Now let’s see, Hieronymus thought as he approached the bridge, what kind of partner mother UNSPAG in her infinite wisdom has picked for you.
When he opened the door to his ready room, his designated first officer, a slender, red-haired man in his early thirties, was sitting in a chair in front of the captain’s desk. Now he jumped to his feet, but instead of turning around, he kept staring straight ahead at the wall. Even when the captain made his way around his desk, the man’s emerald eyes didn’t move.
“Well,” Hieronymus said as he sat down in his chair, “how very nice of you to joins us. Welcome aboard, Mr. …?”
“Lieutenant Commander Christian Fletcher reporting for duty as first officer, sir! I apologize for my tardiness, Captain, but UNSPAG command scheduled an unexpected last minute briefing for all the first officers.”
The captain’s heart sank. Good lord, he thought, they sent me a robot. An anal, obsessive-compulsive technocrat who probably joined the military to compensate for a lifetime of getting bullied.
“At ease, son,” he said. “This is not a battleship.”
“Sir?”
Hieronymus sighed. “Take a seat, Mr. Fletcher.”
Fletcher sat down, keeping his body tense, his eyes straight ahead.
“This last minute briefing, Mr. Fletcher, how long did it take?”
“Three days, sir.”
“Three days,” Hieronymus said, stroking his beard. “That’s not very brief for a briefing, is it?”
“No, sir.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Sir?”
“That last minute briefing, Mr. Fletcher. I want you to tell me what it was all about. I take it must have been rather important if it was so unexpected and so long.”
“We—the first officers of all the ark-ships—received important last-minute instructions, sir.”
“What kind of instructions?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, sir.”
The captain raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“That information is classified, sir.”
“Look, Mr. Fletcher,” Hieronymus said. “I’m your captain, and I’m wondering what kind of instructions could be so important, so crucial to this mission that you are not allowed to share them even with the highest ranking officer on this ship.”
Fletcher didn’t answer. He kept staring stoically at the wall behind Hieronymus.
“I see,” Hieronymus said. He leaned forward and looked Fletcher right into the eyes. “Now here’s the thing, Mr. Fletcher: I’m the one who is ultimately responsible for the safety of two thousand passengers and crew and for the success of this mission. Yes, I’m an UNSPAG officer, and as such I’m bound by UNSPAG directives, but only if I know what those directives are. In order to do my job, to perform my duties as captain, and to keep this ship and the people on it safe, I need to know what’s going on. And let’s face it, Mr. Fletcher, UNSPAG’s authority over this ship, over this mission, and over me decreases with time and distance. Once we’re past Jupiter, and that will be fairly soon, we’ll be on our own. UNSPAG’s jurisdiction, while technically in effect throughout the whole galaxy until eternity, will be rendered meaningless once it can no longer reasonably be enforced. Once that is the case, the buck stops with me. Now let me make it perfectly clear to you, Mr. Fletcher: if weeks, months, or even years after we have left this space dock you are trying to implement any new directives that affect the command structure of this ship or the way this mission is run, it will be regarded as an act of mutiny and dealt with accordingly. I have to run this ship, and I can only do it if I can trust my first officer unreservedly. So I’m asking you one more time, Mr. Fletcher: what were those last-minute instructions you received from UNSPAG before you were deployed here? And make no mistake, if you are not willing or able to provide a satisfying answer to this question, I will not hesitate to put you in an escape pod and personally hit the eject button. Have I made myself clear?”
Stone-faced, Fletcher said, “Yes, sir!”
“Good.” Hieronymus leaned back in his chair. “Go on then. I’m listening.”
He watched his first officer closely. The man was clearly struggling. It was almost as though he was trying to tear down an invisible wall that kept him from being forthright.
After a few endless seconds, Fletcher cleared his throat and finally said, “UNSPAG command is concerned about the social stability on the ark-ship—on all the ark-ships.”
“Social stability?”
“Yes, captain. Simulations by some of the world’s leading scientists have revealed an alarming potential for mental illness among the passengers and crew—especially in the first five years—that could lead to civil unrest, an undermining of the command structure of the ship, and subversive activities that could jeopardize not only the mission itself, but the lives of everyone on board.”
“Mental illness? How?”
“Long story short: cabin fever, sir.”
Hieronymus rolled his eyes. “Oh you’ve got to be kidding me!”
“I’m afraid not, Captain. The scientists tell us that we have most certainly underestimated the adverse psychological effects of long-term deep space travel and of leaving the mother planet behind. In the first couple of weeks and months when we still have a pretty good visual of Earth and people are still able to communicate in near real time with friends and family back home, a sense of excitement and adventure will prevail that will drown out any feelings of anxious anticipation of what lies ahead. However, some six to eighteen months into the journey, as the Earth slowly shrinks to a mere dot in the sky and the communication delay increases from seconds to minutes to hours and eventually days, reality will start sinking in. People will experience feelings of increasing detachment and loneliness, especially those who have no friends or family on board.”
“But cabin fever has been known and studied for centuries,” Hieronymus said. “In fact, we—the captains of the ark-ships—have been briefed on this on day two of our training, and there are a number of contingency plans in place in case things go sideways. Now you’re telling me that all of a sudden these aren’t good enough anymore. I find that very curious.”
“Your training was eighteen months ago, Captain. Things have changed.”
“How so?”
“Sleeten.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Hieronymus said. Almost a year ago, a low level bureaucrat within the Project Exodus selection taskforce, a man by the name of Elgar Sleeten, had leaked a series of top secret documents to the news media—documents that had exposed in great detail how the Exodus Lottery was rigged. Hundreds of millions of people around the world had been shocked to find out that their chances of winning were not even minuscule but literally non-existent. What had been sold to the unsuspecting public as a fair system that gave everyone an equal chance of winning regardless of their age, gender, nationality, ethnic background, religion, sexual orientation, occupation, or skills and abilities, turned out to be an elaborate selection scheme that clearly favored whomever somebody way up high in the Project Exodus hierarchy deemed worthy enough to represent humankind. Excluded were gays and transsexuals (because they were unlikely to procreate), poor people (because if they couldn’t make it on Earth, they probably couldn’t make it in space or on any other planet either), and everyone who had a history of mental illness or instability (because they were deemed to be an incalculable risk for the safety of the mission). Included were predominantly rich, strong, powerful, middle-aged, white individuals who, as it turned out, had been willing to pay considerable sums of money in order to secure themselves a spot on one of the ark-ships.
The fallout of the Sleeten revelations had been huge. The whole eugenics approach didn’t go down too well with the public. Millions of people who felt left out and cheated by the system took to the streets to celebrate Sleeten as a hero and to call for the heads of the Project Exodus executive committee to be smashed in, cut off and burned, although not necessarily in th
at order. Others, ignoring the message and focusing on the messenger, vilified Sleeten, called him the biggest traitor in history, and called for his head to be smashed in, cut off and burned—in that exact order. The two groups clashed, and in the streets of Bangkok and Berlin, of Rio, Vancouver, Moscow and Shanghai, thousands of people on both sides were slaughtered by riot police when initially peaceful protests turned violent.
UNSPAG and the Project Exodus executive committee had reacted to the Sleeten leaks the only way they knew how. They became ringleaders in a global smear campaign against Sleeten that went out of its way to depict him as a disgruntled government employee, a lying, depression-suffering, attention-seeking, sexually deviant loner of less-than-average intelligence one day and a brilliant, evil criminal mastermind who should spend the rest of his life in jail the next. They also wasted no time in pompously announcing how they were going to revise the Project Exodus selection process, making it more transparent and more just, all the while refusing to acknowledge any guilt or wrongdoing, but simply trying to disperse any doubts and restore public confidence.
Hieronymus secretly admired Sleeten and the selfless sacrifice of his life and freedom. It appealed to his sense of justice and represented the exact kind of values—equality, democracy, honesty, and fairness—that he thought humanity would be well-advised to take with them when they left the Earth and took to the stars. Of course he couldn’t say so publicly—not if he wanted to keep his job and preserve his chance to uphold those values on at least one of the ark-ships. It was a dilemma that kept him up at night.
“Before Sleeten,” Fletcher said, “we took great care in screening out anyone who didn't have a one hundred percent flawless mental health record.”
Or perfectly normal people, as we call them in my family, Hieronymus thought.
“After Sleeten, we could no longer do that, at least not to the same extent as before. All of a sudden we had United Nations monitors and consumer advocacy groups on our backs, keeping a close eye on every single step of the process. We were still trying to do our best at excluding people on other grounds—criminal records, traffic offenses, public drunkenness, incidents of antisocial behavior in general—but even then it turned out that too many high-risk individuals were still slipping through the net, with no reasonable way for us to eliminate them from the selection process. These people, we are now being told, are a ticking time bomb. They’re prone to severe bouts of cabin fever, anxiety, and depression once the Earth—home—is out of sight. It is my job to implement and enforce new measures to ensure the safety of this ship and its mission. Sir.”
“Why was I not informed, Mr. Fletcher?” Hieronymus asked. “If this is such a pressing problem that could put the whole mission in danger, why were neither I nor any of the other captains, whom I talked to just a few hours ago, made aware of this?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Fletcher said. “I’m telling you now.”
“That’s very nice of you, Mr. Fletcher, but I’m afraid it’s not good enough. You didn’t tell me these things because you wanted to or because UNSPAG wanted you to. You told me because I pressed you to tell me and I threatened to throw you off this ship. You were not forthcoming, I had to pull everything out of your nose, and you’re still not telling me everything, are you, Mr. Fletcher? There is still something you’re holding back from me, isn’t there?”
There was no reply. Fletcher stared straight ahead, avoiding eye contact with the captain.
“I’m warning you, Mr. Fletcher,” Hieronymus said after a few long moments of tense silence. “You are not going to leave this room until I’m satisfied that you have told me everything I want to know. I am the captain of this ship, and you are not going to have secrets before me that pertain to the success of this mission or the safety of my passengers and crew, or I swear to God I will make your time on board a living nightmare.”
After a few more seconds of stoic silence, Fletcher finally caved in. He took a tablet computer out of his pocket, opened a document, and handed it to Hieronymus. Although the captain only skimmed the document, he quickly gathered the scope of what had been going on behind his back and the back of his fellow ark-ship captains. Under the headline CROWD CONTROL CONTINGENCY MEASURES there was an extensive list of proposed actions to contain any passengers’ activities that the ship’s Chief Intelligence Officer deemed dangerous or subversive. Those actions included perpetual surveillance in order to gather intelligence on subversive activities, the sedation of targets by administering medication through the air supply in their living quarters or through their food, mass detention, enhanced interrogation techniques to obtain information pertaining to potential conspiracies, and the use of deadly force as a means of fending off any immediate danger and as a deterrent for sympathizers and potential copycats. Curiously, the document didn’t state who the Chief Intelligence Officer was, and Hieronymus hadn’t been aware that such a position even existed.
“So this is it, is it?” he finally said, handing the tablet back to Fletcher. “This is how far we have come, and this is how far we are willing to go in order to protect everything we have achieved. All of a sudden I find myself to be the captain of a prison ship full of potential saboteurs, revolutionists, and insurgents. This is what we are taking away from this world, the foundation of the new civilization we are supposed to build. It is kind of sad, don’t you think?”
“Sir,” Fletcher said, “I appreciate your sentiment. However, you must keep in mind that the success of the mission is paramount. Crowd control contingency measures are temporary and only to be used if necessary, at the discretion of the CIO. The right of the people to choose their own form of government and to establish their own laws once we reach Gliese 667 Cc remains unaffected.”
“Yes, yes. Spare me the spin.” Hieronymus waved his hand dismissively. He looked Fletcher deep into the eyes and said, “It’s you, isn’t it?”
“Captain?”
“Our Chief Intelligence Officer. It’s you.”
“Yes, captain.”
“And I assume your authority is … extensive?”
Fletcher nodded briefly. “My authority is absolute, sir.”
“What does that mean, absolute?”
Fletcher didn’t reply.
“Answer my question, Mr. Fletcher! What does ‘absolute authority’ mean?”
“Sir, I have the authority to relieve you of your duties at my discretion, if I believe it to be in the best interest of our mission.”
“I see,” Hieronymus said, leaning back in his chair. “So I’m just a puppet, really, am I? A servant. A mere chauffeur at the helm of your dictator-ship.”
Once again, Fletcher chose to remain silent and to let the implications speak for themselves.
“Very well then,” Hieronymus said and rose from his chair. “It is what it is, I suppose.” He walked around his desk and reached his hand out to Fletcher. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Fletcher. I wish you great success and the best of luck.”
The young officer also rose and shook it, looking slightly puzzled by Hieronymus’s sudden mood change. “Thank you, Captain. I appreciate that.”
“Now let’s get to work, shall we?” As Hieronymus turned to return to his chair, he hesitated, raised his finger and said, “Oh, just one more thing, Mr. Fletcher.”
“Yes, Captain?”
The punch came without a warning. Hieronymus could feel the young officer’s nasal bone break upon the impact of his fist. Fletcher reeled backward, clasping his nose, a stream of dark red blood gushing through his fingers.
“Bloody hell!” he moaned, stooping over in pain.
Hieronymus stepped beside the young officer and patted him on the back. “There, there, Mr. Fletcher. Will you be all right?” Then he jerked his knee upwards and kicked him in the stomach.
Fletcher fell to the floor, moaning in pain, holding his stomach with both his hands and pressing his bloodied face against the grayish-blue polypropylene carpet.
Hieronymus calmly unbutto
ned his uniform jacket, took it off and threw it on his desk. Then he rolled up his sleeves and slowly walked towards Fletcher. “Now, Mr. Fletcher,” he said menacingly, reveling in the mortal terror he could see in the young man’s eyes. This was going to be fun. “Let me explain to you how this is gonna work …”
* * *
“Congratulations, ark-ship Kronos,” Lily Conway said, smiling from the giant screen on the bridge of the ship. “That was some tricky reversing out of a parking space, but looking good from where I’m standing.”
“Thank you, Admiral,” Hieronymus said. “Undocking from Nephilim 2 completed and confirmed.”
“Roger that, Captain. Whenever you’re ready to go, we’re ready to let you go.”
The first officer stepped up to the captain’s chair. “Cuwwently backing up at twenty meters ber fecond, Cabtain. Abbwoaching turnawound povition in fwee minutef.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fletcher.”
“Good lord!” Lily’s smile gave way to a look of startled bewilderment. “What happened to you, Lieutenant Commander?”
Eschaton - Season One Page 20
