by James Wilks
“Do you feel like you can walk?” Staples asked.
“Yes,” she said delicately in her husky voice. “Yes,” she said again, this time with more conviction.
“Good, then you can walk to Medical.” The redheaded woman opened her mouth to object, but Staples spoke over her and with authority. “No discussion. My ship, my rules.” She hoped her smile made her seem less like the dictator she felt like whenever she said something like that. “I insist on my passengers being well taken care of.”
Bauer immediately supported her. “You weren’t just dizzy; you just about passed out there. You really should see the doctor.” She looked back and forth between them, still a little unsteady, and finally nodded sheepishly.
The doctor was waiting at the door when they arrived at Medical. As the ship was in the Martian atmosphere, such as it was, and consequently on its belly, there was no odd gravitational transition as the three entered the long bluish room. Iqbal had prepared the nearest bed, and he guided the woman to it as he introduced himself. Evelyn was attempting to placate them as she walked to the bed under her own power.
“I’m fine now, really.” She turned around, sat down on the bed, and faced the three of them.
“Ms. Schilling,” he began. “It is Ms. Schilling?” She nodded and smiled. “Ms. Schilling, if I had a dollar for every sick patient who told me they were ‘fine,’ I would be a good deal wealthier than I am.” He looked briefly at Staples. “Please don’t take that as a remonstration, Captain. I am quite content with the current state of my remuneration.” He turned back to his patient. “Now please tell me, do you still feel faint?”
She shook her head.
“Light headed at all?”
She looked at him and winced a bit, looking as sheepish she had looked in the ReC. She held out her fingers a centimeter apart.
“Just a bit, I see. Are you comfortable enough to sit up, or would you rather lie down?” As ever, Staples was impressed at the doctor’s soothing and authoritative voice and its ability to engender trust and confidence.
“I’m all right to sit.” She was leaning forward a bit with her hands gripping the edge of the metal bed, her pale and lightly freckled wrists just visible below the sleeves of her sweater.
“Very well. Captain, Doctor, I’ll have to ask you to wait outside. Doctor-client confidentiality, you know.”
Staples and Herc turned to go, but Evelyn quickly interjected, “No, it’s fine. They can stay.”
Iqbal raised an eyebrow, but said, “As you wish.” Once he had picked up his stethoscope, he added, “I’ll need you to take off your sweater please.” Once she was down to her tee shirt, he began his examination, checking her breathing, pulse, blood pressure, and other minutiae. “Your pulse is fast, your breathing a bit quick and shallow, and your blood pressure seems high, though it is difficult to tell without a baseline from your medical records. Frankly, you seem to be suffering from a light case of nervous exhaustion. Tell me, have you experienced anything lately that might account for these symptoms? An illness perhaps, or some other physically trying incident?”
“I…” she groped for the right words, “had a particularly fun weekend.” She blushed as she spoke, though it seemed to be more from a flood of pleasant memories than from embarrassment. “I met someone in a bar, we hit it off, and we spent the next twenty-four hours or so drinking and, well, indulging ourselves.” Her chin lifted slightly as she divulged her one-night stand to perfect strangers, as if to challenge them to comment or judge. No one did.
“Hm. Twenty-four hours is a long time for one to remain intoxicated. Tell me, did you perchance partake of any other mind or physiologically altering substances?”
The woman shook her head.
“You’re sure? You didn’t lose any time during this period of drunkenness?” His questions came without a hint of judgment, only evidencing a desire for information.
“No.” She smiled a somewhat coy and satisfied smile. “I remember it quite well.”
“Well, I am pleased for you,” he said reflexively. The other two looked on, Staples leaning against another table behind Iqbal. “Lightheadedness and dizziness certainly can be aftereffects of the consumption of alcohol, though it is unusual that you should feel it more than a day later, even if you really overdid it. When was the last drink you had?”
“Mmm,” she thought, looking up at the ceiling. “Saturday night with dinner. Say about nineteen? Then I took a rickshaw home and slept all night. I actually didn’t wake up until about noon on Sunday.”
“I see,” the doctor responded, looking levelly in her chestnut brown eyes. “Tell me, were you hung over when you awoke? Exhaustion, headache, the like?”
“Um,” she thought for another second, squinting a bit as she did so. “Exhaustion: yes. Headache: no. Just groggy, very groggy.”
“Unusual, but not unheard of.” He drew himself up to his full height and stepped to the metal tray beside him, putting down his stethoscope and picking up his ophthalmoscope. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep you here for a full examination.”
She was shaking her head before he had finished speaking. “No way, Doc. I really am fine now. I’m sure I just overdid it, and anyway, this silly business has taken up enough of your captain’s and your time.” She looked over at Staples, who returned, the best she could, a look that said don’t worry about it.
“Well, I can hardly make you stay, but I really recommend that you undergo a thorough examination, if not by me, then by another licensed physician.” He put down the ophthalmoscope with a slight air of defeat.
“I will,” she said unconvincingly. “I’ve got to be at the stasis center in a few hours, and I’m sure they’ll do a full check up before they put me under. I’m fine, really.” She winced as she realized that she had earned Iqbal another phantom dollar.
As the three of them were walking out of the Medical bay, Evelyn stopped suddenly and said, “I forgot my sweater! I’ll be right back.” Staples nodded, and she and Herc continued down the hall as she turned around and ducked energetically back through the door, all traces of her prior faintness seemingly gone. Iqbal was standing by the bed she had sat upon, holding out her maroon sweater to her with his left hand.
She did not walk so much as saunter up to him, stopping closer than she needed to, and took the sweater from him. She looked up at him.
“You know, it’s too bad I won’t be awake for this journey, Doctor. You seem really interesting.”
He looked down at her just as steadily. “Now that the examination is finished, our interactions need not be governed by formality or in a professional manner. Please call me Jabir. And may I say, Ms. Schilling, that it would be a pleasure to get to know you as well. One doctor to another.”
She raised her eyebrows, shamelessly suggestive, then tipped him a wink and was gone through the door, the sweater bobbing over her shoulder. He let out a long sigh of appreciation, and then turned and walked back to his office.
“If you don’t mind me asking a personal question,” Staples said as she sat across from her two soon-to-be passengers, “what exactly is the difference between a Computer Engineer,” she looked at Bauer, “and a Computer Scientist?” She shifted her gaze to Schilling. They were seated in the mess hall at one end of the long tables, cold plastic-wrapped sandwiches on plates in front of them and beverages nearby.
Evelyn’s laugh sounded, and Herc grinned. “That’s a personal question?” she asked.
“We get that all the time, actually. Well, I do,” Herc added. “Simply put, a Computer Engineer focuses more on the building aspect of computers.” He pawed at his sandwich with his large but dexterous hands, excavating it from the plastic wrap and setting it down on the metal plate. “It’s really where computers and Electrical Engineering meet. We deal with the construction of integrated systems, power flow, wiring, and hardware in general. That’s a broad definition, you understand.” He took a bite of his sandwich and seemed somewhat surprised
at being pleased with it.
“We have a great cook named Piotr,” Staples offered by way of explanation. “He’s in charge of food purchases, meals, keeping the pantries and refrigeration units stocked, that sort of thing. I’m sorry he’s not here right now to make us something warm. He’s off ship buying supplies for our journey; it’s obviously critical that we have an abundance of food when we make long trips like this.”
“Doesn’t he get shore leave too?” Evelyn asked between bites of her own sandwich.
Staples nodded somewhat regretfully. “He does, but not as much as some. Some things need doing while we’re in port, and that means some crew members have more time off than others when we are berthed. It’s just a reality of the job, but Piotr doesn’t mind. Still,” she looked over at the door to the mess hall as if expecting the burly cook to walk through it, “I’m surprised that he’s not back yet. Maybe he is taking a bit of shore leave out there. But you were saying about Computer Science?” She looked at Evelyn, and then began work on her own well-made turkey sandwich.
“Ah, yes.” She put down her food and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Computer Science is, well, there’s a lot of overlap really, but comp sci has more to do with data, how instructions are processed by computers, data protection and security, and programming languages. It’s a lot of data.”
“So if I wanted someone to write me an AI program, that would be you.” Staples said, pointing at Evelyn.
She nodded in response. “Yes, though that is way beyond me. And illegal, I might add.”
“Do you ever think that will change?”
“Mmm,” Evelyn equivocated.
“Yes, but not anytime soon,” Herc cut in. “AI is the future. It’s where we’re going, but I think people are too scared. Too many movies and books about evil computers destroying mankind, too much human arrogance. You know how long it took people to accept that we’re descended from apes? We don’t like competition; we’re…” he thought for a moment, “in love with our own uniqueness. We’re not ready for another group of creatures that think too. That’s really what Turing Compliant AI would be: another species. People don’t know enough about it, so they’re scared. People keep trying to pass that vote, but I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon.”
Staples put down the crust of her sandwich and considered. “You know enough about it. Are you scared of AI?”
“Absolutely,” he said, and took another bite.
Early the next morning, shore leave was over and nearly every member of the crew was back on board. Templeton and Staples were back at the tubeway entrance to the ship, and this time Dinah Hazra was standing with them. They were waiting on the official delivery of their passengers who had evidently been put into stasis the night before. The stasis process had of course been theorized as a means to deal with the daunting amounts of time required to cross the vast reaches of space between planets long before it had become possible. And despite its invention and subsequent minimizing of accidents and fatalities, it remained somewhat impractical for the average traveler. People and other creatures such as pets could be placed in cold stasis, which effectively slowed the aging process to the point where it was negligible, and though it was common, it was not quite routine. A team of skilled experts oversaw the process of both submersion into and emersion from stasis, which was completed in a special lab, and it often took several hours. Even after stasis was achieved, it was considered common prudence for the team to monitor the subject for the following eight hours or so in case anything went wrong. Finally, the stasis tubes were transferred to the ship in question and hooked into the requisite reception bays. The tubes came with their own power supply, but the bays supplied redundancy in case of a power failure as well as other chemical needs, such as coolant, from storage tanks. It was this delivery that the three crew members were waiting for now.
“Have you ever been frozen?” Templeton asked conversationally to neither of them in particular.
“No,” his captain replied, shaking her head lightly. She was looking for their expected guests again. She suspected that she would have more luck seeing them coming this time.
“Yes, sir,” Dinah replied, also keeping her eyes on the people walking by. There were far fewer this morning than the night before, and many staggered more than they walked as they sought some reanimating magic from their cups of coffee.
Templeton turned to look at her. “Really? When?” Dinah neither looked at him nor answered. Her eyes remained on the crowd.
Templeton abruptly became aware of his faux pas, and changed his question. “What was it like?”
The dark-skinned engineer looked at him, her hands clasped behind her back, her feet slightly spread. “Disconcerting. The process lowers your core body temperature to all but halt aging, the need for food or drink, or brain activity. No brain activity means no dreaming.”
“You sleep for weeks, or even months, but you don’t dream?” Templeton shook his head.
“No, sir. Dreams result from the brain processing the activities of the day, that sort of thing. There is no activity. It feels like someone just turned off your brain, and then turned it back on. It’s not even restful. I usually woke up tired.”
“Huh,” Templeton mused. “‘Usually’? You been in stasis more than once?” Again silence greeted him. Staples spied her opportunity to save them from the awkward moment.
“Here they come.” Four technicians were wheeling two large metallic boxes down the concourse towards them. The boxes were as wide as a bookshelf and three times as thick. The technicians had them on trolleys slanted back at a thirty-five degree angle. The stasis tubes would probably have been too heavy for them to handle if not for the light Martian gravity. The technicians were accompanied by Parsells and Quinn, whom Templeton had sent to meet them at their vehicle to provide security. It was really just a formality, but he figured that it was better to be safe than sorry. The two men looked as dour as ever to be up early. The entourage was rounded out by a man in a blue lab coat and scrubs; the lab coat listed his name on the lapel, Pelzer, as well as the name of his company, Stasis Solutions, across the back. Greetings were exchanged, digital documents shown, fingerprints given, authorization granted, and finally they were ready to push the tubes one at a time down the tubeway and up the ramp to the ship.
As tube A went by her, Staples looked down at the signed transfer documents on her surface that assured Stasis Solutions that she and her crew took full responsibility for the man and woman in the tubes. “A is Evelyn,” she said, imagining the lovely woman unconscious in the huge metal coffin. There were no windows in the devices. She felt a touch of nervousness as she realized that there was no way for her to be sure that it was in fact Evelyn in the tube. Perhaps Doctor Pelzer and Stasis Solutions had made a mistake and sent Evelyn off to Venus like a lost suitcase. She tried to put it out of her mind; they were professionals, and anyway, there was nothing she could do about it at this point.
“B is for Bauer,” she said as the second tube passed her. Once everyone had walked down the tubeway, Staples took one last look around the concourse. People still milled about, walked to work. A shop keeper was opening his store for business on the other side of the large room. A good-looking man in his mid thirties with black hair graying at the temples leaned casually against another closed storefront. A woman spoke in heated tones to a child who looked as though she was on the verge of tears. A man with a black duster and greasy black hair stood further away, looking in her general direction, shifting somewhat nervously from foot to foot. Clea Staples took one last look at Tranquility and walked towards her ship.
Chapter 7
Day two.
“Do we really gotta do this?” Parsells asked, sweat dripping from his face. He and Quinn were both standing, their feet spread, bent over, their hands on their knees. They wore weighted vests over their sweat-damp workout shirts. The tall, bald, dark form of Kojo Jang stood near them, his hands on his hips. He seemed unaffected by
his weight vest, and he was barely sweating. His breath came easily, while Parsells and Quinn both gasped. Jang had just had them run ten sprints, from the base of the back wall of the cargo bay up to where the elevator disappeared into the ceiling when the ship was horizontal. Parsells stood up and put his hands behind his head, desperately trying to catch his breath. “Can’t we at least take the weight vests off?”
“Then what would be the point of this? We are currently accelerating at about six tenths of normal Earth gravity. Quinn, your file says you normally weigh one hundred and nine kilograms under normal Earth gravity. Right now, you weigh about sixty-five kilograms. That makes exercise easy, and it’s a good way to get soft. People who spend a great deal of time in space tend to lose muscle mass.”
Parsells looked at Quinn and tried not to roll his eyes at his friend. “But we used to live in zero G, and we didn’t work out that much then.”
“You were also, if memory serves, spending ten hours a day mining asteroids. Here, it is easy to spend days or even weeks without encountering physical exercise. It is important to stay in shape.”
“But,” Parsells groped for another objection that might put off the next set of sprints another minute, “if we gotta fight, it’ll be on Mars, or the space station around Saturn. That’s light gravity or no gravity! Why should we-”
“Get used to being heavier than you normally are?” Jang finished his sentence, pointing to his forty kilogram weight vest. “Do you remember, just over a week ago, when we were decelerating at nearly three times normal gravity?” The looks both Quinn and Parsells wore on their faces said that they did. “What if you were called upon to fight, or to run, or to climb under those conditions? Adrenaline can only be counted on to do so much. You must be ready. Now,” he pointed to the far end of the cargo bay, “ten more sprints.”
“Drill instructor from hell,” Parsells muttered under his breath. It came out louder than he intended.