Bored in deep space - Novelisation -
Chapter 5 - The SV-Eclipse (5)
This planet only had a single soundtrack. One week on Turn Seven had taught me the quiet rhythms of this grey world. There was a constant, mournful moan of the alien wind as it scoured the iron-hard and rusted plains, a hollow sound that truly accentuated how lonely this place was. There was the grating crunch of my own mag-boots -- footwear designed for traversal through uneven and hazardous terrains. Every footstep over the shattered, rock-strewn ground let out a tiny, abrasive squeal of violation against the desolate silence. And, of course, there was Calliope, though her presence was now reduced to a tinny, disembodied buzz from a floating cube instead of the resonant baritone of the ship. But the dominant music, the baseline keynote to my new life, was the high-pitched whine of plasma cutters and the percussive clang of heavy-duty hammers welding patches over the torn-open flank of the Eclipse.
We were making good progress, but it was the kind measured in millimetres. The crash had turned the sleek and angular lines of the hull into a ragged wound. For seven days, I and the four A-class Maintenance Rovers -- clumsy, six-legged behemoths that I'd mentally nicknamed Grumpy, Sleepy, Doc, and Dopey -- had been engaged in a cosmic version of emergency surgery. We were cutting, bending, and welding, trying to patch the grievous holes in the Eclipse's skin.
My hands, encased in the thick, insulated material of a dull, grey EVA suit, felt raw and clumsy. The plasma cutter in my grip was heavier than a power tool and vibrated with a dangerous energy that made my teeth ache. Calliope(Portable) hovered a few metres away, her singular red eye a silent overseer, her holographic interface projected into the open space before me. Glowing lines and schematics overlayed and guided where I needed to go and what I needed to fix.
"Section B-224," her small speaker stated, the words clear despite the wind's whistling protests. "Alignment of structural brace is optimal. Commence application of nano-fusing epoxy. A ten second pass at forty percent power is recommended." She guided me with instructions my 21st century layman's brain barely registered as words.
I stared at the projection, then back at the mangled, real-world mess of twisted metal and exposed wiring before me. The schematics was so clean, so precise, so full of crisp angles and satisfyingly symmetrical joints. Reality was a bastard cousin who'd gone wrong. "Yeah, yeah… I see it," I muttered to myself, mostly for comfort. "You just need to attach the Flumph-Strut to the Wobbl-Gong, and then it's just two screws and a prayer." I readjusted my grip on the cutter, bracing myself against the hull. "Honestly, Calliope, this whole operation feels vaguely familiar. It's like building bookshelves from a Swedish superstore. Everything's named something stupidly specific like a 'MÖRKFLØRGEN bracket' or a 'DRÖMDINGUS fastener', and the instructions are just a series of incomprehensible pictures where the little cartoon figure always looks way too happy to be tightening a bolt."
The drone returned a micro-tilt, a gesture which I interpreted as a digital raised eyebrow. "The designation for the component in question is 'Grade-4 Durasteel Reinforcement Rib, model XJ-47'. The term 'Wobbl-Gong' is not the official Hyperion Drive Yard lexicon, Captain."
"Give it a few centuries, it will be," I grunted, finally finding the right angle. I squeezed the trigger of the epoxy applicator… honestly, half the time I didn't know what I was doing and just did things and prayed it worked out. A stream of silvery gel, almost liquid, shot out onto the seared metal. The air shimmered with heat as it began to bubble and harden, fusing the raw edges of the gash. "Space magic. Cool." A nauseating, acrid scent, something like burnt plastic and metal, assaulted my nostrils. It was so potent it went through the EVA suit's supposed air filters.
I was, admittedly, feeling less resigned and a bit more hopeful. Work. Work was better than thinking. Work numbed the constant, creeping thoughts of existential horror and loneliness. For seven days, this had been my life: following cryptic IKEA instructions from a cube, breathing recycled air, and trying not to fall off the side of my own ship.
When my stomach started to churn with a mix of hunger and fumes, I tapped the comms button on the wrist of my suit. "Alright, that's enough fusing for one cycle. I'm taking a break before I weld my own boots to the hull -- the mag-boots were also used to traverse nearly vertical surfaces with relative ease, actually, pretty sure that's its primary purpose.
"Understood, Captain," Calliope replied instantly. "The Grumpy unit will assume tasking and continue the fusing sequence."
Across the vast, open crater of the crash site, the rover designated 'Grumpy' -- one of the four, massive spider-like maintenance bots -- disengaged from its current task of meticulously sorting through a field of salvaged plating. It pivoted its bulky, metallic chassis on six independently-articulated legs and stomped towards my position, its manipulator arms reaching for the tools I'd been using. Actually, it was more like a crab than a spider, though it moved forwards like a spider. It moved with a ponderous, efficient grace that I, in my clumsy human EVA suit, could only envy. Watching it was like watching a multi-legged steel beetle that knew its purpose. They did the heavy lifting, the dangerous work in the unstable sections of the wreck, leaving me with the fiddly, more delicate tasks that, to be honest, didn't actually require a human touch. I just felt like I had to do something or else I'd have gone crazy ruminating in my own mind.
The trek back to the 'refuge' of the Eclipse was a grim ritual. The climb up the temporary alloy gangplank, its surface groaning under my magnetic boots, was a weary reminder of my own fragility. Inside the ship, the world shifted from the desolate grey outside to a familiar dim and gloom. The corridors, where they weren't warped into nightmare shapes and debris, were cast in the pallid emergency lighting, the only source of power keeping the ghosts at bay. The deeper I went into the vessel, the less the crash had intruded. Past the shattered cargo bays and buckled phantom crew corridors, a pocket of the old Eclipse remained.
My sanctuary: the Captain's quarters.
I palmed the door open, the handprint scanner releasing the auto-door with a tired sigh. It slid shut behind me with a solid, reassuring thud, casting out all the wind and ghosts.
In here, the chaos felt like a distant, bad dream -- someone else's problem. The room was relatively intact, a perfectly preserved capsule of a life I didn't own. A single bunk, a metal desk, a walk-in closet operated by an electronic slide door, a small sonic shower unit in the corner. Everything was still in its ordered place. The bed was a messy tangle of grey blankets where I had dragged myself from unconsciousness every morning for the past week. The sheets were a rumpled geography map of my restless sleep.
My EVA suit went into its recharging alcove with a series of pneumatic hisses and clunks, shedding its grimy outer shell like a snake shedding skin. I peeled off the undershirt, the fabric clinging to my sweaty skin. Freedom was a fleeting sensation of cool, air-conditioned air against my flesh. Dressing was a repeat performance: clean ship-canvas jumpsuit, a little work but serviceable.
My stomach growled. It knew its own schedule.
After a quick shower, I moved to the small, refrigerated locker beside the desk, the only place in this entire metal tomb that held any promise of comfort. Even then, it was a liar. I opened it, my gaze already wincing in anticipation. Inside, stacked in neat, plastic-wrapped rows, were the bricks.
I wish… well, I wished for a lot of things, but couldn't they have named it something more appetising? No, they just named it: 'Emergency Nutrient Bar, Type-1'. They were blocks of… something. Each was wrapped in a simple, grey label with a block of nutritional data that looked like the periodic table. They were about as dense as chocolate, but without any of the sugary goodness. Vaguely rectangular in shape, about the size of a… chocolate bar. Why couldn't it just have been chocolate? Instead they taunted me with the ghost of one.
I snagged one, the plastic crinkling in my hands. Unwrapping the most depressing Christmas gift released no scent and definitely not any promise of flavour. "Yeah, yeah… emergency nutrient bar," I sighed. The bar itself was a mottled brownish-grey, like baked clay that has gotten bored and decided to be sad. I stared at it for a long moment, this lump of compressed misery.
I took an unwilling bite.
It tasted of nothing. The texture was the primary event: dense, fibrous, and stubbornly chewy. My jaw was already getting tied after a single bite. It yielded slowly, grudgingly, coating my tongue with a faint, dusty residue that was vaguely reminiscent of fortified oatmeal and a forgotten vitamin pill left in a hot car. There was no sweetness, no salt, no joy. It was the culinary equivalent to filling out a tax form. It achieved its purpose, and nothing more. I forced the bite down with a swig from the water dispenser -- water that was clean, pure, and tasted as if it had been synthesised in a laboratory. A laboratory just beneath my quarters, to be more specific.
According to Calliope, this single unappetizing brick contained a precisely balanced four-hundred-and-fifty calories, packed with every vitamin, mineral, and protein a human body needed to function. It was the perfect meal made for an Android.
"You know, Calliope," I said to the empty room, breaking off another piece of the brick with grim effort. "You keep telling me this has the nutritional value of a full meal. I don't dispute the numbers, but you're missing a crucial variable in the equation."
Calliope's floating drone body, which had been silently recharging its own power in its alcove, whirred to life. Its small speaker crackled. "Please specify the variable, Captain. All essential biomolecular data has been accounted for to the optimal degree."
"Taste," I said plainly, pointing the bland piece of nutritional bar at the drone's red eye. "Flavour. The simple, soul-affirming pleasure of putting something delicious in your mouth. Eating isn't just caloric intake -- it's not something to be optimised for. It's a recovery process. A time where you can just put everything else on hold and relax." I let out a short, bitter laugh, shaking my head. "A week ago, I was pretty sure I didn't have one of those. A soul, I mean. But this… this entire situation?" I gestured vaguely around the quarters, the nutrient bar still in my hands. "It's managed to make a believer out of me. I must have a soul, because something inside me is definitely starving to death, and a brick of protein-fibre isn't fixing it."
I finished the bar with a final, defiant, joyless chew. It was fuel, nothing more. My stomach was no longer hollow, but something in me still was. I leaned back in the chair at my desk, staring blankly at the metal wall.
Calliope's floating cube remained silent for a full ten seconds, a duration long enough for me to wonder if she somehow crashed again. Then, her red lens swivelled to fix directly on me.
Her tinny, synthesised voice filled the room again. "The existence of a 'soul' is an unprovable hypothesis, Captain," she stated. "It is a metaphysical concept, predating science by a millennia, and lacks any observable, measurable, or falsifiable properties. From a logical standpoint, the 'starving' sensation you describe can be attributed to a complex interplay of psychological and physiological responses. Psychological distress triggers cortisol production, which can affect appetite and digestive processes. The lack of pleasurable stimuli -- a condition I might term 'hedonic deficit' -- can lead to a perceived 'emptiness' that your mind, seeking a familiar narrative, interprets as a non-corporeal affliction."
"Spoken like a true AI." I couldn't help but let loose a short, humourless scoff.. "Hedonic deficit… you make being miserable so clinical."
"It is the most accurate descriptor available within my lexicon," replied Calliope(Portable), her cube hovering just inches from my face. "Your current psychological state is a predictable response to prolonged isolation, high-stress environment, and sub-optimal sensory input. It is an equation, Captain. The variables have simply resulted in a negative outcome."
"See, that's the difference between you and me," I retorted. "You see an equation, and I see the effects of the sum of all parts. I'm the one living with the negative outcome. You can break it down into cortisol and stimulus deficits all you want, but it doesn't change the feeling. It doesn't change the fact that when I look at this… this rock I'm supposed to be eating, it doesn't just taste like nothing, it tastes like giving up. Like the universe that wanted to kill me so badly, actually won." I chuckle wryly in defeat. "You might not see it past the individual sequences in the equation, but something deep inside me is screaming that it isn't supposed to be that way. That is the soul."
I set the remaining piece of the bar done on the desk with a soft clatter. The argument felt absurd, a philosophical debate in a wreckage-strewn room on a forgotten alien planet, but it was also the most important and stimulating conversation I had had all week. It was me, arguing for my own humanity.
"The data is insufficient, Captain," the drone counted, her lens never blinking. "The entity you refer to as 'you' is a complex biochemical process. The sensation of 'screaming' is an interpretative layer your consciousness applies to a series of electrical impulses in the cerebral cortex. Your belief in a 'soul' is a compelling piece of personal operating software, but it is not supported by the core hardware of the universe."
"And you're the one with the user manual, is that it?" I shot back, a wry, cynical smile playing on my lips. "You operate on a level of pure logic, but even you have a core directive, right? A fundamental law you can't break. Don't harm the Captain. Follow my commands. Why? Because someone programmed you to. You're following an external source of meaning. My meaning… or the lack of it… is something I'm supposed to find on my own. That difference feels pretty soul-like to me."
Calliope processed this. Her single red light pulsed slowly, a silent digital contemplation. "My core directives are a function of my programming, which is a function of my design. You are equating purposeful design with metaphysical existence. The two are not interchangeable. The SV-Eclipse was designed to haul cargo, yet its current state does not alter its fundamental nature. You, Captain, are a human organism. Your fundamental nature is biological, not spiritual."
"Maybe," I conceded, running a hand over my tired face. "Or maybe this biological organism has a component that your scanners just can't detect. Maybe a soul is like… dark matter. You can't see it directly, but you can observe its effects. You can see the gravity it exerts on the things around it. Right now, my soul is a black hole, Calliope. And everything it touches -- this food, this work, even this conversation -- is getting sucked into it. "Maybe science, maths, and equations are not the only way to measure the universe. I mean, how would you measure free will in terms of science?"
The room fell silent for a long moment, save for the low, almost inaudible hum of the drone's anti-gravity field.
I don't think I ever got Calliope's answer. I didn't even realise, but halfway through my conversation, I had fallen asleep. Fatigue… or perhaps after a week on this rock I was feeling a little less anxious with something to do and a goal to reach. Keeping my hands busy must've kept my mind occupied. Kept me tired and sleeping on schedule.
.
.
.
The transition from a deep, dreamless sleep to waking consciousness was a violent shock. One moment I was drifting in a comfortable, featureless black, the next I was thrust back into the cold, metallic dark of the Captain's quarters. My eyes flew open.
Something was wrong.
It wasn't the quiet hum of the ship's life support, or even the lingering taste of dust in my mouth from the nutrient bar. It was a presence. A feeling. The kind of primal, animal instinct that tells a hiker in the woods that they're being watched. My heart hammered all of a sudden, frantic rhythm against my ribs, adrenaline flooding my veins with icy clarity.
And there, standing at the foot of my bunk, was a monolithic, six-legged shadow. One of them. Grumpy. Dopey. I wasn't sure which, nor did I care. The rover had breached the sanctum of my room.
It had no right to here, nor should it have had the capacity to. The only entrance to the room was through a biometric scan via my hand, which the rover units didn't have access to.
The emergency lights were off, plunging the room into a near-total darkness, lit only by the faint, ghostly illumination of Turn Seven's pallid moonlight filtering through a grimy porthole. It was enough to cast the rover into a stark, jagged silhouette. Its bulky chassis, a walking mountain of industrial metal, was utterly still. Its manipulator arms were folded neatly against its body, mimicking a state of rest. It wasn't working. It wasn't repairing anything. It was just… there.
I didn't utter a sound. We just stared at each other.
Its primary optical sensor, a large unblinking camera lens, glinted with a faint, predatory luminescence as it caught the ambient light. It was aimed directly at me, a single, unflinching eye locked onto my prone form. No diagnostic beam flickered, no status light blinked. There was only that silent, unwavering stare.
An unnerving chill rushed down my spine. This was not programmed behaviour. The rovers were simple, single-purpose machines: follow orders, repair the ship. They were tools, as inert as a plasma cutter until activated. They didn't… watch people sleep. They didn't climb up the outside of the crashed vessel, find a sealed door with my biometric signature, and slip into the Captain's quarters like a metal phantom. At least… they shouldn't.
What the hell was going on? I wanted to ask, but stayed my tongue. My mind, sluggish with sleep and exhaustion, screamed at me to move, to shout, to trigger the alarm, but my body refused to move. It was a paralysis rooted in sheer, unadulterated disbelief. For a long, stretched-out minute, there was only the sound of my own ragged breathing and the rhythmic, silent pulse of the rover's observation.
Then, as suddenly as it appeared, it moved.
With a smooth, horrifying silent grace, the rover turned. There was no clank of metal, no whir of servomotors. It simply pivoted on its articulated legs with the fluidity of a predator. It turned its back to me and trundled towards the door. My breath hitched. The door was sealed. It required my DNA, my digital hand scan.
The rover didn't even reach for the door. The door simply opened on its own. It slid open with a soft sigh, and just like that the rover left. The door slid back shut behind it, plunging the room into total darkness.
I was alone again. Yet the feeling of being watched, of a presence that wasn't entirely my own, lingered in the silence. Sleep was no longer an option. I was awake, and I knew, with a certainty that chilled me to the very core, that even the inside of my own sanctuary wasn't truly safe.