Anticlockwise

by T W M Ashford

  ‘Works for me,’ I said, shrugging. ‘You know how to fly that one?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how to fly any of them exactly,’ said Pierre, chewing his lip. ‘But that one looks like it was designed for a mammal at least.’

  Pierre and I hurried across the central walkway, raising our eyes only to make sure the Torri-Tau weren’t making a sudden descent back down the ramp. They weren’t. In fact, nobody was paying us any attention at all. I guess few people in Port Iridium wanted to attract much attention, so few were in much of a mood to pay it either. A pair of tall, thin aliens with skin as pale as snow walked past us, deep in diplomatic conversation, and neither acknowledged us in the slightest as we stepped over the meagre security chain surrounding the ship.

  I hung back and kept watch while Pierre jogged ahead between the ship’s rear landing gear. There was a small loading ramp set evenly between them, but it had been retracted. Pierre fiddled around with something loose for a few seconds before slamming it back against the ship’s underbelly.

  ‘Goddammit,’ he hissed, stomping back to me. ‘They haven’t just closed the ramp, they’ve padlocked it shut. With a chain an inch thick, no less. We’re not getting into this one with anything short of a circular saw.’

  My heart fluttered as I glanced over at the ship opposite. ‘What about that one?’ I asked.

  I recognised it from back at the Roaming Havoc, when it had flown overhead moments before we entered the favela slums and climbed the trash mountain. It looked even more gorgeous and black and dramatic up close. It still resembled a manta ray, but standing near to it felt akin to being in the showroom of the world’s most expensive supercar. It exuded wealth and power. Literal power. Its sleek body sparkled and glistened under the lights of the port. Hovering in place before us, whatever engines kept it afloat were utterly silent.

  And above all else, its entrance ramp was open.

  ‘Yeah,’ gawped Pierre. ‘That’ll do nicely.’

  We scurried back across the path, keeping our heads down once more. Even the sound of our crossing was masked. A long, craggy ship shaped like a cigar went rocketing through the exit, leaving a trail of smouldering cinders in the air behind it. The forcefield rippled as it passed through.

  At the side of the ship’s bay was a tall, tree-like construction light. We stood underneath it with all the subtlety of two teenagers looking to score some weed.

  ‘I don’t see any guards, do you?’ I asked, peering around the lamp post like a meerkat and tying my fingers into knots. I half expected some space-troll with tusks to come along and throw me into a ship’s thruster for trespassing. ‘Or is that what they are?’

  The “they” to which I was referring were a squad of skittish, waist-high, neon-yellow robots scurrying in and out of the spaceship. One of them was desperately polishing the floor of the ramp after itself, wiping away its tracks. Another was disconnecting a hose from the ship’s fuel receptacle with slow and delicate care.

  ‘Them? No, they’re servicing bots, I think. That gives me an idea though. Follow me.’

  We walked towards the spaceship, ducking under the imposing metal barrier that surrounded it. I followed a step behind Pierre. The supernova excitement of spotting the vehicle had suddenly evolved into a neutron star sitting in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘Woah there,’ said Pierre, raising his hand and jogging over. The little yellow robot who’d been polishing the ramp was now beside a small control panel, ready to retract it. ‘Not so fast, please.’

  The robot emitted a note not dissimilar to the wrong answer sound on a gameshow. ‘This area is strictly off-limits to everyone except registered port personnel,’ it bleated. ‘Please vacate before we alert the authorities.’

  At the word authorities the image of a boar-tusked troll in a spacesuit came lumbering back into my mind. Giving it a policeman’s helmet and a baton for a club did little to relieve my nerves.

  ‘Er, exactly?’ replied Pierre. ‘We’re here to, ahem, check the upholstery and, erm, test the facilities. Do a final inspection, that sort of thing.’

  Another wrong answer noise. ‘All procedures are carried out by registered port personnel, and there are no port personnel on file that match your make or model,’ the robot replied. ‘Besides, you’re both covered in garbage. Contacting the authorities. Please remain where you stand.’

  ‘That’s because we just got back from cleaning out a ship over in the next dock along,’ said Pierre, speaking slowly as if the robot was a bit dim. ‘Damn filthy it was. And I know that only androids work this bay, but the owner asked specially for us. You know his type. Do you really think he’d let something silicone decide if his ship was ready to fly or not? His words, not mine.’

  The little yellow robot paused for a moment, computing its reply.

  ‘Yeah, he seemed the sort,’ it grumbled, wheeling away. ‘Whatever. I don’t get paid enough for that sort of abuse.’

  The rest of the maintenance robots followed, leaving Pierre and me alone with the ship.

  ‘It worked, I said, starting to chuckle. ‘I can’t believe that actually worked!’

  ‘Neither can I,’ said Pierre, just as shocked. ‘Now let’s get this baby in the air before they think to check whether the next dock along is run by robots too.’

  We ran up the boarding ramp into a small, dark room, in which a square meeting table was surrounded by a long, plush, crescent-shaped couch. A pair of corridors leading to the rest of the ship beckoned from the back of the room, and an expensive and heavily-polished hover-bike was resting in the corner. To either side of the open ramp were metal ladders leading to an alcove above.

  ‘I’m standing in a spaceship,’ I whispered, staring at the swanky, metal interior in awe. ‘I’m standing in a bloody spaceship, of all things.’

  Pierre anxiously tapped at the buttons of a control panel on the wall. ‘Nope,’ he said, when nothing happened. ‘Not that,’ he said, when success failed to materialise. He eventually got round to a big red switch on the side. He pressed it and the ramp started to rise. ‘Sure, that’ll do it,’ he said with a wild shrug.

  ‘Shall we check the rest of the ship?’ I asked suddenly, every sci-fi horror movie I’d ever seen choosing that very moment to replay itself behind my eyes. ‘There could be all kinds of monstrous stowaways on board. Besides us, I mean.’

  ‘No time,’ said Pierre, starting to climb up the right-hand ladder. ‘If there’s anyone else here, we’ll deal with them later. Right now we need to get out of this place before someone tries blowing us up.’

  He disappeared over the top of the ladder. Not wanting to risk being left alone with anything which might mistake my chest for an incubator, I followed him up to the floor above.

  Pierre was already strapped into the pilot’s chair. It was leather, and an extremely expensive sort of beige. There was a matching one on the other side of the cockpit, which I reluctantly sank into. I felt like a butternut squash put in charge of a large hadron collider. The dashboard in front of us (and above us, and to each side of us, and in some cases below our feet) was mad. Utterly mad. It was as if the engineer had based the design on a nebula, and added a button for every star. The only thing not twinkling at us was a small, blank screen in the dashboard’s centre.

  ‘And you reckon you can fly this thing?’ I asked, peering through the windscreen. Maintenance bots scarpered up and down the promenade outside, but nobody was paying our ship any attention. Yet.

  ‘Fly this thing? Good grief, no.’ Pierre repeated his previous tactic of pressing buttons at random. ‘Never flown a ship in my life. But get it to fly? Maybe. I hope. Perhaps.’

  He flicked a switch and an awful grinding sound came from somewhere in the back of the ship. He flicked it back again and the grinding stopped.

  ‘Possibly,’ he added, grimacing.

  I went to prod the blank screen but Pierre swatted my hand away.

  ‘You don’t know what it does!’ he snapped.

&n
bsp; I looked at all the buttons he’d pressed and switches he’d flicked, all to no avail.

  ‘And you do?’ I replied, prodding it anyway.

  The screen turned a beautiful sky blue colour. A simple, pretty four-note melody came twinkling out from unseen speakers all around us.

  ‘Hello, new passengers,’ said a happy, breathy, female voice. A white wavelength line wobbled along the screen in time to her words. ‘Where would you like to go today?’

  ‘Aaaay!’ Pierre and I cheered, throwing our hands in the air in surprise and celebration.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that,’ responded the voice of the dashboard.

  ‘Ah, right.’ Pierre leaned forwards towards the screen and cleared his throat. ‘Ahem. Could you take us to Ophenia Four, please?’

  Another twinkling four-note melody.

  ‘Do you mean: Ophenia Four, Gelapito cluster?’ it replied.

  ‘Yes!’ we both shouted.

  ‘Now setting a course for Ophenia Four in the Gelapito cluster,’ sang the voice. ‘Please secure yourself for departure.’

  I hurriedly pulled two seat belts over my chest and a third across my waist. The engines, once silent as they kept the ship in place, now hummed as they prepared to move off. I could feel their vibrations building through my chair. My view of the dock fell as we rose in height.

  ‘Here we go,’ laughed Pierre. ‘God, the pilot must be super dumb to leave a ship like this unlocked.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I groaned. ‘Or so powerful that he doesn’t think anyone else would be dumb enough to steal it. Jesus Christ, I really hope this thing has collision detection.’

  Luckily enough, it did. With a slow and careful grace the ship stopped ascending and instead began to rotate, pausing once it faced the wide, open, shimmering forcefield… and the infinite interstellar expanse beyond.

  ‘Port departure protocols checked and approved,’ said the computer. ‘Prepare for launch.’

  ‘Is this going to hurt?’ I asked, turning my head to look at Pierre. He was clutching the arms of his seat just as tight as I was.

  ‘Hurt?’ He shook his head a little but kept his eyes on the window in front of him. ‘I shouldn’t think so. But I can’t promise this won’t be an… uncomfortable experience. You know. First time flyers, and all.’

  The thrusters built up power with a sudden roar. I don’t know if anyone came running down the docks to stop us. I don’t know if anyone even noticed we were leaving. But if anyone did they were too late. A split second later we were launching out of the dock, out of Port Iridium, and fast on our way into the cold depths of space.

  Chapter Eight

  The G-force subsided about thirty or forty seconds after we departed Port Iridium. The ship had reduced its acceleration and reached cruising speed… or so I guessed. We could have stopped for all I knew. My stomach felt like a tumble dryer so I stayed in my seat until it finished its cycle, staring out the window at the millions of static, mesmerising stars. I concentrated on them, and on the ins and outs of my breathing, rather than on the pressing possibility that I might throw up all over the expensive dashboard.

  The nausea subsided. The sense of wonder did not.

  I turned to look at Pierre. He was out cold, which made me laugh. It was a sharp and unexpected sound, and one which was rather unnerving amongst the silence of the ship. I didn’t wake him. I could see his chest rising and falling, even with the belts strapping him into his seat. There was nothing we could do until we reached our destination - a nap was as good a use of the time as anything else. After the day he’d had, he probably needed it.

  The screen in the centre of the dashboard was still a reassuring sky-blue colour.

  ‘Computer, how long until we reach our destination?’

  Those familiar, happy notes drifted through the speakers, though I noticed their volume had been significantly dampened out of respect for Pierre’s slumber.

  ‘At our current velocity and making no unscheduled stops, we should enter the orbit of Ophenia Four in approximately two hours, thirteen minutes and forty-eight seconds,’ replied the female voice. ‘Would you like me to call ahead and make reservations?’

  ‘Probably best you don’t,’ I replied, unclipping my three seat belts. ‘I’m going to take a look around, if that’s alright?’

  ‘Of course. Enjoy. I’ll notify you upon arrival.’

  Aside from a digital navigation chart and a screen displaying the ship’s vital signs, I’d seen pretty much all the cockpit had to offer. I climbed back down the ladder and for a moment stood feeling slightly overwhelmed in the room with the couch, the table and the hover-bike. Then I wandered down one of the corridors leading towards the rear of the ship.

  I had previously compared the spaceship to a supercar, but I was wrong. Supercars are fast, and sure, so was the spaceship we’d stolen. But they’re also quite often cramped, with minimal extras beyond all the extra horsepower. This ship wasn’t a supercar. It was a goddamn royal penthouse suite.

  Halfway along the corridor I arrived at two doors. One of them opened onto a bedroom. This surprised me, but then it started to make sense. You can pay for beds on expensive overnight airplane flights - why not have one on your own private spaceship, when it might take days to fly from solar system to solar system? Whoever he was, the owner of this ship had gone all out. The bed wasn’t a four-poster, but its wood looked just as knotted and grand. It wasn’t queen-size. It wasn’t king-size. It might have been emperor-size, but I reckon it was still a few sizes larger than that. Either the usual pilot of the ship was as big as an elephant, or they had a real issue with people hogging the covers.

  There was a whole dresser of drinks, though I didn’t dare try any of them. My stomach was still reeling and besides, that would have been stealing. Nicking his ship was one thing - that had been necessary. Draining the poor guy’s liquor cabinet was just rubbing salt into the wound. It was for that same reason I didn’t go rummaging through the various drawers and closets that extended from the walls upon my touch, or swipe through the electronic data pad on the desk. I even avoided treading muck into his furry, cream rug.

  A large bay window made up much of the left-hand wall. I stood beside it, unable to bring myself to touch the glass, as if doing so might reveal there to be no glass at all and send me spiralling out into the great suffocating vacuum.

  I thought of home, for a while. Was the home in my memory still there, back on Earth? Or was what Pierre told me true - that everything was being written anew… that in this new universe, as in every other, my home, my family, my… me, had never even existed at all?

  Between that and the sense of insignificance brought on by the view of the cosmos, a light tide of sadness washed over me. I tore myself from the window before my spirits could sink any further.

  I left the bedroom and stood in the corridor as the door closed automatically behind me. I wasn’t quite ready to go back to the cockpit yet. Whether Pierre was asleep or not, I wanted to be alone in case another mellow wave came sweeping in. The second of the two doors was immediately opposite the bedroom, so I pressed the button beside it.

  Boy, was I glad I did.

  The room before me was large, mostly empty, and lit by a ceiling of soft, hazy light. A wide, square nozzle descended from the centre of that ceiling, and a tiny, circular grate was built into the floor right below it. It was a sole dot of black amongst a room of pure white.

  ‘What is this?’ I muttered to myself.

  ‘This is the washroom,’ replied the pleasant voice of the computer, making me jump. ‘The space before you is for showers, and there is a facility for excretion behind the door to your right.’

  A rectangular space in the white wall to my right glowed orange to illuminate where the (apparently secret) toilet was. I guessed it wouldn’t be designed with my species’ specifications in mind.

  ‘Am I…?’ I paused and looked around. I still couldn’t see any speakers. ‘Am I allowed a shower?’r />
  ‘Of course,’ replied the computer. ‘Would you like me to wash your clothes at the same time? They are currently in sub-optimal condition.’

  ‘Erm, sure, I guess? How?’

  A large, square box whirred out from the wall beside the hidden toilet door.

  ‘Please deposit all items of clothing in the cleaning receptacle,’ said the computer. ‘Your shower will then begin shortly.’

  I took off my jacket, scarf, shirt and trousers, folding and stacking them in a neat pile on the floor (which was considerably cleaner than any of my clothes). I was about to remove my boxer shorts when I had a thought.

  ‘You can’t see me, can you?’ I asked the computer.

  Another random twinkly four-note melody played.

  ‘Not exactly,’ the computer replied. ‘Using a sophisticated array of sensors I can monitor guests’ vital signs, as well as track their movements within the ship to best serve their needs, but no, I cannot see you. I have no equivalent of a visual cortex. And I don’t make recordings, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘Good enough,’ I sighed, removing the last of my clothing. I dumped the lot into the cleaning receptacle, which retracted into the wall with a sigh. I stepped into the middle of the empty room.

  And down the rain fell.

  I could have been standing in a monsoon, I was drenched so quickly. The ghost-white steam rose and filled the room. And like a ghost the memory of standing in the rainforest shower of my modest room in Le Petit Monde, and the memories of all that followed that fateful evening, came channeling back to haunt me. Though only a few days had passed for me since then, I felt like I’d lived a dozen lifetimes. Deep breath. Release. I let those memories run off me. I watched them be carried down the drain.

  I tried doing the same with the images of Sam and Chloe that were stuck in my head - their smiles as I climbed into the car on the garage forecourt, the disappointment in Chloe’s voice as I refused to come out from the hotel bathroom - but I couldn’t.