Short Story: Hanami Park — M.K. Capriola

Serials: The Starlark: Part Four –Steve Bowers

Announcements: Orion’s Arm Fan Film Contest

Reviews: Astropolis, by Sean Williams — Todd Drashner

Imagery: More Works by Skitter.

Announcements: Orion’s Arm Novella Contest

Serial: More Things In Heaven, Part One — Todd Drashner

So. Here’s more:

More distinctive graphics: You will have noted, by now, that the Orion’s Arm Universe Project has a new index page. More changes are coming, over the next couple of months, which will improve the site’s readability. There will also be new content (of course!). We’ve done some redesign work here at V/FT, as well; the new banner has been designed specififcally for V/FT, and the fonts have been chosen to complement the new layout. We hope you like the new look.

More contests: This issue, we are pleased to announce the 2008 Novella Contest. Do you have stories to tell that are too big to comfortably fit in a webzine format? Now’s your chance to share them!

More exhortations: Our short film contest continues. That deadline’s July 20, and fast approaching; if you have a good script, now would be a good time to start filming.

More fine articles: But you expect that of us. We look to deliver.

More authors and artists: That’s YOUR challenge. Write; compose; draw; paint; model; digitize… and submit your work! We’ll be delighted to consider your works for publication.

Thanh Truong leapt from the trolley as soon as it came to a stop and
hurried over to Yellow Dragon Square. As he turned the corner at the
end of the shop row, Thanh halted dead in his tracks.

Yellow Dragon Square was gone.

In its place, and spreading up into the hills where residences once
stood, sat a grassy park with pebbled walkways between rows of cherry
trees. Thanh had never seen so many cherry trees in his life.

“Quite the sight, isn’t it, nephew?”

Thanh turned his head and saw a ten-year-old boy standing nearby.
The boy had his hands tucked into his armpits. “Uncle Cris?” Thanh
asked in surprise.

“Yep. How’s your family? Linh have her baby yet?”

“The baby should come day after tomorrow, uncle. How’s the new body?”

Cristobol Ng held up his hands and wiggled his fingers. “Fits like a
? like a body. Weirdest thing is being so short.” He lowered his
arms. “What do you make of all these cherry trees?”

A crowd was slowly gathering, and a woman nearby said, “I heard that
the Child Empress is wiping the Opaline District clean.”

“False rumor,” said a man behind her. “The Serene Knight did this.
It just came on the news.”

The woman stared off into the distance, eyes unfocused. “So it has.”

Thanh accessed the Current Events database and scanned the headlines.
The Serene Knight had, of a sudden, abolished Yellow Dragon Square
and replaced it with cherry trees and Shinto Temples, the new park to
be called Hanami (Cherry-blossom Viewing) Park. Only a corner of the
Opaline District was being converted, piece by piece, into a medieval
Nihonjin city; the rest of the affected territory lay in the Spinward
wilds. The Serene Knight had decreed that all persons (biont or
otherwise) within the boundaries of newly created Yoso-Kyoto must
speak solely in nihon-go.
Thanh turned to his uncle. “There’s scant biographical information
on any of the Lords and Ladies. Is the Serene Knight of Nihonjin
ancestry?”
“I think he’s a hyperturning Ai-Ei,” Ng answered. “Maybe he was
originally made by Nihonjin.”

“Perhaps. Oh, I came upon a weird scene yesterday when I cut through
the Jade Dragon Park during my lunch break.”

“You worked yesterday, then. How are those new glazes?”

“Very nice. Good colors, and easy to work with. Anyway, I was
walking along the Path of Roses when I came upon a statue of a bearded
man in a shortened dhoti blocking the path. And when I edged around
it, I found a young teener boy prostrated in front of it. Apparently,
he has to spend an hour each day abasing himself before the statue
which he claims is an avatar of the Child Empress.”

“A statue of a bearded man?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s supposed to be the Child Empress.”

“Well, the boy thinks so. And from the way the child was dressed,
I’d say he was a superbright out of the Opaline.”

“Maybe he had a visitation. It’s been known to happen.” Cris Ng
gestured at the cherry tree park. “The Lords and Ladies act in
mysterious ways. What do you think prompted this?”

“Your guess is as good as anyone else’s.”

“That statement is false,” said a lanky man who’d just made his way
to the front of the crowd. “A superbright’s guess, for example, is
infinitely better than yours.”

Cris Ng scowled up at the man. “And infinitely no closer to the truth.”

The man grinned. “You’re quite correct, boy. So, how’s your
nihon-go, youngster? You’ll need it if you want to hang about
Yoso-Kyoto.”

“Motto tsuzukete. O-genki desu ka? Genki des ne?”

“Hai. Domo. So you do speak the language. You do look a bit nihon
around the edges.”

“Viet, sir. Not nihonjin. I’m sure all Ai-zhan people look alike to
you.”

“Your son has pride,” the man said to Thanh. “Good for him.”

“Actually, he’s my uncle, and even his wives don’t patronize him.”

“Sorry. New body, eh?” The man slapped his forehead. “Aren’t you
Cristobol Ng, the thrillseeker.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Parrpa Dooley. And do I ever feel stupid. My apologies, Freeman Ng.”

“Accepted.”

“I followed your exploits up until your accident. I guess it’ll be
a while before you pick that up again.”

“Good guess. What participatory sports do you favor?”

Thanh turned his gaze to the park while his uncle talked shop. A
group of children halfway down the slope dared each other with nervous
to be the first to enter the new park. It was then that Thanh
realized no one had approached the park, and that its grounds were
devoid of sentient life. As if everyone feared that the park would
suddenly vanish, along with everything held within its bounds. The
world held its breath.

Twin dark skinned, inky-haired girls darted out of the crowd. One
wore khaki shorts, and the other nothing at all. The girls shot down
the slope and into the park where they cartwheeled across the grass.
They commenced a game of tag among the trees, and within minutes other
children began to trickle down the slope and into the park.

“It’s probably as safe as anything else in the city,” Parrpa Dooley
commented. “I wonder if those two girls are simply more daring than
others, or if they were memed into charging forward.”

“Piped Piper of Hamelin.”

“What piper, Uncle Cris?”

“Ancient Feringji legend about a piper who hypnotized vermin with his
music and led them out of the city of Hamelin. When the good citizens
refused to pay up, he stole their children away in the same manner.”

“Just what I wanted to hear with a new child on the way. Don’t ever
tell Linh this story.”

Ng laughed. “Your wife is the one who told me.”

More about the author, M.K. Capriola, Jr., here.

By Sean Williams

Paperback: 319 pages
Publisher: Ace Books
Language: English
ISBN: 978-0-441-01493-4

Plot Summary:

In the future depicted in Saturn Returns, the human race headed out to the stars and spent the next 150,000 years or so expanding to fill the galaxy, modifying itself along the way into innumerable forms suited to life in different environments or to the vagaries of whatever the local culture considered desirable. Unable to move either matter or information faster than the speed of light, humanity instead modified itself to be able to alter its “tempo”, the perception of the passage of time both mentally and physically, virtually at will. Able to “overclock” and compress hours of thought into a few seconds, or slow down so that decades pass like days, humans are able to cope with interstellar distances and create the Continuum, a galaxy spanning civilization.

Connecting all the systems of the galaxy and forming the basis for all civilization is the Line, the network of maser transmitter stations that sends information (and even properly scanned people) all over the galaxy. Ruling over all are the Forts, superhuman group minds made up of thousands or millions of “frags”, human appearing beings that are essentially the hands, eyes, and voices of the controlling superintelligence. The Forts operate more slowly than any other human type, their ‘top level’ thoughts running at such a low tempo that centuries may seem like seconds to them. Finally, for those times when good management or reasoned persuasion fail, there is the Corps, once a mercenary army, but long ago converted to the military arm of Fort governance. So things persist for almost a million years until….

Imre Bergamasc, once the supreme commander of the Corps, wakes in a new body on a starship orbiting just beyond the edge of the galaxy. He has been reconstituted by the Jinc, a subpart of a human gestalt, a sub-Fort group mind that spends its time at the edge of the galaxy looking for God. In their explorations the Jinc came upon the remains of a destroyed satellite orbiting the galaxy. Reconstructing the fragments of the device they discovered a recording of Bergamasc etched into the satellite’s surface and reconstituted it.

Bergamasc’s resurrection is not an easy one. Due to lost data from the satellites destruction his memory is full of gaps, including why he would have his mind stored as it was in the first place. The Jinc inadvertently put his mind in the wrong body (“he” is now a “she”), and despite his desire to get back in touch with the rest of civilization and fill the holes in his past, the Jinc are unable to provide access to the Line or transportation back to the galaxy. Things seem to be heading from bad to worse, with the Jinc possibly attempting to absorb him into the gestalt, when help comes from an unexpected quarter and Bergamasc is able to escape and return to the Milky Way. But things are very much not as he left them.

Expecting to return to the Continuum, Bergamasc quickly learns that the former supercivilization no longer exists. Civilization has fallen or fallen apart, a side-effect of the “Slow Wave”, a mysterious energy pulse that propagated across the galaxy and broke the connections between all frags everywhere, killing the Forts and plunging the galaxy into chaos. Non-Fort humans left to their own devices rapidly make a mess of things and while civilization is not yet gone completely, things are far from what they once were.

Returning to the Mandala Supersystem, a possibly artificial cluster of stars once home to a major civilization, Bergamasc encounters former Corps comrades from his past, makes a number of discoveries pointing to the idea that the Slow Wave may have been just a first strike in an ongoing war, and ultimately sets out to save the galaxy and put civilization back together again. How his quest will progress or end will need to wait for the next book(s) in the series; this story is obviously just the opening act.

OA Relevance: Moderate to High

The variety of human types, the heavy focus on informational technology as one of the foundations of civilization, and the idea of a really old human spacefaring civilization will all resonate with OA fans. In some ways and with some modifications this story could almost be set in the OA universe, probably somewhere in the High Middle Regions or the Outer Volumes, far from the nearest wormhole gate.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly:

As anyone who reads this column regularly knows, I’ve read books by Williams before with mixed reviews. Based on how the first book in the series shaped up, I’m hoping that the criticisms I’ve leveled in the past won’t come up again this time. Guess we’ll have to wait and see what the next book brings.

On the good side, if you like character driven fiction, you’ll love this book. From beginning to end, its all about the characters who are both interesting and richly drawn, the more so since they may exist in more than one incarnation (Continuum civilization can make copies of a person’s mind you see…). At the same time, the intense focus on the characters sometimes seems to relegate the setting to a two-dimensional sketch. We read off-hand references or background info to the effect that the Continuum could manipulate pulsars and blow up suns, but we never actually see any of it. Continuum civilization is supposed to be almost a million years old, but based on the descriptions provided I sometimes felt that I could have just as readily been reading something set a few hundred years in the future or maybe a few thousand. The ‘sense of wonder’ and sense of antiquity that other authors have achieved when describing such old civilizations was rarely there. But that could just be me.

Perhaps the second biggest complaint I had with the story was that although we are told that humanity has altered itself into all kinds of new forms we never really see this. The different types of humans depicted in the story would all readily pass as near-baselines in the OA universe and possibly even as baselines at first look. This may be because Williams wanted to focus on character issues rather than describing weird looking people but it still bothered me a bit.

The biggest complaint I would level at the book was that while it explicitly stated that FTL travel and comm were not possible, it largely acted as though they were. Characters casually talk about being caught here or there during the Slow Wave and treat Bergamasc as though he has been gone for only a few years when an examination of the sequence of events would have required them to be in their present situation for centuries to thousands of years. The bad guys react to events almost instantly and show up at just the best dramatic moment, often in situations where that would seem to be impossible if light speed were truly a limiting factor. And so on. The idea of variable temporal perception is intriguing and Williams is exploring an interesting new area I’ve only seen one or two other authors every set foot in. But he could have done much more with it and should have paid closer attention to the realities imposed by light speed limited events if he is going to make that a foundational element of his book. Truthfully it would have worked better if he had just introduced some sort of FTL drive and been done with it.

Overall Rating: Good

If you like character driven space opera, you will love this book. If you’re more into gadgets or like a good dose of scenery and travelogue along with your story of a strange far future, then you may be left a bit wanting.

More about the reviewer, Todd Drasher, here.

Deadline for submissions: 09/30/08

Prizes: Each of the five winners will receive a $200 (USD) cash prize, and a royalties contract to correspond with their publication in the first annual Orion’s Arm Universe Project paperback book. A collection of short stories set for release in summer 2009.

Entry Guidelines:

Distributors that will be carrying the book in its final form:
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Powells.com
Froogle
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Simple Suggestions to Improve Your Odds:
Write. Successful entries will have original ideas, strong characterization, fidelity to the OA canon, and appeal to the sense of wonder. Stories must be clear and understandable.
Share. Post your developing story as it progresses at the Café OA for reviews and critiques by your peers. This really is a phenomenal tool that will allow those who use it to progress leaps and bounds beyond those that do not. Maybe that great text you have written works for you, but nobody else understands it. Maybe the science is faulty or you have misused features of the project. This is the place to work out those bugs.
Know your audience. Do your research and ask questions in the discussion groups. Don’t let yourself to be disqualified simply because your story is outside Canon. This is another reason to follow suggestion #2. If you’re new to the Orion’s Arm scenario we suggest starting with our introductory material found at the Welcome page in order to get up to speed.

January 11, 764 a.t Outer system, Epsilon Indi

At last the end of our journey is in sight. The Starlark will shortly ignite the catalysed fusion motors once more, and we will decelerate into the system for six months before making orbit around Indi. I have briefly been outside the ship with the maintenance crew to check the droplet radiator array and the antiproton feed lines. Interstellar space is starting to become thick with the dust and gas that surrounds our destination system; the erosion of myriad microscopic hits has scoured my armoured suit.

Hoyle is determined to reawaken my former skills as a fusion specialist, and it certainly seems to be working. With luck and much hard work, I will be competent again before we finally power these motors down in mid-system. Every night I study, learning a subject that seems tantalisingly familiar.

Sometimes I wonder if Hoyle realises that we specialists are really only needed because we cannot afford to place all our trust in artificially intelligent systems. Every major system on this ship is under Hoyle’s control; we would barely be able to take over if ey went off-line, but there is always the chance that this would be necessary. So many of the AI systems back in the Solar System failed, were poisoned or subverted, or went mad in the time of the Nanodisaster, that no-one can put all their trust in any mechanical brain any more. Of course, our human minds have proved even more fragile on this trip, and there are few on board who are entirely unaffected by the cold sleep process.

To dispel my blacker moods Hoyle has awoken one of my clade-sisters; there are few enough of us on this ship, and the one ey has chosen is a younger clonecousin of mine. Ellie is twenty years younger than I, and I barely remember her as a young child. I do remember teaching her how to draw a spaceship, one afternoon long ago; that memory floats unconnected in space and time but seems quite vivid. We both drew with the left hand, with the same tilt of the head, and we both pressed too hard on the paper. Now she is a woman in her twenties, travelling to the stars with a small group of friends I do not remember.

“You are such an ebuk, clonecousin,” she said to me today, using that annoying dusty backslang all the young people seem to have adopted. I had expressed mild (and, I hoped, polite) surprise when she told me she was travelling with a group of dusties, non-Parthene Martian refugees from the orbital habitats. I can’t say I blame her—there aren’t enough of our kindred on this ship to make a sorority like we had back on Hebe. I had hoped that our special ability to replicate ourselves would eventually lead to a new sorority out here in the Indi system; but there are so few of us, I believe that is a vain dream.

So I’m a cube. an “ebuk,” eh? I suppose I am. Despite our identical phenotype we are very different. She doesn’t even look very much like me, with her long, red, bushy hair and slightly over-the-top make-up; my hair is short, and was once dyed blond, but now the rusty roots show through. Harlan laughs and calls us the “ginger twins,” but I see the differences between us more vividly than he does, no doubt.

January 31 764 a.t Outer system, Epsilon Indi

During the deceleration phase, it is difficult to maintain contact with the colony at Epsilon Indi. A brilliant glowing plume of white- hot exhaust issues from the motors at the bottom of the ship; we feel the vibrations through our feet as the ship creates its own gravity with its thrust. Far below us and off to one side is the tiny spark of the colony planet, Tierra del Fuego. Harlan is engaged in sending medical details of our various casualties via laser to the colony, and in attempting to make sense of their answers.

I have been working with him to tune the message laser so that the signal can be distinguished from the light of the rocket’s glare. The best results have been obtained by using drone relay transmitters sent out far from the ship, but each drone falls ahead of the ship rapidly and eventually we lose contact with it, so we have to fabricate new ones and send them out at regular intervals. However the replies we have so far received have been short, vague and lacking in details.

“They probably don’t have the facilities to handle the worst cases. Feh- we should plan to be living in temps for the first few years, as we don’t know if they can even handle our able-bodied.”

“We have better technology on the Starlark than the original colonists took with them,” I said. “There are some good temporary habitat designs in the database; all the Indis will have to do is shovel raw materials into the fab and it will manufacture them.”

“No doubt they’ll be getting us to do that for them, we’ll be expected to work for a living. We have nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of hard graft on an inhospitable planet, Elanor, old girl. Oh, such joy. I can’t wait. Life on the new frontier is always nasty, and brutal, if not necessarily short.”

Ania was perched nearby, watching our efforts with some interest; now and then she moved her lips as if subvocalising. I guessed she was in contact with someone elsewhere on the ship, via net implants.

I saw her say something like `I don’t know- I’ll ask them,” then she said (out loud) to us, “How many of them are there? Have they told you that?”

“Well, that’s the damnedest thing,” Harlan said. “They say they have twenty thousand people living on the planet and a few thousand in orbit. So there are a few more of them than there are of us.”

“We could probably squeeze in without too much construction work,” I said. “And of course the temps can be put up quite rapidly. But somehow we’ll have to nearly double the output of food on that world down there, or we’ll all go hungry.”

“They must be used to having a rapidly growing population,” Harlan said, shaking his head. “They have already increased their population by three hundred thousand percent”

“What are you saying?” said Ania. “Do you mean to say their population is three thousand times as large as it was when they arrived?” She muttered something into mid-air, obviously to the person she was in communication with. “Yes, I know, I’m not stupid.” She continued, talking to us now, “There are only twenty thousand of them on the planet. Where are all the rest? The ship that brought them there carried fifty thousand people.”

“Like I said, that’s the mystery. When I told them that we have hundreds of statics that we can’t revive, and many more with memory impairment, they were off-hand. Apparently, out of fifty thousand, they lost all but seven.”

“Seven thousand?” That still doesn’t add up,” I said, calculating in my head.

Harland pulled a wry face. “Nope; seven. Only seven survivors out of fifty thousand. And somehow they’ve built their population up to more than twenty thou in a hundred and forty years.”

“By Astraea!” I exclaimed. “That is some impressive birth rate” I was suddenly reminded that I have never yet had a child myself. As a Parthene, I could self-replicate at will, just by thinking about it. But so far, I had never found the time. After all, the process takes nine Lunar months, just to make a newborn. “How, in the name of all the stars, have the Indi colonists managed to produce so many people in just a century and a half?”

“Perhaps they have genetically engineered themselves so that each woman has ten wombs, or something. I imagine something like a giant human queen ant, with a massive belly and lines of babies on breasts.” Harlan gave an evil grin.

Ania threw her hands up. “That’s disgusting,” and left the comms-deck.

“Actually, the original colonists were sent out by a faction opposed to germ-line engineering,” Harlan said, after the bulkhead door flowed shut. “So I doubt we will be greeted by human ant hybrids. As I said, it is a bit of a puzzle; but hopefully we’ll find the answer soon enough.”

February 17 764 a.t. Approaching Tierra del Fuego

We have finally finished our deceleration phase. Hoyle has allowed me to resume my full duties as a drive supervisor, although I get the impression e is watching me closely all the time. Ironic, since our role as supervisors was originally devised as a way of keeping an eye on the supposedly unreliable ship AI systems. Yet in the event we humans have proved to be the unreliable ones. For instance, I have heard today that the ship’s captain cannot be successfully revived at this time, so the acting captain (a relatively young Earthman of whom I have few reliable memories) will be in charge when we reach our destination. But the role of captain is relatively unimportant- the running of the vessel is mostly entrusted to Hoyle, who has effectively controlled the ship throughout our voyage of over a century.

After a tiring shift, which was mostly taken up with various shutdown procedures, I made my way to the Comms deck. This part of the ship often gets crowded with onlookers and idlers, like myself, who desire to find out more about the colony we are approaching. Today Harlan was there, once again, sending medical details about our casualties to the main space station orbiting Fuego. He was frustrated, as usual, by the lack of response from the colonists. Also present was Ania, once again muttering to an unseen companion somewhere on the ship, and Ellie, looking discontented, as she often does. With Ellie was one of her fierce companions from the Martian surface, one of the ‘dusties’ forced off the Red Planet by the nanodisaster. His name is Gusev, a common Martin name.

“That looks like a major impact scar,” he said to Ellie. They were looking at an image of Fuego that covered the whole wall, and spilled over onto the ceiling.

“Yeah,” Harlan put in. “That happened a billion years ago, more or less. Shocked most of the atmosphere off the planet, they reckon. Looks like the Fuegies are having a bit of trouble putting it back- the planet still hasn’t got atmosphere worth a fart.”
He swigged at a beaker of coffee, shook his head. “I bet they are really looking forward to our arrival. A ship of amnesiacs and sleeping beauties, on the run from the old worlds they have never seen, bring who-knows-what kind of plagues with us. They’ll welcome us with open arms.”

“Perhaps not you, Earther, but I know this kind of world. Fuego is not so different from Mars. I can help them put it right.” Gusev said.

“Like you did back home,” Harlan said, with a wry smile.

I was just about to change the subject, when Ania did it for me. “No, I can’t see it,” she muttered to her unseen correspondent. “Shall I ask them?”

“Ask us what?” Ellie said, flicking a not-particularly-friendly glance at her. Ania glanced back; her eyes were dark-ringed, as if she hadn’t slept for a week.

“Where is the- you know, the space station. All I can see is planet.”

“Oh, you can’t see it on that scale,” Harlan said, flicking a finger at the planet on the wall. “Here, I’ll call up a magnification for you.” He made no visible motion, but a small part of the image expanded until if filled most of the field of view.

A respectably large space habitat could now be seen, moving against the thin clouds on the planet below; several rings counter-rotating hypnotically. Nearby a disc-shaped spacecraft accompanied the habitat, quite a large one it seemed, but small compared to the station itself.

“Look, they’ve got a flying saucer,” Ania said.

Gusev shook his head. “That’s the inflatable heat shield on an orbit-to-surface shuttle. The same sort of trick we used to use on Mars in the early days.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what you need when your dumb planet has too much gravity for a rocket landing and not enough atmosphere for a lifting body.” Harlan smirked.

“Are you calling my homeworld stupid, mud-eater?” Gusev became angry in a flash.

“Don’t get snarky, red-boots,” said Harlan, but the thin wiry Martian launched himself at the Earthman’s head.

In the low gravity created by Starlark’s leisurely spin the fight was like a slow ballet, with arms and legs wheeling in space and little contact with the cabin floor. Harlan had the advantage of Earth strength, but Gusev wanted to fight much more than he did.

I decided that this was getting no-one anywhere, so I pushed myself in between the two men and thrust them apart. Perhaps a bit too loudly, I told them “That’s Enough!” They were both a little shocked at my strength and anger, and so was I.

I don’t quite know where that came from, to be honest; but who knows anything on this ship of amnesiacs, to use Harlan’s words.

Later, (a few minutes ago to be precise, just before I wrote this journal) Hoyle thanked me for stopping the fight. “We are all somewhat highly strung at this moment in time, young lady,” e said.

“Except yourself,” I replied.

“Oh, don’t you believe it,” e said. “I am on tenterhooks.” I have no idea what tenterhooks are, for the record.

“I wanted to speak to you about another thing, by the way, Ms Denley,” e continued.

“What’s that?”

“The young Earther colonist, Ania. You may have noticed that she often carries out a conversation with someone on her neural interface, even while talking to people who are actually present in the room.”

“Yes; but that isn’t all that unusual. Some people just prefer talking in cyberspace to talking face-to-face. Plenty of people do that.”

“Indeed; certain people have annoying habits, and appalling manners. But I am in control of all network communications within the ship, you know. And I can tell you that there is no-one on the other end of the calls she is making.”

“I see. Oh dear.”

“Quite. I do feel responsible for you all, in many ways; I only wish I could have prevented so much suffering during the cryostasis process. But since that has not been possible, I feel I must be solicitous of your welfare as far as possible in the coming months.I suspect this is connected with some undiagnosed trauma she has suffered during her period of vitrification; but I do not have time to fully treat it before we reach the planet. I’ll administer some appropriate medicines for now, but I’d be grateful if you could keep an eye on her.”

“Of course,” I said, with a certain degree of trepidation.

More about the author, Steve Bowers, here.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
–Hamlet, William Shakespeare
(Pre-Spaceflight Old Earth)

Settled firmly into his seat on the bridge of a warship about to launch, Dayyid Mok Noon found himself thinking back to recent events.

It had been only two nights ago when he and Magda had walked along the seawall, the lights of the city towers reflecting across the water and illuminating the night around them. Here and there other couples and triples walked, each lost in their thoughts or in their partners. He and Magda had just as studiously worked to have attention only for each other. This night, only days away from Launch, seemed one for quiet closeness, not laughter or loud conversation; a time to treasure one’s memories or the presence of your loved ones. Because in a few days both might be gone.

Suddenly Magda had turned to him and pressed close, hiding her face in his shoulder.

“Tell me you’re going to be ok,” she whispered. “Tell me that when you go to the Center tomorrow that it’ll still be you when they’re done.”

“Of course it will still be me.” He had replied. “The scan process is completely non-destructive. I’ll go in, lie down on a big soft bed for a few hours and then be out in time for lunch. After that, it’ll be up to him. I mean them.”

“And what about them?” Magda asked, pulling back a little and looking up into his eyes. “Let’s say this whole crazy scheme of the Teacher’s works. What happens after? What do we do afterward? What do we do with these…people?”

“I don’t know, Mia,” he murmured, pulling her close again. “I just don’t know. But I do know that if we don’t do this, we won’t have an afterward to worry about.”

And in the sky above a new star burned with a cold, hard light.

**********

Settled firmly into his seat on the bridge of a warship about to launch, Dayyid Mok Noon found himself thinking back to how it all began.

Even at its best, Shasa could only have been described as a backwater world. And Shasan civilization liked it that way. Their single inhabited planet in an otherwise unremarkable system was home to a hundred and fifty million near-baseline souls. No transapients occupied their quiet system, no wormhole gates, not even the comm-gauge variety, linked it to the galaxy at large. A starship might visit but once a century and the nearest beam-rider station was 70 light-years away. There was the Known Net link, of course, orbiting 100 AUs above the plane of the ecliptic and continually taking in the transmitted data of a billion worlds, but that was a minor consideration.

Shasa had successfully resisted the temptations of the wider galactic culture for centuries. The occasional bit of useful science or technological innovation might be culled from the flood for the betterment of all, but the more radical or disruptive features of the outside world were something to be avoided and left to sink into the obscurity of the Net archives. No Shasan would think of altering themselves in the manner of the Tweaks or Splices who swarmed across the rest of Terragens civilization. No Shasan would ever willingly upload themselves into the sterile immortality of virtual worlds and cybernetic bodies. And although bots and nanotech, gengineering and AI were an everyday part of Shasan life, all such technologies were strictly limited to levels that could only ever enhance, never dominate, the Shasan people and their comfortable existence.

The Screamer changed all that.

On the fifth day of Jeda, the month of celebration, a new star flared in the Shasan sky. For three days it shone and for three days instruments all over the system turned toward what at first was taken to be an odd new kind of supernova. However, that first impression was proven wrong within an hour. The glaring pinpoint of light was no supernova. It was monochromatic, being only and entirely a single shade of purest blue. It was coherent, its light waves marching in lockstep like soldiers on an ancient drill field. And it was only visible from Shasa and its immediate orbital environs. In short it was a laser. A laser of incredible power locked onto the orbit of Shasa around its sun and bathing that orbit, and of course the planet itself, in light. After these revelations, the final bit of data delivered by the observation AIs probably shouldn’t have come as any great surprise but it had just the same. The laser light illuminating Shasa was not simply a bolt of raw energy, but a modulated beam transmitting terabytes of data per second and repeating itself approximately once per minute. Someone, it seemed, had something to say to the Shasan people and was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to make their message heard.

For all their proud independence from galactic civilization, Shasa’s leadership was not above hedging their bets. The continuous stream of incoming data from the Known Net might be mostly ignored, or even restricted, but it was never destroyed. All information received was archived in case of future need. Faced with a situation that even their best advance planning simulations had never anticipated, Shasa’s ruling council had turned to that vast storehouse of data. And they had not been disappointed. Less than ten seconds after presenting the contents of the signal to the archive AIs, a translation had been produced. And with it terror.

**********
Settled firmly into his seat on the bridge of a warship about to launch, Dayyid Mok Noon (version 3.0) found himself thinking back to everything they had learned.

The Screamer’s opening message employed a fairly standard galactic transmission protocol and was devastatingly straightforward. War raged in the heavens. Even the transapients were threatened. Perhaps even the archai, god-like AI rulers of millions of worlds, had reason to fear. The foe was more dangerous, clever, and powerful than any that had come before. It absorbed individuals, worlds, entire civilizations into itself and destroyed anything it could not consume. It was implacable and utterly unrelenting, never accepting any attempt at negotiation or communication except to further its own expansion. It was called the Amalgamation.

Shasa knew about the Amalgamation and the war that was being fought against it by the so-called Amalgamation Containment Initiative, a great alliance of many civilizations, in a distant sort of way. The news from the stars was as constant as everything else coming across the Known Net and largely just as ignored. What did the Shasan people know or care of great battles fought tens or hundreds of light-years away and struggles that would test the strength of a god? Certainly, in the last century or so the conflict had seemed to be moving closer to Shasan space, but surely that was a temporary aberration and no cause for real concern. Or so the thinking had been. Thinking that was now proven dangerously wrong.

Far across the stars a great battle had been fought. Two fleets had met and unleashed massive forces, each striving to wipe the other from existence. Whole worlds had burned in the fires of that struggle and an entire solar system had died. In the end, one of the fleets, the Amalgamation fleet, had broken and fled, attempting to retreat in a thousand directions at once. This could not be allowed.

Fearful that any of their enemy might survive to start the conflict anew; the Initiative had split its forces and sent them flying in pursuit, each striving to overtake and destroy a different element of the Amalgamation fleet before it had a chance to take root in some new location. Each pursuing ship or sub-fleet had accelerated to the limits of its engines, boosting up to nearly the speed of light as quickly as possible. Only then had the error been discovered.

In their haste to chase down the enemy that was escaping, they had been insufficiently thorough in confirming that they were leaving only the dead of their enemy behind. Some time after the Initiative ships had left the scene of battle, a lone Amalgamation vessel, damaged, perhaps even reconstituted from the remnants of several others, had boosted away and set its course toward Shasa’s star. But for a minor bit of cosmic chance it might have traveled all the way there undiscovered. However, during its covert flight the fleeing ship had run afoul of a drifting piece of random cosmic debris, a fragment of a comet or Kuiper body perhaps, and been forced to redirect its drive systems at emergency thrust to avoid a collision. In the process it had illuminated one of the Initiative’s combat squadrons as it strove to catch up to several Amalgamation warships. And the forces of civilization found themselves in a quandary.

The fleeing ships of the enemy were in full retreat but still formidable. No ship, even one with the minor level of firepower required to eliminate a single damaged straggler, could be spared. Worse, even if the Initiative could have diverted its resources to backtracking and correcting its error there was no time. They were too far away and moving too fast and the enemy had made too much progress toward its goal. By the time any of their forces could effect the necessary maneuvers to intercept the lone ship it would have arrived in Shasa’s solar system and had sufficient time to make repairs, replicate itself any number of times and, almost as an afterthought, subsume all of Shasan civilization into itself. The Initiative forces might arrive to find all the gains they had made in battle undone by a single survivor, or worse that their error had opened the door for the enemy to end up even stronger than before. The situation was intolerable!

Fortunately, the squadron was nothing if not inventive. Among its contingent were numerous transapient minds, including minds of the Second Singularity. Vast intellects of superhuman intelligence, they now turned their attention to snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. They inventoried the resources available to them, discussed and considered their options, and developed a course of action. From their efforts the Screamer was born.

Synchronizing the laser weapons of hundreds of vessels they sent a signal across the blackness. Contained within it were plans, strategies, logistics programs, and an AI control matrix the people of Shasa would come to call the Teacher. The forces of the Containment Initiative might not be able to reach Shasa in time to aid them in their hour of need. But their knowledge and their agents were not so limited.

**********
Settled firmly into his seat on the bridge of a warship about to launch, Dayyid Mok Noon (version 4.0) found himself thinking back to everything they had done to reach this moment.

Although it freely admitted that it was not a fully sophont being but rather just a very sophisticated tool, the Teacher had proven to be tremendously helpful. Loaded into Shasa’s Known Net archive the Teacher immediately began accessing designs for a host of devices to be used in the Shasan defense. Negotiating with the Known Net receiver itself, it engineered the release of a small number of magnetic monopoles from the node’s emergency power core. At a stroke, Shasa found itself in possession of the seeds of mass conversion technology, something that had been beyond the grasp of the colony since its founding a thousand years before. Speaking first with Shasa’s leaders and then with the Shasan people directly, it brought advice, wisdom, and, perhaps most importantly, hope where there might otherwise have been none.

By the time the Screamer’s signal was flooding Shasan receivers the Amalgamation vessel was almost upon them. They had barely a year before it would begin deceleration and only a month after that before it would approach their world with the intent of consuming both it and them to help fuel its rebirth. Time enough to do what must be done, but only just. And being so constrained by time there was a need for…sacrifices.

As the nanofacs and robot builders swarmed across the surface of Shasa and its moons, building monopole factories and growing warships, the people of Shasa were forced to make a painful choice. Ever since it’s founding their civilization had eschewed the technology of uploading. Creating a cybernetic copy of a beings mind for the purpose of supposedly living on after the death of the original, or worse, deliberately replacing ones brain with a computronium equivalent was anathema to them.

“It’s a joke!” Dayyid himself had once said at a party held only a few years before the Screamer’s light shone down upon them. “It’s a sick joke, and not even a slightly funny one. There’s no way you can make me believe that some kludge made out of software is really me. Or really even my pet. It’s not that software can’t be alive. Everybody knows ais are alive. But a copy being functionally the same as the original? Just because they share all the same information? Not a chance! The whole idea’s ridiculous”

That had been his position then and the vast majority of Shasa’s population would have readily agreed with him. But time, and imminent destruction, can force many changes.

The problem, on the face of it, was really quite simple. The Teacher, for all its impressive capabilities, was not a combat AI. The level of skill and knowledge necessary for such tasks, especially when facing a foe of the power of the Amalgamation, was beyond it. Nor could a combat AI be sent from the Initiative fleet. There was not sufficient bandwidth available in the Screamer to carry a mind of the necessary sophistication. Neither could the records of the Known Net help them in this instance. Combat specialized AIs, particularly combat specialized AIs able to face a threat of the scale of the Amalgamation were one of the few things not readily available in that vast repository of knowledge. That left only one alternative.

The people of Shasa would be tested, using programs carried by the Teacher. Those of the proper psychological makeup, deemed able to handle the stress of existing as uploaded intelligences sent into a war, would first have their minds nondestructively scanned and then copied into computronium substrates built from Known Net designs. Then they would be injected into a series of high-speed virtual training environments that would prepare them for combat against the approaching Amalgamation vessel. Finally their mind-states, trained at a hundred times human normal rates to fit the education of years into a few weeks, would be copied multiple times and loaded into solid-state warships built from designs also brought by the Teacher.

Under any other circumstances, the plan would have been condemned and rejected out of hand. But these were not any other circumstances.

**********
Settled firmly into his seat on the bridge of a warship about to launch, Dayyid Mok Noon checked environmental systems status one more time and looked around at the people he was about to go into battle with. Yanna was checking intership comms again, a little frown of concentration creasing her face, and Tak was focused on the lasers, making sure that the phased array optics were properly calibrated.

Around them the ship hummed with activity (although the actual hum was really just a bit of virtual simulation added for verisimilitude). Bots and drones swarmed both inside and out, checking for flaws or malfunctions, so far without success. Sensors on the ships, in the surrounding launch complex, and spreading for kilometers around across the landscape reported on everything from ships temperature and power consumption, to launch laser status, to the weather. Here, and at the ninety-nine other launch complexes scattered across the globe, events were moving toward a climax.

Each launch point for the newly created Shasan Defense Force contained ten launch cradles, each containing a solid-state warship. The ships themselves were both impressive and unprepossessing. Each was a gleaming, streamlined cone a hundred meters long. Scattered around the planet, their hulls glittered in sunlight or moonlight, dawn, noon, or dusk. They were made of diamondoid and sapphiroid, ceramic and buckyfiber. Locked into their launch cradles and preparing to fly upward through kilometers of atmosphere they were mostly featureless now, their various secondary systems hidden away behind protective hatches. All that would change once the ships reached space, but that time was not quite yet.

The enemy had been decelerating toward them for a month now, its drive exhaust shining like a new star in the night sky. Within a few hours that light would go out and then the enemy would be almost upon them. The time to act was now.

The final run-up began. The last ports and access panels were closed and sealed, bots and drones scurried and flew away, and a countdown began. When it reached zero, immense superconducting storage rings began dumping their power into the great laser arrays arranged around the launch site. A moment later the conversion reactors cut in and added their output to the flow of energy being converted into light.

Underneath each vessel, solid fuel blocks and shaped combustion chambers absorbed each shot of laser fire and flashed into plasma. The resulting roar would have shattered the eardrums of any human within a kilometer. Driven upward by the superheated exhaust, each ship rose skyward at an acceleration that would have crushed flesh and blood crewmembers had any been aboard. Behind them, the lasers continued to fire at hundreds of times per second, each burst pushing the ships higher and creating a blinding pillar of argent light. Thunder, driven to an almost continuous bone-shattering hum by the pulsing brilliance, rolled across each launch point. The ships rose, faster and faster. Within minutes each achieved escape velocity and then flashed into space.

As it settled into orbit, each ship took a moment to check its condition and status and to establish communication with the vessels around it. In short order a network formed, riding on encrypted laser pulses and welding the fleet into a coordinated whole. Fusion drive cores powered up, radiator arrays deployed, and like a vast flock of crystalline birds, the ships oriented on the star of the approaching foe and boosted into the night.

More about the author, Todd Drasher, here

Serials: The Starlark: Part Three –Steve Bowers

Short Story: Travelers’ Notes: Walking The Underground — Todd Drashner

Announcements: Orion’s Arm Fan Film Contest

Reviews: Geodesica: Ascent and Descent, by Sean Williams with Shane Dix — Todd Drashner

Short Story: Solar Anomaly — Linus Cohen

July 23 694 a.t. Interstellar space

Today we presented the results of the induced-recollection trials to the rest of the unfrozen people on the Starlark. I knew that there were many worried and discontented individuals among them; some refusniks had been awake for twenty years or more. Harlan spoke first, and was very convincing; his earnest, dark face appeared on every wallscreen in the ship, as well as via direct neural interface for those who preferred the intimacy of innervision contact. I routed the datastream into my temporary exomemory, so I can replay his speech now and transcribe it word for word.

“I know that most of you are concerned about the problems we have been having with the ice-baths,” he said. “Well, you should be aware that the technology of vitrification has been improved over the course of this voyage; Hoyle and our medical team have been working for nearly forty years on this system, and it is now improved beyond all expectation.

“I can say with confidence that medical science can heal the worst of the physical damage that may be caused by vitrification. If damage does occur which the on-board medinano can’t deal with, the doc will keep us on ice till we get to the Destination. Indi system already has enough medical infrastructure to deal with most problems, or so they assure us in their transmissions.

“But we all know that the medinano can’t cure memory loss. So many of us have woken up with great sections of our past missing; I know, it happened to me. Even if we have a good chance of waking up with a sound body, the prospect of the loss of part of our mind is daunting. With stakes this high, what options do we have in such a situation? I really don’t blame those of you who have declined to be refrozen. But I am confident that I can say in all honesty that things are different, now.

“In the past few weeks, a few of us have been involved in an experiment; a trial of a new treatment that Hoyle has devised. I’m sure many of you have already heard something about this; we are a small ship, and a crowded one, and rumour travels fast.

“By delving into the subconscious memory, this new technique can encourage your own mind to rebuild your lost past. I’ve tried it, and it certainly seems to work for me. It is like awaking after a dream that you can remember, a dream that makes sense of your lost past and brings it back to you in a very meaningful way.

“I can assure you that in no way does this technique interfere with your consciousness or personality; I am still the same person that I was before starting the trial. To the contrary, I honestly believe that I am more myself than ever. Thus, I now believe that the vitrification process can be regarded as safe, at least as safe as any other modern medical procedure. We cannot continue to support a ship full of unfrozen people; we must start going back into vitrification or starve. This technique will allow you to enter the ice-bath with confidence that you will eventually arrive at the Destination system with your body, and your mind, intact.”

I spoke next, giving a brief account of the extent of my amnesia, and how the induced-recollection treatment had brought the past back to me; most of the other trial subjects gave a short account as well, then the ship’s brain Hoyle spoke in order to sum everything up. His kindly, bespectacled face smiled from the screens or in our innervision.

“I can now with confidence say that you will be safe if you undergo the vitrification treatment. In fact, I am able to increase the duration of each episode of stasis, so that it should only be necessary to thaw each of you once more before we arrive. Seventy more years must pass before our voyage is over. Go back into vitrification now, and you will arrive in the Epsilon Indi system almost before you know it.”

With very few exceptions, the refusniks have one by one volunteered for re-freezing; a number of new ice-coffins have been constructed for the new generation of colonists born during transit. I will be joining them soon. If all goes well, when I next wake in the depths of interstellar space for the last time before we arrive, the Starlark will be full of quiet sleepers once more.

August 28 694 a.t. Interstellar space

There is a downside to being a guinea-pig for Hoyle’s dream-therapy experiment. Before we go back into the ice-baths, Hoyle wants to monitor us for a few weeks. So here I am, still unfrozen and bored.

As a reward Hoyle has promised to wake Rosie as well next time he wakes me; this should be the last time either of us wake up before the Arrival. But time is weighing heavy on my hands, out here in interstellar space. I do have the other guinea pigs to talk to, at least. Harlan is fun, although he can get a little intense; he’s seen some weird shit back in the Solar System. He lost most of his family in the Great Expulsion; they were resistance fighters, before that sort of thing stopped being a good idea. No-one could fight against the Global Artificial Intelligence Amalgamation, the great synthesis of almost all the AI on Earth that became the Goddess GAIA. Or rather no-one could fight and win; plenty tried. But after hundreds of millions died, the situation was clear – the survivors took up the offer of evacuation and left.

Also waiting with us to be re-frozen is Ania, the Euro colonist who I have mentioned before. She seems a little concerned about the treatment; she says it hasn’t really worked for her. I can understand her concerns, as my own recovered memories are patchy and rather confusing, and the medication we are given to induce nostalgia seems to fill me full of longing for an unobtainable past. But somehow the treatment does give me a sense of my own identity. I am determined to build on this, and what ever happens I intend to be myself, no matter who that may eventually turn out to be.

To take our minds off all this uncertainty we have been immersing ourselves in studies. The ship’s library is mostly functional, with only a few portions lost through cosmic ray damage. I have been learning (or re-learning) fusion drive technology, which does seem somehow familiar, as if my mind still hangs onto the skills involved despite the memory loss. Hoyle says he can give me some basic tachydicatic training before we enter the deceleration phase, so that I can help with the final approach if required.

As a group we have also been immersing ourselves in simulations of the new system we are headed towards. Still about six light years away, the star is only a second magnitude spark, not at all impressive; but it is a Sun-like star, about three quarters the mass and diameter of our old sun but similar in temperature. It is, only about one-sixth as bright. That really doesn’t matter too much, as there are at least two planets which are close to the star, and the theory is that these worlds at least can be eventually engineered into something like the Earth

The innermost world is a little like the planet Mercury back in the old system, except it has almost no core. If Luna and Mercury can support colonies- which we know full well they can- then this little world can as well. It has a name; Asencion; given to it by the first colony mission, which arrived more than seventy years ago now. That colony had a very hard time at first, apparently, but now it seems to be doing quite well.

The next world out is called Tierra del Fuego; a large, Mars-like world which could probably be terraformed rather more easily than the red planet back home (No! It is not home! Not any more!). This planet holds a small population of the first colonists, but they still mostly live in orbit in space habitats. Perhaps they lack the man-power to start the terraforming process in earnest, but hopefully we can help there.

The next planet, out at seven AUs is a small gas giant, half the diameter of Neptune. This one is called Neruda, and might be a good planet for gas mining one day when the infrastructure is available. Two more small icy planets, one stained red by sulphur compounds and the other with a thick atmosphere make up the rest of the system.

Way out in the far reaches of the system are two giant worlds, a pair of brown dwarfs (one considerably more massive than the other, though they are similar in diameter). Some faint radio traffic from those objects suggest that the Beamriders might have reached those failed stars recently, but the Riders seem to be avoiding contact for the present. Perhaps they think that everything that comes from the Old Solar System is tainted by the Swarms. That seems to me an overcautious attitude, and I doubt they will ever come to much if they continue to cut themselves off in that way.

October 10, 741 a.t. Interstellar space

Another defrosting, nearly fifty years closer to our goal. After I had been awake for a while, and just starting to focus on my surroundings, I was startled into full awareness by a reverberating thud that sounded throughout the ship. The cabin began to rock, and some small objects were displaced from stowage and slowly fell to he floor in the low, centrifugal gravity. A distant alarm sounded, then cut off.

Finally Hoyle’s faux-English tones came over the public address system, sounding calm and a little amused. “Nothing to worry about, ladies and gentlemen; our little vessel has simply had a brief argument with a grain of interstellar dust. A big one too- it might have been all of a millimetre in diameter. Well, you can rest assured that our triple shield managed to protect us from such a gigantic monster; the outer plate alone was enough to vapourise it, although I’m afraid it did make a bit of a bang.”

My heart was hammering- the presence of interstellar space just outside the walls had never intruded on my consciousness before. Dust grains that big were rare, but a real danger. At least one arkship had ceased transmitting in deep space since the Expulsion, presumably because of a slightly larger collision that did manage to breach the hull. At ten percent of light speed, a dust particle packs as much energy as a respectable bomb.

Eventually a medic came in and gave me a mild sedative- I didn’t know this one, just another of the thousands of qualified personnel we were carrying I made up my mind to ask him his name, but before I could, he addressed me directly in that particular, solemn tone that signals trouble.

“I’m sorry, But I have some bad news.”

“I see. Yes. Well, you had better tell me, then.”

“It’s your partner, Rosie. Some time in the last twenty years, the container she is stored in was hit by a particularly energetic cosmic ray. The damage to the systems was repaired, but not before she suffered some tissue damage. Despite the medical nanotech we have on board, Rosie cannot be restored to a state where she can be defrosted in good health.”

“Is she- I mean – is there no hope? Is she …lost?”

“I have been told that she will have to be kept in vitrification until we reach the Destination; the colony at Indi has better facilities than we have, and there is every chance that she can be revived when we get there. But we cannot give you a guarantee of success, I’m afraid.”

We sat together in silence, for a while; This medic, whoever he was, stayed with me to give me support as the news sank in. Perhaps I disappointed him, as I took the news quite calmly. Eventually I said to him; “The terrible thing about it all is, I can barely remember her. I’ve lost a lot of my own memories, you know, during this voyage, and if it weren’t for the treatment I’ve been getting from Hoyle I don’t think I would remember her at all. As it is, she seems like someone I barely know.”

Something strange passed over the medic’s face, but he quickly hid it. This must be all as new to him as it is to me, I thought. “What is your name, doctor?”

“Not doctor, actually. I’m just a paramedic. Call me Pieter.”

“Thank you, Pieter. I have forgotten so much, but I have enough to keep me going. I do know that I was in love with this woman; I can only hope – I can pray, that some day she is restored to me. But if that is not to be, I haven’t lost everything. Some of my childhood memories are crystal clear. And we have a whole new set of worlds ahead of us. I’m not saying that we should forget the past- but we might soon be able to make a new future.”

Pieter said to me, “We can make a new world, but we can never leave the past behind.” I glimpsed some sadness behind his eyes, but he was difficult to read. At length he left, and I was left alone with my thoughts.

October 15, 741 a.t. Interstellar Space

The ship is very quiet, these days; the crowds of colonists and children that filled these tiny quarters are gone. Only a few people are awake at any one time, a few colonists, fewer medics, and a few specialists checking the systems. I might have been one of those specialists, but I need more retraining to replace the skills I seem to have lost in the ice. Most of the time I’m alone, trying to make sense of the jumble in my head.

I’m recording this entry in my favoured spot in the forward hold, floating in microgravity between the cargo shuttlecraft and the outer hull. This is the only place where you can get near a real window, and see the stars with your own eyes. The window is no more than a circle of glass ten centimetres across, just enough to glimpse the Pleiades, or the Southern Cross, or Orion. The Destination, Epsilon Indi, would be an unimpressive star dead ahead, if I could see it. We are now only two light years away but it still isn’t very bright – and the angle of the hull makes it impossible to see anyway.

I shouldn’t stay here too long, as the cosmic-ray shielding is very thin here, although I am not entirely sure I care.

I tell myself that I am missing Rosie, I just can’t be sure of my real feelings in this matter. To tell the truth most of my memories of that woman are gone. Of course I do remember the dreams, which were vivid enough; and maybe some other, less dreamlike but more reliable recollections are clawing their way to the surface of my mind. Most of my recent life, and most of what I think I should be, has gone, blown away like smoke.

I have read over my journals and diary entries for the last however-many-years to try to answer that for myself. I believe that I started this diary with the express intention of recording my impressions for posterity; in that case I would expect other people to read it too, one day, Yet reading the pages I realise that I haven’t given many details about myself- this is particularly frustrating for me now that I am trying to re-imagine and reconstruct my life. For several reasons, I realise that I haven’t even mentioned my own name, my ancestry or even my sex. Such as it is.

Someone chancing across this journal might think I was a man; they would be wrong. But then I am not currently much of a woman, either.

So who am I?

My given name is Elanor Denley; I am a member of the clade Parthene. Perhaps this clade will be unfamiliar to my hypothetical future readers; there have never been that many of us, even among the asteroids where our clan began. All Parthenes are female. Our biology has been changed quite subtly to give us control over our own bodies; we can regulate our hormones and when we so desire, we can give birth without sexual contact. Yes, we are parthenogenic, when we want to be. Perhaps I should explain that too- although it is so basic to our nature that it seems impossible to think that any hypothetical reader might not know what the word means. In short, it means we clone ourselves without outside help.

I could have a child at any time, and that child would be a perfect copy of myself. I am a perfect copy of my mother, and my grandmother. For obvious reasons only women can do this little trick. There are no boy-children in the clade Parthene.

Most of the time we Parthenes do not let our hormones rule our lives. The geneticists who developed our race centuries ago gave us fine control over our bodies; we can adapt ourselves to freefall just as well as most planetary gravities, and much of the time we suppress our female cycle. Right now, for instance, I have practically no secondary sexual characteristics of any kind; a stranger might mistake me for a slightly built young male. The great plan was that we would become dispassionate, creatures of logic, and in some ways it has worked; but I can assure you I most certainly have a temper, and I will not suffer disrespect. If those far-off and long-ago geneticists thought they were creating emotionless automatons, they were very wrong.

I was born in the year 601 a.t. on the asteroid habitat 6 Hebe. My mother was killed by a swarm infection when I was in my teens. My aunts and I were relocated to the Tyr Habitat orbiting Mars, and I trained as a fusion plant technician there. Most of my life I have been working on the surface of Mars or in orbit trying to maintain the power generation equipment. First the surface of Mars became too dangerous for colonisation, then the habitat itself was relocated far from the planet for safety reasons. I can still remember the news of the Great Expulsion from Earth, but after that, my memories have become unreliable, thanks to the low-level damage caused by the effects of cryostasis on board this ship.

Many of my skills have been lost because of this trauma, and bizarrely, I have also lost the ability to speak Esperanto, which I clearly remember knowing well at college.

Somewhere in my lost years I hooked up with Rosie, also a Parthene; neither of us has reproduced, but there should still be plenty of time for that when we reach the new system.

If we do.

More about the author, Steve Bowers, here.