| Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Veo 2 and Veo 3 |
It’s the Halfway Celebration Extravaganza! Today is July 17, 2378. It’s been
exactly 108 years since the TGS Extremus left port in the Gatewood
Collective. Since then, while traveling at reframe speeds, they have covered
76,367 light years. Due to their unscheduled detour into the void, they’re
not quite that far away from their starting point, but it doesn’t matter.
They’re still well on their way to their new home. There is currently no one
left on this ship who was alive when it launched, and no one here will
likely still be around when it lands, but this day isn’t about the
departers, or the arrivers, it’s about the middlers. This day is about
everyone here right now. It’s a grand accomplishment, and they should all be
proud of themselves. It hasn’t been easy. Politics, external threats, cabin
fever. Time travel, spies, betrayals. Uncertainty, purposelessness, loss,
and love. They’ve been through a lot, but they pushed through it, and this
hunk of metal is still hurling through space. Not once have they stopped.
Not once have they tried to turn around. They’re flying farther and further
than ever, into the unknown. And everything they just did, they have to do
one more time. Say it louder.
Tinaya lands on the bed. She’s still conscious, but her eyes are closed, and
she’s not feeling well. She lies there for a moment, focusing on her
breathing. “Thistle, how did I get here?”
“You were about to collapse to the floor,” Thistle replies. “I spirited you away before you could break a hip.”
“Did anyone see?” she asks.
“No. They didn’t even see you disappear. Perfect timing.”
“No need to boast about it.”
“I meant you. You passed out right when no one was looking. Of course,
they would have realized it if you had
hit the floor, so I suppose my timing was pretty spectacular too, thanks
for noticing.”
“Well, thank you. I think I’m fine to go back.” She stands and tries to
activate her teleporter, but it doesn’t work. “Thistle.”
“You’re grounded, missy. You’re lucky I didn’t take you right to the
infirmary.”
While all the corrupted medical personnel who were a part of the forced
pregnancy scandal have long been replaced, Tinaya has become gun-shy to
visit the infirmary. She knows that she’s gonna need it. She’s an old woman.
But not tonight. Any night but tonight. “I have to get back to the party.
They’re expecting me.”
“I’ve taken care of that.”
“How?”
“I’ve written an algorithm, which projects a hologram of you at strategic
locations for strategic people at strategic times. Everyone who sees you
will think you’re busy talking to someone else.”
“That sounds like a recipe for disaster. What happens when someone tries to
walk up and interrupt us, or pat me on my back?”
“Impossible,” he claims. “You’re not a single hologram that everyone looking in the right direction
can see. Each person who sees it sees it separately, as an image that is
projected directly onto their eyeballs. I control when they see it, and
how far away they are when they do, as well as how your avatar moves.”
Tinaya is vexed. She’s never heard of that before. It’s not some futuristic
thing that she can’t comprehend, but she just hasn’t heard of it. “What?”
“Individualized holograms.”
“Who would install such a thing, and why? It seems like the only use for it
would be to deceive people, like you’re doing right now.”
“It has other use cases. You can receive personalized alerts, and
sensitive information. It can help you train to perform maintenance, or
other tasks, without interfering with other people seeing their own AR.”
“Well, why have I never seen anything like that before? Or have I, and I
didn’t know it.”
“You people really took to your watches and armbands, the protocols were
just never implemented. The tech is there, though. Every hologram you see
is coming from those projectors, but widened for general viewing.”
She lies back down on the bed. “Okay.” She doesn’t know how she feels about
this. She was really tired before she collapsed. It’s not like it was a
sudden fainting with no warning. It’s getting harder to keep up with
everyone these days. Even Lataran is too active for her sometimes, but
Tinaya has been hiding the struggle. “What about sound?”
“They can’t hear you in the crowd anyway, but the projectors include
photoacoustic emitters too, if they’re ever needed.”
“How come you never show up as a hologram?”
“I do. Some people ask for it. They ask me to look like some contrived
image of myself, or a cat, or even themselves. You’ve simply never
requested it.”
Tinaya sits up quickly. “Wait. Silveon and Arqut.”
“I used those photoacoustic emitters I was just talking about, and
informed them of the situation. They’re sticking around to make sure the
holos are working, and then I believe they’ll slip out to check on you. I
might make holos of them as well.”
“I’ve decided that this was helpful, Thistle, but I would really like you
not to do this often. I say it like that, because I don’t want to make a
blanket statement that you shouldn’t do it ever, but it should only be for
extreme circumstances. I can’t divulge my health problems until I know who I
can trust, but this isn’t gonna be a regular thing.”
“I understand.”
Tinaya lay back down on the bed and fell asleep. This is sort of the
unwritten, unofficial reason why admirals are only advisors, and no longer
commanders. After 24 years of hard work as a captain, she’s mainly supposed
to rest. Well, she didn’t work a full shift, but she was pretty busy before
that. And she definitely needs to rest tonight. Tomorrow could be even
worse. It’s all downhill from here. She isn’t sure if she’s going to live as
long as her son claims that she will. His information is coming from a
different timeline. Nothing is certain.
Arqut is sleeping next to her when she wakes up the next morning. She nudges
him awake. “Report.”
He groans, only half awake. “We’re taking you to see a doctor on Verdemus
tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, or today?” Tinaya questions. “It’s six o’clock on the
eighteenth.”
“Today,” he clarifies while yawning.
“I have a better solution,” Thistle interjects. “One that doesn’t require any extensive travel, or placing trust in anyone
besides me.”
There is not a whole lot of automation on this ship. When the ancestors left
the stellar neighborhood, technology had advanced far past the need for any
human crew. There was talk back then of not having any captains or
engineers, or anything. Everyone would be a passenger, possibly as part of
the internal government. In the end, of course, it was decided that it was
more important to let people have purpose than to go the easy route. There
are limits to this philosophy, however, and the line separating human labor
from automation lies somewhere before waste management.
There are different kinds of waste. Some of it isn’t waste at all, but
recyclable material, but whatever it is, if it was once used and has since
been discarded, it ends up in this sector to be processed accordingly. No
one comes down here. No one needs to be here, and no one wants to either.
“Why doesn’t it smell?” Silveon asks. “I would expect it to smell.”
For the first time ever, Tinaya is seeing Thistle as a hologram. He’s
leading them through a maze. This is a restricted travel area, or people
might use it for nefarious or inappropriate dealings, so no teleportation.
“I control for the smell,” he explains.
“Why bother?” Silveon presses. “If no one comes here, what does it matter?”
“I’m here,” Thistle says.
“Right.”
“I can smell,” Thistle goes on.
“Why would you be able to smell? Why would you need that?”
“There are many uses for smell, which is why humans and animals alike
evolved their own olfaction. My artificial odor sensors can detect
individual health issues, substance leaks, food spoilage. I mask the scent
in this area, because I find it just as unpleasant as you, if not more.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I’m grateful for it now,” Silveon says.
“You’re here,” Thistle reveals. “I can give you the code for the door, but I
can’t open it myself. It’s deliberately manual. They didn’t want anyone to
stumble upon it. Just type in
zero-nine-three-six-one-four-seven-five-two-eight-zero.”
Arqut handles the code.
“What is the significance of that number?” Silveon asks.
Thistle shrugs. “It’s long.”
Arqut pulls the door open. Lights flicker on, presumably responding to their
motion, rather than a sophisticated AI sensor array. In the middle of the
floor is something that is not supposed to be on this ship. It was banned
because of how it could lead to extreme longevity. They call it a medpod,
and it’s very common on Earth, and its neighbors. It can diagnose nearly
anything, and treat it too. It has a distinct look against other types of
pods due to its uncomparable dimensional specifications. “Who put this
here?”
“Admiral Thatch did. He never used it. No one else has either. To tell you
the truth, I think he forgot about it. He didn’t even write it down. I only
found it because I needed to familiarize myself with the area. There aren’t
even hologram projectors in there. You’ll have to go in and operate it on
your own.”
“How did you know what was in there if you can’t physically open doors? How
did you know the code if he never told anyone about it?” Tinaya struggles to
ask him. Sleeping all night didn’t help much. She grew tired again as soon
as she stepped out of bed. She would be sitting in a wheelchair right now if
doing so wouldn’t be like holding a neon sign over her head, advertising how
frail she’s become.
“He wrote down the code,” Thistle clarifies. “He didn’t say what it was for,
so this was just a guess, but it was a good one given that all buttons on
the keypad have oil fingerprints on them. I knew what was in here because I
can hear it. When isolated from a grid, medpods are often powered by a fuel
cell, and the type that fits this design hums at a unique frequency. It’s
unambiguous to me.”
They all just stand there in the doorway. The boys don’t want to make this
decision for Tinaya, but she doesn’t want to make a decision that they don’t
agree with.
“I actually can’t see it from here,” Thistle continues. “My closest sensor
doesn’t have the right angle. So I’m assuming that it is indeed a medpod. I
don’t know exactly which model it is, but they’re all pretty user-friendly.
One feature they have in common is that you have to be in it to use it. It
doesn’t work from out here.”
“Yeah, okay, I got this,” Tinaya says, determined. She strides into the
room, and taps on the interface screen to see what it does. “It wants me to
get fully undressed,” she says after reading the initialization
instructions.
“I’ll stay out here and keep watch,” Silveon volunteers. Obviously, Thistle
is far better at keeping watch than a single human with only two eyes could
ever be, but those two eyes don’t need to see what’s going on in this room.
“Let me help you, dear,” Arqut says.
“There should be a little compartment under the foot of the table,” Thistle
says from the hallway, “where you can place her clothes. It will test for
contamination, decontaminate them if possible, destroy them if not, or just
clean them for you if they’re medically insignificant.”
“Found it,” Arqut called back.
“Oo, it’s cold,” Tinaya says after climbing in.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Thistle contends. “Activate the warming nozzles.”
“How do I do that?” Arqut asks.
“Try asking the computer with your voice. Again, I can’t see the model.”
Arqut taps on the microphone. “Activate warming nozzles.”
“Oh,” Tinaya says, shivering. “Thank you.”
“Beginning broad scope diagnosis,” a female voice from the pod says.
They expect to have to wait a while as it processes the data, but it quickly
comes to a conclusion. “Diagnosis: severe orthostatic hypotension.”
“Low blood pressure,” Thistle says. “That’s all it’s giving you? I knew
that. I can see that myself. We wanna know why.”
“It has a little tree sort of icon,” Arqut begins to say.
“Next to the hypotension diagnosis? Yeah, tap that. It should start looking
for causes.”
Longer wait this time. “Uhhhhhhhhhhh...” Arqut says as he’s looking at the
screen again.
“What?” Thistle presses.
“Now it’s asking for a secondary profile? Preferably someone younger, or
someone who has been living in the environment for a shorter period of
time.”
“That’s interesting,” Thistle decides. “It wants a comparative assessment.
It wants to see if there’s something different about how you live—if this is
a chronic issue that’s only now had consequences.”
“So...we should do it?”
“Absolutely.”
“I’m a few years younger,” Arqut says.
“You’ve actually been on this ship longer than her,” Thistle reminds them.
“It obviously needs to be Silveon, who is barely an adult.”
Silveon waits while Arqut helps mama get her clothes back on, and carries
her over to a couch against the wall. Silveon comes in and climbs into the
pod for his own diagnosis. More waiting.
“Unusual neural activity detected.”
“Bypass that,” Thistle instructs. “It doesn’t understand that he’s a time
traveler, but it sees the disconnect between an old mind in a young body, so
it thinks there’s either an imaging error, or a mapping error.”
“Bypassing...” Arqut announces. Wait a little more. “Diagnosis: optimal
condition. Primary profile...unstable gravity variations.”
“Oh my God, of course,” Thistle says, smacking his avatar in the forehead.
“She was born here, but spent time on Verdemus before returning. She
predominantly lives under human-optimal gravity, which is slightly lower
than Earth’s, but Verdemus has a little bit higher surface gravity.
Space-farers experience fluctuations all the time, but they have gravity
gum, nanites, and other treatments, which are non-existent, or even banned,
on Extremus.”
“Should I tap on prognosis?” Arqut asks him.
“I know the prognosis. She’ll live in pain the rest of her life unless she
undergoes treatment, which is so easy. It’s just gravity therapy. We have
everything we need here to help her.”
Thistle was right that gravity therapy helped Tinaya feel a lot better in
her daily life. It didn’t make her young again, but it started to be a hell
of a lot easier for her to stand. Unfortunately, her experience would prove
to be a warning, rather than a fluke. It wasn’t just her time on Verdemus.
Everyone on the ship turns out to be at risk. There’s something seriously
wrong with the artificial gravity.
