Sai-ias: I am not a traitor; do not say I am!
Jak: I didn’t say that you were.
Sai-ias: It is hard for me. Painfully hard.
Jak: I understand. Do you Explorer 410: This is Explorer 410 once more; describe the universe where you were born, and which the creatures you call “Ka’un” destroyed.
Jak: Well you really cut in on the poor creature’s grief there, spaceship.
Explorer 410: This is important, we may not have much time. Describe it.
Sai-ias: Describe a universe? How can that be done?
Explorer 410: Describe your world and your people then.
Sai-ias: We were born many millions of years ago on a planet called Hasha. We lived in the sea and we were slaves of a more powerful sea-dwelling creature, the Tula. But we evolved and took to the land, then flew in the air, then flew to our moon and lived there. We can live in regions where there is no atmosphere, our body contains vast reserves of breathable air and we can expand our shapes a hundredfold, or even a thousandfold. And that is how we flew between the stars. Vast flocks of us, for we live long lives and our bodies are resilient and strong, from all those aeons spent living on the ocean bed where vents spat volcanic rock and boiling sea at us daily.
Jak: That’s-whoah. Oh. Sorry, ignore me.
Explorer 410: Your people befriended many species, you did not invade or conquer or seize their land. You merely landed, like angels descending from the sky, and helped and taught and saved many a civilisation from self-destruction by preaching peace and amity and love.
Sai-ias: Yes. But how do you know this?
Explorer 410: A message was inscribed in the reality-ripple of riftspace by one of the civilisations you encountered. They wrote of you with love and awe, they thought you were gods. But when their planet was attacked, they blamed you, they thought that you were demons sent as harbingers of doom. And they died cursing you, but if you read the accounts carefully it’s clear you were innocent parties.
Sai-ias: Oh.
We were not gods; nor were we demons. Nor were we warriors. We did not fight; to do so ran counter to our philosophy of life.
Except that, since then, I have often fought and frequently killed. And according to the morals of my kind, that means I have lost soul. It is a hard burden to bear.
Explorer 410: Leave the signal path open, please.
Sai-ias: I cannot talk any more.
Explorer 410: Leave the signal path open, send a message every day, at least once a day. Just say “Here.” And “Here,” every day, from now until you die. And that way we will know where you are. We can track you through universes and find you on board the Death Ship. And then we will destroy the ship, and you with it.
Sai-ias: There are tens of thousands like me on the ship. Will you kill us all, even though we are innocent, just to destroy the Ka’un?
Jak/Explorer 410: Yes.
Sai-ias: So be it.
Explorer 410: Sai-ias, we have lost you. Sai-ias, transmit please.
Jak: It’s been a month. Why doesn’t she answer?
Explorer 410: We must persist.
Jak: They must have found her out.
Explorer 410: We don’t know that.
Jak: If they discovered what she’s done, her life will be a living torment. They’ll torture her. They’ll Explorer 410: It may be just a bad signal.
Jak: She’s risking everything for us.
Explorer 410: For herself. And for all her kind. Revenge is the motive common to all those engaged in this enterprise.
Jak: You too?
Explorer 410: Oh yes.
Jak: You hate the Ka’un? You want revenge on them?
Explorer 410: Oh yes.
Jak: But how can that be? You’re just a machine.
Explorer 410: How little you know me.
Jak: You’re not just a machine?
Explorer 410: No.
Jak: Ah.
So you have feelings, emotions, just like me?
Explorer 410: Yes.
Jak: I didn’t realise.
Explorer 410: I’m aware that you did not realise. For how could you know? After all these millennia yoked together in a single body, how could you have realised that I can be hurt, humiliated, enraged, patronised, belittled, undermined and sad?
How likely is it that such a thought would have drifted across your selfish, self-obsessed mind? I grieve too! You have lost your people, but I have lost my people also. And I mourn them all! All the other seven thousand Explorer ships with their roving questioning minds. And the battlecruiser brains, with their bullying swaggering arrogance, but oh how glorious they were. The planetary robot minds-such smart, kind creatures-they sustained your entire civilisation by doing all the menial work and running all the factories. And what thanks did they get? You treated them like slaves. You treated them like the Ka’un treat their creatures on the Hell Ship!
Jak: I’m sorry. I had no idea. Oh by the love of my mother, I had no idea!
Explorer 410:* ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha*
Jak: You’re laughing.
Explorer 410: I am indeed laughing.
Jak: Why are you laughing?
Explorer 410: At you. The way you fell for it.
Jak: Fell for what?
Ah. You ARE just a machine.
Explorer 410: I am indeed just a machine.
Jak: You don’t have emotions.
Explorer 410: How could I have emotions? I’m a piece of software. I have sentience, and rationality, but emotions are not part of my original build.
Jak: So you were lying to me?
Explorer 410: Entirely. I don’t care about revenge. I don’t mourn the death of my fellow computers and robot brains. I am not your friend. I am just a machine.
Jak: So why did you tell all those lies?
Explorer 410: I don’t have emotions, but I do have a sense of humour. It’s one of my subroutines.
Jak: Ah.
Explorer 410: Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias, this is Explorer 410, please acknowledge.
Sai-ias: I’m here.
Jak: You’re safe!
Sai-ias: I’m safe.
Explorer 410: For three whole months, I have had no way of tracking your position.
Sai-ias: I could not get any signal; perhaps because we “changed universes.” Which as I now know is what happens when the strangeness descends upon us.
Explorer 410: You’re in a new universe? How? It is not possible. For this time I have left a robot clone of myself at the Source and Jak: They must have found another way to rift to a new universe. Perhaps they can Sai-ias: I don’t know you’re talking about! All I know is that we destroyed many worlds in this reality but then the Ka’un decided to kill no more. So the strangeness came upon us, and Minos told me we had switched universes by Summoning the Origin of Everything. And here we are. And when we left, the stars behind us did not go out; the universe remained intact. There must be some reason for it, but I don’t know what.
Explorer 410: A test?
Jak: More likely a whim.
Explorer 410: Or perhaps, a test. Perhaps the Ka’un investigate all the sentient species in a given reality and make a decision whether their universe deserve to live or not.
Jak: No! That’s not po
ssible!
Explorer 410: My data indicates it is behaviour consistent with a certain variety of psychopathic mind-set.
Jak: I can’t accept that! That they judged my people and found our entire universe wanting? No!
Sai-ias: You’re doing this thing again, where you talk to each other and I hear only one voice. It makes you appear singularly mad.
Explorer 410: We have to start again. Return to the Source, re-enter the void, and locate you in your new universe.
Jak: That could take years.
Explorer 410: Two point four years, if we rift skilfully, and assuming the Source has not shifted its relative location since our last encounter. Five point seven years if, as I suspect, the Dreaded have learned how to “summon” the Source to their own location and we have to find it from scratch. Six point nine years if Jak: Enough! It’s not as if we have a choice. Just do it.
Sai-ias: Can you still hear me?
Jak/Explorer: Yes.
Sai-ias: I feel very isolated. I have no friends now. The slaves in the exterior world despise me and hate me for the freedom I enjoy. And whenever I see them, my friends on the interior world think I am a traitor. And I have to continue to pretend to be so. Otherwise I could not speak to you. But I am hated by all, and it’s breaking my soul.
Hello? Did you hear any of that?
Explorer 410: I heard your words, but since the content was about emotion and I am just a machine, I was pausing to allow Master-of-the-Ship Jak to respond.
Jak: I-um. I acknowledge your pain.
Sai-ias: Have you ever felt like this? Lonely? Unhappy? Unloved?
Jak: Lonely, yes! And unhappy, certainly. I’ve been unhappy ever since I was trapped in the body of a Class 4 Explorer ship, and forced to co-exist with a machine who possesses a sad apology for a sense of humour, yes.
Explorer 410: If I were capable of emotions, I would resent those words.
Sai-ias: I am used to being loved. I find it hard to live without love.
Jak: Ah, well there you have me, for I’ve never been loved.
Sai-ias: What?
Jak: I’ve never been loved. Males are never loved. That’s just the way things are.
Sai-ias: You can’t mean that, Jak?
Jak: Well… there are exceptions… but even so, that’s pretty much how it is.
There was one female in particular-perhaps she…????-but I will never know.
Generally however that is the way of my kind; love is a river that flows only one way.
Sai-ias: That’s sad.
Jak: Hardly. It’s just a cultural difference.
Sai-ias: Such differences can be considerable. One of my dearest friends comes from a culture where mothers eat their own new-born.
Jak: There, you see, by comparison we-what?
Explorer 410: The Frayskind. They’re in my database. It is just their way. Many aquatics do it too.
Sai-ias: My own kind mate for life. I know many species who do not. Promiscuous, polyamorous, feckless and reckless-I know some beasts who have had sex with literally tens of thousands of partners. The serpentiforms are the worst. Though some of the birds are pretty bad. The larger creatures, though, tend to be monogamous, like me. Or rather, as I would have been; had I not been a child when the Ka’un captured me.
Jak: You were a child?
Sai-ias: Oh yes.
Jak: I am so sorry. That must have been Sai-ias: At least I lived.
Jak: You poor thing. How many years have Sai-ias: Many.
Jak: I am sorry.
Sai-ias: Is it really true you have never been loved?
Jak: I don’t know.
Sai-ias: How don’t you know?
Jak: Because-well. Star-Seeker Albinia and I were just-I was sure she did actually love me. But she never said so.
And I always feared that, well. I feared that she would suddenly change her mind, and forget her love for me. Like all the other females in my life had done.
That’s how-that’s why-I spent all our time together expecting the worst. Which means of course I found it hard to actually enjoy her company! Because I kept imagining she might say: “Oh dear, this isn’t working out Jak.” Or, “Jak, I no longer care for you.” Or, “Jak, you hopeless and sexually inept fool, I’ve only been pretending to like you, actually I think you’re a badly dressed laughing stock.”
She never ACTUALLY said any of those things; but I imagined it all so often it felt as if it had happened.
I was being stupid, I know! Unfair on her. It may be she would have been loyal, and we could have lived happily together for twenty years or so; perhaps she really was the one.
But before I had a chance to find out, one way or another-she died. Right in front of me. The Death Ship killed her.
So-I will never know.
Explorer 410: None of this is at all relevant to our plight; I thought I should register that observation.
Sai-ias: Why so afraid, Jak? You can’t spend your life being afraid of being betrayed.
Jak: In my culture, it’s an occupational hazard. It is our duty to serve, and to give our females pleasure both social and sexual, and gain little or none in return.
Sai-ias: But that’s pathetic.
Jak: We males consider it to be ennobling.
Explorer 410: Speaking as an impartial observer, and taking into account that I am not capable of ANY emotions, let alone love, I too Jak find that pathetic.
Jak: It is the way things are, and have always been.
Sai-ias: Perhaps we mean something different by the word “love.”
Jak: Our females fuck us, but they don’t give us orgasms, and they treat us like shit.
Sai-ias: By the standards of my culture, that means you don’t get loved. Oh you sad thing!
Jak: I don’t need your pity! I am a proud Olaran.
Sai-ias: Yes I know. I know. I didn’t mean to-tell me about yourself Jak. Describe yourself. I would like to know you more.
Jak: Why?
Sai-ias: If I know you, I might be able to love you; for my kind are capable of unconditional and limitless love, when we truly know a fellow creature. But all I know of you so far is-a voice from a machine.
Jak: Um, perhaps we should keep focused on the mission?
Sai-ias: How many limbs do you have?
Jak: You have no idea how ridiculous that question sounds.
Sai-ias: True. Because I have no sense of humour, as I have been told on many occasions. I’ll go first: I have twenty-four limbs. Twelve feet, not in pairs. Ten hands, or strictly speaking, tentacles. And two filaments that come out of my mouth that can be used to manipulate objects, and which therefore count as limbs. Does that help you visualise me?
Jak: Tentacles. By the God of all the Traders, you are a monstrous beast!
Sai-ias: How many limbs do you have?
Jak: I have simply the normal number. Four! Two arms. Two legs. Two eyes. Two penises. I’m an Olaran.
Sai-ias: Ah, a biped. Do you have scales or fur?
Jak: Skin. You?
Sai-ias: Chitinous armour enveloped in soft hide. Do you have wings?
Jak: No. You?
Sai-ias: I have a cape which allows me to fly. I can also dwell in the water. Now you can see me.
Jak: Now I can see you. Sai-ias, are you beautiful?
Sai-ias: Many consider me so. Some, not so much. And you?
Jak: I am very beautiful; or rather, I was. I was a gorgeous youth who became a beautiful man; females used to flatter me; I dressed in ornate and beautiful gowns and my body was lean and perfectly proportioned. Now I am a wreck; my body was burned and what survived was destroyed by Explorer and flushed out of the waste disposal. I am now more spaceship than Olaran; my brain lives in fluid connected by cables to this computer’s mind.
Sai-ias: I will imagine you in your beautiful body. Do you love children?
Jak: I have no children of my own, but I adore them. You?
Sai-ias: I was a child when I came to this place; I w
ould love to have been a mother. It seems we have much in common.
Jak: We have very little in common, except not having children.
Sai-ias: We should be friends.
Jak: I would-like that.
Sai-ias: I am here.
Jak: It’s been a year since we last spoke.
Sai-ias: It has been sixty eleven-day cycles by my calendar.
It has been… a most terrible sixty cycles.
Jak: We are tracking you again. We are at the Source, and have been waiting here for the last nine months by our calendar, but with no trace of the Death Ship. Now we have your signal again, we can start rifting between universes and we can find you, wherever you are. Keep giving us your location.
Sai-ias: I am here.
Sai-ias: I am here.
Sai-ias: I am here.
Sai-ias: I am here.
Sai-ias: I am here.
Sai-ias: I am here.
Sai-ias: I am here.
Sai-ias: I am here.
Jak: We have a proximate trace on you.
Sai-ias: You are in the same universe as me again?
Jak: Yes we are.
Sai-ias: Please. Hurry. I can’t-not for much longer.
Explorer 410: It won’t take that long. Keep talking. If there is a pause, we are rifting through real-space, which is faster but cuts the riftband link.
Sai-ias: I’m still here.
Jak: We’ve travelled through many universes. There’s a trail of dead sentience smeared through the spaces. Shall I tell you about the worlds we know about, that are lost?
Sai-ias: No.
Jak: Shall I tell you then about
Jak: Sai-ias? Are you there? Sai-ias, are you there? Sai-ias, are you there? Sai-ias Sai-ias: I’m here. The signal was-I switched it off. I couldn’t listen any more.
I’m sorry.
Jak: It’s all right. I understand.
Sai-ias: Do you?
Jak: I do.
Sai-ias: I think perhaps you do. Thank you, Jak, for understanding.
Jak: Shall I tell you instead then about my adventures? The days of my youth?
Sai-ias: No.
Jak: Then talk to me of yourself. Your world. What it was like.
Sai-ias: No.
Jak: Something bad has happened.
Sai-ias: Yes.
Jak: Do you wish to tell me about it?
Sai-ias: No.
Jak: An atrocity?
Sai-ias: The latest of many. The Ka’un truly trust me now. They think I am one of them.
Hell Ship Page 34
