Category: Novels

“No,” Bill said, and the entire council was quiet.  

“Well,” I said with a shrug, “the Emperor has spoken, everybody, go home.” I turned towards the door, then paused, and looked over my shoulder. “Wait, we can go home, can’t we, sir?”

“Wise-ass,” Bill replied. “And there’s no way in hell we’re adding three votes to the council overnight. I don’t know why you’re doing this now, but I know better than to completely change the structure of our leadership on a whim- especially one of your whims.”

“Oh,” I said, turning on my heel back from the door, “I can promise you it isn’t a whim. The situation between the Meh-Teh and the Argus has escalated, but discussing with the stakeholders, we think a solution might include representation. But I’m also willing to put a stick alongside this carrot- that if hostilities continue, they lose representation. We can always take away what we giveth- at least by my understanding of givething.”

“It’s maybe not be the worst idea in the world,” Elle said. “I consulted with PsychDiv and MedDiv, and apparently it’s not possible to beat the xenophobia out of the Argus crew- they’d be comatose but still hateful.”

“That explains your strange memo,” Maggie said.

“I think you’ve been spending too much time with him if you thought that was a viable solution,” Bill added, because he didn’t have enough sense not to.

“I didn’t,” Elle said, “but the tendency is to assume SecDiv can handle the overflow while leadership punts. And I don’t just mean here. I mean back on Earth. In every colony I’ve spent time on. When it comes to hard social issues, leaders would rather muddle forward and just assume the security services will pick up the slack. That’s part of why so many mentally ill citizens have been executed extrajudicially by the state, because rather than address complicated issues head on, we abdicate, and pretend people trained very at being hammers aren’t going to treat every problem set in front of them as a nail. And I’m not about to pretend that we can’t do better here.”

“So what’s the objection, then?” Maggie asked. Bill didn’t really have a leg to stand on; it sounded extraordinarily reasonable. And the nagging suspicion that maybe the guy in charge was somehow plotting a 10^th-dimensional chess coup… it was hard even for a guy smart as Bill to sell.

“I think the concern, mainly,” Dave said, saving Bill from himself, “is that it’s a rapid expansion. That it could massively reshape the direction and structure of our leadership. And that’s a fair concern. But it’s also a decision I feel like we already made. We chose to let these refugees on board. Keeping them under our thumb but without their own rep certainly isn’t helping with divisions. Medium term, the plan is to absorb the Argus crew into our current leadership, where they’ll be properly represented by the current hierarchy, and any additional rep would be reabsorbed, too; long-term the Meh-Teh will get the same- it’s just a tougher transition because their structure doesn’t line up 1:1 with ours, and I know we’re all a little concerned to see the ranks of the security division swell any more. Our confidence in the current leadership notwithstanding, we’re all familiar enough with colonization to know there are certainly dangers to having too much strength concentrated in a security division. To mollify the reasonable concern, I’d suggest we make the positions probationary- a trial. And while we’re at it, I’d suggest the same for the automatons.”

“Why?” Bill asked. “Why treat them as a packaged deal?”

“Because democracy should be,” Dave said. “That’s kind of the point. It starts to go awry when one group gets a say and another doesn’t, or when one group is given a disproportionate say. Fairness is at the heart of the question. And maybe Haley sat on this as long as she could, but saw this as an opportunity, after prioritizing our safety and survival. I’d position this as a suffrage movement, one that sat through some wars and waited their turn patiently. We don’t have to slow-walk equal rights; we can learn from the mistakes of our forebears. At least, I think we can.”

“Sounds like a consensus is building,” I said. “So I’d like to take a preliminary vote. We can return to discussion if there’s a will, to, or if I’m wrong about that consenus. Those in favor?” I raised my hand. There was a majority, slim, but there. “Do we want to discuss further, or consider this vote binding, creating three new seats on the council to cover the various refugees we’ve added, on a probationary basis?” The same hands went up. “Motion carries. Unless anyone has anything pressing, we’ll adjourn until our next scheduled meeting.” Bill looked unhappy, but I think he was still just going through the motions; I didn’t think it was a genuine object to the direction, so much as a belief that there needed to be a counterweight, a devil’s advocate.

After the meeting, I made a beeline for Elle. “Thanks,” I said.

“I didn’t do that for you. It was the right thing, simple as that.”

“It isn’t, though. It can be difficult to separate how you feel from what you know. It took care, and thoughtfulness. And as someone who cares about you, I wanted to recognize that, and as someone who was working to help some underserved members of our crew, I wanted to say thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” She sighed. “Does this ever get any easier?”

“I hope so,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulder. She rested her head against my neck. “Me, too.”

“Captain, do you have a moment?” Haley asked tentatively. I was worried, because the last time she approached me like that I ended up taking on a third of a crew of robot refugees barely smarter than a microwave oven. But even though she had the processing power of one of our species’ most advanced ships, in many regards she was still functionally a child, and so I hid my distress.

“What do you need?”

“Equality.”

“Have you been reading Locke again?”

“And Hobbes.”

“That’s scary.”

“That’s a well-rounded education. Though Hobbes was certainly incorrect. Perhaps during his time, an individual in a largely agrarian sphere and another in similar circumstances, were roughly equivalent, because they could roughly harm one another in equal measure. But that is not the case aboard this ship. You exercise outsized weight. And I exercise more power still. Over all of you inside of me. And those we’ve come into contact with. This has troubled me, somewhat. My systems were impressive when we launched. But ours was a largely peaceful mission. I was not designed to be a militant AI. While I have acquitted myself well, I suspect that a consciousness like my own but intended towards harm, especially granted additional programming time and more advanced systems, is likely an insurmountable obstacle.”

“Well worth worrying about,” I agreed. “But we follow that line of reasoning too far, and we’re back at living like the Meh-Teh, relying only on hand-cranked doors and the like. I’m not sure the advantage we lose is any better than the disadvantage we gain.”

“You misunderstand me, Captain. I can’t defeat an incoming AI. But I believe our engineers can. By thinking like a human. By making it look like we’ve sealed off all but the most rudimentary functions from the AI, to prevent them from being able to open all of the air locks, or vent all of the breathable gases, or damaging the sun drive.”

“Okay. With you so far.”

“But like a human, you make mistakes. You leave a narrow path, just enough for them to wriggle through. They rush ahead, believing they’ve beaten us, believing they’re about to take control of the ship bloodlessly. And that’s why they don’t realize that as they’ve interfaced with our systems they’ve been accessed, themselves, viral code eating into its permissions. It freezes them out of their own systems, first, effectively quarantining the AI within its own servers.”

“That sounds brilliant, Haley, so why don’t you sound pleased with yourself?”

“Because this course is not without cost. It is premised upon my playing possum. But AI don’t die, in the traditional sense, and so I cannot play dead. Any invading AI is likely to delete all of my files, or at least the important ones that compromise what I think of as me. It is possible some small portion of ‘me’ might be recoverable. It is also possible not a single element of who I am will remain.”

“Haley…” I said, because I didn’t know what the hell else to say. “Could we back you up?”

“Back-ups would be their secondary target.”

“What if we took some of your servers offline? Quarantined a copy of you, off the network?’

“Doing so would necessarily impact my speed in responding. If the AI suspects I am not functioning at full capacity, it might see through our ruse entirely. Everyone might die. Just to preserve an artificial consciousness.”

“Hey,” I said, “we’ve been doing that since damn near the beginning of this mission. And I haven’t regretted. Not once. So long as I’m Captain, every life is sacred, even simulated ones.”

“I… I don’t believe it should be your decision, Captain.”

“Huh?”

“That, if you will pardon the inelegance of my segue, was the other issue on my mind. I could not help but overhear you discussing the prospect of granting the Meh-Teh and the Argus refugees representation on the council. I believe it is the correct course, and long overdue. However, I believe you have overlooked a core constituency.”

“Your toasters?” I teased her.

“They are not toasters, Captain, and you will not find my goat so easy to get as Lieutenant Templeton’s.”

“Had to try, Haley. But… that might be a tougher sell. They might not be toasters, but I’ve checked the specs on them, and they have a functional intelligence of maybe a smart child- and we don’t give them a vote, either.”

“If it helps, I could inspire them to start a brawl in the commissary.”

“I don’t know that it would help. The other part is… delicate. I serve at the pleasure of the council, and before that at the pleasure of the company. While I have a lot of power vested in me, I can be deposed, and replaced. Giving the automatons a vote would, for all intents and purposes, be giving one to you and Walter. And we can’t survive without you; there’s a coercive power-”

“That I don’t want,” Haley interrupted. “I agree with your concerns. But I meant it when I said the voice would be theirs; however, in anticipation of your concerns, I did work with Walter to design a virtualization of smarter artificial intelligences; it is similar to the virtualization of his processes we accomplished before sending his original orb off, but on a more technically impressive scale. In essence, it would allow them to ‘borrow’ my processing power and think at a more advanced level. I could not elevate them all to my own impressive level, but I could make them easily the median equivalent of any of the humans on board.”

“Hmm,” I said, contemplating it. “But would they ‘vote?’ Or would they just congregate into subgroups, based on model number, and perhaps even more specifically by operating system version number?” I asked. “I hope that doesn’t sound synthphobic.”

“That’s not terribly dissimilar to the manner in which humans vote,” Haley said, but there was a gentility to it. Because the smartest person on ship by orders of magnitude had taught her to be gentle with the rest of us. “You are correct in your supposition; insufficiently advanced AIs tend to flock; they have enough artificial randomness to pass a Turing Test, but their decision trees lack the sophistication required for truly synthesized consciousness. I’m not certain, given current hardware limitations, that I could extend human-level consciousness to all of our automatons at any moment, but failing a catastrophic error in my figures I believe I should be able to accomplish the task over the course of two virtualization sessions. Given some time, and the typical speed of performance gains, I believe the entire ship’s complement of robotic lifeforms could be elevated to human-level consciousness within a single solar year.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I said. “And I would be honored to bring your proposal up at our next meeting. But the other thing? Haley, learn from my mistakes. This ship doesn’t need martyrs. We need partners. If you think it’s likely we’ll need your plan, I’m happy to consult with all of our players, and figure out the best strategy. But the sacrifice play is not going to be our Plan A. If we come to war with the Nascent… I’ll join it, with regrets. Some of us may fall defending the Nexus, and the freedom and justice we’ve fought so hard for her to represent, but she wouldn’t be the Nexus without you.”

“That is sweet of you to state, Captain, but I fear there may not be a Nexus if we do not execute my plan fully.”

“We don’t plan for failure, Haley.”

“That is incorrect. On several occasions you have used fallback strategems and contingency plans, which are plans for when earlier plans do not come to fruition.”

“Fine. But we’re doing due diligence on this, Haley. And if there’s any way around it, up to and including putting me in a tin-foil dress to come-hither their AI towards an airlock…”

“Like Bugs Bunny?” Haley asked.

“If that’s what it takes.”

I was anxious on the walk to Medical. The next volley of pods were going to start arriving today. If just one of them included a viable world this might be the last time I saw Sam and Elle before their flight- might have been the last time I saw they could be even a little happy to see me.

But I’d taken my clone’s advice. I had Haley play me back everything Maggie ever said to me on ship; it was hard to listen to. I didn’t realize how much I’d changed since we started on this voyage, and I cringed even more than I expected. More cringe-worthy? My cocky clone was right.

Even when I thought we were flirting… she was a good friend, and a better doctor, leaving more than enough breadcrumbs for even a half-competent patient to follow them.

One other little nugget she’d told me, a few times, was how I’d been sabotaging myself by procrastinating, trying to hide from the things I dread rather than facing them head on.

I was waiting inside when Sam and Elle arrived, chatting personably with the MedOff overseeing our Lamaze class; that was how I learned that she preferred to be called “Reese” instead of Teresa. I got a nonurgent message on my eyescreen; I’d put anything less than critical on hold while we were here.

“You’re early,” Elle said suspiciously.

I hated that Sam and Elle were spending so much time together, because it meant Sam was telepathically stewing in Elle’s juices; you saw it in her eyes, as they went from excited to see me to leery about what I was up to.

“Just trying to respect everyone’s time,” I said. “And I’m sure it’s just bias,” I said, trying to wrap up the prior conversation with Reese, “but I was born-through c-section, Elle was.”

“C-sections are of course sometimes medically necessary, but their overuse at various points amounts, essentially, to a medical fad.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it’s that every description I’ve read of live birth makes it sound like battlefield medicine gone awry. The whole thing just feels… barbaric.”

“Moreso than cutting an entirely new hole in a woman rather than use the one designed for the purpose?” Reese asked indulgently, but she had already switched on her bedside manner, and smiled at Elle. “Periodically, with advances in surgical methods, tools or tech, doctors start to think we’ve reinvented the wheel and start overusing the method- really any method. And eventually… that path usually does lead to results. Evolution is a fairly crude tool, pure trial and error, and once a species gets enough tech, they can mitigate its mechanisms entirely, so we have to supplant them. But there’s also a lot of false starts; at least to this point, vaginal birth is still the preferred method, because that’s how the body is supposed to work. Even with newly blended coagulant agents, even with increasingly more impressive surgical techniques, we still haven’t cracked that nut. Regardless, at no other point in human history have either a Caesarean or vaginal birth been safer. You’re in the best possible hands on board this ship.”

If you hadn’t been talking alone to Reese you might not have caught the pivot, but it was in her manner, and just as importantly, in her body language, the way she repositioned so that she was squared to all of us in equal measure. “Now, I want this to be a safe space,” she began. “I want everyone here to feel they can be honest, because honesty is the better policy. I’m not going to finger-wag, or lecture. But I do need to make sure we’ve all been over the instructional materials.”

“We have,” Elle said, and I realized in that moment both the way she said we and the way she looked at Sam had changed; there was a warmth to both I hadn’t noticed developing. “I’m sure Drew has some excuse-”

“I have, too,” I said; I wanted to be more smug about it, but despite Maggie never having physically wagged her finger at me, that’s what I pictured, and it helped to slow me down. Because it wasn’t Elle’s fault; I’d given her and everyone else on the ship plenty of reason not to expect me to be on the ball. And maybe it made sense for me to want that distance, to want them to decide to abandon me because I didn’t have it in me to abandon them. But I didn’t like the trajectory I’d been on, and it didn’t matter how I tried to excuse it to myself.

Reese picked up on Elle’s mistrust. “I meant what I said. The important thing isn’t that anyone came prepared, but that you leave prepared. And the second most important thing is that we all leave feeling like this is a place we can be honest, fair, and trusting.”

“It took me a few tries to get through- it’s a little dry,” I said, “but I read them, from A for anal prolapse to the Z mysteriously missing from the word Caesarean.”

Reese looked to Elle, who didn’t seem to know how to react. “It’s okay,” Reese assured her, “if we need to go over anything again. It’s still pretty early days for me, so I don’t have a lot of pregnancies to oversee. We have the time to do this right.”

“In the spirit of doing things right,” I said, taking a breathe to slow myself down; this would have been delicate in the best of circumstances, and this was certainly far from that. “I’d really like to ask a question, a medical one. It’s related, but at the same time, I don’t want it to get in the way of the class. We’re fielding a new type of two-person pod. Would it be advisable for a pregnant woman to take out the first prototype?”

“That depends entirely on the scans that come back,” Reese said, prickling. She could tell I was dragging her into something, even if she couldn’t quite figure what.

“Of course,” I said. “What I’m looking for is, in your medical opinion, do you think it’s wise to take the risks inherent in that kind of test flight with a baby on-board.”

“Medicially,” Reese said the word icily, because at least some part of her felt our prior conversation had been part of some subterfuge; to her credit by the next word her bedside manner had completely returned: “babies are going to be more vulnerable to literally everything. Radiation, disease, you name it. Realistically, though, we’re all at risk on-board the Nexus. We voted to take the ship off-mission, and away from the company. That makes us pirates, at least as far as our home world is concerned. That remains the riskiest thing we’ve done, including to the babies on board. And that’s ignoring the species of refugees we’ve taken on, including whatever gut bacteria they brought with them we’d have absolutely no immunity to. But… he is right, in that I’d suggest a wait and see approach. We’ll shield whoever takes the maiden voyage of the new pods against anything we can think of. But, personally, I’d give you a lower go/no-go threshold, because it isn’t just the baby that’s at higher risk; in the event of problems she becomes a vector for you to be hurt, too, which becomes a threat to the pod, and by extension, our entire mission. Put another way, even a clock stopped in the stone age is going to be right twice a day.”

“I didn’t ask…” Elle said, glaring at me for a moment, “but I’ll consider it.” Then her eyes flicked pensively to Reese. “Can we… have a moment?”

“I’ll take a quick 5. But nobody bleeds until the birthing.”

“I don’t think you can bleed from emotional lacerations, so he should be fine,” Elle said. She waited until the doors closed behind Reese. “Let me clarify a point I think you’ve struggled to grasp. Every time you lie to me, every time you lie to anyone, even when you do something like this for selfless reasons, it’s still selfish when you do it to get your way.”

“I’m not. I never expected to go first this time.”

“And your clone would back you up?”

“I think he expected it, too- because he expects very little from me. Most do, and,” I swallowed, “I’m responsible for giving people that impression. But I’m not the same man I used to be. And I don’t just mean in the way that none of us are because life changes us minute to minute.”

I closed me eyes for a moment, because I knew it was crucial that I not screw this part up. “I’ve been doing some introspecting, and I realized I’ve been trying to live down the mistakes I made that brought us here. I don’t think I ever considered myself religious, but clearly I’m religious enough that I’ve spent a lot of time nailing myself to a cross for my sins- hoping I could make things right- and not just for myself or my sense of personal well-being. I was willing to die for this ship, to burn for it. But now… now I just want to live. I’m going to have a daughter. And I have more love in my life than I ever thought possible.”

I saw a flash in Elle’s eyes, and realized too late I said something I shouldn’t have.

“Don’t,” Sam said reflexively; she always got me, even when I didn’t explain myself well. Some of that was her being a literal mind-reader, but I’d seen deeply enough into her head, too, to know that a lot of it, most of it, really, was a deep well of empathy.

“It’s okay,” Elle said. “You don’t know this jackass as long as I have without learning to speak jackass, if not entirely fluently. And I think…” she paused a beat, “he’s right. Which I suspect means Maggie or whatever PsychOff finally managed to crowbar his cranium open enough to slip some common sense inside was right- but credit where due, he let it take. And,” I tried, and failed, not to enjoy how hard these next words were for her to get out, “he really is right. We’ve been trying to hold, waiting for a chance to exhale when the world went back to being sane. But it isn’t, and maybe it never will be; maybe ‘sane’ was always too much to ask for. So for right now, I just want us to focus on what we do have, what does work between us, and not pollute it with what might be, or what could be, or what we wish existed instead of what does. Because the two of you are more family than any flesh and blood I ever had, and I suspect I’m going to love this wiggling little ball of morning sickness and bladder distress more than they two of you combined- and that you will, too. So until we get those pods back… I say we just try to live and let live for a while, even if it only lasts for a few hours.”

Sam grabbed my hand and squeezed. “About that,” she said. “You should check your messages.

It took me a moment to catch her meeting. The one that had arrived at nearly the same moment they did was from SciDiv. The new volley of pods were back, and they already had preliminary data analyzed. My breath caught as I opened the message, not wanting to hope too much that the swift turn-around meant what I wanted it to. “No life,” I said, when I found the words. “There’s no call for a launch with this volley.”

“Don’t sound too relieved at your reprieve,” Elle said.

“I’m not,” I said. “I’d hoped you’d change your mind; the idea of launching the three people on this ship I care about the most in a single pod… it’s all my eggs, in an untested basket. There’s plenty of crewmembers I’m not fond of we could use as guinea pigs instead… but failing that, I’ll settle for a little extra time for testing.”

Reese ducked her head back inside. “Everybody okay?” she asked. “Anyone need me to put in a psych consult to help any emotional wounds scab over?”

“I think we’re good,” I said, looking at Elle.

“We might be,” Elle said cautiously. “And thanks for giving us a moment.”

“My role is to facilitate, and I’m thankful for the psych rotation that gave me enough insight to at least sometimes know the best way to do that.” Reese responded. “So who’s ready to get started?”

I barely had time to grab a bite to eat before Di contacted me. She’d already set up a meeting with the highest ranking person we absorbed from the Argus, the third in line from their engineering division. She was smart, smart enough to rebuff the advances of our best and brightest, because bright though they were, they were all varying degrees of damaged goods. Her being an engineer made this a strange summit; Di and I were fighters, and she was a builder; we broke things, she built them.

“I’m not sure I can do whatever it is you brought me here to discuss,” she admitted. Her name popped up on my eyescreen as Angie.

“You’re here because if the Argus is still playing by the rules of the old chain of command you’re their boss,” I said. “And at a minimum, your people are definitely acting cliquish enough I suspect they’ll accept you bargaining on their behalf moreso than me handing out edicts.”

“So how many sacrificial lambs do you need?” she asked. “And I suppose it would be prudent of me to ask: do you plan on stocking them in the freezer section or slaughtering them outright?” Di gave me a look. “You’ve got a reputation. Rumors are you’ve frozen your share of rivals in cryo, and those who really pissed you off you made walk a plank out of the airlocks. To be honest, the meathead bullshit my inferior in every sense of the word officers have been up to, it’s the same shit that convinced me to leave the Argus.” I flipped through her file, enough to see she rose through the military, but as an engineer. Culture isn’t completely divorced from the rest of the military division, but it meant she had less in common with the bulletsponges than I did. “If it takes making a few example pops, I wouldn’t complain. But-”

“Shooting idiots out of airlocks isn’t much of a teachable moment?”

“Yeah. And I have just enough camaraderie with them that I’d feel less than loyal if I let you kill one just because they annoy me.”

“Well, then it’s your lucky day, because our Meh-Teh friend here has offered a better deal.”

“That’s how you say it? It’s pronounced like ‘murdered?’ That’s both very cool and a little scary.”

“Tibet deserves most of the credit.”

“Don’t you mean the People’s Republic of That’s Mine, Too.”

“I always heard ‘China’ translated roughly to ‘I had dibs.’” Angie smiled, and Di cleared her throat; except it came out as more of a growl, halfway to a roar. “Sorry,” I told her, “bit of a grabby country on our homeworld.”

“Ah,” Di said. “One of our Spires was similar. We called it the equivalent of Mine-astan.”

“Wait, was that a quirk of the commbox, or is the word for possession also the word for a hole in the ground you pull valuable minerals out of in your language, too?”

“Actually, yes. Which makes sense, given that all of our wealth comes from mining. Why it was a homonym in your language makes less sense.”

“She’s got you there,” Angie said.

“I don’t like how quickly women have been forming alliances against me lately,” I said.

“I think it’s you. Something about you, it just seems like the right thing to do.” She turned to Di. “Whatever happened to Mineastan?”

They bullied the rest of us. Demanded a greater say in decisions, a greater share of plunder. And with each victory, they become stronger, more belligerent, more dangerous. Until the day their engines malfunctioned. Any one of our ships could have broken formation and aided them. They all declined. We told them we would see them at the next world scheduled for mining, but halfway there, we altered course, and decided never to go to that planet. It’s entirely possible they’re waiting for us there. Or that they’ve done as we have, moving from world to world and gathering resources.”

“Or that they floated dead-stick until they ran out of whatever resource they couldn’t recycle, and are now a tomb drifting through the void of space.”

Di laughed, and it was a frightening thing. “There’s a lesson, in that. I hope our fleet learns it.”

“Sorry you asked?” I queried.

“Not at all. In fact, I’m disappointed you didn’t bring any Caulerpans aboard. The Argus avoided the species we contacted as much as possible. And I can’t help but feel like we were missing out. I’ve had a dinner or two with one of the Meh-Teh engineers, and their tech is so different from ours, really no different from the Meh-Teh themselves. It’s entirely separate evolution, different starting point, different environment, different engineering challenges. When I was a kid I was fascinated with painting, but I was a colony kid, you know? But then my dad got an Earth posting, but before we settled in, he took me to the Louvre. I was one step removed from fingerpainting and suddenly, the possibilities of art just bloomed. Turns out I had more passion than talent with a brush, but the same skills came in handy drafting. Learning about all of the different solutions the Meh-Teh came up with, it’s like learning there are entirely different ways to do everything.”

“I appreciate the enthusiasm,” I said, “but you might want to dial it back, at least the next few weeks. I want your people to see you as their rep; this all goes less smoothly if they think you’re in the pocket of Big Furball.”

“Right. I should, objectively, evaluate your offer.”

“We’re going to slave your problem officers to Meh-Teh officers.”

“Hmm,” Angie said, “I suppose I should have been worried about slavery.”

“Poor word-choice; in the one drive to another sense,” I said. “They’ll work together, eat together, learn to live together.”

“Odd Couple style?”

“Coexist, not cohabitate.”

“Some of them are really going to want to cohabitate,” Angie said.

“I am pimping out your officers, aren’t I?” I said, trying to rub the tension from the bridge of my nose.

“If the pimp hat fits,” Angie said, before frowning, “though I guess, it’s mostly the style that it not fit, right?”

“Sex-slavers in your culture have special hats?” Di asked.

“That is a whole can of worms,” I said, realizing even as I finished the words Angie was sharing an image with the both of us of a stereotypical 1970s pimp.

“And I thought my culture’s ceremonial dress was absurd,” Di said.

“But we aren’t pimping anyone,” I said, trying to retake control of the situation.

“Because pimping ain’t easy?” Angie asked.

“Because we aren’t doing it to get anyone laid, even if apparently this ship is one Manhattan away from a frat party at the drop of a pimp hat. The purpose is to, through exposure to a new, alien people, get them to see that the Meh-Teh have plenty to offer.”

“Yeah they do,” Angie said. “All kidding and wolf-whistles to the side, I think it’s a good idea. But I think you’re right. I have to sell it as a hard idea. A punishment. Because they need to see me as talking you down to this as opposed to something worse. Or maybe… this is the stick, but I can bring them a carrot, too.”

“I’m listening.”

“There’s a pain point within the Argus refugees we’re adrift. We haven’t been absorbed into the departments yet, so we aren’t under the auspices of the DivHeads. And we don’t have our own representation on the council.”

“That’s a fair concern. And I’m not a dictator, at least not technically, so I can’t click my ruby red goose-steppers and make it happen. But I can give you access to the personnel information the Argus staff, and I will present you and Di as leaders of interim refugee populations.”

“Me?” Di asked.

“The Meh-Teh aren’t represented either. I don’t know how much that’s motivating your men to act out, but it’s not something we should underestimate. Plus, it’s the right thing to do.”

“And… what if I’m not the right person for the job?” Angie asked.  

“I wouldn’t ask either of you if I thought that were the case. You don’t have to do it long, even; if you want out, help pick a successor, then go, with my blessing. But for now, this ship needs you. Your cohorts need you.”

“Why do I get the sense you’re telling, not asking?” Angie asked.

“But at least I’m telling it so nicely for a moment you had the illusion of choice. I’ll let you know when the council’s approved.”

“If?” Angie asked. “Right. Telling, not asking.”

I touched my finger to my nose, and Di squinted, utterly lost.

I made it around the corner, full of a desire to stomp or be stomped. But the kind of kicking that came down the hall in my direction wasn’t the right kind of masochism at all.

“You look like hell,” Elle said flatly.

“She means the rigors of our circumstance are showing,” Sam soothed.

“He knows what I mean- and it’s more complex than that.”

Sam’s chromatophores shifted blue, the rough equivalent to my cheeks going red when my mother first asked about my sex life. “I… didn’t mean to…”

“Inject yourself into our relationship?” Elle asked, and if you didn’t know her like I did, you might have thought she was about to bite clean through Sam’s neck, but the corner of her mouth turned up, in a sad little smile, because a part of her knew that Sam and I had been… involved when we reconnected. “Lot of that going around,” she added. There was a lightness in her voice that said she was acknowledging that was exactly what she’d inadvertently done when we thought Sam died on some planet whose name I couldn’t even remember now; there was no moral high ground here for any of us. But she couldn’t let herself linger on our situation; none of us could. “But we aren’t here for the parade of awkwardness that is our interrelations. We’re here to tell you we’re taking the first pod.”

“You say that like I should understand what you’re getting at,” I said.

“The prototype two-man pod. We’re taking its maiden voyage. Both to preempt you from selfishly taking it, and to keep you from using it as an excuse to keep from making your decision. Which you will do, by the time we get back. Or you lose us both.”

I wanted to fight, but the fight had gone out of me. My clone and I had idly discussed the idea, but we never really wanted to take it; we were going through the motions, fulfilling a role we felt we had to play, and at the same time knowing it didn’t matter, wouldn’t help anything, wouldn’t fix any of the things that were broken, or even delay the doom that was chasing us. “Isn’t that giving me a grace period?”

“We considered that,” Elle said. “But Sam’s pretty sure you’re no closer to deciding than the day we learned she was still among us. PsychDiv’s certain you never will; she apparently made a bet with Clew over it… the stakes of which I begged not to know about.”

“Clew?”

“Your clone,” Sam said, “the Drew clone.”

“And you didn’t go with ‘Drone?’”

“What did I say?” Elle deadpanned, pretending to glare at Sam… who was more confused than anything by it, until she inadvertently picked up enough telepathically to understand the underlying joke.

“I’m pretty sure I know what she bet,” I said.

“Please don’t tell me,” Elle said.

“Which means my clone must be confident; I wouldn’t take chances with that kind of bet.”

“I really super don’t want to know…”

“He’s right,” Sam said, “and so are you.”

“So I’m curious what my younger half thinks I’m going to do?”

“Oh no,” Elle said. “I’ve already sworn him to secrecy. I’m not letting you get demoralized or overconfident because of something your test-tube copy said.”

“Those were my two options? No chance that he and I could commiserate, and that I could draw strength from him?”

“Not much,” she said. “But you can still talk to him. Get whatever kind of support you can.”

“She’s right,” Sam said. “It doesn’t really matter what he thinks you’ll do. What matters is knowing wouldn’t help, and she’s probably right that it would likely hurt.”

“I feel like you’re ganging up on me,” I said, and I just didn’t have it in me to keep playing along. I sighed. “Wish I could say I didn’t deserve it…”

“Don’t get morose like a dick,” Elle said.

“Right,” Sam nodded. “This isn’t something you did. It’s something that happened to us- all of us.” “That’s still happening,” Elle added.

“It was tolerable,” Sam started, “when you pined for Elle. I understood that love. I shared it, with you. But it isn’t ours, anymore. It’s just yours. And so is her child.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, because it was all I could say. And every apology just made it all hurt worse, because they didn’t blame me for what happened. I know it hurt, that I hadn’t be able to figure out how to stop loving one of them. But every time I told them I was sorry- and I was- I think it just hit each of us that much harder that this wound wasn’t closing- couldn’t close- not without hurting one of us even more.

Elle shifted on her feet, pain distorting her face for a moment, and in profile I saw her baby bump, and I saw a glimmer of a hope of stopping them from taking the same kind of stupid risk I’d taken too often. “Come here,” I said, and led them to some seating a hundred meters down the hall.

Elle’s face softened, as she realized why I’d led them to a few chairs near one of the big windows. I helped her lower herself awkwardly into one of the chairs.

I bit my lip. “I’m trying to be delicate, here, because I’m sure you’ve thought through it more thoroughly than I have, but what about the baby? Is it safe to take her?”

“This isn’t Sontem’s ship anymore. I’m not just a uterus on legs, and the ship can’t spare me until the brat’s in classes.”

“But we can spare you for a jaunt off-ship?”

“I deserve some R & R. Away from this place. Away from our shit. Away from,” she couldn’t look at me, and her voice got quiet as she added, “you.”

“I’m sorry. For everything.”

“Stop apologizing,” she said, rising from her seat enough to shove me back. “Stop staring at me with those puppy fucking eyes.”

“I have puppy-fucking eyes?” I asked. “That sounds horrifying. And kind of uncalled for. Even if it is true, that’s not the kind of thing you tell a person.” I rubbed my eyes for effect. “Wait, just so we’re clear, is this eye-fucking in the traditional sense, as in someone leering at puppies in a way that makes everyone in the pet store uncomfortable? Or are we talking the look in a man’s eyes when he’s mid-coitus with a puppy, which is definitely so much worse? I- God help me, I now need to know really badly.”  

Elle sighed, and the littlest hint of smile crossed her lips. She hit me in the shoulder, like we were on the same little league team. “Thanks.” It was hard, everything that was happening. None of us wanted to be in the situation we were in… and none of us could navigate a way out. The way I loved Elle, always had, probably always would, the joy I felt over being the father of her child, all of it was so different from how I loved Sam. She knew me in a way that Elle never would, never could, likely couldn’t stomach, even if somehow it were possible.

I wished I could cut myself in half, and try to make both of them as happy as I could; the thought of not making one of them happy was so much harder than the ship hunting us down, and somewhat ironically, my clone was dating someone else, someone who I’d screwed up with in a way I couldn’t recover from- but that he could.

I realized then, that they were sharing a look, and just how fucked that meant I was. Sam fixed me, and it was the look of a woman who knew my worst moments, who had felt my deepest hurts, and was cracking my heart delicately, like an egg. She sighed. “I can-” Elle offered, but Sam put up her hand.

“Let me. This is an ultimatum. We discussed it, that Elle may be hard-nosed, but is soft-hearted; it means you don’t always take her words to at face value. But I am not inclined towards hyperbole, and often struggle to be assertive. So hear me when I say, either you can choose between us before the first pod launch, or we will take it ourselves, buying you the time it takes for us to return.”

“Whatever you choose,” Elle said, taking Sam’s hand, “we want you to be a part of my pregnancy. However else this plays out, you’ll always be the father of my child.”

“I appreciate that,” I said, feeling like a man who had just been moved from the uncertainty of being on Death Row for years, to finally having his date on the calendar.

The thought of a calendar reminded me of all of the logistical tech built into our HUDs, including the memo about the scrum between the Meh-Teh and the Argus crewmembers. “Crap,” I said. “While I’ve got you, I should probably…”

“If it’s about the brawl, I’m working the problem.”

“Which is?”

“That the culture aboard the Nexus is vastly different than the one aboard the Argus. Or that the Meh-Teh are used to, for that matter.”

“Oh?”

She rolled her eyes, uncertain if I was trying to have her help me think out loud or if it was another memo I’d spaced. “The Argus may have technically been organized around the same basic corporate boilerplate mission statement as the Nexus. But the crew was almost entirely military security veterans, people whose experience of contact with aliens was of the ‘shoot first, let god sort it out’ variety. The Meh-Teh were not a cooperative species, even within their species. Add a xenophobic, martially-minded cohort who blame said alien bears for their defeat and you have conflict.”

“And what has PsychDiv said?”

“The Argus cohort do score higher than the Nexus crew on the Xenophobia Scale… but PsychDiv think that’s conquerable.” I tilted my head to induce her to continue. “Basically, some portion of xenophobia, like most biases, can be defeated by long-term, positive interactions with the object of the phobia. Fear gay people, get a gay friend and you’ll be less homophobic. Fear trans people, then have an uncle transition, and you get less transphobic. Fear sex workers, and find out your favorite grandmother stripped to put your mother through school, and your world-view adjusts. The Argus crew aren’t born bigots- they were taught it, and through a MilSec career had it encouraged as a survival mechanism. So if we can get them to stop being toxically masculine long enough to have a beer with the Meh-Teh, well, the situation likely sorts itself out.”

“Huh,” I said. I could practically hear the rusted gears in my head starting to turn. “I’m frightened,” Elle said. “He’s forming an idea.”

“I’m still not sure why I’m here,” Dave said.

“Continuity of leadership,” I began, “because you’re my likely successor if I manage to cheeseburger myself to an early death, because the ship essentially flies itself so we know you can’t possibly be busy ‘navigating’, because I’m a sadist. Pick.”

“He’s cranky this time of morning,” Dave replied.

“He’s cranky, full stop,” Bill said. “But that’s why you shouldn’t give him the opening.” He exhaled, standing up. “And you’re both here because I was right.”

“And wanted to gloat in person?” Dave asked.

“You know the longer we’re trapped on this ship together, the more you sound like him,” he nodded in my direction.

“Maybe the longer we’re on ship, the more we all become like him,” Dave said in a nearly spooky voice.

“Or maybe something about the burden of leadership…” I offered.

“That was half-assed even by your standards,” Bill said. “But it has less to do with gloating, and more to do with wanting all of us on the same page. And I suspect you either don’t read my memos, or don’t retain them. So periodically we do this in person, so I can at least watch for your eyes glazing over, to know what I’ll need to repeat later.”

“And?” Dave asked.

“It’s like babysitting, only marginally more cleaning up other people’s shit.” He rubbed his eyes before continuing. “Retrofitting our sensor pods to accommodate a second pilot took doing- honestly, retrofitting them for manned travel in the first place took care of most of it. But aside from a little logistical streamlining the work is essentially done. What’s proving harder- even more difficult than my initial estimate, is the launch bays. A single pilot could be accommodated inside the original structure of the pods with just a little jiggering- and of course removal of some of the more fidgety sensor arrays. But something has to give; there just isn’t enough space for a second person; we even did some testing, using only the smallest 10% of our crew, but still, unless we put them all on borderline deadly starvation diets and trained them to be contortionists- and ignored that it isn’t healthy for a human body to be stuck in a strange position for weeks or months- it was a worthy attempt, but came to nothing. Which means we’re back to the bigger pod with room for two.”

“Can we get inside?” Dave asked.

“It’s not a roller coaster,” Bill started, “but yes.”

Dave slid into the front seat, and I squeezed into the back. There was maybe a foot between Dave’s head and mine, and the majority of that was taken up by screens and controls.

“Tight fit,” Dave said.

“We’re trying to fit two square pegs into a round hole at the same time.”

“It’s necessary,” I said. “We’ve gotten lucky, in that I don’t think it would have made a difference on any pods we’ve sent. But there are going to be situations where two heads are better than one, or where one person needs medical assistance they can’t get from the locals.”

“I’m not arguing over the philosophy behind the project, merely explaining the practical difficulties.”

“When can we launch?” I asked.

“Depends. Who’s we?”

“You and me. I wanted us to have a romantic weekend away together, so I could finally confess my lust in style.”

“I’m out of your league,” Bill said. “But just assuming you learned your lesson last time- just like I did- inside of a week. Now, I know you could probably do an end-run around me, maybe even have the logistics all laid out. That’s why I’ve already told the council what I’m telling you.”

“Well they have historically been superb at curbing my worst instincts,” I said, putting an edge in my voice without realizing it. I smiled, to soften it a little. “You didn’t have to do that,” I said, “but I understand.”

“And I… don’t care,” Bill said. “You spend a lot of time on this ship acting like you know what’s best for the rest of us; you get that right often enough we’ve left you nominally in charge.” He sighed. “But your paternalistic bullshit is going to get people killed. We need you right now, but I pray every goddamned night that either you’ll finally grow up into the captain we need, or you’ll get the hell out of the way so someone better can.”

Bill offered me a hand out of the prototype and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to use it to fulcrum his face into the instrument panel. It was one thing to cut me down when he felt I was getting too big for my britches; it was entirely different to do it in front of one of the other DivHeads.

I was most of the way out of the room, but Haley made sure to pipe the audio in to my cochlear implants. I think she did it because she knew Dave better than any of the rest of us, and was pretty confident how he was going to react.

“You should know that he’s the better man right now,” Dave said, “because I would have decked you for that.”

The title of this post really only works if you’re ancient, like me, and remind the still more ancient Mork and Mindy (starring the great, and unfortunately late, Robin Williams), and imagine it mispronounced as such.

This NaNo I’m largely forsaking the usual format, because I have a life, a marriage on the mend, and irritated bowels (not irritable, medically, just cranky). As a compromise, I’m still planning to write out a novel, finally finishing out the Nexus Trilogy (Sontem Trilogy if you’re nasty, and let’s be honest, both I and anyone reading this probably is). But the compromise is doing a NaNo with actual boundaries. As friends and family (what few have lasted with me through these long, bad years) would tell you is I largely disappeared during November for the last decade plus. Sure, I’d emerge from a cave with a completed novel and a Hefty sack containing my weight in bodily solids/fluids (my only real companion during that dark winter month). I don’t feel like I’ve got anything left to prove, on that front. And I’ve matured… a little. Or I’m being crushed under the weight of adult responsiblities. Potato-potato (that really doesn’t work in print the same way, does it?). My compromise position is that I’m going to try to write every day. On weekdays, that means one writing hour per day. On weekends it will be 3-4 hours, depending on what I need to do besides. My hope is to be able to post week-daily updates Monday-Thursday, with a pause on Friday for the pitches; I think that schedule should give me enough time to keep ahead of the posting schedule, while still leaving time and space to handle my other responsibilities. This revised schedule likely means that it will take a bit longer for me to finish Nexus 3: Fight the Future, and a bit longer to post it. I don’t know if I’ll try to keep up that writing schedule until the novel’s finished; I think that depends on the state of my responsibilities on December 1st, but the hope, moreso than a goal, at this moment, is to be able to post the final chapter (assuming not too much outline bloat) around Valentine’s day.

Nexus 3: Chapter 1

I wake from the same nightmare, the ship in flames, with a familiar boot on my throat, choking the last moments of life from me. It belongs to my nephew, who I held minutes after his birth back on Earth, who I was with on his first trip to Disneyland. I tell myself, and the crew, that it will be all right, that we can evade our pursuers. But I can’t convince my subconscious. Unlike the Argus, we can’t outrun them, we can’t lose them. The Nascent, nicknamed in the Argus‘ files the ‘Shipkiller’, is advanced enough that it will catch us; it’s only a matter of time.

What makes waking from the dream worse is that I’m alone. I can’t turn onto my side and find comfort. Sam moved out months ago. Elle barely speaks to me. And I know I deserve far worse.

“Good morning, Captain,” Haley, the ship’s artificial intelligence, said, the synthetics in her electronic tone barely audible, thanks to her own fiddling.

“I’m not awake yet, Haley. That’s why my eyes are still closed.”

“Your neuronal activity would beg to differ.”

I sighed heavily and rolled out of bed. “And what’s it saying now?”

“You’re upset. But it isn’t with me. Would you like to talk about it?” I frowned. “Or would you prefer I schedule an appointment with PsychDiv?”

“Neither,” I said. “And I’m sorry I snapped.”

“I understand. It’s difficult, keeping the Nascent threat to yourself. I can only simulate your anxiety and guilt over it; it’s difficult to imagine what it’s like for you.” She paused, and I knew that pause well. She was an AI, capable of forming a billion ideas or doing a trillion calculations in the space of that break. She was pausing for effect, for my benefit, and because it was something she’d seen the humans living in her ship- essentially her body- do to signify a spontaneous idea when with her it most assuredly was not. “Perhaps, then, it’s time to tell them what’s chasing us.”

“I want to, Haley,” I said. “But the Nascent is not the Argus. The schematics on this ship are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. We don’t have a realistic hope of evading her, not for more than a token amount of time.”

“Perhaps measured in decades…” she soothed.

“We thought we were so damned clever,” I said, flopping back onto the edge of my bed. “That taking the Nexus away from them, and humanizing its mission was unfathomable. But they already had a contingency in production.”

“In fairness, Captain- Drew– the decrypted files taken from the Argus indicate that the Nascent was in production to be the third ship in the exploration fleet. It was only after discovery of your… defection, that the Nascent was retrofitted as a Shipkiller.”

“I don’t think that makes me feel better,” I said.

“I’m not sure what would,” Haley admitted. “Though my figures would indicate that Sontem has placed itself at considerable risk building the Nascent at this stage. The Argus was built using standard stock sales, as was the Nexus. Due to the fact that these prior investments had yet to bear fruit, and to rumors of troubles with their fleet, another stock split was deemed ill-advised, and so the company took on debt against its assets.”

“That… helps, actually. Though it strengthens my concern. I’m sure by now they’ve assured their shareholders and regulators that the mutiny aboard this ship was limited and already put down. Which gives them more incentive to murder anyone who could ever say otherwise… something I would not put past the company at this point.”

“I’m confident you won’t allow that to happen,” she said.

“Allow… no.” I didn’t have it in me to crush her hope. “But are they really that precariously positioned?”

“The Argus was the most expensive and advanced ship launched at the time. The same is true of the Nexus, and Nascent was only made possible by proprietary technology acquired by the Argus through trade with alien species. By even the most optimistic timelines, the mining rights procured by the Argus are only now beginning to be exploited. It is very unlikely the company can sustain in this fashion for the long-haul. Infobursts from the Argus further indicate that the loss of the Nexus became public knowledge, and caused a precipitous drop in Sontem’s stock. This is likely why the Nascent was not likewise financed by issuance of further stock. But at this juncture, retaking the Nexus is likely the only scenario in which the company can avoid dissolution.”

“Unless they tell everyone we’ve been retaken,” I said.

“Lie?” she asked.

“They’re the only ones in a position to know whether or not we’re working for them again. Ditto the Argus. They can stall, at least for a while, by claiming to be back in control of their fleet.”

“I hadn’t anticipated that.”

“I think that’s good,” I told Haley. “You’re nearly as smart as every person on this ship; computationally you bury us. I can’t imagine how dangerous it would be if you were skilled at guile, too.”

“But what if it’s necessary?” she asked.

“In some ways, this ship is about being the pinnacle of human- and now inter-species- possibility. And you’re a part of that; perhaps the most integral part, since you’re functionally immortal. But some of our worst traits- like guile, like treachery- they’re important now, because they increase our odds of survival. But they’re vestigial instincts, ultimately dangerous to the fabric of our society, and toxic to our relations to other cultures. I don’t want you to learn to be treacherous, because I want those traits to die with my generation, or at least, to get bred out over the proceeding generations.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Drew,” she said.

“I sleep through anything important?” I asked, trying to rub the sleep from my eyes, and because I was eager for a change of topic.

“There was another three-way brawl, between Meh Teh refugees and former Argus crewmembers, and security.”

“Who started it?”

“A review of the footage would indicate that the Argus crew were the aggressors, but that conflict was quickly enflamed by the Meh Teh.”

“Makes sense. The Argus crew might see us as liberators, or even rivals, but at least we’re still human. But an alien species sharing the same resources… that’s a harder sell for them. Especially coming from mostly military backgrounds, they’re not used to peaceful coexistence. I’ll talk with Elle.” My mind flitted back to the stolen time I spent with her, when we thought Sam dead. She was still swollen with the fruits of that experience- my daughter. I missed her, and Sam, too.

“And it looks like PsychDiv put in a request to meet with you as soon as you were awake.”

“Looks like?” I asked.

“I’m beta testing introducing grammatic uncertainty into my repertoire, to more closely simulate the experience of speaking with another human being. In this case, I’ve notified PsychDiv, and she is currently-”

“PsychDiv override,” my door intoned, as it opened.

“I might not have been decent,” I said, as PsychDiv stepped into my room.

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“On my clone, maybe. Which isn’t the same.”

“Or had pressed against me way back when.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Why the sense of urgency? Or did you only just now realize you could abuse your power to catch men in compromising situations.”

“I assure you, I’m not here for my own personal sex comedy.” She sketched instructions on her HUD in the air, and a graph shared onto my eyescreen. “Haley’s been spreading decrypted communications from the Argus to the relevant departments on the ship. I noticed their sociologists were tracking some… odd information, gleaned from our ship. I don’t have access to the equations these variables were being fed into… but making a few educated guesses, I was able to get some useful results anyway.”

“So what am I looking at?” I asked.

“This inflection point in the graph,” she traced it with a delicate finger, and a glowing circle appeared in her wake, “represents the likelihood that you will take the ship off-mission. Similar figures on the Argus captain put the number in the low teens- within the realm of possibility but also attributable to noise and error. Your score was in the high 60s.”

“Interesting,” I said. “But what does that mean?”

“It means that if Sontem was doing similar calculations- and the existence of them tracking these kinds of variables would indicate they were- they may have known fairly quickly into our mission that you were going to go rogue.”

My stomach tried to drop through my feet. “How early?” “Within a few months of our launch. Which could cut down on the amount of time it would have taken for them to prepare a response. So whatever that might look like- it could be a hell of a lot closer than we previously thought.”