A Stitch In Space

by Christopher Lansdown

  “Good morning,” she said.

  “Good morning. How are you feeling?”

  “About exactly as you’d expect. My leg aches, and I don’t have much energy, but I’m alive and quite happy about that.”

  “I think that you’re the most cheerful person on this ship.”

  “Just because I might be dead tomorrow doesn’t mean I’m dead today,” Freia said.

  Fr. Xris smiled.

  “Is there anything that I can do for you?” he asked.

  “No,” Freia said. “Leave me to my reading and go keep the crew from killing each other.”

  “That’s an impressive knowledge of human nature,” Fr. Xris said.

  “It’s not miraculous to know that everyone gets desperate in a crisis where he has no job,” Freia said, “But actually I was texting Katie before you came, and she told me what you’d been doing.”

  Fr. Xris laughed.

  “I’ll stop by later,” he said.

  * * *

  Quake XIV would be immediately recognizable to anyone who had played the previous thirteen versions of the game. It had better graphics than its predecessors, of course, and it was generally hailed as having the best team-playing mechanic in the franchise. The game absorbed the interest of the crew for several hours until they had to take a bathroom break. While it had been going it was like a magic spell, but once the spell was broken it was shattered. Playing had been cathartic, but it had used up people’s need for catharsis, and so most lost interest.

  Fr. Xris tried mightily, but in the end he couldn’t stop Belle from summoning Katie for a progress report.

  Katie didn’t look pleased when she entered the room.

  “Yes, Captain?” she asked.

  “How’s it going?” Belle replied.

  “I still don’t know whether it will work,” Katie said.

  “But are you making any progress? Have you been able to tighten the error bounds at all?”

  “Not significantly,” Katie admitted.

  “Have you looked into the priest’s idea about calculating exactly when we left the slipstream to calibrate the accelerometers?”

  “I did a few calculations, but I can’t see what that buys us. I mean, we’d know our acceleration for a few moments, but our acceleration couldn’t have been constant for hours.”

  “The problem is only until the pirate ship got off of our backs, right?” Fr. Xris asked. It wasn’t much, but he didn’t want to leave silence where he could avoid it.

  “Yeah,” Katie said. “At that point we’re back to a known mass and can do thrust times time to calculate our distance.”

  A barren silence followed. No one had anything to say.

  It was a featureless silence, and no one knew how long it had lasted when Katie broke it. “Wait!” she exclaimed. “That will work! Father Xris did have the answer. He was just asking the wrong question. We don’t want to calibrate the accelerometers, we need to calculate the mass of the pirate ship. We know the thrust we applied, and the accelerometers tell us how much acceleration that produced, so we know the mass!”

  Katie jumped in excitement, then before anyone could say anything, she said, “Belle, give me just a few minutes. This won’t take long. I’ll be right back once I’ve worked this out. There’s still accelerometer drift, so I need to do some averaging and filtering... It may not be enough, but this is going to be a massive improvement!”

  She ran out of the room before Belle could respond.

  “Permission granted,” Belle said. It’s less a subversion of authority if a person correctly anticipated your orders.

  The room was filled with nervous energy. This was the first time that Katie had seemed optimistic. There was no conversation, however. The only things there were to say were all obvious, and the captain’s stares combined with her recent exertions of authority made everyone independently decide that what they had to say wasn’t worth the risk of annoying her.

  Twenty minutes later, Katie came back. “I’ve managed to get the error bars down to about twenty kilometers!” She said. “I know it’s not perfect, but at over 100,000 kilometers away, it’s pretty amazing. And that’s the best that we’re going to get.”

  “It will have to do, then,” Belle said. “Let’s plot the course. Katie, do you want to write the navigational program?”

  “Sure,” Katie said.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll check it over myself before we activate it.”

  “Of course,” Katie said.

  Because of the vast distances involved in space travel and the consequent need for frequent course corrections, you didn’t drive space ships by pointing them in a direction and setting the throttle. Instead you entered a navigational program. They generally weren’t complex, but it was especially important to get braking correct so as not to crash into anything, and when you’re traveling at a significant fraction of the speed of light, the point at which you have to start braking is more precise than is sensible to leave up to human control. Moreover, because of the capacity for damage that large ships traveling at near-relativistic speeds could cause, it was standard procedure for all navigational programs to be checked by an officer.

  Katie sat down at a desk and called up a programming interface. It was a tense several minutes where only the brave dared to breathe more than absolutely necessary.

  “I just need to read it through again,” Katie said, “it should only take a minute. Oh, there’s the issue of getting us turned around accurately. Did you guys build that inertial reference launching system?”

  “We did,” Jack said.

  “I’ll finish the program, then go check that out while Belle looks it over.”

  She finished only a little later than her prediction, then popped up from the desk and said to Jack and Fr. Xris, “lead the way!”

  Getting suited up, then space-walking to the railgun which Jack and Fr. Xris built took considerably longer than the inspection itself.

  “Looks good,” Katie said. “Have you tested it?”

  “Yes,” Jack said.

  “OK, that’s why you only have two projectiles here. Sounds good. Can you load it up now and launch from inside?”

  “We didn’t bother building that functionality,” Fr. Xris said.

  “That would mean you’d have to spacewalk back inside while the ship is moving. I think we’re better off having Stan do it. Robots don’t get dizzy. Let’s all get inside.”

  They got back to the bridge and Katie reiterated her approval.

  “Your navigational program looks good,” Captain West said, “but I did want to ask about your choice of thrust. You’re only using the cruise engine?”

  “We have one working main engine and one working cruise engine,” Katie said. “I’m going to start bringing up the other engine once Stan fixes Spark and I get some more sleep. But if the main engine fails, the cruise engine wouldn’t be able to stop us. If the cruise engine fails, the main engine can. Also, the cruise engine spools up and down faster, and we’re going to have to kill it, turn around, and reverse our thrust quickly given the comparatively short distances involved. When we do flip around, given the way our spilloff has been so abused lately, I want to minimize the amount we have to use it. Probably the most important thing, though, is that less thrust is easier to measure accurately, since there’s less turbulence in it.”

  “Makes sense,” Belle said. “enter it as written.”

  Katie sent the navigational program to the course computer and Belle entered the command to activate it.

  “It will start as soon as you guys fire the reference point,” Belle said.

  “We didn’t build in remote firing capability,” Jack said. “Katie said that we should have Stan press the firing button since he can spacewalk back with the ship turning more easily than we can.”

  “OK,” Belle said, simply.

  Jack called Stan and gave him the orders including describing what the firing button looked like and where it was. Inter
nal communications would not work outside the ship, through its armor, and it would be embarrassing if the robot had to come back inside to ask for clarification.

  Three minutes later they heard a very faint scraping sound echo through the ship’s superstructure then felt the ship begin to turn.

  “We’re committed,” Belle said.

  “I sure hope we got it right,” Jack said.

  “There’s no point in thinking about that,” Belle said. “But we do have a lot of damage that needs to be fixed. As soon as Stan gets back in, let’s see how much more he has to do to get Spark working. Not too much, I’d think. And we haven’t even done a proper evaluation of the damage to the ship. Not to mention a whole lot of paperwork to do. For the time being, let’s all just assume that we’re going to find the slipstream again and try to get some of that work done now so we’ll have more free time for partying when we do find the slipstream.”

  “I’ll scout out the first battle damage,” Biff said. “I really want to get a closer look at what happened where the pirates came in.”

  “I’ll join you,” Jack said. “I don’t know that I could do paperwork right now.”

  “I’ll check out the damage where we battled the lone Orca,” Kari said.

  “I’ll take a closer look at engineering,” Katie said.

  She was considering asking for a helper when the captain said, “Priest, would you talk to the passengers? I’d rather not.”

  “Certainly,” Fr. Xris said.

  He texted the three passengers to meet him in the lounge, and they were there before him. They looked up at him, Hannah anxiously, Shaka trustingly, and Xiao patiently.

  Fr. Xris looked for the words to begin.

  “How bad is it?” Hannah asked.

  “Properly speaking, we don’t know, but quite possibly not that bad.” Fr. Xris said.

  Fr. Xris described the attempts they were making to get back into the slipstream.

  “How close?” Xiao asked.

  “Within twenty kilometers,” Fr. Xris said, “and possibly much closer than that.”

  Xiao nodded.

  “So what if we don’t find the slipstream?” Hannah asked.

  “Then we keep looking for it,” Fr. Xris said. “We don’t have the thrusting fuel to go around in many circles, but we can try at least a few.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?”

  “We put out a beacon to passing ships and hope that someone passes by and catches the signal.”

  “And if no one passes by and hears it, we starve to death?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is not a good way to go,” Xiao said.

  “There are no good ways to die,” Fr. Xris said, “since death is an evil.”

  “But,” he continued, “it’s only a natural evil. The body is scared, because the body doesn’t understand that death is not the end.”

  “Death is how you get to heaven,” Shaka said. “Death is how you shed the sorrows of this life. It is a blessing.”

  “So you’re saying that I should want to die?” Hannah asked.

  “No,” Fr. Xris said. “Death may be necessary, now, but it is not itself good. And this life, though imperfect, is good. Death should not be feared, but neither should life.”

  “Better,” Xiao said, “to accept life and death as they come. They will anyway. If you do not fight it, you will not be in turmoil.”

  “So long as that means trusting that God has everything well in hand, however little we can understand the specifics, I agree,” Fr. Xris said. “If that means cooperating with evil when that’s less work than opposing evil, then we must disagree.”

  “There is no need for us to agree,” Xiao said, philosophically.

  “So what do we do?” Hannah asked.

  “Right now, we have the most difficult job of all,” Fr. Xris said. “We wait.”

  * * *

  Fr. Xris led them in prayers for a half hour, then excused himself to go check on Katie.

  He found her in the main engineering room. She was looking at some of the bullet holes in the back wall. As he walked in, she looked up and smiled.

  “They tore this place to hell,” she said.

  He let the metaphor go.

  “I was amazed at how destructive the battle was when it was going on. I think I heard almost two hundred bullets while I was in this room for less than two minutes.”

  “That’s right, you were here.”

  She paused a moment, picking her words. By the length of time she was silent, she had evidently discarded several possibilities.

  “So what what’s it like to be a hero?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly, I object to the term hero. I was able to help, and did. Those sort of opportunities rarely come up, so we don’t really know how most people would act in them. Whether I did anything unusual, we have no way of knowing.”

  “Modesty is annoying,” Katie said.

  “Only false modesty should be,” Fr. Xris said, “but I was being quite serious. Before you conclude I did anything extraordinary, allow for how extraordinary the circumstances were.”

  “Do you always act this way when people compliment you?”

  “I’m not one of those people who can’t handle praise when it’s deserved,” Fr. Xris said, “but the truth is more important to me. And I have a serious point. I don’t want you thinking so ill of the world when such a low opinion of it may not be justified.”

  “Why?” Katie asked.

  “I like the world,” Fr. Xris said.

  “I thought you thought the world was sinful.”

  “I do, and so you do. So does every sane person. You may use a different term, but you mean the same thing. But while the world is imperfect, it’s still quite good.”

  “Why are you so frustrating?” Katie asked.

  “I believe you have to figure that one out for yourself,” Fr. Xris said. “I don’t think any explanation I could give you would help.”

  “Fine,” Katie said, “if you want to be so difficult, what’s it like to have saved someone’s life?”

  “Pleasant,” he said.

  “That’s it?”

  “I don’t think that pleasure is a small thing. It’s gratifying that I was able to—in that narrow moment—be a part of God’s love to Freia.”

  “Where was God’s love when the bullet hit Freia?”

  “On its way, to get there when she needed it.”

  “So why not be there when the bullet was fired?”

  “I was speaking too glibly. Properly speaking the love of God was already there. The thing that you have to remember is that God didn’t create us then walk away. He created every moment of existence, so his maintenance of our existence is as much a part of his creative love as is our conception or birth. And while the bullet was being fired, the oxygen in the air was still there nourishing Freia. The laws of physics still worked making her heart pump blood. It’s only natural to focus on the one thing that went wrong—the bullet—but if you’re fair about it, there were many, many things going right at the same time. And, it’s important to notice, nothing that was needed was lacking. She didn’t bleed to death.”

  “But she bled a lot, and now is confined to bed!”

  “You’re assuming that she should be out of bed right now. But you have no way of knowing that. I trust God that this will work out for the best. I don’t understand how, but then you don’t understand the world any better because you don’t trust God. You can just describe your lack of understanding in fewer words.”

  “I’m not sure I get you,” Katie said.

  “My position is: I trust God. Your position is: shit happens. Neither one means that we understand the world. You just use one less word than I do to say that you don’t see what the point is. But as far as knowing what specific good can or can’t come from what happened, we’re equally in the dark. The only difference is that, as a response to our ignorance of the future, I trust God and you don’t.”

 
“You’re right, I don’t,” Katie said.

  “Which is your right,” Fr Xris said.

  “Really?” Katie said.

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s what free will means.”

  Katie looked at him.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you? This isn’t just some arguing trick, is it?”

  “Quite serious. God must be chosen freely, or not at all.”

  Katie was quiet.

  “Why are you so different from the christians I knew growing up?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t even have a guess,” he said.

  At that moment Stan interrupted them to let them know that he had completed repairs on Spark, who was now functional.

  “Awesome,” Katie said, “now we can finally start repairing things!”

  “What’s first?” Fr. Xris asked.

  “A thorough check of the energy spill-off,” Katie said. “We can get back with one engine, but we could destroy ourselves if we use a broken spill-off.”

  “How like an engineer, to pick the correct thing over the most emotionally satisfying thing.”

  “Are you thinking it’s a pity I do that for religion too?” Katie asked, without malice.

  “Actually, I was thinking that it’s a great pity that you don’t,” Fr. Xris said, and smiled.

  Katie laughed.

  “I had come to offer my help,” Fr. Xris said, “But since you have Spark back, that’s not needed, so I’ll let you get to your work.”

  “Yeah,” Katie said, “I’ve probably got the most important job to do right now. But thank you for the offer. If Spark hadn’t been fixed, it would have been a life saver.”

  “My pleasure,” Fr. Xris said, and turned to leave.

  “Hey,” Katie said.

  “Yes?” Fr. Xris said.

  “Even though I still think you’re wrong, thank you for not giving up on me.”

  Fr. Xris smiled.

  “Never,” he said.

  * * *

  After retiring to his room for a few minutes to say some private prayers, he went in search of Hannah to see how she was doing. He found her alone in the lounge.

  “How are you doing?” he asked.

  “Scared,” she said.

  “Me too,” Fr. Xris said. “But how are you handling it?”