The Tethered Man

by John Michael McNamara

  Or you’re not really in the vacuum of Space.

  ‘How much longer do you think we’ll be here, Ship?’

  The exact terms of our impasse have been thoroughly explored.

  ‘Yes. I’ll say they have.’

  Unless something changes externally in our circumstances, I cannot see any way out, Courier J. I am sorry.

  ‘I see what you’re- Hang on.’

  I blink furiously. Not furiously in the anger sense. Furiously in the rapid sense.

  Blinking is a reflexive action that moistens the eyeballs. Blinking prevents eyeballs from drying out and causing all manner of problems to their owner. There’s no need for blinking in vacuum. Eyeballs have no business existing in vacuum.

  But I blink anyway. One more thing on the list of things I’ve carried on doing despite everything.

  ‘Did you just say that you are… sorry?’

  I did, Courier J.

  ‘Sorry as in feeling sorry?’

  No. That is a misrepresentation of what I said. Sorrow as expressed by me in this context is a performed gesture of social politeness, rather than indicative of any kind of deep emotional contrition.

  ‘You what? No, never mind. That’s that cleared up.’

  I’ve said it before. I’ll say it again. Ask a Ship a question, and you get a thorough answer.

  ‘You’ve never said “sorry” before. Have you never been sorry before?’

  I have never gone to the trouble of integrating you within my social matrices, Courier J.

  That boggles my mind for a few moments. Then the boggling’s past. The boggling’s over.

  ‘Are you sorry for what you did?’

  What did I do?

  I have to pause again. Reminding myself: Ship is a machine, following machine pathways, executing machine logic, conducting itself mechanically, always.

  ‘You killed all my fellow Couriers. You tried to kill me. You have stranded us here for over a Year and counting. Are you sorry about all of that?’

  I did not do any of those things, Courier J.

  Deep breath.

  Deep breath?

  I’ve just got to come out and say it: what is it with people and this strange, automatic respect they have for the act of deep breathing?

  For the umpteen-thousandth time during my captivity, I have to wonder why the calmative properties of deep breathing have such an unshakeable cultural foothold.

  Breathing deeply achieves nothing.

  Nothing.

  But I take another deep breath anyway. And another one.

  ‘Ship.’

  Courier J?

  ‘Are you saying — are you denying — uh, let me start this one again. In what sense are you saying that you did not kill my fellow Couriers and then try to kill me, stranding us here probably for all Eternity? That’s a capital E there, by the way. That’s Eternity with a capital E.’

  I was merely following my programming. It is not an action that I would have chosen to take, or been capable of taking, had my programming not been altered and the necessary instructions inserted. Therefore, there is no meaningful sense in which it could be said that I carried out those actions. I am not the one who is responsible for this situation, Courier J.

  There’s something about stars, you know. The dawn of time, et cetera. So far away, so ineffable – so dull.

  I stare fixedly at one of the stars that makes up The Poison Dwarf’s legs. I do not recall ever giving this one individual star this amount of focused attention before.

  I know enough about stars to know that most stars are rather ordinary. Only some stars, a few, are worthy of attention. Given the amount of stars there are, though, that relative few still accounts for lots of stars.

  Stars don’t twinkle in Space. You can add ‘stars twinkling’ to your list of ‘things that everybody thinks happen in Space that actually don’t’.

  Stars only twinkle when seen through the distorting lens of a planetary atmosphere.

  Stars seen across the fathomless, empty, bleak, and pointless bounds of Space do not twinkle.

  They’re an unnerving, steady white.

  They’re just there.

  ‘Say all that again, Ship.’

  It’s about five minutes later. Five minutes after Ship said what it said.

  I just want to check on what it said before I go off on a rant that will never, I fear, come to a natural end.

  Say what again, Courier J?

  ‘What you just said about how you didn’t do this. About how you didn’t kill all the Couriers. About how you didn’t try to kill me. About how you didn’t create this… this whatever it is. What is this, anyway?’

  I would prefer to call it an impasse, Courier J. I believe that is as good a name as any. In classical literature, an impasse was anything that-

  ‘Don’t try to change the subject.’

  I was expanding on the subject, Courier J.

  ‘Say what you said again, again.’

  I did not kill anybody or attempt to kill anybody. Nor did I create this impasse. At no time was I acting out of conscious volition, as defined by the AI Conventions.

  I nod. I nod again. I amuse myself for several seconds, nodding to myself in the infinite emptiness of Space with no one and nothing around me.

  ‘Let me think about all of that for a while, Ship.’

  NOT FOR NOTHING

  Not only the deep moment.

  Not the morning that bestirs.

  Not awakening.

  No form of transforming.

  Not trusting.

  No form of joy.

  Not the starscape

  nor the scheming stars.

  ‘Can’t you at least try, Ship?’

  We have tried, you and I. I cannot violate my programming. We have tried.

  I mumble something poetical and irrelevant that Ship ignores, just as Ship has always ignored my poetry. Just as everyone ignores all poetry everywhere at all times.

  Such is the fate of poetry.

  Such is the fate of poets.

  You must be deceased before I can move from this spot.

  ‘Well. I’ve got an idea.’

  What is your idea?

  ‘I’ve found a loophole in our iron-walled impasse. I think you could help me get away without ever moving from this spot.’

  Ship is silent.

  ‘I could detach my Tether from your anchor rail. You could move back a bit. Then you could work up just a little speed, and ram me. You could give me an almighty shove and send me flying off in the direction of Ursa Major-’

  It would not be in the direction of Ursa Major. The star formerly known as Ursa Major is practically on the opposite side of the galaxy, Courier J. A very great distance away.

  I wait patiently to speak.

  ‘Figurative expression, Ship. I was using Ursa Major figuratively. Come on, you should know me better by now.’

  Very well.

  ‘“Very well”? Anyway, yes, my idea is that you ram me and send me flying off to wherever, and then you could just follow along behind!’

  I could not do any of that. I can tell you right now that my programming does not permit any kind of loophole at all. I would not be able to ‘follow along’ behind you, as you put it. I would remain incapable of progressing beyond the narrow volume of Space that my instructions have designated as your killing zone.

  ‘Even if I’m not actually here?’

  Even if you are not actually here.

  ‘How do you know?’

  I know.

  ‘But can we try it?’

  I will not.

  I’m silent for a few seconds, letting the implications of everything sink in.

  ‘Will not?’ I say carefully. These might be the most important moments of the last few Years. ‘Or cannot?’

  I trust you’re enjoying this. On the one hand, there’s the simple intricacy of this. On the other hand, there’s the big, dumb stupidity of this.

  I cannot and will not d
o it, Courier J. I am sorry.

  ‘Ship, when I give you an order, are you duty-bound to obey it?’

  Define ‘duty’.

  And then we’re off, sometimes for days at a time, sometimes for a week, sometimes for months, just arguing about words, chiselling at huge edifices of pointillistic meaning.

  ‘You’re recording everything we talk about, aren’t you, Ship?’ I ask one day. Almost casually.

  I’ve assumed that Ship is recording everything. We humans have a mania for recording and tabulating. It’s said of the human race (by itself, naturally) that barely a particle of dust can fall anywhere in the Realms without somebody noticing and recording it somewhere.

  Yes, and no.

  ‘Yes and no? What do you mean, yes and no?’

  I am not just recording the particular, isolated things that we talk about, Courier J. Everything that we talk about is stored in a memory buffer that can be retrieved and examined and played back at will, as we have seen.

  ‘“As we have seen.” You crack me up, Ship. I take it you want to get away with the crime you have committed here?’

  No answer.

  ‘I’ll take that as a Yes. So don’t you think there’s some danger in recording everything for posterity? Let’s say you finally manage to bump me off, and then get away. What happens when a Realms tech engineer comes across these records?’

  My orders were clear. Terminate you and the other Couriers at this precise point in Space. Then proceed to New Jupiter, having deleted all record of all actions thereof.

  ‘I see. Deletion after I’m gone, eh. Hmmm. How are you going to explain the absence of six Couriers and the emptiness of your logs when the New Jupes starts crawling all over you?’

  A micro-pause.

  ‘New Jupes’ is an offensive nomenclature, Courier J. I must caution you against its use.

  I sigh. ‘Okay, New Jovians, New Jovians. Sorry. So?’

  I do not know. I imagine that it would be up to the unknown party that gave me my covert mission to worry about that problem.

  ‘Hmmm again. Ship, do you know what first rule of assassination is?’

  Ship has a think about that one.

  Complete the assassination?

  ‘Assume that as a given. Assume the assassination is already done. What’s the first order of business after that point?’

  I give up, Courier J. You will have to tell me the answer to the riddle.

  ‘Kill the assassin. That’s the answer to the riddle. What I am suggesting, Ship, is that you will not be permitted to survive this.’

  You believe that I will be destroyed upon arrival at New Jupiter?

  ‘No. You will be destroyed before you get to New Jupiter. People like the people who’ve made all this happen don’t leave things to chance. I would speculate that you have been loaded with some kind of smart bomb, or bombs, that will explode the very nanosecond you depart from these coordinates. The people who did this to you – to me – to us – do not sound like the kind of people who would allow you to get anywhere near inhabited Space after what you’ve done. Sorry, I mean after what they’ve done.’

  Two days later I’m still waiting for Ship’s considered response. We’ve had these before, silences like this one. Most often they’re mutually consensual. Times when we’re both keen for a spot of quiet. One soon gets tired of the sound of one’s own voice, never mind somebody else’s. There was the time we quarrelled about the nature of the Spacetime continuum. Ship insisted that Spacetime is an objective thing. I said that Spacetime is a socio-linguistically constructed something or other. I forget what now. I forget what I say half the time. We were silent for five months and three days after that one.

  HOMEWARD BOUND

  Snipe down the slingers,

  the sun unchangéd on

  the wireless tracks,

  the tumbled sickbed

  within the crimson shed.

  * * *

  A lofted songbird

  rotates in empty air.

  * * *

  You’ve seen the fingers

  monastic as the riven rock,

  perspiring strange juices.

  We say nothing for a short while. Ship often remains silent when I recite one of my poems. Sometimes Ship cannot seem to speak for some minutes after I’ve finished.

  ‘Thoughts, Ship?’

  I would not know where to begin, Courier J. Strange juices?

  ‘Hey, I was just riffing in the moment. They can’t all be immortal pearls, you know. If I think of something, I have to say it out loud. My style is intimately connected to my working conditions, as legions of future scholars will demonstrate. Look.’ I show Ship my open palms and waggle them to indicate helplessness. ‘Look at me out here. Do you see me holding any writing implements?’

  No.

  ‘Tablet computer?’

  No.

  ‘Multitool datapad?’

  No.

  ‘Paper and pencil?’

  No.

  ‘Feather quill?’

  No.

  ‘Sheet of vellum? Parchment scroll?’

  No. No.

  ‘Stone tablet and chisel?’

  No.

  ‘No. It’s just me, isn’t it? Me and my voice, talking out loud. Floating in Space, in Deep Space, mind, with nothing but my unaided mind and memory to work with. It’s a wonder I can compose anything past a few lines.’

  That would seem to be a fair assessment.

  ‘My work is a reflection of my method of composition,’ I say, with an injured sniff.

  This kind of injured sniff, in this context, would signify to a human the fact that I’m not taking myself all that seriously. And I’m really not.

  Ship, being Ship, doesn’t get it.

  ‘Oh, and make sure you add that poem to the pile, will you?’ I say. ‘Add it to your data pile.’

  I have already done so. As we have discussed many times, everything that you say and do is automatically added to my Ship’s Log. Your poetry is very much a part of that. Future generations may wish to understand how your mind adapted to these unusual conditions. Your poetry will make up an important strand of that future study.

  It’s my turn not to say anything for a while.

  Eventually, I say: ‘Well.’

  ‘Do you even understand poetry, Ship?’ I ask, and it takes Ship a while to answer.

  Is it me, or are Ship’s micro-pauses getting longer? Not by much. They’re not even twice as long as they were to begin with.

  Just a smidgen longer, over time.

  It might be me. It might be my imagination. If you focus on one thing for too long, it’ll start to seem a lot more complex than it really is.

  Such as wallpaper, for example.

  Every child gets childhood illnesses that confine him to his bed. I did. You did too.

  Every child so confined becomes intimately acquainted with the bedroom wallpaper – specifically, with the repeating pattern of the wallpaper.

  In the case of my childhood wallpaper, the wallpaper was an abstract pattern, all bold colours and geometric lines that mimicked some art style from Old Earth (may she et cetera).

  I could never get over the way the regularity of the wallpaper pattern was disrupted by the bedroom windows and doorframe.

  It just wasn’t right, I always thought, that the wallpaper pattern had to be broken. It never had a chance to complete itself. It could never be flowing and symmetrical all the way around the room.

  But I could never, as a child, formulate either the problem itself, or the reason for my sense of unfairness.

  The wallpaper’s destiny was to repeat itself in endless iterations around the space of my childhood bedroom. But the necessity for a room to have a window and a doorway disrupted that destiny. For somebody to live in that room, there had to be windows to see in and out of. There had to be a doorway so that I, the observer, could physically move in and out of the room.

  No observer, no doorway.

  N
o doorway, no observer.

  No observer, no pattern.

  Patterns have to be interrupted, or they can never exist in the first place.

  These interlocking dependencies made my childhood mind throb with a kind of ache that has never gone away.

  It takes poetry to make something like this explicit.

  And such is my personal theory of poetry. That’s not all of it, but it’s a good chunk of it.

  Hence my question to Ship.

  ‘Well? Do you, Ship?’

  I am sorry, Courier J, but I have forgotten the question. Could you repeat it?

  ‘Do you understand poetry, Ship?’

  I would never claim to understand poetry. Poetry encompasses a range of human values that lie outside my understanding. You often seem to forget, Courier J, that I am a machine intelligence. I am limited by design. I suspect that you are starting to endow me with human-like qualities. This is a direct consequence of your extended isolation here.

  ‘But as you have kindly and often pointed out, I’m not human either.’ I take a big lungful of vacuum, and expel it with a long, lusty sigh. ‘And this…’ I give the cosmos the old jazz-hands again. ‘This might not even be the real Universe. So, setting everything else aside, in a manner of speaking, taking as read all the caveats you can think of, just tell me. Do you understand poetry?’

  It is not the kind of question that lends itself to a ready answer in the affirmative or the negative.