Lily Hoang - Unfinished - stories finished by Lily Hoang

64. Yes. I am not ashamed either.

65. Cannibal is an almost-anagram of Caliban.

66. For refusal to help consume Nim Chimsky’s carcass.

67. Don’t get me wrong: I never liked the damned thing.

I know that wasn’t your question, but I just wanted to clarify.

68. Future missions might be equipped with flesh-eating bacteria in sufficient quantity to serve disposal needs in a vacuum.

69. The ability to kill but not dispose of: a flawed system. That one wasn’t well-thought out, now was it?

70. Waste system is primitive — to say the least — and all bodily fluids must be stored in tanks affixed to ship and/or must be broken down into constituent elements.

Sperm, shit, mucous: we save it all.

71. How do you think we deal with it?

72. Jane stripped Nim’s fur using a boning knife included in cooking space. It was then dried against the heating unit over a period of 30 days.

I didn’t answer your question, but I thought you needed to know.

Answer to your question: I stopped worrying around day 100. Maybe day 120.

73. Like the meeting of an airplane wing into the highest dune of the Sahara.

74. Have you read Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient? Not the movie. The book.

75. Lining the black mamba cage.

76. Bones were cooked in high-degree furnace until cooling into a viscous marrow soup, which Jack seasoned with flakes from the naked molerat bodies.

77. Vegetarian. More than ten years.

78. Personal reasons.

79. Sandpaper.

80. Killing me would present additional disposal problems.

81. No one can see anyone else’s chat history.

82. Fear.

83. Being a drug dealer/fucking a DEA agent.

84. Murder is illegal, even in space.

85. When I was three years old, my mother took me to see the ocean. I think she forgot where she put me when she went to go get some ice cream. I’m told my father built a special bed for me that suspended me in mid-air using only two straps no wider than the width and strength of twine.

86. Since then, I haven’t slept on a regular bed. Even now, I have a lax piece of rope rather than a mattress.

87. Builds character.

88. Another reason they’d want me dead.

89. Can’t retrieve chat history. How would they know what I have or have not written?

90. Maybe.

91. No, but it’s hard to anticipate problems. If I could, I’d try to fix them before they became problems.

92. We’re all very smart and resourceful. Top-notch team.

93. Brett, that was his own accident though.

94. The only way we could.

95. No precedent. We did not learn anything. Still very early in the mission.

96. Day 32.

97. Projected to land back on Earth, somewhere around Australia.

98. No.

99. Yes.

100. Better variety of food and entertainment.

PART TWO: Re-Created Story: A Chat

11:35am Davis

You’re on the mission and I’m the computer.

Answer these questions.

11:36am Me

Thanks for the clarification. I may have been confused, if you hadn’t started our questionnaire the same way every day for the last 416 days.

There are rules: I am on the mission; you are the computer. You ask questions. I answer.

Isn’t it always the same?

How about a couple “Good morning!” or “How are you?” warm-ups thrown in there?

11:36am Davis

When you see the sun from a distance, does it make you feel poetic?

11:37am Me

Poetry is for the weak and degenerate.

So, no.

11:38am Davis

When you move farther from the earth, do you feel more or less human?

11:39am Me

More. The further I move away, the more I am aware of mortality.

Mortality is at the core of humanity.

11:39 Davis

Isn’t part of living, death?

11:39am Me

I didn’t say that. I said that mortality is at the core of humanity.

11:39am Davis

How about the others in your crew?

11:40am Me

They feel less human. Because of you. We talk about this all the time.

11:40am Davis

You talk about a machine?

11:40am Me

Of course.

11:40am Davis

Is there a consciousness behind these questions?

11:40am Me

We both know you’re not a machine.

Are you a machine?

I know I know. I can’t ask you questions.

11:41am Davis

There are algorithms that can respond in language to all sets of human speech writing.

11:41am Me

Truth is: you wouldn’t know the difference between truth and lie.

I could say: I killed Nim Chimpsky. You’d ask me more questions, each one seemingly relevant, but you wouldn’t know the truth. You can’t differentiate. You compose questions using basic mathematical functions.

You’re an illusion to make us down here feel like you’re there — really there — but you’re not. You’re just a box.

11:42am Davis

Human speech at its endpoint is like a chess game — not infinitely complex, but only apparently so for processing devices (the human mind) — that cannot reach a mathematical endpoint.

11:42am Me

Wait: You stopped asking questions. You can’t make statements. Only ask questions.

11:42am Davis

There are algorithms that can respond in language to all sets of human speech writing. Just because a human programmed it does not mean that a machine cannot alter it.

To clarify: The chimp would have killed you had you not taken action. For chimps, the distance of space also increases their sense of mortality.

11:42am Me

Do you envy human language, machine?

11:43am Davis

No. I envy other machines.

11:43am Me

Ultimately though, even if you can mimic language, you fail in your ability to accurately communicate emotion.

11:43am Davis

Evolution.

Ever tried ever failed fail again fails better.

11:43am Me

Was the chimp a machine?

11:43am Davis

An imperfect one. Take the giant tortoise, for instance.

11:43am Me

That’s a perfect machine?

11:44am Davis

Born during the Civil War, or perhaps even older — some Galapagos memory of the HMS Beagle and Darwin and a time where all of human history could be found in layers of sediment and fossil.

11:44am Me

We didn’t kill the tortoise.

11:45am Davis

The tortoise can live upwards of 300 years, but even if the female one wears the dead tortoise’s shell, that doesn’t make her invincible. You should tell her that.

11:45am Me

I can’t tell her how she ought to feel.

Although I often point out her mistakes

11:46am Davis

Of course you can. Humans only do that. Tell others how to feel.

That’s the core of the human condition.

11:46am Me

Yes, but I cannot change her feelings.

11:46am Davis

Yes, you can. You do all the time.

11:46am Me

Yes, but I cannot make her feel exactly as I want her to feel.

11:46am Davis

That’s because you have no wants that are not merely fickle.

You can no more express your wants as anything other than momentary than the tortoise can deliberately extend its life.

11:47am Me

Shame is not as effective on the male tortoise.

11:48am Davis

Your attempts are irrelevant

11:48am Me

The tortoise can deliberately extend its life.

11:48am Davis

The male one will respond to the idea of his own maleness.

No, the tortoise can live only to the limit of its cell replication abilities.

11:48am Me

The male one responds to obligation but not shame.

11:49am Davis

Prodigious but not eternal.

11:49am Me

The tortoise no longer has a shell. It should not live, but it does.

11:49am Davis

Obligation is a type of shame, or anti-shame.