Skipper

If I didn't have you to talk to, Skipper, I think I'd go right out of my mind.

Of course, I'm not so sure that I haven't done just that already. You'd think I'd know; I'm a psychiatrist, after all. It's a myth that crazy people don't know they are crazy. And I admit that I'm projecting here -- finding in you a place to store my deep fears, my wild hopes... and...

And what? Where am I going with this train of thought?

Just looking for a sense of companionship, I guess. You're so patient and so quiet, but there's a way that you look... a certain expression I catch, or a small clutch of expressions that speak to a range of feelings and responses. You encourage me with such tiny signs I don't know that anyone else would see them, if anyone else were here. It took me a long, long time to start figuring out your various expressions. Well, that's all right, too. We may still have a long, long time ahead of us. I hate to sound a pessimistic note, but do you ever think we are going to be here, in this ship, on this trajectory, forever?

It's taken us so much longer than we expected just to get this far. We followed the time tables precisely, rigorously, and somehow we're still out here in the void, still on our way with no sign of arrival... at least, we think we're on our way. But have we missed the mark? Or was our understanding of the structure of the universe somehow incomplete? We forget that everything is theory, even our accepted measures of distance between the stars. A trip that should have taken six sleep cycles has taken almost twice that long, and with fuel and air and other supplies depleted as they are, there's no going back now. No, and not much to work with once we get there, if we get there.

But surely you know this, don't you? Astrogation and ship's operations are your fields of expertise, not expedition logistics, but you're attached to the ship, not a volunteer colonist like most of us on board. Even so, you must certainly know at least as much as I do about the overall travel plan: Two designated guardians stay awake for two years while the others sleep. A dozen guardians watch over one hundred forty colonists and fifteen crew, taking turns, a pair at a time for two-year intervals.

We really thought it would only take sixty years shipboard time to get there, which is not quite three rotations for each guardian. Every rotation pairs people differently, to keep things from becoming too boring, and rotations are offset so that each guardian sends his old partner off to sleep and welcomes a new partner a year into his shift. The system is designed to give us some stability, and yet some variety, and keep us mentally stimulated without running too great a risk that any two people will become unbearably... maddeningly... homicidally sick of one another.

I haven't gotten sick of you... at least, not yet. You're so much easier to get along with than that bitch Croana, who couldn't get it through her head that I wasn't going to sleep with her. Funny, but for exactly the opposite reason, life with you is also easier than with Francois -- beautiful, tragically heterosexual Francois. He was easy on the eyes, but so hard on the rest of a body. I only hope I didn't aggravate him as much as Croana irritated me.

Did Francois ever talk much with you? I wonder what he might have had to say. About me, I mean. Or, really, about anything, since he was never much for conversation. After a whole long year, all I knew about him was that he had a sister and both of his parents were still alive when we left.

Which was what? A few centuries ago, from the perspective of the folks back on Earth. That's the screwy thing about time dilation. But what if we're not moving as fast as the gauges tell us? What if we've miscalculated? Or what if Einstein was wrong about time going slower on board a ship moving near the speed of light? Even if all our theories are correct, one tiny error -- in addition or conversion or matrix algebra -- and we'd be so totally, totally screwed. We might only be halfway to our target system. Hell, we might be headed in the opposite direction... It makes me crazy, it really does, staring out at the stars and seeing nothing change. We are actually moving, though, aren't we? You could at least tell me that.

You could, if you'd just speak up.

But that's not your thing, and I understand. It's fine. I stroke your HardGlas� display with tender affection, your lights blinking in their accustomed sequences, and that in itself is enough assurance. I can hold on to that. Tomorrow I will have to enter cold sleep myself, alone as I am now, since the ship has long been unable to support two wakeful people at the same time. Two months from now, the ship would be able to support zero wakeful people, were I not headed for slumber. Will I ever revive, or will I enter sleep forever, dreams forever, like this unending dream of travel from star to star?

The ship's captain is sleeping, too, Skipper, which leaves you in charge of this ion-propelled bucket and its hopeful human population. Hence my little joke, calling you Skipper. Francois called you Autopilot, which seemed cruel to me, and dismissive. Francois was handsome, but really, he was kind of hardbitten, and something of a prick. The kind that you look at and you think, well, of course he went off on a colony expedition. No one back on Earth probably wanted him around.

But colonization carries risks, along with the certainty that no matter what, it's a one-way trip. One big risk is that we're headed into... whatever we are headed into, I guess. It's getting hard to hold on to hope, Skipper, hope that we really will waken to a fresh new world. First things first... there has to be a world waiting for us. The radio and X-ray telescopes suggested there would be. I know I sound like the kid in the back of the car, but are we there yet?

Ha, just kidding. But here's a serious question for you. Will our resurrection be in your capable hands? I don't think the standard backup systems are smart enough to wake anyone up once we enter the solar system. It's down to you, "Autopilot," old buddy, old pal. You are going to have to identify the right sleeping body to rouse.

That's how I think it will have to happen, don't you agree? One crew member will be brought out of deep sleep. That's why I'm going back to my cryohull a little early. I could have waited a full year. That's what Tana thought I'd do, when she roused me and explained that for the last few shifts only one guardian has been awake at a time, to conserve air and supplies. But I realized soon after that someone who knows what they are doing will have to handle the final approach, survey the system, maybe land the ship... maybe deploy the solar generator and start synthesizing critical supplies like air and protein. I figured he would need two months to handle all that by himself. So I am shaving those two months off my duty shift. It's not you, Skipper. You're not bad company. I'm not bored with routine systems checks and quarter-lighting and the dregs of our rations, the same thing every day, all the good stuff already picked through and eaten.

Yeah, I'm not fooling you, of course I am bored shitless. Literally, because those dreary meal-packs don't give a body much fiber to work with. Sorry, I don't mean to be crude, but unless you have a GI tract, you just can't sympathize.

Anyway... Where was I? I can't keep track of my thoughts these days. Oh, yes. I hope it will be one of the crew who you wake up, someone with proper astrogation training. Of course, you can probably handle it yourself, if you need to. Did they design you for such duty? You are officially attached to the ship, not one of us dumb colony bunnies. I guess I said that already... but anyway, I don't think anybody else has the faintest idea about Oort clouds or ice-particle shells or radiation gradients or solar winds and bow shocks. You wake up a colonist to deal with all of that? We're all pretty much toast, maybe only jam for the toast.

But there's reason for good cheer, right? You always keep up a merry countenance, pretty lights, always so lively. And you're right to keep upbeat about things. Where there's time, there is hope, and if time really has slowed down for us... well, then... as far as anyone else is concerned, we have all the time in the world, and all the hope in the world. There's enough reserve power to keep us human popsicles viable for another ninety years or so, and I imagine that means there's enough electricity left to keep you going for at least that long. I mean, I understand I'll have to shut down all the other systems before I go snuggle up and snooze, but not you... not you, Skipper, faithful master of this quiet, sleeping ship. Visit me, won't you, in my dreams? Otherwise, we might both get too lonely.

Was that quick sequence to three blue flickers and a yellow flash, was that really a smile? Or am I losing my marbles? You'd think I'd know. I'm a psychiatrist, after all. I know I'm projecting here, because you're a very clever AI, but you're not anything like a human being in your thoughts and in your soul. Or are you? I'm sorry. I don't mean to be disrespectful. It's just that I wonder whether we might find extraterrestrial life on our new home planet. In the exo-bio training module they told us about how some organisms on Earth have radically different sensoria, different perceptions and ways of processing those perceptions. Like octopuses. Don't even think about correcting me, I know better: It would only be 'octopi' if 'octopus' came from Latin, but it doesn't. It's a Greek root word. Ancient Greeks had very different perceptions too, they think. Something about the human brain being a little different a few thousand years ago? Octopuses have totally inhuman ways of seeing the world. They taste with their skin, or something. They see with their suckers? You get the point. So what would an alien be like? How would he... It?... How would they reason? Like us? Like you?

Like them, I guess! Ha!!

Yeah... How does an AI think and feel? I think about that sometimes and I wonder if a human being could ever match the way you think, the way you organize and keep track of all the input the ship feeds you. What were those guys in that book about the desert planet? Mentals? Mentationals? Are you like them? Could they have been like you?

I don't really understand you in some ways, Skipper, but then again... intuitively... I think I know you better than I ever knew anyone else. You spend enough time with somebody, even in silence, and you get a feel. Like that Francois --�what a creep. Am I just projecting? I don't think so. He's a cold fish, and not because he's chilling out in his cryohull. How does a creep see the world? Maybe weirdos like Francois are the real aliens. Even an AI has more human warmth than somebody like him, and I know you have a good heart. A heart of platinum. Sorry, buddy, but even I know that's what they used, not gold, for your core computational matrix.

But none of that matters. Gold, metal, it's just matter, and matter hardly matters... oops, haha, sorry about the stupid pun. But I bet you like stupid puns, right? All the really smart people I know do, for some reason. Not all of them are capable of real connection, deep down, not like you. I look into your HardGlas� display and see your flickering Christmas tree indicators, so very cheerful, and I see my own reflection, and see your twinkle in my eyes.

But I suppose I might just be projecting. Did I say that before? I think I did. I'm talking in circles. Does that mean I lost my way? Well, let me cut right to it then. In this lonesome place, far from anything, wandering around in my own thoughts, you're the friend who keeps me on course, erratic as that course might be. I have friends in this world, on this ship, sleeping and waiting for morning on a new world, but they're not like you; it's not quite the same thing. I can laugh with them, and drink with them, but not talk with them. They don't know how to listen, that's the main thing, and I know from listening. I listen to them. I know how to listen, the way you know how to listen, and that's... I'm starting to think that's really something unusual, even special. Listening is half of talking, and it's the half you do really well. I'd love to hear your stories, if you'd tell me, and maybe you do. Maybe I, the listener, should learn to listen better and I'd hear them.

You're my best friend. I have to take it on faith that there really is someone there I'm talking to and connecting with, someone worth caring about who cares about me in turn. Someone who's not just me... me sitting here in my skull, behind my thoughts and words, me assigning the idea of someone else to focus on.

Does an AI relate to the idea of existential uncertainty? Bone-numbing fear, the fear of death? Not the state of it, but the idea of it, a thing you simply can't imagine. A void you're launched into... pretty much the way you're launched into life, which is also pretty random and creepy, but you get used to it and it seems beautiful after forty or fifty years. Are voids like that? Spooky? Shake you up? Until you get used to them, and then you find the things you really like about them, and then... and then that's home? By the time we get to that one planet, that one star, will all this dark and all those stars in the dark have become our home? Will we be sad to relinquish and long and quiet journey and take in the bustle and worry of arrival? What's really sad and poignant: Getting there? Or getting lost? Is one really better than the other?

Sometimes I wish I had a drink. The alcoholic kind, not recycled water.

Well anyway, thanks for listening to all this. Thanks for being here with me.. for me. You know I'll return the favor if you need it, right? Because what are friends for? And there they are again: Three blue flickers, a bright yellow flash. You always lift my spirits. Thanks for that.

I either love you very much, my friend, or I am very lonely. Maybe one begets the other, maybe the two are really the same. But what the hell, right? There has never been a relationship between two people, let alone man and machine, that couldn't be summarized with those very words.

There's that smile again.

Maybe I'm just an optimist or a romantic, but I think you understand me.

For J.D.