by BL Craig
“Would you mind taking a questionnaire that will help me better focus on areas where you need help?”
“Sure,” he replied. He did not really want to, but having another attack was very high on his list of things not to do. If checking some boxes might be even remotely helpful he would give it a try. The questions mostly focused on symptoms he had experienced before he died. Sleep problems, yes. Anxiety, yes. Crippling, panic attacks, yes. Constant fear, yes. Guilt, yes. After a while he stopped. “Can’t we just assume I’ve got PTSD and move on?” he asked the counselor.
“It is important to establish a full diagnosis, but we can stop the questions for now. Is there anything you would like to talk about?”
How can I get out of here and get back to Carly? he thought but did not ask.
* * *
…
* * *
Elva was lost in thought when her office door chimed.
“Come in,” she said.
William stepped in. “You wanted to see me, Captain?”
“Yes, thank you. Please have a seat.” She held one of the little stun pens she had confiscated from Addy in between two fingers. She probably should not be idly fidgeting with it if she did not want to take an unplanned nap. She put the pen in a desk drawer.
Once William was seated, she looked him over. He had schooled his features to impassivity and sat erect in the chair. The picture of a good officer ready to receive instructions. No hint of anxiety.
“William, I need you to tell me about Mirada.”
His expression grew apprehensive. “I’ve been talking to the counselor, Captain.”
“This isn’t about your mental health. I’m beginning to think that the information we received about Mirada is not entirely accurate. I want to hear what happened. All of it. Before, during, after. Start with the decision to use reanimates from the Yan Luo in the ground battle.”
So, he told her, in clipped sentences, much like a written report. His tone lacked emotion. He kept his eyes downcast focusing on her desk. He told her about how he was conscripted to the ground forces by a strike team commander and sent to the front lines. He said nothing about personal animus, but Elva could read between the lines. They had not liked the grounder pilot. Not trusted him and not appreciated his questioning of their orders. He told her about the decision trees he developed with a drone he had named Hank.
Thereafter followed a precise account of the various positions they had advanced against and overtaken, the tactics, successes, and failures. Elva had seen in his file that William had planned to study history and had taken several optional courses on the subject, particularly ancient military history. The vindictive commander probably had no idea that William actually had had an inkling of how ground campaigns should be fought when he had sent the lieutenant forward to die.
When he got to the final push into the city, he hesitated for a long time.
“I made an error in the decision trees.” He finally said in a rush. “I had not set any parameters for distinguishing between civilians and combatants nor for how an alien enemy might ask for quarter.”
Elva understood. Drones could be very literal, particularly in stressful and unfamiliar circumstances. They were capable of surprising nuance in areas with which they had familiarity, particularly familiarity from 1st Life. But no one, living or dead, had experience with war.
“I had them fall back when I realized the error,” he said flatly. “The colonists took over securing the Rannit settlement after that. The drones were loaded on the Giltine the coffin . . . the dead body transport for Mirada. They left, I presumed for the Yan Luo.”
“And after, the Navy sent you on a press tour with Admiral Shen?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered softly.
“No one saw you for counseling,” the Captain said.
“They said there would be time later. They gave me sedatives to sleep.”
“Thank you, Mr. Butcher,” she said. “I have spoken to Mr. Brooks and clarified my expectations for proper behavior. If you have any further difficulty with any of the crew, please let me know. You can go. We reach Mirada in 40 hours.”
* * *
…
* * *
William did not want to return to his cabin after answering the Captain’s questions. He was on the hunt for more hidden art when a bot painted in zebra stripes zipped past him in the general direction of engineering. It held a pair of heavy wire cutters in its little claw arm. He followed behind, both to see where the little bot was headed and to try and find the name that was typically stenciled or painted on the body.
The decorating bots did not end with Sarah’s maintenance flock. A small army of generic and specialized mechanicals carried out functions all over the ship, each one with its own name and flair. One sported a tiny top hat made from a section of pipe and painted matte black with a tiny red flower on the brim. The name “Dandy” was painted on his chassis. William had caught sight of around a dozen more: a spectacle wearing bot with a customized multitool arm, a squat cylindrical floor cleaning bot with a small stuffed shark that had seen better days perched on top, a speedy little car-like bot with flames painted along the sides that trumpeted a fanfare as it zoomed past crew members. The crew, including the Captain, treated the bots like something between pets and colleagues, greeting them in the hallways and saying “please” and “thank you” when giving instructions.
William remembered a particularly cantankerous primary school teacher who had lectured often on proper adult behavior. One particular sticking point for him had been ascribing human characteristics to objects. To do so, in his mind, was a childish and foolish impulse to be avoided. Objects were tools for humans to use, not pals or friends. If students wanted to be taken seriously, they should behave seriously. The crew of the Tilly had no particular concern about being taken seriously. Each was clearly highly competent as both an expert and a generalist. William soon found himself following their lead, thinking of the bots as part of the crew and decided to learn their names and functions.
The striped bot rounded a few corners and came to a compartment William hadn’t seen yet. The door swooshed open for the bot and closed behind. William followed. The space on the far side had a close feel to the air that made him guess it was hotter and more humid inside, though his skin could not detect temperature differences in the range of human habitation. The space beyond the door was lined with racks of parts. Electronics, mechanical bits, cables and wires of all sorts neatly stored in bins. At first glance, the room appeared to be a deep storage closet with odds and ends on three walls. The bot was nowhere to be seen, but William could hear music coming from further into the space. William moved toward the sound. As he reached then end, he saw the optical illusion created by the racks. The space was a corridor.
* * *
…
* * *
Addy was fighting with a particularly cantankerous scrap pump when the little delivery bot arrived with the cutters he had asked for. “Thank you, Stripes, now I need . . .” he started, noticing William standing in his entryway.
“Sorry!” said William, “I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just following the bot . . . Stripes, I guess.” He waved at the bot. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“Ah, William, no worries. You found my little nest,” Addy said, gesturing broadly at the space.
Addy watched William taking in the room. A number of large pipes ran up the walls and overhead. Hanging between two of these was a bright red hammock with a collection of blankets and pillows stacked on it. There was a rug on the floor, a few scattered tables and storage lockers, and of course, the racks and racks of parts.
“Is this a secret retreat?” William asked.
“Not very secret,” laughed Addy. “Everyone knows I live here.”
“Live? Don’t you have a cabin?”
“I don’t like the cabins. They make me feel cramped, trapped. So, I made this space over for myself.”
William looked around the space again. Addy knew what he was thinking: the room with its low ceilings, odd shape, and mass of pipes and gauges was the epitome of cramped.
“I feel more at home here. Pull up a chair, I’m just gutting this thing for parts. Stripes, go get me some end nippers off the rack over there, please.” He waved the bot toward one of the shelves.
“Would you like some help?” asked William.
“Nah, it’s not really a two-person job, but hang out. I like company while I’m deconstructing.” Addy had been waiting to make up his mind about the young pilot. William was friendly and attentive. Even a social mal-adapt like Addy could see the sorrow that haunted William’s eyes. Addy had wondered, was it just the normal grief of dying young and full of promise? Or was it guilt from the battle? The meltdown during the live fire drill had put any doubts of William being a psychotic mass murderer to bed. Still, it took the engineer a while to warm up to new people.
“Want some gum?” Addy held out a pack, trying to remember and observe social niceties.
“I wouldn’t want to waste it. I can’t really taste much.”
“Well, it tastes like shit anyway, so no loss there. It’s more just for the chewing. Helps focus the mind.”
“Ok, I guess I’ll take some.” William took the little cube from Addy, unwrapped the packaging, and popped it in his mouth. He did not grimace at the taste so either he was very polite, or they had done a number on his taste and smell.
“I make it myself from an old family recipe,” Addy volunteered.
William laughed, “I didn’t know there was such a thing as old family recipes for gum.”
“It’s not really chewing gum, not like most people think of. Back before colonization, when everything on Earth was going to hell, coffee became really expensive. Most of the beans took a bad hit from the climate change. The ones that grew well tasted terrible, so people started using them to make gum and put flavors in it to try to cover the bitterness. It’s really just a way to feed a caffeine addiction.”
“So, it’s a lump of chewy coffee?”
“Pretty much.” Addy made the gum out of habit and sentiment. His grandmother, an elegant woman of class, descended from kings and queens (she said), had been at turns cold and distant then kind and solicitous. Her one vice, as far as young Addy could tell, had been the coffee bean gum. She insisted on making it from the original strains of beans, which were truly awful tasting things. It certainly was not the cost of coffee beans that deterred her. She had hand towels in her guest bath that cost a month of mortgage payouts for most folks.
Her ancestors had been early investors in Tran Corp, the predecessor of AfterLife. She had undoubtedly thrown a fit when she found he had taken out a mortgage, but he was dead by then and did not have to deal with the fallout. Addy still felt a bit guilty for dumping that tirade on his father.
Addy’s family were among the rare remaining wealthy class that could afford to maintain lives of comfort without taking out mortgages or working for a living. Getting a high quality education was expected of all the Harunas. Addy had skirted the prohibition against vocation by dint of his genius. Running a tech innovation company had passed his grandmother’s iron restrictions, just barely, so long as it was understood that he did it for the personal edification and not the lucrative profits. Taking out a SecondLife mortgage, the norm for the vast majority of humans, was unheard of in the Haruna family.
“Do you mind if I ask you some stupid questions?” William asked.
“My mama, always said, ‘There are no stupid questions, just idiots who can’t pay attention.’”
William chuckled, “Well, I think I’m one of those idiots.”
“Shoot.”
“I noticed that we’re taking three hours between jumps to recharge the capacitors, but they are showing up on my console as fully charged in about two hours. Is there a protocol for the three hours, or something that’s going on during that time that I’ve missed?”
“Aha! You’ve found the oldest trick in the book that little cogs like us use against the machine!”
“What?”
“You always tell the boss it will take more time to do something than it really will. That way you don’t have to scramble.” He gave William his most impish smile.
“But three hours is in all the manuals I’ve read, that’s how long it takes capacitors to charge after coming out of a FTL, how come the company hasn’t noticed the difference?”
“And who do you think wrote those manuals?” Addy smiled conspiratorially.
“Oh,” William said, the light dawning.
“To be fair, three hours would be the right number for our type of engines delivering energy to these particular capacitors, but I’ve been tinkering for a long time. The set-up we have here, and on a few other ships who’s crew I know, is not standard. We’ve squeezed a lot on the charging times. You never know when arriving an hour early might be useful. Or when having an hour to kill might also be useful.”
“I hadn’t realized you were a master of subterfuge in addition to engineering.”
“I am a man of many talents. You had other questions?”
“What’s up with sabbaticals? Are they really a thing? The orientation materials seem pretty cagey on the subject.”
Addy accepted the end nippers from a returned Stripes and began cutting something inside the condenser chassis. “Well, it’s basically AfterLife’s way of honoring our contracts, without letting us actually go free. Way back nearer to the beginning of the company, about, oh, 400 years ago. They started out just paying people for the bodies of their dead relatives. If your family sold you or your body went unclaimed they just outright owned you. Then the economy went all cattywampus and they started offering the mortgages based on how much service they expected they could get out of your corpse,” he pulled out another wiring harness. “How long have they got you for?”
“Eighty-seven years.” William said.
“That’s a strange contract duration,” Addy said. There is definitely a story behind that, he thought.
“It’s complicated. I don’t really want to talk about it. It’s been a rough day already.”
“Fair enough. So, what do you suppose happens when your contract is up? Do they just turn you off? Stop giving you elixir and let you fade away. You know what they don’t do? Pay your upkeep for free. AfterLife is in the business of making money, don’t ever forget that.”
“I guess I hadn’t thought about it.”
“They offer you a new mortgage. Call it a renewal bonus. The rate depends on how important your job is, but it’s much lower than when you were alive. You take that money and whatever you’ve saved and live on one of the dead worlds until you run out. Then it’s back to work. They call the breaks sabbaticals.”
“How long do sabbaticals last
“It depends on how fast you spend your money and how much you get. Sarah would have a better idea, but it’s something like a year or two break for twenty years of work. They won’t let you sign up for more than twenty. A lot of us are falling apart by the end of our first contract. They aren’t going to pay you for time they’re not going to get.”
“And that’s it, they work us till we die? Just little vacations every decade or so?”
Addy shrugged, “It beats being dead. I know it’s shit right now, but there is joy to be found in this life. I’ve done some of my best work after I died.”
“Wait, I thought we can’t sign contracts because we’re not legal people once we’re dead?”
“Aha, yes. That was a problem, so they came up with sabbaticals. When you finish your contract period you could choose a sabbatical as part of your original contract.”
“I didn’t see any of this in the contract I was given, though I didn’t read it that closely.”
“No, you won’t see it in the contracts because the contracts reference ‘internal AfterLife policy approved by external review’. It’s all built so you’ll never see it
.”
“And no one ever asks to see the internal policies?”
“Not often. Most people don’t care. They figure they’ll be dead, and it won’t matter. Also, AfterLife got laws passed to prevent families from claiming anything from a dead family member’s contract.”
“And the bit about termination?”
“Yeah, they’ll turn off your NCM and drain you when you’re not able to work or support yourself.”
“Have you ever done a sabbatical?”
“I’m bad about saving credits. I like to buy toys.” He gestured at the racks of components. “My original contract was short. When I re-signed, I took a short one right before I came to the Tilly. I spent a few months on Vaikuntha, but I got bored. After I blew all my money, I didn’t have any funds to do anything fun, so I just laid around reading and watching media.” Addy recalled an utterly bland two months on the dead world. What got to him most was all the drones. He’d had no stomach for being around them after his time in R&D.
“Is there fun stuff to do on dead worlds?”
“Oh sure. Some enterprising folks pool their credits and start up little businesses. On Styx, there’s a theater troupe that puts on plays and a whole entertainment district. Low-G mini golf, video game lounges, all sorts of things. It’s a good way to make money. Surprisingly, the company doesn’t demand rent or anything. I guess they consider it worthwhile for ‘morale.’”
Addy dumped a lump of coils from the pump on the floor and started to stand up. He brushed off his knees. “Of course, all this only applies to us. The drones just work until they drop.”
“Well, that’s depressing,” said William.
You have no idea, thought Addy.
William, clearly sensing his cue, stood up and made motions toward the exit. “I’ll stop imposing. Thanks for the chat.”
“No problem.” Addy grabbed a rag off of the workbench and wiped his hands off. “William, you seem like a good fellow. I like you.” William’s face brightened. “But John has been my friend for 25 years. I don’t want to get into any more arguments with him than I have to. So, please. Don’t come back here.”
