Onliest

by J Daniel Batt

  For every other incident, she cried out in alarm, and Blip had turned to help her, and then the other robots, most smaller than Blip, were there to manage the problem. There had been the broken water line. Syn’s fault. They had been racing, and she had tripped on a waterhead by a path. It hadn’t been a big emergency, but the water, under pressure, streamed up into the air several meters. Syn had given a sharp laugh, and before she’d stopped, the repair bots were there. They had pushed her away and then went to work. All told, the incident had taken less than a minute.

  There had been other problems. Wildlife. Plant disease. But nothing that would alarm Blip like what she was witnessing on his face.

  Blip stuttered, “Behind…Behind…”

  “Where? What exploded? Is the ship in danger?” It was impossible to grasp anything large enough happening that the entire world could be damaged. But she had watched enough science fiction that she knew that might be a possibility. They were on a ship moving through the stars. Moving from one star to another. An interstellar journey. Perhaps this would be the day the journey came to an end.

  The fallen companion bot had invaded her world just days before, and now this explosion was shaking the very walls. Her large world seemed tiny suddenly.

  Blip whispered two soft words, “The gate.”

  Syn put a hand to her mouth. The gate was in the needle. The gate was the one part of the ship she’d never managed to get past. Blip could open up anything but the gate. Every access panel, every gateway, every room. Blip was the master skeleton key, and the obstacles never daunted him. Oh, he was reluctant, more often than not. The more Syn wanted to explore, the more Blip rejected her decisions. Every door presented a possible threat to him. In the end, he’d open them up, and they’d continue their exploration and scavenging. But then none of them were The gate. She felt like every time she uttered it, it should come out in all capital letters. THE GATE. It was a massive hundred-meter edifice and completely impenetrable. There was a part of her world that she had never seen before. They didn’t know what lay on the other side.

  “On this side?”

  “Behind the gate. That’s all I can figure out.”

  “I thought you couldn’t tell what was happening behind the gate.”

  “I can’t.” Blip was already moving up the Disc toward the nearest tower to ascend to the needle around which the Disc revolved. “I simply measured the waves in the Disc and across the rest of the ship. I calculated back the origin of the tremors. Whatever caused that, it’s behind the gate.”

  “Wow.” That was the only word that came to her.

  “Let’s go,” Blip said.

  Syn shook her head, attempting to shake loose her confusion. She stepped after him.

  “If it’s the gate, it’s going to take a bit to get there.”

  Blip nodded and turned toward her bike. “Twenty-two minutes. At top speed. Probably longer.”

  Syn smiled. Even in the face of danger, Blip was still joking.

  She had the ship down to pure memory. She knew the closest path from one place to another. Yes, the gate was a bit away from here. They’d have to make it to a tower, and then, if the elevator was working, ascend the massive five-kilometer-high strut that followed the outside of the Disc, alongside the tiered housing units, until it intersected with the needle. Then, they’d have to go up two or three levels in zero gravity and maneuver a few more kilometers. Even with all of that, the trip couldn’t take more than fifteen minutes. He was challenging her. He was hoping that she’d feel the challenge and dart ahead without becoming distracted, which was her usual M.O. His hopes were well-rewarded.

  Syn sped toward her bike.

  Close behind her, Eku sniffed, and Syn looked back. Syn shook her head. “You can’t keep up. We have to go fast.”

  Eku didn’t move. Syn took a few steps and rubbed the cat’s neck. “It’s fine,” she said, “It’s okay. You play. Go have fun.”

  Eku stayed put though, unwilling to leave without her.

  Syn smiled, scratched the tiger again and straddled the bike—a quick version known as the Ogun model. Syn loved this hover bike—its blue finish, the way it sloped forward like a tiger, ready to pounce. It was sleek and beautiful, and she felt like she was hugging an arrow shot through the air.

  The Ogun hovered above the grass. Like Blip, it used magnetic induction to hover above the metal surface that lay just below the jungle soil.

  As she touched it, it sprang to life. Like most everything else, it responded to her touch. She was all it needed to come alive. She was the code that unlocked it. There had been keys on doors and different vehicles when she had first ventured out into the Disc, but they were of no concern to her. The ship was hers alone.

  8

  Ogun

  “And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it!"

  —Genesis 28:12, ESV

  Like a rabbit hopping up out of the weeds, Blip jaunted ahead and pointed far down the Disc. “Go to 17. Hopefully, the Jacob there is still working after that.”

  “16 is closer,” Syn said.

  Blip nodded as she pointed the Ogun out from the house. “Yes, but closer to the blast. I’m hoping that 17 wasn’t damaged at the top,” he said.

  Syn paused, took her hands off of the bars, and looked at him. “You think the Jacob lifts are damaged? Near the needle?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Olorun is struggling to deploy scanners and assess the damage.”

  “How’s that possible?” Syn couldn’t understand that. The Olorun was the ship and the ship responded as fast as Blip, as fast as thought.

  “I think the whole system had to reboot. I’m not getting my feed.”

  “Blast,” Syn said. She understood the feed between Blip and the ship. He interfaced with the system and had access to everything through his connection. Always on. Always present. This was the first he had ever said there was a delay with it. He mentioned it so casually that Syn wondered if he had encountered this before. He wasn’t freaking out. He wasn’t frightened. For him, losing his connection with the ship was something that just happened. That frightened Syn, sending a cold sensation washing across her. It was proof he wasn’t telling her everything.

  Syn steered the Ogun toward 17. With a single tug, the hover shot off. Even at this speed, it would take a minute or two to get to the bottom of Tower 17, and then they would have to get in the Jacob lift.

  The air whistled alongside them as they sped forward. There was music to the sounds: the hum of the engine, the slight off-key whine as they careened across the surface, the metal frame straining in the tight corners, the rush of the wind as they roared past the blurring scenery. It was a soothing echo of what Syn imagined flying would be like.

  They moved through the various buildings and structures. The Disc’s rises resembled a stacked city, designed in organic shapes to lessen the artificialness of it all. At the base, the structures were spread out. No congested alleys or streets. Yet, no single path was a straight route. The designers of the Olorun loved curvy roads. Since the ship had been manufactured, since it was all artificial in nature, the goal was to make every bit of the design feel natural. Sidewalks and roads all curved through foliage. Sightlines were broken up.

  Ladder 17 was nearly one hundred meters in diameter at its base. It curved up, following the outward bulge of the Disc and the tiered houses and green spaces of the rise. The houses and buildings followed the curve and ascended past the clouds. The upper residences had housed the older members of the crew. As the levels went up, the gravity lessened. This was an attractive option for the elderly, for those of the crew that were past 100. With less gravity, they had more mobility, less fear of falling, far more strength in managing everyday items. So it went—the younger at the base, the older far up the rise. It was an unintended physical hierarchy of age. Syn had discovered this fact in her scav
enging and exploration of the residences. The decor of the houses changed the farther up the rise she went. A scattering of toys at the bases. The residences became odd geological strata of the lifespans of its crew.

  Syn slowed and drifted next to the tower’s base. The Jacob lift opened up in the center of the strut. As they approached, the lift doors slid open.

  Blip gave an acknowledging beep. “Grab your spear.”

  Syn narrowed my eyes. “Up there? No lions, or tigers, or bears up there, my brave little toaster.”

  Blip just stared back. “I’m concerned.”

  Syn narrowed her eyes but went back to pull her spear free from the makeshift sheath she had crafted on the side of the Ogun. The spear was nearly five feet in length, and Syn had crafted it from several carbon-fiber pipes (it was as light as a feather) and managed to cold-weld a carbon-fiber knife she had shaped to the tip. Syn could hit nearly anything from at least forty to fifty feet away. She had taken down a lion that had escaped the zoo in their second year. She hated to do it, but he had been chewing up the cats and dogs in the Anatolia neighborhood, and he had to die—the closest the Disc had to a serial killer. The animals had been docile, programmed deep in their DNA toward a tameness. But that change in nature was only a guarantee with humans. She was safe, but the lion still possessed its primal urges to hunt and feed. And now, it seemed, to hunt alone for the sport of it.

  Reflecting on the moment, she had been frozen in fear, her stomach rolling in anticipation. It wouldn’t kill her—couldn’t kill her. But if she walked away, its spree would continue and other animals would die. Or perhaps, this would be the one animal that fought its programming. Maybe it would break free of its reins, charge her, and she would die. Then, Olorun would tumble through space, empty of all intelligent life except a single robot named Blip. She shook her head. Imagination run amok. Very little could hurt her here.

  A strange thought formed far back in her mind. If she had conceived of her own death, Blip had as well. Would Blip knowingly choose to live his existence alone? Perhaps he kept the other bot secret so that he had someone else in case Syn died.

  And she would die. At some time. Clearing through the dead bodies in the Disc had convinced her of that. Everyone died. Perhaps, her death was years from now, but she would die. She knew it. And so did Blip. So why had they never talked about it?

  Syn stared up the length of the Jacob lift. The tower stretched to the sunstrips, and its end was obscured in the clouds. Far above them, attached to the Jacob lift, an Orisha mask stared down, seemingly oblivious to the commotion. The masks had been created by the Builders and each was different. The one above her was a rectangular construction with a long, long chin, slits for eyes, and a thin mouth below an angular nose. The masks were hundreds of feet tall and could still be viewed down here. They were mounted on each lift and created a somber feel when viewed; each of them were silent like sentries, looking over life on the Disc.

  “Express ride to the top?” she asked.

  “No stops,” Blip said, as much to her as the Jacob. The inner doors of the lift shut, and the outer doors to the chute closed. The elevator lifted up—it was a gentle motion.

  Syn put a hand on the wall. Smooth and clean. They cruised upwards at an incredible speed, but they did not feel it. Without the open window to the world below them, they would not have even noticed.

  They broke the fourteenth level, and the canopy of the Aja jungle fell below them. The dense green foliage blocked out the individual paths that snaked around the outside. They soared higher, and the world of the Disc opened up below them. Syn sighed and thought, Mine.

  Below her, splitting open the Aja jungle was the river. Her river. And He separated the waters from the waters… The various populations that inhabited the ship had each given it their own name. Some had called it the Euphrates. Others called it Shui. The few Russians that had assisted with the construction of Olorun called it the Volga. Syn had named it Lokun, in honor of the people that had ultimately launched the craft. She had forgotten most of her language course work from that first year, but she remembered that word. The Lokun was beautiful, stretching the entire distance around the base of the Disc. The ship’s Disc—a large ring—rotated around the center needle of the ship’s fuselage. The rotation produced gravity. It was nearly 32 kilometers in circumference and four kilometers wide. Almost 128 square kilometers of surface for Syn to play and live upon.

  The Lokun zig-zagged from edge to edge, its course allowing it to form eddies and currents and pool in places and bottleneck in others. At three different intervals, from the rocks built into the walls of the Disc between the rising settlements, waterfalls pushed the river along.

  The water came from the great bodies of water that surrounded the Disc. The biggest danger of space was the radiation. Earth had its atmosphere and magnetic system to divert and absorb the harmful radiation. The atmosphere of the Disc wasn’t capable of that. It was not thick enough. Instead, in a secondary, insulating layer around the entire Disc, an ocean of water floated. It was impossible to get to and impossible to disturb. There was enough water in the shield to flood the Disc and more; easily a kilometer-thick extension on both sides of the Disc.

  The river fed back into it. The water filtered to the settling ponds below before it moved back to the surrounding ocean shield. Then the water would pour back into the river, pushing it along. Compared to the water in the shield, the Lokun was a mere trickle. But laying upon it, floating with its current, it felt mighty.

  Syn had once taken a boat out without any true intent and allowed herself to float along. For four days, she laid in that boat, circling the Disc. She felt like she was in orbit. Over and over, she saw the same sights move past. She laid there without sleep as the sunstrips along the needle faded into darkness, and the projected stars, a representation of the outside, were allowed to show their light. Her fingers hung in the water, and the small fish would come taste the salt from her fingertips. They nibbled at her skin and then darted off when she moved. She drifted between sleep and awake, allowing the lull of the world, the hum of the engines, and the thrum of the rotating Disc to hypnotize her.

  She dreamt that she had stared into the deep of the Lokun, and there, below its mirror surface, was another world. In that other world, there was another Syn, another girl, looking up. Her hair, her eyes…her. But with a different voice and a different mind. Someone human to share this world with. Someone with flesh and blood and tears and anger and fear. Someone beyond Blip and Eku and the animals and the dumb bots. She loved Blip. He was her closest friend. But that night, she had felt very alone. She drifted through the waters and wondered what it would be like to hear another human’s voice, not through some recording, but with her own ears. Would the voice be different if it had been formed with human vocal cords? Would it sound different to her tiny ears if the words had escaped warm lips, crafted with a thick tongue that was moist with spittle? Would the conversation be different if the other person had to pull their hair from their eyes like she often did? If they had to sometimes pause the conversation to run and use the bathroom?

  Syn had hung from the bow of the boat and let both hands deep into the water. She saw herself there and saw that reflection mouth other words than the ones her own lips formed. The reflection was living. It was thinking. It was another, and she wanted to fall forward and embrace it, pull that other close to her own chest and feel the thump, thump, thump of its heart and the warmth of its breath against her neck. She wanted to feel the sweat of the other’s skin and let her mutter, “It’s okay. You’re not alone. I’m here.”

  But that had been something near to a dream.

  She pulled away from the glass, the view of the river Lokun, and thought, I say blast it to the shadow girl, the girl below the waves. Olorun is my world, and the rule of it comes with the thorn of loneliness. Who cares? I’m a god in this little place and…

  “Why are you lying to me?” Syn said, her eyes surveying her worl
d.

  Blip turned away from the control pad and looked at her. “Excuse me?” he said, his voice low and careful with a hint of confusion.

  The ignorant tone he replied with set her off. She wheeled and pointed. “Stop lying. Stop it now.”

  Blip moved back, appearing stunned by her words. “What are you…”

  But he couldn’t get the words out. Syn interrupted, “The other bot. The other one like you. You knew about it! I saw it in the way you approached it. You were surprised by its arrival but not by its existence. You were surprised that it had crashed. Where do you go at night? When has the feed broken down before? Who was that companion bot? What’s the explosion about? You know all the answers, and you’re not telling me a thing! I want answers.” She was furious. With each sentence she stepped closer to him, her finger pointed at him and spit flying from her mouth. “Stop lying Blip!”

  Deep inside though, a small voice spoke, you’re going to send him away. For a moment, the voice caused her to stagger, and she only finished with a stunted, “Stop…”

  Blip stuttered at her pauses, “What are you…” and then, “I’m not.” Finally, after her final word, Blip replied, “I…” But he would never finish that sentence.

  9

  The Jacob

  “Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything

  of who do the things no one can imagine.”

  —Alan Turing

  The Jacob came to a sudden stop, and they were thrown up, slamming hard into the ceiling. They were over halfway up the tower. The further up they went and the further from the base of the Disc they climbed, the lower the gravity was.