Flower-of-Sands_The Extraordinary Adventures of a Female Astronaut

by Grahame R. Smith

  Edge embraced thin air and collapsed over a nearby table of neatly arranged Marleeseen finger snacks. The ardent followers, realizing that they were witnessing and were indeed part of an extension to their never-ending party, screamed with high spirits and recorded every part of the proceedings. Within seconds, the incident appeared in implants and holos across the entire space station, other stations in orbit, the home planet, and orbiting research labs. Soon it would reach the moons of the outer planets. In Earth twenty-first century terminology, it had gone viral.

  Flower-of-Sands remained furious. ‘Astral-La is your best friend,’ she shouted. ‘Man up, straighten-out, get a grip, get off your ass, and follow me. You are taking me to Paradise whether you like it or not. If you do not, I will beat you up, Earth style.’

  By now, a large audience, which included Flower-of-Sands’ old friend Joy, who had just arrived for a holiday, were wildly applauding, convinced that they were witnessing a new form of street theatre. There were continuous cries of ‘brilliant’,’ outstanding’, and ‘more’. Flower-of-Sands was famous, and for all the wrong reasons.

  Realizing that she was creating a spectacle, but unaware of the extent of her fame, she caught Edge in a vice gip and led him towards the nearest jump booth, amidst thunderous applause from a by now massive audience. Joy struggled through the crowd so that she could intercept her friend. ‘I told you to stay clear, didn’t I. I told you!’

  Flower-of-Sands arrived with the hapless Edge into her apartment where Faithe was already waiting. ‘You lost it, completely and utterly,’ Faithe said as if she had been desperately searching for a description of Flower-of-Sands’ behaviour and had at last found one.

  Edge, for whom gravity and sofa comfort were the same thing, tried to sit on Flower-of-Sands’ sofa, only to find that the girls were peeling off his clothes. ‘Hey,’ he said mildly, misunderstanding their intentions. ‘You only have to ask.’

  Outside in the corridor and surrounding areas, fans of the occasion, convinced that they were participants in a brand new recreational activity, were trying to gain access to Flower-of-Sands’ apartment. Holo projections and various forms of spy-flies had entered the apartment and were recording and streaming the sight of two women desperately trying to sober up Edge.

  ‘It’s no use getting his implant-net to do it,’ Faithe said. ‘He has programmed his plant-net to not sober him up, unless his life is threatened.’

  ‘In that case,’ Flower-of-Sands said roughly, ‘let me at him.’

  Uproar from outside. Faithe tried to calm Flower-of-Sands. ‘Sands, please, we will have restraint bots here, if you carry on like this, and they have not been activated for hundreds of years. We would never live down the scandal. Let’s do it the old-fashioned way. Let’s put him under the shower.’

  Continued uproar from the fans outside the apartment.

  A day later, Flower-of-Sands, Edge, and Faithe faced a grim Clayton, flanked by Arlo, Dangelo, and an assortment of assistants and engineers.

  Edge had transformed himself into a respectable looking pilot. Hair cropped short, eyes bright and attentive, wearing a grey-blue one-piece pilot uniform; he bore little resemblance to the play-loving, irresponsible socialite who had haunted the Spectrum club and nearby refreshment outlets.

  Flower-of-Sands was still angry, and what was extraordinary was the inability of everyone around her to comprehend that anger. On the positive side, her anger had made events move on. Edge was sobered and in decent shape. Clayton had found a suitable ship, and the launch bay had already initiated a countdown. What was less positive, or perhaps unnerving, was that people seemed to see her outburst as a form of recreational activity. She was gradually becoming aware that it had made her famous. Holoigloo and holo games were already simulating her behaviour. The Spectrum club had opened a special anger chamber in which members could observe and partake in so-called anger activities. Creative people regarded it as a form of conceptual art. What made it worse was that her face was everywhere, and holo recreations and elaborations of her assault on Edge played across the media. Of annoyance was an ever-growing fan club of people queuing to have her assault them in a comparable manner.

  She needed off station, off planet, and out of system. Preferably yesterday.

  Chapter 12

  ‘Edge is just a completely different person,’ Flower-of-Sands said to herself as she observed her duties on star ship Oblique, on route to Paradise. He had replaced his playboy persona with that of an efficient, calculating pilot-machine. Occasionally he joked, was even slightly familiar in a casual, detached manner, but the irresponsible, overgrown teenager had vanished. She almost missed him and found herself wondering if he had a twin who had wangled his way onto the ship. It was uncanny, even frightening.

  During a quiet moment with the ship on auto and Edge asleep, Faithe explained. ‘You see, Sands, you still do not understand our society. Of course, that is understandable; in effect, you come from eight hundred, at least, years in the past. Customs have changed. Some people experiment with different personas, different life-styles, in some cases modifying their bodies, sometimes even changing sex – you must have noticed that, surely. Edge has been experimenting with being a bad boy, a party socialite, but he has never meant it; it is not who he really is. Not everybody does this sort of thing, of course, but those that do get fully into the part.’

  ‘In my time,’ Flower-of-Sands pondered, ‘it was teenagers, even children, who did that sort of thing – enacting scenarios from worlds they had been studying in class. But never quite like this, not so total. I don’t recognize Edge at all. As far as I am concerned, he is a different person. Are you sure he doesn’t have a twin?’

  Faithe laughed. ‘I know what you mean. I have known Edge since we were children. We went to school together. We are close, but not romantically, at least mostly, more like siblings, so feel free on that account.’

  ‘So, the uproar I created was in response to a façade.’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that, Sands. He was living the part. The character he was playing would have responded to your request that he pilot this ship exactly as he did. It needed to be real from the inside; otherwise there was little point in his being that person we all experienced as Edge the playboy.’

  Flower-of-Sands shook her head, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply. ‘And to think I went along with the act and created a fashion.’

  ‘Yes, you did, and what a fashion. Anger! Wow. Wild, out of control anger. People will run with it for years.’

  ‘No need to rub it in.’ Flower-of-Sands stretched and rotated her head slowly, a habit of hers. ‘With any luck, I won’t be spending much time on and around Liberty Primary. With any luck, we will get the drives from Astral-La and we will be off to the Great Wheel galaxy.’

  ‘We? I haven’t agreed to come with you yet. And as for finding Astral and the drives, that’s very big if.’

  ‘I know. And we have had a few of those recently.’

  She awoke with Edge gently shaking her shoulders. An alarm-beep was pulsing throughout the ship – not an emergency beep, just an indication of gradual approach to the Marleeseen planet. Had it been an emergency, the alarm would have been impossible to ignore. Her stomach burned in anticipation. For some reason, she felt apprehensive about visiting the Marleeseen.

  The ship, Oblique, was a needle piercing the black velvet of hyperspace. The bridge, living quarters, recreational facilities, research labs, and med centre occupied the front. Aft were the great FTL drives. Storage space occupied an area between the engines and the occupied human quarters. There was also a conference room, a kitchen, and a holo-deck, known as a holoigloo. The bulkhead encased layers of compressed silver and white alloy. Outside, the entire hull was deep black; windows that gave an excellent view of the cosmos from the inside were dark on the outside. The ship was silent, virtually invisible, and travelling FTL to the power of 3.

  She arrived into the kitchen to find Faithe sipping a hot be
verage. Edge was not there; probably he was on the bridge preparing for FTL exit procedures. She helped herself to a strong wakeup drink and a protein energy booster. Sitting down opposite Faithe, she immediately began to question her about Edge.

  ‘Is he mad at me, do you think? After what I did.’

  ‘No, not mad at you. Just … well, it’s like this: he must acclimatize to being back to his default personality. Your behaviour yanked him out of his playboy persona prematurely. In a way, he has an existential hangover. He needs time to adjust. He will come out of it. Give him time. And stop worrying, Sands, honestly.’

  ‘Okay, but that is easy for you to say, frankly. For me it’s just weirdness on top of weirdness.’

  ‘Unbelievably, I have felt like that myself many times. Edge’s brother, Remus, for example. He and I were close. Until he became the eternal scholar. Theories, theories, and theories. I couldn’t cope. It runs in Edge’s family. Changing personas. So, you see, I have been there. I know how you feel.’

  ‘Thanks, Faithe, and that must have been something, Edge’s brother. What a thought.’ Flower-of-Sands closed her eyes and breathed deeply. ‘We should be coming out of FTL fairly soon.’

  As if in answer, Edge’s voice sounded in the air about them. ‘Exit from FTL in five minutes approximately. Might be a bit rough. Temporal turbulence. Best go to a station or to your bunks and strap down.’

  ‘Can we both go to my bunk?’ Faithe asked Flower-of-Sands. ‘I get scared coming out of FTL.’

  They went to Faithe’s quarters, lay down on her bunk, and strapped down. Faithe was trembling. ‘I hate this,’ she said softly. ‘Can we hold hands?’

  Lying close, strapped in, they stared at a panel above the bunk that switched between views of nothing to flashes of graphs and readouts monitoring the flight’s descent from hyperspace to normal space. They closed their eyes and waited for the expected sickening lurch.

  It was a bad one. Flower-of-Sands felt her stomach expand like a balloon and float away from her. She was there on the bunk, but without her stomach, just an empty space that gradually filled with a new stomach, fluttering, shivering, and quivering as if she was about to give birth to something extraordinary.

  Then she was fine, but Faithe was not. Scrambling out of the bunk, Faithe vomited violently into a nearby wash basin, her face red, distorted, almost anguished. ‘That was the worst I have ever known. I think I’ve got the temps,’ she cried. ‘I saw myself beside me as we came out and I can see myself five minutes from now.’

  Flower-of-Sands rushed over to her. ‘Don’t panic, Faithe, you will be fine.’ She passed a hand over the wall above the washtub and a drawer slid out. Grabbing a transparent package, she drew out an injector syringe and plunged it into Faithe’s arm. Faithe looked at her wildly and appeared about to faint. After a few tense seconds, she began to relax, sighed, and hugged Flower-of-Sands. ‘Thanks, Sands, I feel better now. I forgot to tell you, I am a bad traveller, especially coming out of FTL. Let’s see how Edge is faring.’

  ‘Funny, he hasn’t made an announcement, and I can’t connect with him through my plant-net.’

  ‘He may have put himself off-line, to avoid FTL exit anomaly.’

  ‘Could be, but we need to check him out.’

  Entering a tube-way that ran through the entire ship, they glided effortlessly towards the bridge. They found Edge thrown across the central control panel, his eyes open, but unseeing, his mouth a gaping hole, as if he had tried to say something but had stopped in a frozen moment of time.

  Faithe rushed over to him and felt his neck, all the while shouting his name. ‘Edge, Edge what happened?’

  He failed to respond and Faithe kept feeling his neck for a pulse. ‘He’s alive, but that’s all I can say. Where are the med-synths? They should be here automatically. Flower, call them.’ She gently eased Edge off the panel and into his pilot’s seat.

  Two med synthetics arrived with a hover-stretcher and began attending to Edge. After administering basic procedures, they lifted him onto the stretcher and proceeded to the med bay via the jump-tube. Meanwhile, Faithe scanned the control panel, which was flashing wildly with random icons and holos.

  ‘AI,’ Flower-of-Sands shouted, ‘What happened to Edge? Please respond.’

  Silence.

  ‘AI,’ Faithe shouted. ‘Respond immediately. What happened to Edge?’

  Silence.

  ‘The AI shouldn’t be malfunctioning in this way,’ Faithe said frantically. ‘It simply doesn’t happen. AI! Respond!’

  She began passing her hands over the control panel. Gradually, the flashing icons began to subside. Still running checks, her eyes now on the complexity of information running across multiple holo screens and miraculously manifesting around the bridge, she began to dial in commands to the ship’s central intelligence conduit. She yelled to Flower-of-Sands, ‘AI’s basic functions are in order. But its higher functions are frozen. Something must have happened as we came out of FTL.’

  ‘What could possibly happen these days with tech so super-advanced?’ Flower-of-Sands voice indicated panic.

  Faithe ignored this as she was desperately trying to engage the AI’s audio functions. ‘Can’t connect,’ she said hopelessly. ‘Go and see how the meds are managing with Edge, whilst I check the ship’s flight path.’

  Flower-of-Sands obeyed without question as this was no time to make a stand against bossiness. The med-bay was teeming with activity as the med-bots and synthetics, some extremely human in appearance, tried to ascertain Edge’s condition.

  ‘How is he?’ Flower-of-Sands asked the room in general.

  A lifelike female synthetic turned and began speaking. Flower-of-Sands guessed the synthetic person was a composite of virtual and holographic self-aware brain functions within a sheath of bio-enhanced synthetic-humanoid crafted alloy. The effect was stunning and for a moment, she lost sight of her reason for being there in the med-bay.

  ‘We are,’ the synthetic said in a rich voice, ‘to put it in human terms, baffled. He is alive, and you will happy to know not brain dead, although whatever attacked him may have intended that.’

  ‘Attacked?’

  ‘We have every reason to believe that he is the victim of an attack.’

  ‘But how? In FTL? Surely not.’

  ‘There is much that Humankind does not know about hyperspace,’ the comely synthetic answered. ‘There is anecdotal evidence of life forms, albeit far removed from us, but alive, potentially conscious, and possibly hostile and predatory.’

  ‘What? Really?’ Flower-of-Sands gazed anxiously at Edge. ‘Will he recover?’

  The synthetic hesitated. ‘We think so. There is considerable brain activity, as if he were in rem-sleep. We think that he is in an auto- hypnotic state induced by whatever it was that attacked him.’

  ‘Attacked? You say that word again. Are you sure?’

  ‘We are sure that some form of attack took place. Whether it was from a conscious entity or a blind non-sentient life form like a virus or bacteria we have no way of knowing.’

  Flower-of-Sands was silent for a while. Then she spoke, ‘What about the ship’s AI? Its higher social functions seem to be impaired.’

  ‘We are analysing that situation. There may be a way around it. I will report to you, Flower-of-Sands, as soon as we know something concrete.’

  Flower-of-Sands returned to the bridge where Faithe was still working at the central control panel. She looked up briefly and sighed. ‘I can’t find the underlying cause of this. How is Edge?’

  ‘He is alive and he is not brain dead – far from it in fact. The chief med-synthetic claims he is in some form of rem-sleep. She, or rather it, says that something attacked him, which I think is too fantastic for words.’

  Faithe was silent.

  ‘What do you think?’ Flower-of-Sands asked eventually.

  Faithe’s fingers were still working over the control panel. She spoke slowly, as if multi-tasking. ‘There have been instances
, very rare, but never explained, of disappearances in hyperspace. There are legends of hyper spores, or leeches, or of sophisticated alien life forms that exist in hyperspace and attack unsuspecting space vehicles.’

  ‘Space spores. Tell me another one?’

  ‘I’m just saying. One version of the legend is that these spores are really a form of hyperspace insect which create a dimensional side track, like a web. Having incapacitated the crew, they encircle their prey and feed off them.’

  ‘Lovely! Do you think we are in a web?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘In which case, we are dead.’ Flower-of-Sands groaned. ‘Everything seems to be against me obtaining the intergalactic valves. Everything. It feels like a cosmic conspiracy.’

  ‘Well, we have other things to think about before we deal with that one. First, we need to defend ourselves. Second, we need to get out of here.’

  A resonant voice came over the intercom. ‘Do we have permission to join you on the bridge so that we can discuss solutions and options?’

  Faithe looked questioningly at Flower-of-sands, who laughed. ‘Don’t be alarmed, Faithe. It’s the med-synthetic who promised to analyse our condition.’

  The tube-way hissed and the med-synthetic walked swiftly onto the bridge. Its body was silver beneath which multiple lights of all shades rippled and shifted about. Grey, intelligent eyes regarded Faithe and Flower-of-Sands with a hint of irony.

  ‘We have some understanding of the situation …’

  ‘Who is “we,” exactly?’ Flower-of-Sands interrupted.

  Almost imperceptibly, the med-synthetic hesitated. ‘” We” is the conglomerate of the ship’s synthetics and available AI functions.’

  Flower-of-Sands nodded and the synthetic continued.

  ‘We believe that on exiting FTL the ship was attacked by an energy life form occupying the multidimensional backwaters of hyperspace.’ Flower-of-Sands shifted impatiently. ‘We can always discuss the metaphysical implications of this situation later, but suffice to say the entity, or life form, intended to incapacitate the ship and its crew completely. Thanks to the quick wittedness of the pilot who took lightning speed measures to compensate for the attack, the entity was only partially successful. Otherwise, it would have already consumed us.’