Kzine Issue 21

by Graeme Hurry et al.

  The captain paused again. The poet was never quite sure if he paused for dramatic effect or because he was communicating with the other Mechans and dealing with other matters. “You, on the other hand, what is your purpose?”

  This was a rhetorical question, but the poet had learned from experience to indulge the captain. “I am a poet, I create beauty with words. I entertain.”

  “Ah,” said the captain as if he had learned something new and slightly surprising. “And for how long have you been doing this?”

  “I have been the ship’s poet for more than twenty years,” said the poet. “As you damn well know you stupid machine.” He didn’t add.

  “And how much poetry have you produced in that time?”

  “I have written fourteen collections containing more than three hundred poems. I have composed music for a third of those and four of my poems have been turned into theatre plays,” said the poet with quite a bit of pride in his voice.

  “Impressive,” agreed the captain. “And when was the last time you finished a poem?”

  This was the sticking point and the poet knew it. There was no use hiding it or running circles around it.

  “Eight months ago,” he admitted. “But you must understand how difficult it is to be creative in this environment.”

  The captain paused again for what seemed like an exceptionally long period of time. Something was surely going on between the Mechans. It was easy to forget how much was continuously happening that humans had no chance of picking up on. The Mechans communicated electronically and at a much higher speed than humans were capable of. They could be having entire conversations in the timespan it took the poet to blink. He wondered if they were talking about him, but decided that if the conversation was so long and complex that it made the captain noticeably pause, it must be something more convoluted than what to do with a mere poet.

  “Environment?” said the captain finally. “So there is something wrong with the environment then? Should we ask the scrubber what it thinks? Would the environment stop him from cleaning the bridge?”

  The poet was impressed that the captain managed a slightly mocking tone. Mechans weren’t too good on subtleties.

  “I do creative work, I need inspiration. I can’t just sit in a cell and pull poems out of thin air.”

  “Why not? Isn’t that exactly what creative thinking is? To create something out of nothing?” The captain was silent for a moment then he turned towards the poet. “I personally have never been much impressed with creative thinking, you know. I find it overrated, chaotic, and unnecessary. But my crew, some of them at least, assure me that creativity is the one thing that you humans can still contribute. Are you saying that you cannot be creative anymore? That you can only take input, process it and put it back out as a poem? Is that all you do?”

  The poet had to be careful. If the Mechans thought too little of what he did, he would surely be eliminated. The Mechans’ appreciation for his art was the only reason he was kept alive. “Writer’s block,” he said. “I am suffering from a severe case of writer’s block, but I’m sure I’ll snap out of it.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. I have some ideas I have been toying with.”

  Again the captain paused. The poet looked around to see if he could get a hint at what was going on, but Mechans didn’t have interfaces to interact with the ship, it was directly connected to their neural network and they got all the information sent right into their artificial brains. They also controlled the ship and communicated in this same way which made it impossible for a human to figure out what was going on. The bridge and every other location on the ship was stark and without the screens, buttons, and vents that adorned human ships. The poet at times felt like he was living in a giant sensory deprivation tank.

  “Good,” said the captain. “Soon then. Make it fun, entertain us. Let’s say tomorrow. Then you have nearly twenty-five hours to make something out of your ideas.” The Mechan referred to the Martian day of twenty-five hours, since that was where most Mechans lived and Mechan spaceships tended to follow the Martian daytime cycle.

  To the poet this sounded like a death sentence.

  “Now go join the others, I have other more pressing issues I must attend to.”

  * * *

  The poet, or Jeffrey as his name was, had to put on a breather mask to return to the human quarters. Not all the hallways had a breathable atmosphere, but the route he was led by at least had pressure. He was happy to see that he would be let into the common room to be with the other people instead of spending his last day in solitude. He was quite convinced that this would indeed be his last day as the ships poet. He did not have anything brewing and did not have even the most remote idea of what to compose. If in eight months he hadn’t come up with anything, he could see no way of doing it over the next day. In a way it was understandable. He wouldn’t keep a broken utility around either and that was exactly what he was. Broken. Or maybe spent was a better description. He had written three hundred poems since he first arrived at the ship, and writing another seemed impossible right now. The threat and deadline only made him anxious. He needed something to write about, experiences, something to spark an idea. Anything.

  In the common room, he joined Jeanette who was sitting with her screen. She created digital paintings and had a device for it. She had never left the human quarters of the ship, and Jeffrey’s self-pity made him feel a pinch of guilt. He at least got to go to the bridge and other parts of the ship to recite a new poem when he had written one. Jeannette’s paintings were enjoyed by the Mechans through a digital transfer straight into their visual data stream. She was an artist who never met her audience.

  Maybe he could write a poem about being trapped and isolated? He immediately discarded that idea. He had composed at least twenty poems about that very theme, and though they were some of his most heartfelt ones, the Mechans did not seem to care much for them. Maybe they felt some shame when listening to them. Then again, maybe not.

  Jeanette smiled at him. “How did it go?” she asked.

  “Oh, so-so.” answered Jeffrey, he didn’t want to trouble or worry her.

  “Look at this.” Jeanette was clearly excited about something and wasn’t interested in hearing about Jeffrey’s experience on the bridge. Instead she handed him her screen. “I caught this transmission.”

  She smiled at Jeffrey’s puzzled expression. The Mechans did not use any type of communication that was detectable by Jeanette’s screen. He took it and played the transmission. A redheaded woman appeared. Jeffrey Gasped. Since he arrived on the Mechan ship he hadn’t seen a person other than the ten artists that were kept with him. The redheaded woman looked to be in her fifties, but they all knew not to judge spacers by appearance. Radiation from space and the lack of gravity often made people look older than they were.

  She looked stoic and carried herself with certainty and confidence. She wore a sleeveless T-shirt with some military looking pins and insignia that Jeffrey didn’t quite recognize. Her red hair was tied up in a tight short ponytail. She had high cheekbones which was something rarely seen in spacers as long exposure to the zero g environment tended to make people’s faces look puffy. Her arms were crossed in front of her and her facial expression made it clear that this was not a social call.

  She was magnificent.

  “This is a message to the Mechan piece of junk patrolling twelve thousand clicks in front of us. Our records show that you have twelve human prisoners on board. I demand that you release them immediately to my custody so we can bring them home.” The woman spoke as someone accustomed to giving orders. She stood still for a moment awaiting the Mechan reply. After a few seconds she nodded to someone off-screen and said: “Speakers.”

  Most Mechans sounded the same. They didn’t use audio to communicate between themselves, so unless they had a specific reason not to, they used the same simulated voice. “Your information is wrong.” Came the Mechan voice over the speakers. “
We have ten humans as guests here. Two have died several years ago.”

  The woman did not waiver one bit. “Send us docking parameters so the humans can be transferred to us.”

  “I presume that if we refuse you will use force?” asked the Mechan

  “I most certainly will,” said the woman.

  When it was apparent that no reply was forthcoming from the Mechans, the woman again nodded to someone off screen and the transmission ended.

  Jeffrey sat in silence for a moment. “Wow.” he finally said.

  “Is that your professional opinion as a poet?” Jeanette smiled from ear to ear.

  “What a woman! Such bravado! Did you see that?” he gestured excited at the screen. “When did you receive this?”

  “While you were on the bridge with your friend the captain.”

  “So, this is half an hour ago? Is she coming for us now?” asked Jeffrey.

  “I don’t know,” said Jeanette dismissively. “But if anyone is going to do it, I bet she is the kind that could.” A smile lit up her face. “Could you imagine? Freedom?”

  “Are you going to show the others?”

  “I don’t want them to get their hopes up if it turns out she is just a delusional lunatic. But you,” she paused and caressed Jeffrey’s chin. “You look like you could use a little hope, even the false kind.”

  * * *

  Jeffrey’s private room was two by two meters and as stark and undecorated as the rest of the ship. White walls with no features but the faint glow from the internal lightning made it hard for the eye to focus. In there, was a bed and a small desk with a blank notebook and a soft-tipped pen. Jeffrey had originally requested the notebook and the pen saying that this was the only tool he could use to compose his poems, even though he didn’t care what he wrote with and on. He had hoped the Mechans would be taken aback and spend weeks locating the equipment. He could even imagine them having to change course and dock with a space station or perhaps even Mars home base in order to find a soft-tipped pen. Disappointingly it had taken the Mechans less than ten minutes to come up with exactly what he had requested. He was never sure if they had the material on ship or if they produced it on the spot when it was needed. Probably the latter.

  For the first time in months, Jeffrey was sitting at the desk, pen in hand, ready to put words on pages. He wanted to write a poem, a grandiose poem about heroes and villains, love and war, death and freedom. The poem would be about a blue bearded warrior - a red headed woman would have been too obvious - who rode into battle against all odds and came home victorious. He could hear the rhythm of the verse in his head, the words would be coming. He could feel it. He hummed tones without melody and closed his eyes while he let the paragraphs form in his mind. Line by line he saw it and the pen danced swiftly across the pages. He stopped a second to catch a rhyme and laughed out loud when it came to him.

  Twenty minutes later he stopped, his forehead wet with perspiration. He had filled several pages. He counted the verses and saw that more than twenty had formed in the notebook. He closed the book and opened it back up on page one. The first couple of verses had words crossed out and re-written, but after page one there were no crossed out words. The poem had flowed from him with speed and he saw that his writing had become quick and sloppy. He read the poem and had the feeling of reading something written by a different person. The joy of writing had taken such hold of him that he hardly remembered what he had written.

  While reading the poem he noticed that it was not a war epic. No, it was different. It was a love story. It was the story of a young naïve girl falling in love with the blue-bearded warrior. It was the girl telling the story and the warrior was even more extraordinary when seen through her eyes.

  Jeffrey loved it. It was easily one of his best works. He stood up and started reciting it out loud to hear what it sounded like when spoken.

  Just then there was a hard knock on the door.

  Jeffrey froze.

  The Mechans never knocked on his door. If they wanted to see him they simply entered with no regard for his privacy.

  The humans were not allowed to visit each other in their private quarters so it couldn’t be one of them. He leaned against the door listening for clues from the other side. He could hear the sounds of the ship moving, the engines slight rumble carried through the hull, but it was such a constant sound that Jeffrey had to force himself to actually hear it.

  There was also another slight sound, almost like a voice but too faint to make out the words.

  Not knowing how to react he tapped on the door with his knuckles and said: “Hello.” Then he put his ear flat on the door and held his breath.

  The voice on the other side of the door kept repeating something, something about the door. He focused all his attention. He heard a word that sounded like ‘stake’ or ‘slap’ or ‘step’. He tried to build it into a phrase “Slap a stray on the floor”. Jeffrey didn’t understand. A muffled boom was heard. Like a gun fired in vacuum where the sound was carried through the vibrations of the shooter, the floor and finally into his quarters where the air was pressurized. “Stake afraid or the door?” That didn’t make any sense.

  It suddenly dawned on him.

  “Step away from the door!”

  Once he heard it, it became clear as day. Jeffrey was so proud of himself for having made out the phrase that he almost forgot to actually comprehend the words. When he did, he hurried to the back of his room and sat on the bed. He was only a meter and a half away from the door, so he curled up and covered his face with his hands.

  He felt more than heard the muffled explosion that blew the door askew on its hinges. The pressure in the room immediately dropped to near zero and Jeffrey gasped for air. There was no feeling of wind when the air left the room, but he suddenly had trouble breathing and could feel the pressure pushing on his face from the inside. He couldn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t hear. He reached out to grab a hold of something, and his hands found his notebook. He grasped it and tumbled forward off the bed.

  His head was suddenly pulled back and he could feel hands and materials being pushed and pulled around his face. He realized that someone was putting a mask over his head. The mask snapped into place and a tube from it went into his mouth. Clean breathable air rushed through the tube and he took a deep breath. He opened his eyes for the first time since his door had been blown open. The mask covered his entire face all the way back over his ears. He could feel pressure coming back and his ears popped painfully.

  “We need to move,” He heard a voice. Some kind of transmitter in the mask. He looked up and saw a person clad in a minimalistic thin spacesuit standing in front of him. “The mask will keep you going for a few minutes, but the vacuum will get to you if you don’t get to a pressurized room. Come with me.” The spacesuit motioned him to follow.

  Jeffrey didn’t have much of a choice. There was no atmospheric pressure in his room now and with or without a mask, that would kill him in minutes. He could already feel the pain in his joints as he tried to bend them. He looked at his arms and saw his veins bulging out sickeningly.

  He jumped from the bed and in the nearly zero g environment of the ship he was propelled through the door and out into the hallway. The Mechans kept the ship on a slight rotation to simulate a minimum of gravity, mostly to hold things in place, but it wasn’t anything like mars or even lunar gravity. The person in the spacesuit followed him quickly. He grabbed Jeffrey’s hand and started running down the corridor in long jumps.

  “In here,” he said and made a sharp left turn. They entered into a cargo area where boxes and crates were strewn out on the floor. The room wasn’t a big one and it was busy. He saw the other humans from the ship standing in a group looking frightened. Three spacers with spacesuits like the one that had led Jeffrey here were standing guard and moving the humans around. All three were armed with heavy assault rifles. Jeffrey winced. Few things were as unwelcome in outer space as projectile weapons.

&
nbsp; Jeffrey saw his skin was turning bruised from being in a vacuum. He had a sickening feeling in his throat and his skin felt like it was on fire.

  They heard a sharp hiss and the pain slowly began to fade away.

  “They are pressurizing the hallway and the cargo bay,” said one of the spacesuits. “They don’t want their precious slaves to die.”

  ‘I don’t want to die’, thought Jeffrey.

  A moment later the room was filled with a breathable atmosphere. The now four spacesuits all hit a button on the side of their helmet that opened up their visors. Two men and two women looked around. They looked so different, thought Jeffrey. So large and strong. He had forgotten how much he and his companions had wasted away over the years. Living in zero g and being kept alive for twenty years by what the Mechans understood to be a healthy diet had turned them into shadows of their former selves. They were thin in ways you could only get thin in space. Jeffrey looked down at his hands. His fingers looked like twigs on a bush. Thin and gnarly. Compared with the four newcomers, his companion’s faces all looked like skeletons. Hairless, with deep set eyes and with the bone structure dictating the facial expression. They looked like two different species.

  Apparently Jeffrey wasn’t the only one stricken by this difference. The four spacers all looked horrified at the prisoners. “We wait here,” one of them said. “Our captain will come looking for us here.”

  As if on cue, they heard a door open at the far end of the corridor. They couldn’t see it open since the cargo room’s door only revealed the opposite wall of the corridor and the door was down the hall. They heard the characteristic steps of someone moving as fast as possible in zero g. It was like running in slow motion. You couldn’t get much traction, so you had to sort of skip in long strides. Then another door was heard opening at the opposite end of the corridor. The steps coming from there were noticeable different. Quick clacks from metallic limbs with grapples at the end of them. Mechans!