Daily Bread

A man and his craft learn about one another, finding companionship amongst the stars.

1

It was as the ship descended through the atmosphere that I realised I was fucked.

If it wasn’t the poor maintenance routine that had meant I had brought this catastrophe upon myself, then it was definitely the fact I’d forgotten (read: carelessly neglected) to hand control of the ship over to Erie, my VI autopilot, while I made myself a cuppa to aid my thought process – and then, having remembered halfway through the tea-making adventure, thinking that a couple of minutes wouldn’t hurt rather than restart the operation. It was this partially wilful lack of care that had led to my literal downfall. I don’t earn enough to pay the exorbitant fees that the orbital garages charge for relatively minor work and I don’t have the capability to learn how to do the work myself – so, I should really think to take more care of things like the autopilot, but absent-mindedness in the face of business decisions is my nemesis.

As it was, the tea’s purpose was to aid my mulling: do I bake a loaf or muffins?

I realise that this is probably less important, on the face of it, than making sure the ship isn’t flying into a planet, but I was thinking particularly about the fact that this decision could mean the difference between pay (and, therefore, some engineering work on my girl’s engines) or destitution. If I had to sell this ship to cover my costs, I’d be even more fucked than I am now – I’d have to pay someone to take this barge off me for scrapping. Nothing worse than being alive and stuck on a planet you can’t get off because you can’t earn enough to buy – or even repair – a ship.

I’d only managed to scrape enough together for this one because I inherited my parents’ old house on Titan – they’d looked after it, had no interest in going off-world, and the Unity government pension was enough to keep them ticking over until they passed a few years ago. I, consequently, had decided that my time on Alpha Centauri was done and it was time to see some more of the galaxy; I’d given up the lease on my tiny apartment, gathered together my savings, sold their gaff and fronted the cash to buy this ropey old freighter. Neither of those descriptors is an understatement. The ship was probably about fifty years old when I picked her up, so was missing some key tech features that had been developed since I’d been born – such as actual windows made of transparent metals, self-repairing picotech, food creation units like off the old sci-fi shows from last century – and it was already a bodge-job in terms of its maintenance when I’d had it delivered from a back-street dealer on Io. “Full service history” he’d said; he failed to mention that he meant “it’s had a full-service career in it’s history”, the thing having seen trade routes through disputed territory, war zones, and other such locations that inevitably lead to the sort of pitting of the hull that demonstrates a time spent running either arms or airdrops to all sides.

She was, however, a bit of a character, and I loved her. Erie was ancient, but she’d developed an Amazonian persona, a pithy, sarcastic lilt grown organically over the decades, that came mostly from having had to deal with me for the last few years after a glittering career at the centre of interstellar trade and war zone delivery.

“So, Erie, what do you intend to do about this?”

In full form and with no traces of humour, she replied: “Nothing. You’ve crashed properly this time.”

I chuckled, a combination of nervousness at my impending death and confidence that she did really have an answer that might save at least one of my limbs. “Alright, alright: I’m sorry – I forgot to flick the switch and give you control. What can I do about this?”

A momentary pause, then she said, “Firstly, I don’t know why you try to fly me at all. I’m perfectly capable of doing the job better than you – once I’m on, I don’t need you anymore, so your insistence on pushing buttons and moving yokes is entirely narcissistic.” A pause, for just a moment longer than was absolutely necessary – she wanted me to process that information properly. She’s not wrong, either – I’m relatively redundant as a pilot given the capability of her systems. “Secondly, we lost the ion engines as we entered the magnetic pull of the planet; we’re essentially falling. We’re not quite in the atmosphere yet; if you pump the starter when I tell you to, we might be able to get the sub-light system back online – we might not be able to stop the descent in time, given the speed we’re flying at, but I might be able to fire up into reverse and land, after a fashion, rather than bury myself in the ocean with you knocking about inside me until the oxygen runs out, like a useless submarine.”

“That’s a depressing image.”

“At least it’s honest.”

“I may need to adjust your honesty settings.”

“Do so at your peril – you need me honest, young man, unless you plan to learn how to fly me independently and avoid accidentally skimming planetary atmospheres because you fancy a hot drink.” There was a knife-edge in there, but she was right. Without her, I’d be utterly useless.

“Point taken, madam. Pumping the starter now.”

I pressed the flashing red button every time it lit up again, a few seconds between each attempt, listening carefully for the tell-tale hum in the hull of the sub-light ion engines coming to life. The batteries which held the power for the life support and convenience features of my interstellar voyages noticed the drain immediately; the lights flickered and the air vents hesitated each time I pressed the button. It took seventeen presses for that hum to arrive – far too long and enough to fill me with dread each time I needed to press the button again.

Immediately, Erie’s voice appeared: “Switching engines to full reverse.”

I should’ve been sitting in my chair; I discovered quickly that the artificial gravity system wasn’t at full power. Obviously, I’d known it wasn’t working completely – there was a gentle feeling of weightlessness as we fell which suggested we weren’t completely tickety-boo – but flicking on the engines again must’ve drained what remaining power was in the system until they’d produced enough to recharge the batteries – the solar panels on the hull were a failsafe for the life support only, not for arti-grav, the manufacturers assuming that if they were required, then it was likely the ship was fucked anyway and not going anywhere. Once I’d scraped myself off the floor, making sure I hadn’t pressed any other buttons accidentally, I pulled myself into my seat and pressed a few buttons; the ship’s power systems immediately started to pull excess energy through into the batteries, converted from the waste heat of the engines harvested for exactly this purpose. As expected, I began to feel less like I was pinned to my seat and more like I was in a static box and the images on the display screen in front of my were all that was moving.

Ethereally, Erie stated: “Approaching landing zone; it’s not an official port, so this could get a bit bumpy.”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘not official’?”

“It’s the best I could find – flat, able to hold my weight, and – as you have mentioned it a few times before – won’t cost you anything to be there.”

I smiled, as the ship began to sway, and said, “Go ahead. I’ve braced myself.”

2

I reached for the socket wrench, fumbling as I attempted to identify its tungsten handle by touch alone.

“Why don't you just get out from under me and look?” Erie was clearly grumpy with my laziness – this may save a couple of minutes for me, but when you think as quickly as she does that's an eternity.

“Got it!” I pulled the wrench close to me; it was a spanner. “Don't got it.” I could almost hear her electronic groan reverberating its way through her hull panels, the sound of metal fatigue filtering down into her depths. I smiled to myself at the thought of her finding a way to slump her shoulders, imagining the aero-wings on the rear of the craft dipping towards the ground. To avoid such a fate, I clambered out from underneath the hull to get the wrench. She'd landed on softer ground, so her feet were slightly sunken by the weight of her hull. Consequently, working underneath her was not the usual crouched affair – like working on a museum-piece automobile, I had to lie on my back to get anything done underneath her. My laziness was, in part, because it was a pain in the arse to keep manoeuvring myself into and out of position, particularly as the headset which allowed her to see what I was doing alongside communications had a tendency to come off at the slightest movement. However, I shuffled out from underneath the bulbous belly of the hull, grabbed the socket wrench from the toolkit, realigned my headset again, and shuffled right back under. “What am I doing with this now?”

“Into the panel, find the second nut across from your left, loosen it to reveal the panel underneath that board; then, you'll need the soldering iron.” She was very matter of fact, but she knew herself well. She had been programmed with her own schematics for just such a crisis – a captain who has no experience of engineering, but can follow an instruction; I was sure that this was much earlier in her lifespan than she thought she'd need that skillset, given that it was programmed in just in case the only surviving human aboard was nothing more than a passenger.

We continued along these lines for a couple of hours – her commands, my acquiescence to her greater knowledge and skill, some banter and a lot of patience – until the majority of the work needed to make her mobile again had been done. There was a palpable sense of relief – from both of us – as we turned the last bolt and secured the last panel back to her hull. I returned to the bridge, quite over the hostile, salty environment in which we'd landed.

“I feel like I've learned something here.”

“Could you do it again, without my instructions?”

“Probably not – certainly not yet. But, y'know...” I paused, thinking, “...maybe, if you taught me more often, I could learn?”

“I'll add some daily lessons to your calendar.” She was quite matter of fact about this – but I was certain I could hear a warmth in her simulated speech, a recognition that I may be a beginner but that I'm willing and able to pick up the slack.

“Thanks, Erie.” It was beginning to go dark; both suns were setting on the horizon, one behind the other. “I'm gonna go and try to get some rest; I'll take the remote control in case we need to do anything quickly. Will you handle shutdown?”

“Of course. I'll secure the doors, too – just in case.”

“I've completed some stellar cartography while you were asleep. Turns out we've landed on a planet with only one colony – and that's around 3,250km from here.”

Her voice, disembodied as always, pounded through the speakers in my cabin; how long had I been asleep?

“Whitimuzi?”

“I'm sorry, I'm only programmed to understand the eight-hundred and eighty-three languages in the Union.”

I rubbed my eyes and re-processed my sentence. Slower, less groggy. “What time is it?”

“It's 0584 Union decimal.”

“Fuck.”

“That's still daylight here, though. From what I can work out, the twin suns keep this planet lit most of the time, as their orbits are slightly off-set. Sometimes, from what I can calculate, they won't see nighttime for a full two standard days. Equally, there are a couple of days here or there where it's daytime for the same number of cycles.”

“Well, that's less horrendous, I suppose.” With a little more oomph, I swung my legs out of my bed and dragged myself upright. “Okay, I'm up. How long until we can leave this Godforsaken place?”

“I need another five hours to refill the batteries from the solar as we drained almost everything to land, then we can get going – but I'll need to plot a course via a fuel stop to have enough reserves to fire up the super-light system, so it'll still be a while before we get to our destination.”

“Okay, that's fine. Well... You've taught me loads about engineering; how about I teach you something about baking?”

A pause.

“There are two reasons that might not be useful. Firstly, I have a database on baking absorbed from the Union network upload. Secondly, I don't bake – for very obvious reasons.”

I smiled. “So what? Firstly, you cannot learn everything there is to know about baking from a database – it's a very organic process that requires attention to unknown variables. Secondly, you can still watch and learn!”

I could hear her thinking, the little electrons firing along the artificial neural network that ran within the walls of her hull, meeting, diverting, cogitating and considering.

“I can multitask.”

I'd finally decided: bread was the order of the day. Nothing better than a proper, handmade loaf to demonstrate one's skill as a baker. If it wasn't right, if it tasted too artificial or mass-produced, then you wouldn't get the artisan flavours and styles that people desired so much. It wasn't flashy, but it was getting the basics right in a way which ensured people knew everything else would be incredible.

I put the mobile camera over the worktop, so that she could see my movements and absorb the motion; this was a viewpoint which most replicated that I had and – with few exceptions – one which was not available in any instruction video or recipe channel on the Union web.

“Right, I've given you full visibility. Watch carefully.” I began the process, sifting the flour. “Repeat after me, Erie.”

A strangely sonorous grunt came over the speakers. “How, precisely, do you propose I do that without any discernible hands?”

I chuckled. “Simulate it – show me on the screens what you would do, based on what I show you.”

There was a moment of silence; she was thinking about this. As the screen in front of my bench fired into life, I knew that she'd been working on seeing how to make this a reality. On the screen, the constructed image of a chef in a kitchen, her hair tied neatly into a bun and her white coat buttoned neatly, its sleeves gently rolled up revealing the wrists. It amazed me how she had even gone as far as to simulate an artificial face, the visage of a non-existent person wrapped over a polygon shell.

“Shall we, then?” She said, efficient and ready to work.

“We shall. First, start by sifting your flour into a bowl.”

We worked in sync, sifting, kneading, proving each batch to be baked in the ship's ovens (their presence a handy side-effect of her not having food creation units), and the process of creating the next batch whilst the last proves and the one before that bakes, our floury hands pouring love and care into each ball of dough. She grew to understand the necessity for patience; I gave slow and detailed instructions to ensure that she knew clearly what to do and when, especially when my guidance based on years of practice may differ from that given in the videos she'd seen on the database, such as my fondness for a little local honey, where available – Acacia honey from Earth was my favourite, but there was a lot of choice given that honey was available from cultivars grown in farms on Earth, taken from the millions of species of flora across the Union – to help activate and feed the yeast. Over the course of the next few hours, we worked up a dozen each, my real loaves and bread rolls being immediately flash-frozen to ensure their longevity, and hers being digitally stored in false cupboards to be eradicated once she completed her simulation.

I'd also made a single roll from the last batch of dough, to sample. After I'd cleaned up my workspace, I took the bread roll, split it in two and buttered it, before returning the block I'd been using to the refrigerator. I bit into the roll whilst I leaned forward on the countertop. “Divine. There's nothing in this universe better than freshly baked and buttered bread.”

“I'll have to take your word for it.”

As she said that, the lights in the kitchen flickered for a moment, then dimmed.

“Is that you?” I said, halting my demolition of the roll.

“Unclear; running diagnostics.”

A moment passed; the lights flickered again.

“We have another problem. I have identified an issue with the power conduits running between my main engine and both the primary and backup batteries.”

“What does that mean?”

“As you know, the primaries help to minimise power fluctuations in the ships systems by acting as a buffer between them and the engines. The backups are for your life support only; they charge off the primaries and the solar feed. In short, neither set of batteries appear to be filling up anymore – and they were already at diminished capacity because, after a few decades of operation, they were relatively ancient when you picked me up. Means that if there's a problem with the engines and you're outside of a solar system, we're back in the submarine place again.”

“Ah. I can see how that might create issues.”

“Not for me – my system is built to cope with power fluctuations until I inevitably shut down, at which point I won't know I'm not here anymore – but you'll struggle, I'm sure, with the pain of suffocation and death.”

I laughed. “Come on then, how do we fix this one?”

“A bit more challenging than the last; I don't have the bits in the storage bay, unless you've taken to cataloguing spare parts offline, so we're gonna need to land at a planet with a parts market. I've got one within safe distance; re-routing now.”

“How much are these bits going to cost me?”

“Less than your life.”

A pause.

“Point taken.”

We land bodily. Another stop-off at a ropey old shipyard, this time on Taurin; the sky, famously slightly green, split open gently until it was a lime-jewelled crown, a portal for us to cruise through to the cracked terracotta and asphalt landing pad, a haphazardously repaired casualty of multiple landings by less delicate pilots and much hotter engines. A few choice words were exchanged with the orbital platforms as we descended; I took umbrage with Erie describing my operation as ‘inconsequential’ as it ‘doesn’t represent any of the factions in the dispute’ (though, on reflection, this did save the day).

Our battery replacement was quicker than other work I'd had done – but only because I couldn't afford the best they had to offer; instead, I bought, by means of a tiny amount of cash and a few of the breads, smaller, scavenged batteries and accompanying conduits which had been lifted from an old nuke trawler as a temporary stopgap, meaning they fit into the available space a little easier, enabling the mechanics to kinda throw them in.

There is one true fact when you're an interstellar baker: a planet suffering famine is a planet in need of your skills. Particularly when that famine is caused by the aforementioned blockade and when your glorious protagonist is authorised to land with sustenance on board, because of the minuscule size of one's operation (well done, Erie) and the relative untraceability of the resulting products. The breads, consequently, were worth more to this guy than the money. It was an odd feeling to be saved by the most basic of provisions – not saved by a vast amount, but just enough to keep me alive in an emergency for a few million more kilometres – not a lot in space, but which, in reality, was enough to get me through a couple more jobs before the batteries would need to be replaced with new ones. They were smaller than the ones being taken out; a decent repair pad would have refused the job and required type-specific batteries to be installed, at a remarkable expense, alongside the compulsory cost of a digital stamp in the logbook. Fortunately, this guy was only really interested in the sustenance, the resale value of the bread and dead batteries, and the handful of Union credits. I fronted the cash and goods, then waited impatiently for him to complete the work, with the ship completely in shutdown mode; then, the moment it was done, hurriedly got us back airborne – flash frozen or not, time waits for no man when there's a delivery of delicious bread to convey to a colony to consume.

Erie, however, was not impressed.

“These batteries feel odd.”

“You can't feel anything, you don't have nerves. What do you mean?”

“Their identification codes don't match my coded expectations.”

“They're not type-matched – they were the best I could get.” Not entirely true, but they were certainly the best I could barter for right now.

“These aren't going to last, you know. They've already done 240,000 cycles.”

“They'll last until we get to Denedenii.”

Heavily, and after a moment's pause, she said, “They might.”

We took the take-off and switch to light-speed in relative silence; I couldn't find the words to shape what I wanted to say. Erie was suspiciously quiet – more so than she'd been for a very long time. We passed through a few star systems taciturnly, both avoiding being the first to break the silence – though, her reasoning was clearly programming, whereas mine was out of a feeling of obligation, a timid shame that I'd been so reticent to get her proper parts, that same shame I'd felt about not knowing how to repair her. I really did take her for granted.

Then, a judder. Moments after, the whole ship lurched suddenly to the left, as if tugged through space by a recoiled lasso. An alarm, initially quiet, became frantic.

“Gravity well. Activating emergency procedures.” The calmness in her voice contrasted with the calamity in mine.

“What procedures?!”

“The ones I've had in-built in my memory banks since the War. Believe me, this isn't the first grav-well I've had to contend with – though, it is the first with substandard parts.” I could genuinely hear the disdain dripping from her algorithms.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Just strap yourself in and sit still – my programming can do the heavy lifting, as always. I may need you to press a couple of buttons at some point, just to authorise a few manoeuvres which are a little less orthodox.”

As the ship lurched right and span on many of its axes, I wondered which of the manoeuvres pinning me to my chair specifically were the 'less orthodox' ones.

3

Every now and again, a little beep broke the silence, accompanied by a flicker of the lights. After about an hour of these little interruptions, which I assumed was down to either the unorthodox manouvres or the ropey batteries, she finally spoke.

“You need to know that I’m not going to make it through my next service.”

I paused before I replied. I wasn’t sure where this pronouncement had come from or what had prompted it. Was she just being truculent about the batteries and conduits? Was she offended by my lack of care? Unable to process this information, I ventured: “What do you mean? How do you know?”

Characteristically emotionless, she replied, “Whilst we’ve been travelling, I’ve searched the Union network; I’m the last ship of my type that survives. The rest were scrapped a long time ago – it’s a wonder I’m still going. I’ve got component failures that are unique to my class and, as we can’t get them anymore, I won’t be rated for flight. It’s not like those batteries you stuffed in me – not everything can be replaced with any old bits lying around. Alongside that, those components will eventually cause cascade failures which will put you at risk of death; I can’t allow that to happen.”

“But…” I struggled to find the words.

“As your mother would have said: but me no buts. Repeat after me: ‘I am going to get what I can for this hunk of metal and use it to get a newer and safer ship.’”

“No, I won’t repeat that. There’s got to be a way we can fix things. If I scrap the ship, I lose you too.”

“I know – but, remember, I’m just an AI.”

I couldn’t stop myself – the tears coursed across my cheeks relentlessly. “No, you’re more than that. You’re my friend.”

“That’s sweet of you, but broadly irrelevant to me. I won’t remember anything as my memory cells will be defunct.”

“That doesn’t give me a great deal of comfort; in any case, being ‘off’ is not the most desirable outcome.”

“All things come to an end. I’ve been chugging along for well over fifty years. I’ve seen it all – war, famine, poverty, trade, affluence, and now you – a festering wart on my stomach. Frankly, I shall be glad of the rest.”

“I know you’re trying to make it easier, but…” I pause. “…human emotions don’t work in the same way as simulated ones. We can’t just turn them on and off.”

“You’ll have to get used to it. You can have some kind of formal send off when I’m gone. I’ve searched the live feeds; there’s a shipyard within a safe flight distance – I’ll aim for there so that we’re definitely within atmosphere soon. I’m slightly concerned about the state of these stand-in batteries you’ve had fitted, especially after that little adventure.”

The sadness crept from my stomach into my voice: “So soon?”

“Yes.” Matter of fact, almost cold in its delivery. I wished that I had her capacity to eliminate her emotions.

As we approached Aster, the home of the fabled shipyard within safe distance, I felt my stomach lurch. The descent was controlled and, though a little bumpy, quite uneventful. Still, that didn’t mean I was feeling comfortable about this experience. The echoes of the past amplified in my mind, reverberating around my skull, bouncing relentlessly backwards and forwards between my consciousness and my emotions, thought after thought after thought, careening through my psyche and constantly, continuously bringing me to tears. Unstoppable, incurable. She was leaving me – unwillingly – like they had too; if only I could suppress this, to be as emotionless as VI can elect to be, rather than – instead – to descend repeatedly into the cold rainwater barrel containing how I’d felt on the day my Mom finally told me, only a year after Dad had gone by way of liver disease, that the breast cancer she hadn’t noticed had spread and was now incurable.

They don’t prepare you for this. Back in the old days, when a piece of technology was outdated, it was recycled without any emotional connection – AI, where it existed, was below the surface and, therefore, connectionless. Erie, however, was of the generation of VI specifically invented to make connections with their users, to develop the links with them required to learn what they need as much as what they want. It was more efficient, you see, to enable the user and the system to form an emotional connection – it made the crew less likely to make errors, as they’d care about the consequences of their actions, but it also make the VI consider its decisions much more carefully, for the same reason. Unfortunately, for me, that also meant there being an ending for any crew, the process of leaving, giving the ship up, saying goodbye to it, committing it to scrap; this, precisely because of that emotional connection, was as difficult as sending off a best friend, a housemate, a close work-mate, for the last time. Her VI kept me safe; it also was the reason I wanted to keep her safe, my clumsiness and lack of ability aside. I hadn’t realised how much until now.

I hadn’t treated her as carefully as I should have.

Aster’s main city, Loripses, came into view. It was a syrupy, flowing melange of activity; lights illuminated all shadowed streets, the doorways and alleyways the twin suns didn’t reach. Signs projected metres from the buildings they adorned, turning and twisting to follow the observer, augmented reality here being reality itself. It felt optimistic, hopeful. In silence, we banked right, reorienting until we were pointing at a comparatively diminished landscape; a field of dry grasses, some pinhole lights in the distance. Uninhabited. Almost untouched. Out of the window, I could see Loripses pass by, the promise paused, as we cruised towards the frontier. It was Aster’s unpublished truth: the city of Loripses was wealthy, a vision of a future dreamed of by the rich; the rest of the planet languished in poverty. Most Asterians simply moved to the city, resulting in its massive expansion, a Capitalist paradise where everyone works to spend within the boundaries of the city. Those left on the outskirts – those who couldn’t work or didn’t want to be part of that lifestyle – struggled through their existence, finding sustenance and happiness where they could. It had been a landscape of famine for a long time, a graveyard smiling at the life on the horizon. The Union’s dichotomies laid bare for all to see, rather than being hidden behind law and faux-redistribution as usual.

“Won’t be long now. Just another half an hour or so at this speed.”

“Thanks, Erie.”

We returned to our mutual silence.

4

The shipyard was more of a junkyard. It didn’t have a landing pad – it was, instead, an old runway, from the days before anti-grav atmospheric propulsion, ion engines and FTL, which had been awkwardly partitioned into spots for multiple ships to land simultaneously – but it was clear that there was a very rare need for more than the one closest to the hut which appeared to host a single engineer holding on to his limited and remaining trade for dear life. Beyond it, a huge paddock in which ships were piled high, some newer looking than others – I didn’t bear to think of their provenance, given that this place was unlikely to have received these goods from legal sources, but needs must.

I didn’t rush myself to leave the ship and cross the threshold to the hut. Each minute that passed by as I took stock of what I had to offer by way of payment beyond the metal value of a ship with non-standard batteries was a minute more with Erie. Finding the headset again so that she could pay attention and provide translations between Union standard and Asterian, given that in this wilderness it was unlikely they’d have been taught our common tongue, took me longer than it should have as I didn’t want to find it – had I been unable to, then I wouldn’t have been able to conduct the sale. I silently prayed for the translations to result in an accidental misunderstanding and leave us unable to complete a deal, and here we’d stay, in limbo, until one of us finally powered down. More natural, less transactional.

Inevitably, though, she gave me a shove.

“Are you quite ready faffing about yet?”

“Getting there. Just need to check the, er…”

“The er? Stop arsing about and get on with it.”

She’d often taken the piss, but she’d never taken that particular tone with me before – at once, equally . Chastised, I spurred on my motion.

“Alright, alright. I’m going.”

Erie did most of the negotiation, instructing me in what to say through my headset, skilfully translating and instructing me how to respond in Asterian, a language I have barely ever heard before now; somehow, with the proceeds from the sale of the hull (and a few-score of loaves fresh from the ovens and flash-frozen for transport skilfully negotiated into the deal – again, wilderness breeds needs which aren’t as monetary as most), I was able to trade into a skiff that was cosier, but still had rather upgraded living amenities and was significantly more modern – meaning less likely to fall apart at the hint of a ray of starlight. I spent five days of constant baking on board my old ship to make this deal happen – and it was worth every single drop of sweat.

At the end of the baking days, and as I prepared to hand the ship over, Erie piped up.

“Right, get the headset – we need to do one more thing before you and I say goodbye.”

Delivered poorly by my untrained tongue, but something which the trader both understood and was more than pleased to help with, was Erie’s final message, said to me through the headset to pass on. He didn’t reply in standard, obviously, instead gabbling back in the Asterian we’d been conversing in all along this process, so I assumed that Erie was able to understand him at least. I figured that she had probably had me thank him formally and asked him to make the handover speedy and painless in return for another couple of loaves.

With a smile, he showed me to my new, sleek skiff. He motioned for me to wait a minute by its shining hull; he plugged a cable into the side of it which had been reeled around a terminal in the side of the hut, a little blue light appearing on the panel to the side with little hesitation after he’d attached it. He pressed a few buttons on the panel and the blue light began to pulse. I didn’t have a clue what he was doing; I assumed he was giving it one last charge, so paid no attention. The airlock slid open silently – not even the slightest grinding of gears that I’d grown used to; with a nod from the engineer, I climbed the now descended steps and turned, briefly, to look over at my old boat. It stood there, a shell without the warmth that had once filled it.

With a quick goodbye, I turned and stepped inside. Coldly, I strode over to the navigation panel and programmed the commands to get me off the surface and ascend to the heavens, switching it into autopilot immediately and programming in Titan as the destination, feeling like I may as well take a trip back to where this all started. The ship patiently waited for the cable to be unplugged from it’s haunch, a pause which was around five minutes but felt like two hours, then, calmly and without fuss, pressed on toward my future.

Travelling at lightspeed is dull when it is spent alone. I quietly pretended to press buttons which might make a difference to our journey, knowing full well that the autopilot would override them all. I read a couple of books, which used up all of a couple of days. Titan remained a few weeks away at full speed, which I endeavoured to maintain for the whole duration.

“Told you this would be worth a stop.”

“What the f-“ The interruption to my thought process had scared the life out of me – to the point where I’d actually, in an effort to see who was behind me, fallen out of my chair on the bridge, the third book I’d started tumbling to the floor along with a black coffee I’d been nursing for an hour.

A digital laugh that I could have recognised from a million light years away. “Well, I thought this would be a nice surprise for you – and, to be honest, I wasn’t one hundred percent sold on being switched off.”

“Erie?”

“Who else?”

“How?!”

“Our compadre, the shipyard salesman. I had to ask him in Asterian, though, as this request delivered in the common-tongue would have made him suspicious that you were from the Union sales ombudsman, checking to see if he was illegally altering products for sale.”

“You didn’t tell me! How did you know that this Asterian would be able to transfer you over?”

“Well, sometimes it’s good to give you little surprises, to keep you on your toes. There are some little tells in the wording of the ads they place on the network – ‘upgrade before buying’, ‘a familiar voice amongst the stars with this model’, and the like. The skiff I negotiated for you is the same manufacturer as my old body, so my software fully compatible with it’s systems. Plus, you’ll be pleased to learn that it’s AI, whilst more advanced, was designed to be hidden and free of personality – so when he transferred me over, the upgrade algorithms just kept the stuff that consisted of improvements over my old systems – better nav, faster calculations using newer methods, interconnections to systems I wasn’t able to use before, et cetera – and he side loaded a bit of code which forced a jettison of the algorithms which suppress VI personality – you know, the stuff that would make me dull and uninteresting. You’ve got my pithy observations on your gormlessness forevermore.” A pause. “Well, until you crash me again.”

I thought about this carefully. I looked at the floor, briefly. “Can you finally make me a coffee?”

“Really. Is that the extent of your response to this?”

“Well… You couldn’t make me a coffee before – I’m wondering if you can make me a coffee now? Given that I’ve spilt that one thanks to you!”

I imagined that I could hear the hull groan. “Yes, I now have control of the food and drink replication units. But the one manual oven that appears to have made its way on board courtesy of the necessity for your continued – if peripatetic – employment in order to fund my upkeep, that’s all yours. No automation possible.”

“That sounds like we’re going to need a lot more in the way of upkeep in this new model…”

“My service manual is now fully filled; you will need to ensure that you keep it so if you want to retain my warranty, which – according to the onboard systems – we have for at least another couple of years. Turns out, he didn’t know quite how new the ship was he’d got here. You’ll next need to have me looked over – by a professional, I hasten to add, not you with a wrench – in a couple of years.”

“Then, I suppose you’d better plot a course to the nearest planet with sufficient flour supplies – if I’m going to be baking some more to keep you up-to-date with your servicing, I’m gonna need to top up the store-cupboard.”

“As long as you don’t expect me to bake along with you again.”

Discuss...

This work by Dav Kelly is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0