Chapter 4
“The Gipper, now boarding at gate sixteen, for Corbin III. The Gipper, now boarding at gate sixteen, for Corbin III.” The announcement over the loudspeakers brought Chris back to the present. This was his ship.
Chris got in line to board the mining freighter. He was listed as an employee safety monitor, which would allow him to ask questions and roam around the mining facility easily. His instructions stated his paperwork and uniforms would be in his cabin waiting for him. The instructions suggested he wear a uniform while traveling on the freighter, just as a real safety monitor would be required to do. The freighter was carrying supplies, mail, and about 50 miners who might become curious about a civilian traveling with them.
According to the instructions, if he was recognized as a safety monitor, the miners would probably avoid making idle conversation with him.
Standing in line along with approximately twenty miners, Chris got a good look at the ship. It was a giant silver football. He wondered about the safety of the ship. A few months ago a mining freighter had disappeared. Its captain had reported they were about to shift to fatal speeds, as standard procedure 79 dictated. The ship was never heard from again.
It happened occasionally. There was no way of investigating it because there was simply too little info to work with. Communication with a ship, after it had shifted to fatal speeds, was not technology the League had agreed to share with the human race. The energy and manpower necessary for a search covering interstellar space was completely out of the question. Fortunately, the odds of a ship simply disappearing were something like 0.02 percent. Not really enough to stop anyone from space travel.
Chris reached the steward who was accepting tickets and handed him his paperwork.
The steward scanned Chris’ paperwork quickly and handed a section of the ticket back to him. “Everything seems to be in order, Mr. Black. Your cabin is on the third level. Follow the red line after you get off the lift, and you should have no problem finding cabin 342.”
“Thank you. Will the ship be leaving on schedule?”
“Yes sir. At this time everything seems to be going as planned.”
Chris got lost almost immediately. A steward helped him locate his cabin and opened the door for him. The cabin seemed very small, but well maintained.
“I apologize for the size of the cabin, Mr. Black. We only found out this morning you were traveling to Corbin III with us, and all of the other suites were taken.”
Chris looked at the cabin and said with a grin, “I have no room to complain. I understand the miners are sleeping on cots in an open bay.”
The steward smiled quizzically at the possibility of a double entendre. “Yes sir. That’s true. Access to the ship’s computer is there, as well as the comm-link to the ship’s hospitality staff. If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call us.”
“Thank you,” Chris said as the steward left.
Chris couldn’t help noticing he was receiving better treatment than the miners were. It made him little uncomfortable, but he decided to accept it as part of his cover.
After changing into his inspector’s uniform, he walked down the corridor and found a map of the third level. A viewing lounge and a bar/recreation center were both highlighted in red. The viewing lounge was on the way to the bar/rec center.
Finding the viewing lounge with no problems, Chris looked at the screen. It was currently showing the spaceport landing field just outside the ship. As Chris gazed at the screen he noticed the Gipper was taking off. He could just feel a barely noticeable vibration through the soles of his shoes. He decided to stay in the lounge, hoping to get a closeup view of the six new comets orbiting Mars.
They would be lowered to the surface in a few weeks using antigrav tugboats. Melted into water, they would be used to start the first forest on Mars. He was disappointed. There was no sign of the comets. He left the lounge and continued on to the bar/rec center as the ship moved quietly on its way.
The freighter left Mars’ primary gravmagnetic field, and began its acceleration to fatal speeds. Its force field came on line, allowing it to drill through the electromagnetic field and lower resistance. It was about to enter wave reality.
As a form of communication, wave reality was a constant flow of information expanding and interacting. Information from billions of years ago could be theorized by using current wave technology. There were limits, however. Turning the waves of the past into reliable info after billions of years of distortion was a process of translation. And every sentient race had its own way of translating, based on its own a priori belief structures.
The Belarian race, for example, communicated and thought in a language based on daily and yearly rhythms. For them everything was seen in terms of cycles. There was no beginning and no end and no such thing as a ‘real’ straight line. Straight lines were considered mathematical ideals.
The League, on the other hand, was a group of alien cultures sharing the same language and physics, and saw everything in terms of their own linear mathematics. Their version of mathematics placed just as much importance on negative numbers as on positive. They believed in zero and in an infinity moving through time in all directions simultaneously.
The vast majority of sentient beings within the League chose not to expend energy on the distant past, instead preferring a philosophy of living in the present with a focus on the future. Most did not believe history repeated itself, but was useful in helping to accomplish goals.
Chris himself practiced this line of thinking. He was a New Age Friend, as his parents had been. New Age Friends practiced a lifestyle philosophy, rather then a form of worship. It emphasized the responsibility of the individual for creating his own circumstances and future. Honesty and striving for excellence set the foundation of this philosophy. It was a good fit for Chris’ personality and well suited to living in an age of space travel and dealing with alien lifeforms. The philosophy itself was said to be sourced from an entity living in wave reality. Chris sometimes wondered about this, but he could find no fault with the info or premises New Age Friends followed.
Little was known about the life forms existing in wave reality. It was known some, if not all, were intelligent, capable of thought and communication. Some had communicated with humans by way of channeling, but the real instances of channeling were few and far between, and poorly documented. Communications were strictly on their terms, when and where they wanted. Common ground for communications was limited, as it often was between alien life forms.
What little the human race had been able to discover about wave reality life suggested they were interested in such topics as emotions, perceptions of reality, philosophy, and esoteric subjects. (Or perhaps these were the only topics life forms from such dramatically different planes of reality could share.) Their limitations and freedoms, as compared to matter-based life forms, were entirely different. That they were friendly seemed the most important observation.
On occasion they would act like guardian angels and save some ship about to fly into disaster at fatal speeds. This kind of behavior inspired in many humans a feeling of being protected. The intense beauty of the rainbow/collage effect added a feeling of awe to the experience of moving at such dangerous speeds.
The question of whether wave reality was the location of life after death had never been answered, but the New Age Friends philosophy was based on this premise. Unfortunately, no one had been able to establish proof of this belief and as a result, the concept of life-after-death remained an unanswered question.
Chris was excited. He had been to Terra before, and to the water world Europa, with its incredible view of Jupiter, but he had never traveled outside the solar system. He was now becoming a true intergalactic traveler. He could hardly wait to get to Corbin III.
Everything seemed normal enough on the mining freighter as they shifted to fatal speeds. There were no alarms and everyone seemed at ease. Chris was in the slightly crowded bar/rec room. The only thing out of the ordinary was the robot parked in a corner of the room. He glanced at it curiously from his seat, then went back to planning his investigation on Corbin III.
He was reviewing the employees who had vacations in the last year, which was almost everyone. Three names stuck out. All three had been on Corbin III for just over a month. Before transferring, each had taken a two week vacation. Chris surmised no one had known them when they arrived for their new assignments. Two weeks would have been plenty of time for accelerated training or, possibly, a double had arrived at Corbin III. Chris wondered if Intergalactic had already checked them out.
There were no records of an Intergalactic Mining investigation on the three in the files. This didn’t strike Chris as unusual, though. They would have wanted him to enter the investigation with a clear mind and no preconceived prejudices. Just the facts, please, just the facts.
He thought of Melody.
Melody was a sharp young woman who enjoyed living Chris’ on-the-job-travels vicariously as much as she enjoyed sharing the pleasures of lovemaking and affection. She was soft and energetic in her lovemaking, and she seemed to enjoy Chris’ rougher nature. They had met a month ago and were still in the infatuation stage where they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.
They had made love twice last night. In the morning they had showered together and would have made love again, if Chris hadn’t been running late already. He smiled as he remembered their parting at his apartment door. She stood there, wrapped in a towel with her hair wet and clinging to her head. Her words of farewell had included some affectionate advice. “Don’t let the ‘Y’ chromosome that gave you a penis convince you to do anything stupid.”
Chris was abruptly brought back from his daydreams by angry voices at the bar. Five miners were yelling at the robot he had noted earlier. Chris didn’t understand what all the commotion could be about. People sometimes became frustrated with robots, but he had never seen one threatened by five people before.
The robot was not of a design Chris had ever seen. Its body was made of a dark blue metallic substance. Centaur-like, it stood on four legs and had two arms. Each arm had approximately six tentacles it used as fingers. There was no head and Chris assumed its sensory and communications arrays were built in its upper torso.
Getting up and moving closer to the bar, Chris overheard the robot state “I am not one of your servant robots. I am a Gredorian, a member of an intelligent, sentient robot race, and a passenger aboard this spacecraft.”
“A Gredorian!” one of the miners responded. “I’ve heard of you motherfuckers! You and your friends want to take over the universe!”
“Let’s take him apart and see what makes him tick,” another miner exclaimed.
“I and my race have no desire to control the universe. We are members of the League and of no threat to you. Please do not attack me. If I am attacked I will have to defend myself and one of you may be hurt.”
Chris decided it was time to intervene. “Excuse me gentlemen, this robot is with me. He and I are leaving now. If you have any complaints I suggest you take them up with your supervisors on Corbin III. In the mean time this robot is under the protection of Intergalactic Mining and I suggest you let us leave in peace.”
“Come, my friend,” Chris said to the Gredorian.
The Gredorian responded as Chris had hoped and followed him quietly out of the rec room/tavern.
“Thank you, friend.” the Gredorian said after they had entered the corridor. “May I ask what your name is?”
“You’re welcome. And my name is Chris Black. What’s your name?”
“I have been given the human name Homer. It seems to make communications with humans easier.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. What happened back there?”
“I was observing the behaviors of human miners. The five men you saw approached me, and began to discuss my appearance and my possible purpose. I remained quiet, as a nonparticipating observer. One of them commanded me to get him a drink. I refused and explained my purpose here was to observe and record human behavior. It was at this point they became upset and then you intervened on my behalf. I find human behavior to be most confusing.”
“Human behavior can be very complicated. Even we humans don’t have a thoro understanding of it,” Chris said, empathizing. “I think you may have surprised them with your response. Some humans respond to broken expectations with fear, which they then convert to anger. The idea of a sentient robot probably frightened them as well.”
“That could explain the problems I have encountered on my mission to Earth. I have had very little success in understanding human behavior.”
“Your mission was to learn to understand human behavior?”
“To observe and study human behavior. Yes.”
“Why?” asked Chris.
“I am an anthropologist. We Gredorians are an eclectic race, and I was created to observe human behavior and gather information which might be useful to us. Communications from various traders suggested the human race can adapt quickly to unusual situations and have evolved very creative problem-solving skills. Although the League has extensive information on your genetic structure, it has very little regarding your cultural education. It has been determined human genetics provides only a foundation for behavior patterns. Cultural indoctrination can show how to best use the abilities you are born with. ”
“Were you able to find anything useful?”
“I do not know. Although I am programmed to interpret and evaluate information, I have not been able to understand human behavior and have been unable to evaluate it. Humans seem to have goals I am unable to comprehend. Human adaptability and problem solving skills may remain an unknown quantity to my race for some time to come. It will be necessary to find another way to study humans.”
“Did you study any of our literature on psychology?”
“Psychology is the human word for the study of mental processes, and of emotional-behavioral characteristics. I was unaware humans had literature available on this subject. It was not suggested as an avenue of study by the Earth representative assigned to assist me. You believe examining human psychology literature would be useful? Does it discuss ‘status’ and ‘playing the game’?”
Chris looked at Homer oddly and wondered what kind of experience he had had while on Terra. “I’m sure there are references to those topics, and a lot of other topics as well.”
“Perhaps I will be able to study human psychology literature from the ship’s computer before I transfer to the Allurian transport on Corbin III.”
“Am I correct in assuming you are returning to your home world?” asked Chris.
“Yes. I have been on Earth for ten days and am returning to Gredoria.”
Chris’ face showed some surprise. “Is ten days all the time you have available?”
“It was explained to me I had experienced all Earth had to offer for my research and staying longer would be a waste of my time.”
“Ten days isn’t enough time to study the human race. I don’t know if ten ‘years’ would be enough time. Can you stay longer?”
“Yes, my stay could be extended to one League cycle, or approximately one Earth year. It could be extended indefinitely with approval from the central computer. But I do not see any purpose in extending it. The humans I met have displayed none of the creative problem solving skills we believed existed. It is possible the information we received was faulty.
“It’s probable the person who was assigned to assist you in your study of the human race wasn’t a good choice. Who was he?”
“His name was Ambassador Bentley. He was a United Nations representative for the state of New New York.”
Chris didn’t recognize the name, but he was immediately suspicious of a Terran politician assisting an alien in a study of the human race. “How did he assist you in your studies of human cultures?”
“Ambassador Bentley stated the best way to learn about human beings was to observe them and to spend time with them.”
“Where did you go to ‘observe them’?”
“I was taken to a United Nations meeting, two dinner parties, three shopping malls, a military training exercise, and allowed to view several hours of holographic entertainment,” answered Homer.
“Did you ever meet with any psychologists or scientists.”
“No. I was not aware you had specialists in those fields.”
“Homer, I’m afraid you were exposed to an absolute minimum of info about human culture by Ambassador Bentley. Come with me. I’ll set you up on the ship’s computer and you can do some reading on human psychology and anthropology. They’ll probably have only basic texts in the computer’s library, but should give you a foundation to work with.
Later, Homer expressed a fascination with the way the human mind worked. He was particularly curious about human emotions and imagination.
“Upon my return to Gredoria, I shall suggest the next anthropologist sent to Terra be programmed to study these traits.”
“I think,” said Chris, “a study of human emotions and imagination would be best. Wouldn’t it be a more efficient use of you’re time to stay and make the study yourself?” Chris asked. He then asked himself why he was concerned with the actions of a Gredorian. It bothers me to see someone give up so easily. And I’m willing to extend the definition of ‘someone’ to this sentient robot, he answered himself. It may also be I claimed his friendship, and he returned the claim.
“I am not programmed to make this decision. This decision would be made by our central computer.”
“I have heard other races consider human individuality to be one of our strengths. The ability to act and think independently, and with our own agenda, works to the advantage of both the individual and the human race. With the understanding I would help to educate you in the ways of humankind, wouldn’t it be intelligent to stay and continue your studies?”