Chapter 1
‘So, we survived the vat,’ Doctor Nancy Zing said.
‘The question is, where are we?’ Raife’s voice drowned in the sound of the showers flushing growth medium from their bodies.
‘Later! My first question is does the food processor work?’
As soon as the warm air blowers had dried her, Nancy cracked open the side of her birthing vat and pulled on a one-piece bodysuit. She headed straight for the equipment that was giving off an aroma of something potentially edible.
‘What’s making that almost appetising smell?’ Raife asked as he cut his blower. He fastened his bodysuit and strode across the cabin to where Nancy was juggling trays and tumblers.
‘Looks like warm cubes and nutrient milk.’
‘Oh, I bet they’re delicious!’ Raife was not at all hopeful. He crumbled his cubes straight into the tumbler of thick, milky drink Nancy gave him, then downed the first half in a couple of gulps.
‘Peasant!’ Nancy said, taking a surreptitious sip, followed by a cautious nibble of one of her six cubes.
‘As I thought.’ Raife licked his fingers. ‘Soup cubes. They taste exactly like stewed vegetable stock and this so-called milk is... well, what is it like? Mine’s got soup in it.’
‘The ‘milk’,’ Nancy said, ‘has a curiously neutral flavour.’
‘We have to survive off this indefinitely?’
‘At least until we make planet fall, assuming that’s even possible.’
‘We wouldn’t have birthed if Explorer hadn’t checked it already. We’d still be in storage and on our way to somewhere else.’
‘That’s the plan.’
‘How far’ve we come, where are we and what’ve we got?’
There were no windows in the cabin of Explorer 5017. Windows were an unnecessary luxury in an automated ship. For more than a century it had sped amongst the stars, to find one that had a planet in its habitable zone.
‘That’s a lot of questions for someone who, until minutes ago, was a mindless, vat-grown clone,’ Raife said.
‘Not so mindless now.’ Nancy poked him in the ribs. ‘Just give me the answers.’
‘Hey, OK.’ Raife flexed his right hand, signing in the direction of a control sensor. It responded to his authorisation and he spoke the command that opened the main viewscreen.
He and Nancy sat on the pristine white bunk. They nibbled and sipped, skipping through the various views and scans Explorer had recorded of its approach to the planet.
‘The computer is still arguing with itself over exactly how far we’ve come,’ Raife said, ‘but it is telling me it took almost a hundred and twenty years. This planet has been named Zeta Nine, apparently, and so far it’s looking good.’
‘Yes, I can see blue bits and green, brown and white bits in the usual places: oceans, atmosphere, cloud, land and poles. Nice, fuzzy equatorial belt with what is presumably forest. All within tolerance.’
Raife and Nancy’s very own, brand new planet glowed with sunlit colour, suspended in the viewscreen. It was what they had spent years training for.
‘This is going to take some getting used to,’ Raife said, lying back on the bunk with his hands behind his head, his gaze still focussed on the image of Zeta Nine. ‘Until ten minutes ago, the last thing I actually remember was that personality download cubicle on Home Turf.’
‘It’s weird being born wide awake and grown up!’
‘And remembering everything.’ Raife tried to collect his thoughts, his memories of before. The shock of birthing kept coming back in waves, interfering.
Explorer’s computer was programmed to make humans. When sufficient equipment had been assembled, parts for two clone vats were extruded and assembled by Spiders. The vats were then prepped, primed and loaded.
Raife sighed heavily, trying to push away the thoughts of birthing. When neither of them was talking, he noticed the soft clicks and whirring of machines, the swish of a Spider’s muscle bundles. He’d expected a new, plastic smell but instead the cabin smelt old, with a whiff of growth medium, like meat jelly and a dash of disinfectant. Catching him unawares, his mind began playing tricks again, jerking him back twenty minutes, to when a jolt of stimulants had pushed him into wakefulness.
‘You seemed to have a bit of a hairy time, coming to in the vat,’ Nancy said, sensing his discomfort.
‘I was OK once the shower started.’
‘Not right away though.’
‘It’s the dull pop as the lid goes up. You feel it as much as hear it.’
‘All that stuff in your ears.’
Raife remembered hopping onto tiptoe, straining to get his chin clear of the growth medium while it glugged away down the drain, an ugly rumble he’d felt through the base of his vat.
‘You’re scared you won’t catch your first breath,’ he said out loud. The memory of it was so vivid Raife’s mouth opened like a fish. He’d gasped for air, coughing the glutinous medium from his mouth and blowing it from his nose.
‘And you can’t see properly,’ he added.
‘Was that when you panicked?’
‘Hard not to. You looked like your head was rotting from the top down. It was horrible. I tried to shout but my mouth was full of stuff.’
‘Even so, you should have kept calm. You looked the same to me.’
‘Sounds easy when you say it!’
Where Nancy’s hair should have been, Raife had seen sickly green, with a sharp ridge above her brow. The cylindrical shape of the vat hadn’t helped. It formed a giant lens and Nancy looked three times the width she should have. Horrified by the sight of her bulging head, his heart had begun to pound.
The thick liquid had stuck to his body, increasing his alarm. He’d used his hands to scrape away as much as possible, flicking it onto the walls and floor of the vat. All he could hear were muffled thumps and squeaks. Raife felt helpless, spluttering and spitting growth medium as he stared wide-eyed at Nancy.
‘Raife, are you alright?’ Nancy said bringing him out of his reverie.
‘Oh, yes. It’s just I don’t want to be doing that again for a long time.’
‘Best to think about something else, then.’
Raife tried. He stared at the image on the viewscreen but it did not distract him. He hadn’t realised how difficult and frightening the birthing would be.
He’d been still groping for words when he wiped his eyes again and saw that Nancy’s head was not crowned with diseased tissue. It was a close-fitting cap, with faintly glowing spots of colour. Unsupported by the liquid in the tank, he had collapsed with relief.
His whole body twitched at the memory.
‘Raife!’
‘I can’t relax until I’ve gone over it.’
As soon as Nancy had peeled off the layer of green latex, the lights went out. She’d pointed at the screen behind him. He’d struggled back on his feet.
Remove personality download cap now flashed in large letters. As soon as Raife had slid his cap from his head the display changed to Clip cord. Threaded loosely around his umbilical, Raife had found a red plastic clip, which he slid to within two centimetres of his belly. He squeezed hard, wincing as the clip simultaneously cut and sealed the cord. On the screen Start shower showed as soon as he was free of the machinery and warm water sprayed from above.
Nancy watched out of the corner of her eye, while Raife sighed and sank lower into the bunk. She let him be for several minutes.
‘You’ve been quiet for a while,’ Nancy said finally.
‘I was just thinking,’ Raife said. ‘We were given our personality download while we were still in the vats. The way I remember our training, a Spider would have prepped us one at a time, getting a download from a machine, with wires everywhere.’
‘Upgrades, I guess.’
‘Upgrades! When I first saw you with that green thing on your head!’
‘You looked pretty weird, too, but I could read the screen from where I was.’
‘
I’m glad you haven’t gone mouldy,’ Raife said.
‘So am I!’ Nancy held him close.
From the novel’s first review: “...well-written, thought-provoking... entirely credible as one writer's exploration of a version of the life to come... Characterisation was more than sufficient to maintain an interest in what happens to the protagonists but really fascinating to me was the incorporation of all kinds of real & imagined technological ideas & concepts which really does succeed in demonstrating the writer’s gift for making this stuff interesting”
Richard (Editor, Authorsonline, UK) says –
“Passengers to Zeta Nine... the quality of the writing is very much up to the standard of Passengers to Sentience. The detail and the descriptive passages are absolutely top notch. Also the characters were well developed... The technical stuff, which is very much your forte was again absolutely spot on and very well thought out. In fact it bordered on brilliant.”
The First Completely Electronic Robot and Science Fiction Limerick Book – a collection of over fifty amusing short stories told in five lines each.
Reviewed by Joseph Rhea, author of Cyberdrome:
“This is a collection of humorous limericks by U.K. novelist, Peter Salisbury, usually known for his "serious" science fictions novels, like "Passengers to Sentience," and its upcoming sequel. It is a small book uniquely designed for the Kindle (or other eReader) that will have you rereading it again and again. It is also suitable for all ages (IMHO).”
and
https://petersalisburyauthor.blogspot.com
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