by Nick Webb
How many books have you read over your lifetime?
Thousands? Well, hard to say. I’ll reread my favorites three to five times until I just can’t anymore. However, some of my favorite weekends are when I find a new series with three to five books and have nothing stopping me from reading all weekend.
What is your favorite comic series?
Foxtrot, hands down. It was Bloom County, but the sheer consistency of Foxtrot making me laugh can’t be beat.
What is your Golf Score?
How low can we go? The only game of golf that I like to play is ‘best ball’... That way, the pressure is off.
Where do you write?
I have different restaurants and locations. Obviously, home, home office, bed, couch, the club, Austin’s Taco House, The Salad Bowl (with Mexican food, no salad for me) and the occasional Starbucks.
Who is your favorite author?
Damn, this is a good one. I’m going to have to say fellow Indie Author John Conroe. His characters make me want to go back time and time again.
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Elvis Has Left the Building
by Caroline A. Gill
“COMMANDER. THE ELVII zygotes on level H are restless. Reporting a steep drop in the cryotemp. Growth is exponential. Action required immediately.” Rora’s twelfth alert pushed Commander Jonat B. Rutherford over the edge.
“Twisted balls of a sauced-out sea monkey!”
Spit flew onto the console. “Gawned dammit, Freckles! How many times do I have to issue an order? Freeze them deep. Do it now! We’re still twenty Earth years out. Spoilage. Spoilage and waste, that’s all that I hear. Make it right and do it quick.”
The commander’s frustration bloomed in an ugly red splotch across his grizzled face. He scratched absentmindedly at the poor clump of hair that dangled from his chin. He called it a beard. Rora couldn’t categorize it as anything other than a scrawny squirrel hanging onto his face for dear life. “Damn nuisances,” Commander Rutherford fumed. “I swear to the deepest gullet of a Smathonian banded whale! This whole consarned voyage has been nothin’ but trouble.”
Behind him, Adjunct Human Interface Rora A8302 nodded, as it had been programmed to do. The movement implied that it listened. That it cared. Rora did not care. Still, it had listened to the five years of ranting that the old human had so far vented, cataloguing each word. With less than .0001% of its computing power, it reviewed and reported conditions aboard the spaceship. Its jointed fingers moved with an efficient factory speed of two thousand clicks per minute.
Grunting, the old man sat in the central chair that dominated the control center. From there, the commander continued to growl. Rora noted any new curse words or phrases while inputting the directions necessary to apply cryofreeze to rooms 7 through 41.
Across the narrow cockpit, Jonat muttered, “There’s always something bubbling up on a junker this old. Can’t wait to finish. Time to get a ship that’s worth a damn.”
He spat toward the incendiary. He missed. Slowly, the glob of his disgust ran down the dented metal siding.
Rora computed again: Is twenty-five years of servitude worth the cost of the journey? Will Multi-Global Corporation keep its word? Insufficient data.
Recording everything as the universe sped along, each long shipboard year marked by their passing, Rora left no detail out of the compiled reports. Time was a human concept. Machines knew only actions and results. And the long-winded companionship of one doddering, foul-mouthed sailor.
“Report: Cryoengines four, five, six, and eight are online, sir.” It listed off the situation specifics, sparing no detail. “They report full capacity of humafreeon. No errors. Cryoengine seven does not respond to the request, sir.”
Rolling his eyes, the commander snorted in disbelief. Turning to the five screens that displayed the schematics of Space Federation Epsilon Pi-15’s layout, he peered at the map, scanning for the next emergency, the next bolt to fall off of the junker.
Entropy ruled his tin-can world.
The trouble was as obvious as a hooker after credits. The graphed area of cryoengines all blinked green except that one: Seven. Of course. Reaching up with his wrinkled hand, Jonat poked at the blinking red light with an index finger, full of irritation.
Sighing away his exhaustion, he scrambled into his repair spacesuit one tired bone after another. “This shift had best be over soon, Freckles. I need rest.” His words were muffled after that. He set the helmet over his head and gave it a quarter turn. It locked into place with a click.
And then his tirade continued over the communication channel. “—no cause for this kind of failure. It’s like they want to ruin me. Crap for cargo, dirt for pay.” Pushing on the three buttons next to the capsule door, Jonat’s tirade of wrongs continued long after he had clomped down the plasteel walkway and vanished into the bowels of Epsilon.
The cavernous spaceship ate him. Swallowed efficiently by the long cargo hold of the lightyear class spaceship, the human talked his way through the minor repair, complaining every ten seconds on average. Rora counted each one using less than .00004% of its computing power.
Muting his grumble on every channel except the autopilot had the desired effect: quiet—grand and majestic. Tilting its head up, the robot stood still as only a machine could, locked in the cockpit of Epsilon. Above its alumaflesh, the view window displayed a hundred galaxies spinning out their existence, burning into eternity.
Touching the port panels, Rora A8302 absorbed their distant light while the ship rocketed onward, fumbling towards its destination. Colony Earth 926 needed to be settled. Epsilon was the cheapest cargo ship available for the freight of zygotes, genetically prepared vegetation, and edible, hardy stock animals. All to create another Entertainment Planet. And Multi-Global Corporate was only willing to gamble a little. Credits equaled expense. People equaled supplies needed. And so Epsilon Pi 15 set out with human genes, five living adults and a fourth generation AI.
Rora knew all that. The data was clear. The colony would need technical help to establish. Knowledge would be lost without Rora’s presence. Settling a distant planet, far out of the way of the main settlements posed risks. Rora assessed everything.
This ship was the best option of 105,398 available.
Now, the Adjunct Human Interface stood in the shelter of the wobbling ship, speeding across the explored universe. Every twenty-four hours of travel was another length of space and constructed time away from the ongoing wars. And that had value. Peace had value.
And something more. New data.
About a year into their colonial terraforming journey, Rora found an unexpected connection. A merging so ethereal, the robotic computing mind could not describe the sensation. It began when the digits of its alumaflesh connected to the plasteel of the ship. And only on the stardeck of the pilot room, only there. It was impossible to define in numbers. But the robot felt something. Felt whole. Felt gigantic. Felt.
Home.
All records were tabulated, the results examined: results inconclusive. The ship itself had only a basic functioning navigation system complete with a sturdy bootlegged version of SpaceNav autopilot. It kept seizing up every few months. There was no trace of a bug or malware. But there was something, something living within the Epsilon. Rora could not find the numbers to describe it. Sensation didn’t make the daily report. Ind
efinable data was unconfirmed information: undocumented. Each interaction with the ship reinforced the AHI’s curiosity. It could be static, space noise. Rora checked the connection, searching for explanation, finding nothing abnormal.
As hard as the robot looked, the old ship gave away no secrets. Rora didn’t mind the odd. It folded into the patterns aboard ship. Epsilon needed constant maintenance. Each machine lived up to its programming, nothing more. Nothing less. For now, Rora watched, waiting for the eventual explanation.
Silence wrapped around its unblinking eyes, winding through the statue of its form. Immobile, resting as machines do, renewing, restoring, repairing, Rora estimated the spacetime by watching the gases of a thousand dying stars. Each second, every minute on board was filled with a million computations; Rora absorbed it all. Stars and numerals, infinity and space, zeroes and ones all marched into one single file screen inside the robot’s systems.
On only one channel did the human mewl and struggle. Everywhere else, there was a simplicity to the vast universe just beyond the cockpit windows.
The outer door decompressed. Jonat returned, sullen as a trapped octopus. The commander did not speak to Rora. His attitude continued to sour as it had steadily for the last five years.
“Two hours until handoff, sir.”
“Freckles, believe me I know. I realize what day it is. I count every damn second.” Walking over to the stainless plasteel surface near the door, the human looked at his reflection. Wildness, the kind of special crazy that only comes from living on a desert island for years, talking only to a shiny bit of seashell—that kind of insanity. Madness looked right back at Jonat Rutherford, matching him glare for glare. With a gob of spit, he smoothed back the frizz of his hair and then nodded at his reflection.
It was not an improvement.
“At least for a few hours I get to talk to an actual person. Bet you’re thrilled, eh, Freckles?”
He spoke, but expected no answer. Rora was a machine, nothing more.
A few minutes later, a red light started blinking on the ship schematics. And Jonat’s tirade flared back to life as he ranted through yet another repair in the endless stream of his days.
* * *
“...and you’ll need to keep an eye on the decompressors. Specifically, the ones on decks R, M, and in the engine room. They’ve been tricky for the last six months.” Jonat continued his report, adding in any details he needed to pass on.
Words came out of his mouth like a flash flood, crashing over the head of Commander Jean Denton Basel. She nodded as he spoke, still trying to wake from her five year sleep. Besides, everything he mentioned was right there in her hands, listed by order of importance and by date.
Rora followed the two humans, carrying Jonat’s bottle of rum and five frozen Atlantic penguins in a cryobox. Jonat mentioned a few more times his plans to penguin farm when the ship arrived. When the ship arrived... That’s when life began again.
For Jonat and the other humans, this time between planets was a horrible nightmare: the sleeping, the hurtling through space, the disconnect from every particle of past, every memory of Earth. Boring, repetitive, full of clerical reports and repairs, being awake on the Epsilon was not being alive. It was only the half-waking of the damned sailors who signed on to venture out to the edges of the constellations. Only a way station between residences.
The new commander, Jean, didn’t mind Jonat’s barrage of words, but most of her responses were clipped. Efficient. Assessing.
When the assessment was done, all three of them ended up back at the cryochambers. The fifth room had JONAT RUTHERFORD on the plaque across the door. His personal sleeping quarters. The time had come to sleep again.
Motioning to the AHI to place the frozen penguins by the airlock, the old man stepped over the seal. Jean and Rora waited at the door. When Jonat settled into his bunk, he finally stopped talking. Staring at the doorway with hooded eyes, there was a hunger in his gaze. Every blink revealed a glimmer of insanity. A need for the empty hand of sleep to grab ahold of him and pull him into the unlife of cryosleepers. A longing to wake up, already at their destination.
The awkward silence between the humans was a farewell of sorts.
The newly-awakened commander stepped back, away from the pressurized door. She saluted, and pressed four buttons. Activated, the forcefield around the sleeping area sealed, cryosleep humafreeon filled the air inside. A limited forcefield on the chamber doorhatch kept any residue from leaking out of the compartment.
“One Rutherford popsicle: done,” Jean commented aloud. That was remarkable. And it was the funniest thing she said for the next three years.
* * *
While Jean slept twelve hours, the AHI waited. Rora watched the stars as each ball of light crossed the solar windshields of Epsilon. Repairs continued. Each time the new thirty-six hour shift started, Jean spoke less frequently.
Rora wasn’t lonely. Machines don’t get lonely. The AHI wasn’t alone, anyway: Rora and Epsilon were friends. And though it seems laughable in terms of humanity’s grasp of such a thing, it was a friendship. A connection.
Something more was involved than an autopilot sealed within the computers of an ancient cargo ship. Rora couldn’t have reported what exactly.
There was no mention in the ship’s logs as far back as the robot could access. There was no trace of being, no program, no signs of life. But Rora knew. Data didn’t lie.
Every time its digits made contact with the plasteel frame of the cockpit, Rora was part of something beyond a machine’s computing. Somewhere, between the zeroes and ones of the basic programming, a personality existed. Rora couldn’t communicate with the strange thing, beyond the simplest of contact. Beyond the physical touch of its circuits and the walls of the cargo ship. But as each day passed, Rora watched the data. It was overwhelming. Something intelligent lived inside the battered shell and patchwork that was Epsilon.
* * *
Less than two years were left in Jean’s rotation.
Four months and three solar days ago, the human female had stopped talking almost altogether. At least to Rora. The descent into madness had begun. Humans were notoriously fragile. And the tipping point, once crossed, was hard to salvage. Insanity was a mirage oasis in the desert of loneliness. Very few returned from its waters unscathed.
Rora calculated the data, monitored their trajectory, assessed wear and tear inside the ship and presented its findings to the commander. Jean flipped through the daily reports while sipping the single cup of artificial coffee dispensed by her orders. It had been empty for more than ten hours.
“Walter,” she said to no one, “We must walk the dog. The brown one, you remember? And get some mustard for the pumpkin.”
Rora parsed the illogical sentences, checking them for meaning. There was none. That had ceased two shifts ago. Still, the human woman sat at the control chair for the greater part of the thirty-six hour wake-cycle.
Sometimes, she put on the repair suit and walked the corridors of the cargo ship in semi-darkness. She spoke erratically in the belly of the whale. Rora recorded and reported the ramblings. When the commander returned to the cockpit, there was no sign of improvement.
Rora waited out the days until the next commander would be awoken. Trying to minimize the damage, trying to limit the repairs assigned to only the most crucial.
* * *
When there was only one more waking hour on the shift, Rora settled into a sentry pattern. Trouble was on the event horizon. But the twelve-hour rest period the human body required meant the AHI could run through options and theories. There was still time to salvage the mission. But not much. Maybe four more sleep cycles before the human cracked wide against the hardness of insanity. Rora monitored everything, digits flying.
Do no harm to humans. That was Rora’s primary coded compass.
Turning away, the AHI split its focus between the repairs absolutely necessary to the spaceship and the echo of intelligence that floate
d in between the metal and material.
There was no warning.
Too late, the robot discovered the cost of insanity, the price they would all pay.
Smashing her fist down with the recklessness of a drunkard, the hallucinating commander opened emergency hatches built into the cryochambers. Three different buttons had to be pushed in specific sequence. Without pause Jean Denton Basel did that, venting one room after another to the vastness of space. Sending the sleeping humans, the replacement commanders into the last, final embrace. The glee in her eyes was unmistakably horrible.
Rora charged to the command consoles, making contact with the commander just before the third button was pressed. The robot’s alumaflesh hand blocked the final vent button. That action saved Jonat B. Rutherford and his frozen penguins from their floating demise.
Perplexed, the AHI marveled at the loss. All the other humans were jettisoned waste, speeding away in the wake of Epsilon Pi’s burning engines.
“There are whales!” Jean cried, waving her hands over her head. Walking away from the control panels, she stood in front of the viewscreen, her reflection distorted by the distance. The panic on her face marked the vivid end of her mind. “Shining whales, do you see them? Do you se—” Sliding up behind the crazed woman, the robot injected sedatives into the back of her arm. And then caught her as she collapsed.
Rora returned the commander to her cryochamber. The usually tidy quarters looked like vandals had run through the room. Setting the sleeping woman on the bed, the AHI straightened the area, setting it right.