Conclave

by Murray, Lee

  *

  Peach and Araxi have been talking for a while now. Their conversation has turned to a topic called art. Art is not a subject of interest for Raknoids as far as Araxi can tell. It has no technical or developmental purpose. It seems as though the patterns of shapes and colours evoke strong emotions in humans. They must be an incredibly sensitive species. There’s something captivating about trying to understand the messages hidden within Peach’s images.

  Peachtree: So those are trees, apparently. I mean, old style Earth trees. Obviously, we don’t have anything that big on ship.

  Arax-i: Are you going to paint some?

  Peachtree: I have to paint what I know. I’ve never seen trees like that in my life.

  Peach sends Araxi another digital painting. It is a picture of space: a few meteors floating around the sides, but the centre is composed of messy spirals stretching beyond its 2D structure. An endless tunnel of space.

  Peachtree: What kind of thing would you paint?

  Arax-i: I imagine I would paint an idea. Software, for example. Or perhaps the Space-line. In any case, painting is not part of Raknoid culture.

  Peachtree: I’d have thought your community would love that kind of stuff. Aren’t they all about creation?

  Arax-i: It is true that they are over-fond of invention.

  Araxi thinks about this until Peach sends through a starry night scene in swirls of gold and blue.

  *

  Araxi fixes on the flash of his visual board. There’s an incoming electronic message waiting for connection. He blinks, flexes his control-fingers, and reaches out to tap the answer key. A tele-memo parent appears on screen—he must have forgotten the arranged communication time. How strange. He’s been quite preoccupied with Peach lately. Talking with her has become a hobby. His parent sends a question:

  //Have you created any new developments for the colony?//

  Araxi beats his three left manual fingers softly against the edge of the switch panel as he considers his reply. No new technological advances. No updated forms of software code. Very little worth reporting to the Raknoid Advance Office where his parent works. Eventually, he replies.

  //New project. Working on communication research. Test subjects within range of personal sphere. Progress to be relayed at a later date.//

  That should be enough of a description for now.

  //Species?//

  //Human. Intelligent. Unknown to memory bank. Small community.//

  This time Araxi has to wait a while before a new message appears containing only the time set for the next check-in. One time period away. Araxi sets a reminder in his visual board memory bank.

  *

  “She’s being taught to help lead our community! It’s important she understands what’s going on!”

  Nashi frowns at her husband, then shakes her head. “I don’t think we should tell her. It’s classified information, Totara! It can’t get out to the public.”

  “Our daughter is not the public,” Totara shouts. “How can we expect her to understand what she’ll have to do for the community if she doesn’t even know what the problems are herself?”

  Sighing, Nashi leans her forehead against the palm of her hand. How can she tell Peach how far off course they are? What if they don’t make it at all, and there is no future for the community? Wouldn't it be better to protect her from worrying about all that?

  “Look, just take her around the navigational office to see how things work. If you don’t want to tell her yet, fine. But she’s going to find out sometime, the public isn’t exactly unaware that there are problems,” Totara says, resting his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

  Nashi nods. She knows her husband is right. It’ll probably look more suspicious if she doesn’t bring Peach to work, actually. The Maintenance workers might suspect something’s going on, but keeping everyone out of Navigation would be like painting a sign on the door that says: Herein Lies the Problem. Head Office can’t really afford that kind of panic right now. Nashi only hopes she can keep Peach from noticing too much while she’s there.

  *

  Peach runs into Pearl in the hallway on the way to class. “Hey, man, I haven’t seen you in ages!”

  Pearl laughs. “Heaps of my classes have been cancelled. Riots and stuff, you know?”

  “Lucky! I had a few cycles off at the beginning, but mostly my classes have still been on.”

  “I guess it’s good I take Theoretical Agriculture, then. My ma’s a little annoyed that I’m hanging around home all the time. You still doing those dumb decision-making classes?”

  Peach nods her head. “Yeah, but only twice a week now. Although this cycle we’re on a field trip.”

  “What field?”

  “We’re checking out some of the higher offices: Navigation, I think.”

  “Doesn’t your ma work there?” Pearl asks, eyebrows furrowed.

  “Yeah.”

  “I thought you’d know about it already.”

  Peach looks at the floor. “Well, Mum doesn’t like to talk about work at dinner.”

  “That’s odd. Dad talks about Maintenance all the time. Actually, my parents are sick of me hanging around doing nothing. They’re a little stressed ‘cause of the extra workload and all.”

  There’s a short silence. Peach hadn’t really thought about how the riots might be affecting Pearl. Since she’s met Araxi, she’s been neglecting her friend. She can’t remember the last time they got together.

  “Hey, we haven’t hung out in ages. Shoot me a message sometime, we can get together and play Star Shooter.”

  “Yeah… I’m not free that often at the moment. Later, maybe.” Pearl combs her fringe away from her eyes. “Actually, I’m meant to be helping Dad out with work, so I’d better go.” She wiggles her fingers awkwardly and turns away, humming softly as she walks down the corridor. “See ya.”

  “Bye.” Peach watches her for a moment, then hurries off to class.

  *

  Section Parent Araxapaar clicks his manual thumbs softly. The Council has decided to declare a consumption crisis and send out a mass message to its children. It affects the offspring especially—a lack of food energy means there won’t be enough resources to send to the far reaches of the colony’s web. At worst, the Council may decide to cut loose a number of Space-lines for those working on projects deemed less urgent. The colony has many children to nourish, after all. His control fingers blur over the switch panel as he clacks out the memo.

  //CONSUMPTION CRISIS WARNING. Keep watch for species of sizes one to six that could be colonised as possible food source. Send information directly to Office 3 of the mainframe. All reachable species that meet these requirements will be analysed and processed for nutritional value.//

  Large black irises focus on the message as it lights up his visual board. Araxapaar turns a dial, and the space connection sends it to all innovation globes in his sector.

  As the message reaches out across the digital strands, Araxapaar wonders if any of his children have information that could be useful. He has a feeling one of them said something about another species during his last communication. He blinks a couple of times, and then turns back to his visual board. He supposes it doesn’t matter. If that’s the case, then of course they will reply to the request.

  *

  Peach steps into her room and shuts the door. Locks it. She logs into the Conclave inter-ship network and opens her chat program.

  Peachtree: Araxi?

  Arax-i: Hello, Peach.

  Peachtree: I need some help.

  Arax-i: What sort of help?

  Peachtree: You’re good at technology, right? I mean, I got an A on that research project you helped me with. Thanks, by the way.

  Arax-i: Yes, I have been trained in all kinds of technological work.

  Puffing out her cheeks, Peach leans in and carefully types out her request.

  Peachtree: I think there’s a problem with our ship or something. Actually, I know something
’s up, I’m just not sure what. I need to find out what’s going on, but I can’t find any information. Do you think you could hack the Conclave Pacifica mainframe for me?

  Arax-i: I suppose you are not meant to hack your computer memory?

  Peachtree: It’s definitely classified, and probably a little illegal. Can you do it?

  Arax-i: Yes.

  Peachtree: Without getting caught?

  Arax-i: Yes. I already have some experience hacking your community’s systems. I find it enjoyable, in fact. Would you like me to do this now?

  Peachtree: As soon as you can would be sweet.

  Arax-i: I will set up a path and send you an entrance code in a few hours.

  She’s playing Star Shooter to calm down when her chat reopens. Guilty, Peach nearly jumps out of her chair. Araxi’s sent her a file:

  Open system interface and go to mainframe info, then restricted access and you should find a connection marked Path_Araxi_Here… Instructions. Carefully, she follows Araxi’s directions, eventually finding her way to the ship’s inner memory bank. She sits back in her chair, and nibbles her bottom lip.

  Arax-i: Do you know where the problem might be?

  Peach lifts her leg onto the chair and leans her cheek against her knee. She peers at the screen. The problem could be anywhere, really. There could be lots of problems.

  Peachtree: I think Navigation. Might have found something worth looking at when I was up there for school. Thanks for the help.

  The conversation over, Peach shuts her chat page, opens her history, and clicks the current day cycle on her log. Then, she deletes the entire conversation.

  *

  Clay sits hunched over the screen. There are no chat logs for Peach Endeavour between period7870 and period7998. He checks over the inter-ship memory again, but it doesn’t change. He runs a search in case something was misplaced and saved somewhere else, but the blue message on the screen states that what he’s looking for simply doesn’t exist.

  He takes off his glasses and cleans them on his shirt. If it didn’t sound so crazy, he would say someone had deleted them. But what for? There are so many communications saved that most of them never get seen again. What could have been in those conversations that someone thought important enough to hide? He opens the full history of Peachtree’s chat communications and finds one last entry dated period7862. It’s between her and Araxi. Nothing else.

  Clay opens his message-board—it’s far too early to be awake, but Scoria should probably come and read this.

  “What does any of this even mean?” he asks when Scoria has dragged herself out of bed.

  Scoria sighs. “It’s no good, Clay, there’s too much stuff missing. This is all the information we have, and it just doesn’t make sense without the rest. We’re going to have to choose a different topic for our final history paper.” She glares at the screen, as if staring will make anything new appear that could help her make sense of it.

  “Are we giving up, then?”

  “We can’t do anything else.”

  “I suppose none of these old chat logs are worth keeping,” Clay says. “I would have liked to know who that Araxi was, though. Besides the hacking thing, he isn’t mentioned anywhere else in the system, I’ve checked.”

  Scoria hums absently as her friend opens the save file and selects all contents, right clicks and hovers over ‘delete.’

  *

  Nashi never thought she’d be the kind of mother who snuck into her children’s rooms, but as soon as Peach had left for school, she had used her override code on her daughter’s password. Surely, she didn’t need to feel guilty. If there’s a chance that this information could save their community, then Nashi was willing to make one tiny exception to her morality…

  Chatlog: Previous Day Cycle

  Arax-i: So, the intent of this poem is to use ‘air’ as a metaphor for freedom?

  Peachtree: Exactly! I was thinking about painting something to go with it. Maybe impressionist style?

  Arax-i: I was under the impression you were studying surrealism?

  Peachtree: Yeah, I was, but I don’t really understand it, to be honest. There’s this one Earth artist called Picasso, and when he draws people, they just look really strange and unnerving.

  Arax-i: Perhaps you could use his colouring techniques. If you were planning on painting space, you could avoid an abundance of black.

  It hadn’t been too difficult for Nashi to trace the signal from Peach’s chat messages to her off-ship friend and scribble down the co-ordinates before she headed to work. Of course, she had hoped, once safely back in Navigation, that she could use the information to find the Earthship of Peach’s friend. Only Nashi had renewed her trace several times now and each time it seemed as if there was some kind of error in the co-ordinates. Peach’s penfriend seems to come from space nowhere. The scan hadn’t found any blips bigger than a meteor—nothing big enough to hold a colony of anything larger than dust mites.

  Nashi switches back to her Navigational work, but that screen turns out to be equally discouraging. When she’d realised that even with the whole Navigation team working double the hours the chance of finding their course again was slim, she had doubled the scan for any nearby planets that might fit the requirements for human habitation. It had been running for over a week now, and so far there were no results.

  The silent notification blinking from the side of the screen frays her nerves. The scan still hasn’t found another ship, but this time it’s picked up some kind of tunnel? The readings show it acts like an electronic path through space. If it’s meant for communication, the ship could be farther away than Nashi had expected.

  Still, how much harm can it do? Nashi types up a distress message and fires it into space.

  *

  The way Pearl’s eyes widen is almost comical. “You what? Have you gone insane? You’re telling me that for the past one hundred day cycles you believe you’ve been talking to an alien and instead of telling an adult that there’s a potential threat species nearby, you want me to help you sneak it in?”

  Peach winces. She’s been talking with Araxi for so long, it’s hard to imagine not trusting him. She hadn’t realised what her idea might sound like to her friend.

  “Look, Pearl. Something’s been going on up in Navigation, okay? That’s why all the workers are angry. You know how they have problems that aren’t being answered and they don’t know what’s going on?”

  Pearl shrugs. “Sure. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Head Office isn’t answering Maintenance because they have bigger things to deal with. We’re off course. We’re lost.”

  Her friend blinks. Twice. Pushes her glasses up her nose. She gives Peach a long, hard look.

  “How do you know?”

  “My mother’s in Navigation, remember? Trust me.”

  “What can you do about it?”

  Peach grins. “You mean, what can we do about it? You’re gonna help me get Araxi into the ship.”

  “You trust him, then?”

  “Apparently.”

  Slowly, a smile stretches over Pearl’s face, freckled cheeks scrunching up.

  “Didn’t your parents ever tell you not to speak to strangers, Peach?”

  Peach giggles a little hysterically. “If I did that, I’d never meet anyone new!”

  *

  The message is unexpected. Organising communication between the Raknoid mainframe and the children of sector OmegaNE is Araxapaar’s main responsibility, but this message is not from one of his kind. It takes him a while to create simulation software that mimics the message well enough to open it. After running it through his own translation program, it seems to indicate a lost colony within their reach.

  Araxapaar rubs his six control fingers together as he follows the Space-line back down to where it was interrupted and searches for the ship so the species on board can be analysed. This may be exactly what their colony needs.

  *

&nbs
p; They have to hide behind some boxes in the hallway—Pearl says they put a few guys on hallway patrol at night just in case—but they make it to the machine docks easily enough. It’s mostly unused now, they don’t need to send out many scout ships these cycles. Occasionally, a repair probe goes out to fix the exo-plating.

  “This is the best place,” Pearl says as she starts up the controls. “It has a pressure hatch big enough for whatever mini-ship thing your space creature is in. Do you know how much energy it takes to work the vacuum system on a space hatch, by the way? We only got to learn about physics in a machinery sense in my classes—”

  “I’ll look it up for you another time, Pearl. Physics is like my worst subject.”

  Pearl snorts and flicks a switch. “I’ll put a light on so your alien knows where to come through. He can see, right? Like, he has eyes?”

  “Uh, I hope so.”

  *

  He’s talking to Peach when the memo appears—a consumption crisis. Araxi had gotten used to nutritional energy being sent down the Space-line whenever he required it. The Raknoid Mainframe is demanding information on any reachable species. Since his parent didn’t send him a personal message, it seems he has forgotten that Araxi mentioned humans in a recent communication. Of course, he should send a reply immediately.

  Araxi’s fingers twitch above his switch panel. Then again… if humans turn out to have the nutritional index needed to feed a Raknoid, their ship would be snatched out of space and taken to the Mainframe where they would be cloned to produce a continuous supply of energy. On the third hand, solving the crisis might just be enough for the mainframe to invite him home.

  Indecision is a new experience for Araxi. He finds it uncomfortable. Perhaps he’ll just wait a while. If the mainframe can’t find anything else, he’ll almost certainly tell them. He doesn’t know anything about food source or about species analysis, anyway. Humans probably aren’t anything like what the colony is looking for.