suspended on purring crane arms, and behind the ranks of systems desks and console banks, the whole command centre was painted with a dancing rainbow storm of holograms. Like a dream’s procession, flat oblongs of sensor displays flickered into existence in the air, briefly sketching out the velocity and vector of distant comets. Just one of a hundred displays, a thousand icons, disappearing and reforming across the deck… a storm of information overload. Colour-coded and three-dimensional. Water use. Cabin temperatures. Malfunctioning atmosphere recycling systems due repair. Empty storage chambers being sterilised by exposure to the void. Buggy ship sub-routines being rebooted. Robots being allocated. Droids being recharged. Solar flares being monitored.
Zeno came up behind the prince-in-exile. ‘Hell of a sight, isn’t it.’
‘It’s a complete mess. How can you make any sense out of this? You might as well stand behind the wheel of an ice schooner and invite half your crew to scream directions at you while the rest leap up and down tossing maps and charts in your direction.’
Zeno tapped the side of his head, smiling knowingly. ‘These days, there’s a little bit of me in every human – the droid inside. Not inside your Amish friends, of course. They don’t do implants. But the crew of the Gravity Rose have them. Without a computer implanted inside your skull, you can’t possibly cope with this much information. We might as well let the ship’s AI, granny, push out on autopilot, retire to our cabin for the duration and sip cocktails for the rest of the voyage. Some crews do that. Not the clever ones, though, remember that. Lazy out here ain’t that much different from dead.’
Calder shivered in dread. Is that apprehension mine, or residual memories from rubbing shoulders with the Amish for so long ? To have an organic computer nestled alongside your brain like a leech, the machine’s creepers sucking nourishment from your blood, sending you information when you summoned it, filtering this headache of information overload into some semblance of sense. ‘I’m not so sure.’
‘Personally speaking,’ smiled Zeno, ‘I’d say that the droid inside is what makes you human, these days, if that ain’t a contradiction. A little bit of logic and analysis to cool those animal passions. You’ll need an implant, too, if you’re to work on board. Time comes, maybe you’ll even want it.’
‘I can’t imagine that.’
‘Try experiencing it viscerally, first, in the pilot episode of Hell Fleet . Then tell me you don’t want it.’
‘Do you need an implant to handle this?’
‘Man, when it comes to this, I am an implant. To me, what you see here is slow motion. This dance can speed up; if the ship’s threatened, for instance. But you fleshy types can’t cope with too much hypervelocity decision-making, not without being seriously genetically modified. And then you don’t appear so human anymore.’
‘Does the Gravity Rose get threatened often? I thought she was a merchantman, not a warship?’
‘More than you’d think. Any jump-capable starship is worth a fortune, even today. These babies aren’t like ground cars, one sitting in every citizen’s garage. And to pay for a cargo to be transported between worlds is no small thing – a load’s got to be seriously valuable to someone, somewhere. You rub those two economic laws together, and there’s no shortage of pirates, privateers, hijackers, criminals and corrupt governments looking to steal, jack, kill or impound our ass and take everything we have. For crew, it’s like travelling with a million dollars stuffed inside our trousers.’
‘If the ship is worth so much, why doesn’t the captain just sell the vessel and retire to a life of luxury?’
‘I guess Lana likes moving about too much for that. Besides, the Gravity Rose has been passed down through her family. The ship is like a family member to the skipper. Only one she’s still
Zeno came up behind the prince-in-exile. ‘Hell of a sight, isn’t it.’
‘It’s a complete mess. How can you make any sense out of this? You might as well stand behind the wheel of an ice schooner and invite half your crew to scream directions at you while the rest leap up and down tossing maps and charts in your direction.’
Zeno tapped the side of his head, smiling knowingly. ‘These days, there’s a little bit of me in every human – the droid inside. Not inside your Amish friends, of course. They don’t do implants. But the crew of the Gravity Rose have them. Without a computer implanted inside your skull, you can’t possibly cope with this much information. We might as well let the ship’s AI, granny, push out on autopilot, retire to our cabin for the duration and sip cocktails for the rest of the voyage. Some crews do that. Not the clever ones, though, remember that. Lazy out here ain’t that much different from dead.’
Calder shivered in dread. Is that apprehension mine, or residual memories from rubbing shoulders with the Amish for so long ? To have an organic computer nestled alongside your brain like a leech, the machine’s creepers sucking nourishment from your blood, sending you information when you summoned it, filtering this headache of information overload into some semblance of sense. ‘I’m not so sure.’
‘Personally speaking,’ smiled Zeno, ‘I’d say that the droid inside is what makes you human, these days, if that ain’t a contradiction. A little bit of logic and analysis to cool those animal passions. You’ll need an implant, too, if you’re to work on board. Time comes, maybe you’ll even want it.’
‘I can’t imagine that.’
‘Try experiencing it viscerally, first, in the pilot episode of Hell Fleet . Then tell me you don’t want it.’
‘Do you need an implant to handle this?’
‘Man, when it comes to this, I am an implant. To me, what you see here is slow motion. This dance can speed up; if the ship’s threatened, for instance. But you fleshy types can’t cope with too much hypervelocity decision-making, not without being seriously genetically modified. And then you don’t appear so human anymore.’
‘Does the Gravity Rose get threatened often? I thought she was a merchantman, not a warship?’
‘More than you’d think. Any jump-capable starship is worth a fortune, even today. These babies aren’t like ground cars, one sitting in every citizen’s garage. And to pay for a cargo to be transported between worlds is no small thing – a load’s got to be seriously valuable to someone, somewhere. You rub those two economic laws together, and there’s no shortage of pirates, privateers, hijackers, criminals and corrupt governments looking to steal, jack, kill or impound our ass and take everything we have. For crew, it’s like travelling with a million dollars stuffed inside our trousers.’
‘If the ship is worth so much, why doesn’t the captain just sell the vessel and retire to a life of luxury?’
‘I guess Lana likes moving about too much for that. Besides, the Gravity Rose has been passed down through her family. The ship is like a family member to the skipper. Only one she’s still
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