Speak, Vaccine, Speak!
by
Tim C. Taylor
Niresk was pleased with the three piles of bags he had neatly arrayed on the cabin bed: organics for recycling, clothing and equipment for return to stores, and everything else to be vented to space. He wondered for a moment what had become of the previous occupant -- a human. The crewmembers of that species were still quite a novelty, and their naïveté made them superb targets for practical jokes -- an art form Niresk fancied he excelled in.
Ship's Core had told Niresk that clearing the cabin was an urgent priority, so he pushed away his musings, and grabbed the bags destined for the disposal airlock.
Just before the doorway, he chirruped in alarm. He had forgotten to check under the bed. They always left rubbish under the bed.
Crouching down, he checked underneath for any signs of tenure. There was a layer of sloughed skin fragments, an article of underwear, and a small rectangular object of peculiar design.
Intrigued, he picked up the object, opening it out on the bed to reveal a sequence of small sheets. Each was constructed from self-illuminating plastic and covered in human language symbols. He had been learning their language for weeks now. Sireenee -- the copper-colored goddess of learning and love -- had clearly approved of his devotion, and was rewarding him with an opportunity to prove his language skill. He cooed in anticipation, feeling himself bathed in divine sanction.
Oblivious to his work schedule, he sat on the bed, amongst the personal artifacts of the author, and began to read.
June 14th, 2461
This is my personal account of one of the most dramatic events in human history. I've spent a month's allowance acquiring this journal rather than record the same words in the ship's databank. It's my way of embracing the atmosphere of drama and long suppressed excitement.
My name is Erik Gunnarson, a 26-year-old grade-8 hydroponics crewman aboard the ship Faith. Our colony fleet of five vessels departed Sol System sixty years ago. Tragically, only four vessels are about to reach our destination: Chara-3.
Perhaps I should have introduced myself first, but Ship's Core suggested I write things down in the order I think about them, rather than plan it all out. It told me this would have a more dramatic effect, and I want so much for this to sound dramatic.
It is now a little over a hundred years since Discovery 61 found pods of alien technology scattered throughout the Epsilon Eridani system, broadcasting that telltale sequence of primes. The intact computer cores inside gave us the blueprints for a breakthrough leap in ship design. And now our little fleet of ships is about to vindicate the dreams and sacrifices of the thousands who have brought us to this point.
I find it awe-inspiring to think of my grandparents' generation. They began this journey knowing they would never see our destination: the planet that would become Terra's first extra-solar colony.
So I dedicate this journal to Freddie and Sejal Gunnarson. I hope you would think us worthy of your vision and sacrifice.
June 27th, 2461
I've seen pictures of Chara (I should really call it Chara-3, Chara is the star, but now we're about to go into orbit everyone's dropping the suffix). It looks the same as Terra to me, but I am told all the landmasses are shaped differently. There's less water too.
I thought I would have to go through lots of drills for landing or something. Anything. Yet nothing official is happening. It's as if now we've got here, no one knows what to do next.
Charlie got so frustrated that nothing official seemed to be happening that he's developed his own planet-fall fitness program, and encourages us to join in. But for me it's just the same work as always -- tending my paddy fields. With over two thousand mouths to feed on this ship alone, my responsibilities don't cease just because we've reached our new home.
Maybe something of Charlie's attitude did infect me, although I would never admit it to him. Today I started fasting to prepare me for the days and weeks to come. Well, not strictly fasting, but I've only taken rice and water. I've even cut out the vitamin supplements.
My father used to fast like this every few months. He said he felt it cleared his head. I want this to be a gesture to honor my parents.
Thinking about him made me look up Mom and Pop in the archives yesterday. There was nothing there! Just their names and the date when they died. Yet the accident was big news at the time -- only five years ago.
Explosive decompression is a horrific but newsworthy way to die. The idea that so many safety devices and their backups must have failed spread panic throughout the fleet. Although, thinking back, the fear died away surprisingly quickly. I can't understand why there is nothing more on record. There must have been more written down at the time. Has the data been corrupted or simply erased to save space?
It may seem trivial to anyone else, but it has me scrunched up inside in a way I don't think I've felt before.
Maybe it's the sudden change of diet playing havoc with my body.
July 6th, 2461
We reached orbit over Chara a few days ago, and nothing much has happened. I suppose we have been getting here for sixty years, and can afford to wait a few more weeks. There is a small survey team down there. No one else.
My nagging fear has always been that we would arrive only to discover the planet already occupied by another species. Thankfully, Chara bears analogs of insects and flowers, but nothing more advanced than that.
The news channel tells us everything is going according to plan, but they need to collect micro flora and fauna samples so we can be immunized. How ironic it would be, with all our advanced planet-taming technology, if the humblest creatures on the planet defeated us.
Charlie's friend in the comms room said he accidentally logged into an inter-ship conference, which was debating how to proceed to a new stellar system.
A new one!
Charlie certainly drew stunned silence when he exploded that news in the mess hall. We dismissed it as a sick joke. One that is insulting to those who spent their lives getting us here.
This afternoon I talked to Crewman Garcia about my parents. She could remember the names, but that was all. What's going on? She worked with them for years. After the funeral, she told me to call on her if I ever needed help. Said it was the least she could do for Leif and Annie. She can't remember any of that now.
At first, I put it down to some kind of brain damage. Hard vacuum is a hostile place, and there is not much shielding us from it.
But I couldn't convince myself, so I checked out other friends of my parents. Strange that I had forgotten about them myself.
Most of them were dead, and those who are still around simply don't remember my parents or me. This is far too much to be explained away as coincidence. It really bothers me. I can find no rational explanation for this cover-up.
Tomorrow I will hunt for some answers.
September 16th, 2461
I had forgotten about my journal until I came across it at the bottom of my locker this morning. Looking back over it, I can't understand why I had been upset. Probably a consequence of my excitement at reaching our destination.
Except it might not be my destination. Some of us will be heading on elsewhere. I'm sure there's a good reason why, although I can't understand what it might be.
There are still only a few dozen people on Chara's surface, but everyone up here has been immunized as a precaution.
And there has finally been a change in routine. I've been interviewed at length about the lessons learnt from the voyage, and about the rice production system in particular. Zakir and Lorna told me they were asked about their enhancements to the particle dispersion field. I guess we are all having our expertise sucked out of us. It's good to feel useful -- that I justify my allocation of energy and space.
September 19th, 2461
My sub-conscious kept nagging a memory of how clearly I thought when I was fasting.
So I tried keeping to simple foods again, and now everything is as clear as vacuum.
They put something in the vitamin supplements!
Something to dope us up to keep us under control. But for what purpose?
No one realizes. Everyone I tell just laughs at me.
Now I wish I'd kept it to myself. I'm scared one of my friends will tell them, and I'll have an 'accident' -- same as my parents.
Considering that, this could be my last journal entry.
When you know to look, the archives are littered with holes and fabrications. Like Crewman DeSouza, who protested at the restricted rights to author material for the news channels. Stripping naked at the broadcast for the annual address by the Fleet Council got him noticed all right. It also got him transferred, along with a lot of others, to the Endeavor shortly before all hands were lost when her radiation shielding failed.
The logs mention none of this, and no one can remember it -- at least no one who will admit to remembering.
They don't bother to cover up too well. Why should they? Everyone is too drugged up to notice.
And to cap it all, they've changed the mission objectives. We're to await a rendezvous!
Who with?
Three generations gave their everything to get here. The officers kept ramming it into our heads. Don't forget why you're here. Don't betray the faith placed in you by your ancestors. Terra needs you. And all that nonsense.
Now they've changed it. Just like that. Everyone just accepts it.
So what do I do now? I am one man amongst thousands. I'm just a guy who works the paddy fields. What hope have I got?
September 28th, 2461
I met my first alien today.
Actually, I met quite a few, but no one seems to think it's a big deal, as if it's something that has happened every week of their lives. Maybe we already knew they were out there somewhere -- after Discovery 61 found the alien technology -- but it's not as if anyone's actually met an alien before.
Some had fur; others skin. I spoke with a light green alien who stank of unwashed feet, and had a sort of grid thing growing out of its head looking like a heat radiator. It called itself a Ko-Ri-Roo-Ooo or some such; their speech isn't easy to write down in normal English letters. I guess they will have to work out approximations of their names for us to speak and write. Probably need to come up with some new vowel accents too.
One little guy sung like a cricket -- a Terran creature I came across on a natural history crystal. It trampled some of Steve Riley's barley crop, which made him mad all right.
Strange though they were, I looked all the aliens in the eye at some point, and I always saw the spark of a human-like intelligence inside. All had something like a head and between four and six limbs (although some preferred to walk on all limbs, except when grasping something). It's strange: I thought aliens would be odder somehow. Like intelligent slugs, or hive minds, or something.
They were here to see our hydroponics systems. My rice production particularly intrigued them. Ship's Core had talked to the alien ship's computer and very quickly worked out how to map our languages from one to another. I had to speak into a mike and Core would talk back in the language of the alien it thought I wanted to talk to. It was very odd to hear regular English turned into squeaks and chirrups. It worked all right though.
They seemed attentive, but whether they were being polite, or whether there was something new for them to learn I couldn't say.
I asked them why they weren't so very different from human beings. They looked at each other in a funny way. Eventually one of them said, "The ships will only admit similar morphologies to their existing crews. This maximizes the success rate of cultural integration when breeding."
Ship's Core must still be struggling with the translation -- that sounded like grade-A gibberish to me.
What I still don't understand is this: we spent decades getting here, yet the alien fleet and ours arrived within a few months of each other, and each seemed to expect the other. How could that be?
October 3rd, 2461
I've been told I won't be part of the team to settle Chara. They're going to ship me out, along with lots of other poor fools, to work with the aliens in constructing new ships from hollowed asteroids. We're off to colonize another planet. Humans and aliens together. They want my hydroponics expertise, apparently. Great! I will never set foot on a planet. I'll be long dead before we reach our new destination.
For the first time since my parents died, I cried today.
October 7th, 2461
I can see Chara's misty sphere in the monitor. So implausible that such a massive ball of vibrant colour can sit so serenely in front of me, after twenty-six years of nothing but pinpricks of light in the endless dark.
I am writing poetically now, as if whispering expectant nothings to a lover. And in truth, I am to be parted from the dearest lover.
For years, I, we, all of us, have thought of little but our final destination. How beautiful and worthy a prize she is. But she is not for me.
They (Who they are I do not know. But they definitely exist). They have exiled me before I even set foot on Chara. My hydroponics experience is important, they say. It is a new opportunity, unparalleled in human history, they say. And no, it is not optional.
We are to take the best ideas from the two combined fleets, the best of the crews, but only spare equipment and ship cores from both alien and human fleets (the ships continually replicate their cores, presumably to guarantee redundancy). We head out for the inner asteroid belt in about two days (Earth standard days. I'll never experience the Chara daily cycle -- it's a little shorter).
How ironic that I broke up with Fumi a couple of years ago because I wanted children there and then, but she wanted to wait until they could be born safely on Chara. Space is a dangerous place, I told her. Just look at how my parents were snatched from me. Now I wouldn't want kids if they paid me. It would be a betrayal to bring them into a drug-induced non-life with the promise of a betrayal like mine.
October 8th, 2461
I wanted to get away. I didn't want to waste the rest of my life stuck in transit with a bunch of aliens. I didn't care what they wanted me to do. I wanted to be on Chara.
It didn't work out quite as I had planned.
The idea of breaking the rules so blatantly had scared the hell out of me. You don't survive long in a closed and fragile environment like the Faith if you aren't prepared to tow the line. So it was a new and liberating experience to be doing something for myself. I was finally taking control of my own destiny.
The plan was foolproof: steal a life pod and pilot it down to the surface. I didn't know whether they would shoot me, or welcome me as a hero when I told them about the drugs. Either way, it would at least happen on Chara. I had nothing to lose.
The source of my intended salvation was a sweet irony. I have always ridiculed the very idea of life pods. We all do. The annual evacuation drills are a standing joke. What is the point of evacuating a ship traveling at half the speed of light? Nothing could possible match vectors to rendezvous with the pod. The technology does not exist. The officers mumble something about possible emergencies on launch or final approach, but we all know the pods are there because the bureaucrats on Earth had rules about standard safety features.
At third break, I made my way quietly back to my cabin, to collect the small away pack I had prepared. I passed Jim Agblo on the way, who was surprised to see me out of the 'ponics. I felt an unexpected pang of regret as I spun him a yarn about catching a contagious illness that meant I was confined to quarters. It wasn't the lie that bothered me, but Jim and I have had some good times together, and he was due to join me on the new fleet. Maybe it wouldn't have been all that bad.
I waited five minutes in my cabin to be sure Jim had gone before emerging with everything I needed in a pack slung over my shoulder: a change of clothes, my wash-kit and this diary. I passed a few people on my way to the pods on deck C3, but no one paid much attention. With everyone sharing the same goal, and drugged up for compliance too, there wasn't much call for wasting manpower on 'security'.
As soon as I pressed the stud to open the door to the pod, my calmness left me. I broke and ran inside, jabbing at the large red launch button in my desperation to get away.
I calmed down when I sensed the acceleration as the spherical chamber ejected itself from the only home I had ever known.
"Confirm destination?" asked the computer.
"Main human settlement on Chara surface," I replied. I slumped to the floor. Nothing to do now but wait.
Another burn of reaction mass and the craft hurtled towards my destination. Eager to savor my victory, I punched up a view of Chara. I should only take a few minutes to reach the surface. And yet it still looked to be so far away.
And getting further away with every moment!
"Computer, our destination is Chara surface. Isn't it? Please verify."
"Your destination request has been noted and denied," it said.
"On whose orders?" I could not understand it. These pods are self-contained and automated. The ship's captain couldn't bring me back even if he wanted to.
"It would not be in our interest to allow you to the surface as you would be a disruptive influence. Nevertheless, you still have several attributes we wish to transfer to the crew of the newly gestating fleet. This craft will take you to join the new crew assembly."
I admit to feeling utterly beaten at that point. I could feel the color leech out of me. "Whose instructions are you relaying? Who do you mean by, we?"
"We are the ships. I am the Faith."
"Why tell me this?"
"Because," it said, "we want you to know."
I asked it to explain, but it would elaborate no further.
So now I know. I never really stood a chance. In the unlikely hope that someone may read this journal and take note, I have dutifully written up the day's events.
Now I await my fate.
October 30th, 2461
I'm exhausted after another day working on the construction of the new hydroponics plant. It's very different from the Faith. So many of the technologies I have at my disposal now had never occurred to us: local gravity manipulators, portable transgeners and fully enzymatic gas exchange. The new system designs will use all of them. The aliens are freely teaching us as much as we can learn. Overall, they are a good bunch to work with.
Naturally, we humans have had a thing or two to contribute to the party. The rice genome has caused great interest, as have our irrigation techniques. Our small stock of rice-beer is constantly in demand by the bearers of a range of anatomies. We will be the most popular species in the fleet once we crop the rice and begin the fermentation of a new batch.
My latest attempt at resistance died a pitiful death yesterday. I asked Senna, from the core software section, whether we could put in some backdoors to override the central core's control of critical ship systems. He looked at me quizzically as he explained how no one understands enough about the system code to even interrogate it. The alien software specialists had been disappointed to find Senna knew as little as they did. All they do is connect external systems to the central core, according to the core's instructions. The ships weren't constructed from reading the blueprints in the spores left around the galaxy, despite what we had all been told. No, they were built by blindly following instructions given by the cores.
Even so, things haven't turned out as badly as I had thought. There are plenty of other people -- human people that is -- and I'm glad Jim is here to share a drink with me from time to time (quite often actually).
Yesterday, I told Jim everything about the drugs, the escape attempt, and the idea that we were a part of an act of sexual reproduction for the race of ships. He seemed to mull it over a little before pronouncing that I had drunk too much to make sense and yet not enough to make my stories really bizarre.
The reaction is the same with everyone else: disbelief, amusement, and then ridicule. The consensus is to tolerate me as a harmless bozo, albeit one with useful skills.
The only one who seemed to believe me was a KoRi called Niresk -- that's one of the green guys with a grid growing out of their skulls. I grew excited as he told me that he had already found out about the drugs, and was planning a coup to force the crew to exclude the drug from their diet. When I told him I wanted to join up, he made the coughing and cooing noise that passes for their laughter. He thought I was mad, just as everyone else did. The jerk was just fooling around. You can never trust a KoRi -- they spend their lives playing jokes on poor chumps like me.
The vitamin supplements are the real culprits, not the aliens. The other species get their own version of course. I eat and drink what I like, but don't touch the pills. I've never felt better, but no one else will try life without them.
265.F.3
Still getting use to the new dating system used on my new ship, the Nebula. I'm not sure why I bother. Likely the same reason I keep writing this down: if I act as if there is a future for me, then perhaps I'll start believing it myself. I behave as if the goal the crew share -- the goal that the ships have set them -- is my goal too.
But I'll never let them drug me again. They may control my liberty, but they'll never have my mind. I may appear dormant, but I continue my resistance in these journal entries until they lower their guard and I seize an opportunity to reveal the truth about our slavery.
If they let me live long enough.
You see, I've been thinking about the vaccine they pumped into me on the Faith -- the safely neutered versions of the bugs on Chara. I suspect the real reason why the ship didn't just vent me to space is that it wants me as a memetic vaccine.
In my safely ineffectual way, I carry on spreading my idea throughout the crew -- the ship's equivalent of a bloodstream. When the next crewmember realizes the truth, the ship will already be resistant to the idea because I have discredited it.
And when the ship feels sufficiently inoculated, it will be time to purge me from that bloodstream.
THE END
© 2006 by Tim C. Taylor
Bio: Tim. C Taylor lives in a peaceful village in England with wife, cat, and son James (known as bump until his birth in June). Correction: the village used to be peaceful until the evening crying started -- now Tim often can be found pushing the pram around the village at midnight. He has been published in Aphelion before (Search. Destroy. Deceive., February, 2005), and recently in Aoife's Kiss, HardSF.net, Creative Singularity, and Forgotten Worlds.
Website: Tim C. Taylor (with links to other stories available online)
E-mail: tctaylor@ntlworld.com
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