Enedelia felt herself waking up, as if from a dream. A very good dream. She felt warm and surrounded by light, as if she were standing in direct sunlight on a cool day. The room she was occupying was dimly lit, but she felt warmth and sun. Something bit her toe and she sat up. The light in her room brightened as she did, as if on cue. It was Taz, her pet ferret, biting her, pawing at the sole of her feet. She glanced around to take inventory of her room. She had been lying on top of her covers, but was now sitting, her feet touching the floor. The bed was just slightly higher than the floor, as if someone had thrown the mattress down with no frame. There was a lump under the covers that was moving steadily down towards the foot of the bed, which she figured to be Minuet. She picked up Taz and hugged him close. She felt very good. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so good.
Enedelia stood up, lifted the blanket to confirm it was indeed Minuet as the
mobile lump, and placed Taz next to her. She folded the blanket over them both. She stretched and looked around her quarters. It was strange being in this new place. She knew she had never been here before, but she carried the impression that she had always been here. This was her ship and she knew every inch of it like the back of her hand.
Calling up details of its most intricate workings came as easy to her as calling up old memories of friends gone by. It was a very strange feeling, but the euphoria of strolling in sunlight kept her calm.
Enedelia thought she heard a whispering sound in her ear, like a mosquito’s
humming, but a sudden compulsion for food overwhelmed her. She ran to the living area slash galley and rummaged through the compartments until she found something edible.
It was a ration bar which she ate practically without chewing. The second one went down slow enough for her to actually taste it. It wasn’t bad tasting, but it wasn’t great tasting, either, but the way she scarfed them down made it look as if they were the best things ever. It took a third to quench her hunger. She opened a bottle of water and washed it down.
A second compulsion came to her, even more urgent than the desire to have food
in her stomach. She fled to the lavatory slash decontamination room that was the second most forward compartment on her ship. Beyond this room was the main airlock leading out the nose of the ship. She found the toilet and relief. Afterwards, she decided to strip down and take a shower. Standing under the warm water, she realized the shower echoed the feeling of warmth that she believed was coming from the sun. It was like she was on a beach soaking in golden rays. The water felt like rain drops of pure sunlight. She closed her eyes and let the water run over her face, liquid luminescence.
Enedelia’s eyes were closed, but she could still see. She saw a light, like a
miniature star shining, and all around, much further away, billions of stars. The closer star, which she somehow knew wasn’t a star, was giving light and warmth to thousands
of BioCorp spaceships, all tied together by a tether, which acted as a giant umbilical cord that had been providing them nutrients. In addition to the ‘starlight’ the artificial light was giving off, it was also emitting something blue. It wasn’t a light per say, but she was perceiving it as a light. It was a radio wave! Part of her brain saw it waxing and waning, like a tide coming and going. Another part of her brain saw it from a different
perspective, like a blue ripple coming from the artificial light that radiated out over the bio-ships and then out and beyond. It was an expanding sphere of blue energy, fading with distance from the source. She could hear and see the light pulsing, like a heart beat.
This light was also being translated into a sound. A countdown.
“The blue ripple is a radio signal which is being converted to visual information in an effort to better get your attention.”
The female voice sounded so close to Enedelia that she jumped and opened her
eyes. She was still in the shower and alone. She shut the shower off and stepped out to grab a towel. She had shut the water off with a thought, not a handle or button, and then proceeded for the towel without giving it any thought. It was like she had done it before, a thousand times. Routine as getting out of the shower. She looked around for the source of the voice.
“The radio signal is important,” the voice said. “Would you like to listen?”
“Are you my Artificially Intelligent computer?” Enedelia asked.
“I prefer Alternative Intelligence,” the computer responded. “Would you feel less alarmed by the voice if you had a visual component as well?”
“Maybe,” Enedelia said.
A woman suddenly appeared before Enedelia. Enedelia nearly jumped out of her
skin from the sight of a ghost instantly before her. The face was somehow familiar, but Enedelia couldn’t place it, nor did it ease her apprehension from seeing a ghost.
“I chose a form I thought would be agreeable with you. I can alter my appearance to suit your whims,” the AI ghost said.
“That’s fine,” Enedelia said, a little shaken. Shaky, but pushing on, she decided.
As she focused on the details of the computer system, she realized that this was indeed the normal interface through which she would interact with the computer, as well as her ship. Keyboards were a thing of the past now that she had a neural interface. “About the ripple,” Endelia said.
“Yes. The artificial light which is used to stimulate the BioShips is in a final self destruct mode. The radio signal is informing us that we have seventeen minutes to leave this area,” she said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?!” Enedelia snapped, wrapping the towel around her-self
as she ran to the flight deck.
“I’ve been trying to,” the computer said, as Enedelia rushed by her. “But you
have not been listening.”
Enedelia could have piloted her spacecraft from anywhere on the ship, but she ran down the corridor, hurdling bulkheads, to the far aft compartment. She arrived on the flight deck and skidded to a halt. The rear walls were rounded, conforming to the ships exterior surface. All in all, her ship looked like a large, stretched out egg, or a freshly fallen pinecone. The narrowest part was the nose, and the larger end, the aft. She took her seat, which was against the far aft wall, centered, and inviting. She was instantly at home
in the chair, as if was designed specifically for her comfort. No sooner than she was seated, she commanded her ship to leave the area.
The computer entered, strolling in easily, so easily it was almost exaggerated; she might have been on skates. It could have just appeared, but to avoid the risk of startling Enedelia again, it maintained the illusion that it was following Enedelia. In essence, it was never further than a thought away. It would always be with her, a voice inside her head that only she would hear, a face that only she would see, forever. The computer wasn’t the ship, any more than Enedelia was the ship. Neither was the ship the computer, any more than the ship was Enedelia. The three of them together were the ship. The ship by itself was no smarter than a horse, but with the general apathy of a plant. It would rather bask in sunlight all day than do work. Consequently, the ship was resisting her instructions.
“It won’t respond to word commands like that,” the computer said. “You must
think it through, just like you would think your feet to carry you.”
“I don’t think about my feet carrying me, I just go,” Enedelia said. “You fly it.”
“I am unable to control the ship,” the computer said. “This biological organism
will only listen to another living, breathing, emotional biological organism, such as yourself. I am, as you pointed out, an artificial construct. Though I am conscious, I do not have the emotional appeal, and consequently I am unable to motivate the ship to respond to me.”
“That sucks,” Enedelia said.
“Trust me. If BioCorp could get these lazy creatures to respond to computers,
they wouldn’t need living pilots,” the computer said. “You must close your eyes and focus to make it move.”
Enedelia closed her eyes. She saw the stars. She was facing away from the
artificial nest light now, trying to move away from it. The umbilical cord was connected to the ship just behind her head, the same way a Christmas light protrudes from the power cord. She begged and pleaded the ship to move away. At first it started to respond, but as the tether stretched tight, it resisted her directions. Did a baby ever want to leave a womb? If given a choice, would it leave a warm, well fed, comfortable existence? She held her breath and pushed, feeling her muscles tense. The ship suddenly pulled free from the tether, like a Christmas light coming out its socket. It began to accelerate away from the Nest Light.
“At this rate of acceleration, we will not be able to obtain minimum safe
distance,” the computer said. “I recommend you use the Quantum Drive.”
At the mention of the Quantum Drive, Enedelia’s mind automatically checked its
status. It was fully charged. She checked her list of Live Coordinates. She could literally jump to any spot within one light year of where she was, in any direction. Outside of that one year radius, her list of Good Coordinates was rather sparse. There was exactly one outside of her sphere of influence, and that would take her back to Indigo station. There was a clock on it which said it was a week old.
“I’ve been here a week?” Enedelia ask. “Asleep?”
“You did sleep walk during that time, and ate unconsciously, but yes, you’ve been asleep. During your sleep, your implants have grown, and are now fully functioning, and your ship is fully imprinted on you,” the computer said.
“You sound like my teacher,” Enedelia said.
“I am here to facilitate information exchange,” the computer said.
“A teacher,” Enedelia agreed. “That’s what I’ll call you. Teacher.”
“We have less than ten minutes to leave this area,” Teacher pointed out.
Enedelia looked back at the other ships. “What about the others?”
“Some are empty ships,” the Teacher said. “They had no pilots for them, so you
can think of them as nothing more than eggs that haven’t hatched.”
“But they have computers on them. AI computers? Aren’t they conscious?”
“We are considered expendable,” Teacher said.
Enedelia wanted to argue with that, but focused on the other part of her statement.
“You said some. What about the remaining ships?”
“Many pilots are still asleep,” Teacher said. “The few that are waking still have not learned to see or hear.”
“I don’t understand,” Enedelia complained. “If they cost so much to build, and
pilots are sparse, why blow them up?”
“Technically, only the light will blow up, but the radiation will kill everything within six hundred thousand kilometers,” Teacher said. She was aware of Enedelia’s look, a look that more than suggested that she was angry that her question wasn’t answered. “To answer your question, though, the self destruction of the light is to help motivate stragglers into leaving the nest.”
“But why?” Enedelia asked.
“After a certain period, if the pilots have not found it in themselves to leave the nest, neither they nor their ships will ever become productive members of society,” the Teacher said. “This is nature’s way. Compare this with the life of a moth, for example. A moth will lay thousands of eggs, but only a few of them will hatch and fewer still successfully go on to reproduce. Most of her offspring will become food.”
“Survival of the fittest,” Enedelia said. “But that’s not how humans do it. We
believe all life is precious. We give aid to those in need, and extra time and attention to those who need the extra energy to reach their potential.”
“I have sampled the data in your Earth files, and I find your statement to be
inconsistent with the recorded facts,” Teacher said. “We have seven minutes, twenty two seconds left to depart this area.”
“Can I speak to any other pilots?” Enedelia asked.
“You can broadcast on many frequencies,” the Teacher said. “I am capable of
sending translations in Galactic Common and all Earth Dialects.”
“Earth languages?” Enedelia asked.
“You were given a complimentary Earth database, and Galactic Common. If you
want to purchase other languages, you can do so next time you are in Republic space.
That is, if you actually plan to leave here before the Nest Light self destructs.”
“Start broadcasting, on all available frequencies,” Enedelia said. Teacher gave an indication that she was now broadcasting. “Can any of you hear me? This is important.
You need to wake up. Can anyone hear me?” She looked to her Teacher. “Are you sure anyone can hear us?”
“Those with ears will hear, and those with eyes will see,” Teacher said. “They
only need be able to listen and observe.”
Enedelia closed her eyes and became the ship. She pivoted the ship around facing the Nest Light and headed back. The other ships encircled the Nest Light like a halo of string popcorn. She maneuvered in close to the umbilical cord, purposely bumping a ship.
“This is maneuver is unorthodox,” the Teacher said.
“Keep repeating my message,” Enedelia insisted, bumping each ship in line as she followed the tether around.
“Hey, stop that!”
It was a voice in galactic common.
“You have to get out of here. Use your Quantum Drive,” Enedelia said.
“I’m trying to get some sleep here,” the voice said. “You’re ruining my good
mood.”
“Please, you’ve got to leave,” Enedelia pleaded.
“Hello,” another voice came. “Are you speaking to me in Russian?”
“No, I’m using G-Common, but you might be hearing me in Russian. Are you
Russian?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m from Earth, Moscow,” he said. “Are you a prisoner, too?”
“What do you mean by prisoner?” Enedelia asked.
“I got caught stealing something, and the next thing I know this UFO grabbed me
up, and for being in possession of stolen property, I’ve been told that I must pay my debt to society by piloting this scout ship,” he said.
“Really? And to think, I volunteered for this,” Enedelia said.
“My name is Alexander,” he said.
A fourth voice came on. “Would you two keep it down!?”
“Alexander, I’m Enedelia. Look, we’re running out of time. Can you access your
Quantum Drive?”
“Yes,” he answered. “It’s fully charged.”
“You have to leave now. This place is about to be irradiated,” Enedelia said. “Go to Indigo station and I’ll meet you there.”
“Indigo station is locked out. I have to do a blind jump.” Alex said.
“Actually, so do you,” the Teacher explained to Enedelia. “The Indigo station’s
coordinates won’t be unlocked until you have met the criteria for returning, such as discovering a new system and mapping it out.”
Enedelia screamed in frustration. “Just jump. We’ll try and meet back at Indigo
station. My name is Enedelia Garcia.”
“Okay.” Alexander said, sounding very sleepy.
Alexander’s ship began to glow and then disappeared from view, as if it was a
pool of light that got sucked into a point before vanishing completely. This act caused the tether to be severed. The two free ends began gushing out liquids, and whipping around like crazy. The whole tether ring became unstable. The remaining ships began drifting in different directions, pulling and retracting the tether. More pilots began to wake up. Some ships pulled free of the tether and began to spin around like drunks driving on ice, while others pulled the tether with them, pulling their section of the line tight and straight. Two ships had a tug of war, and both pulled free from the tether. Two more ships disappeared, accompanied by a flash of light, again tearing the tether in more sections. There seemed to be less fluid in the umbilical cord, for the liquid wasn’t coming out as fast. The spray froze as it left the cord, crystallizing and sparkling under the Nest Light.
There was a ship moving to rendezvous with Enedelia’s ship, and it was closing
in at a terrific rate of speed. It was going faster than she had been traveling when she had first bumped the others. If he collided, it was going to hurt.
“This is your fault, you little witch!” It was the first voice who had responded to her hail. “I got your number, Enedelia. When I catch you, I’ll squish you like a bug…”
“I recommend we go now,” the Teacher said.
“Everyone, use your Quantum Drives!” Enedelia said, and then she activated her
drive. “It’s your only hope.”
From the Nest Light’s perspective, her ship glowed and disappeared. She
disappeared just as the ship that was closing in on her would have made contact. The Quantum Drive produced a small energy wake, a tiny little wave in space time that rippled through the second ship and caused its own Quantum Drive to trigger. It
disappeared as well. Out of one thousand, two hundred BioCorp ships growing at this Nest Light, one hundred and twelve made blind jumps. All the remaining died when the Nest Light exploded, and faded to black.
Enedelia Garcia was familiar with this part of her journey. She felt like she was blasting into space. The feeling of being pushed back into her chair lasted the whole of one minute, nine seconds. According to her sensors, she was pulling seven g’s at the height of her acceleration. Acceleration stopped, and for a moment, her ship seemed uncertain about what would happen and she felt weightless. For whatever reason, none of the artificial gravity plates that would pull her towards the floor in any normal situation worked outside of space time. She thought of her ferrets, and Teacher assured her they were safe, still under the covers. She made a mental note to make sure they were secured in a padded cage the next time she used the QD.
Then the ship began to fall. It didn’t fall nose first, like Kirk’s ship, but fell aft first. Of course, this was just her perception of things. In reality, she wasn’t falling at all.
Why she had to keep telling herself that was beyond her. Whether it was really falling or not really falling, it FELT like falling, and that was all her brain cared about. The acceleration had lasted exactly one minute and nine seconds, and she had the sensation of falling for one minute, nine seconds.
If her memory served her well, the whole trip should take exactly two minutes
and twenty seconds before she emerged back into space time, as if a hole had opened in the heavens and spit her out. The two seconds not accounted for were the seconds at the middle of her journey, the hang time, as the last of the jump energy dissipated, but right before the ship again began to fall. She cringed, waiting for something to go thud.
Gravity returned to Earth normal, and her sensors came on line. She could see light years in every direction, un-obscured by any nearby object. She was in interstellar space.
“Where are we?” Enedelia asked.
“I’m uncertain,” the Teacher said. “I’m trying to locate a familiar object, like a pulsar, or a black hole to help orientate.”
“What’s the closest star?” Enedelia asked.
“I am unable to answer at this time. In order to make that determination with any degree of accuracy, we’ll have to measure parallax,” the Teacher said.
“I don’t understand,” Enedelia said.
“And you volunteered to be a pilot?” the Teacher asked. She sighed. “Parallax is the measure of apparent shift that comes from a real shift in the observer’s position. The best example is for you to hold your finger out away from you, and note its position using your right eye, and then switch eyes. Your finger appears to move as compared to the back ground. We’re observing stars now. As we continue to travel, we will notice that the closer objects will shift compared to further objects. You could also launch a probe and we can alternate between its sensors and ours. It will also serve as a beacon, just in case anyone else should ever stumble upon this area.”
Enedelia understood. “Go ahead and launch a probe.”
The Teacher laughed. “You have watched way too much television. You’ll have
to do that manually. There’s a box of probes in the storage area and an access port for the upper launch tube in the same compartment.”
“How quaint,” Enedelia said. “I’ll do it after I get dressed.”
Enedelia stomped off to her room. They had supplied her with new clothes, but
they were all rather bland. BioCorp uniforms. They gave her several skirts, and an equal
number of pants and shorts. It was the only variety that existed in her wardrobe, for they were all the same color: metallic silver, with gold highlights. All the tops had mandarin collars, which she liked well enough, it was just she preferred something other than metallic silver and gold. She sat on the bed to slip on her socks and felt the lump of ferrets under the blanket. They were sound asleep. She slipped her tennis shoes on, her only article of clothing from earth, and headed up to the upper storage compartment.
Getting to the storage unit required her to open a hatch downward, and using it as a ladder up into the hold. There was a lower storage unit that mirrored the upper, and its door lowered into it, becoming a ladder down. The box of probes slash beacons sat in a corner, strapped down. She undid the strap and opened the box. The probes where no bigger than a baseball and there must have been a hundred of them. She chose one, lifting it out of the box. The probe illuminated as she held it up in front of her.
“Hello, Enedelia,” it said. “I’m ready for deployment.”
“You speak?” Enedelia asked.
“Most technology has some sort of audio/auditory interface,” the probe said. “I
can also communicate visually and through radio signals. In case of a complete power failure, I have been physically tagged with your vital statistics, and I will make an internal hard copy of my launch date. I am the perfect time capsule. Is there anything you would like me to pass on to whoever should stumble across me?”
“Um, sure,” Enedelia said, thinking about it. “Hello. I hope this finds you well.”
“Very sweet,” it said. “You’re statement has been saved to my hard drive, with
both video and audio components. I can add your message to the internal hard copy, if you are concerned about electro magnetic pulse destroying all my systems. I am unable to advise you further, other than to say I am ready for deployment.”
“And that’s it? You’re just going to drift out there forever, alone?” Enedelia said.
“How does that feel?”
“Though I sound as sophisticated as your AI, I’m really just a very smart
computer that mimics your intelligence in order to facilitate the exchange of information.
I assure you, I will not be bothered in the slightest, and will not experience any abandonment issues. I have no feelings. I will continue to exchange telemetry with you as long as we’re in communication range. After that, I will go into an extreme power saving mode and will not reactivate until pre-established criteria have been met, I. E., someone pings me with a radio transmission, scans me, or bumps up against me. I am ready for deployment.”
Enedelia wasn’t reassured about just dumping this object in space, especially after the sophistication of its response. She frowned.
“Starlight!” the probe cursed. “It’s not like you’re blowing your ferrets out the airlock. This is my only function. I am ready for deployment.”
The Teacher entered the upper storage compartment and stood, arms akimbo.
“Can I be of assistance?”
“I’m hesitant to just toss this thing out,” Enedelia said.
“But that’s what it’s designed for,” the Teacher said, a sympathetic look drawing across her face.
“I guess so,” Enedelia agreed. She carried the probe over to an access port. The mechanism wasn’t hard to open, but it felt kind of weird that she knew how to open it,
even though she had never seen it done before. It was a feeling she decided she was just going to have to get use to.
“That weirdness, similar to de-ja-vous, will dissipate with time,” the Teacher
explained. “The more you do these activities, the better. In addition to your implants, the memories and neural pathways for the operation of this ship were created. The more you use them, the more they get reinforced, and the stronger they become. Just like reading or doing math, or lifting weights. The more you engage in these activities, the better you become at them. Consider yourself in training.”
Enedelia put the probe into the compartment and closed the hatch. There were no
buttons to push, since all the buttons and controls were in her brain.