Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

Explorer 410: I heard your words, but since the content was about emotion and I am just a machine, I was pausing to allow Master-of-the-Ship Jak to respond.

Jak: I-um. I acknowledge your pain.

Sai-ias: Have you ever felt like this? Lonely? Unhappy? Unloved?

Jak: Lonely, yes! And unhappy, certainly. I’ve been unhappy ever since I was trapped in the body of a Class 4 Explorer ship, and forced to co-exist with a machine who possesses a sad apology for a sense of humour, yes.

Explorer 410: If I were capable of emotions, I would resent those words.

Sai-ias: I am used to being loved. I find it hard to live without love.

Jak: Ah, well there you have me, for I’ve never been loved.

Sai-ias: What?

Jak: I’ve never been loved. Males are never loved. That’s just the way things are.

Sai-ias: You can’t mean that, Jak?

Jak: Well… there are exceptions… but even so, that’s pretty much how it is.

There was one female in particular-perhaps she…????-but I will never know.

Generally however that is the way of my kind; love is a river that flows only one way.

Sai-ias: That’s sad.

Jak: Hardly. It’s just a cultural difference.

Sai-ias: Such differences can be considerable. One of my dearest friends comes from a culture where mothers eat their own new-born.

Jak: There, you see, by comparison we-what?

Explorer 410: The Frayskind. They’re in my database. It is just their way. Many aquatics do it too.

Sai-ias: My own kind mate for life. I know many species who do not. Promiscuous, polyamorous, feckless and reckless-I know some beasts who have had sex with literally tens of thousands of partners. The serpentiforms are the worst. Though some of the birds are pretty bad. The larger creatures, though, tend to be monogamous, like me. Or rather, as I would have been; had I not been a child when the Ka’un captured me.

Jak: You were a child?

Sai-ias: Oh yes.

Jak: I am so sorry. That must have been Sai-ias: At least I lived.

Jak: You poor thing. How many years have Sai-ias: Many.

Jak: I am sorry.

Sai-ias: Is it really true you have never been loved?

Jak: I don’t know.

Sai-ias: How don’t you know?

Jak: Because-well. Star-Seeker Albinia and I were just-I was sure she did actually love me. But she never said so.

And I always feared that, well. I feared that she would suddenly change her mind, and forget her love for me. Like all the other females in my life had done.

That’s how-that’s why-I spent all our time together expecting the worst. Which means of course I found it hard to actually enjoy her company! Because I kept imagining she might say: “Oh dear, this isn’t working out Jak.” Or, “Jak, I no longer care for you.” Or, “Jak, you hopeless and sexually inept fool, I’ve only been pretending to like you, actually I think you’re a badly dressed laughing stock.”

She never ACTUALLY said any of those things; but I imagined it all so often it felt as if it had happened.

I was being stupid, I know! Unfair on her. It may be she would have been loyal, and we could have lived happily together for twenty years or so; perhaps she really was the one.

But before I had a chance to find out, one way or another-she died. Right in front of me. The Death Ship killed her.

So-I will never know.

Explorer 410: None of this is at all relevant to our plight; I thought I should register that observation.

Sai-ias: Why so afraid, Jak? You can’t spend your life being afraid of being betrayed.

Jak: In my culture, it’s an occupational hazard. It is our duty to serve, and to give our females pleasure both social and sexual, and gain little or none in return.

Sai-ias: But that’s pathetic.

Jak: We males consider it to be ennobling.

Explorer 410: Speaking as an impartial observer, and taking into account that I am not capable of ANY emotions, let alone love, I too Jak find that pathetic.

Jak: It is the way things are, and have always been.

Sai-ias: Perhaps we mean something different by the word “love.”

Jak: Our females fuck us, but they don’t give us orgasms, and they treat us like shit.

Sai-ias: By the standards of my culture, that means you don’t get loved. Oh you sad thing!

Jak: I don’t need your pity! I am a proud Olaran.

Sai-ias: Yes I know. I know. I didn’t mean to-tell me about yourself Jak. Describe yourself. I would like to know you more.

Jak: Why?

Sai-ias: If I know you, I might be able to love you; for my kind are capable of unconditional and limitless love, when we truly know a fellow creature. But all I know of you so far is-a voice from a machine.

Jak: Um, perhaps we should keep focused on the mission?

Sai-ias: How many limbs do you have?

Jak: You have no idea how ridiculous that question sounds.

Sai-ias: True. Because I have no sense of humour, as I have been told on many occasions. I’ll go first: I have twenty-four limbs. Twelve feet, not in pairs. Ten hands, or strictly speaking, tentacles. And two filaments that come out of my mouth that can be used to manipulate objects, and which therefore count as limbs. Does that help you visualise me?

Jak: Tentacles. By the God of all the Traders, you are a monstrous beast!

Sai-ias: How many limbs do you have?

Jak: I have simply the normal number. Four! Two arms. Two legs. Two eyes. Two penises. I’m an Olaran.

Sai-ias: Ah, a biped. Do you have scales or fur?

Jak: Skin. You?

Sai-ias: Chitinous armour enveloped in soft hide. Do you have wings?

Jak: No. You?

Sai-ias: I have a cape which allows me to fly. I can also dwell in the water. Now you can see me.

Jak: Now I can see you. Sai-ias, are you beautiful?

Sai-ias: Many consider me so. Some, not so much. And you?

Jak: I am very beautiful; or rather, I was. I was a gorgeous youth who became a beautiful man; females used to flatter me; I dressed in ornate and beautiful gowns and my body was lean and perfectly proportioned. Now I am a wreck; my body was burned and what survived was destroyed by Explorer and flushed out of the waste disposal. I am now more spaceship than Olaran; my brain lives in fluid connected by cables to this computer’s mind.

Sai-ias: I will imagine you in your beautiful body. Do you love children?

Jak: I have no children of my own, but I adore them. You?

Sai-ias: I was a child when I came to this place; I would love to have been a mother. It seems we have much in common.

Jak: We have very little in common, except not having children.

Sai-ias: We should be friends.

Jak: I would-like that.

Sai-ias: I am here.

Jak: It’s been a year since we last spoke.

Sai-ias: It has been sixty eleven-day cycles by my calendar.

It has been… a most terrible sixty cycles.

Jak: We are tracking you again. We are at the Source, and have been waiting here for the last nine months by our calendar, but with no trace of the Death Ship. Now we have your signal again, we can start rifting between universes and we can find you, wherever you are. Keep giving us your location.

Sai-ias: I am here.

Sai-ias: I am here.

Sai-ias: I am here.

Sai-ias: I am here.

Sai-ias: I am here.

Sai-ias: I am here.

Sai-ias: I am here.

Sai-ias: I am here.

Jak: We have a proximate trace on you.

Sai-ias: You are in the same universe as me again?

Jak: Yes we are.

Sai-ias: Please. Hurry. I can’t-not for much longer.

Explorer 410: It won’t take that long. Keep talking. If there is a pause, we are rifting through real-space, which is faster but cuts the riftband link.

Sai-ias: I’m still here.

Jak: We’ve travelled through many universes. There’s a trail of dead sentience smeared through the spaces. Shall I tell you about the worlds we know about, that are lost?