Jennifer Wells - Beyond the Stars - At Galaxy's Edge

Rora followed the two humans, carrying Jonat’s bottle of rum and five frozen Atlantic penguins in a cryobox. Jonat mentioned a few more times his plans to penguin farm when the ship arrived. When the ship arrived... That’s when life began again.

For Jonat and the other humans, this time between planets was a horrible nightmare: the sleeping, the hurtling through space, the disconnect from every particle of past, every memory of Earth. Boring, repetitive, full of clerical reports and repairs, being awake on the Epsilon was not being alive. It was only the half-waking of the damned sailors who signed on to venture out to the edges of the constellations. Only a way station between residences.

The new commander, Jean, didn’t mind Jonat’s barrage of words, but most of her responses were clipped. Efficient. Assessing.

When the assessment was done, all three of them ended up back at the cryochambers. The fifth room had JONAT RUTHERFORD on the plaque across the door. His personal sleeping quarters. The time had come to sleep again.

Motioning to the AHI to place the frozen penguins by the airlock, the old man stepped over the seal. Jean and Rora waited at the door. When Jonat settled into his bunk, he finally stopped talking. Staring at the doorway with hooded eyes, there was a hunger in his gaze. Every blink revealed a glimmer of insanity. A need for the empty hand of sleep to grab ahold of him and pull him into the unlife of cryosleepers. A longing to wake up, already at their destination.

The awkward silence between the humans was a farewell of sorts.

The newly-awakened commander stepped back, away from the pressurized door. She saluted, and pressed four buttons. Activated, the forcefield around the sleeping area sealed, cryosleep humafreeon filled the air inside. A limited forcefield on the chamber doorhatch kept any residue from leaking out of the compartment.

“One Rutherford popsicle: done,” Jean commented aloud. That was remarkable. And it was the funniest thing she said for the next three years.

While Jean slept twelve hours, the AHI waited. Rora watched the stars as each ball of light crossed the solar windshields of Epsilon. Repairs continued. Each time the new thirty-six hour shift started, Jean spoke less frequently.

Rora wasn’t lonely. Machines don’t get lonely. The AHI wasn’t alone, anyway: Rora and Epsilon were friends. And though it seems laughable in terms of humanity’s grasp of such a thing, it was a friendship. A connection.

Something more was involved than an autopilot sealed within the computers of an ancient cargo ship. Rora couldn’t have reported what exactly.

There was no mention in the ship’s logs as far back as the robot could access. There was no trace of being, no program, no signs of life. But Rora knew. Data didn’t lie.

Every time its digits made contact with the plasteel frame of the cockpit, Rora was part of something beyond a machine’s computing. Somewhere, between the zeroes and ones of the basic programming, a personality existed. Rora couldn’t communicate with the strange thing, beyond the simplest of contact. Beyond the physical touch of its circuits and the walls of the cargo ship. But as each day passed, Rora watched the data. It was overwhelming. Something intelligent lived inside the battered shell and patchwork that was Epsilon.

Less than two years were left in Jean’s rotation.

Four months and three solar days ago, the human female had stopped talking almost altogether. At least to Rora. The descent into madness had begun. Humans were notoriously fragile. And the tipping point, once crossed, was hard to salvage. Insanity was a mirage oasis in the desert of loneliness. Very few returned from its waters unscathed.

Rora calculated the data, monitored their trajectory, assessed wear and tear inside the ship and presented its findings to the commander. Jean flipped through the daily reports while sipping the single cup of artificial coffee dispensed by her orders. It had been empty for more than ten hours.

“Walter,” she said to no one, “We must walk the dog. The brown one, you remember? And get some mustard for the pumpkin.”

Rora parsed the illogical sentences, checking them for meaning. There was none. That had ceased two shifts ago. Still, the human woman sat at the control chair for the greater part of the thirty-six hour wake-cycle.

Sometimes, she put on the repair suit and walked the corridors of the cargo ship in semi-darkness. She spoke erratically in the belly of the whale. Rora recorded and reported the ramblings. When the commander returned to the cockpit, there was no sign of improvement.

Rora waited out the days until the next commander would be awoken. Trying to minimize the damage, trying to limit the repairs assigned to only the most crucial.

When there was only one more waking hour on the shift, Rora settled into a sentry pattern. Trouble was on the event horizon. But the twelve-hour rest period the human body required meant the AHI could run through options and theories. There was still time to salvage the mission. But not much. Maybe four more sleep cycles before the human cracked wide against the hardness of insanity. Rora monitored everything, digits flying.

Do no harm to humans. That was Rora’s primary coded compass.

Turning away, the AHI split its focus between the repairs absolutely necessary to the spaceship and the echo of intelligence that floated in between the metal and material.

There was no warning.

Too late, the robot discovered the cost of insanity, the price they would all pay.

Smashing her fist down with the recklessness of a drunkard, the hallucinating commander opened emergency hatches built into the cryochambers. Three different buttons had to be pushed in specific sequence. Without pause Jean Denton Basel did that, venting one room after another to the vastness of space. Sending the sleeping humans, the replacement commanders into the last, final embrace. The glee in her eyes was unmistakably horrible.

Rora charged to the command consoles, making contact with the commander just before the third button was pressed. The robot’s alumaflesh hand blocked the final vent button. That action saved Jonat B. Rutherford and his frozen penguins from their floating demise.

Perplexed, the AHI marveled at the loss. All the other humans were jettisoned waste, speeding away in the wake of Epsilon Pi’s burning engines.

“There are whales!” Jean cried, waving her hands over her head. Walking away from the control panels, she stood in front of the viewscreen, her reflection distorted by the distance. The panic on her face marked the vivid end of her mind. “Shining whales, do you see them? Do you se‌—‌” Sliding up behind the crazed woman, the robot injected sedatives into the back of her arm. And then caught her as she collapsed.

Rora returned the commander to her cryochamber. The usually tidy quarters looked like vandals had run through the room. Setting the sleeping woman on the bed, the AHI straightened the area, setting it right.

Stepping out into the hallway, Rora walked past the four buttons that sealed the cryochambers closed and activated the dispersal of humafreeon. A machine could not initiate the sleep. The makers of robots and spaceships didn’t trust the machines to make the right decision, only the logical ones. And when right wasn’t the addition of all available information, well, only a human could decide.

Jean needed to rest. Actually, she needed far, far more than that: her fractured mind needed to be submerged back into the primal sleep. There was no cure. Not until her feet could touch real land, until she could stand by an ocean and dig her toes into the sand. And there was no chance of that for another eleven and a half years.