Tinman

by Simon Fairhead

  Art’s mental breakdown occurred the moment he saw the human debris spilling out into space, suddenly frosted by the vacuum. He saw the mindlessly flailing limbs, the spinning, thoughtless brains, the bits and pieces of human detritus too small, too insignificant to identify. Claustrophobia overcame him. He was trapped within a machine on a ship controlled by a cancerous, 300 year old brain. His immediate reaction was to try to disengage himself from his host body. Failsafe systems disabled his limbs as they reached for the screws that would undo his cradle from his runabout. He would have screamed, but he had no mouth. Dawkins removed him from his new body and pumped his brain full of sedatives.

  CHAPTER 12

  Halliday’s vessel, 101-90, attained peak acceleration five weeks, six days and 23 hours after Art Parrish was sedated. G-forces immediately returned to normal.

  “Dawkins? I need a beer.”

  Dawkins opened a refrigerator and returned with a plastic tube with a built in straw. “Six percent alcohol by volume, 500 millilitres, two degrees centigrade.”

  “Perfect. Can I smoke?”

  “There is a packet of airettes on the console next to you, Art.”

  Art reached out for the genetically modified cigarettes and saw his hand move into view. His actual, real, flesh and blood hand.

  “Where am I, Dawkins?”

  “Mezzanine lounge, just behind the cockpit, Art. If you are feeling strong enough, you can look through the cockpit window if you go to the rail in front of you.”

  “Wait. You put me back in my body.”

  “Acceleration has stopped. Gravitational forces normal. I thought your own body would be the most efficient environment for the remainder of your journey.”

  “What about radiation?”

  “The ship is heavily shielded. You are in no danger, Art.”

  Art lit an airette and sucked on the tube of beer. Suitably refreshed, he stood up – and felt like he had been in a fight the night before. Every limb and orifice ached. He staggered, and gripped the arms of the lounge chair he had been sitting in, before getting to his feet and stepping carefully to the narrow rail a few feet ahead.

  He looked down on a dimly-lit chamber crammed with consoles and screens, ergonomically designed flight-seats and banks of computers, all un-manned. Beyond all that was a shielded window nearly a metre thick, made of a glass and titanium alloy. Beyond that was the most terrifying sight he had ever seen.

  The boiling remains of E-416 filled the window, as if it might devour them at any second.

  “Fuck, Dawkins, you want us to ride this?”

  “Thrusters will turn us, when the time is right. We will match our speed with the speed of the shockwave.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “A week and a half. Will you be requiring human contact until that time?”

  “Damn right, Dawkins. But let Halliday sleep through, all right?”

  An alarm woke Art a few hours later. He panicked a moment, banging his head and elbows against the constricted confines of his tiny sleep-pod, until he found the communications station. “Hello? Yes?”

  It was Dawkins. “Art, there has been a malfunction. Come to Unit 116 – Kamakura.”

  Franco was dead. Art studied the medical readout lights. They were all in the red, and glowing steadily, the final result. “Dawkins,” he said, “find a suitable donor body. Someone healthy, younger. Old brains always get a positive boost from a younger host.”

  Dawkins accessed the ship’s mainframe. “Art, the brain of Franco Pirelli is dead too.”

  “No – give him 5cc adrenaline and an oxy-burn.”

  “Already administered. No response. Brain death recorded at 11.55pm ship’s time.”

  Art turned away.

  The next day, Kate joined him in the Mezzanine lounge. She drank coffee, and smoked some of Art’s airettes.

  “Let’s kill the fucker. Who’s gonna know?”

  Art’s gaze rose from the deck plates to meet her eyes. Halliday had been such a huge part of his life, from student days on, that he could not contemplate a future without him. But the same could be said of Franco. “No. No more death. The supernova will kill more people than we can even imagine.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “Forward scanners, maximum magnification, entire spectrum.”

  “Results: nil. Rescan?”

  “Yes.”

  Halliday’s vessel sped on through the endless, featureless vacuum. The space between the stars. No radiation, no light, no sound. Nothing. They sped through the abyss at ninety percent the speed of light, shields incinerating wisps of dusty debris, passing through the inconsequential knots of dark matter that fouled its path. They were in the deeps of space, seventeen billion light years from Earth, between the visible or known galaxies. The silence, and the isolation, was absolute.

  Thirty-two thousand years had passed. Art sat in the commander’s chair. Lounged would perhaps be a more illuminating term, one leg thrown over the arm, a cup of something he knew as coffee in one hand, his eyes fixed on the deep blackness through the massive cockpit window. It was like a well. A descent into a deep, black crevasse. It had been the same the day before. And the day before that. It had been the same five centuries ago, when he was last woken from his cryogenic stasis, and the same five hundred years earlier still. Often, he would quietly tell Hiroto to shut off all the lights in the cockpit, including the illuminated dials and instruments on the navigation desk, and he would sit there in a blackness no man had ever experienced before; an utter darkness where the light from distant stars had not yet fallen. He would sit in the captain’s chair and feel the hum of the craft pass up through it; he would listen to the continual exhalation of life support, and he would stare into the abyss until he felt his physical self dissipate like mist, and he became a floating, weightless, sightless, nothing, in the midst of absence. Once, he thought he saw a flash of light in the dark, and told Dawkins. Dawkins told him it was a neutrino, a tiny subatomic particle passing through the ship, and his eye, as if they did not exist. He thought it sounded like a shooting star, and made a wish…

  Every five hundred years, he, Dawkins and Six were coaxed back to consciousness by Hiroto Beta to comb 101-90 from nose to stern, examining every inch of cable, every strut and nut and bolt, every piece of software for signs of wear and tear, and repair and replace where necessary. Then they would laboriously conduct hull scans using a turtle-like drone on the outside of the spacecraft with cameras on its belly to check for signs of micro-meteorite damage, pin-hole perforations, knocks and scrapes from unknown debris, and fix that too.

  Art was woken for one year every five hundred years to conduct the maintenance. To preserve his sanity, he had taken to recording a log; a log for no one. Life support permitted no more than one organic and two robots to conduct maintenance at one time. He had been lucky to gain even these brief moments of humanity, but an emergency in a difficult-to-reach air-filter, and the dexterity of his human form and fingers had secured his right for the future. Hiroto-Beta was nothing if not practical.

  ART PARRISH: LOG ENTRY 15: “I am older now than Methusela; I have lived longer than any other human being in existence. 32,000 years. The time man took to evolve from the stone-age to landing on the fucking moon. From fur to fibre-glass. We missed the Luhrmann Breach by half a million miles. The shockwave caught us amidships, and turned us a fraction of a degree off course. Hiroto did his best to correct our trajectory, but when dealing with a force of nature, calculations can go awry. We simply didn’t have the thrust to compensate for it. We had to ride it further than we anticipated, right out into the Drop Off. Into the Deep. There are no charts for this part of space. Radio telescopes on Imo recorded nothing. If there are galaxies here, they are far beyond anything we can detect. We could drift on for a million years until the nuclear pile that drives us exhausts itself, until every battery can no longer recharge, until every trickle of every radiation powered gadget gives up the ghost. We are lost and alo
ne, more isolated than any vessel in history. All I can do is ensure I survive for as long as possible. If I continue to do the maintenance in my natural body, as Art Parrish, I can live maybe 200 years, with 500 years in between my maintenance jaunts. That means I could live for another 100,000 years, one disjointed year after another, with only Six and Dawkins as company. Meanwhile, life support denies me Kate’s company to preserve resources for some unknown future. Laugh, I damned near soiled myself, as they said in some old twentieth century film.

  But even 100,000 years is a conservative estimate. 100,000 years will see the end of my physical form; then my brain will be preserved. Running a brain alone will conserve far more energy. I could go on half-a-million-years. But even that will pack up, in time, for even a brain needs nutrients. Perhaps I will have my neural network ‘published’ onto solid state components at the end of all things; frozen into a silicon landscape that will endure until the end of time.

  Behind us is a destroyed colony and a devastated Earth. Ahead is the unknown. We know of no suitable worlds in the Milky Way or Geseven that could offer us safe harbour, or even if the Luhrmann Breach survived the supernova so, for now, we speed on, in search of pastures new.

  I look out of the cockpit window and see forever nothing…

  CHAPTER 14

  Art Parrish slept for another 500 years. When he awoke, Kyko Halliday was standing over him, a beatific smile on his face, a willow-patterned cup of green tea offered up in greeting. He was dressed in immaculate, loose fitting white coveralls, and he was standing on his own two legs, his feet immersed in a pair of towelling slippers.

  Art remained silent. He gave Halliday a curt nod of thanks and drank the green tea. It tasted good. It washed away the chemical tang of life support and brought some much-needed warmth to his chest cavity.

  “All is well,” reassured Halliday. “One brain death, one body death. There was a shower of micro-meteorites three hundred and four years ago, which resulted in a minor rupture in the hull above engineering supplies. The drones were damaged. Dawkins completed a successful spacewalk to replace the damaged panels and internal sub-structure. He also repaired the drones that were not lost to the vacuum."

  Art resisted the instinctive urge to reach up and wrestle him to the ground, to choke him to death as he lay on the deck and watch the life ebbing out of the bastard. He was still too weak. He would need a good seven days before he could even contemplate physical violence against Kyko Halliday. Again he nodded, and swung his feet down onto the cold deck.

  In the mess, Art devoured two plates of bacon and egg and toast and coffee and porridge, all luxury items preserved in deep stasis in the ship’s food store. They had, in fact, been looted from the Church of Earth on Imo, a few days before departure. Remnants of produce from extinct species on earth. There were no more pigs or chickens or fields of oats, or coffee beans: earth was dying; or, more probably, dead. They had been travelling now for 37,000 years. It was either dead or reborn, perhaps without men, some fantasy jungle of beasts evolved from the species of thousands of years ago.

  Kyko had left him alone to recover from his jaunt in suspended animation. Now he returned, drinking a bowl of green tea himself.

  “Nice legs. Are they yours?” asked Art.

  “Hiroto has been very diligent. Regrowing nerve fibres remains a torturous process. My mental absence from my body has allowed him to make excellent progress. I am complete.”

  “And the cancer?”

  Halliday lowered his eyes. “Forgive me.”

  “You killed his body and his brain, you fuck! You could have left me his brain! It’s Franco! He’s been like a father to me! Why did you do it?”

  Halliday cocked his head at Art, genuinely surprised. “The brain death was a mechanical failure. But the clone is secure. Franco’s not dead.”

  So many questions flooded Art’s mind he fell silent for a moment, afraid of using words for fear they might break Halliday’s last sentence. Franco was alive?

  Halliday spoke. “Did he not discuss this with you?”

  Art wiped his eyes; there were all sorts of tears clouding his sight. “What are you talking about?”

  “Dawkins’ brain is cloned from Franco’s, Mr Parrish. I’m surprised the two of you never mentioned this.”

  Art hid his face in his hands and wept like a child, uncontrollably, inconsolably. The horror, the hope, was all too much. We have all become Frankensteins…

  Art and Dawkins met later that day on the bridge, on the mezzanine above the cockpit. Art had a whisky and coke, or something as near as damn it from the replicator. He lit an airette. And turned on the Cloke™ still attached to the house key he stubbornly refused to abandon in his pocket. The Cloke™, jammed all electronic surveillance devices within five metres of itself: cameras, audio bugs, infra-red devices, keystroke monitors, passwords, everything. Halliday would not eavesdrop on this conversation, nor register his computer use.

  Dawkins could not sit, so Art stood by the curved replicator table at the end of the tiny galley kitchen normally reserved for flight crew.

  The cyborg obediently rolled up to him, his avatar face open and inquisitive upon its oval screen.

  “You have had a terrible shock, Art,” he offered.

  “Damn right, Dawkins.” He looked at the artificial face. It was not Franco’s face, nor anything like it. Nor were the voice patterns. “Whose brain do you have, Dawkins?” he asked, bluntly, his heart thumping.

  “Franco Pirelli’s.”

  Art lifted his glass and gulped down some whisky. “A cloned brain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “The question never arose. You can check my audio files from inception point.”

  “When was the inception point?”

  “Thirteen years, four months, one week, three days, two hours, eleven minutes, seven seconds ago, excluding stasis periods."

  “Neural updates from donor brain?”

  “Fifteen minute intervals from inception until time of death.”

  Dawkins’ brain had been in synch with Franco’s since it had been cloned. It had been given all of Franco’s memories from birth to death. And for the last thirteen years, had lived two lives, in fifteen minute simulcasts.

  Art leaned heavily on the counter, and pressed his forehead against its cool surface. He contemplated a gruesome recovery programme.

  “Hiroto?”

  It was late the next day. Art had slept off the most horrendous hang over through most of it, and even now he was achy and trembling. He lounged in a comfortable chair near to a monitor showing Hiroto’s avatar face. He had called on the brain earlier, but had terminated communications after a few brief moments, feeling sick and tired and emotionally wrecked. But he had to act swiftly.

  “Hiroto?”

  “Art san, it is good to hear your voice.”

  “I need Franco back. What can you do?”

  A billion upon a billion calculations whispered through Hiroto’s giant cortex, answers sifted, correlated, discarded or acted upon. Answer one came quickly. “ Art san, passenger 344, Bev Wzchiok is in the best physical condition to carry and bring to term a cloned embryo carrying only Franco Pirelli’s genetic material.”

  Art shook his head, and watched as the avatar face dissolved into a sandstorm of pixels before reforming, a thoughtful expression on its face.

  “I want an adult recipient, Hiroto, and I want Franco’s face. I want to clone Dawkins’ brain and place it in an organic host. I need an adult skull for an adult brain.”

  Hiroto’s face flickered, turned a somersault. Was silent. “Art san?”

  “Yes, Hiroto?”

  “What you ask is very difficult. You want me to create a feast from scraps.”

  “Yes I do. Halliday created this fucking mess, and now you and he can repair it.”

  “Franco’s body is dead, Art san. It is frozen. It cannot be made to live again.”

  Art wiped his
mouth. What he was about to say made him retch. “We have organic polymers aboard. Take stem cell samples, burn the flesh, take bone measurements and rebuild the skeleton.”

  The Hiroto monitor burned bright and was flooded with colours. “Art san, yes! We can re-seed the skeleton with stem cells, and regrow organs to fit around them!”

  “All right. Do it. And don’t fuck with me.”

  The weeks dragged slowly by. By day, Art, Dawkins and Six made their rounds of the ship and made good their repairs. By night, he and Dawkins attended the medlab to watch Franco grow…

  “Remarkable”, murmered Kyko Halliday, leaning close to the window of the sealed lab window. He flexed his new legs as he watched. Art wanted to smash his face against the glass.

  Franco’s skeleton floated in a pale pink nutrient tank, supported on a rig of clamps. Tiny plastic pipes, nanometres wide, fed stem cells into every bone, from the metatarsels of his foot to the tiny hammer and anvil structures of his ears. They were red with life. But it was in his chest, encased within his ribcage, that all of their attention fell – bright red, already alive with movement, a new heart, Franco’s DNA in a donor organ washed clean of the original cells and re-seeded with his own. It throbbed and jumped, still assisted by the medlab drone units, all controlled by Hiroto. It was growing its own veinous system. Already, fat, thick arteries sprouted like rhubarb stems out of its valve chambers; already, smaller veins and capilliaries danced to the rhythm of the heart, as yet loose in the nutrient tank, awaiting the flesh that would encase them. But it was growing. All the organs were there, harvested from those who had suffered brain damage or brain death while in hibernation. An intestine and a fat, pale stomach, bobbed along to the heartbeat over the gelatinous pelvic bone. The stem cells locked on to the organs, sensed their purpose, changed their purpose to fit their role. And around it, still loose, but seeking meaning and function, and being drawn slowly into place by opaque webs of connective tissue and budding, bulbous blobs of fat, was Franco’s skin, livid as a newborn baby’s. It was like watching a gruesome explosion in reverse, in extreme slow-motion. Bit by bit, molecule by molecule, Franco’s body was knitting together to form a functioning whole again.