The Silence Between the Stars

by Alan Davenport

  “It does take some getting used to,” admitted Kurt.

  “I just can’t believe it,” said Nathan. “So am I getting one of these all for myself?”

  Kurt and the crew around him all burst into laughter. “No Nathan, not at all.” Nathan’s face fell as they all laughed at him. Kurt put a hand upon his shoulder and gently said, “No Nathan, this is just a shuttle. It is for in-system travel only. It does not have interstellar capabilities. Your ship is much larger than this little shuttle. Your starship has six of these shuttles in its hanger bays alone. Your ship is a rectangle approximately two kilometers long by 700 meters wide by 500 meters tall.”

  Nathan briefly felt anger rising within him but it quickly dissipated. “You are serious, aren’t you?” he asked in wonder. Kurt nodded. “At first I thought you were pulling my leg.” Nathan’s brow wrinkled in thought. “I am really getting a ship like that all to myself? Why?”

  Kurt nodded. “Yes, you are.” Kurt’s brow wrinkled with despair. “Nathan, things on Earth are far worse than you have been led to believe. The media have been fed carefully modified data that makes it appear as if the collapse is almost two years away. The reality is that it may occur any day now. We are building starships and colony ships as rapidly as we can. While there is still some semblance of order, we are populating the colony ships with Earth’s best and brightest. In addition, we are finding pilots and sending out them out on the exploration starships. Humanity can survive on the colony ships for an indefinite period. However, what we really need is a new world to settle upon.” Kurt looked Nathan in the eyes earnestly and said, “Persons qualified to be trained as pilots are in very short supply. That is why we came and picked you up so quickly. We could not take the chance that we would lose you.”

  Nathan looked Kurt in the eyes and softly said, “I always suspected that it was worse than the media let on. We’re really fracked, aren’t we?”

  “Afraid so. We are so fortunate that you decided to apply today. When society collapses, the internet will almost certainly collapse shortly thereafter as critical infrastructure is destroyed. Once that happens it will be nearly impossible to locate new pilots and colony candidates. We have many more version 2.0 starships under construction…” Kurt paused, took a deep breath and said, “However I wonder if we will have to settle for less than qualified pilots. Once society fails, we will have to redirect most of our efforts into food production for the colony ships. Yours may be the only 2.0 starship that ever launches piloted by a planet side recruit.”

  Nathan began to open his mouth to say something however he quickly shut it. The image on the view screen struck him dumb. Unpainted, grey and vast, his starship loomed and quickly filled the screen. The shuttle’s pilot keyed the microphone on the communication system and said, “Starship 2.0, this is shuttle 1138 preparing to dock in shuttle bay number seven. Please open the bay doors.” There was no response. “Do you copy starship 2.0?” There was still no response. The pilot was about to call again when the radio crackled to life.

  “Sorry for the delay shuttle 1138. We do not have the computer online yet. Opening bay doors now. Please wait for the doors to completely open before docking.”

  “Understood and thank you starship 2.0.” They hovered in place next to the massive door. Lights around the door illuminated red and the door ponderously opened. The external lights changed to green as the door completed its opening sequence. The pilot eased the shuttle through and then keyed his microphone. “We are all aboard and secure. Please close the airlock.”

  “Understood shuttle. Closing door.” The external lights shut off and the lights inside the bay turned red. “Please wait for the lights to turn green inside the bay before disembarking. Also, please be advised that full power has not been initiated as of yet. The ship is running on auxiliary power only. Gravity is set at 10% of Earth normal. Use caution when exiting the shuttle.”

  The pilot said, “Thank you. We will.” The door completed is slow closure and the lights in the bay began quickly pulsing off and on.

  Shortly, the lights turned green. Kurt pressed a button and the shuttle ramp opened with a whine and a thud. He turned to Nathan and smiled. “Go ahead Nathan, board your ship. Be careful of the gravity shift!” Despite the warning, the change in gravity from the shuttle to the starship caused him to stumble… just a little. Kurt followed him down the ramp. Nathan stood, as if in shock. Kurt smiled, put his hand upon his shoulder and said, “Welcome aboard your ship, Captain.”

  “Captain, wow,” thought Nathan. He looked about in awe. With only the auxiliary lighting to illuminate the space, it was difficult to see much. Despite the poor lighting, Nathan saw that the shuttle bay dwarfed the twenty-meter long shuttle. “Good grief. And I thought that the shuttle was huge!” Nathan thought. Laughing, he turned to face Kurt and said, “Okay, now what?”

  Kurt joined him in the laughter. “Let’s get you to the command deck. It will be good experience for you to watch the tech heads running through the starship startup procedures.”

  Nathan held out his hand and said, “Lead the way!”

  Kurt led him to a door that opened to a seemingly endless corridor. The wall opposite of the door had been painted with many different colored lines. Each line labeled with a different destination. Red for engineering, blue for medical, green for cargo bays, yellow for cafeteria and living quarters and, thicker than the rest, silver for the bridge. Each line had a triangle upon it to indicate proper direction to travel to reach that destination. Kurt turned in the direction indicated for the bridge and began to walk. “Be careful in this low gravity. If you push off too hard you will conk your head on the ceiling!” Kurt took a step and traveled an amazing distance before coming back down on his other foot. Nathan tried to do the same however even though he thought he had not pushed off very hard he still flew up and bounced off the ceiling. He twisted mid-air trying to right himself. He failed and he landed with a thud upon his behind. He bounced a couple times before coming to rest beside Kurt. Kurt tried to hold back a laugh, failed, and said, “Are you okay, Nathan?”

  Nathan looked around sheepishly and said, “The only wound is to my pride.” Kurt offered a hand and easily lifted him to his feet. Nathan grinned at him and he said, “Show off! You make it look easy!”

  Chuckling, Kurt said, “Sorry, I couldn’t resist. You should have seen me the first time I tried to walk in reduced gravity. It was not pretty! The trick is to shuffle your feet as if you were walking on ice. Remember you only have to use ten percent of the energy that you need in full gravity.” Holding Nathan’s shoulder Kurt said, “I’ll help hold you steady. Let us get going. It’s not too far.”

  Nathan gave him a look. “Just how far is it?”

  “The shuttle bays are located amidships as is the command deck. We only have to travel less than two hundred meters.” Noting Nathans look he continued, “Normally, there are little electric vehicles. They are not available yet. This ship is literally just waking up for the first time. Only essential functions are operational at this time.”

  The two men arrived at the bridge without further incident. Kurt shook Nathan’s hand and said, “I leave you to the tech heads. Welcome to your ship’s bridge. Be safe out there.” Kurt saluted him, turned, and shuffled back down the corridor.

  Nathan turned towards the bridge. Two men and a woman clothed all in green technical corps uniforms turned and waved to him as he walked in. The woman, a slightly heavy girl with wavy brown hair and laugh wrinkles upon her face smiled and said, “Welcome to the bridge, captain. My name is Eliana. I am head computer tech.” Indicating the man to her right she said, “Joe is the reactor tech and Jim here is environmental.”

  Nathan shuffled over to her and shook her hand. “Thanks Eliana. I am Nathan. I would like to watch all of the startup processes. I want to learn as much as I can.”

  Eliana gave him a good looking over. “That is excellent Nathan. I think some of the gen one starship captains couldn’t
turn on a light without the computer’s help. Looks like they picked a good one for the first gen two starship,” she said with a flirtatious smile. “Nothing but aux power and minimal environmental is currently online. Would you like to see the procedure to start these systems before we initialize the remainder of the ship?”

  Nathan blushed and said, “Absolutely.”

  Eliana led him to a console along the side of the bridge. “This is the emergency engineering console. You will never have to use this unless you are commissioning a brand-new ship or have suffered a catastrophic accident. The computer normally controls the environment and all power along with everything else. The red LEDs over each system control indicate that the systems are on manual. When the systems are under computer control, the status LEDs turn green.” Eliana pointed to the power control console and said, “That large red control cleverly labeled ‘Auxiliary Power’ turns aux power on. Next to that, the other control labeled ‘Emergency Environmental Control’ controls air recirculation and artificial gravity. The rotary control sets the strength of the gravity field. Auxiliary power is finite. It is replenished from the main reactors when they are online. Since they are not yet online, we are slowly draining power. The reason we set the gravity at only ten percent is to reduce the drain upon the auxiliary power supply.”

  Nathan looked at her and asked, “How long can the ship operate on aux power alone?”

  “With a fully charged aux power cell the ship is designed to operate for ninety days while just maintaining environmental systems and artificial gravity. If you use the engines, aux power will last approximately fourteen days… depending on how fast you are traveling.”

  Joe chimed in and said, “Don’t worry Nathan, we will not be running out of power any time soon. Barring any malfunctions on all five reactors, we will have main power up before the day is out.”

  Eliana laid her hand upon Nathan’s arm. The touch, lingering. “Let’s get you registered to the root computer process as this ship’s captain.” Eliana pointed towards an LCD screen and keyboard. “Would you like to start the main computer?”

  Nathan nodded. “Of course.” He looked in dismay at the LCD screen, mouse and keyboard. “Isn’t this a century out of date?”

  Eliana laughed. “This just starts the root processes. Once the main computer is online, you will never need to touch this again. This is only used for the initial starship initialization sequence.” Noting his face relaxing, she laid her fingertips upon his arm again. She ushered him over to the console and she said, “Please lift the cover over that big orange switch and flip it over to the ‘ON’ position.”

  Nathan lifted the protective cover and, with an audible clunk, flipped the switch. An LED on a monitor lit up and glowed orange. The monitor came to life immediately and displayed no signal. A couple seconds later the LEDs on the keyboard flickered, the LED on the monitor turned green and glowing green text began rapidly scrolling down the screen.

  STARSHIP CONTROL COMPUTER V2.0.

  4,294,967,296 PARALLEL PROCESSORS DETECTED.

  1 PETABYTE RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY DETECTED.

  RAM MEMORY TEST IN PROGRESS......PASSED.

  SCANNING FOR CORE STORAGE….

  512 EXTABYTES SOLID STATE CORE STOREAGE DETECTED.

  CORE MEMORY TEST IN PROGRESS......PASSED.

  QUINTUPLE SYSTEM REDUNDANCY DETECTED.

  STARTING REDUNDANT SYSTEMS…..SUCCESSFUL.

  SYCRONIZING REDUNDANT SYSTEMS…..SUCCESSFUL.

  STARTING STARSHIP OPERATING SYSTEM.

  S.O.S. VERSION 2.0.17 BOOTUP IN PROGRESS. PLEASE STAND BY.

  BOOTUP SUCCESSFUL FOR SOS V2.0.17 BUILD 1337.

  READY

  Eliana was ecstatic. The entire boot up process took less than ten seconds. “Wow, that was fast! This is the first time I booted up aversion 2.0 starship. The old v1.0 control computers have one-tenth the memory and take nearly two minutes to completely come up!” Beaming at Nathan she said, “Type the following command and press enter; RUN REGISTER-SHIPS-CAPTAIN.

  Nathan did so and the console beeped and displayed ‘PLEASE PRESENT RFID CHIP’. Nathan waved his hand in front of the monitor and it beeped and displayed ‘WELCOME CAPTAIN NATHAN STAITE. ROOT PROCESS CONTROL GRANTED’.

  Eliana smiled and said, “Congratulations Captain. Next step, please type in the following: RUN CONSOLE-CONFIG PARAMETERS=AUTO-POWER, LOCATE.”

  Nathan typed in the command, the console beeped, and the screen instantly displayed, ‘CONSOLE CONFIG SUCCESSFUL. 32,767 CONSOLES DETECTED. CONSOLE POWER SAVING MODE ENABLED’. The remainder of the screens on the bridge simultaneously sprang to life and beeped.

  Eliana shook her head in wonder. “It usually takes me days to get everything online. At this rate everything will be up and running in less than an hour!” She turned to Nathan and excitedly said, “One last thing and the real work can begin. Please type in the following: LOAD GRAPHICAL INTERFACE. Nathan did so and instantly a screen full of colorful icons replaced the stark READY prompt with its blinking green cursor. Eliana was practically vibrating in place. She turned to Nathan and said, “This is so exciting! Nobody actually interfaces with a computer using a keyboard and mouse any more. It’s all voice control.” She made eyes at him, kissed him on the cheek and said, “I can’t believe you actually want to know this stuff!” Turning beet red, she continued, “See there is an icon for each major ship system. Navigation, engineering, environmental, etc. You could spend a lifetime exploring the system. Of course, you will not have to once we have the ship’s avatar program running. It is just pretty cool. Look, see the search box? You can use it to explore the system or to jump instantly to a subsystem.”

  Joe and Jim watched with amusement. Joe finally could not contain himself any longer and with a laugh he said, “I think she’s in love, eh Jim?”

  Jim laughed, “Yes, love. Definitely.”

  Eliana turned to Joe and good-naturedly said, “Okay Joe, I can take a hint. The system is ready for you. You may begin reactor power up whenever you are ready.”

  “I’m ready now,” he said. “Nathan, want to watch?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it, Joe.”

  Joe sat in a chair in front of the monitor. “Sorry Nathan, I want to control the process. It is critical it is done correctly.”

  “It’s ok Joe, I’ll just watch over your shoulder. Do me one favor, explain each step to me as you perform them.”

  “You got it captain curious,” he said with a laugh. Joe took ahold of the mouse and began. “To get to reactor control, first click the engineering icon.” Joe did so and a new set of icons filled the screen. “Next, click reactor status/control icon.” Joe did so and instantly a graphical representation of all five reactors appeared. Upon each representation a red box was superimposed that said ‘Offline’. “Before you power up a reactor, it is best to run a diagnostic.” Joe clicked an icon under reactor number one which read ‘Run diagnostics’. A progress bar appeared upon the screen. The bar progressed fully in just over a second. A popup box appeared that said ‘Diagnostics Passed’. The red box over reactor one’s representation changed to say, ‘Offline. Ready for Startup’. Joe shook his head and said, “What the hell? That can’t be right. Diagnostics should take around twenty minutes!” Joe turned to Eliana and said, “The control program must be fracked. Can you check it out for me?”

  “Hold on, I’ll check,” she said. Eliana sat at another console and clicked engineering and then error logs. “The error logs are clean. I tell you this new generation two computer is unbelievable. Why not trust it and initiate reactor startup?”

  “I don’t know girl, I have a bad feeling.”

  “Oh don’t be a nervous wreck Joe. You know better than I do that the reactor safeties will kick in at the slightest indication of a problem.”

  Joe sighed, took a deep breath and said, “Okay, here goes nothing!” Joe clicked the startup icon and a new popup box appeared labeled ‘Reactor One startup in Process’. A new progress bar ap
peared and it slowly filled. Shortly, a popup appeared that said ‘Reactor One startup successful’. The box over the representation of reactor number one turned green and said simply ‘Online’. “Well I’ll be fracked!” said Joe. “I don’t believe it!” Turning to Nathan he said, “One last step and we are off auxiliary power. Cross your fingers, eyes and toes!” Joe clicked an icon under reactor one that said ‘Connect to ship’s power grid’. Instantly the room brightened and the whir of the air circulation fans increased as main power came online. Joe’s eyes widened and then without hesitation, he clicked the icon to run diagnostics on reactor number two.

  Ten minutes later, Joe finished starting up the last reactor. He sat there, frozen in awe. “I’ve never seen such an easy startup!” Shaking his head he said, “Let me check power status.” Clicking the icon, he read aloud, “All reactors online, connected to the power grid and running in the green. Total power consumption is at 0.3% of total capacity. Auxiliary power is charging and is currently at 84.63%.” Still shaking his head he turned to Jim and said, “I still feel like I am dreaming however I’m giving you the okay to initiate full environmental system startup.”

  Jim ran a hand through his unruly, dirty blond hair and said, “Environmental isn’t as sexy as a reactor jockey’s job, but let something go wrong and I am suddenly everyone’s best friend.” From his glance towards Joe, Nathan could tell that the comment was directed at Joe and that this was the banter of two good friends.

  Eliana poked him in the arm and said, “Stop talking and get it online. Any longer and I am going to go pee in the corner!”

  Laughing, Jim said, “Do you see what I mean?”

  Joe chuckled and said, “I grok you, Jim.”

  Jim sat down at an unoccupied console. “If Joe’s progress is any indication I should be done here in less than five minutes!” Jim pointed at the screen and said, “Environmental is a whole separate sub-system. Some people try to find it under engineering so do not be fooled and make that mistake.” Jim clicked the environmental icon and said, “The first thing we are going to do is set gravity to Earth-normal. See this slider? You can just drag it using the mouse to whatever strength you wish. Before you make any changes to gravity, it is strongly recommended that you use the intercom to inform any ship’s personnel. You do not want to injure anybody! There is an intercom icon right here on the gravity control page.” Jim clicked it and said, “Attention ships personnel. Gravity will be set to Earth-normal in thirty seconds.” Jim’s voice boomed like the voice of God throughout the ship. He grinned and said, “Everybody ready?” Everybody nodded and Jim said, “Watch for any power spikes, Joe.”