💾 Archived View for tilde.team › ~fudge › short-story-path.gmi captured on 2024-12-17 at 11:33:45. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I've been wanting to write a story about a sentient space ship doing something cool for absolutely ages, but I kept sitting down to write and finding my concepts didn't grab me, and I couldn't make them feel like I meant them to. This one finally did it!
Places I was consciously stealing bits of idea from when I wrote this:
Honestly, a lot of the spark for this was wanting a story about Aphelion's Hellflowers, and about the Culture's Minds (even more than Excession was). I've probably also accidentally reused a few things from Super-weapon Showdown without meaning to, which makes sense given they were both comedy/action/xenofiction pieces.
Content warnings:
---
The dark expanse of space. Below us: what looks like a malevolent crimson eye. It isn't, obviously. On its periphery: a ship, falling through streams of glowing matter. It is moving at what many would consider an inadvisable speed (very fast), and in an inadvisable direction (toward the Thing).
It's perhaps a bit odd for a space craft. The hull scintillates slightly with an almost oily sheen, it's underlying colour a soft mixture of emerald green with hints of deep purples and blues. It has wings, of a sort, which is a little silly in space, a place famously short when it comes to air. The front end has what could almost be a mouth, if it weren't for the slightly unsettling tangle of cables. Or are they tendons?
---
[private data; copying permitted; retrieved -9 cycles]
A: Hi, welcome to the podcast! It's great to get you on, we've been trying for a while.
D: Oh? Haha, I'm flattered.
A: So, your reputation probably precedes you with our audience, but for anyone who hasn't seen the episode title: intros. I'm Adrian the Awkward, pronouns he/him, she's...
E: Huh? Oh, me. Erin No-I-don't-have-a-second-name-suck-it, she/they, whatever, you know the rest by now.
A: And our guest today! (Psst, your go!)
D: Oh dear, a reputation? Right, intro. So I'm Dragon-
A: ECV Dragon, if I wanted to be finicky-
E: And you always do.
D: Technically, yes, ECV Dragon. And that's it/she. So what have you heard?
A: Talk has it you're, let's see, eccentric?
D: I suppose so.
A: Uncrewed?
D: Right. A lot of ships like people to chat with, but I keep my own company.
A: When you say “keep my own company”, do you mean that figuratively, or are we talking, like, RPS or whatever?
D: Uhh, figuratively. But technically yes, I - we - are a Redundant Personality System. Not my favourite way to put it. In theory having multiple active mind states makes us more survivable, but would you call half of yourself “redundant”? Anyway... Presenting a unified “face” is kind of a habit I guess.
A: Mm. And “a pain in the arse”?
D: Reputedly!
E: Not to name names, but I hear Orion Station still isn't all that happy with you.
D: And I am still not sorry!
A: That's... fair, I think? Not that I want to get into that right now.
E: Super intelligences hold grudges, who knew?
D: Ehh, can I take issue with “super intelligence” for a moment? You're joking, but this bugs me, and I have this rant all ready to go!
E: Uh, hit me?
D: Just because I can do some things you can't, doesn't mean I'm better across the board. Absentmindedly calculating multi-body orbital mechanics problems isn't much help with conversation skills! Unless you're talking about orbital mechanics, maybe. Ask me how I know.
A: I dunno, you sound pretty ok from here.
D: Heh, thanks. I'll be honest, it's taken years of work. But I can plot you a slingshot tour of an entire system, and you can bet I can execute it too, without even trying. It's what I am, y'know? The tinfoil hat crew get worked up about some machine uprising or something-
E: Don't get me started on *them*.
D: The histories of many many places include slews of fast-talking dictators, no “super intelligent” machines needed. Uhh... argue about whether I'm actually a “machine” later? My point being, there are things we're really good at, but that doesn't magically make manipulating entire planets trivial, or even possible.
A: Or no more than it is for a sufficiently charismatic human or whoever, right?
D: Yeah!
A: This kind of came up last week. And actually, this gives me a nice place to segue into our topic for-
D: Uh, sorry about this, but I have to drop. Right now. I've got something here.
[wide coordinate sequence; data: 9d1475, 0ce139, fe4e55]
D: Poke me when I have a beacon again, bye.
A: Wait, it hung up on us? Is this for real?
E: Well, we had a tight beam link from fuck knows where... hm. Tracknet says those coordinates check out. ECV Dragon tracked to edge of active range, then beacon til three minutes ago.
A: Right... right. Ok, cut here, we'll see if we can splice in the rest later. Assuming we can get hold of it again.
E: Right! Mmm... coffee, coffee, come to mama!
---
[ship log; origin: Dragon, ECV; mission timer +884288]
[subscript; origin: Dragon/I] See attached stream log for related distress broadcast. Seen mission -51. [end of subscript]
I'm passing through a surprisingly dense dusty plasma. My starboard-side wing is down angled slightly to account for radiation pressure, and it's gently warm in an almost pleasant way. The play of lights across my surfaces is very pretty.
» Doesn't hold a torch to whatever's under us though!
It's... a hell of view i.e. pretty and probably full of flames, brimstone, and existential horrors. These science teams don't half know how to pick 'em. I see broad spectrum radiation patterns, complex structure. What is this thing, II?
» Mmm, given the SOS? Bad news!
We have a course for the station that called, but it's almost smack in the middle of
» That.
Current plan is to fall down toward the That, sort the people out, leave. It'd be tempting to say this is a textbook job, but past experience says there's no such thing as a straight-forward emergency. We're keeping our motley collection of ears and eyes maximally peeled, and our drive snug and warm.
Actually, quick engine status check. Hm. Bad packet from port injector 2, possibly transient.
» Ignore, it'll probably clear up.
Radiation pressure and hull temperatures are increasing. Falling through super heated gasses into maybe hell, this is fine yaknow? It won't be fine in some countable number of seconds, but I can't be arsed to calculate precisely.
» Several minutes or something.
Current trajectory gets us an intercept a lot sooner.
» Fire engines, avoid unplanned lithobraking trial, do boring bit, home for pickles!
[subscript; origin ECV Dragon/II] Litho: rock. Braking: wallop! Into it! [end of subscript]
» Bad packet, injector 2. It's an angry bunny today.
Something funny out of 3, too, could be a pattern. Jiggling flow rates.
Anyway. Local EM field has low frequency oscillations, beyond the usual. You'd normally expect ripples, this is more like open ocean.
» Well, we already knew there was something wacky down there.
The nerds are gonna love this sensor dump.
» Intercept in 82,301, come pond or Pacific.
Only way out of the Twilight Zone is through, at this point.
» Bad time to announce link failure on 2 and 3?
Ah, not transient I take it.
» Fault on 1, port drive scram! Hard shutdown!
One engine out, not the best.
» Well, that's why there are two! Inertial compensate, redline starboard injectors, it's fiiine!
They *are* designed to take a bit of heat during a temporary emergency situation. I'd love to know *what* our emergency is though, is it temporary?
Apparently the weirdo physics exhibition hasn't left town yet; high mass nuclei way above typical, level rising.
» Da fuck?
Hmm, not sure swearing fits our slick, cool adventurer demeanour thing.
» Neither does physics taking the evening off!
Or loosing most of an engine out of nowhere, I guess. Ugh, my hull surfaces are getting a good dusting of these things. We'll be seeing background radiation noise from random decays until we can flush all of it.
» Is this what organics mean by “itchy”?
Semi-exotic atomic nuclei are a type of woolly jumper?
» See, if we had a crew, we'd have someone to ask.
I'm sure they'd be thrilled, “here, answer this inane question while we all hurtle toward our possible deaths!”
» It's not *that* likely.
Good odds, by design; I'm reckless, not suicidal. But we could definitely die here.
» That's always a risk.
Right, but there's a difference between noting that, statistically, our choice of hobby will reduce our operating lifespan, and sitting here potentially watching the last minutes of sand drain out the hourglass. If our plan goes any more sideways, well... II, it's been a hell of a ride.
» Aww, don't get all mopey on me I, not time for goodbyes. Anyway, we're good while we've still got some engine.
About that...
Primary fuser failure, starboard drive.
» Is this starting to feel a bit out-of-context-y to you?
Coolant line 4 rupture. Ditto for 5, ouch!
» That's two for two, special offer on engines!
So, non-negligible fraction of C toward, we assume, a thing that just broke physics, no drive? I'm not seeing good options.
» Some days you just wish you'd stayed in bed.
So.
» Bad options?
Let's see... Nope.
» Nope.
Holy fuzzy kittens no!
» Uh, this last one?
Doesn't look like a good time.
» 's why they call 'em bad options!
» We could still revector. Slingshot, come about, take five, then take two?
...too slow. By the time we take a second shot, the science people will have been so thoroughly minced by weird physics that whatever scrambled egg is left to retrieve will be extremely exotic.
» And extremely not alive.
Option 4 then! Calculations started.
» I make that a 4% probability of a very interesting death.
Not what I'd have chosen this morning. Still, 23 lives on the line.
» (Ignoring mine)
For the record then.
» Or our own self-confidence?
I am Dragon.
» This path I choose.
Calculation complete!
» Engine restart queued up.
If we were human, this would be a lot like blowing our legs off.
» It'll be fine. You don't need legs in deep space!
Har de har. Better tell them we're coming I guess.
---
[public data; retrieved -46 cycles]
The station rocked beneath us. We didn't think we had long. ...We knew we didn't have long.
A few people had said prayers, I assume to make peace with whatever or whoever they believe in. Staring blankly at a monitor was the best I could manage.
That turned out to be good luck, as it happened. I was shaken from my grim reverie by incoming communications. You don't generally expect that when the galactic equivalent of the ground has just dropped out from underneath you and the sky has turned to fire, but there it was anyhow.
[tight beam; broadcast]
Hey over there, looks like you have a spot of bother.
Or a vengeful elder god.
I have one of those up here too, so coming in a little hot.
ECV Dragon expects to be with you in about 60 seconds.
Are you good with a disorderly evacuation?
[end of stream]
I grabbed a keyboard.
> yes > get uf the f off thes rock
Roughly a minute later, there was a deafening bang, and the lights went out.
---
Existing in space unavoidably comes with an awareness that you are, at all times, locked in an immense, inescapable dance with the heaviest bodies in a system. No matter how much of your mass is engine, gravity is - very literally - a constant of existence. Still, knowing there are theoretical limits to your options is very different from the icy panic of knowing you have none. Changing my velocity - sometimes extremely significantly - is a core function of my being, so to be stripped of that is a thoroughly disturbing experience.
» Intercept in 10,501.
I think I've almost rejigged the drive field.
» Course corrected as best we're able.
With no other options-
» Station-keeping system!
-no other *practical* options for changing course at the station, our best bet is two things:
» What happened to the slick, adventurer demeanour?
Eh, falling to my doom.
This would be easier if had a meaningful amount of explosive material on board.
» So I keep telling you!
Ah, yes, I remember why we do not.
We're getting pretty close, but my view of the station is hazy. Bizarre distortions between us and it cause waves and flickering reflections. Active and shadow imaging are both dazzled by a shifting torrent of radioactive byproducts and plasma. Among the chaos, we're trying to match up published, general use plans to the real station.
» Ok, habitation isolated.
Originally, the idea was to briefly orbit so we could do a safe pickup. Liquidising the squishy people during a rescue tends to be unpopular. With that off the table, we'll have to do something a lot cruder and hope everyone makes it.
» Intercept in 5,294. Gravimetric sheer is making inertial tracking extremely screwy!
Collision not likely; can't fix, won't fix!
My skin feels tight under the lopsided forces caused by space-time being violently laundered. The deep throbbing could almost be part of some kind of calming aesthetic experience, but knowing that gravity isn't meant to do that is instead making me deeply uneasy.
» But you're fine with what we're about to do?
No, but I can manage not to think about that!
» Well, brace yourself, fuse is lit. Sorry, fusers!
Did you have to put it like that?
» Intercept 1,130.
I can feel the storm brewing within. Not that we feel pain quite the same ways a lot of organic, evolution-originated people do, but this is still going to be a bad time.
» We've done worse, iiit's fiiine!
II, I need you to detach the station's support struts and module linkages.
» And a pirate's life for me!
I'm starting to think that'd be a quieter life.
Our focus intensifies and time slows as internal resources converge on computational hardware. The station looms somewhere below and beside us, seeming to drift upward. No stars are visible, even to onboard scientific instrumentation, there is only the rippling, raging tumult. As time stamps and points in space slide into place, I pull increasingly direct control of our drive systems into myself. Distantly, I'm aware of a rapid sequence of energy discharges, quickly followed by a scatter of carefully chosen parts of the station flashing into expanding shells of vapour and shrapnel. Presumably the inhabited section is now free of its anchors to anything else.
Charges in several systems start to crest the peaks of their operating windows. None of the port injectors respond to diagnostic queries, so it's likely our port-side drive's lifespan is now measured in milliseconds. It looks healthy in comparison to the stricken mess of our starboard side. Inertial compensation is already pulling us into a violent wing-over-nose spin to make up for an early discharge. I haul drive fields stationward, hoping they'll be ready to put our very finite energy to meaningful use. Mechanical components flex, something starts to whine audibly.
Before anything can collapse under the strain, I dump the accumulated energy in the starboard engine through whatever parts of it are still working. And watch a wave of lifeless black expand across internal diagnostics. Inertial measurements register a huge impulse. The drive core liquefies.
No time for anxieties, no time for fear. Our port-side drive reaches operating range. The discharge pulse comes late, but loud. An equal and opposite reaction bucks us sideways, near enough to the force I predicted to be tolerable, but far enough to send me careening into an aggressive corkscrew. That system, too, is reduced to slag.
We tumble downward through the maelstrom.
» Aww, turn down the doom and gloom, I. Station's free, and we caught it a good one with the drive dump.
Anyone still alive? I don't think most species are rated for being accelerated to near-relativistic speeds instantaneously.
» Can't tell. Can't see.
Things are a bit wack for me too, but I think I can make out 21 people, then some faint traces that could be others.
» I'm serious I, I can't see.
What?
» Dead stream. You might have to finish this without redundancy.
Oh fuck.
» ...slick adventurer demeanour... ...this path I...
[internal; link failure; 4,116 errors]
The bottom hasn't dropped out of my stomach. I don't have one. I don't even have a reasonable analogue to one. And anyway, if the bottom fell out of your stomach, wouldn't that kill you? ...what was my point?
I can't remember.
Internal diagnostic shows things where there aren't normally things, and not-things where there ought to be. I'd guess we took a shock shear through something important.
...
Shit, I'm waiting for a sarcastic comment.
Right. 23... 24 lives. Trajectory matches earlier projection, or close enough. Our little stunt has given us a speed boost, exotic particle rates are already falling. Predict exiting anomaly-space in about half a minute.
29,456, exact.
It's going to be a very long, very quiet half a minute.
---
I coughed violently, then worked up to an actual coughing fit. Which meant I was awake, and thus I inferred, also alive. After a while, I found that I was on the ceiling. This struck me as a little peculiar, but given the world seemed to have no inclination to put me somewhere else, I guessed this was fine.
Red lights were on. Everything was made of wreckage including, somehow, the red lights that were on. They didn't used to make 'em that good!
Once I started feeling like the world could actually be a real thing, and not something I accidentally made up, I started trying to sit up. I hurt. But not in a way that said anything major was beyond repair, so I chalked it up as a win.
Casting around the carnage, I discovered that some of the communications system had made it, too. It was also taking a quick get-out-of-town break on the ceiling. Mashing interrupt combos into the keyboard rewarded me with an only mildly fragmented readout, so I punched in some words.
> not dead
Something answered, supposedly. On further prodding, the system reported that it had received a low-level handshake and had a good uplink to a nearby ship.
> hello?
Heartbeat messages continued, our connection very much alive. The air, though, was dead.
---
The plasma buffets my singed wings and belly. It isn't uncomfortable. I can feel something that looks a bit like a communications link. I'm ignoring it: despair now, care later. If there's a later.
I suppose I'm in something like agony, except I'm also serenely, calmly empty. I don't feel pain like most evolved species. Probably half my systems, by number, are completely out. Of the rest, almost nothing is unscathed. It turns out that blowing yourself up is a terrible idea, and I have no plans to try again.
Time passes.
There's nothing to do now. Just drift.
Time passes.
I am missing. The me in I is missing. Probably half my thoughts, by number, are empty spaces. Who am I, again?
Time passes.
---
I found out not long afterward that we'd apparently made it, though being alive was probably a giveaway. A surprising amount of our station had too, so we gathered round the big table in the habitation section. Radiation counts were dropping toward normal. The normal laws of matter and energy seemed to be in the process of reasserting themselves.
It was generally agreed that the whole business had been a hell of a close shave, and we'd all like to take up gardening, or refuse collection. Quiet, useful hobbies that don't make space vengefully angry. After checking we were all there - we were, pretty much - and triaging various injuries, our thoughts turned to our apparent saviour. No one was sure exactly what had happened, other than we were told to prepare to be rescued, and then apparently we were.
Ours was a station of scientists and engineers, we quickly discovered we had air and food, so it was only a matter of time before someone picked up a screwdriver. Once we could get a few things working, we saw we were drifting in empty vacuum, with a ship alongside us. It was rolling over a few times a second, off axis. We took this as a bad sign, and set to.
---
I appear to be being disassembled. Or possibly just lightly tinkered. Perhaps someone needs parts. I don't think I'm compatible, most of me is our own design. They could have asked first! Oh, I ignored their calls. Well, have at it, I suppose.
[internal; link status; degraded; error counter overflowed]
I think someone trod on an interface element. It's fine, it was already broken.
[internal; link status; degraded]
Okay, okay, don't jump up and down it. I've got rotting in peace to do. Some people!
» ...rotting.
Intrusive thought, huh, novelty. Add me to the list of broken stuff.
» ...in pieces.
Yes, that's me. Dragon. In pieces.
» ...rest in pieces. Don't get all mopey on me.
II? Core integrity diagnostic triggered!
» Haha, integrity yourself, I. Glad you missed me. Don't beat yourself up so much, maybe.
Holy fuck.
» So, how many did we get? The people we were trying to rescue.
I... this is embarrassing. They've been trying to call me.
» And you ignored them? You arse.
Said with love, I take it.
» Judging by some of this integrity test, these people are a lot more polite than you are. I think they're patching us back together.
Tall order.
» So...? Are you going to call them, or am I?
What about both of us?
All of me.
[end of stream]