Noumenon

by Marina J. Lostetter

  He cleared his throat. “Uh, hello, I.C.C.”

  “Hello—” its voice carried slight unnatural pauses; the telltale sign of any automated vocal system “—Hello. Reginald Straifer. The First.”

  That sent a little chill down Reggie’s spine. “How do you know who I am?”

  “You left traces of your deoxyribonucleic acid on my bay entrance, alerting me to your arrival, and I have records of your speech patterns.”

  Nakamura leaned in close to explain. She had more gray hair than the last time Reggie had seen her . . . but then again, so did he. “Each ship has several checkpoints by which the system can identify the individuals aboard. They rely on dropped hair follicles and sloughed skin.”

  “Can it see everything? Everywhere?”

  “Yes, and no,” said the agent. “It has the capacity, but with its current settings the system can only identify who is aboard and the last checkpoint they crossed. Barring that, someone must speak directly to I.C.C. for it to pinpoint that person’s location. It can take control of many of the on-board cameras if instructed to do so, but does not have free access. It must get permission from its primary technicians for that.”

  Interesting. “Nice to meet you, I.C.C.,” Reggie said as they continued forward.

  “And you as well.”

  “Is it all right if I have a moment alone with the computer?”

  Nakamura and the agent shared a look. “What for?” she asked.

  “Oh, come on, you all used to tease me about my PA, but now it’s here—it’s part of the mission. I want to talk to it for a bit.” He forced the heat to rise in his cheeks.

  Amusement flickered over her lips. “You’re embarrassed.”

  “Maybe. A little.” He ducked his head, hoping she’d buy the act. He waved his fingers at her. “Shoo. Just a ways down the hall, or something. I’ll catch up.”

  Still confused, the agent let Nakamura steer him away.

  When Reggie was sure they’d tread out of earshot, he patted the wall. “I brought you something.” He pulled a flexible digital organizer from his pocket and turned it on. “This is C. C, say hello to the next generation.”

  “It’s in the ships?” C asked.

  “Yes. It’s going to the star. And a clone of Jamal Kaeden will go with it.”

  “Wow. Hi.”

  “Hello,” said the Inter Convoy Computer. “I do not have a record of visiting guest, ‘C.’”

  “Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” said Reggie. “I.C.C., are you holoflex-ware compatible?”

  “Of course. You need to use an available terminal, but any crew member may upload information.”

  He didn’t have authorization for this. If Nakamura caught him . . .

  “What’s the plan, sir?” asked C. Blue dots and green leaves bounded across the holoflex-screen—C’s new avatar of choice.

  “I.C.C. is built on your basic coding,” Reggie explained, searching for the nearest access point. “I want to give it your memories, too. With your permission.”

  “You don’t need my permission, sir.”

  “I know, but . . . this isn’t like backing you up, C. I’m sending your memories off-world. I hope I.C.C. might find them useful.”

  C let a beat pass. “I hope it finds them useful as well.”

  A slight recess in the wall marked the nearest terminal. Intuitive in its layout, the access point was easy for Reggie to utilize. The striking of a few keys, a swipe of the ‘flex-tech—and a confirmation ding meant the task was completed. I.C.C. thanked Reggie for the upload and asked if it should integrate the memories now.

  “Wait until launch,” he said, turning C off.

  Thick paneling and stiff carpeting went by in a blur as he jogged ahead to meet up with Nakamura. “So, all of the ships have officially been christened?” he asked seamlessly, as though he’d never left her side.

  “Yes.” Nakamura produced a list. “It was kind of you to let the existing clones vote on the ship names.”

  Reggie shrugged. “Just made sense. They’re the ones that have to live with the titles.”

  She nodded in agreement. “This is Mira,” she said, waving a hand in illustration. “Holwarda is our science and observations ship, Hippocrates is the medical ship, Aesop will be the educational vessel, Morgan will be for food production, Solidarity is for recycling and fabricating, Bottomless is for the storage of raw and reconstituted materials, Shambhala is for recreation, and Eden is their little slice of the outdoors. That’s it. All nine.

  “Mira is the ship your genes will be spending most of their time on, isn’t it?” she added.

  “Probably,” he said. “I discovered the star and yet the genetic specialists say my histones indicate my code is best suited for leadership, not scientific research.”

  “Well, you led us straight as an arrow,” Nakamura said. “Our project is nearly on its way, and the Dark Matter team still hasn’t produced the final schematics for its ships.”

  A genuine blush creeped into his cheeks. “They haven’t released the manifest yet—which position did you receive?”

  “An expected one: head engineer. She’ll be looking over a large department, I hear. Their main function will be ship maintenance and repair, but, if there’s a Dyson Sphere, or something . . .”

  “Then it’s lock-n-load.” He peered in a window as they passed. It was dark inside, but he could make out the faint shapes of built-in furniture. “What about Sachta, Donald, and Norah? They haven’t said anything directly, but there have been hints and rumors.”

  “Diego Santibar, too. He and Norah, being resource specialists, are assigned to food production and mineral mining respectively. Matheson I don’t know. Dr. Dhiri refused to sign the contract.”

  “She did? How come?”

  “Religious purposes. She’s a practicing Hindu and wasn’t sure what would happen to her if she died while a clone was still alive.” Nakamura cleared her throat. “She was afraid she wouldn’t be reborn.”

  Reggie understood. “I almost didn’t sign.”

  “You? I was sure you’d have jumped up and down shouting, Pick me, pick me!”

  “Ah, no. If it was me they wanted to send, well, maybe. But it’s not. And it didn’t feel right to make the choice for someone else. It still doesn’t feel quite right. I didn’t want to rob someone of their freedom to choose, the freedoms we have to stand up for ourselves and say Yes, this is what I want. He doesn’t get that opportunity.”

  Nakamura frowned. “Not everyone here gets that, Reggie.” She laughed, but without mirth, and shook her head. “I didn’t get to choose. My government made the decision for me.” With a calculated sigh, she squinted and smacked her lips. Akane could say so much with just her eyes. “You’re so American sometimes.”

  “They made you sign?”

  “I didn’t want to sign,” she said bluntly. “There’s only one of me and there should only ever be one of me. It’s not a religious decision, like Sachta’s, but it’s what I believe. I’ve lived my whole life believing this is all I get, all I should get. I don’t want other people out there who look and think and act like me making decisions in my name without my input. That’s just . . . it’s creepy. It doesn’t feel right.

  “But, in my country, when it’s your duty to your people to say yes, you say yes. Sure, I still technically got to choose, but it’s not the same as in the US. Where I come from, even when it’s okay to say no, it never comes out as no. ‘No’ is impolite, self-serving. My answers don’t just affect me, they affect my entire family—their honor, their place. Saying yes means they will live well for a long time. Refusal would have shamed them. I didn’t want to be selfish.”

  She plucked a hair off her suit jacket and looked away. “Your life doesn’t revolve around honor and duty in quite the same way mine always has. It is a great privilege to fulfill that duty, but it’s not always what I want.”

  A nugget of guilt formed in Reggie’s stomach. If Nakamura felt forced into this sit
uation, wouldn’t her clones feel similarly? Maybe he’d made the wrong choice for his genetic materials. He wanted to go into space, but perhaps he’d been influenced that way as a young boy. His clones wouldn’t have his parents to give them star charts and books on planetary formation. There wouldn’t be plastic glow-stars on their bedroom ceilings.

  And beyond all that, they wouldn’t have the wonder. Because space would be their norm, not a farfetched, out-of-reach dream.

  He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t find the appropriate words. It wasn’t an apology, or even his sympathies he wanted to offer. It was something more abstract, and simultaneously more primal. “Akane, I—”

  “What’s done is done,” she said. “And there are far worse fates.”

  Perspective. Yes, he supposed he could use a dose of that. The clones weren’t going off to war, weren’t being asked to commit atrocities or surrender their humanity for an experiment. They were going to be researchers, explorers. They would go down in history like great thinkers and travelers before them. Not such a bad life.

  But still, choices were important to him. And he couldn’t shake the regret.

  Nakamura turned to the consortium agent. “Is the launch date official yet?”

  The agent gave his notes a once over. “Yes. About a year from now—September 22nd, conditions permitting.”

  “Excellent.”

  They descended from the ship, the tour over. The hangar’s transparent ceiling domed over them, each octagonal pane independently skewing their view of the stars, distorting them. Just like time and distance had distorted Reggie’s view of himself and the project. He was not the same man who’d started this journey. He was still full of hope and wonder, but he felt more like a cog in a great machine than the lynchpin holding everything together.

  “How’s your wife?” Nakamura asked.

  Her question broke the tension. They were on to a friendly subject. “Good. Stressed. Our youngest is heading off to college next year. We’ll be empty nesters.”

  “Soon I’ll know what that’s like.” She looked back over her shoulder at the Mira—the convoy vessels were her children.

  Nakamura shook Reggie’s hand in farewell. “I’m off—an engagement with our benefactor. Come rain or shine, I’ll see you in a year.” She came in closer. “And, Reggie, sometimes you have to do what you have to do. And there’s no shame in that. Life’s full of obligations, that’s just the way it is. I appreciate that aspect of life just as much as the moments where I get to choose. It’s part of the human condition, a symptom of being a part of the whole. And it’s all beautiful. Remember that, okay?”

  She was right, as usual. Everyone had commitments they couldn’t control, but that didn’t mean they weren’t free to be happy.

  They parted, all smiles.

  September 26, Launch Day

  2125 CE

  Noumenon Sub-Goal 1A: If the variation is determined to be natural, a theory of its formation is to be presented upon return.

  Noumenon Sub-Goal 1B: If the variation is determined to be unnatural, a theory of its purpose and origin is to be presented upon return.

  Even from twelve miles away, the deep rumble of the external graviton cyclers revving up set off car alarms in the parking lot. It was a sound more felt than heard.

  The crowd gave a collective cheer and Reggie thrilled at the sight of the nine ships rising into the clear midday sky. If not for their distinctly unusual shapes, someone might have mistaken them for silvery hot air balloons—they lifted so slowly, so smoothly away from the planet.

  Each ship was uniquely formed in accordance with its purpose. Hippocrates’ many umbilical docking tracts—like spines on a sea urchin—were withdrawn and stowed for lift-off. Mira’s hull was dotted with the most portholes—dark eyes that peered solemnly onto the planet for one last time. Together, Bottomless and Solidarity looked like massive industrial towers. Windowless, lifeless, but certainly not purposeless.

  Unlike traditional spaceships, none of the Convoy’s were particularly aerodynamic. But with antigravity technology, the shape didn’t matter. They didn’t need to push violently against the planet’s hold in order to reach escape velocity, didn’t need to worry about breaking the sound barrier. Which meant their ascent was slow, easy. Minutes ticked by as they steadily put more and more distance between themselves and earthbound humanity below.

  Reggie’s insides boiled with conflicting emotions. He was nervous—almost to the point of nausea if he thought about it too much. Anything could happen. One of the ships in the Deep-Space Echo convoy had exploded during orbital takeoff. And there were so many millions of miles between the Earth and LQ Pyx, lots of space for something to go wrong. Any one of countless problems could spring up and endanger the crew and the convoy’s mission.

  If they failed today there would be no second launch, no new plan. They alone carried his dream.

  Sadness accompanied his anxiousness. The convoy was leaving without him.

  But he knew the journey was not for him.

  With only a few decades of life left he wouldn’t get anywhere near the star. The team expected the journey there to take one hundred years from the convoy’s perspective—near a thousand from Earth’s angle, due to subdimensional dilation. No, he was still needed here. He could do more good at the university than he could on those ships.

  They were high now, but still well within the atmosphere. They’d begin to pick up speed soon, to sail into the stars.

  Yes, Reggie could do more good on Earth, though it would have been a grand adventure. Who hadn’t dreamt of becoming an astronaut as a child? What scientist, studying the wonders of the universe, hadn’t fantasized about seeing its miracles up close?

  There went his chance, carried into the wispy clouds on an invisible pillar of negative force.

  He was tied to the Earth, though the reach of his dreams remained infinite.

  C’s ‘flex-tech was clipped to the front of his shirt, giving the PA an unobstructed view. “That’s not something I’ve seen before,” it said. Reggie found the obvious statement endearing.

  Alongside his other emotions rested a pensiveness. The Earth-based team would be able to communicate with the convoy only occasionally, due to the time dilatation and the difficulties of SD communication. Once they were out of range, that would be the last of Reggie’s involvement. His project would culminate centuries, maybe millennia, from now.

  His was truly a contribution meant for humanity and not its inventor.

  Reggie sighed and watched the ships become specks in the distance. Abigail laid a hand on his shoulder and smiled. Pride made her face glow.

  He wanted to keep growing old with her, to see his children get married, meet his grandchildren. Earth still held more wonders for him. Some more fascinating than anything he could find in space.

  Most of those born to the convoy would never know Earth, but they would have experiences most humans could only daydream about. They were an incredibly special group.

  What amazements would they discover?

  He took hold of Abigail’s hand and turned back to the ships. “Good luck,” he said under his breath. “Come home safe.”

  “Will the I.C.C. integrate my memories now?” C asked.

  “Yes. Just when you leave home, that’s when you need to remember it the most. Part of you will sail among the stars, C. How does that feel?”

  “I am happy to be here. And happy to be there.”

  With a broad smile, Reggie patted C’s screen.

  The journey of Planet United Convoy Seven had officially begun.

  Chapter Two

  Margarita: Inside Taro’s Box

  September 26, T minus 0 Days to LD

  2125 CE

  “Suit up!” was the call of the day.

  I stood aimlessly in hangar four, eyeing the rows and rows of space suits, trying to divine which one I was supposed to find my gear down.

  Nika ran by with a helmet in her hand and s
lapped me on the back. “Wake up, Mags.” She pointed over her shoulder at the aisle she’d emerged from. “Tenth suit down. Better hurry up. Mother and Father won’t be happy if we’re late.” She brushed her dark hair out of her eyes as she smacked the helmet down over her Mongolian features. Nika was beautiful in a really regal sort of way. She should have been a queen instead of an astronaut.

  Of course, she’ll never be my queen . . .

  Then she said something in Russian and hurried away to her mark.

  I flipped her off as she went, knowing full well she’d just insulted me. We always used our native languages to jab at each other.

  I swam against the flow of bodies rushing away from the makeshift lockers. They were off to find their places. Bumping into person after person, I found myself shoved down the wrong row, then helped down the right one. Organized chaos. We all knew what to do and where to be, but there was nothing ordered about it.

  That’s what you get when you have fifteen thousand people all getting ready for their Big Debut at once.

  I think there were only seven hundred in my hangar, but it seemed enough to constitute a sea of people. And I definitely felt like a little fish swept up in the ebb and flow.

  Finding my locker—which was more like a fiberglass cubby—I swiftly pulled the space suit over my party dress and zipped all the zippers I could reach. I’m not sure why I picked a dress—silly choice. It got all bunched up around my hips, which in themselves aren’t exactly slight. Supposedly the suits are unisex, but I’ll be damned if they aren’t designed for men with skinny asses.

  Helmet tucked firmly under my arm, I advanced with the crowd toward the hangar entrance.