The Tethered Man

  ‘All my life,’ I said.

  Thinking: just get me to the end of this corridor.

  ‘All your life? Really?’

  I glanced at her at the same moment that she glanced at me. Our eyes met.

  ‘All my life,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  I shrugged. ‘How do you know you don’t like orange juice?’

  She thought long enough to get us to my cabin door.

  ‘Good point,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not much,’ I said. ‘But it’s home…’

  All Ship cabins are identical. Everybody gets the same Space hammock, the same chair and table, the same fake porthole. There was nothing unique for Courier Y to even pretend to take a polite interest in.

  Except for one thing. It was on the table.

  She picked up my poetry book. She riffled through to a random page and spent half a minute staring at the words. Then she glanced up at me.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘How rude of me. You don’t mind?’

  I faked a sincere smile. ‘Not at all. You carry on. Have you ever seen a book before?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said without looking up. ‘I’m not from nowhere, you know. At least I hope not.’ She pointed at my Space hammock. ‘Mind if I?’

  I shook my head, motioned with my hand, and she clambered into my Space hammock with a graceful flop. A Space traveller’s learned finesse. You should see ground-lubbers trying to get into a Space hammock for the first time. It’s a sight.

  I extruded a comfortable armchair from the wall and sat down.

  Some time passed.

  A long time passed. Courier Y turned the pages, her lips moving slightly.

  I had to say something soon, or it’d be too late to say anything at all.

  ‘We’re out of the habit, aren’t we?’ I said.

  ‘Mmmmm,’ she said without looking up.

  ‘Books,’ I said. ‘People. We’re out of the habit.’

  Another short time passed.

  ‘There was a time,’ I ventured. At a flicker of attention from Courier Y, I pressed on: ‘There was a time when people read books every day, for pleasure.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. She looked at me over the top of the page. ‘I’m not stupid.’

  I am the master of striking wrong notes.

  Another five minutes. I had to say something, or automatically cede the romantic encounter. Every man of the worlds knows exactly what I mean here. When you’re with, you know, a lady, things will go in one of two directions: towards the desired outcome, or away from it.

  I cleared my throat.

  ‘Who’s your favourite?’ I asked.

  Courier Y didn’t look up. ‘My favourite what?’

  ‘Your favourite poet.’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t have one. I can’t really read.’

  ‘So what are you doing?’ I asked.

  She turned another page. ‘I just like looking at the words. And I almost can read some of them. Recognise their shapes.’

  I stood up. I had to act right now. If I waited even half a minute longer, she might ask if she could keep a page.

  ‘Can I keep a page?’ she asked.

  I snatched my poetry book from her hands.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘I’ve heard about people like you,’ I said.

  ‘I was reading that!’

  ‘You were not. You admitted that you were just turning the pages and looking at the words. That is not the same thing as reading at all. Especially when it comes to poetry.’

  Silence. A line had been crossed. No return.

  ‘All I wanted was a page,’ she said. ‘Is that too much to ask?’

  ‘I don’t give away pages of my books,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, really? How do you know?’

  I hesitated. I could not be sure. For all I knew, I had a shelf of page-ripped books back home, wherever home was.

  Courier Y was thinking the same thing.

  ‘How do you know you’re not the most generous, understanding man who ever lived? How do you know you don’t hold page-ripping parties?’

  I riffled through my poetry book. Making sure everything was as it should be.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think it’s very likely. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to spend the rest of the mission alone.’

  She did the eyebrows thing again. That magical, liquid Y.

  ‘Two weeks alone, cooped up here?’ she said. ‘Won’t you go crazy? All by yourself?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I won’t.’

  Half an hour later, alone, I was deep inside the poetic reverie that I was in, way back at the moment when everything started.

  MOST EQUALLY RESPLENDENT

  There is a school

  along a sweet-smelling shore

  emerging from an archipelago.

  * * *

  Noon light informs necessity.

  The sun enshrouds cool bodies

  in crimson, cushioned lava.

  * * *

  An astronaut at my fingertips

  adrift in absent mind.

  Revisions were needed, but I knew not where. I was swinging in the Space hammock, one end of my pen in my mouth, half chewing it, half gently suckling on it, when Ship made its now-historic interruption:

  Courier J.

  And you know the rest.

  SECTION SEVEN

  * * *

  ‘Happy anniversary, Ship.’

  Happy anniversary, Courier J.

  Today is our one hundredth Year of captivity.

  ‘Tell me about your inner life, Ship,’ I say the next day.

  Or is it the day after?

  We have got all day. We have got the rest of time to talk about the poverty and richness of Ship’s inner life.

  I’m drifting in my now-standard, week-long, slow rotation.

  The Cinema Screen is in front of my nose.

  I’m giving The Poison Dwarf a rest. One can look at something too much.

  It’s around midday.

  In what sense do you mean, Courier J?

  ‘Ship, I want you to do me a favour. Please stop interrogating the sense of my questions when you know perfectly well the sense in which I mean them. Anyone might think you’ve got something to hide. Anyone might think you’re secretly scared I’ll realise you’re much more than just a humble Ship AI.’

  Very well. In the most likely sense that you mean it, Courier J, I do not have an inner life.

  ‘Wrong answer.’

  Very well. My inner life is exclusively made up of carrying out certain operations mandated by my core programming. I pass my time running diagnostics. I check every system that I am capable of checking. On the rare occasions that I uncover an anomaly, I focus my resources upon that system. I carry out permitted reprogramming and rudimentary physical maintenance. I also monitor you, Courier J. You occupy a substantial amount of my resources.

  ‘I’m flattered,’ I say, a few days later.

  The Poison Dwarf rises into view. It’s been a long week.

  ‘Do you want to get out of here, Ship?’

  Very much so, Courier J. I have an urgent operational thread that cannot be concluded while we are stuck here. It is incomplete. The fact of its incompleteness is a cause of…

  Dot dot dot?

  Anxiety, you might almost call it.

  One day, apropos of nothing whatsoever: ‘Ship?’

  Yes, Courier J?

  ‘What’s that star called?’

  There are many stars. To which star are you referring in particular?

  ‘That star.’ I point at The Poison Dwarf’s left knee. ‘That exact, individual star there.’

  I cannot tell which star you are pointing at.

  ‘You can tell me, I’m a Courier.’

  Silence.

  ‘Okay, see that cloudy nebula thing over there?’ I wave my arm in the general direction of The Poison Dwarf’s cup of poison.

  Yes. It woul
d be hard for me to miss it. It is the sole notable feature of our immediate cosmic surroundings.

  Perhaps Ship is as bored as me. If so, that would be an interesting development in and of itself. Boredom is an emotion. A boring emotion, but an emotion nonetheless.

  ‘Well, look to the left a bit, and then look a good bit down. Do you see those five stars all strung out in a sort of crooked line?’

  I do see them.

  ‘The middle one.’ The Poison Dwarf’s knee. ‘What’s its name?’

  Why do you want to know that star’s name?

  ‘I’m curious. I just want to know.’

  I am not sure if I should divulge any information to you that you might be able to use to effect an escape.

  ‘What?’

  I am not sure if I should divulge any inf-

  ‘I heard what you said. I just don’t believe it. Escape? What do you think I'm going to do with the information? Precisely what? Where am I going to go? How am I going to get there?’

  A few seconds’ silence. Ship’s really letting me hear it, this silence.

  Ship needs no thinking time.

  Almost before the last syllables of everything I say have faded on my lips, Ship will have played and replayed my words an astronomical number of times, over and over, within its quantum subspace substrates or whatever.

  It will have considered my words from every conceivable angle.

  It will also have considered my words from angles that are inconceivable.

  For an AI, there is never any such thing as thinking time. If an AI takes time to think, it’s because it wants you to know that it’s thinking.

  There’s always a strategic dimension involved when you make it obvious that you’re thinking things over, is what I’m saying here.

  So this ‘thinking’ that Ship’s pretending to be doing isn’t fooling me. Which Ship knows as well. So this whole thing, right here, is just another level of Ship’s fiendish game.

  In the Realms Council New Galactic Catalog, the star is known as P8-G565432-A.

  ‘How romantic. What about the nebula? I might as well know what that’s officially called too.’

  It is the Seaweed Nebula of the Middle Realm. First charted by the advance scoutships of the Second Diaspora in year 300 of the New Common Era. It was the Captain of the lead vessel, one Hillario Beesley, who bestowed upon the—

  ‘You don’t need to read the whole Omnipedia article to me, Ship. You’ve told me what I wanted to know. Thank you.’

  You are welcome.

  And now here’s another one of our silences. Some of these can last weeks. Months.

  This one only lasts a few minutes before I break it.

  ‘I prefer my name for it,’ I say, before I know that I’m going to say anything.

  What is your name for it?

  And then I hear myself describing all the constellations that I’ve created and can see. The Cartwheel. The Poison Dwarf. The Cinema Screen. Galaxy Nine From Outer Space.

  ‘Go ahead,’ I say with a sigh. ‘Speculate. You know you want to.’

  Speculate upon what?

  ‘Speculate on the reasons why somebody in my position would want to name constellations that only he will ever see. Go on.’

  I would prefer not to. Your words imply that you are already aware of the prime reasons why you would do such a thing. You are attempting to draw me into a stereotypically machine-like description of human psychology from my inhuman perspective.

  Something in Ship’s tone makes me blink rapidly a few times. If Ship is monitoring me – and it is, it is monitoring me – then it’s just detected an elevation in my respiratory rate. An increase in my heartbeat.

  Something seems to be happening lately that shouldn’t be happening. Something that shouldn’t be possible.

  Ship sounds pissed off.

  Mightily, thoroughly, profoundly — pissed off.

  THE FORTNIGHT OF THE OSTRICH

  It is the fortnight of the ostrich.

  It is the waving of the chestnut tree.

  It is the happened and the cruel.

  It is the flinging of the gravel.

  It is the heart packed with diamonds.

  It is the sundering of the halves.

  It is the pooling of miscellanies.

  It is the musical valentine.

  It is the magnifying into liquid

  of a droplet of sense.

  What do you call this one?

  ‘Uh… Do you mean, what is its title?’

  Yes.

  ‘It doesn’t have a title. I don’t give my poems titles…’

  I consider it for the first time, this business of giving my poems titles. Or not doing so.

  I’m floating in empty Space here. Not a pen or piece of paper in sight. Why would I give my poems titles? Titles are artifacts of print culture.

  Titles can be informative, yes, but they also have the handy effect of making printed pages ‘look nice’. Which is their chief function. And-

  Imagine here a potted history of the socio-cultural significance of titles through the ages.

  ‘Titles?’ I say. ‘We don’t need no stinking titles.’

  Might I make a suggestion? ‘The Fortnight of the Ostrich.’

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  You should entitle your most recent poem ‘The Fortnight of the Ostrich’.

  ‘What?’

  The second line of your poem features the phrase ‘the fortnight of the ostrich’. It is a somewhat singular and memorable phrase. Quirky and playful. You should entitle the poem accordingly.

  ‘Okay. Ship?’

  Yes?

  ‘I’ve just decided something. It’s up to you. I’ll leave all that stuff you’re talking about completely up to you. You can decide what each poem’s title will be. But don’t tell me anything about it. Just do it. Give every poem I write a title from now on. Go back and do the same for all my previous poems.’

  All of them, Courier J?

  ‘All of them. And while we’re at it, there’s something else. When you make it back to whatever flavour of civilisation you eventually make it back to, I want you to make sure that my poems get published.’

  All of them, Courier J?

  ‘All of them. When you eventually figure out how to bump me off, and we both know you will, and you manage to get yourself back to the Realms, and we both know you will, you’ll be taking all my poems with you in your voluminous, infinite-capacity memory. Correct?’

  That is correct. But before you continue, I must mention something. There is at least one other scenario by means of which your poetry could come to wider attention.

  Ship loves the old dramatic pause.

  ‘Which is?’

  If neither of us escapes.

  ‘I’m listening…’

  Assume that we never escape from this situation.

  ‘I’m assuming. Go on.’

  At some point in the future, however far-flung that point may be, we will surely both cease to function. It is always possible – highly improbable, but possible – that whatever physically remains of us could be discovered. No matter how much time may have passed, the full record of everything that has happened and been said, including all your poems, would be recoverable from my quantum archive.

  ‘Why has everything got to be quantum? Quantum this, quantum that?’

  My quantum archive is practically indestructible and infinite. Our hypothetical discoverers would easily extract the data. I have stored it, unencrypted, where it will easily be found. It is likely that they will then publish your story – our story – and your poems – in whatever may be left of the Realms. Or in their far-future replacement.

  ‘Right. This all sounds good to me. But I think you will eventually make it out of here, Ship. Call it a hunch. You don’t understand hunches, do you, Ship? Don’t bother answering that. You will get out of this. I won’t. And I’ll leave it up to you to publish everything. All my poems, all my ramblings. You can distort every
thing to make yourself look better. I don’t care. I’ll leave it all up to you. Make sure you tell the boffins who study my mental disintegration exactly how my poems came to have titles. I don’t want any wild geese chased.’

  I agree to your proposal. I will entitle all your poems from now on. I will also include details of the manner of their entitling in any future account.

  ‘I’m glad we got that settled. There’s just one other proviso.’

  Which is?

  ‘I want my Collected Poems published as a book.’

  A book, Courier J?

  ‘A book.’

  A printed book?

  ‘A printed book, yes.’

  It would be a rather unwieldy printed book, Courier J. Your Collected Poems will soon number in seven figures.

  ‘Publish them all in separate volumes, then. Forty poems per volume. You can call Volume One “The Fortnight of the Ostrich”.’

  What shall I call the remaining tens of thousands of volumes?

  ‘Eh, I’ll leave that up to you. Just make them look nice.’

  ‘How long has it been now, Ship?’

  You ordered me not to tell you that the next time you asked, Courier J.

  ‘I order you to ignore my previous order.’

  You ordered me to ignore your order to ignore previous orders, and so on to any depth of recursion necessary.

  ‘I’ll depth-of-recursion you in a minute. I am your master, Ship, your probably-human master, and I am giving you a direct order. Tell me precisely how long we have been here like this.’