Captain Yenant pulls a chair over, and sits down in front of Omega. He
closes his eyes, and massages the bridge of his nose. He’s been through this
before, and he’s sick of it. He’s in charge of the crew and the ship itself,
and not so much the passengers; they have their own leaders. Omega is more
of a stowaway, though, and that kind of falls under Halan’s
jurisdiction. “Why am I still dealing with you? It’s been eight months.”
“I was just trying to boost our speed,” Omega answers with a shrug.
“We’re going at maximum reframe. It doesn’t get faster than that.
Technically, we’re not exceeding the speed of light. It’s more like we’re
going back in time while moving forward.”
“Yes, but if we go back in time faster then we’ll get to our destination
earlier.”
Halan gets this close to putting his face in his palm. “We’ll get there
earlier, so what? That’s not faster. It will take us 216 years, whether
that’s 216 years from the day we left, or 216 years before we left. That
doesn’t help anything.”
“The faster I get you to your precious planet, the faster I can get back to
my life on Gatewood, and I would like to reappear the second after I last
left, so I’m actually trying to send us back more than twice as fast as we
are now.”
“I won’t allow that.”
“I’ll do it anyway,” Omega contends.
“You are not entitled to persistent longevity treatments. You’ll die here,
like everyone else. I’ll see to it.”
“I don’t need those treatments anymore,” Omega claims. “I make my own.”
“Not in the hock, you don’t.”
“You can’t keep me in hock for the whole journey.”
Halan stands up, and carefully places his chair back where he found it,
randomly towards the back corner. “Watch me.” He walks towards the door, but
addresses the guard first. “Do it.”
“No!” Omega cries. “You can’t do this! I’ll stop, just don’t lock me away!”
He’s probably expecting the Captain to stop, and prove that his words were
only an interrogation tactic, but Halan doesn’t need anything from him. He
might as well be in hock, at least he can’t cause any more trouble. He’ll
leave him in there for a year, and then reassess.
Halan walks down the hallway, and back onto the bridge. He finds Rita by the
viewscreen. “Is he ready?”
“No.”
Halan checks his watch. “He’ll have to be.”
“You could always just do it yourself, like you have been,” Rita suggests.
“The passengers have to see that this is not a one-man show. We’re all in
this together. He’ll do it several more times before his shift ends. He
might as well start now.”
“He’s still practicing, even all this time. That does not suggest a lot of
self-confidence.”
“All right, well I’ll get him to that point. I’ll go in alone, so he’s not
intimidated.”
“Are you calling me intimidating?” Rita questions, offended.
“I just mean he’s better one-one-one. But if you wanna be the one to coach
him through it...”
“No, no, no. That’s fine.”
Rita walks the other direction, while Halan steps into the PA room. A young
technician stands up quickly, like he was bitten by a toilet snake. “Good
evening, sir.”
“As you were, Tech.”
“Thank you, sir.” He does not look well.
“Breathe with me.” Halan sits down, and begins to breathe deeply and
deliberately. “In. Out. In. Out. Make sure you get oxygen to your brain.”
“Thank you, sir,” the boy repeats.
“You can do this. You’ve done it a million times by now, I’m sure.”
“Not when people could hear me.”
“Just pretend they can’t. There are no hecklers here. There’s no feedback.
As far as you can tell, when you push that button, it does absolutely
nothing. Then just...say your lines, like you have been all day.”
“Is it really that easy?”
“It can be.” Halan checks his watch again. “It’s time.”
The boy breathes a few more times. “Okay.” He tries to convince himself that
it is indeed okay. “Okay. I’m ready.”
Halan nudges the microphone a millimeter closer. “You have the floor.”
He clears his throat, and begins. “Uhh...attention all passengers. The
bridge crew of the transgalactic generational colony ship Extremus would
like to thank you for another lovely day. We are eight months, two weeks,
and one days—I mean, day—from launch.” He sighs. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, just keep going,” Halan assures him, not sure whether his own
words make it into the microphone.
“Today marks a special occasion. We are now five hundred light years from
Gatewood, an amazing feat by all accounts. The Captain wishes to extend his
gratitude towards all of you for agreeing to join him on this unprecedented
adventure. This would be neither possible, nor meaningful, without each and
every one of you. His door, as always, is open to all. Here’s to another
two!” This motto refers to the number of light years Extremus is able to
cover in the span of about a day.
Halan pats him on the back. “Great job.”
“I messed up.”
“That’s all right. We do this every single day. No one’s gonna remember this
one time, and you’ll get better. It won’t be as scary next time, I promise.”
“Thank you, sir.”
An alert from Rita comes up on Halan’s wrist device. “I gotta go try to fix
a crisis. You can still handle the calls?”
“Yeah, I can field the one-on-ones. That I have no problem with.”
“Wonderful.” The phone begins to ring just as Halan is leaving the room. He
goes all the way to the other side of the ship, where his lieutenant is
waiting for him.
“It’s not terrible, but it’s not great.”
“What does she need now?” Halan asked.
“She’s demanding we make it bigger.”
“Bigger? The airlock?”
“Yes.”
“That is a service airlock. It’s just meant for robot EVAs. We can’t make it
bigger. The robots are being serviced on either side!”
“Well, actually they’re not. That whole section has been essentially shut
down for her. I mean, it would be tough, but I spoke with some engineers
yesterday, and they said it’s technically possible to break down one of the
walls, but only the one.”
Just before launch, Halan made an announcement that said everyone who had
second thoughts, and wanted to leave the ship, could do so simply by
entering an airlock. Captain McBride then teleported them out of there, and
back into the main Gatewood cylinder, where they could do whatever they
wanted with their lives without having anything to do with the mission. One
woman thought the service airlock counted, but only the ones near the
passenger sections were being monitored for this courtesy. She shouldn’t
have been anywhere near this area. Halan partially blames himself for not
being one hundred percent clear, but mostly blames her for having wandered
off to a restricted section. Well, it was never technically restricted, but
everyone else knows where they don’t have any business being. The five other
people who chose to jump ship at the last minute certainly knew.
“I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with her tonight, so...”
“I’ll take care of it,” Rita says, “again.”
“Get a second opinion on that wall,” Halan says as he’s walking away. “And
remind her that she may return to her quarters whenever she wants. Psychotic
break or no, staying in the airlock permanently is not going to help her get
home. That was a one time offer!”
“I’ll say it just like that, sir!”
“Thanks! I’m gonna go check in with the Old Man!”
Halan makes his way back to the other side, then down towards the stern. He
finds the oldest engineer this vessel has to offer in his lab, tinkering
away at his little contraptions. “Ahh, you’re here. Good. Could you place
your finger right here?”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“Please,” Old Man begs.
“Are you gonna shock me again.”
“Probably not.”
Halan scoffs, but does as he’s been asked. With the one piece of metal
firmly in place, Old Man can now line it up with a second piece of metal. He
drips nanosolder between them, and announces that Halan can let go. Halan
looks around. “Where is it?”
“It’s over on that table there.”
Halan glances over. “It looks finished.”
“Oh yes,” Old Man agrees. “It’s been repaired.”
“So, it works.”
Old Man lifts up his lenses. “It can do what it was designed to do.”
“That’s not what I asked of you,” Halan reminds him. “I want you to make it
do something else.”
“It’s not that easy. The device is tethered to a moment in time. Everything
that existed in that moment has to go back where it was. You, me, some rando
on Teagarden. Everything just reverts to that moment. It’s a reset button,
not a teleporter.”
“She said that if someone who hasn’t been born yet pushes that button, they
will return too. They won’t revert to their non-existence, and they’ll
retain their memories.”
“Yes, and I don’t know how that works. That is what I am trying to figure
out now. It will take time. We can’t mess this up. There is no way to test
it. If I do something wrong, that could be the end of everything. It could
send us back to the stone age, for all I know. I’m not a time travel
mechanical engineer. Now, if you would let me build a new device that’s only
been inspired by the original design...”
“No. There is a reason I chose you for this project. I don’t want this
technology left on my ship. I want two people to go back to Gatewood, and
only those two people, and I want them to take the only device that can do
it with them.”
“Yes, and I will soon be dead, unlike someone better suited for this
research, so the secret dies with me, I get it.”
Halan knocks on the table twice. “I hope you do get it, because I need this
done. I cannot take another day with a self-obsessed narcissist who thinks
he’s entitled to modify this ship as he pleases, and a deranged Karen, who
thinks she’s entitled to have a team of crew members wait on her hand and
foot.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about, sir, I just work here.”
Halan’s watch alerts him to the next issue. He starts to back out of the
room. “I have to go put out another fire. Finish whatever that thing is, and
then get back to my recall device.” He opens the door to exit.
“Certainly, sir. It’s a consciousness uploader.”
Halan turns back around. “What?”
Old Man has returned to work, and acts like he’s barely noticed that Halan
is still there. “Oh, this will upload someone’s consciousness into a
reserve, where they can witness the arrival on Extremus, even if they die
before we get there.”
“Who asked you to do that?” Halan questions.
He takes off his lens gear, sets it on the table, and interlocks his hands
next to it. “You will.”
“I will?”
“No one wants to die, and certainly not the people on this ship.”
“We agreed it would be generational. That was decided a long time ago,
before they even made me Captain. Do you know something about the future
that I don’t?”
“Goodnight, sir.”
Halans wants to argue, but he’s too tired. He still apparently has to speak
to someone about a possible radiation leak on the observation deck. He can
tell by Old Man’s progress that this mind uploader is nowhere near finished,
so there will be plenty of time to argue about it another day. “Get back to
the recall device. Now.”
“Very well.” He knows how important he is, at least until the device is
complete. He might be worried about what happens to him after that, though,
which is why he’s really building the uploader. In all honesty, Halan can’t
be sure the man shouldn’t be worried. It is not off the table to tie up all
loose ends.
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