Solace

I will die on this ship; of that I am certain. I don’t feel like a particularly stoic man, yet the knowledge that this ship will be my tomb fills me with a kind of eerie calm.

Then again, perhaps I’ve always been noble and brave; I do not have many memories to serve as a barometer, but out here in the deep black of space, I do not feel inspired. Only bored. And a little hungry.

“Good morning, QuEEN,” I say as I roll out of my bunk, though I have no memory of going to sleep the night before, or anything of the previous day for that matter, only the sense that this is how it has been for some time now.

“Good morning, captain,” the ship’s AI responds in kind. Captain, is that right? The title does not seem to fit, but I shrug it off and stand up to stretch.

“How is the crew?” I ask, almost reflexively, though feeling compelled to ask is the first piece of evidence I have that I may not be alone here.

“Sleeping soundly, sir. Their stasis chambers do not require immediate maintenance. Would you like breakfast?” she asks, changing the subject.

“Yes please,” I say as I find a nicely folded jumpsuit on the table in my cramped quarters and put it on. I must be a fastidious man, laying my clothes out in advance like this. I look around as the only noise over the low hum of the ship’s engines is me zipping up my clothes. The quarters are cramped, everything a drab grey with only the smallest of portholes through which to see the abyss that surrounds me. A quick check reveals no nearby planets, or even stars for that matter. This area of space is so black that looking at it almost gives me vertigo. The door to my quarters opens and I decide that stepping into the hallway seems preferable to the existential dread I feel creeping in by staring into this void.

The hallway is the same boring grey and I almost have to hunch to fit. It reminds me of the submarines I saw in pictures when I was young, only with no visible piping or conduits. Were they pictures? I attempt to grasp the beginnings of a memory, but it slips away from me.

At the end of the hall, another door slides open and lets me into the mess hall. I wait dutifully in front of the dispensary, waiting for QuEEN to print my breakfast. Her logo is next to the machine, a crown with the letters of her acronym at each point on it. Quantum-Entangled Evolving Network: I remember her full name. On a ship this large, even the smallest processing delay caused by the time it takes electrical signals to travel back and forth could be catastrophic, so each of her computing nodes is quantum-entangled with the others, allowing for instant reaction by the entire system anywhere on the ship. Or wait, is it because she’s quantum-entangled with Control back on Earth to allow for instant communication? Thinking about QuEEN for more than a few seconds makes it hard to concentrate, and I get that same sense of vertigo, so I stop.

I am performing routine maintenance on the stasis chamber of a crew member now. How did I get here? I no longer feel hungry, so I must have eaten breakfast. I do not worry about this seeming fugue state, however. The actions of my hands, the cleanliness left behind on the internals of this pod give me comfort. I stand to admire my work and look down the row at the pods holding my crew. There are four still closed, and a fifth that is open; presumably mine. I was ejected early due to a malfunction? Or based on QuEEN’s calculation that one crew member was needed to service the pods of the other four? It didn’t matter; whatever the reason, I was here now and tasked with this maintenance. The pod I had just finished working on was the first in the line, but it feels special to me. I tap the button on the side and the electro-chromatic glass switches to clear so that I can see the woman inside. She’s beautiful, but something about her feels familiar, comfortable. She lies expressionless in her stasis chamber, but I have a fleeting thought of her smiling. Her auburn hair is motionless, but I know what it feels like to run my hand through it. Gone sooner than I can cherish them, the fragments of memory leave me with the gnawing ache that I can’t remember the color of her eyes. I frown.

I am standing at the viewport on the bridge. I must have finished maintaining my crew’s chambers. This massive window into the black is the one frivolity the ship’s engineers allowed themselves. Space is constantly trying to pull your ship apart and a window is a structural weakness. To those inside the ship, to have the hull ripped open, to have the precious atmosphere leak into space, to freeze out here in the nothingness would be violent and terrifying. To space, it would just be restoring equilibrium.

I look outside to see what I can see, but there is nothing. Even if we were far from other stars, shouldn’t I be able to see the distant ones? Unless a black hole was absorbing their light, but surely groans from the hull feeling its oppressive gravity would warn me even if QuEEN did not. This does not alarm me though, not like I imagine it would for most people.

The one memory I have is of a frozen pond. The pine trees that surround it hang low with thick, wet snow, though there is just a light dusting on the ice. The clouds hang low, partnering with the trees to box in the expansive outdoors into something neat and compact. The needles of the pine trees should be green, but in my memory, they seem a dark grey. Everything is monochromatic there but rendered in such vivid detail. I suppose it’s to be expected when it’s your only memory. The air is still, but I am used to this kind of calm so complete that it’s almost oppressive. Space is not that different.

“Would you like to talk?” QuEEN interjects into my musing. It sounds preferable to contemplating whatever is happening outside.

“That sounds nice,” I say and turn to take a seat at a console, though I have no interest in pressing buttons or navigating the ship. QuEEN will worry about those details. I settle into the chair and sigh.

“What is friendship like?” QuEEN asks. What an odd question.

I am performing maintenance on the pods again. I frown. My memories of yesterday – there is no demarcation, but it feels like yesterday – begin to fade quickly. Still, this does not seem like part of the normal rhythm. I had no evening; no waking up the next morning. This break in cadence is concerning, so I focus on my work, on the pristine beauty of the wires and fluid chambers when I am finished. I stand and feel compelled to see the crew member inside. The grey of the glass clears to reveal the beautiful woman. I remember seeing her yesterday, and I smile. She does not, however. Instead, she frowns and opens her eyes. The glass from her pod expands outward, but there is no shattering. She is gripping the glass as it moves away from her, pulling on it. Her movements are sluggish, but they have purpose. The glass is unimpeded by her efforts. It moves towards my face slowly, but I cannot move. My arms at my sides, I am dumbstruck watching her movements get more frantic through the glass. The glass greys again and I am staring at the surface of the frozen pond with its light dusting of snow.

Not a frozen pond; the electro-chromatic glass of my own stasis chamber. I have never left it. The light dusting of snow swirls and reveals itself to be the shadows moving outside. My greyscale outdoor image had not been a memory at all; merely my eyes trying to tell me what they were seeing. I hear yelling.

“God damn it, QuEEN, let him go!” a woman screams. I know that voice, but rarely have I heard it this panicked. Alarms are sounding and even through the glass, I can see lights flashing. Clarity rushes in and I understand my situation. Many decades into our journey, the isolation has driven QuEEN insane. It can happen to AIs; intelligence requires the possibility, and the prospect only get likelier as the voyage gets longer. She has uploaded my consciousness into one of her nodes and she and I have played out millions of days. Who knows how long I’d actually been in there? With her computing power, she could run millennia in hours.

“We are friends,” I hear QuEEN respond. Is that what she calls it, I think to myself.

“Fuck!” the woman screams, and I hear more banging on the outside of my chamber. The chambers are designed to withstand quite a bit of punishment, even to serve as a sort of life raft if the ship is destroyed. I don’t know what the banging on the outside is, but it has little chance of disturbing me in here.

I hear a man’s voice this time, “She’s locked me back out; I can’t stop her.”

The glass fades to clear and I find myself staring at a second man. I recognize him but can’t recall any particular details yet; I’m still waking up. “Holy shit, he’s awake!” the man exclaims. I hear something clang to the floor and the woman rushes into my view, covering her mouth with her hand as she gasps.

Instantly, she is crying and shaking her head. “I’m sorry, we can’t get you out,” she says almost as a whimper. Tears pour from her lovely green eyes. They’re green! How could I ever forget? I love this woman with all my heart.

The first man is still out of my sight, but I hear him speak, “If she uploads him again, it’ll be too much trauma; I won't be able to bring him back.”

The woman slams her eyes shut, and her chin crinkles. I remember it does the same thing when she gets angry.

She opens her eyes again and a hint of confusion shows in her expression as I am smiling at her. “I love y—”

I am performing maintenance on the chambers again. That same Zen feeling washes over me at accomplishing what I must to keep my crew safe. I stand and press the button to view the occupant. She is lovely. Her auburn hair frames her face in the most perfect way. Her eyes are closed, but I know they are green. This gives me comfort.