by BL Craig
He supposed that might be part of the problem. Over 80% of the living took out mortgages when they achieved adulthood. AfterLife did not really need any more bodies, did it? Most people spent their youths traveling or going to University to get degrees they never used. Hardly anybody outside of the Navy had real vocations, though a lot had serious hobbies that sometimes, but not often, recouped the associated expenses through cooperative artisanal markets. It was not like anyone had ever encouraged William to do differently. He and Carly had planned to go to University together and then travel using mortgages. Only his dad’s death had changed the plan.
William checked the nexus for Sarah’s location and status. Seeing that she was in vat room. he got up from the bridge console he had been working at and headed that way.
* * *
…
* * *
Elva walked down to the cargo bay. She needed to do something about John Brooks. His muttering would certainly have been cause on a naval vessel for a reprimand. Things were less formal on the Tilly, but typically when Brooks said one of the crew were “aff yer heid” he meant it with love. She resisted her instinct to dress him down. She knew the man. He would just dig his heels in deeper if he saw himself as the righteous avenger defying authority. He was angry about Mirada. They all were and going back there was stirring it all up again. But taking it out on William was counter-productive. She had seen how he balked and stiffened whenever the word was spoken.
She wandered among the equipment and sample crates stashed haphazard around the hold. The space was overdue for a reorganization. The last survey arc had been rough for all the crew and their usual tidy efficiency had suffered. She had no idea if the urgent assignment they were to receive at Mirada would leave them time to clean up the mess.
She was uncertain what to do with William. Her instincts as a veteran Navy officer were to mentor and support a young junior officer. But William was a conundrum and a possible problem. The haste of his assignment was too convenient. The Tilly’s Captain found herself in need of a pilot, and William was coincidentally murdered and reanimated at just the right time. Elva was sure it was not at all convenient for the Navy. They had nearly as much trouble securing high-quality new blood as AfterLife did. So few of the living chose to pursue functional education or vocations these days. Most spent their lives blissfully engaged in casual hobbies and endless vacations.
Perhaps it was simply coincidence. Pilots were hard to come by in Hades Fleet. Navy officers almost never took out mortgages, as a matter of culture and pride. A mortgage was a sure way to ruin a naval career, Elva knew that all too well. The living merchant marines who staffed the sub-light ships used in systems were not nearly as militant as the Navy, but given their ample compensation, rarely needed to take out loans. Commercial shipping companies were happy to pay for the education and training of skilled crew, especially pilots. Certainly, if AfterLife had something special planned for William, they would not have shoved him off of Elysium so quickly. What did it mean for her ship and her crew? This was Elva’s main concern as she pushed a pallet of geo crates out of the hold’s fire lane? There was no such thing as “paranoid” when it came to the company.
She took a deep breath. Speculation would not help with the immediate problem. Maybe time would. If she could keep John and William apart, or at least not alone together, Brooks would settle down eventually.
* * *
…
* * *
Sarah was humming as she checked the nutrient balance of the small tank of Yarrowia lipolytica, when William entered Vat Room D.
“Aha! You’re just in time to meet one of my favorite yeasts!” She held a glob of the stuff in her gloved hand smiling. She loved grossing people out and had little opportunity to do so with the other crew who knew all of her tricks and idiosyncrasies after more than a decade together.
“Is the list of your favored yeasts long?” William asked. Sarah noted the lightness of his tone and the tolerant set of his face. No gross out there.
“Hmmm, I dunno. Yeast is pretty much the da Vinci of the fungus world. Bread, alcohol, probiotics, and great for genetic research. This particular nifty little fungus can sequester all sorts of nasty substances. Alex uses it for processing some toxic samples acquired on survey sweeps. It was used extensively in the 22nd & 23rd centuries for industrial clean up. Sucks up heavy minerals, arsenic, and a bunch more nasties.”
“I’ve clearly been remiss in my lack of appreciation of yeast,” William said solemnly placing a hand over his heart.
“It’s ok, you’ve got plenty of time to rectify the situation. Also, you might want to step back. Yarrowia isn’t terribly prone to aerosol transmission, but I’ve been stirring up the vats. It has been known to set up camp in reanimates. It’s like a very nasty athlete’s foot, but in your armpits. And worse places. I’ve been inoculated, but you haven’t.”
“Ugh,” he took a step back, then a second. “Should I leave?”
“No, I’m going to seal this up. We’ve got excellent filtration in here.” She pointed to the ceiling hoods over each vat that kept the air circulated. “I’ll hit you with the inoculation when I’m done. You should have it anyway since you’re going to be my back up. We’ll go check on Karl Marx after.”
“I should probably mention that biology was one of my worst subjects, but I’m pretty strong in the social sciences and I’m really sure Karl Marx was the father of communist philosophy, not a yeast.”
“Karl Marx is my pet name for Cladosporium sphaerospermum. That’s a nifty radiotrophic fungus, though, not a yeast. It absorbs ionizing radiation like plants use sunlight for photo synthesis. I keep a small vat going. You never know when you’re going to need a radiation-eating fungus in space.”
“True enough.” He responded, nodding sagely.
“Social Science, eh,” she queried. “And you ended up a pilot?”
“I’m pretty good at math and physics. They’re just not my favorite subjects.”
“Well, you’re going to learn to love biology, or at least learn how to pretend to love biology,” she chuckled. “Freeman, my sweet, are you done?”
The squid-like drone with silicone tentacles surfaced in the tank and gave Sarah a salute with one tentacle.
“Alright then, dry off and get yourself in the sterilizer. You’ve got to check out the algae next.” The drone pulled itself on to a small platform and quickly dripped dry, thanks to its hydrophobic coating. The little bot hopped onto the floor and octopus-crawled to a boxlike apparatus near the wall. William was hypnotized by way the tentacles flowed across the floor. Sarah moved to the counter and began stripping gear.
“Did you know lots of bird species can see a much wider range of light than humans? UV light and more distinct varieties of visible light?” William asked as she threw her gloves into the sanitizer and pulled the apron over her head.
“No,” she said, following his gaze to the box where Freeman was getting his cleansing UV bath. “My background is mostly focused on bugs to keep us alive in space and bugs that might try to kill us in space. There are more of the latter, of course.” She smiled wryly.
“Birds use their superior vision to see definition in leaves that just look like gray blobs to humans.” William reported, a bit bookishly. “They also have markings on their own bodies that reflect UV light. It lets them camouflage themselves to predators while standing out to others of their species. Also, helps not crash into trees. I always liked the idea of animals having secret communications, something they can hold over humans, like a species in-joke.”
“I bet that if animals think about humans at all, they consider us to be a very bad joke.” She dumped the apron into the sanitizer behind the gloves. “Let’s go check out some slime.” She led William to the next room, where they were greeted by several vats of green goop floating on top of various water solutions.
“You know, when the Captain said you were the environmental engineer and that I should learn to c
over for you, I was thinking more filters and scrubbers and less—whatever this is.” William gestured around the room.
“Oh, I will teach you that eventually, but Brooks and Addy can change a filter if it becomes necessary. How to properly scrub the bottom of a vat of Yarrowia lipolytica so that it doesn’t contaminate the water recycling system and give everyone a lethal case of jock itch is something someone other than me should know. In case I’m on vacation, or dead-dead.”
“We get vacation?”
“No. Don’t be gullible. I won’t be able to resist tormenting you.”
“I will keep that in mind.”
“Well, actually, we usually get a few days of leave when we’re in port, so you weren’t totally a rube.”
Sarah knew that following her around served double duty. William was learning to be her backup, but it was also an excellent way to get to know the ship. Despite what she had said, her environmental maintenance duties took her all over the ship, not just to the rooms full of vats. He seemed particularly amused by her little flock of robotic helpers. Freeman spent most of its time in the vats, so this was the first time he had encountered the little bot. Sarah had named them all after famous anthropologists and decorated them accordingly. She had not told anyone that. If they wanted to know, they could look it up. William had already met the vent cleaner and maintenance bot, Geertz, who was painted all over with seemingly non-sensical symbols. If someone were very diligent and very lucky, they might discern that the bot’s chassis told the tale of a time Sarah ate too many hamburgers at a picnic on a dare and threw up on her aunt. Sapir-Whorf, another vent-cleaning bot, sported wire frame glasses and graffiti that said, “I can haz ur languages.”
William had gamely shaken hands with Mead, a small spider-bot with a wig made of a mass of curled coated wires and chenille stems. Freeman’s salute and Mead’s handshake were just two of many little human-like gestures Sarah had programmed into the bots. Many of the general service bots on the ship had been programmed with adaptive behaviors that would evolve as they interacted more with each crew member. It would be fun to see what boticisms they developed with a newcomer in the crew.
Sarah had introduced William to the big survey probes Tesla and Edison a few days before. Sarah shared custody of the probes with Brooks, but she had taken William to see them when John was off shift. The two probes with their own small sub-light drives lived in pods that looked like nothing more than oversized missile ports. They had a number of attachments useful for surveying, cutting arms, lasers, and powerful sensor arrays that could detect any wavelength of light and other sorts of radiation.
William was not what she had expected. AfterLife kept a lockdown on most local news outlets. The company maintained that it was important for SecondLifers to move on from their 1st lives. Following news from home was just another way of clinging to the past. Sarah knew there was some truth to that. Learning to let go of your first life was something that no atype ever managed completely, but it was extra difficult if you were constantly scanning the news looking for friends and family. AfterLife did allow the major interstellar news broadcasts. The Tilly was out of the loop for months at a time, but they had caught the news about Mirada on a stop at Tlalocan. It was all anyone could talk about. Some of the broadcasts showed quick snippets from the battle that made Sarah wish she could throw up.
Then there had been the clips of William, the Hero of the Battle of Mirada. His camera-ready good looks and self-effacing demeanor epitomized the image that the Navy wanted the world to see. Brave heroes fighting to save humanity from all manner of threats. Never mind that since its inception the Earth Naval Defense Force had never engaged in combat more stressful than ousting a few disgruntled miners who were striking for better working conditions. They had not even done that sort of thing in the hundreds of years since the undead had taken over those jobs. In William, they had the perfect avatar. Clean cut, well spoken, earnest, recruited from a grounder family. You too, could be just like the ‘Hero Pilot’ from Eden, enlistment offices are open seven days a week. She wondered how much of his demeanor was coaching and good editing. A more cynical part of her wondered if his elevation to hero status had been planned. They must be shitting kittens to have lost their golden ticket, and to AfterLife no less.
The Navy’s notoriously anti-SecondLife attitude was well known among both the living and the dead. Elva, Jason, and now William were the only former fleet reanimates Sarah knew of. She knew the story behind Elva and Jason’s choice to take out SecondLife mortgages at the peak of their successful fleet careers. She wondered what had led William, still very young, with a promising future, and more importantly, a paycheck, to take out a mortgage.
The William she came to know on the Tilly was, well, a total nerd. Pilots were notorious for being cocky and arrogant, but William seemed grounded. Perhaps the pilot jock would come out later when he was more comfortable, but Sarah suspected not. He was just as undeniably handsome in person as on TV, but he did not seem to crave any acknowledgement of his looks. Which was good, because Sarah was not in the habit of fawning over good looking men. Mostly, he was quiet, though he could get quite animated when discussing some weird moment in history that he found fascinating or talking about the finer points of piloting and navigation, which he seemed to genuinely enjoy.
William was easy to get along with. He laughed at Sarah’s snarky jokes and was a diligent student, learning the basics of her job as they went along checking fluid levels and PH readings. Sarah knew she was the only one so far to give the pilot the benefit of the doubt. The others were watching and waiting. She spent the most time with him and quickly determined that he could not possibly be a mass murderer in disguise. His assiduous avoidance of speaking about Mirada told Sarah that there was more to the story than what the news feeds showed. Even if there was not, though, Sarah knew they would all be stuck together for a good long time. She might as well make the best of it.
The Captain had tried to make that very point in a meeting shortly before William arrived. She asked everyone to reserve judgment until they had a chance to get to know their newest crew member. The meeting had not gone well. Speculation about the rapid assignment of the new pilot had ranged from him being a spy to conspiracy theories about the Navy trying to infiltrate AfterLife. The Captain had finally had to shut everyone down and send them about their regular duties.
Sarah knew John was making an ass of himself, despite the Captain’s warnings. That was not Sarah’s problem. William would have to deal with it or ignore John. John was volatile in the best of times and he had taken Mirada hard. Sarah hoped that he would calm down in time and cut the new guy some slack, but it was thin hope. More likely there would be an altercation. She just hoped it would not come to blows. She was a shit medic.
* * *
…
* * *
William wasn’t sure if there was an unspoken code not to talk much about their lives before death, or if the crew just was not interested in talking to him. He did not feel much like talking about his pathetic short little life, so on the rare occasion that he was offered the chance to speak about himself, he stuck to sharing odd historical facts and conversations about work and life on the Tilly,. Mostly he talked with Sarah. He got a little tired of the knowing looks the rest of the crew shared whenever he did or said anything they found cute or naive about SecondLife. All of them were older than him, though except for Alex, with her grey streaked hair, none of them looked all that old. On the whole, they were polite if not warm, with the notable exception of Brooks.
The ship’s feed was a wealth of knowledge. William was able to scan back through years of communications to get a feel for his colleagues and the workings of the Tilly. Alex, despite her nearly emotionless affect, turned out to be the reigning queen of terrible dad jokes. The former pilot, Jasco, sometimes quoted poetry, especially Blake and Shakespeare. There were lots of little in-jokes that were opaque to William, but the gallows humor that pervaded the ban
ter made him feel strangely at home. They would wish each other “Happy Death Days” to commemorate the years of their SecondLife. One feed, entitled “Pudding” included everyone except the Captain and consisted of repeated, though infrequent responses of, “pudding.” Just the word pudding at seemingly random intervals from various crew members. Sometimes months would go by, and then “pudding.” One day, when he felt like more of an insider, William would ask about pudding.
It also became clear that the crews of the Tilly and the Mikki, were close, sharing another feed when in system together. The two Captains were like everybody’s doting parents and they shared a clear affection for their crews. He wondered about their relationship. One of the things William had discovered about his new dead body was that his libido was completely gone. He guessed it was a blessing, given the very small pool of people to sleep with anyway. He wondered what a marriage was like, with these sexless bodies that got almost no pleasure from simple touch. Clearly, they had found a way to make it work.
The Captains’ companionable banter on the shared feeds reminded William of the messages he and Carly had sent when he was away on duty. He missed Carly. Missed her smile, the way she laughed, and her smell. God, he missed smells. Only the most acrid stenches permeated his senses now. He’d had no idea how much smell was a part of his life until it was gone. The only thing he missed more was food—especially the experience of sitting down with other people to eat. He had never considered how humanizing it was to share a meal with a friend, family, a lover, or anyone, really. Not until no one he interacted with could eat.
