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Mandica is less than four weeks into her trip, yet 48 years have passed for
the rest of the universe. She thinks about that sometimes. If she had never
latched onto this relativistic ship, she would be 76 at this point. A couple
of centuries ago, had she died at that age, people would have said that she
lived a good, long life. Now 76 is still quite young, even for the
undigitized. It’s not like she doesn’t accept any medical
intervention. For the less enhanced, it’s still unusual to not make it to at
least 100. But that means in about 15 or 20 days, she will have passed her
own expected lifespan. Her parents were already pretty old when they had
her, and she was only 22 when they died themselves. She spent the next six
years carrying on their nomadic legacy, but alone...except for Mordred and
her bot pack. It is finally time to move on from that. By the time this
arkship comes to a full stop, it will be the 26th century. Who knows what
the world will look like by then? She doesn’t even really know what it looks
like now. Castlebourne isn’t open to the public yet. They only announced it
early to build hype, and give ship travelers like her time to cover the
expanse.
Most people have no use for the ships. Once Castlebourne does officially
open, they will simply transmit their consciousnesses through the quantum
network, and arrive in a matter of days at worst. She doesn’t know if they
will have facsimile substrates waiting for them or skeletal android bodies,
or what. She doesn’t pay attention to that stuff because it doesn’t apply to
her. She has chosen to not be able to do it. Those are the values that her
family instilled in her. You’re born, you live, you die. That is the cycle.
That is how humans have been doing it for millions of years. That’s what
life is. She honors her ancestors by becoming one of them one day. Going on
this trip isn’t changing the plan, it’s just delaying it by a century, and
making it happen on a different planet. If someone had invented
faster-than-light travel like they have on the TV shows, she would have
absolutely done it that way instead, and stayed on the schedule that her
parents predicted for her. But this is what she has. She has a 108-year
wait, experienced as 56 days. Then, for the next 80 or 90 years after that,
she will lead the kind of life that she wants, and die peacefully on her
terms.
Mandica set herself up with exigent alerts. While she can’t see
outside—which is normally no problem, because there’s usually nothing to
see—the pod has external sensors, keeping tabs on the environment. That
environment is always shifting as they’re shooting through space at luminal
speeds. That’s a new word she learned. Luminal is for those extremely
high relativistic speeds that allow her to survive the journey in a
reasonable amount of time. Any slower, and it’s not worth it given her
lifespan. That gift isn’t enough now, though. There’s a breach in the hull.
Nothing in the ship is going to die, but it needs to be dealt with, and they
will send a bot out here to do that. Since there are live specimens
on board, most of the vessel has to be spun to simulate gravity using
centrifugal force. They don’t spin that whole thing, though. The spinning
section is fully enclosed, and kept separate from the hull using
electromagnets. The spinning cylinder is fine for now, but they can’t just
leave that gaping hole there like that. Someone will come eventually.
The alert told that there was a problem, but it didn’t give her the whole
story. A deeper dive into the “local news” explained it further. A
micrometeoroid, probably the size of a grain of sand, managed to make it
through the shielding, and puncture a hole in the front of the arkship. The
EM shield surely slowed it down, after the plasma shield ionized it,
but wasn’t enough to deflect it, and definitely could not have stopped it.
Since the space between the spinning cylinder and the hull is also a vacuum,
it was able to continue to fly backwards like a bullet. It then blasted
another hole in the back as an exit wound. Right now, the automated systems
are prioritizing that entry wound, because it makes them more vulnerable,
but it’s only a matter of time before they head this way. It’s close enough
to where Trilby attached the barnacle that a bot would spot her. She doesn’t
know exactly how it will react, but it won’t ignore her. It will report the
intrusion to a higher tier intelligence at the very least. She has to act.
But what can she do here? She can’t just move the barnacle somewhere else.
This entire back section is exposed, and she is visible to anything nearby.
She might be able to slowly walk around the engine nozzles, and hide behind
them, but that’s a long-ass walk, and dangerous. Trilby said there’s a
reason he chose to stick her in this spot. Even though the ship is coasting,
and the engines aren’t on full right now, they still generate heat. Her
suit, the tether, the barnacle; any of things could suffer damage during
transit. She has to think, and she has to think fast. The port side maybe?
That might be fine for now, but she’ll then be exposed to the kinds of
micrometeoroids that just ruptured the hull. Again, that’s why Trilby put
her right here. The way she sees it, she only has one choice at this point.
It’s incredibly risky, but the worst that could happen is the bots finally
do apprehend her. If she tries any alternative she could die instead.
Mandica gathers everything she can, namely the half-complement of dayfruit
growers. After a quiet goodbye to her temporary home, she untethers herself
from the barnacle, initiates the release procedures, and watches it fly off
into the nothingness. Now she’s staring into the black. It’s haunting.
Nothing on Earth is as black as this. No stars, no debris, just endless
void. Everything is completely redshifted and invisible to the naked eye.
They are simply moving too far away from it all. She shudders and turns
away. It shouldn’t be her concern right now. There is no way to know how
soon the repair bots will come. She trudges across the hull as fast as she
can, which isn’t very fast. Her magboots have to be on maximum, unlike they
would be if she were on the inside since a misstep out here could cost
someone their life. She sees it with her flashlight now. It’s the hole. Man,
is it huge. She was worried about being able to fit, but it’s not going to
be a problem at all. You could send a truck through this thing if you had
to.
She carefully contorts her leg to magnetize against the edge. To a giant, it
would be an edge, but to her, the hull is so thick, it’s like its own wall.
She walks along it until she’s fully inside. Now she’s looking at the
rotating cylinder, moving at about one rotation every two minutes. It seems
to be holding up. She watches it go by, looking for something—anything—to
grasp onto. There, that’s it. It’s some kind of access panel. Hopefully, it
grants her access to the inside, and not just wiring, or something. She
leaps. The microthrusters on her PRU are designed for helium and neon, so
they’re not particularly powerful, but they keep her pointed in the right
direction. She grabs the handle, and holds on. Then she turns it and pulls.
It’s unlocked, which makes sense, because who would they be worried about
breaking in? Pirates? Insane human stowaways? She crawls up the tunnel, and
comes out through a hatch in the ground, surrounded by timber wolves. “Hm.
Could be worse.” It is here that she spends the next four weeks trying to
figure out how she’s going to get off the ship unnoticed.
