John Moralee - Future Imperfect - A Collection of Science Fiction Stories

“Yes, Uncle,” Mazina said, feeling like a little girl, not a grown-up woman aged nineteen. “I’ll get it right this time. I swear it. Just give me a minute, Uncle.”

“Nyet. There are no breaks outside. Start now .”

Mazina rubbed her weary eyes and jacked back into the sim for the fourth time that morning. In the real world she was inside a zero-gee gym in the central hub of Paradise Saved , but she suddenly felt like she was outside the spinning arkship surrounded by deep space, clinging onto the dark-grey hull with gecko pads on her gloves and knees. The sensation made her giddy as she looked at spiralling curve of the ship against the background of stars.

MISSION STARTS flashed up on her display.

The simulated mission involved repairing the outer hull after the ship sustained damage – a mission she took seriously even though it was not real. The ship’s computer always made the mission different to keep her vigilant – so she didn’t even know where the damage was until she switched on her coms and spoke to Milton, the ship’s central AI.

“What’s the problem, Milton?”

“I have a major leak, Miss Valentov. I need you to seal it for me, as my bots are unable to operate close to the tokomak fusion drives due to a radiation spike.”

“Where’s the leak?” she said.

“A small rock hit the G82 lifepod. It’s leaking atmosphere. You’d better hurry.”

The Paradise Saved was shaped like a giant conch shell consisting of hundreds of modules all connected by airlock tunnels to the central hub. Each part had its own solar generators and matter scoops to provide power and material for existing in the virtually empty space they were travelling across to a star system 420 light-years down the spiral arm of the Milky Way. Mazina crawled over the surface until she was on the side of module G82. A hole had been ripped through the hull plating, exposing the internal atmosphere to venting. Around the hole, slashed cables sparked and spat like electric eels. Last time she had tried to fix the hole without turning off the power to the loose cables, resulting in an oxygen explosion. This time she addressed that problem first, cutting the power with a thermal lance aimed at a junction, then turned her attention on the hole. There were temporary hull plates in her supply pack that she fastened to the hole with a strong resin.

“The pressure is still decreasing,” Milton reported. “And there’s a temperature increase in the hull layer.”

“What? Where?”

“I have no data, Miss Valentov.”

No data? Only in a sim would that be true. Milton had access to every sensor on the ship – but for the purpose of training her, the AI was playing stupid. Okay – how can I figure this out? She looked around, determined to pass the test by figuring out what was wrong. If a rock had really hit the ship at near light-speed it would have punctured one side of the ship and gone through to the other side. The other side! She had not checked there. Feeling foolish, she scampered around the module until she was staring at a second small hole. Tell-tales in her suit recorded a temperature increase on the surface of 900 degrees. A fire. Inside the hull layer. She needed to cool it down with a spray of liquid nitrogen from her supply pack. She opened her pack and located the nitrogen canister – but lost her grip on the hull with her gecko pads. No longer secured to the ship by her hands, she found herself flipping backwards, disorientated, her suit’s alarms wailing, Milton ordering her to use her thrusters to correct her orientation, but a panic filled her and she thrashed and wailed and lost complete control over her suit and body. She spun away from the ship, desperately trying to right herself, but her thrusters were not working and she was slipping further and further away, just like her mother and father …

“AAAAAAaaahhh!”

“Milton, end sim!” her uncle said.

Snap. The sim ended abruptly like she had been woken from a bad dream. Mazina was relieved to be back in the gym, floating harmlessly – but she hated failing again. She blinked tears, looking at her uncle’s image. “I’m sorry. I messed up. I panicked again.”

“That’s enough for today,” her uncle said, the disappointment in his voice palpable and wounding. “We will do your next lesson tomorrow. I’ll see you later.”

Her uncle’s image disappeared as his neural link disconnected.

Dismissed, she felt like a failure.

With effortless grace, she exited the gym, wishing she had the same balletic zero-gee skills when she was inside the simulation. As she moved away from the central hub, the centripetal force of the spinning ship slowly increased until she was in a white-walled one-gee tunnel walking to her room in Section Q. She slumped on her bed and stared at a picture of her parents, tears stinging her eyes.

“Why can’t I do it better? What’s wrong with me?”

Ten minutes later, someone knocked on her door.

“What?” she yelled.

“It’s me.”

“Oh – Kai.” She wiped her eyes. “Come in.”

A young man with blue eyes and spiky white hair entered her quarters wearing red overalls stained with sweat and grease. Mazina always felt good seeing her boyfriend – but she was not in the mood for doing anything romantic, though Kai did not know that. He started eagerly removing his overalls near the door, dropping them in the laundry box for auto-processing. Then he started to strip off his T-shirt – until she shook her head.

“Kai, I’m sorry – but I’m not in the mood. Keep your clothes on.”

“But we – oh, okay.” Kai stopped undressing, fidgeting like he didn’t know what to do or say. “Soooo … How’d the sim training go with your uncle?”

“It was bad,” she said. “I panicked again just before completing the task. I’m never going to be accepted on Riko’s squad if I can’t even get through the basic sims. Next week they do the tests for selecting the new recruits – but I don’t feel ready.”

Kai sat on the edge of her bed, taking one of her feet in his hands to give it a relaxing massage. “What happened exactly?”

“Forget it. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Don’t look so miserable, Maz. I’m sure you’ll do better tomorrow.”

“Yeah – right. That’s what I thought yesterday.”

“You could always be a grease monkey like me, you know. You don’t have to join the shell squad. I’d love to work with you in Engineering.”

Mazina appreciated Kai’s support – but she needed to prove herself worthy of joining Riko’s squad. “My parents would have wanted me to do it, Kai.”

“I know you feel that – but wouldn’t they have been happy if you did something else?”

“Yes – no. I don’t know because I can’t ask them.” She sighed. “When my dad was alive, he used to talk about his work all of the time. He loved his job. My mom did too. It was dangerous – but it was important. Milton can’t repair everything. The ship still needs humans to do some things to keep itself running. I want to do my part to get this ship to Paradise System just like my parents. On their last mission they died saving the lives of over a million passengers. Being on the shell squad is what I’ve dreamt of since they died. I just wish I could get over my fear.”

“Fear is logical considering the situation. Maybe what you need to do is face it head-on? Have you ever talked to Dr Collins?”

“No. What good could she do?”

“Counselling helped me deal with some things after my parents divorced. I was pretty angry and self-destructive. That’s not a good thing on a spaceship. Milton would probably have been sent me into cryo-storage if I had not had therapy. Isn’t that right, Milton?”