Starship Doi

by Alex Deva

  "Food is a great idea, and we should definitely have some," said Mark, "but just before we do that, I think we should try to see if we can control this ship. Then we can see about eating and we'll make a plan."

  "I guess," said Doina."

  "What do you have in mind?" asked Aram.

  "I think we should have a command room. I mean, take a room and dedicate it to the purpose of commanding the ship. Since the ADM said all rooms are interchangeable and can serve any purpose, let's make it this one."

  "One is a good number for a command room," said Aram.

  Mark touched the wall and then the ADM symbol.

  "We want this room to become the ship's command and control centre," he said.

  And everything went pitch black.

  XII.

  "Configuration complete," said the voice after a second.

  "...the fuck?!" said the perplexed Dacian.

  "I can't see anything," said Mark.

  "Wow... this is so beautiful!" said Doina.

  Both men were quiet for a moment.

  "Doi? Are you alright?" asked Aram.

  "It's beautiful! I can't believe it! It's so amazing!"

  It was Mark's turn to speak.

  "Doina, we cannot see anything," he said, dumbfounded. "It's all complete darkness."

  "What?! You do not see the stars?"

  Mark looked around, but there was nothing there. Wherever he turned, there was pitch black; a simple, utter lack of any source of light. His eyes were straining to the point where he began to see fatigue spots. He brought his hand in front of his eyes, but could not even see that. He touched his nose; he felt the finger, but did not see it.

  "Oh, God," said Doina again. "This is unbelievable!"

  "Well, obviously you see something that we don't," came Aram's voice from the darkness. "Can't you make some light?"

  "How can you not see this?" she wondered earnestly. "It's everywhere!"

  Mark sat on all fours and crawled to where he remembered the wall was. Blindly feeling in front of himself, he finally blundered into it. He placed his palm on it, but nothing happened.

  "Doi, it seems that the ship likes you more than it likes us," Mark called, unease creeping into his voice. "It probably also means that you have some sort of control. Can you try to make it so we can see what you see?" Or anything at all? he continued in his head.

  She didn't answer, but in a second, everything changed. Millions of stars sprang to life all around them, even under their feet and above their heads, moving about nauseatingly. In the middle of it all, surreally illuminated by them, was Doina, who appeared to be using simple hand motions to move the amazingly complex starfield in all directions. Mark was sitting with his back against the wall. He could feel it solid against his body, but the projection was so realistic that he barely dared to take his hands off the floor. He glanced at Aram, who had knelt down on one knee, keeping one hand on the wall and the other on the floor, looking around in total bewilderment.

  "Please stop," said Mark.

  The stars stopped dancing as Doina quit shifting the starfield. She looked ecstatic and her face had an odd, quiet but powerful quality, enhanced by the starlight reflection. She looked at Mark and said:

  "I'm feeling a little strange. I can... feel the ship, I think. I can feel the empty rooms and the central airlock, and the movement that we have. I don't understand most of it, so don't ask me to explain, but I can feel it."

  "Which way is forward?" asked Aram.

  "Which way do you want it to be?" asked Doina in turn.

  Mark quickly intervened. "Doi, if you can control the ship, please don't do anything to change the speed or direction just yet. Let's try to get our bearings first," he said.

  "I was only talking about the stars," said Doina. "I can align them with our current direction, or I can align them in any direction you want."

  "Ah... let's see them aligned with our trajectory then," said Mark.

  The starfield shifted, this time more slowly, and then it stopped. Doina pointed to her left and slightly up and said: "We're going that way."

  A yellow star was glowing, somewhat brighter than the ones around it.

  "Is that... is that the Sun?" asked Mark.

  Doina turned to him, her face beaming with delight and excitement.

  "Yes! Isn't it amazing? I could never have believed it possible to fly even one finger above ground, and now here we are, flying among the very stars!"

  "Where's Earth?" asked Aram.

  Doina immediately pointed at another tiny pinprick of light. "There," she said.

  "How far is it?" the Dacian asked again.

  She stopped for a second.

  "Well, it's closing every second. Right now it's less than half a trillion kilometres out."

  The complete ease and simplicity with which she uttered that truly astronomical number rendered both men speechless.

  "Shit," said Aram. "I don't even know how much that is."

  "At our present speed, it's about two weeks away," she quickly explained.

  "So we're really travelling at nearly the speed of light?" asked Mark.

  "Almost, yes."

  "If you wanted to go any faster, could you?"

  She stopped and thought. To Mark, it seemed as if she was checking something, maybe just as he would've asked himself if he could run another ten extra minutes at the end of a long exercise.

  "Yes, but not much faster," she finally answered. "I don't think we can make light speed, but I don't understand everything yet, either."

  "How about slower? Could you slow down?"

  "Yes. That's easy!" she answered.

  "How does it feel?" asked Aram.

  "I don't know how to describe it. It's as if the ship is my new body... somehow. I can do stuff with it just like I can do stuff with my hands. In fact --"

  She was suddenly surrounded, from head to toe and all the way around, by small, floating discs, each carrying different glyphs, just like the ones that had previously appeared on the walls.

  "--yes," she continued. "I can also control some of the things manually, by touching these symbols."

  She chose one that was floating next to her right hip, and brought it in front of her. Then, she waved all the other symbols away, and placed her palm on the floating disc. More, smaller discs sprang from it, and she touched one.

  A three-dimensional representation of their ship appeared in her front. She touched another symbol, and divisions representing each room, with its circular walls, flat floor and arched ceiling, manifested themselves in the ship model.

  "That's amazing," said Mark. "I really wish I knew how you can do all that."

  She pointed at one particular room.

  "That's the room we're in right now," she said, and touched it. The room began to glow in the model, and command circles, with various symbols on them, sprang out around it.

  She touched one, and then asked: "Can you feel?"

  It took them a few seconds to realise it.

  "It's getting warmer," said Aram.

  "And now, colder!" she said, with a quick laugh.

  The temperature dropped a few degrees in another couple of seconds.

  Mark had the distinct impression of a kid playing with a car's climate control system. He sought to distract her with a more serious question.

  "I have a question," he said.

  "Go on," she said.

  He made a quick pause, then asked:

  "What's the name of this ship?"

  Doina stopped too, and looked at him, frowning. She concentrated for a few seconds but found no answer.

  "Maybe ask the voice?" suggested Aram.

  Silently, she produced the relevant disc and simply threw it towards Aram.

  "Whoa," he said, unprepared. The ADM symbol stopped right in front of his face. He winced, then raised his hand and touched it. It didn't feel solid, but it started to glow. He coughed and asked Mark's question:

  "What is the name of thi
s ship?"

  "The ship had no name," the voice said, "until it had a master. Now, the ship imparts her master's name."

  That seemed like an excellent idea to all of them.

  "Hey, we should have it written outside, on the hull," Mark said.

  Doina smiled. "A good thing I can write my own name," she said.

  The model of the starship changed; instead of the semi-transparent view, it only showed its black outer hull. On it, in huge, irregular, silver capital letters, appeared the name:

  DOI.

  XIII.

  She tried to explain as best she could. She didn't have the scientific knowledge to understand everything herself, but Mark knew that even a Nobel prize winner in physics from his day would not completely grasp the workings of the alien ship. Variable artificial gravity -- if that was what it was -- or near-light accelerations with no inertial effects, those were all considered impossible in 2014.

  She told them that the ship was moving by propelling very tiny things in any direction it wanted (well, in any direction she wanted, now), right through the hull. It was somehow related to the way they had been brought in, directly through the planet itself, but she didn't have the words to clarify.

  Mark and Aram tried to access Room One's walls, but they couldn't. Doina alone could turn the starfield on and off, and could operate the room's doors without even touching the walls. So they started making little experiments. At first, they tried to turn the projection off and back on. Then, she turned it off, and both men tried, without any success whatsoever, to turn it back on. It only worked for her and nobody else. Then, they tried exiting and getting back in, to make sure the room recalled its function. It did. Aram even tried to hide in the ship, only to see if Doina could find him from the command room. He randomly skipped from ceiling to floor to spoke to airlock to spoke to room and back to a spoke again. Wherever he went, he was accompanied by a smiley face, crudely drawn on the wall.

  Sitting cross-legged with his back to the wall in Room One, watching Doina virtually chasing the blond Dacian through the torus, Mark started thinking of more serious things.

  "Doi," he called. "Can we communicate with Aram directly?"

  "You mean, by speaking?" she asked.

  "Well, yes."

  She grinned a little mischievously, while she made the relevant symbol appear and touched it. Then she nodded towards Mark.

  "Aram, can you hear us?" Mark asked.

  The Dacian was just finishing shifting from the wall-floor of a spoke to the floor-wall of a room. Hearing Mark's voice from the walls, he was startled and nearly lost his balance.

  "That you, Mark?" he asked, stupidly.

  "Yes," came the answer. "Doina found out how we can speak at a distance. Can you please come back to One?"

  "On my way," he replied.

  Back in the control room, Mark explained to Doina:

  "We're probably going to need a way to call each other if we're ever separated. I suppose we could pass messages via the ADM, but talking directly would be better."

  "That's true," she agreed.

  "Is it possible that each of us have our own symbol on the wall, so we could call each other by touching those?"

  She thought for a little. "I don't see why not."

  The floor door opened and Aram floated in.

  "What's going on?" he asked.

  "Mark thought of a way we could speak to each other from anywhere within the ship," she explained. "I'm gonna give you each a circle with a letter: A for Aram, M for Mark and D for me. They'll appear when you touch the wall in any room except this. You touch it, and Doi -- the ship, not me," she added smiling, "-- will carry your voice to wherever the other one happens to be."

  "That'll do great," said Mark. "Thanks. We'll try it out in a minute. But until then, I have another question."

  "I think you have a million questions. I'll try to answer if I can."

  "How are we navigating? I mean, how do we know where we are and where we're going and how fast?"

  Doina inhaled deeply and became serious. She put her hand in her hair, concentrating to find the answer, and a way to communicate it. Finally, she swiped the floating projection of the ship away, and instead recalled the starfield. She dimmed the simulated light of the stars, then made them fall away, zooming out until the entire galaxy was filling the space in front of them.

  "That's our galaxy," Mark said.

  "Yes. And in the middle of it, there's a big black thing that sucks everything around itself into it."

  "That's called a black hole," supplied Mark.

  "Right. Well, we always know where we are because we always know where that thing is from us. And we know where that thing is by looking at the effect it has on the space and time around us."

  "Wow," interjected Aram. "You actually understand what you just said?"

  "No, not all of it," admitted Doina. "But I know it's true. Whenever we go towards something, like we're now going towards Earth, Doi-the-ship puts us and the destination on a circle that has the black hole in its centre. In that way, I can tell that in every second we cover two hundred and ninety-nine thousand, seven hundred and ninety-two and a half kilometres."

  "...and a half," repeated Aram ironically.

  "Well. Four hundred and fifty-seven metres."

  "And how many centimetres?"

  "But the destination is also moving," intervened Mark. "The Earth has its own path around the Sun, and the Sun moves as well."

  "True," she said. "But Doi-the-ship knows that, and so we're heading to a place where the Earth will be when we get there."

  "Of course." Mark felt a little stupid for asking that.

  "Like shooting an arrow at a running deer," the Dacian said. "You need to aim in front of it."

  Or like sniping.

  "That reminds me," continued Aram. "Speaking of deer. Doi, is there anything you can do about food? I've been trying to explain to that ADM thing what food is, but it didn't work out too well."

  "I'm not really sure how to do it, but I do need to try," she said. "I'm getting really hungry myself. After all, I haven't eaten since year one thousand one hundred and eleven, and I only had a boiled potato then!"

  "Well, I haven't eaten since nine hundred years before you were born," half-joked Aram in turn. "And I had cheese."

  XIV.

  In the end, she got it almost right. It took copious amounts of explaining and experimentation, trials and failures generally marked by gagging and colourful expletives, but the ship eventually understood the energy requirement of their metabolism and physiology, and figured out a way to supply it. It produced small, brown lumps that turned out to be edible and, it was felt and hoped, even nutritious.

  Taste was a bit of a problem; adding salt was easy once Mark remembered that salt was sodium chloride. Sweet or sour, however, were complicated. Sugar, Mark knew, had something to do with glucose or fructose, which were organic compounds, and way outside his area of expertise. He told the ADM as much, and the ADM was aware that those words existed in the English lexicon, but in the human's head they were not attached to a chemical formula, and so were meaningless to it. After more experimentation, they managed to add a slightly acid tinge to the brown lump and called it good enough for the moment.

  They all agreed that it was bad, but much better than starving, made a group decision to keep experimenting, then temporarily resigned.

  They moved into Room Two. For their first meal aboard the starship, Aram ordered a wide, short cylinder to be used as a table, and three shorter cubes for each of them to sit on. Then, he ordered their trademark bowl in triplicate, filled with water. Mark had the idea to create the meal lumps in rectangular form, which he called "meal bars," and to make the salty ones reddish and the more acid ones greenish. They filled another bowl with bars, and sat around the table.

  "Well. This is a little better," said Aram, munching serenely.

  "Yes," agreed Doina, also chewing on a green bar.

  "S
o, what do you think we should do next?" Aram asked Mark.

  Mark drank a little water, then said:

  "Well, right now, we don't have that many options. We can either keep flying towards Earth, or do as the owners asked and go gallivanting around the galaxy, or go elsewhere -- though I don't really know where that elsewhere might be."

  "I vote for Earth," said Aram.

  "Me, too," said Doina.

  "Well, I want to go home as well," said Mark. "Doi, you said we're about two weeks away?"

  "Just about, yes," she answered smugly.

  "OK. If we were to stray off course, would you or the ADM be able to get us back on track?"

  "I'm sure of it."

  "Then, I think we should experiment with flying the ship a little, see what it can do and what it can't, and just generally prepare ourselves."

  "You expect trouble?" asked Aram.

  "I don't know what to expect. I don't know what year it'll be when we arrive. For all we know, Earth may not even be there by then."

  "It'll be there," said Doina confidently.

  "No, I'm not talking about navigational errors," he explained. "I'm saying we have no way to look into the future and anything is possible. Earth could even be destroyed."

  "How can you destroy a whole planet?!" asked Aram with scepticism.

  "Trust me, it's possible," Mark said. "In fact, in my time, it was always a risk. Weapons were so powerful and nation leaders were such idiots, that for most of the time we lived knowing that the world might end in the next five minutes."

  The other two just stared at him.

  "Thanks for telling us that our descendants became a bunch of shitheads," said the Dacian wryly.

  Mark smiled.

  "I'm sure everyone will still be there," he said. "Probably living in tall towers with robot butlers and flying around in bubble cars and walking on moving sidewalks and all that."

  The others still stared at him. He shuffled on his seat and changed the subject.

  "Anyway. What time is it?"

  That was another excellent question.

  "How do we keep track of time?" asked Aram. "There's no sun above."

  "I'm sure the ADM keeps track of it," he said. "It's just a matter of converting to our system and adopting a frame of reference."