Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “Why would they do such a thing?” she asked again, more amused than disturbed.

  “I’m not sure. Perhaps they’re keeping an eye on our mental health.”

  “Whatever for? We’re all grownups, and besides, this is a ship full of very intelligent, very responsible people—all of us.”

  “Maybe some sociologist is doing research—you know, the first interstellar flight, a closed environment, a unique study group.”

  “A bit far-fetched, Neil. They couldn’t do that without government approval.”

  “This is a government ship.”

  “Yes, true, but. . .”

  She told me not to worry and returned to her knitting.

  Day 1829:

  I have made an effort to keep up with this written journal, but there’s a subliminal drag on motivation. Regarding my voice journal, I asked Dwayne if there was a way we could prevent any monitoring of my max files. He looked solemn and murmured that he had already “fixed” that.

  “What do you mean, fixed?” I asked. “And when did you do it? I haven’t been out of my room for days, except for meals.”

  “Uh, actually, I did it all in one shot, fooling the audio snoop, blocking max access, installing unbreakable file encrypt. I did it around the end of year one.”

  I just shook my head. “And how did you get access to my door code?”

  “That was fairly simple.”

  “Well,” I huffed, “it looks like I’ll have to change my code every hour on the hour.”

  “That’ll sure keep your fellow passengers out. But the codes aren’t airtight, since there are override commands to unlock a door if someone forgets his code. Every day somebody or other forgets. But don’t worry, I keyed in an override of the override. If they ever want to have a look around your room, it would slow them down.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “It’s kinda complicated. Anyway, just give me a call if you ever have problems.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “Let’s say you get summoned to the principal’s office for being a bad boy in class. Let’s say they ask you some casual questions about your max, ask you if anyone’s been tinkering with it. They might tell you the ship’s master computer is blinking a warning that there’s a glitch in your max, and they’d like to send a tech guy in to see what the trouble is.”

  “You’re saying they’d make it sound innocent as apple pie.”

  “Yup. And it’d be your proof. It’d tell you that they’re real miffed, that they tried to get into your max and figured out they’ve been blocked. They’d have to be cagey about finding out just how they were blocked, because that would be a dead giveaway of their secret. That would be telling everyone on board that whoever’s in charge of surveillance is reading our secret diaries. Then they’d have to deal with the uproar. They wouldn’t want a revolt on their hands. So they’d be real subtle about it.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “Yup.”

  “Another question: Whenever I go searching on the max, can anyone else see where I’m going, read what I’m reading?”

  “As we know, the max is theoretically a self-contained unit. That’s what the Manual says, and that’s what they told us at pre-departure briefing, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And we’ve discovered that they can jump right through standard firewall for some reason known only to themselves, right?”

  “Right again.”

  “Well, they must want to keep tabs on us in a bad way, because they also implanted a back-up micro trail leading in and out of each max. It’s a circuit that monitors and cross-checks all the regular airwave traffic in and out of your max. It’s also how they would read what you’ve been surfing.”

  “In my case, there’s no harm done. But what about you? Wouldn’t your research into the Christian cult make trouble for you?”

  “I fixed it. Sent them on a false trail. Did the same for yours too. I mean there’s probably about a thousand max units on board, and it would need a lot of manpower to check out where everyone’s gone surfing. But if anybody turns his eye on you and wants to track you, what they’re going to find out is you’re real fixated on astronomy and poisonous snakes.”

  “Clever, Dwayne, very clever. In fact, I am fixated on the latter topic.”

  We sat there for a while, nodding and nodding, staring at the floor. “You’ve been pretty thorough”, I said. “Is there any chance you might have overlooked something?”

  “Such as?”

  “Anything, really. Take for instance the tapeworms and botflies they use back on Earth.”

  “The what?”

  I described the nano-pests that had infested my home, and how I regularly zapped them.

  Dwayne smiled. “Oh, those. I used to call ‘em flutterers and burrowers.”

  “Seen any on the Kosmos?”

  “Nope. Years ago, I put together something nanoid of my own. It alerts me whenever they’re around. Haven’t had a bleep since we left home.”

  “I wonder why they don’t use them here. Rare is he who even knows they exist.”

  “Right. But imagine the curiosity that would be aroused if people started seeing all kinds of flutterers and crawlers on board. I think DSI reverted to the older form of surveillance because they know that a lie and a friendly machine can do the job just as well.”

  “Or do it even better. No one trusts a creeper; everyone trusts their computer.”

  “Yup, extension of the self.”

  “Owner of the self, if you don’t keep it in line.”

  “Keep it in line? I’d say that’s a tall order for most folks.”

  “Not completely. We can simply choose not to use it.”

  “True, but life is less efficient without the dang thing.”

  “And more real.”

  His eyes went all abstract, and he tilted his head a little, musing on a topic that he had probably given plenty of thought to on his own. I expected him to hold forth on the old cliché of tools reshaping those who use them—the slave becoming the master. But instead he returned to our original discussion: “The other day you asked me if I’d read your paper journal.”

  “Don’t worry, I believe you.”

  “I just want to remind you that there’s no way you can encrypt a journal like that. Anybody who gets into your room could read it.”

  I hadn’t thought about this—despite the high IQ of yours truly.

  “I just figured I should mention it, Neil. You’re probably working on a lot of scientific things, right? And you don’t want other people reading it. Maybe you should keep that kind of ultra-private stuff for encryption.”

  I nodded my thanks.

  “Uh, did I just hear you call me by my given name? The name Neil?”

  “Yup.”

  “Shake hands, pardner.”

  We shook hands.

  “Dwayne, there are a few people who I think should know about this situation. Would you be willing to do some tinkering for them too?”

  He paused and silently tossed it around in his head.

  “I’m sure the others would find some way of compensating you”, I prompted.

  He looked up sharply. “Not necessary”, he said, hardly moving his lips.

  After he had gone, I dismantled my shaving razor, and using the blade, I cut a discreet slit on the wall side of my mattress. Into this hidey-hole I inserted journal pages that could make problems for others. I reassembled the razor and had a good nap.

  Day 1833:

  Putting my best foot forward, so to speak, I approached four people and broached the subject with exquisite tact.

  Xue took it serenely, but his eyes went cold.

  Dariush just look perplexed and began to digest it.

  Maria went into total denial.

  Pia looked very disturbed, and blushed. What she said is worth noting: “I had no idea, no idea. This is awful. It’s so cynical. We’re not laboratory rats. I kee
p a lot of very private things on my max.”

  “Things that have nothing to do with your work?” I asked.

  “That’s right. You see, I’ve grown very close to another person on board. We text each other every day, since we’re not often able to get together for a meal or a drink.”

  “Your shifts are different?”

  “Yes. And he’s in the flight crew. They don’t come downstairs all that much, and of course we never go upstairs to KC.”

  “I know someone who can help”, I said.

  Day 1865:

  Xue, Dariush, and Pia now enjoy ultra privacy. None of them know Dwayne’s name or where he works. We prearranged that he would do the job when they were out of their rooms. A hacker par excellence, he accessed their door codes without a hitch.

  I suggested to Pia that she bring up the topic with her friend, if she feels he can be trusted. She assured me he can be trusted, but he’s in a highly sensitive part of command—Navigation—and his personal quarters are also on KC, so there would be problems getting to his max. Pia and her beau will have to make do with paper love notes for now.

  I fume over the lies we’ve been told, though I try to maintain my perspective. My guess is that even if everyone on board learned that they are under surveillance, a majority would shrug. Only the very oldest among us remember a time when state surveillance was no more than modestly invasive (monitoring of cell phone and e-mail traffic). We are, to borrow a term, surveillance immigrants while the younger ones are surveillance natives.

  How do we inform them? How do we raise the right questions, generate real thought about the right to privacy and the wrongness of invading it? I wonder if they would even care.

  Day 1999:

  Here are a few more random observations:

  Despite the wildly fluctuating clothing styles (women mostly) and the humdrum uniforms or dull civvies (men mostly), everyone wears incongruous grip-slippers. Everyone, that is, except me (barefoot mostly, cowboy boots when I can get away with it) and Stron, who wears real leather brogues (illegal) and emanates an attitude that inhibits anyone from making trouble over it.

  More on social relationships: Well, this topic is so complex I won’t even attempt an exhaustive description. A sampling of fields will do. The group mood is generally cool to tepid, constantly buoyed up to the level of optimistic, efficient friendliness. Definitely an urban mode of behavior. Nevertheless, there have been breakdowns: For example, three-dimensional Scrabble has become the cause of a certain loss of objectivity in the lounges. The game keeps people’s minds agile, but I have noted in players and onlookers a growing amount of emotional investment in winning or losing. There have been angry arguments, sparking intervention by social facilitators.

  Then there’s the love thing. There is a lot of it, as I mentioned before. Who knows where it all goes. It’s conducted in relative privacy (by which I mean outside of my optical field, though not, presumably, outside that of the Watchers). Thus any analysis of mine can only be based on insufficient (even faulty) observation.

  Are there friendships on board, as in real friendships? Yes, there is at least one set of friends, and I’m involved in it. A mysterious thing is friendship. In its own way, it’s a kind of love, or quiet affection, without demands or expectations. It’s an affinity with certain kinds of other people, those who share an interest, or a common goal, or ideals, or heck, they just like each other.

  According to the official e-newsletter, we are all “friends”, a “team”, a “community”, a “family”. This weekly missive from the Department of Social Infrastructure contains plenty of happy-face material, augmented by newsy items and announcements, reminders of coming entertainments and activities, public talks, educational programs, etc. Also the “news” from Earth, which is stale due to the distance it now must cross to reach us. Moreover, the details seem rather thin to me, since the murky doings of our home planet are ever tense and complicated. Of course, journalism has always been carefully tailored for positive-attitude-building and group cooperation, but it seems to be even more so since our departure from Earth. Is there no bad news anymore? Has mankind really achieved in so short a time such universal cheer, cooperation, and progress?

  Due to my inability to obtain an objective reading of both my home planet and this soaring embassy of the said planet, I must now resort to random samplings, as follows:

  Sample 1: In the African restaurant one night, not long past, I am seated alone at a table, spooning corn mash, spiced with red peppers, into my mouth. Seated alone at a nearby table is an extremely short woman about seventy-five to eighty years of age. She is heavily wrinkled, sipping from a martini glass that contains a clear liquid, leaving red lipstick stains on the glass, as she reads from a book. I am close enough to see that the letters on its cover are from the Cyrillic alphabet. With a brooding expression, she mutters to herself from time to time. She is wearing a medical staff uniform, with a gold caduceus pinned to the center of her chest, a winged stave entwined with snakes. Perhaps she has just come off duty and is having a drink before heading for home.

  I am toying with the idea of leaning over to engage her in a conversation when from the corner of her eye she spots me looking at her. Her chest inflates with outraged dignity. If she had quills, she would have bristled them, maybe thrown a few at me. She glares ferociously as if she is about to open her mouth and tear a strip off my vanity. I look down at my bowl of mash and resume spoonfeeding myself, pretending that none of the aforementioned really happened.

  “You rude man! Vye are you looking at my scar?” she says in a low threatening tone.

  “I wasn’t”, I reply. “I didn’t see a scar.”

  “You are lying! You ver looking!”

  She slams the book down on the table, and raises her voice: “Alvays, alvays, the fools! You are Amerikanits. You are old man and old baby.”

  “Really, Madame!” I protest.

  Now I notice a slight scar that disfigures one of her eyebrows.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid”, she mutters, shaking her head, and then to herself: “They know nothing—nothing! They have not suffered!”

  Displaying rather dramatic dignity, she drops from her chair and, with a toss of her head, stalks toward the exit.

  Later, checking through the main computer’s Kosmos personnel file, I find her listed under the medical department, spotting first her photo and then her bio. She’s a very famous Russian psychiatrist, and she works on deck A.

  Leaving all curiosity aside, I make the decision to avoid Concourse A as much as possible.

  Sample 2: Another night, this time in the Euro restaurant on deck A (yes, yes, I know, but resolution weakens, pain fades). At a nearby table, two middle-aged men are eating spaghetti and “meatballs”, refilling their wine glasses from a straw-wrapped, rotund bottle of chianti. They are talking loudly and laughing, joking and teasing each other. My three years at the Fermi Institute in Milan had given me enough Italian to understand that they’re making puns based on the topic of anti-gravity. The terms they’re using are highly technical, so I presume they’re engineers.

  As it turns out, one of them is from the city of Siena in Italy, the other from Florence. The jokes become jibes. Within minutes, the banter becomes an argument. Soon, both of them are red in the face and gesturing wildly with arms and hands.

  “Ha!” says Siena. “Your little city, so pretentious, so young!”

  “The city of Dante and Galileo”, retorts Florence.

  “The city of the Medici!” shouts Siena. “A city of poisoners and usurers.”

  “Basta!” shouts Florence. “What about your Borghese poisoners! What about your pathetic Palio di Siena! You kill more people with your horses every summer than all the victims of the Medici in history!”

  “Ridicolo! Firenze kills with poison, Siena with accident!”

  “You don’t even use real horses any more, just the holograms, but the people get crushed just the same! No longer the horses tra
mple; now you must trample each other. You love all that blood on the cobblestones of your very ancient, very cultured city!”

  The roaring goes back and forth for quite some time. In the end, they embrace and part from each other with kisses on the cheeks, followed by “Ciao! Ciao! Ciao!”

  Sample 3: Perusing a painting in one of the art alcoves on deck C, I am the unwilling witness to a torrid dialogue between a young man and woman, both of them wearing regulation DSI suits and ties. They careen into the alcove entangled in each other’s arms, their emotions flailing in equal measures of desire and anger. The mood tabs behind their ears are flashing lurid colors. Either they don’t see me standing there a few feet away from them, or they don’t care.

  “I told you, I told you”, says the male. “She means nothing to me.”

  “But I saw you together!” says the female. “I saw the way you were with her.”

  “She started it. I couldn’t resist.”

  “Couldn’t resist? If you really loved me, you would’ve resisted.”

  “You don’t understand. It was just one of those things that happen.”

  “Just one of those things that happen? You’re saying it’s all right that one of those things happens because I wasn’t there? If I’d walked in ten minutes earlier, it wouldn’t have happened?”

  “Yeah, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “It would’ve happened at some other time? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Honey, you just don’t get it. I told you, she’s nothing to me. I love you, babe!”

  “I love you too, babe” (sounds of choking, sniffling, sobs). “Look, I gotta get back to work. I’ll see you later.”

  “Will you call me? Give me a call on max when you get off shift, okay?”

  “It’s better we don’t talk on max.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just better, that’s all.”

  And so forth. Mind-numbing, nauseating, Pavlovian-Machiavellian drivel.

  “Excuse me, babes”, I mumble as I brush past them, desperate to get out of that alcove.

  Sample 4: Feeling restless one day, I’m in the library containing hardbound books, searching for something to read. I’m sick of sea stories and would also like a change from astronomy and physics. There’s another person present in the room, a man in his late twenties, standing exactly in my path, blocking my view of the literature section. I expect him to notice me and courteously stand aside, but he stays where he’s parked, head bent over a leather-bound copy of Shakespeare’s poems. I peer surreptitiously and see the page opened to the heading: “Sonnet 30”.