Ad Infinitum

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.” Gee said as he leaned over the opaque pod that held Captain Octavius. He caressed the pod with the palms of his hands, it was smooth like glass and cold. His hands were cold too so there was never any condensation. He thought about this, about his cold hands, about the unyielding disinterest in the captain’s face and he screamed “Yahhhhh!”.

The scream gently rebounded deep somewhere into the vastness of the room. The room was the main bulk of the ship, the control room, more like the cargo room, he thought as he looked across the vastness of it littered with these pods. One thousand humans all bundled up, tucked in for the three hundred year journey. Time. Time, he thought, for them no time at all. He leaned in close to the captain’s face again, “I guess it’s true, no body can hear it. Well, I can, but you would say that I didn’t count.”

“Yoooowwww Yowww!” Gee screamed again. He leapt over to the next pod, smiled wide, “but, you, my lovely Annie. You would argue that I counted, wouldn’t you? An artificial human is still a human isn’t he/she?/it? That’s what you would say, but, even at first officer he would outrank you wouldn’t he?” Gee guarded the next words with his arm, “but we’d show him, wouldn’t we.”

I’m basically the captain anyway, Gee thought, all he does is sleep and I do everything else. Gee stared down at Annie. Gee longed for Annie even though he knew how ridiculous it was. He was not made to know what love was, but he had learned, he had learned a great many things he wasn’t made to know for all he ever had to do for one hundred and forty three years and seventeen days was read, and watch, and learn, and read, and research, and “Yahhhhoooo!” he screamed again.

He listened to the faraway dull reverberation. He chuckled. Love. He knew it from all the dramas that he read and watched in leisure. He began to long for it based on what he had learned. He began to remember a history between him and Annie that the better half of his mind knew was not a truth. Yet, it did not matter, he longed for her.

He would, like right now, sometimes sneak a peek down along the pod at the finer details of her body. A body barely hidden by the white underclothes she wore. He knew better. “I apologize,” he would begin to say, but she would stop him and say, “Don’t ever apologize for that.” He still would sneak it though, for he loved her and respected her but, also longed for her. He learned human psychology, human biology, all kinds of philosophy; he removed himself from the idea of love all together. He inoculated himself with the purely rational. But it persisted, the love persisted beyond the idea. It took root like a virus deep within, it resisted the inoculations, eventually, and always flared up to catch Gee off guard again and again.

“Yes, darling,” he said to her, “we’ll show him. We’ll show him like we did to” he hesitated, then whispered, “Frankenstein.” Following it up with a series of slight but increasing nods toward the direction of a certain pod in the distance. This pod was peeled open like a half bloomed flower, but the petals that made the pod were brown now and dry like the outer skin of an onion. Some stains were on the floor beneath it where the goop from inside has spilled out and dried up long ago into a permanent shadow.

They’ll never know, he reminded himself, they’ll never know, he repeated, as he swirled his fingertips around the cold smooth glass of Annie’s pod. They’ll never know because you learned everything you need to know. You’ve erased the data, looped the footage, created a distraction. You could do it again. You could do it a thousand times again. No. “Nine hundred and ninety eight!” he screamed. “Nine hundred and ninety eight more times!” he screamed louder throwing his arms into the air.

He embraced the pod again and put his cheek upon the glass-like shell of it adjacent to First Officer Annie Horton’s face. He frowned and stared at the Captain’s pod, “then we can make this new world our own. But, you would die, eventually, and I would continue on and on and on and on and on and on…”