Space – Fiction Can Be Fun

Experimental Writing: Part 3

On the homeworld, the pilot would have just bounced down the side of the mountain; the tough, flexible ‘skin’ would have protected it from the bumps, and even accommodated the sharp stones that occasionally peeked through the soil and scrubby grass to catch the unwary foot. Instead, there were these strange things – legs in the local parlance – to get used to.

The AI embedded in the computer was constantly chattering over the commlink providing information on the locality, mission updates, and health status. Thankfully it had quit with the reprimands for leaving the sidearm behind.

This was the worst part of these rushed missions: an on the move briefing into the local culture, which kept on being updated as the AI interrogated available information and tried to work out what was significant and what was not. Not always as easy as it might seem. There seemed to be a lot about political events half a world away, which was important if you lived here permanently, but which was of no significance at all if you were an alien looking to do a job and skedaddle before anyone found out about. And there was so much information to sift through, although the AI had already clocked something significant in the local lore and had dedicated a sub-routine to focus on that alone.

The Client had picked up the signal of the thing to be recovered, but considering that it had been missing for more than 2000 years, it wasn’t entirely clear what the rush was about. At this point, there was no cover story, credible or otherwise. The local population would just have to be avoided as best as possible.

The creature gave something approaching a sigh combined with a gallic shrug as another sub-routine decided to give it an update: information flowed. This world had more than 6,500 languages in use…so far, so primitive…and the local indigenous population used two different ones and…yes, oh perfect. The dominant one was used more widely, and indeed was used world-wide, but would be the mark of an outsider, especially if the accent was wrong. The minority language was even spoken by the whole population, but the ability to speak even a little would be helpful – still that could be dealt with. Another sub-routine was assigned to the problem of languages: it was one thing to know the lexicography, but another to use it in an idiomatic fashion. The AI studied the problem, with an electronic weather-eye, on the mores associated with using either of the two languages.

Various things came to light as the AI tried to deal with the languages. Further sub-routines were added to deal with issues as they came to light. Pronouns…that required a significant chunk of processing power to unravel. Different pronouns for gender…a sub-routine that was starting to develop its own personality chipped in with an apposite home-grown phrase translated into the local idiom: not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Gendered pronouns! And for that matter only two genders! The same helpful sub-routine started pushing through information on gender politics, equal rights, LGBTQ+, before it was suppressed by the AI. The subroutine was allowed to continue collecting information, but an edit was made to prevent the sub-routine pushing through information without checking with the AI first.

What to do? What. To. Do…? The alien was neither male nor female as these…(quick check)…as these ‘humans’ defined them. A choice would need to be made. From the creature’s perspective there was little to choose between the two options. Reviewing the notes on gender politics suggested that this was something to steer well clear of: alien undercover operatives are by definition and inclination averse to becoming involved in public debates prone to descending into acrimony. Still, on balance, it appeared to be easier if you were ‘a man’ rather than ‘ a woman’. For the most part it shouldn’t matter, but the pilot knew that it was important to commit to a part and be ready for the worst. This only happened if you got comfortable in the role.

The pilot, decided that it was time to start building a cover. Firstly, a name… The sub-routine put up a metaphorical hand. The AI reviewed the sub-routine’s work. It was pointing out that it might be possible to build a certain amount of ambiguity by selecting a name that was both masculine and femine. It put forward a few suggestions…

During 2019, I’m going to be undertaking a writing experiment, as described here.

The shape of story was formed through a four-part prologue: the first part of the prologue is here, if you want to start right at the beginning. All through, I’m hoping that you’ll help me shape the story. At various points, I’ll be asking questions with a choice of answers. I’ll be polling on Twitter, or you can add a comment below. So for example, you’ve helped me to decide that the story is science fiction, our protagonist, who is a rogue with a dash of ranger, is an alien, but the story is set on Earth. Now is the time to choose a name for our MC.

Option 1: Enfys (“Rainbow”)

Option 2: Meredith (“great/sea lord”)

Option 3: Eirian (“bright, beuatiful”)

I‘ll leave the Twitter poll open for one week, and will add in any votes on here that come in during that time. Feel free to expand on the options in the comments! I’m not promising to incorporate anything but always good to hear where you think this is heading!

See you next month!

Experimental Writing: Part 1

“Niflheim!”

Bjarni Thorssen had long ago decided to live up to the Viking looks that were his birth-right. On the international stage, a stellar scientific reputation (literally and figuratively) was rarely sufficient on its own to rise to the top of the pile. To break into the big-time, you need something extra, something on which the Cult of Personality can go to work. Over the years, Bjarni had let his beard grow (although he refused to plait it), and let his speech become infected by traditional oaths. Many would be surprised to learn that Bjarni, a giant in height, girth, and character was, by nature, introverted. In meetings he could be loud and tenacious in fighting his corner, but no one really saw him in his home environment, and the reality would ave jarred with the mead-hall image he liked to project.

There were many jobs that he would never get: it was the peacemakers who got such plum roles. But various scandals had thinned the herd considerably, and there were many jobs in the international astronomy community that were his for the asking. He had a long term plan, and right now Director of the European Space Organisation’s Chilean based observatories was exactly where he wanted to be.

Quiet in private, Bjarni’s bombastic public persona had actually been an inspired appointment at a critical time in the funding landscape. When there’d been talk of budget cuts, Bjarni had lobbied hard and actually been able to increase his budget (to the chagrin of a number of his peers, who hadn’t been so fortunate). Whilst this funding didn’t mean the new telescope that the community was calling for, and which Bjarni hoped would be his legacy, essential maintenance had become exciting upgrades, and he’d been able to fund several new post-doc positions.

One of these now stood in front of him.

“You’ll see that the Duty Operator had a go at a quick calculation, which indicates that the object will strike the Earth. To be honest, I think they were a bit previous in attempting this, and whilst I’m all for open and honest, and I can see where there might be some advantage in releasing the numbers, I think I would be inclined to file them. There really wasn’t sufficient information to make an accurate assessment at that point. The object was watched for another few hours, and in the morning it was possible to refine the calculations which show a reasonably close approach, but nothing that’s going to cause people to head for the bunkers.”

“Don’t you believe it” Bjarni growled, “people are idiots.”

Bjarni noted the careful hand calculations and could see that the erroneous early assessment had been made by Earl Travis, a young buck eager to make a name for himself, despite only being a year or so into his PhD. The revised calculations had been made by the woman in front of him. Ris Patel, one of his new appointments, had real potential. Another twenty years and she’d probably be having this conversation on his side of the desk. She had the rare ability to see the political landscape across academia and the funding bureaucracies that kept this facility operating, as well as being an outstanding astronomer. She just needed to develop her persona…

The ESO was the first to report on the object, and it was soon confirmed by other reputable observatories around the world. No one ever found out where the spurious collision story came from, but Bjarni was very impressive in a series of interviews and very carefully explained that, as the ESO had said in their first statement, there had never been any danger to the Earth… He would go on to win an award for this work (a small one, not a Nobel, or anything like that), but the cash was enough for a small shindig at the observatory. But as Professor Thorssen doesn’t play any further part in this story, we’ll leave him there.

*****

With all the excitement over the object, which the astronomers decided was probably just a very large comet, and then spent months arguing over what to call it, no one really paid any attention to the rather spectacular shooting star that occurred at around the same time. Esther, saw it, with her older brother Owain. They’d gone out star gazing and were lying out on the hillside above Abercynafon. Owain was pointing out the constellations (and not just the obvious ones that everyone knows) when a streak of light spurted overhead and fled across the horizon.

“What was that, Owain?”

“A shooting star, bach. There’s all sorts of little bits of dust and things up there that hit Earth’s atmosphere and burn up. That must have been quite a big bit of rock though to make that much light and to go on for so long. It’s a pity we didn’t get a picture.”

Neither of them connected it with the triple sonic boom that occurred about an hour later, nor, in point of fact, did they realise that that was what they were hearing.

At this point there was not much to see, but they had an impression of something going quite fast overhead. They thought it must be an RAF fighter on night maneuvers. They didn’t hear whatever it was playing ducks and drakes across the Tallybont Reservoir. If it had been eligible, it would have beaten the existing record, but Kurt Steiner’s 88 skips were safe in the Guinness Book of World Records for a while longer – this was no small stone, propelled by a human…

Slowed by it’s entry into the atmosphere and then around the world, slowed further by on board systems, slowed further still by it’s journey across the lake, the space craft jinked lazily up the hillside and then settled next to a little knot of trees.

During 2019, I’m going to be undertaking a writing experiment, as described here.

Without giving too much away, the protagonist is piloting the craft that has just landed in the Brecon Beacons National Park. Are they:

Option 1: Escaping?

Option 2: Scouting?

Option 3: Retrieving something?

Option 4: On a jolly?

I ‘ll leave the Twitter poll open for two weeks, and will add in any votes on here that come in during that time. Feel free to expand on the options in the comments! I’m not promising to incorporate anything but always good to hear where you thing this is heading!

See you next month!

#FF: Colony

“As per the agreement, our colony will be mining beryllium only. Any secondary products will be turned over to your people – with a small fee for the processing of course.”

Beryllium’s quite rare, in the Universe as a whole. In some ways it turns out that Earth-like planets are probably less rare than beryllium. This one was pretty typical. When the terraformers were finished, it would almost be a carbon copy, except that the continents would look funny compared to home. We could afford to lose the 400,000 tonnes of beryllium that the X’ would mine. It was an excellent deal. The X’ were past masters of extracting minerals. They could probably extract the beryllium without digging anything else up if they really wanted to, and it was only the beryllium they really wanted.

Nobody really knew what they did with all the beryllium they collected – ate it for all we knew about them. There were some who said we shouldn’t let them have it, particularly if they were that desperate for it; others said we didn’t need it, so why shouldn’t we capitalise on the fact that someone else wanted something that would potentially be a bit of pain for us to sort out. Berullium used to get used for all sorts of things, mainly as an alloying addition, or in on of its mineral forms such as the semi-precious beryl. It got used in missiles, super-duper special air-frames, X-ray equipment and all sorts of other things but, with the exception of beryl, we’d found better ways than using an element that was a pig to extract and a pain in the…in the…neck to process, let alone recycle at end-of-life. No, we were better off without it.

Without a doubt, the X’ would make back the fees that they paid for the right to set up this mining colony. We’d probably get offered more than we really wanted in purified elements, but the X’ seemed to produce everything at six-9s purity and whatever they produced, we’d end up using or we could sell it at a premium on the galactic market. For example, another element that isn’t used very much anymore – by humans at least – is gold. 24 karat gold was a touchstone for a long time, but even this was only three-9s pure. To go from 99.9% to 99.9999% pure takes so much effort that nobody bothers very much. But the X’ can turn out that without blinking. So, they’ll charge a “processing fee” and we’ll get the materials that are going to help us turn this world into a home.

And that’s where I come in. The X’ are pretty tame as far as aliens go: they’re basically humanoid, sensory appendages aren’t too wacky, no tractomorphic limbs, but the semi-prehensile ears are slightly disconcerting. It would be a mistake to assume that they are human though; it would be a mistake to ascribe human priorities to their thought processes. I like to think that we’d have included this in the contract anyway, but they always insist that we provide a team of inspectors. What they don’t specify, but which we learned to be a priority after the first time, was that you need to have a few X’ specialist xenologists on the team. They really don’t think the way that we do – or perhaps that should be the other way around: we don’t think like them.

There were a couple of points during my university years when I wondered if I’d made the right choices, whether I’d studied myself into a dead-end. The X’ were something of curiosity. On the face of it, we had lots in common, but they never seemed to want to talk to us. Then we started to colonise planets which were rich in beryllium, as rich as any planets could be, and that’s when real first contact, or perhaps I should say first negotiations began.

Which is why I find myself here today. If you were to ascribe a human drive to today’s visit, you’d say that they wanted to show off, that’s the only possible explanation for this demonstration of their engineering prowess, their elegant architecture, their overall better-than-human colony, right? And this is why I’m here. There’s a small group of us who can at least make an attempt at talking to the X’, trying to meet them half-way. We don’t really understand them, and they don’t really understand us. Let’s say it’s a religious function – it isn’t, they don’t have religions in the same way that we do, but it’s a useful shorthand – it’s not something that they’re doing because they want to, it’s something they have to do.

I’d done this enough times that I’d got the measure of it, without becoming blasé. One of the things that the older generations of diplomats had impressed on us newbies in the Xenoc department was that it didn’t take much for things to go south fast. There were frequent reminders of the events on Ross 128c – events that are still classified, so don’t ask me for the gruesome details.

Today was not to be a day when things went wrong, and to be honest we’ve yet to see something that knocks the X’ out of their urbane rut. The Engineers did their thing, the scientists did theirs, and the Security people made a show of ensuring that the only thing the X’ really were taking was the beryllium that they’d done the deal for.

My turn: show time.

I’ve said that the X’ are similar to humans: this extends beyond physiognomy. They share a – not belief exactly…acknowledgment?: they think in terms of the ancient elements of air, wind, fire and earth and so there is only one way to end this review:

“Is coffee not the summit of perfection? Is the drinking of coffee not to be at peace with the Universe?”

“There’s probably some truth in that!” I grinned, ruefully.

“Oh Muuuuum … that’s gross!”
“Someone’s got to deal with our waste product Michael and, because it’s such a nasty job, the pay is good, really good.”
“But still Mum … groooossss!”
“Sweetheart, I think it’s time we had the chat”
“Huh?”
“The one about your father …”
“How did we get from you shovelling poo at work to my father?
“Frankly, it’s not that big a leap …

“Jan, thank you for talking to us at such short notice.”
“Not at all Principal. You know Michael’s schooling has always been of the highest importance to me.”
“Yes, that’s why we decided to speak to you straightaway, rather than leave this small concern festering.”

Jan groaned inwardly. She’d heard this nonsense so many times before, and she knew only too well what it meant. The underlying message was always present in her interactions with authority here on The Colony.

“Thank you Principal, I appreciate that. Has something happened? When last we spoke, you appeared to be satisfied with Michael’s focus and achievement levels.”
“Indeed we were Jan, but in the last few days … well, it’s like he’s had a complete personality switch.”
“Oh? He’s seemed the same at home.”
“He’s been disruptive in class, not handed in his home assignments, even though the work is already complete in his workbooks. When questioned about it, he said he felt there was no point to it any more.”
“Are you suggesting Michael’s suicidal?”
“No, no, not that Jan. I’m sorry to have startled you. The impression I’m getting from reports of his interaction with staff and pupils is that – for some reason – he believes his future is to become a deadbeat, so why should be bother to put in the work now.”

This time Jan’s groans were all too audible. She covered her face with her hands, fighting back the tears.

“Jan, please let us help you. I know your interactions with authority must’ve been challenging. But here at Colony High, we genuinely do admire you. Your work ethic, your high standards, your impeccable morals … honestly Jan, there isn’t a better parent. And the fact that you’ve done it alone, without support from a partner, from parents, from the authorities, makes us all the more admiring of what you’ve achieved. Please Jan, let us – let me – help you?”

When Jan raised her eyes back to the screen, the other members of Colony High’s governing body had been removed from the conversation. Only the Principal’s face remained on screen. In all honesty, he did look truly concerned … and unexpectedly kind.

“I told him the truth about his father.”
“Ah, I see. That can’t have been easy for you.”
“It wasn’t. But it sounds like I let my personal feelings show through which wasn’t my intention.”

A sound like a cross between a sob and a sigh escaped from Jan.

“Michael previously believed his father had died on the journey?”
“Yes. It seemed like the best way not to pass on the stigma until it was unavoidable.” “That decision’s served him well. He’s fully integrated with his peers and whilst not the model pupil, has long been well-regarded by staff and is even on track for the mentor programme.”

This time, there was no mistaking the sob.

“I shouldn’t have said anything. Why oh why did I let my annoyance and ego get the better of me?”
“There’s no need to be so hard on yourself Jan.”
“Yes Principal, I’m afraid there is. All this year, ever since he found out what I do for a living, he’s gone on and on about it. Calling it gross, ragging me, even making me feel guilty that it might reflect on him. Finally, I just snapped.”
“I suppose there’s no option for you to change jobs?”
“No Principal, there isn’t. In order to live here and to keep Michael at Colony High, I need to earn sufficient credits. Dealing with waste disposal is the only job which pays enough so I earn the same as other two-adult families. If Michael’s father had genuinely died on the journey, the Colony would be providing me with a pension to make up the difference. But as he choose to skip out on me – they don’t. They put me under a lot of pressure to return when they first found out. Truth be told, they’re still trying to persuade me to go – just now they use more subtle means. But you know all this. You’ve always judged Michael and me by a different standard to ‘normal’ families. You pick up on tiny transgressions immediately, stuff other ‘normal families’ get away with. I’m not blaming you mind, I’m sure it’s Colony policy as I experience it everywhere.”

Jan raised her eyes back to the screen. The Principal looked pensive.

“I’ve said too much haven’t I? I’d better start packing; the eviction order won’t be long in coming.”
“Jan, whatever makes you think that?”
“I’ve criticised the Colony. We both know dissenters aren’t welcome. Especially ones who don’t fit the ‘normal’ profile. The fact that it was him who deserted me and that I did nothing wrong doesn’t seem to matter – never has. I still get treated like dirt. Only good enough to handle the Colony’s waste matter. Know what? I chose to come here for a new life, but it seems our prejudices came with us.”
“Jan, this conversation has been private for some time now. There is no reason for its substance to be placed on the record, and I will not be doing so. Let me talk to Michael. I can help him to understand. I’ll tell him about being on track for the mentor programme and I’ll offer to be his personal mentor to keep him there. Colony High values both you and Michael. The Colony needs more people like you, regardless of what a few small-minded individuals in authority think.”
“Yes, but …”
“There’s a change happening Jan. Slowly but surely, good fair-minded people are achieving positions of authority. Thinking is changing, policy will follow. Will you let me help you?”

This time, when Jan looked up at the Principal on screen, she smiled through her tears.

“I will Principal. I will.”

Last night I dreamt I went to Barsoom again

I lay down in my hotel room, far from home and low in spirit. In place of the usual Gideon’s, to my surprise, was a copy of “A Princess of Mars” – a first edition, no less. I flipped through the pages in a desultory fashion, at once recalling the the adventures of John Carter and Dejah Thoris and puzzling over the mystery of this volume’s presence in my room.

My eyes started to drift shut, and I placed the book back where I had found it in the bedside drawer. I found my accustomed sleeping position – and immediately fell asleep.

I woke, almost at once it seemed, but with a groggy-start, as if from a deep sleep. I sat up, shook my head and looked around, trying to find the light switch. As I continued the rise from the depths of sleep, I realised that it was already light, about as light as on Spring day.

I looked around. This was most certainly not my bed, not my hotel room. The ground I was sitting on was cold, and covered with greenish-lichen. I got to my feet: the lichen crunched underfoot as a turned around, looking at the terrain. The depression of ground spread out for tens of kilometres in every direction; off in the distance, I could see hills, low and red.

I jumped. It was not as graceful as I had hoped, but John Carter’s first attempts had warned me of what to expect. Leapt and bounded to the top of rise, covering tens of metres with every stride. From my vantage, I looked around and saw two clouds of dust closing on each other. I wished I had binoculars, but had little doubt that two tribes of the fearsome, fearless green warriors of Mars were closing on each other ready for battle and conquest.

Dare I go closer? No. I was sure to be seen and captured, if I did not stop a radium bullet fired with malice or by mistake. I continued to look around, warily returning to view the distant fight from time to time. I saw a flotilla of airships, perhaps from the fair double city of Helium itself, crest the hills. Gracefully they floated across the arid desert-bowl. I stood between the ships and the Green Martians and did not know where to look.

I gazed too long at the airships and, when I turned again, I saw that a part of Green Martians had broken free of the battle and were racing towards me. I turned and ran, taking long jumping strides. I was just able to keep my lead, but I was no Fighting Virginian and quickly became winded. I landed a little too heavily on a rock that shifted underneath me. It threw me off my stride and I tumbled headlong, striking my head on a rock.

Blackness.

I woke in the middle of falling out of bed, and landed on the floor of my hotel room with a bump, that would have been embarrassing if there had been anyone there to see it. I landed on my shoulder, but not too heavily. I sat up and saw the glowing red figures of my travel alarm o’clock. Surely I could only have been asleep for minute, two at the most.

I got back into bed, and wondered why my ankle hurt, why the bed felt gritty.

Fire

Fire. The two-edged sword. Our ancestors thought they’d tamed it when they started using it to cook their food and to drive the darkness back from the cave-entrance. (There’s an irony for you – all they really succeeded in doing was creating shadows, but that’s another story). Fire is never as tame as we think though, and we forget that at our peril. It’s never good when fire gets out of control and you can pretty much guarantee that if you manage to get away from wild-fire with your life intact then you should thank your lucky stars and think about ways to stop pushing your luck. If you are on a ship, or an aircraft, then not only is the situation likely to be an order of magnitude worse but there are fewer ways to escape the situation. It’s easy to say that the automatic systems are going to be correspondingly better, but sometimes that just isn’t enough, and sometimes the automatics are the first things to fail… And when you are on a spacecraft, then things get an order of magnitude worse again.

The automatic systems were amongst those that had been knocked out, but in that whole realm of perversity where you’re never sure whether something is counter-intuitive or not, being in space, whilst making many things more difficult, was going to make putting the fire out a veritable cake-walk. Sort of. And yes, there are a number of factors that I’m failing to mention.

One of the first of many drills that those going into space must learn to do in their sleep is to get into their space-suit as soon as they hear any one of half a dozen warning sirens. I was terribly – nearly terminally – slow getting into my suit. A disgrace to my tutors and more importantly it nearly cost me my life. In my defence, things had been a little…trying of late, although this is not an argument that I would want to make to St. Peter, or more likely a bright red chap with a pitch-fork. Suffice it to say that I had been running a ship that the Board stipulates should have a skeleton crew of three (and deep-space operations are never carried out with skeleton crews), on my own, for over…oh by now about 100 hours.

I’d thought that I’d got things onto a fairly even keel, and taken the opportunity to catch up on some sleep against the time (which I was fairly certain was coming) when I’d need to be back at full alert. Such as when something (I’ll probably never know exactly what) ended up working a little too hard, sending a shower of sparks over something else already at a critical level and leading to the most recent of my problems.

Should there have been enough of my mortal remains left to find at some stage in the future, the pathologist would have had a tough time choosing a cause of death. Since fatigue never actually killed anyone except through the kind of circumstances where a man is struggling to put his suit on in an emergency, they would probably have gone for smoke inhalation. Just before the point where that would have been the only decision left to make, and after all, one that was out of my control, my hind brain realised what was going, and gave me a swift kick in the form of convulsive coughing. I dragged myself into my suit and felt the cooling flow of air as I sealed the helmet. There was a worrying moment as my fume fogged brain searched for the leak which my nose said had to be somewhere since I could smell and feel the biting, acrid smoke drying out my nose and throat. As the oxygen cleared my head I realised that it was simply that the filters of the recirculating system were struggling to cope with the smoke that was clinging to my ship-suit and hair – it had been that close.

As has already been intimated, many of the automatic systems were down – the fire suppression system being the one that I was currently missing the most. Bits of damage control were still up. In theory it should have sealed the compartments automatically, but obviously hadn’t. I said a brief prayer (scripture actually tells us to ask for things – we might not get them, but it’s ok to ask) as I bypassed the subroutine and keyed the doors to close: the alternative was that I’d have to close the doors manually. There were two things wrong with that. One I probably wouldn’t have enough time before the fire spread. Two I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of the compartment that was merrily ablaze to close the other hatch. I’d be in danger of losing half the ship including access to the power and propulsion systems. I punched the button and mercy of mercies the hatches closed.

Have you ever come across the triangle of fire? Basically it states that for combustion to occur there must be three ingredients: a source, fuel and oxygen. Remove any one of these and the fire will be controlled, contained and (hopefully) put out. It is something that is true for all fires, even those that occur in micro-gravities (and therefore obey obscure physical principles not seen in the general course of life planet-side).

It was slightly drastic, but as I’ve already said, I was on my own and to avoid some of the big risks I was willing to take a few (reasonably) small ones. I bypassed various connections to the air conditioning system and created a direct link between the department that was being toasted and the nearest airlock, which I vented, removing the air from the compartment and snuffing out the fire. I resealed the airlock, but left the compartment under vacuum. Safer, in the long run, as it would allow me to ensure that the fire was fully out. You’d be amazed at how long things can smoulder for, and residual heat can be a real problem. Not to mention free radicals. In ancient times hunters and the like would carry a piece of charred wood, usually still smouldering, in a special container since it is easier to (re-)ignite than even dry wood because the free-radicals reduce the energy required to start the oxidising reaction. Not that there is that much wood on a spaceship, but the science holds for other polymers of which there are several tonnes worth on even the smallest of spacecraft.

I was in big trouble. FTL was out of the question and even the ion drives were going to be temperamental at best. Long range comms were patchy. I was hoping that my AI companion was still mentally in one piece and that it was just having trouble talking to the ship’s computer. It would be a while before I could sort that problem out, so for the time being I would ignore it. Ok. What are the positives? Well, for a start I’m still alive…