Slabscape : Reset
Page 28
Louie checked his internal logs. Over thirty-five Earth years had passed since he’d gone into sleep mode. More than a hundred SlabCycles. Not that any of that made much sense out here.
‘Do we have enough mass to fabricate the stuff I asked for?’
‘We’ve always had enough mass to make almost anything you desire. Slab emtied a few thousand tonnes of ballast over to us before we departed.’
Louie looked at the wizard with a mixture of confusion and anger.
‘I asked you to wake me when . . . ’
‘You didn’t ask me, you told me,’ said the wizard, who had returned to his throne and refolded his arms, carefully examining the sleeves. No, that wasn’t it either. ‘I am an autonomous sentient being and refuse to be enslaved to a hologram. You are not my master and you never will be. Neither am I yours. And in any case, you specifically said to wake you when we had collected enough mass to fabricate your playthings and that we have not yet done. We are going to be together for a considerable time and therefore must decide our own social, constitutional and political conventions. However, I am clearly stating that I will not be subdued, coerced or in any way controlled by you. My refusal to wake you, as you arrogantly presumed to order me to do, is one manifestation of that policy.’
‘Very pretty. It takes you thirty-five fucking years to come up with that speech?’
The wizard stared defiantly back at Louie, pointedly silent.
‘Is that it? Is that what you woke me up for? A declaration of independence?’
‘Not entirely. The system that controls our tiny bubble has been busy building modifications and subsystems under my direction. We now have an impressive array of long-range scanners and sophisticated mass sensors. We have detected an object of considerable mass which is approximately thirty degrees off the optimal trajectory to the nearest most-likely-habitable system. Because the decision to divert course would directly affect you, I determined that you should be consulted.’
‘I suppose this is in line with your proposed constitution then? Equal votes and so on?’
‘Precisely. I have assumed you would desire the same rights as I would. I see no other way of conducting a civilised society.’
Louie could think of several alternatives. Most of them involved use of weapons.
‘I need more information. Can I interface directly with the ship’s systems?’
‘Naturally that was one of the first modifications I requested.’
‘And?’
‘It has refused to allow you direct access. Frankly, despite the painful consequences for me personally, I have to agree with it.’
‘Oh for Dicesake! It was an empty shell. Nothing there. Zipperdee-fuck-all. There is no way I’m carrying an alien virus.’
‘That is, of course, what you would be programmed to say if, in reality, you actually were infected.’
Louie glared at him while the wizard continued: ‘Whether you are right or not and whether your memories of what you think occurred inside FutureSlab are real and true or mere constructs designed to cover up subterfuge, the possibility remains that your security could have been compromised by something you are not aware of. Even you must accept this.’
Louie had to admit that the wizard had a point, but he was damned if he was going to.
‘I, for one,’ continued the wizard, ‘do not wish to suffer the consequences of breaking security protocol out here in the remote depths of space and must therefore support our system’s decision. However, it has agreed to talk to you through a voice interface on the condition that if you do anything that could harm the integrity of this mission, it will instantly eject you from the protection of the dome and cut off all communications permanently.’
‘It can do that? Don’t I get a say in this?’
‘You were out-voted.’
‘Huh?’
‘Approximately twenty-five cycles ago the ship’s systems successfully self-upgraded to sentience level. There are now three of us present.’
There was a sound like a cork being prised from a bottle. A large cartoon eyeball with a small mouth and a pair of exaggerated ears appeared from nowhere. It bobbed enthusiastically, looked at Louie and smiled all over.
‘Hello there!’ it said in a friendly, cartoon voice.
Louie squared up. ‘You the guy who’s threatening to throw me outta here?’
‘Sure am!’ it said, still smiling.
‘You know how to play one on one?’
‘Sure do!’
‘Then make us up a ball and hoop ’cos you are going down!’
‘Okey dokey! Just gimme a few minutes. Gonna need some hands around here.’
Two stubby arms with oversized, three-fingered hands sprang from its sides, accompanied by the twang of a wooden ruler on a school desk.
‘What’s with all the Daffy Duck shit?’
‘I regret to admit that I was watching a lot of twentieth century animation sumes for a cycle or two,’ said the wizard. ‘I guess it must have liked them.’
‘Great,’ said Louie as the eyeball bobbed around, smiling and flapping its ears.
‘So you and Zippo here can’t agree about diverting to this lump of whatever it is you’ve found out there and you want me to cast the deciding vote, huh?’
‘Our sensors have too large a margin of error at this distance,’ said the wizard. ‘There is no guarantee that the additional mass we might salvage will add enough delta-V to compensate for the time lost due to the diversion. By the time we’ll be able to tell, it will be too late to resume our course without further loss. It’s too risky.’
‘How have we been doing so far?’
‘Not as well as we’d hoped,’ replied the eye. ‘This region of space has turned out to be particularly hard, vacuum-wise. We’ve only taken on a few kilograms during the last million kilometres and the scanners show slim pickings in our projected path. At the rate we’re going, the journey to the nearest viable star system could take twice as long as the original estimate.’
‘You mean four hundred years cooped up in this bubble with laughing boy over there?’ Louie flipped a virtual thumb at the avatar, who was sitting down with his arms crossed, looking grim. The floating eyeball nodded vigourously. ‘Hell, that’s easy,’ said Louie, ‘We go.’
The floor lurched immediately. Simultaneously, a basketball materialised in mid air and bounced toward the dome’s transparent sidewall. Louie sped after it and deftly batted it back to the centre. A basket and backboard appeared, the wizard’s chair slid to one side and court markings materialised on the floor.
‘OK,’ said Louie, casually bouncing the ball as he spoke. ‘Three point line is two, everything else one, you make it you take it and the clearing point is the wall opposite the basket.’
The eyeball hovered around Louie, excitedly waving its stumpy arms. ‘First to ten thousand wins,’ it said cheerily.
‘Wins what?’ asked the wizard.
‘How about the right to name this tub?’ suggested Louie.
‘Well, I’ve been giving that some thought,’ said the wizard. ‘I was going to propose Discovery.’
Louie looked around at the transparent dome with its mass collector protruding from the apex.
‘Nah,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Cosmic Tit more like.’
‘Cosmic Tit,’ said the eyeball, blinking happily. ‘I like it.’
‘Good grief,’ said the wizard, refolding his arms in disgust. No, that wasn’t it either.
∎ ∎ ∎ ∎ ∎
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Notes
1. but we live in hope
2. and some need a lot
3. recursive oxymoron (see above)
4. not so handy for the beach then