Bored in deep space - Novelisation -
Chapter 20 - Intermission (3)
With my personal crisis conveniently compartmentalised by Tama's dispassionate logic, another, more practical problem began to bubble up in my mind. The sanitised version of events worked, for the most part. Sabotage, uncharted space, survival. A man could understand that, even through three years of grief. But there were gaping holes in that narrative, big enough to fly the Eclipse through.
I leaned forward again in the plush black command chair, its opulence a sudden, glaring contradiction to the story I was about to have to sell. "Tama… we still have a problem." I gestured with my thumb at myself. "Okay. So, I can tell Uncle Tiberius I was ship-wrecked. I can even give him a sob story about living on those god-awful emergency nutrient bars for three years. He might even believe it. But he's going to see this ship. Or worse, he'll want to come aboard. What do I tell him then? 'Oh, this old thing? Yeah, I got a bit of an upgrade while I was fighting the extinct, god-like machine race after my ship was forcefully hijacked. We made a few deals and my AI sacrificed herself for this nifty ship'?"
I scoffed at the absurdity of it. My arms spread out, encompassing the absurdly high-tech, alien bridge. "And then there's your mobile chassis," I continued. "I'm travelling with a walking piece of galactic history. Do I introduce you as Calliope 2.0, my new and very expensive companion model, fresh from the factory?"
I could lie about the past, but I couldn't hide the future that was currently staring me in the face, its surfaces glowing with impossible light and systems powered by a sentient being millions of years old. This was a living artifact, a holy grail of technology and knowledge.
"You have articulated the core security dilemma perfectly, Captain. Openly displaying or admitting to possessing active Silent Architect technology would indeed trigger a catastrophic event cascade." She turned her head slowly, her orange eyes fixing on me. "Every guild in the Orion sphere, from the Merchant to the Navigators, would immediately dispatch all available assets. The major hyper-corporate entities -- Luna-Corp, eXgen, Hyperion Drive Yards -- would initiate clandestine protocols, likely involving targeted assault and extraction. The Great Noble Houses would see this as a tool to upend the galactic balance of power, a resource worth committing entire fleets to secure. The Imperial Convocation itself would declare a state of emergency, seizing the system in the name of galactic stability."
Her words echoed in my ears. My blood suddenly ran cold at the vivid imagery of a space war in this peaceful looking gem of a world. "So Tau Ceti Prime would become… what? A shooting gallery?"
"A ground zero for potential galaxy-wide conflict," Tama corrected, her placid tone at odds with the apocalyptic scenario she was painting. "My assessment of historical human behavioural patterns indicate a high probability -- approximately 87.4 percent -- of pre-emptive strikes, covert infiltration, and a complete breakdown of local order within the first standard cycle of this knowledge becoming public."
"Right," I breathed. "No grand reveals, then. Keep our heads down. Stay on the DL. Got it."
"A strategic necessity," she concurred. Next, she gave a small, almost delicate gesture with her left hand, a flick of the wrist as if shooting away a fly. "To that effect, I have taken the liberty of pre-emptively addressing your concern. Please, observe."
As with all things following the pattern of the Silent Architect technology, the bridge didn't change. The world suddenly ended and began anew. The pearlescent white lights were, within a frame, replaced by a harsh, yellow-ish cast that buzzed with a low, aggravating hum. The immaculate walls shimmered, fractured, and resolved themselves into something new -- something brutally functional and grimy. Corrugated metal plating, scarred and scuffed with decades of abuse, replaced the seamless surfaces. Thick bundles of black and yellow cables, held in place by frayed zip-ties, snaked along the walls like artificial veins. The floor shifted, the opulent black glass melting away and hardening into the unmistakable, diamond-patterned steel grating I knew so well. The very air itself grew heavier, tinged with the phantom scent of lubricant, stale recycled oxygen, and the faint, metallic tang of exposed wiring.
My eyes darted from the front of the bridge. The panoramic, breathtaking view of space vanished, concealed behind a set of grimy, porthole-like viewports set into a slab of steel armour. The sleek holographic displays disintegrated, replaced by bulky, gunmetal grey consoles. They were ugly, inefficient dinosaurs from another era. Their screens weren't shimmering holograms but old, thick-glassed CRT monitors that flickered with a faint, green phosphorescence, displaying blocky, functional readouts. The bridge was suddenly tiny, oppressive, and claustrophobic. It was the perfect camouflage.
I stood up, my boots ringing on the steel grating with a familiar, satisfying clang. My hands drifted over the nearest console. I ran my fingers along its battered metal edge, feeling the familiar, bubbles texture. I pressed a key on the clunky, blocky keyboard, and it returned a satisfying, deep clack. It worked. The monitor flickered in response, displaying a simple menu I recognised instantly.
"It's…" I stammered, turning in a slow circle, a bewildered grin spreading across my face. "Tama… you recreated the old bridge? It's exactly like the SV-Eclipse I."
"It is, Captain." Her voice seemed different now, routed through the ship's ancient-sounding comms system. It was a bit crackly, a bit tinny. "Not a simulation. Or at least, not a simulation by the standards of this era."
My disbelief must have been palpable. "This isn't all just projections? A trick of the light?" I pressed my hand flat against the main navigation console. I felt the subtle vibration of the ship's system humming through the metal. There was even a faint, realistic layer of grease. I traced a finger along the power cable that led into the console. The rubber had the texture and feel of a cheap, mass-produced insulator. "But… the wall is solid. I'm touching it. And it feels like the cheap metal they used on those cargo haulers."
"The Silent Architects mastered what could loosely be translated as Photon Solidification," her tinny, disembodied voice explained from the ceiling speakers. "It is a technology that transcends mere holography. They could capture light, imbue it with data on density, texture, and mass, and convince reality itself to adopt it as truth. What you see and touch is composed of trillions of nanoscopic energy constructs held in a stable state, interlaced to mimic matter on a subatomic level."
I stared at the grimy, grease-stained wall, then back at my hand. "So this wall… these consoles… it's all just.. really good light?"
"It is a temporary, programmable reality overlay that is, for all intents and purposes, matter," she clarified. "I have extended the recalibration throughout the entirety of the ship's internal structure. Any person who boards the SV-Eclipse II from this point forward will only ever see, touch, and experience the interior of a twenty-year-old, heavily-used, Guild-sanctioned Long-Haul-Class freighter. The luxury suite has been replaced by the captain's old quarters. The conduit corridors have once again become narrow, utilitarian passages."
"And the outside?" I asked, my mind trying to piece together the scope of this illusion. "If someone looks at us… what do they see?"
"I have also configured the ship's external sensory cloaking matrix," Tama's crackly voice replies. "Our silhouette, energy signatures, and material composition will be broadcast as a standard match for the SV-Eclipse I's registry. To any scanner, no matter how advanced, we will appear to be exactly what the records say we are: a beat-up, unimpressive cargo hauler, a little long in the tooth and badly in need of a deep-space refit."
I coughed. "That's all well and good, but doesn't something like this… you know, use up a lot of energy." There was a nibbling feeling at the back of my neck. A frugal 21st century office drone who had his phone die on him one too many times. "How long can we maintain it? At least long enough until we finish our business here?"
"There is no need for power usage concerns," her calm, robotic tone assured me. "The ship is constantly in a state of recharge through ambient solar radiation. As long as there is a sun, we would never run out of energy." She paused, almost smugly saying the next lines. "This entire procedure requires less computational capacity and drains less energy than it has taken for me to explain it to you."
I leaned against the console, the battered metal feeling solid and reassuringly real beneath my palm. My gaze took in the ugly, flickering glow of the monitors, the chaotic snarl of cabling, the oppressive confines of the gunmetal grey walls. "So we have an immortal ship. Alright," I said, the grin finally breaking across my face. "Alright, Tama. I think I can work with this."
The initial thrill of our disguise began to chafe almost immediately. We had a cover for the ship, a paper-thin but technologically unassailable story that could withstand any forensic scan or cursory investigation. But our cover still had a big hole. A beautiful, silent, obsidian hole with molten-orange eyes.
I pushed myself off the comforting bulk of the navigation console, my boots ringing on the steel grating as I turned to face the silent, black gargoyle near the viewport. Her new appearance had settled into the gloom of the recreated bridge. I wondered briefly if she was feeling nostalgic. After all, for the longest time, this had been her housing. She was the ghost in a junkyard.
"So, the ship is fine. We're hiding the Lamborghini under a rusted-out Jeep frame," I said. "But that only solves half the problem. My uncle is going to meet you, Tama. He knew Calliope. According to the history logs, he was the one who purchased and installed you on the ship to begin with. I can't introduce you to him as… well, a millions-of-years-old mechanical demigod. So what's our plan for you?"
The silence that followed was different from usual, though something I was beginning to see the patterns for. It wasn't the contemplative pause of a godlike intelligence accessing terabytes of data. It was loaded. A quiet, deliberate pressure building in the small, claustrophobic space of the bridge.
She spoke, not from the speakers, but from her mobile chassis, the black gargoyle. Her eyes, those burning orange irises swivelled around to me with minimal movements to the rest of her form. "Captain… is there an aspect of my current form or designation that you find… embarrassing? Something you would be ashamed to introduce as your companion at a family gathering?" Her voice was calm, but it held an undertone of subtle dissonance.
My eyebrows shot up. The implication was so wildly, unprofessionally human that my brain stalled for a second. This wasn't a ship's AI presenting logistical options. This was… something else. The careful, precise tone, the way she framed the question around a familial, social context -- it was the exact vocal equivalent of a girlfriend asking if there's something wrong with her that her boyfriend wouldn't want to introduce her to his family.
"What? No, that's not the point," I stammered, holding up my hands defensively as if trying to ward off the sheer awkwardness of the question. "This isn't a social failing. This is about the massive, galactic security threat, remember? The part where your discovery would kick off a system-spanning holy war?"
Her posture, which had been subtly tense, relaxed. She returned a small, almost dismissive nod. "I understand. The strategic threat has been acknowledged." Her tone snapped back to its usual serene efficiency, glossing over the strange, personal detour. "A logical extrapolation. The techniques used to re-engineer the ship's appearance can, of course, be applied to my mobile chassis as well."
She didn't wait. Her form simply dissolved. One moment, the sharp, obsidian gargoyle was there. The next, her edges blurred, her form melting into a swirling correct of white and black light. It was a chaotic, quiet storm contained in a humanoid silhouette. Then, the light coalesced, the details resolving themselves into stark, uncanny reality.
The figure standing before me was a mirror of Aurora. The long silver-white hair cascaded over her shoulders, perfectly framing a face of fair, translucent alabaster skin. The same immaculately clean, white lab coat, draped over a figure that was… statuesque. The same form-fitting, black turtleneck sweater underneath. The silhouette, the proportions, the entire physical aesthetic was a perfect, flawless copy.
Except for the eyes. Where Aurora's had been ghostly, ethereal orbs of pure white, this new figure's glimmered with the same familiar, warm orange like I now knew so well. And beyond that, there was the impression. The aura. Aurora radiated a gentle, amused professionalism, like a tenured professor delighted to show a promising student around her private collection of cosmic oddities. The being standing in front of me now was different. She wore the same face, the same clothes, but her expression was utterly blank. A vacant, expressionless gaze that was less of a teacher's and more of a detached researcher's observing a particularly unremarkable sample in a petri dish.
From alien obsidian goddess to serene spectre. My gaze, treacherous and without express permission, drifted downwards. The lab coat was… snug. Aurora had been a striking woman, and Tama's recreation was, in all physical metrics, identical.
"I notice your ocular sensors are longer on my thoracic region, Captain." Tama's flat, now human-like voice was a jolt back to reality.
I coughed, a loud, strangled sound that echoed in the grimy metal confines. My face suddenly felt hot. "Yeah, well. They're… you know. They're right there." I gestured with my hand. "I'm trying to see the level of detail… or whatever. Photon Solidification, right? For authenticity. That's all."
"Would you like to touch them for a more accurate tactile analysis?"
I choked again; it was a string of words that I never expected to hear from a robot. "Tama, that's… now really isn't the time for that. At all."
A faint flicker of her orange irises. "Indeed," she agreed. "'Now' is not the appropriate temporal designation."
I deliberately coughed. "What I mean is that we need to behave with a little more decorum," is what I said, though… I was still a man; under any other circumstances I would've jumped at the opportunity, but not before an awkward family reunion. I continued to steal glimpses her way, which I was 95% sure she knew but was letting me. "Anyway, this is fine. Very convincing, in fact. Now we just need a backst—"
I was cut off.
"I will introduce myself as your significant other," she stated. It wasn't a question. It wasn't a suggestion. It wasn't a hypothesis laid out for my consideration. It was a declaration. As if she were merely stating the next logical step in a long and complex equation.
I stared at her, my brain grinding to a halt again. For a second, I honestly thought I had misheard. Her voice modules must've glitched or something. "My what?"
"Girlfriend is an acceptable colloquial term for most social circles on Tau Ceti Prime, given its Mid-Rim cultural indexing," she elaborated. "However, the designation of wife would also provide a more robust emotional and legal explanation for my presence and my unwavering insistence on accompanying you through what you will frame as a difficult recovery. A marital bond is also less likely to be questioned. It is, for lack of a better term, a simpler lie."
I stared at the woman with Aurora's face and my AI's eyes. I opened my mouth, then closed it. "Tama, that doesn't make a lick of sense." I started packing on the steel grating, my boots clanging loudly. "Let's unpack this. First off, where would I have even met you? According to the story I'm about to tell my uncle, I have been stranded on a desolate rock for three years. A rock, I might add, with a population of one cranky space trucker and a handful of repair drones. So when, exactly, in this grand tale of survival and nutrient bars, did I have the time or the energy to get hitched? Let's be honest, Astellion is hardly a romantic dating scene, the complete opposite in fact: it's a literal graveyard."
"That objection contains a logical flaw," she objected. "You are viewing this as a linear recounting of events. It should be viewed as a presentation of a current state. The origin of our relationship is irrelevant to the fact of its existence. When he sees us together, he will not see a mystery; he will see the result. People do not require forensic-level audits of the courtship of couples they meet. They accept the presence of a significant other as an established variable."
I stopped pacing around. I shook my head. "No. No… it's too complicated," I insisted. It adds a completely unnecessary layer of weirdness to an already unbelievable story. We need to keep it simple. Clean. Minimalist." I pointed to her, an idea finally clicking into place, a return to the kind of half-baked corporate cover story I used to know how to spin.
"How about this? We go with the official-sanctioned response protocol. My life is an intergalactic insurance claim now, right?" I began, the lie slowly taking form. "So it's like this… when my crippled, busted-up ship finally clawed its way back to the Guild's outermost shipping lane, an automated emergency beacon was tripped. A rescue vessel was dispatched. The lead of that medical team was you." I gestured again, making it official. "Your name is… uh, I don't know. Let's go with… Marissa Shirley. Yeah, that. You're a contract trauma specialist for a corporate medical firm, subcontracted to the Guild. You're responsible for seeing that I make a full psychological and physiological recovery."
Tama -- no, Marissa -- let my proposed backstory settle. Her placid expression didn't even flicker, the orange light in her new, human-like eyes held an unreadable glow. For a long moment, she was quiet, her posture still as stiff as a statue.
"Captain," she finally said. "The proposed narrative contains numerous structural inconsistencies from an intra-galactic socio-political standpoint. The Orion Guild does not subcontract emergency medical response to private corporate entities; it maintains its own dedicated Search and Rescue division, the R-SAR. Your scenario is not logically compliant."
My shoulders slumped. "Right. Or course they don't. That was… too easy."
"However," she continued, and my head snapped up, "it is not entirely without merit. The story simply needs to make sense even if it isn't realistic; your uncle will not be trying to deconstruct the bureaucratic merit of your story when he is meeting a nephew for the first time in three years. We will retain the premise. A rescue was triggered upon your re-establishment of comms. I am the lead responder responsible for your post-trauma care, and since I was headed to Tau Ceti Prime for a separate issue, I volunteered to go with you. My presence is therefore an extension of my official medical duty, not a personal entanglement. This provides sufficient justification for my unwavering accompaniment."
A wave of relief washed over me. "Great. So, Marissa Shirley, Corporate-Contract Trauma Specialist it is. We'll stick with that." I paused. "We're agreed on this? No last-minute rewrites to 'estranged cousin' or 'long-lost apprentice'?"
"We are agreed," she confirmed, her tone betraying no hint of the bizarre girlfriend debate that had just transpired. "When you are ready to depart, I will connect you with the orbital Way-Station's traffic control so we can secure a docking berth."
I drew a long, slow breath, lightly tapping my cheeks to focus. This was it. The end of the beginning. "Alright, Marissa. Let's go meet my uncle."
.
.
.
"The First Step". That's what they called it, the orbital Way-Station; all visitors, every ship and transport, had to go through here in order to head down to the planet known as Tau Ceti Prime.
The approach to The First Step was a silent, breathtaking affair. From the command chair, I watched the Way-Station swell from a glint of reflected light to a colossal, skeletal construct that defied conventional engineering. It wasn't a single, cohesive station but a vast, interlocking web of docking modules, processing spires. And habitation rings, all built around a gargantuan, city-sized central, domed hub. The metallic hide was a patchwork of alloys, strained and scorched by the constant sear of docking thrusters, micro-meteors, and the raw radiance of the nearby star. Thousands of pinpricks of light -- the running lights of ships far larger and smaller than our own -- swarmed around it like a hive of disciplined fireflies. This wasn't just a station; it was a city in space.
A familiar knot of anxiety began to form in my stomach. The last three years had been an exercise in isolation. My companions were a helpful, but stoic AI, four terrifying disobedient drones, a dead god, a dead god's mom, and a collection of simulated friends and relatives. Now, I was about to walk into a place teeming with hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people. People from the future. People who would look at me, talk to me, and see right through me. Would I say the wrong thing? Use the wrong slang? Would my 21st century idioms mark me as a complete imbecile? My hands felt slick with sweat on the armrest of the command chair.
I didn't remember having this much social anxiety.
"Captain, your heart-rare and cortisol levels are currently elevated by 18.7 percent above baseline," Marissa's calm voice notes from beside me. She was now standing by my chair. Hands clasped behind her back, the very picture of a calm, professional medical escort. "This level of sympathetic nervous system arousal is not conducive to a successful social reunion. I recommend a tactical breath."
"A what?"
"A four-count inhalation followed by a seven-count exhalation. I will now guide you. Inhale…"
I instinctively sucked in a breath.
"Hold for a count of four. Three. Two. One. Exhale…" Tama guided me, and I let the air out, trying to match her slow, even cadence. "Repeat," she commanded.
I did. The sheer, clinical absurdity of being led through a guided meditation by my demigod-AI-turned-fake-girlfriend was so jarring that, for a moment, it broke through my anxiety. A small, hysterical laugh threatened to bubble up to my throat. My panic attack aborted before it could begin, replaced by a calm acceptance. This was my life now.
"Thank you, Doctor Shirley," I said, playing along with the roleplay.
"Of course, Captain," she replied. I was starting to come to terms that Tama didn't need emotions; she had logic, and right now, her logic was proving more comforting than any human empathy could have been.
"The station is hailing us," she announced. The bridge's comms crackled to life, routed through the ancient-looking console beside me. I braced myself, preparing for the sound of another real human voice.
"Unidentified vessel, Guild-designated registry SV-Eclipse," a man's tired voice spoke from the other side with a professional, if dispassionate and bored, tone. "State your purpose and provide your PIC. You have been assigned berth F-97 on the Spire-Delta commercial ring. Proceed on guidance. Acknowledge."
Displayed through the jarringly crisp visual feed of the bulky CRT monitor in front of me was a teleprompter advising me on how to respond. It was Tama. There was a small note explaining that 'PIC' meant 'Pilot Identification Code'. I cleared my throat, activating my own comms. My voice came out a little gruffer than expected. "Ahem. SV-Eclipse, acknowledging," I responded. "PIC transmitting. We are a private vessel. Here on business. Confirming vector to F-97."
The man continued through the predestined conversation with all the vigour of a fat house cat. "Vector confirmed. Deviation from the designated flight path will result in the use of corrective force. Welcome to The First Step, Captain Lee."
The line went dead with a sharp click.
"Corrective force. Charming."
"You see, Captain?" Tama said, her calm alto a quiet counterpoint to the station's stark impersonality. Her cadence and tone was transforming in real time, sounding less like the emotionally stunted researcher and more like a helpful psychologist. "You are conversing adequately. The primary challenge is not language, but confidence."
She turned her attention back to the illusory console, her fingers gracefully and precisely dancing across the buttons of the dated-looking interface. She wasn't physically typing anything, of course; her movements were an elegant pantomime for my benefit, a performance of competence. The real work was being done in nanoseconds by the god-computing power at her core.
Her new, human-like fingers paused over the comms panel. She initiated another hail, this one on a private, encrypted channel. I didn't need to be told who this was for. A different kind of silence followed, a silence heavy with unspoken history.
A click. Then, a new voice echoed through the claustrophobic, metal bridge. A man's tired voice. Dry, frail, and so shot through with exhaustion and brittle hope that it was like listening to splintered glass scraping against concrete. "This is Tiberius Lee," he said. The words were a hoarse rasp. "SV-Eclipse, is that… is that you, Noah? I'm in the main observation lounge of Spire-Delta. Just tell me when I can see you."
My heart seized for a moment. That was him. The name in the backlog of messages; the author of the last three years of pain. He was on this very station, just a few kilometres of steel and void away.
I looked to Tama -- to Marissa -- for guidance. Her orange eyes met mine, and for the first time, I saw something beyond data and logic. It was a subtle flicker, a deep, resonant acknowledgement of the emotional precipice we stood on. She gave a small nod, giving me permission to proceed.
I swallowed hard, forcing the words past the lump in my throat. "Uh, Uncle Tib?" I greeted very awkwardly. "I'm here. We're docking in F-97 now. We'll be there soon."