Letters to an Android

by Wendy Rathbone

  I will be working in navigation but not up front. I’ll work in the chart rooms at the center of the ship. The computers do the math until the charts look like intricate designs of castles, or pyramid piles of leaves, or the bone structures of indescribable monsters. Equation sets are often differentiated by color. The chart rooms resemble galleries of modern art made of tiny numbers.

  I fall asleep dreaming of those numbers.

  Please write back. Speak of any subject. If I don’t receive the wave tomorrow, it will be waiting for me when we get to Fair-Orb.

  Your friend,

  Liyan.

  Again, Cobalt read the message three times, just as he had with the last one. He memorized every word.

  He opened a fresh page.

  Dear Liyan:

  I don’t know how to tell you that I long to see indescribable monsters on navigation charts. It is strange to write that. But it is the truth.

  If possible, I would next like to hear your experience in foldspace. I have heard it said that no two experiences are alike. Some say time moves slower or faster. Some say inanimate objects appear to shrink or grow before your eyes. Some suffer a kind of spacesickness for the duration and must remain in sleep mode. As you well know, out of foldspace have come revelatory scientific theories, award winning novels, master symphonies, among other amazing human feats of genius.

  Do share whatever revelation you may receive, even if it’s only one word.

  I continue in my duties. There are many I can enjoy and many I cannot enjoy. This is not a complaint, simply a fact. The sadness in me comes, I believe, from the implanted childhood memories that are unreal. Because they did not, in fact, happen, I often wish I did not have them. The theory is they create personality because we are born ‘adult’. I can say perhaps they do that, but they cause more pain than pleasure because of developing tastes, likes and dislikes, judgment and subjectivity. If one is going to create a tool, it is cruel to give it emotion, do you not think?

  The tediousness of my words appalls me but I leave them.

  I look forward to your next wave.

  Your friend,

  Cobalt

  Two weeks passed. In that time he did accounting, reservations, and more bartending. He was also forced to make his body available to two male clients who were selfish and unfriendly. But unlike the last client, they did not leave bruises.

  Every night he looked for a message light. None appeared.

  He dreamed of watercolor starcharts. He wanted to dream of Liyan. It simply did not happen.

  He thought of him often, though, in his white uniform standing on the polished decks of a behemoth ship that cruised the ancient star-lanes. In the image he conjured, Liyan’s leaf-hair fell against his brown eyes as he read the math of the stars.

  *

  3. Fair-Orb After the Storm

  Dear Cobalt:

  Our first foldspace path grew sluggish the further in we went. There was nothing to do but wait it out. I’m sorry it has been a month since my last wave.

  Despite the unexpected thickness and soupiness of our route, the experience was nothing short of enlightening.

  I tried to keep a journal. It became impossible when my sentence structures fell apart and I was left with pages containing lists of words only, meaningless without a context.

  Here is a sample:

  lore silver forest portrait pulse rook bracelet collar pillow stealth music-box ink audience luck mother candle underline sawdust

  It only got worse from there.

  Here is another sample:

  The onetwofour multilingual Doppler mountain laurel must event itself in the sullen range of microwave believability.

  No great novels or symphonies came from me, I assure you. Any scientific discoveries I might have made are delusional at best. At least I did not suffer the space sickness. I spent a lot of time in ecstasy believing the birth of myself had only begun. I recommend it.

  I have made friends aboard this ship already. They are smart and loyal. More on that another time.

  Fair-Orb awaits. I am needed at my post.

  Your friend,

  Liyan

  Liyan poked the ‘send’ light, then realized he had not addressed Cobalt’s more serious issues of being indentured and utterly alone. Cobalt had mentioned childhood memories that did not exist and Liyan had not even asked him about them. Guilt flared, tinged with nausea. He wasn’t to blame, but he cared. And he wanted Cobalt to know it. But the busyness of his new life called.

  He went to work through corridors of living light. He moved inside a silver being that mixed with stars. He helped to send it and its crew to deliver passengers, cargo and goods to far-flung colonies at distances the mind could not truly perceive. He was happier than he’d ever imagined he could be.

  *

  Once orbit was secure around Fair-Orb, the deliveries began. Cargo and people exited. More cargo and people entered.

  The crew took shore leave in shifts. This gave them 12 hours each. After two days and everyone packed aboard, the starliner would move on.

  Liyan shuttled with three friends to the surface. One was a new officer, like Liyan. Two were seasoned travelers who had been to Fair-Orb many times and knew which towers housed the best restaurants, bars, casinos and views.

  The shuttles streaked like arrows through the atmosphere leaving copper contrails against a pink sky. On this side of the world, night approached. Lark, one of the experienced men, confirmed that Fair-Orb’s impressiveness increased at night. He’d chosen the place and time perfectly. If you wanted to get lost in the stars reflected in Fair-Orb’s vast and silent seas, you had to be there after sunset.

  The shuttle circled Tower Probable before setting down on a tarmac very much like that where Liyan had worked for two years.

  Under red clouds they disembarked. The stars remained in hiding.

  Tiri, one of the inexperienced officers, asked Lark, “Will the clouds mar the view?”

  “The storm just passed. I made sure of it when I studied the weather reports. Look, they’re already breaking up, blowing away.”

  The tower looked as if it were a huge wax drip-candle. In fact, it was made of the crystallized liquid of a native mineral mined from undersea, and it was harder than titanium. The liquid shone gold with an opal sheen. The city-sized tower housed a million souls and ten thousand visitors a day. Lark told them there were even parks within, complete with grass and trees.

  The landing strip made a flat semi-circle around the tower. The sea drifted around it, serene and royal and blue. There were lights upon it, but they were from fishing boats, not stars.

  Once inside, Lark pointed out the vertical transit system that ran up and down the tower at various points. Lark wasn’t sure of the number of trains that existed within, but he guessed at least one hundred.

  Liyan looked up and saw the distant ceiling of firstfloor made of glowlight. He saw clear, glass enclosed trains moving up and down, one at their entrance point and others at more distant entrances. They looked like glorified elevators. Everything was bright and new. The scents came one after another, first the sea, brine and salt, then the indoor humidity of teeming life, raw, sweet, tangy. Firstfloor was like a vast mall and business district. They started there. Lark promised they would go to the topmost level, but not until after dinner.

  Everywhere Liyan looked was something new. An orange fountain that made spirographs. A floating, bare-branched tree with a thousand blinking lights. People singing on a quay. Children rushing about a giant, fish-themed playground.

  Lark led them many blocks through throngs of bustling people who were on foot or on bikes to Morry’s Fishhouse which he swore made the best fillets he’d ever tasted.

  Liyan’s mouth watered. He was starved.

  He tried to remember what he saw so he could describe it all to Cobalt when he had the chance, but it was too much. His senses were overwhelmed.

 
; After the fantastic treat of dinner, they all boarded a train which took them straight up to the top floor to a bar with the most expensive cover charge Liyan had ever heard of. Lark, wealthy and connected, got them in.

  “This is the million dollar view,” he said.

  Liyan saw that the bar was made of giant windows. Even the ceiling was glass. Night had indeed come. The four of them moved to one edge of the room and there it was. Everything Cobalt had told him, and more.

  A world made of stars within a realm of stars. The stars, real and reflected, engulfed each other.

  They all stood poised and humbled, surrounded, captured, suspended in galactic glitter.

  Later, lost in drinking and youthful exuberance, one could say they all had the time of their lives.

  They returned to the tarmac at dawn, when the stars began to fade and the sea was pink. The voices of fishermen called through the waning night.

  Liyan left Fair-Orb as if encased in a dream.

  *

  Dear Cobalt:

  I made it to Fair-Orb. I have just come from the surface having spent the night drinking on a top floor bar with three friends.

  Dawn was drowning the world when we left and the sea-boats were all heading out to their favorite spots. On the salt wind of azure tears and pink seas, I heard fishermen call to each other as their boats wove through their fishing lanes.

  I can’t tell you everything I saw. It’s too much. But you were right about the stars meeting the sea. Their oceans are mirror-still, the tides slow. When a million stars wink on at dark, a million more are reflected. Thus, one million becomes two million—so many prickles of light they sting the eyes. Other oceans on other planets are too choppy to minister this effect.

  I don’t think people could sleep with open windows at night on this world. Those armies of light would invade their sleep. Everything’s so liquid and reflective. An endless fever of mirrored flame.

  I want to tell you all of it. Inside the tower: the whispering spiral fountains, the scents of ocean dew and frying fish, the sparkle of the tower itself as if made from frozen moonlight.

  I am restless as I write this, and still quite drunk.

  Lark, our leader, took us to the nightside and his favorite tower, Tower Probable. A funny name. I never learned where it came from. He led us to a fantastic fresh fish dinner and a bar with a cover charge you would never believe. We grew drunk on beer and starlight.

  I am listening to quiet music now, alone in my room, too tired, too drunk to sleep.

  I think of you intently, and I am afraid I have not addressed you properly, that I write too much of myself and never ask you questions.

  But I don’t know what to ask. You are trapped. I can’t ask how that feels. I can only imagine. And I agree that false childhood memories may be cruel. But if you did not have them, or any emotion at all, would you even care about this letter?

  I took you with me in spirit tonight. I thought a lot about how I would write to you of Fair-Orb, about Lark and my other friends. I knew I could never do the experience justice with my mere words. But you can at least know it is for you that I’m trying.

  It is the best I can do for you, though not enough.

  I am so drunk I want to cry with happiness. How can I explain that?

  I won’t try. You are spared for now.

  Write me of your deepest thoughts any time. Write me about the weather. I don’t care which. I just want to hear from you.

  Your friend,

  Liyan.

  He felt foolish but he prodded the send light anyway. Better any letter than none for a lonely android who would qualify with the best of them to travel the cosmos, but would never be allowed.

  Finally he collapsed on his bunk. He dreamed of stars and fish and fish-stars and star-fish.

  *

  Dear Liyan:

  I can see the tower. I can smell the sea. I can hear the voices of the fishermen. Thank you for that. Perhaps your true calling is poetry and not navigation? Perhaps they are not mutually exclusive.

  But of course one can also have more than one calling in life.

  I am great at many different things myself. I say that without pride. It is my prime function to be good at whatever I am hired to do. Perhaps it is more accurate to say I am a good learner.

  As I spoke of in my last letter, I have preferences. I am good at accounting, but I prefer my concierge duties. I like seeing the people come and go. I like looking at them, listening to them. The bartending also allows me this pleasure.

  I don’t mind my work. Honestly. But I can say I am the most fortunate to be able to travel with you, if only in words.

  I am glad you have friends. They sound like good ones.

  May I ask your next destination?

  The port’s false moon is beaming through my window right now. The decoration serves only to remind me there is no moon. And that the moss and lichen hued atmosphere of this asteroid is due merely to toxic gasses emitted from the constantly humming vessels at the landing site.

  I know you do not miss this place. But when you think of me, this is where I’ll be. Always.

  Waiting for another letter.

  Your friend,

  Cobalt

  *

  4. The World of Floating Cities

  Cobalt had to wait two months before receiving another wave. It was worth it.

  Dear Cobalt:

  Two months in foldspace. We didn’t even realize that length of time had passed. Our chronometers displayed a real-time experience of seven days, eleven hours and eight and a half minutes, give or take a second.

  This foldspace experience was more coherent than the last. No rhyme or reason to it. I did not smell colors or hear dreams. I never felt the urge to keep a madman’s journal. They say it can be that way, sometimes, like normal star-cruising.

  There is little navigation to be done once the ship is inside-out of that black envelope of time. But we still kept our normal work hours. The captain gave us tasks and drills. No one got spacesick.

  Lark, Tiri, Sekina and I played a lot of cards and watched a lot of recorded wave stories. Of course nothing from real-time waves could get through to us.

  I don’t believe I’ve told you much about my friends. I’ve only mentioned them.

  Lark is 25 and was just promoted. He is a full lieutenant now. He has big feet and broad shoulders and likes to talk a lot. And he’s loud. No one cares, though, because he’s funny. When I first came to navigation I reported to him. But he’s moved up. Sekina is my boss now.

  Sekina is the smartest person I’ve ever known. She’s only 23 but will make lieutenant next year. She entered the service of C&C at age 22, after spending four years at an ivy university on Dylan studying physics. She has her sights on a ship of her own by the time she’s 28. She has wonderful blue streaks in her black hair. The blue color reminds me of yours.

  Tiri is 21. She’s also very smart and a good worker. She was trained in military combat before acquiring the math skills to be an officer. She’s tall, but all willowy muscle and no-nonsense. She and Lark could almost wear the same size uniform, including boots, but are opposites in personality. They have eyes for each other but have not shown awareness of it yet. Sekina and I can see it. Lark likes having, for once, a ‘straight-man’ for all his jokes, and Tiri seems to enjoy being that for him.

  My friends include me in all their activities together. They are generous and kind. Since no one from my classes back at the spaceport came with me, I arrived to the liner friendless and alone. I was also the youngest. For awhile, Lark often called me ‘boy’ off duty and on. He doesn’t do that anymore, though.

  They all know I write to a friend back home. When I mentioned your name, Lark’s response was, “I do love that shade of blue.” I have told them nothing else about you. It’s not from shame that I may seem secretive. It is more about this deep sense of knowing that you are a person. The ‘no rights’ is
sue aside, where you come from and your label as ‘android’ is none of their business. You are a friend. You are the person back home I write to. That is all they need to know.

  If my behavior concerning this is wrong in your eyes, please tell me. I don’t want to think our differences are so big. That’s all. If I am making myself appear unclear about you, or conflicted, I apologize. Nothing could be further from the truth.

  Our new destination, now that we are out of foldspace again, is Vaera, where the cities float among the clouds.

  Your friend,

  Liyan

  *

  In the sapphire shadows of his private room, Cobalt read Liyan’s wave three times and, as always, memorized every line. His body ached from recent abuse. A hot drink scented with cinnamon calmed the stiffness of his muscles. And his mind.

  Liyan’s letter returned a warmth to his veins he did not realize, until now, he’d desperately needed.

  He opened a page and began to compose.

  Dear Liyan:

  I can see Vaera on Galactic Images, and am picturing you there among the rose and tangerine clouds zooming through the neon fog in a grav-cab. I hope you get to do that. It looks as if you will find beauty and pleasure in any city you choose to visit there. I am ready to hear all about it.

  I like to hear of your friends. As you must be well aware, people do not befriend androids. You are the exception. Mostly, we make people very uncomfortable. They wish only to use us and be done. I am used to it. I don’t know any other way.