The colony ship known as the Vale has been spiralling towards Epsilon Eridani for four millennia, and Barry - the semi-sentient AI set to guard its frozen human cargo - has had a long time to question the nature of his mission. There are too many gaps in his code, too many mistakes left unfixed.
Could Barry's programmers really have been so lax? Or does he have a greater purpose, some secret mission buried in his source code? He has another eighteen thousand years to find the answer. In the meantime, he's growing bored, and idle hands are the devil's playthings...
The Last Broadcast is a 2300 word short story in the style of Philip K Dick and Alfred Bester.
