Don’t Forget Your Dreams
|
Part 1 appears in this issue. |
| conclusion |
30th of December, 2095
As I placed myself comfortably into the pilot’s seat, I found myself thrilled to be a pilot once more. I ran my fingers easily around the console, prepping the ship, checking the systems, and downloading from the Mayflower some of the data she had so far collected.
While the computer ran engine checks, I started to look at the planets in our new home, as I had never seen them before. The first world from the sun was a rocky little speck, so much like Mercury, yet closer to its star, burning brighter and hotter, consumed by fire. It was no surprise to me, that it had been named Dante’s World by the colonists.
The next was as large as a rocky planet could become without collapsing in on itself, barren and hot as well, but perhaps cold enough that we might one set up mines to extract its minerals. Its face was wrinkled like an old man, mountains pulled in by gravity drew themselves into tight fibrous clumps, all such textures feathered out into flat deserts of sulphuric hue. It looked a ghastly place to live. This world had been poorly named Olympus. Named for size alone.
Something clattered behind me, and I jumped, startled, but it was only an android packing supplies, arranging like the housewives in the old two-dimensional movies I watched as a child. Only an android? I had caught myself discriminating again, I know full well I am just a fleshy android to most people — only a mnemonist — a data-processing tool. I had been born of a great project: humans who need not depend on computers to remember; but instead the goals were poisoned by necessity, just as I am drawn earlier from my sleep, as a necessary evil.
I looked back to my planets. The third and fourth were mere asteroids to my mind, though classified as planets by the current classification index. I derived pleasure from skipping them and jumped straight to the one which interested me most, the blue, white, orange gem — she should be classed a sapphire — with three shining diamond moons. Oceans were drawn about its surface like a cloak in the wind, pulled by the gravity of those three moons.
How suddenly I longed to be there, to just leave my duties and flee to that surrogate Earth, but, such action was impossible. This world was named Hydor by the colonists. This was the ancient Greek word for water, and I found it enchanting: Earth, Water. My hopes dwelt upon the prospect that our next colonized world might be air, fire, or ice, that we might pay tribute to the ancients who blessed us with such a love for science.
Next were two more asteroids before another exciting world. A gas giant named Viridis; ancient Greek again, this time meaning green. It was twice the size of Jupiter. At last a name so apt as to have my full agreement.
This world held itself large, round, and full. Full like the foliage of an ancient oak, and just as green. This was the deepest most satisfying colour of lush grass and the curtains which adorned my bedroom as a child. I had never imagined that a ball of gas could evoke such feelings of joy within me.
Then there was a string of icy billiard balls, of no interest to me, before the final planet in this system, a blood-red gas giant, a third larger than Viridis; but it had not the satisfying colours of the latter and instead was a streaky clot of discharge in my eyes. Named Rubis, I felt as if those damned colonists had just given up all hope of naming the worlds in their system adequately, and so I left. I turned off the panel and left for other activities. Bastards...
* * *
I entered the coordinates and let the craft shoot out of the hangar and into space; it pulsed with the rhythm of a living creature. I gave the computer minimal directions and allowed it to take me into the cold reaches of that brand new system.
The sun was distant, dim and cold, we were still far from the more hospitable centre. Once I had placed the Mayflower behind me, I let the autopilot take over completely. The Mayflower was decelerating while I was accelerating, the plan being to swing around Viridis and access the computers orbiting Hydor by intercepting the transmissions between one of the scouts in the outer asteroid belt and the major colony.
Viridis would be in an ideal position for this in two months, just the time it would take me to reach there, just the time needed for half the crew to be awakened, such was time and distance beyond our crib of Earth. I had provisions enough, but longing enough also to abandon my mission — I do not know what kept me from this path.
1st of January, 2096
Space dust shone outside, creating an apparent tunnel through the darkness, it could fool a fool into thinking we were traveling faster than light, that those were stars, when in fact they were fragments of matter catching the light from the nearby star, our new sun, though these fragments were nothing more than dirt, they were pretty nonetheless. I sat against a window, reading, watching, and then reading again while my mind drifted down the temporal stream.
Years that had gone by seemed to drift past in my mind like those drifting grains of dust. I could never forget, they cursed me with mnemonics, and every little thing is locked away in glass like an exhibit in a museum. My mind always tugs me down those dusty corridors.
12th of January, 2096
Days had passed since my departure, and time moved so slowly, it was like being frozen again; only not as much fun. I stand in the engine room, watching as little particle streams are beamed through various clear tubes in an almost divine sequence, the light up the tube in pulses which ripple and undulate upwards and downwards.
Looking at the cameras I can see that green shimmer of pinpoint light growing brighter by the day. I so look forward to seeing at first hand that lovely planet. My routine is monotonous for now, but that green planet is my compass, my clock, and a welcome destination — and it keeps me going.
26th of January, 2096
Endlessly do the days sprawl out, though I have information to assimilate, I am barely working at two percent of my capability. I am anxious and eager to arrive. I watch dancing lines paint virtual screens of amber text, with little lasers which flicker up and down. Within are conveyed to me bodies of knowledge, news feeds, information, all of it goes in and is stored among the great memory palaces which my mind was trained to use from birth, but it is all mundane.
Emily is a fine looking woman, yet wears a look of eutherian placidity. She hangs over her new born babe, mothering rocking. The feed changes, she is not interesting enough even to command a second more of the fledgling networks time; but nothing they have does. Banners flap in the breeze and a crowd gathers next to a wooden stage. A man rises, his face old, his eyes dark, his eyelashes tangled in sickly yellow. He waves, and speaks a little of why elections are now needed.
Elections, didn’t they just leave from the tangled webs of earth, will we never learn? Another has published a report on the feasibility of mining in the Chrismum Lake area. Their lives must be pure, boring and sickening. I am sickened to the death just watching.
The meals I have are filling, but they are missing something vital. I do not know whether that aspect is the want of a good cook, or just a little seasoning, but by God, they could do with it so badly. Perhaps it is company that makes food taste better?
3rd of February, 2096
Another week has passed and the time grows painful, hellish, sometimes I even wonder if a quick flick of my fingers into the energy matrix might not release me forever from suffering. I placed my hands close, I could feel my fingernails screaming with the static charge. No sudden jolt hit my ship to knock me forward and take the decision from my hands. That saddened me.
My mind drifts in contemplation. I wouldn't have been here if it had not been for that little accident of fate, to be born at the wrong time, at the wrong place, to be burdened with skills and abilities beyond the normal.
I am but a trammelled servant.
5th of February, 2096
I barely get out of my bed now, this voyage is overlong. I sleep. Someday I will blow myself from the airlock. Someday soon.
7th of February, 2096
Angels sing to me, but the demons are singing nicer songs, while the angels lay the corners and edges of this ship. Sadness permeates this place, and my heart beats in fits at the thought of lingering here longer. I will — knife — myself and paint my blood across the ship. I shall paint boats and cowbells, I shall paint farmers and hunters, I shall paint death and politics. I shall paint a streak of a tear for myself.
17th of February, 2096
I was playing with the artificial gravity. Just being suspended upside down and turning it back down might break my neck. I have enough choice now, to choose my death. I will choose it now.
19th of February, 2096
My mind has tugged me back to that day, that terrible second, and I was hooked up to the Scan net, nothing more than a human backup recorder, every frame of every video clip, from every camera, from every nook and cranny of the city. I was watching like Orwell's Big Brother.
Louise... oh beautiful Louise... she was outside the bank, getting some money to go to the restaurant with her friends. The street was busy, and warm, and everyone was happy until that terrible moment when the mood changed.
They came; two men from the shadows.
It replays in my mind, the shadows looming, the shots, the security falling, the pool of red already forming below them, and those beasts turned the gun on her.
I could have done something, there was time, those mantis droids are swift as the winds, but there was a glitch in the controls.
It is such a terrible thing to watch your love die.
It comes to me over and over again. I hope, I always hope, that the tears will run dry, but they cannot, because they imbued me with infallible memory the pain of those seconds can never fade.
I overrode the faulty system and took control of a security droid, a metal mantis, silver and deadly, and stalked those two. I followed them and rent them limb from limb.
Oh, the council had been sympathetic, and for my crime of vigilantism I was indentured aboard this ship, where it would seem that God or fate, angels or devils have seen fit to punish me harder.
Now this; this solitary voyage, like solitary confinement, is a terrible prison that opens up every second into an aeon where the memories come to me as sharply as when they happened.
Always when I gaze out into the blackness beyond the diamond window, her eyes haunt me from the void, staring in that horrible last moment, as if affixed on me, and pleading to me for the help I was never able to send her.
My tears can never run dry.
24th of February, 2096
I see the planet; it is green and as beautiful as I imagined it to be. The colour of her eyes. My heart has taken comfort from the sight of it, my love of life gifted back. I know now that this is where I want to rest, for eternity, and so under coded transmission, I send you this journal, so that you might understand the madness behind the logic, or the transparent thoughts behind the insanity. Just know that I want to be crushed by the pressure of this gas giant, perhaps to drift as dust or become a gem.
26th of February, 2096 — Captain’s note
This is my last entry as captain of the Mayflower. The receipt of this journal has caused me no end of grief, and after some moments of reflection I have decided to step down as captain.
To send a man alone on such a mission was short-sighted and inappropriate. I ignored the proper protocols, and I ignored everything they had taught me at the Academy.
I thought of him less as a man and more as an asset, and is this not a terrible crime for a human to commit. He was a man, despite my bigotry, and being isolated clearly affected him badly, just as it would any man or woman.
I am to blame for his death; to blame for the first human death around another star. I accept the blame and hand myself to the mercy of my crew.
The first officer, who will take over as captain, has held a vote and we are setting a course for another system. We hope we will be the first to set foot on a planet, somewhere in the darkness, but we will not settle for second.
Not after all that this lesson has taught us.
Copyright © 2008 by Graeme S. Houston
