Black Hull (4 page)

Stuck. With an ancient robot, on an
ancient, broken ship. Looking at twenty years.

“Look at it this way, Mick: We’ve got
plenty of food and fuel, more than enough to get us to Utopia.”

Mick slumped down, grazing a wire
harnesses that snagged and drew blood. He didn’t notice any pain. His son was
into music. They’d made a pact to record something together. He’d been having
ideas, different sorts of “going home” songs. One ended: “As I wander far from
home and soul / Always will I return / to you, the hearts from which I roamed.”

“Ok. I’m all ears, XJ71. That’s what you
want me to call you?”

“Call me XJ.”

“I’m all ears XJ.”

“All ears . . . that is a colloquial
phrase. Checking database…”

It has to check its colloquial database.
That’s okay. It gives me time. I need to sort this out: Grateful to be alive.
Average human lifespan: one hundred and eleven years. I have plenty of time.
What do I care if I’m seventy when I get back to them? Because Karen will have
a new love. Why are you kidding yourself, she already does. That prick? He’s
dumb, rich, and arrogant. He never piloted a god damned hovercraft. Does that
concern you now?

“All ears means what?”

“Tell me what the plan is.”

“I told you the plan. Although our plans
have changed. Now my plans include replacing this console with one that works.”

“What are you doing out here?”

Mick waited for his answer, watching the
droid disappear from the console station. He thought about the word, Utopia. He
remembered it meant something important, but he couldn’t be sure.

A perfect world? Let us go there. Let us
rejoice and be glad. The refrain from church, wasn’t it? The end of that trap.
Religion did not die out, after all. It faded away, didn’t it? God—do you
remember the refrain? God be with us. There were principles, that was all.
Don’t misconstrue God for principles, he’d told his kids. Be honest,
hard-working, helpful, kind. Apply those principles to your daily life, and
forget that God bullshit. Could it be that mental clarity was returning? How
long has it been? Four hours since waking from cryo? It hadn’t been that long.
It doesn’t matter. You can recognize how fucked you are without regaining
mental clarity.

A creaking accompanied the movement of
rusting joints as XJ waltzed back into the control room with a new keyboard
console. He diligently began disconnecting the old one.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Mick, I don’t know what you mean,
out
here
.”

“Out here. Fucking space. Floating in
the vacuum outside the Gliese system.”

“Well of course I can explain my
mission, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Just taking a god damned stroll through
space? Sauntering about, traipsing through the Oort cloud?”

“Your sense of humor is human.”

“Well I’m human.”

“Hah—ah, hah-hah!” It was a laugh, Mick
realized several moments later.

“And that’s built-in humor recognition
AI.”

“Oh dear—you were quite serious, weren’t
you?”

“About being human?”

“Yes.”

“I hope so.”

“I will have to check your system after
I fix this.”

“Check my system? How about you give me
a blow job?”

“I beg your pardon, Mick?”

“Are you alright, or have you lost some
circuits?”

“I suffer from Alzeimagnetism
deficiency.”

“Alzeimagna-what?”

“And I fear you do too, I think.”

“Alza what?”

“You don’t have an entry for it?”

Mick realized what was happening. He had
gone from one corrupt computer to another. Data irretrievable. Corrupt data. A
circuit was not completing in this poor old thing’s brain.

It thinks I’m a robot.

“Do I look like a robot to you XJ?” Mick
tried to dispel the droid’s suspicion. XJ finished installing the console and
stood up, rotated with a creak toward his crew mate:

“Yes, very much. But that’s an outdated
term: Robot. Cellbot, you mean.”

“Cellbot?”

“Of course—rub it in. I know I am an
older model, but that doesn’t make you any more resistant to Alzeimagnetism.”

“What on god’s green earth is
Alzeimagnetism?”

“Mick, you
are
serious, aren’t
you?”

“I’m about to shut you down is how
serious I am.”

“Memory loss akin to the archaic human
syndrome known as Alzheimer’s disease.”

“Too much XJ, too much.” Mick slumped
down again. He’d been pacing, staring out the porthole, expecting to see
another ship arrive, come clean about the prank.

Can I really hear this thing out? Surely
I am in my death dream. I’ve frozen off this mortal coil.

“I’ll hear you out. I’m a cellbot, you
said? And we’re going to Utopia, and Earth is destroyed?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s the thirty-second century
still, or has that changed too?” Mick laughed.

Perhaps humor was what he needed. After
a laugh, he could settle in, troubleshoot the cryochamber, the engine, do what
he did best: get himself home.

“Mick, I am glad I found
you—Ah-hah-hah!” XJ’s eyes lit. A wisp of smoke shot toward the plasmetal
ceiling from his nose. He laughed for nearly ten seconds. Mick closed his eyes;
thoughts formed, condensed: one letter, another, words, sentences, phrases,
concepts, ideas, patterns, intentions.

“Ok, I give up. What year is it?”

“Why, Mick. Don’t pretend you don’t know
that time no longer passes.” XJ grew solemn, “perhaps your AM is worse than
mine after all. Oh dear.”

Starlight mixed with ocher gleam in the
dining room aboard the Light Dog One.

Orange fluorescence washed over a beige
table, rectangular, meant to seat six. Only two sat: XJ across from Mick. An
antique clock, digital, hung above the head of the table. The walls, once bare
and metal-plain, now bore the signs of dementia: The robot had decorated, it
seemed, plastering archaic photos wherever there was a smooth surface. Mick
strained to make out the faded images: strange singers from a bygone era,
dressed in leather, above their heads a sign reading “The Cavern Club.”

The ceiling wore several dangling
earrings of tangled fish hooks, bent from wire coil and plastifiber. A radio
with a half-eaten apple face sung mildly some recording from the twentieth
century: “Everybody’s gree—heen, ‘cause I’m the one that won your love.”
Several of the lights flickered occasionally, adding artificial despair to an
otherwise blank morning. A pot of gold steamed between the droid and his new
guest: roasted beans wafted in step to the radio’s throbbing rhythm. XJ’s face
contorted in what was once man’s best mimesis of a smile. Mick looked at the
droid, drew his cup, and sighed.

“So it’s four thousand.”

“That’s right Mick.”

“And, time’s stopped?”

“Ah-hah!” The droid gyrated, drew its
own cup, and slapped the table. A line splintered at the spot where he struck.

“You said it was. What’s to be trusted
from a droid with AM?”

“It was a joke, Mick—look.” XJ pointed to
a faded photograph.

“Einstein?”

“Right—time is a property of matter. It
was humor, to set you at ease.”

Can I get into the computer on this
thing without him bothering me? Maybe I can figure it out. I worked on LD200s.
Late 200s.

“So, how far to Utopia?”

“Just about a year.”

Maybe they are dead, all of them:
civilization, society, war, plague, history, family, Earth. What a condensed
growth in a single location. Vulnerable.

“So my mission, it was eight hundred and
fifty years ago? How do you explain that?”

“Mick, I can’t quite explain it—it just
happens to be the variance in our recollections.”

“How’d you track down Crake?”

“I was coasting through, on an errand
before the trip to Utopia, and the explosion came through on my radar.”

“Do you mind if I take a look at the
ship’s memory?”

“Not at all.”

Mick drank down the last of his coffee
and left the table. XJ watched him walk to the main computer and sit down.

This is ancient. A waste of my time.

“How do I access the time?”

“It’s on the top right.”

Mick’s eyes rolled. The time and date:
4,000: 12:2:19:16.1.1.

He’s programmed his system to match his
alzemangled brain. Impossible
.

The first few human instances of
time-travel had been incidental. Sergei Avdeyev, a Russian cosmonaut, had flown
around Earth in low-orbit for over seven hundred days, just before the close of
the twentieth century. His speed in orbit had been 17,500 miles per hour,
causing time for him to pass slower relative to Earth time. His feat garnered
him acclaim as the first time traveler; he’d gone a full point two seconds into
the future. Eventually, time travel became a luxury of the rich. Special
orbiting vessels traveled swiftly around the Earth, their occupants paying in
accordance with how far they wanted to travel into the future. All payments
were made up front.

Some chose to travel ten years into the
future, hoping for cures to their fatal diseases in the not-so-distant future,
with the idea of returning to enjoy life while their friends and family were
still alive. Others paid more, longing to see the evolution of the human
species. These richest of clients paid to travel up to one hundred years into
the future, at the cost of only several years of their own lives. 

But eight hundred and fifty years? Even
the best technology can’t produce those results. I haven’t aged a bit. All
light-speed transport ships, including Black Hulls, use STEC engines: Spacetime
Expansion and Contraction. STEC barely dilates the passage of time. Even if the
technology does exist, there’s no way XJ’s ship is capable of it.

“How do I access the Nav?”

“Let me show you,” said XJ, walking
over.

The droid’s arm punched several quick
commands into the keyboard. The spacetime grid of a foreign galaxy populated
the screen. Beneath the image, a footer appeared: Messier 82.

“Messier 82?”

“Precisely. We are on course for Utopia
within the Messier 82 galaxy.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s quite a place Mick. I’m glad
you’ll be seeing it.”

“I won’t be seeing it because we have to
get back to Earth.”

“Earth is gone, Mick.”

“Bring up Earth on the Nav.”

“If it pleases you, I’ll make an
attempt.”

XJ punched the keyboard again. The
screen responded after a momentary shudder. The arms of the Milky Way Galaxy
appeared. The screen zoomed in, revealing a star system with familiar planets.
Mick watched the Earth come into focus, but something was wrong; it was
misshapen.

“Zoom in further.”

It’s mangled. Devoid of blue. Without a moon.
How’d he program that?

“What is this?”

“It’s Earth Mick. I’m sorry you are so
shocked by it.”

“How?”

“The Moon Collision.”

“Moon?”

“The Quantum Bomb, Mick.”

“Quantum bombs are illegal.”

“Perhaps you should spend a day or two
reading the Earth History Archives. They might deliver you from concern.”

“My concern is my god damned family, you
good-for-nothing piece of shit!”

XJ recoiled, slowly backing away from
Mick’s rage.

“I am sorry you’ve been mixed up, and
that you won’t see them again. I don’t know how I can help.”