by Joseph Rhea
She smiled. “Norman told me the titles came from old images of libraries. He said that it’s our generation’s duty to recreate what was lost to the past.”
He looked sideways at her. “He wants us to guess what was originally in these and write them ourselves?”
“That would probably be a waste of time,” she said. “He suggested finding a title that speaks to us and then start writing our own story.”
“That does sound like something he would say,” he admitted. “But I still think it’s a waste of time.”
“Plus,” she added, “writing in these books doesn’t use additional power.” She stood beside the chair and saluted him. “Those were the captain’s orders, weren’t they?”
As she stood there, barefoot on simulated golden carpet, tussled hair now grown down just past her shoulders, he realized that he was becoming very attracted to her. Not that he would ever admit it to anyone, and he certainly wouldn’t act on the emotion.
As he stared at her, he realized that it was no longer her strange resemblance to his ex-girlfriend, or even her childlike innocence that made her so attractive to him. She was a girl—a woman—unlike anyone he had known before, and a part of him imagined sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her away. But to where? They were both trapped inside a metal boat, heading steadily away from civilization into uncharted waters. Was there a worse time to fall in love? Then again, was there a better time?
In an attempt to shake off the thought, he walked over and sat down in the second chair. It was surprisingly comfortable. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should stay in here for the rest of the trip and write my life’s story up till now,” he said aloud, but he was really just talking to himself. “Maybe it would give me insight as to why the bilge brought us out here.”
Jane moved the other chair closer to his then sat back down and propped her feet on his arm rest. “If you could have chosen your life’s path at birth, what would you have done differently?”
“My life’s path? At Birth? That’s not possible.”
“Why not? Everyone is born with natural talents, so it should be a simple matter of following where those talents take you.”
“It’s not that simple,” he replied, although as he said those words, deep down he wished it were that simple. “Besides, I’m more of what you would call a ‘generalist’ in that I’m pretty good at a lot of different things, but I’m not the best at any one of them. I guess that’s why I never found one particular job that I wanted to pursue.”
She looked at him intently. “Seems like a very good trait for being a ship’s captain.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “You don’t think you’re a very good captain, do you?”
He sighed then leaned back and closed his eyes. “You don’t mince words, do you, Jane?”
“Jessie says that life is too short to be anything but honest,” she whispered.
He kept his eyes closed, enjoying the quiet. “My mother used to say, ‘Life is short, so try to make each day matter.’“
“You haven’t been following her advice, have you?”
He opened his eyes and looked over at her. “I don’t think you know me well enough to make that statement.”
She stood up and then slid slowly down to the floor, doing a perfect split on the carpet. “I think I know you better than you know yourself, Jacob Stone.”
He jumped to his feet. “Don’t do that!” he yelled, almost surprised by the sudden rage she had evoked. “Those are her words, and you are doing her voice.” He turned to leave, but she was suddenly there, holding his hand with both of hers.
“I’m sorry, Jake. It seemed like you needed comfort, and I thought—”
He turned to her. “You thought imitating my dead girlfriend would make me feel better?” When he looked in her eyes, he was reminded that she was still quite young and inexperienced. Maybe she just didn’t understand. “Look, Jane. I know you’ve probably broken into every database on this ship, and I know there are probably recordings of Stacy in there.”
“Quite a few of them,” she interrupted.
“The point is, I don’t want to think about her. I don’t want to live in the past. Not anymore.” He looked up at the collection of books surrounding them. “I don’t even want to write about that past in one of these books.” He took her by the shoulders and looked her square in the eyes. “I want reality. I want be here, right now, with you.”
She copied his actions, grabbing him by the shoulders, and she was surprisingly strong. “Is this what you call dancing, Jake?” she asked with a genuine gleam in her wide eyes.
He let go and sighed. “I guess I should be going,” he said.
“Well, you certainly know how to kill the mood,” she said with a pouting lip.
“Sorry. I just have things to do.”
She went back to her chair and returned with a book and a pen. “I knew you wouldn’t be interested in writing your story using someone else’s title,” she said, “so I had Norman make a special book just for you and the crew.” She handed him the book then breezed past him without another word and headed out of the room.
He glanced down at the book’s title: Facing the Blue: The Journey of the Rogue Wave. He shook his head. She apparently didn’t understand a thing about him, and he certainly didn’t understand her. Maybe that’s for the best, he thought as he cupped the book under his arm and headed out the door.
Chapter 04
Even though he knew that the powered-down nano-particles should stay attached outside the rec room, Jake was still a bit surprised when the book didn’t simply disintegrate when he stepped into the hall.
As he walked past Jane’s quarters, he was tempted to knock, but then he heard her voice coming from beyond the bulkhead door ahead. When he opened it, he saw her standing at the open door to the dive locker. He walked up beside her and peeked inside. Norman Raines, along with Ash and Jessie Fields, his navigator and acoustics officer, were seated around a six-sided table that Raines had built a few days earlier. Under normal circumstances, neither Jake nor his first mate, AJ, would have allowed something like that in a working area of the ship. However, this particular trip was anything but normal.
“You’re dead, Ash!” Jessie said to her older brother with a taunting laugh.
“Don’t count me out just yet, little girl,” Ash replied.
“Feeling lucky, are we?” Raines asked. He held the cube-shaped die in his finger tips, making sure the side embossed with six white dots faced his opponent.
“I was born lucky,” Ash replied, shaking his own die in his outstretched hand.
“And I was playing this game forty years before your lucky birth,” Raines said with a calm smile.
“That’s right,” Ash shot back, “I forgot just how old you really are. Sure you don’t need to stop for a nap or something?”
Raines’ smile weakened slightly, but he covered it quickly. “That certainly is a lot of beans to risk for one challenge,” he said, glancing down at the small brown pile lying in the center of the game board. “Once these are gone, there are no more.”
The ship’s engineer was correct, Jake thought, as he watched the game from the doorway. All food sources were being rationed, and their small stockpile of precious coffee beans had quickly become the most valuable form of currency aboard his ship. For reasons known only to Ash, he had just bet the last of his personal allotment on a silly game.
“The game is called ‘Hex,’“ Jane whispered. “It’s best played with six people, but it works with two or three players as well.”
“I know how to play,” he whispered back, “but how do you know about it.”
She turned and looked at him oddly. “I know things,” she said then turned back to the game.
“After I beat you,” Ash said, “I’m going to take all of these beans and go upstairs and brew up the strongest pot of coffee this ship has ever smelled.” He tossed his die on the table, and it came up five. He smiled. “And then I’m
going to drink that entire pot of coffee all by myself, right in front of you.”
Without another word, Raines tossed his die on the table. The look of shock on Ash’s face told Jake the outcome.
“Ahhhhh!” Ash yelled as he jumped up and stomped across the room. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”
Instead of gloating, which was what Jake probably would have done after Ash’s boasting, the older man calmly pulled the pile of beans to his side of the table and counted them one by one. Then he walked up to Ash and held out his hand.
“What’s this?” Ash asked.
“Your allotment,” Raines replied.
Ash looked stunned. “Why? After what I said, how can you be so generous?”
“Oh, on the contrary,” Raines said. “I’m actually being quite selfish. We have a lot of time to kill in the weeks ahead. You are the best Hex player on board, and I like to play. If you don’t have beans, you can’t play.”
Ash opened his hands and accepted the beans. “You’re a better man than I am, Norman Raines.”
The engineer smiled and returned to the table. “Well, that goes without saying.”
Jessie giggled and then said, “I’m going to beat both of you the next round.”
“Join us, Captain?” Raines asked, acknowledging Jake’s presence for the first time.
He started to reply when Vee’s voice called from the overhead speaker. “Captain to the bridge.”
Jake looked at Jane then back at the others in the room. “Well, I guess I’ll hold on to my beans a bit longer,” he said then stepped out of the doorway and jogged up the stairs.
When he reached the bridge he saw his helmsman, Vee, and his first mate, AJ, staring at what looked like a cloud of static hovering above the center chart table. “What is that?” he asked, dumbfounded.
“You mean, what are they,” AJ corrected him.
“They?” he asked as he felt a shiver run down his spine. AJ adjusted something on the table, and a model of the Rogue Wave appeared in the middle of the cloud. If the scale was accurate, the cloud was at least fifty times larger than his ship. “I don’t understand. What am I looking at?”
“We don’t know,” Vee said. “They vary in size, but none of them are larger than about ten centimeters.”
He put the book he was carrying on the console and peered out of the side viewport: this far away from the colony, he could see only black out there, even with the window’s low light filters pushed to max. “Where are they?”
“Keep watching,” Vee said then veered the ship slightly to port. Outside, a thousand points of light appeared then flicked off.
“They look like stars, don’t they?” AJ said, standing beside him.
Jake shook his head. “The stars in Capitol City aren’t that bright, even the ones they repaired last year.” He looked at Vee. “Do it again.”
As she nudged the ship back to starboard, the sea lit up again. When they winked off, he looked back at the size of the cloud on the chart table. “How…how many do you think there are?”
“No way to tell,” Vee replied. “They don’t give off a metallic signature.”
“Maybe you need to get Jessie up here. She’s the acoustics expert.” He suddenly froze then turned to Vee. “Signature?” he asked, stunned. “Tell me you’re not actively pinging them.”
AJ stood up. “Of course we are. They don’t give off any acoustic signals themselves. We wouldn’t even know they are out there if Vee hadn’t been bored. They actually seem to be attracted to-”
“Stop it,” Jake nearly yelled, as he switched off the chart projection. As the particles dropped back down to the table’s surface, he turned and reached for the acoustics console to his right but stopped short. He had a basic understanding of all bridge operations, but acoustics was a bit of an art form. Plus, Jessie had configured her dashboard in a way that only made sense to her. He looked back at his first mate. “You need to shut off the transmitters.”
Before AJ could respond, Jessie slid under Jake’s outstretched arms and in to her chair. “Don’t sweat it, Captain,” she said.
He turned to her. “I will sweat it, if you don’t mind,” he said as he wiped actual beads of perspiration from his forehead.
“It’s not what you think, Jake,” AJ said. She always used his first name when she was trying to calm him down. In the past week, she had started using his first name more and more.
“Do you know that for a fact?” he asked.
“Know what?” Ash asked as he came up the stairs. “We could hear you guys yelling all the way down on C-deck.”
“Nothing,” AJ said. “Just an old sailor’s story.”
“I love old sailor’s stories,” he said as he dodged the chart table and went to sit at his navigation console in the bow.
“You won’t like this one,” Jake said, then turned back to Jessie. “Is it off?”
Jessie touched her dashboard and then gave him a stiff salute. “Aye aye, Captain. Active acoustics are disabled until you say otherwise.”
Jake nodded and then looked at the others. “Listen, people. We are all alone out here.”
“You don’t have to remind us of that,” Vee interrupted.
“What I mean,” Jake said more firmly, “is that when you are walking the streets at night all alone, you don’t wave your light stick around. That invites every street thug on the block to come and rob you.”
“Wow,” Ash said. “What kind of neighborhood did you grow up in?”
“My point is that we don’t know what’s out here, but we can assume that anything we find will be dangerous.”
“What are these sailor’s stories?” Vee asked. “I’d love to hear them.”
Jake turned to her. “You’re off shift now, aren’t you?”
Vee nodded sheepishly then sat down on the now dark chart table. “I’d like to stay up here, if you don’t mind,” she said. “With the rec room turned off, there’s not much to keep us occupied during off hours.”
Jake nodded then looked at the others in the room. “Look, people, we are a week and a half into this trip and we could have up to three more weeks to go. You’ve got to find things to occupy your time or you’ll go crazy. Or you’ll drive me crazy.”
There was silence for several seconds, then AJ spoke. “Good pep talk, sir. I’m sure we’ll all be fine now.”
Jake felt anger building in him, but then everyone broke out into laughter. When he realized the joke, he forced a smile. “All right. Just for that, extra rations for everyone.”
Ash grabbed his throat. “No, not that. It’s too horrible of a punishment. No more corn!”
Everyone laughed again, but deep down, Jake knew this was what his former captain, Marcos Coal, would have called gallows humor. They were heading away from civilization toward a destination that most likely didn’t even exist. If they didn’t reach it, they would die out there. First they would starve as the food ran out, then the batteries would go and they would die slowly as the breathable air was used up. It was not a pretty thought.
“Okay,” AJ said, as the laughter died down. “Vee, you’ve got the oh-six-hundred shift, and you need to get some rest. That’s an order.” A few days earlier they had switched from four-hour bridge watches to six, at AJ’s recommendation. As she passed Jake, she added, “I’m on at midnight, so I’m going to bed now.” She looked at Jake. “Coming, Captain?”
Ash cocked an eyebrow, and Jake knew why. “I’m serious, Ash. Extra corn if you don’t stow it.”
Ash dropped the brow and nodded. “Aye aye, sir.”
Jake looked at his first mate. “Actually, I just woke up. I… I guess I forgot what shift I was on.”
“You? Sleeping in the afternoon?” AJ mocked.
Jake shook his head. “I thought it was morning, and to be honest, I don’t even remember going to bed. Must be getting a little punchy.”
“It happens,” she said. “Well, good night then.”
Jake turne
d to follow AJ down the stairs and was startled when he suddenly found himself back inside the white cylindrical chamber from his nightmare. He was still strapped to the bed, but this time the bed was rotated vertically, and he was nearly upright. The white wall in front of him faded, or more precisely, it became a window, and he saw the outline of a group of people sitting on the other side of it. The lights above them were off and he could make out none of their faces.
“Who are you people?” he called out.
“That is a jury of your peers,” Captain Steele’s voice whispered in his ear.
“How am I here?” he asked, feeling as though he was losing his mind. Both realities, the ship and this place, seemed utterly real to him. However, he knew one of them had to be fake, either a dream or an elaborate simulation.
“They are both real, in a fashion,” the female doctor from his first awakening said.
“What?” he asked. “Are you reading my mind now?”
“Actually, that is precisely what we are doing,” Steele replied, moving to stand in front of him. “This is what we call an Interrogator, one of the best in the colony, actually. It allows us to probe your memories and observe your actions at any point in your recent past. With it, we can determine the guilt or innocence of any subject without the need for traditional interrogation procedures.”
“You mean like, beating confessions out of people?” he spat.
“No need for such hostility,” Steele said with a slight grin. “We are not here to intentionally convict you of any crime.” She waved her hands to the group of people behind the window. “We are all here to simply learn the truth of what happened to your ship and its crew, nothing more.”
“I imagine you would like to know as well,” the doctor said. “It must be driving you mad not knowing.”
“But you said I have brain damage from lack of oxygen.”
“The human brain is quite good at spreading memories to different neurons, sort of like data backups, which is why memories often return to people with severe brain trauma. The Interrogator scans your entire brain, and it can piece together these backup memories much faster than you can.”
