Starship Doi

by Alex Deva

  "Good," said Doina. "So let's agree on what time and date it is now, and start from there."

  "Then let today be Day One of the mission, and we'll count hours starting when we first woke up, twenty-four to a day."

  "I think that would make this dinner, then," said Aram, looking at Doina for confirmation.

  "I can't tell for sure unless I go back to One," she said. "But we could ask the ADM. Either way, I could use a little rest."

  They looked at each other with instant understanding.

  "I'll sleep in One," Doina said, grinning.

  "I'll stay here in Two," said the Dacian.

  "In that case, I'll be in Twenty-Four," said Mark. "Let's make some beds and use them."

  * * *

  "So, space is mostly empty?" asked Aram at the next breakfast.

  "I guess," she said, grabbing a green bar.

  But Mark wasn't convinced. "Doi," he asked, "what happens if we hit something, or something hits us?"

  "Well, there's this big egg," she said chewing.

  Mark raised an eyebrow, but didn't argue. "Go on," he said.

  "I mean it's not an actual egg, but it looks like one, and the ship is in the middle. If something breaks the egg, it instantly attracts lightning from the ship and gets blown up. If it's small enough," she added.

  "You mean, like a shield? An energy field?"

  She stopped and frowned. "I guess," she said again, and took another bite.

  "Like an electrostatic field, and when something enters it, it becomes charged and it attracts an energy spike from the ship," Mark reasoned out loud.

  "I don't know. Maybe," she said, pausing for a moment. "Could be. Sounds about right."

  "At the speed we're moving, that egg's gotta be huge," Aram reckoned.

  "Yeah, it's pretty huge," she confirmed. "We could ask the ADM exactly how big it is."

  "What if we meet something really big?" asked Mark. "Like a huge comet, or something fifty times our size?"

  The young girl dug for the answer. "Then Doi-the-ship will sense it because of the way it changes space and time around us, and we'll go around it."

  Mark raised the eyebrow again and said, in his best Spock voice:

  "Most fascinating."

  * * *

  On that day, they did some flight training. They moved to One and Doina connected with the ship. She brought up the starfield and overlaid their existing trajectory as a thick, curved pink line. Then, she shifted the perspective so a projection of the ship itself appeared at the end of the pink line.

  For starters, she tried to slow down. Mark instinctively wanted to grab something as Doina counted down the start of the manoeuvre. As she came to zero, they were all looking at the starfield, trying to see or feel some change. They felt nothing, saw nothing for a long while, and only Doina's confident look prevented them from asking whether anything had gone wrong.

  Then, some of the nearest stars seemed to slow down, ever so little.

  "A hundred thousand kilometres per second," she announced.

  "That's about a third of our previous speed," Mark said. "Can you slow down even more?"

  "Sure."

  They carefully looked at the stars, and they seemed to slow down again, just a tiny fraction.

  "Forty thousand kilometres per second," she said again.

  "Amazing," Mark said. "We didn't feel a single thing. Such deceleration should've turned us all into smudges on the walls."

  "Doi-the-ship is taking care of that," she said. "When we're going faster or slower, everything inside the egg feels light as a feather."

  Bye bye, Newton, thought Mark.

  Having gathered a little confidence, they next tried changes of direction, and Doi took them in a complex trajectory comprised of three circles, one around each axis. Then, they tried attitude changes, rotating the ship in various positions while maintaining their speed and direction.

  Aram was mesmerised as either the starfield or the ship's projection moved about.

  "How I wish I could do that," he mumbled.

  Mark turned to look at him.

  "I've always dreamt that I could fly," the blond Dacian told him. "And now, here I am in a damn ship of space, flying like light through the skies, and the ship only listens to her," he said. "You gotta admit it's a bit frustrating."

  The Englishman patted him on the shoulder.

  "I'm sure we're each here for a reason," he said. "Maybe you'll have your chance after all."

  Aram nodded, but said nothing.

  "I think it's enough for now, Doi," said Mark. "Can you bring us back en route and accelerate again?"

  "No problem," she said, looking happy as a lark.

  Aram sighed.

  "How quickly can you accelerate?" asked Mark.

  "Let's find out," she said.

  She leant a little forward, out of instinct, and her face got a determined look. Mark counted to seventeen.

  "We're back at our original speed," she announced.

  "No inertia at all," repeated the Englishman in amazement. "By rights, we should've been pulverised."

  "Whoever built this thing knew what they were doing," commented Aram.

  Bye bye, physics, thought Mark again.

  * * *

  They were alone in separate rooms, each having a bath and relaxing, and chatting via the ship's intercom.

  "What's the future like?" asked Doina.

  "You mean, my time?" said Mark.

  "Yeah," she said. "What's gonna happen in the next thousand years?"

  He thought for a moment, trying to summarise one millennium in a few phrases.

  "There were good things, and bad things," he finally said. "There were great wars and horrible diseases, but there were also great discoveries and inventions. Once we invented machines and found a way to fight disease, the population grew into billions over billions."

  "Wow," said Aram from another room. "Was there room enough?"

  "Not everywhere," Mark said. "Some places got really crowded."

  "So what interesting things did you have?" the Dacian wanted to know.

  "Antibiotics," came the answer. "Mobile phones, computers, the Internet, cars, aeroplanes and helicopters, flying to the Moon..."

  "What, you flew to the Moon?" they both asked.

  "Not me," he said, laughing. "American astronauts did, and that was over forty years ago... I mean, before I came here."

  "What's it like there?" asked the young girl.

  "Dusty. And very cold. Or very hot, depending on shadow."

  "Was there anyone there?"

  "Nope. Not a soul."

  "Did people move over to the Moon because there was no more room on Earth?"

  "No, not really. Only a dozen people went to the Moon altogether."

  "Why so few?"

  "I don't really know," Mark said. "I think they just lost interest."

  "Wow," she said. "How can people lose interest in space travel?"

  "I don't know," he said again.

  There was silence for a few seconds.

  "Hey, maybe we'll go home and they'll say, you're boring, go back where you came from," said Aram.

  "I... don't know. It's possible, I guess."

  "What do we do then?"

  "I have no idea."

  There was more silence.

  "So does God still exist in 2014?" asked Doina suddenly.

  Mark sank his head under the water.

  * * *

  They started having a daily routine. Wake up, freshen up, have breakfast. Then, Mark had the idea to ask the ADM if the gravity, or whatever it was, could be configured so they could walk on the round walls of a room, and so Room Fourteen (chosen mainly because it was on the other side of the torus, for a change) became the gym. They took to running around it, just to stay in shape and healthy.

  Doina had replaced her flax fibre dress with trousers and a blouse. At first, wearing pants bothered her, but she had to admit that with all the floating around they we
re doing, pants were simply more practical. She spent a half hour alone in a room with the ADM, and emerged in a pair of simple, straight black pants and a matching, waist-long blouse, with a short, straight collar.

  "What do you think?" she asked the men.

  They looked at her, then at each other.

  "You look great, Doi," said Mark.

  "Don't you want a change of clothes? I can make you some, too."

  "Do you mind if I feel the material?" he asked.

  "Sure, go on," she said, offering him a hand.

  It did not feel like fibre at all. It felt like very very soft rubber.

  "Seems comfy," the Dacian said too, dubiously. "Is it strong?"

  "Go ahead, try," she said.

  He grabbed her sleeve and gently pulled on it. Then he pulled stronger, and then, mumbling with amazement, he pulled as hard as he could. It was stronger than any clothing he'd ever seen.

  Mark looked at her feet. They were still bare.

  "What about your feet?" he asked.

  "I don't need shoes," she said. "There's nothing sharp in here and I can make it as warm as I like."

  The men looked at each other's feet. Aram was still wearing his leather shoes, and Mark had his light brown Timberlands.

  "We'll keep ours," they said.

  * * *

  "I can't get over it," Doina said, one day. The guys were literally on the walls, doing push-ups. She had been assigned to count them, but had insisted it wasn't fair: Aram had asked to have twice the normal gravity on his particular spot on the wall.

  "Over what?" asked Mark, breathing heavily.

  "Why are we here? I mean, why us in particular?"

  Aram stopped, and rose to his feet, parallel to the room's floor, weighing almost two hundred kilograms and not showing any.

  "Well, for my part, I have no idea," he said. "I'm nobody. Never did anything really interesting."

  "And don't you want to know?" she asked.

  The Dacian looked at her, his long, blond hair plastered to his face by sweat and extra weight. His chest heaved with the effort to breathe. He was serious and motionless for a few seconds.

  "No," he said, finally. "Actually I don't think I do."

  "Why not?" she insisted, a little taken aback.

  He stepped out of the extra-g zone, and as the force gradually dissipated, he started drawing longer breaths. He slowly moved around the room's circular wall, watching his feet, putting one in front of the other with great care, as if he'd just discovered how to do it.

  "I'm sure I'll find out when the time comes," he said, eventually.

  "How about you, Mark?"

  The Englishman hadn't stopped working out and he didn't answer.

  "Mark," called Doina.

  "Yeah?" he said, not looking up.

  "Aren't you curious why the ship chose you among all those people around you?"

  He did three more push-ups then got up. As he rose, his face was red.

  "You want to know why you're here?" he countered.

  "Yes, I really do."

  "Well, why don't you just ask?"

  She looked at them and smiled a little.

  "I guess I will," she said.

  She went over to the wall and touched it. The myriad of symbols sprung from under her palm, and she chose the ADM's complicated glyph and touched it.

  "Hello, Doi," said the voice from the walls.

  She straightened herself up instinctively, raised her chin and announced deftly, in a loud and clear voice:

  "I want to know why I was chosen to be here."

  "Because your soul is pure," came the instant, emotionless answer.

  That perplexed all three of them. Aram shook his head towards Mark in a makes sense to me! gesture. The latter had no reaction.

  "Explain," she asked.

  "The interface with this ship is difficult to express in simple words, but, like any other communication link, it is subject to noise. The ship selected a commander for itself based on that person's capability to present a clear, consistent and predictable interface pattern, with very little or no static. You were perfect for it."

  "Explain the soul part," she asked again.

  "Mere conscious thought is not enough to operate a ship of this complexity," came the answer. "The link between machine and life is done at all levels: rational, emotional and spiritual. They are all equally important, or the connection would fail."

  When she said nothing, the ADM carried on:

  "Neither of you can think quickly enough or process the volume of data required to make useful choices in running this ship. Emotionally, however, you can react without rational thought and that serves better."

  "But the soul...?" asked the girl.

  "Everything you decide to do, rationally or emotionally, is filtered and enriched through your soul. This is what guarantees the successful operation of everything -- of you, as a person, and of the ship, as a transgenic construct."

  "What's a transgenic..." started Aram, but she waved him off.

  "What happens if I change?"

  "You always change, and the ship changes with you."

  "So what if I become a bad person?"

  "I am unable to quantify good or bad," answered the ADM without pause. "But even if your very nature is altered, the ship will follow."

  "So this link, this connection... can never be broken?"

  "Only by your eventual demise, or by the ship's complete destruction."

  She stared at the wall, and said nothing.

  "...construct?" finished Aram, lamely.

  * * *

  "Do you still have your parents?" Doina asked Aram at lunch one day.

  "They died when I was younger than you are now," he answered.

  "And how old are you now?"

  Aram smiled. "I'm twenty-four."

  "And you?" she asked Mark.

  "Thirty-nine."

  "Parents?"

  "Father and step-mother. Alive when I left, in High Wycombe. That's a place in my country, England."

  "Were you close?"

  "Not really," he said.

  "Do you think they missed you?"

  He noticed her use of the past tense and realised that his parents had to be long dead by now. It hit him, but not very hard. The very last person he had really cared about had died, long before that strange day in Alba Iulia, and he still could not forgive himself for it.

  "I don't know," he lied. "How about you? Do you miss your parents?"

  She raised her eyebrows, sighed and looked straight ahead.

  She had grown immensely in those two weeks. Not physically; she was still a small, twelve-year-old with short, black hair, even if the hair was, by then, a little longer. But her eyes were mature, and, catalysed by the strange communion she maintained with the alien starship, she had become an adult, much earlier than she should have. Her command of English was already as good as Mark's, and surpassed Aram's -- who had himself, in all fairness, begun to sound like a twenty-first century Brit. Except for the accent; for some reason Mark thought had to do with native phonetics, Aram had picked up an unmistakably Northern accent.

  "I sometimes remember them, especially my mother," she said. "She taught me everything I know about the world. I don't know how she knew so much."

  She looked straight at Mark.

  "They were both killed by Mongols," she said, directly. "I wasn't home. They raided our village and killed every single human being, then burnt it down. It took half an hour."

  Mark sustained her gaze as long as she needed to.

  "I'm sorry," he said softly, when she eventually looked away.

  After a pause, Aram spoke:

  "Mine got sick and died, together with my brother and a sister. I can barely remember them. A friend of my grandfather's took me in after that."

  "What was Vlachia like back then?" asked Doina.

  "The Romans were still there at the time," Aram remembered. "There were hundreds of warring tribes, and on top o
f that, there were plenty of other passing bastards looking to rob and steal. Poor Romans tried their best to keep some order in the land, but it was too much, even for them."

  He, too, lost his gaze for a few seconds.

  "Fuck me," he shuddered. "I know it's been a few thousand years, but it still feels like a couple of weeks to me."

  They all approved in silence.

  XV.

  "It's time," she said.

  They were all gathered in One. The starfield now prominently showed the Sun, glaring much brighter than anything around; the Earth itself was visible as a sizeable blue disc, with the Moon a tiny grey dot next to it. The field was configured to show their immediate surroundings in a spherical view.

  "Amazing," said Mark. "Right now, we're as far any human has ever got from home."

  "As far as we know," Aram said.

  They had planned to decelerate behind the Moon, just out of caution, and Doina was monitoring their trajectory now, seconded by the ADM.

  "Decelerating in five seconds," she said.

  At the enormous speed they had, the Earth quickly became bigger, until it filled much of the underside of the room; then the Moon came into view, also growing impossibly fast.

  "Now," said Doina.

  Suddenly they were looking at the dark side of the moon underneath their feet. Huge, dark grey and pockmarked, it was an amazing view, one that Mark had never imagined he would witness.

  Sharp flashes of light erupted from around them, beams of coherent energy directed at points right in front of them.

  "Objects are entering our energy shell," said Doina, sharply. "Most of them have been destroyed by our automated defences."

  "Most of them?" asked Aram, now more worried than her.

  "Only those on a direct collision trajectory," she explained. "The others will pass us by."

  The objects approached, elongated shapes rotating out of control.

  "Can you enlarge the starfield in that direction?" asked Mark.

  Doina gestured and the objects came into view. Some flew harmlessly around them, and the ship's collision prevention lasers destroyed others. But as the image was enlarged, details became visible.