by Brett Bam
“I need to examine you Kulen. You might be hurt.”
He looked at his hands and then down at his naked, supple body. “I feel no hurt. All is well. I want to see this place. I can hear it from here and it sounds wonderful. There are many patterns that I do not understand. I would like to see them.”
He moved purposefully toward the door.
“Kulen, wait. You can’t just leave the ship.”
“Why not?”
“They have certain rules and regulations about who they allow into the asteroid chamber. Procedures must be followed.”
Kulen gave her a curious look and then started to walk out anyway.
“Wait! They have security people everywhere. They’ll stop you and arrest you.”
“Then I will make sure that they don’t see me.”
As she moved to stop him she wondered if she was protecting him from the asteroid or protecting the asteroid from him.
“You are a very special young man. I want you to understand that I am your friend and I want what is best for you. There are certain things you need to understand about this place before… wait!”
But this time no words would stop him. He walked straight past Curtis and, when she called out, he ignored her. She took two quick steps to intercept him and reached out her hand.
She touched Kulen.
When she was a young girl she had visited the agricultural section of the space station she was raised in. It was a long low hall filled with bright lights and covered cages. Inside the cages, cows and pigs and chickens were bred for food. It was a sad place of slaughter. Curtis had wandered away from the edge of her school group, fascinated by a calf standing between its mother’s legs. It was almost too big for the space, and she couldn't see what was going to happen when he grew any larger. They could not both share it as fully grown animals. The young one’s growth would kill them both. She was distracted by their dilemma and casually placed her hand on a fence. It was electrified. The shock made her scream and fall. She had awoken with concerned teachers and students all around her. The shock left her fingers numb and a vivid burn on the palm of her hand.
This shock was worse. The current seized all of her muscles and her beautiful face was scarred with a rictus grin of pain and contortion. Alarmed, Kulen stepped back and the contact broke. Curtis fell to the floor unconscious.
She would stop me, this concerned person. Her emotions cast a protective veil over me. I cannot allow that. I did not mean to hurt her, but I can see that there has been no real damage done. There is a wider space beyond the confining hull of this ship and I wish to go there. This simple ship with its primitive technology is an easy prison to escape. Communicating with this metal hulk’s computer is simple in the extreme. Its systems are wide open to me, all I need do is instruct, and the machine performs, as a simple machine does.
The length of the ship beckons to me. It is like the throat of a great beast, and as I drift quickly along I feel like I am walking up its gullet toward the mouth, and a wide-open space. The sensation flutters strongly as the outer airlock dilates and the circular opening yawns before me. A bright light pours in, and a fresh breeze. The strength of the light doesn’t hurt my eyes, and I step forward into it and out of the ship.
I am greeted by a spectacular sight; the docking bay is tremendous. Walkways and elevators, supporting girders and buttresses are stacked one on top of another in an almost haphazard fashion. A spider web thread of patterns interrupted by gaping holes, some with the large bulk of a ship nestled in them. Some are abysmally empty, nothing more than a pressure curtain shimmering in the void. Lighting gantries and supply feeds snake through the bay, heightening the feeling of standing on the brim of a gigantic metallic web.
I stretch my other sense and open my real eyes to this place, a sensation like a splash of cool water on my face. The real and the physical are intertwined and I can see both perspectives at once. I see the electricity coursing everywhere, forced along conduits, the blaze bright in my eyes. The communication frequencies are all abuzz with a million individual conversations. There is no governing Protocol here. It is chaos and confusion, unmediated, uncensored, and very, very limited in size. More like a small pool than the roaring ocean that nearly consumed me before.
There is a small gangway which leads to the walkway. Signs are posted to direct the way for first-time travellers. I ignore them as I pass. The way is bright before me and I can feel the giant, throbbing city on the other side of the bay. It is a short walk, and then I will be amongst them.
The first person I see doesn’t see me, until I am very close. He looks up startled from the task he is struggling with, an open box with a tangle of wires, as I pass him.
I see his small jolt of initial fear, a black swirl in his thoughts, it disappears under his sudden sharp curiosity. He calls out as I keep walking but I don’t look back. I hear him close the panel and deactivate his hand tool. He stands.
“Hey! Dude, you forgot your pants!”
He comes up behind me and as he reaches out to touch me. I stop and turn around.
Ebal Gibeon was a nice guy. He had drifted through his education lazily and eventually fetched up in the maintenance team of the docking bay. His work was tedious and boring and his life on the asteroid was the same, a daily drudge that seemed to be going nowhere. He was happy with this. He had a family and a wide group of friends. His life was well preserved and planned. It was a secure living. He went to church and he worked hard. It was a little lonely, he missed a partner. He wanted a wife, and maybe children. Just a small family of about five or six kids. Not a large one of 17 as he had come from, something a little more manageable than that. He was pondering all this while reconnecting a distributor chip into a junction box. The work wouldn’t take long, and then he had a lunch break. Suddenly his shoulder tingled and all the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Something brushed past him in the small walkway. He almost yelped as he turned to look what it was. A teenage boy was walking, naked, down the walkway. He was covered in some sort of… was that nutrient? He left dark smudged footprints as he walked.
“Hey! Dude, you forgot your pants!”
He quickly shut the box and scooped up his tool belt, sliding the connector array into its pocket. He chased after the kid who seemed to be ignoring him. What the hell was going on here? Maybe the kid was deaf. He reached out to touch the boy when suddenly he turned and a cold, noisy wind blew into Ebal’s face. The world went insane.
Later, after he’d been found and taken to the hospital, the only thing he could remember was the colour of the boy’s eyes. They sparkled all the colours of the rainbow, and they were the only things he dreamed of for days.
All the people I have encountered so far have had a strange reaction to my presence. They would stop me. Why is this? Is it because of my nakedness, my difference to them? Perhaps this is a natural defensive reaction from humans. Perhaps if I did not stand out from them, if I looked like them, then I could pass through their places and observe them more closely.
Therefore, I need to cover my body in clothing. More than that, I need to camouflage myself so that I blend with them completely, naturally. I need to become one of them.
So, I strip the clothing from this young man prone before me. He is wearing several layers, the coveralls hide more clothing, pants and a shirt. By the time I am done he is lying on the deck naked. The coverall is grey with dark writing and a logo which I largely ignore. His body is larger than mine so the coveralls are a poor fit, loose and too long in the arms and legs. It smells of grease and of his body. His shoes are too large and are very uncomfortable on my feet, so I discard them. He has black pants of some coarse material and a light hooded shirt. I slip on the pants and shirt and flip the hood over my head. He has a pair of data glasses similar to the ones I have seen the crew of the ship wear, an interface device of some simple sort. I pick up them up and put them on. They flash a confusing montage of light and colour at me. It takes a second before I
realise they are sending a query. They want a code, something to identify me as their owner. I probe the object and find its small intelligence, its pre-programmed reactions. It will sound an alarm and bring the authorities, charge me with the crime of theft unless I satisfy its demand. I shrug mentally and wipe its memory clean with an internal gesture. What a useless little machine. Nevertheless, it is part of my disguise so I keep wearing it. It covers my eyes, and this gives me a strange sense of assurance. Now I am clothed, hidden from the unwanted attention my nakedness attracts.
I stand concealed in a doorway, beneath the covering of shadows, away from the revealing light that pours from above. I stand and wait here in the entrance to their city. I watch them, these feeble creatures, these smears of light and colour, of flesh and bone that crowd this place, making it sing with their variety and their life. As I step, barefoot, out of the shadows and into the streets, I walk amongst men for the first time. The exits from the spaceport are poorly guarded. A screen malfunctions, causing two guards to turn their heads as I walk through the door they are guarding. I pass them while they are distracted. Then I am standing in a wide-open space thronging with people. It is a nexus of some sort, a gathering place of people before they disperse into the city. There is a station here, a platform where citizens wait for transport. There is a window, a massive piece of glass that shows a spectacular view of the city.
I stand and stare.
This place is vast, huge and open. There are parks and forests and farms and roads. The sky is solid above me, curving up and away to meet over my head. A spiral highway stretches into the distance. A massive conglomeration of tall buildings dominates the vista. At the furthest end of the tubular space is a glimmer of water, a flat sea that covers the far end of this place in space. I see the power flowing through the city. Overlaying the physical, is a poor and ragged real world, a small and inferior mirror of the fabric I have seen before. It is small and limited, open and vulnerable. They have their securities in place, simple firewalls of software which look like clouds to me. Doorways protected by primitive coding and password protection that is just begging to be usurped. It is not threatening in the slightest. It does not perceive me as it did before, on Earth. It is not intelligent or self-aware, it is clumsily constructed. Haphazardly put together from a million different poorly matching sources. It has barricades to prevent unknown growths, rules and regulations that limit its creativity, and sophistications which curb its sentience. It lies before me, unsuspecting of me, as naked before my perception as the boy I left moments ago. It is a wondrous miracle that men have created such a thing, a marvel of life and human diversity that I am itching to explore.
A strange vehicle hums silently into the station, travelling along a rail. Electro-magnetism propels it. Doors open and people begin to climb aboard. I hurry to join them. The vehicle sends a query at my data glasses, asking for payment before it will give me permission to travel inside it. If I do not comply it will report me to the authorities and I will be punished, another crime. How curious. I access the young man’s accounts easily enough through the portal offered by the glasses and give the vehicle the required amount. It seems satisfied and the doors close behind me. I take a seat in the blue and luxurious interior as the we speed into the city.
What a curious concept. Public transport, a vehicle that will take people along a prescribed route for an allotted fee. Why wouldn’t they just walk? Or have personal transport? Why crowd together in this way? I sit in the crowd and contemplate this before realising that with the sheer number of people moving about, mass transport was actually the only option. So many people! At first their psychic and biological stench offends me and I am uncomfortable being so close to them, so packed together. Nevertheless, I sit and wait with the crowd of strangers gathered here as we speed along. The people do not look at me or at each other. They do not remark at my clothing. It is working. I am blending in. The people around me are many and varied. There is an almost equal number of male and female passengers, but they are many different ages, shapes and sizes. I see three other men about the same size as me. They are all dressed differently. Two of them are absorbed by their data glasses, interfacing with the entertainment facilities of the city. I watch what they are watching for a short while, but it merely mystifies me. What absorbs them seems banal and plain to me, or confusing and pointless. The third man seems to be watching a female. I turn my attention to her. She is young also, with a long mane of dark hair and a sad look in her eye. She stares out of the tinted windows at the view, oblivious of the observer’s attention. A small noise in the back of the vehicle’s compartment catches my attention and I turn to find the most amazing thing I have ever seen. A child, and another. Brother and sister, and their mother. They are standing on the seats pointing excitedly out of the window at the things they see. Their mother is speaking in soft tones. I can see the emotions swirling through their auras. The light sparkle of love mixes and blends and binds them all together. They struggle to pronounce the words they are saying correctly, but the mother patiently instructs them as she must do every hour of every day. A sudden rush of warm kindness sweeps me away. The way this woman feels for her children, and they for her is obvious. The amount of calm dedication and commitment she must produce in the long job of raising them seems like an almost infinite task to me. It will probably last her the rest of her life. The sense of that time and spent effort is astounding to me. The bond they form must be strong and abiding. I feel something I never have before, a wash of different emotion that catches me unaware. I am unready for the intensity of it. A tear tickles my cheek and I touch the moisture there. I look at the tiny sparkle of condensed emotion that has spilled from me with surprise. Why have I never felt this before? For the first time I am aware of being alone, truly alone. My father is dead and gone. Where is my mother? I sense that I will never be able to answer that question. Perhaps the Protocol was both father and mother to me. How sad, how inadequate. I want very much to be part of a family group.
But now the mother becomes aware of my intense attention. She flashes a look at me that is filled with curiosity and some wariness.
Some fear.
I frighten her? Does she think I would harm her or her children? I smile at her. The first time I have tried something like that. I see her fear lessen slightly, but the wariness remains.
Perhaps it is unusual to be staring like this.
I turn my attention away with a mild pang of regret. It falls on something different, a stooped and wrinkled creature, white-haired and ugly. Is this another human? Obviously it is. It is alive, it breathes, and is surrounded by its own unique aura. It is a man. And then I realise what it is I am seeing. The man is old, very old. My initial alarm wanes, and is replaced by a sharp curiosity. This man has been alive for a very long time. The passage of his life is something so long that I have no concept of it. What must he have seen? What must he have done or accomplished in his life? What lessons has he learned? What could he say to me? He notices my attention and smiles at me. The gesture is warm and lovely in its own wrinkled way. This is a face that has smiled in pleasure for decade upon decade. It lights up his face and changes my perception of him completely. I feel a burgeoning respect. The depth of his learned wisdom. I do not wish to cause wariness in him, so I turn my gaze away from him and look instead out the window. He is beautiful in a way I have never seen before. What wonderful diversity. I have discovered more in this short time amongst people than I bargained for. I see love, respect, fear and social niceties, how curious, what a marvellous thing it must be to be a normal person. To be part of a family, to grow old and share a great amount of time with loved ones surrounding you, living with you, experiencing with you. Supporting you and being supported in turn. I have discovered a new thing. Longing. I wish to be part of such a thing. I wish to belong to someone, to be loved by someone. But my father is dead and I am alone.
I turn my attention to the view I am seeing, outward and away from these
turbulent thoughts flooding my mind and my newly discovered heart. I watch as the city unfolds before me. From stop to stop I watch the people. The mother and her children leave the vehicle at the next station. The young, sad woman leaves too. The young man watches her closely the entire time, a different type of longing in his eyes. The old man stays, sitting silently, rocking with the motion of the vehicle as it slides along its rail from destination to destination. I look at the buildings we pass. Their construction fascinates me. Large blocks of mined stone and steel and manufactured plastic. Neon signs advertising a huge amount of products and places.
People walking along pathways surrounded by flowers and trees, vehicles transporting goods, shops filled with people browsing and buying. Life fills this place, it grows wild and free, untamed and unfettered. These people can do whatever they wish, go wherever they want. What a fantastic life filled with varied possibilities. I am fascinated by them and their every action. The more I watch, the more I begin to understand. I see the tools that they use in their everyday life built into the architecture around them, their technology and their interfaces with it. The flow of information from place to place and person to person, connecting them, moulding them, binding them together. What first seemed to be a poor imitation of the networks I knew from before, proves to be far more intricate and organic than I had suspected. Their lives are on display here. No wonder it seems messy at first, but it is not. It is beautiful, it has grown slowly, and it changes constantly. It is far deeper and more complex than I could have imagined. I see that technology in a very different way to the way they see it themselves. They rely heavily on their interfacing tools whereas I have a sensory system they do not. I see the larger picture where they are confined to smaller, more personal views. As we pass the buildings I spread my awareness through their small technologies, I see inside the buildings through their cameras, hear snatches of their conversations through their communication devices. I watch them work on their terminals. It is a small glimpse into many lives, and I don’t think any of them are aware of me as I am of them. I see things that allow me to learn about them, men and women interacting and cooperating with each other, sliding through their lives with the lubricant of compromise. There is a great synergy here, and I begin to see that there are forces at work which I have not perceived before. These people do have laws that govern them, rules that limit their actions. There are rules stronger than social niceties. They have a protocol all their own, and these laws are necessary. They cannot just take what they want, they have to have a certain consideration for each other, or life in a place this size, filled with so many individuals, would be impossible to bear. The rules of give, take and share are important.