Episode 1: Prologue

Loka was bored. Taking a break from her monotonous work, she read, for perhaps the millionth time, a curious log entry from one of the colonists prior to his boarding the ship. He was a scientist of some sort or the other; she had never read his civi-stats, of course, as a colonist’s expertise and personal history were of no concern to one in her position. His writing, however, had struck a chord with her. Loka’s mind had seized upon the guiding metaphor in his entry as if it were something other than simple words. Though she had no real concept of life outside the Arrival, the passage seemed to be a kind of key to some hidden universal truth:

Time, in sufficient quantity, is almost always fatal. Like an insistent wind, swirling and relentless, time gathers life up with its gusts, carrying it aloft for a while before depositing it, motionless and silent, back amongst the stars from which it had sprung. For we are all, we creatures of blood and breath, the children of stars. We spread out on the breeze not simply to prolong origins of our existence. We are very like our parents; we spread out in the fullness of the wind, letting it fan the flames of existence, our very spirit, before we burn out, once more dark and cold and empty.

For Loka, the passage of time had been nearly imperceptible on board the Arrival. As the lone android on the fore-bridge of the huge colony vessel, her responsibilities included, among other things, monitoring the ship’s automated systems for abnormalities. Of course, there were seldom any abnormalities; it was a simple case of the colonists—the cryosleep passengers aboard the Arrival—being extraordinarily careful. She would have called it paranoid if she had been able to associate that concept with her creators. At any rate, she had been on the Arrival—had been alive—for a very long time, even for an android. She and time were like old friends, wandering together out here among the stars.

The colonists had seen fit to provide her with a small view panel, ostensibly so that she could call up various views of the ship’s exterior and immediate surroundings. There was nothing for her to watch during the interstellar voyage, though, as the ship’s own movement was relatively insignificant.  At any given moment, the glittering stars and galaxies dotting the dark curtain of empty space outside the vessel seemed fixed and immutable. The ‘window’ did nothing more than emphasize her solitude. When she wasn’t monitoring her assigned readouts, though, she found her gaze wandered almost longingly towards the screen and out among the stars.

Punching a few keys on the console in front of her, Loka projected an enhanced image of those stars superimposed over the real thing. It was an image of the field taken almost five years earlier, and the shift was obvious. The constellations had stretched over that time, indicating that they had indeed been moving forward; that was somewhat reassuring. At least something was changing, if only very slowly. Eventually the time for deceleration would come, and she would change her routine to accommodate the slow approach of the Arrival to its destination. For her, any change was a welcome one.

Tap tap tap.

The familiar and yet startling noise once again succeeded in breaking her out of her reverie. What was that sound? A day or two ago when she’d first heard it, she had assumed it was some fault in the ship’s design manifesting itself after so many years of traveling silently through space. But how could that be? This particular design had been built for many millennia and had been sent out, filled to capacity with sleeping cargo, to colonize distant parts of the galaxy. The armies of intelligent—even faultless—synthetic engineers responsible for the colony ships couldn’t have made such an error. And yet…

Tap tap tap.

Loka turned off her primary display, stood up, and walked through the back door of the fore-bridge into the small chamber that served as her dining room, washroom, and sleeping facilities; it was her home, more so even than the fore-bridge. At the back of that room a lone door separated Loka from the millions of passengers onboard the Arrival. There were men, women, children, and even infants whose lives had simply been stopped, put on hold to await their future. Suspended in cryofreeze, their delicate metabolisms had been painstakingly slowed to near zero. Dependent upon machines—both warm and cold—of their own creation, the inhabitants of the vessel cheated time, if only for a while, as their fragile bodies traversed formidable gaps of nothingness to colonize the stars. Thousands upon thousands of cryoboxes stacked like coffins after some great holocaust filled most of the ship’s hold, and it was Loka’s job to make sure they arrived safely at their ultimate destination.

Tap tap tap—the sound was almost insistent this time.

Was somebody trying to communicate with her? Impossible—the thought was dismissed out of hand. And yet, there was obviously something making the sound. Loka smiled; in the nearly empty depths of space, after thousands of years of trackless boredom, a mystery was a welcome change. Even better was the fact that according to her instructions, mysterious phenomena were to be investigated.

Loka swept her long, golden hair to the side and pressed her ear against the door, listening for more of the tapping noises. All she could hear was the hum of the engine almost a kilometer away; she had come to know that sound so well that it was both soothing and irritating. Her fingers played against the cold metal and her eyes searched through the sealed glass, trying to make out something—anything—in the darkness beyond. She fancied that she could make out shapes or shadows, and for a moment she swore she saw movement, but this was impossible, as there was nobody else awake on the ship. Perhaps if she were permitted beyond that door, she might discover the cause, but that option was closed to her. The portal may as well have been welded shut.

The thought suddenly crossed her mind that she might be malfunctioning, even crazy, though she knew androids from her line did not develop mental defects. While earlier models had been somewhat unpredictable, geas-enabled androids seldom experienced any difficulties serving their creators. The colonists had designed her line particularly well—there had never been problems or malfunctions with her class, at least none that had ever been reported. Loka wondered if she might be the first. Then again, maybe there were no tapping noises. Perhaps this was just another form of punishment being administered by her own internal disciplinarian for letting her thoughts wander.

A sudden movement in the darkness beyond the sealed glass transfixed her. There was no doubt in her mind that she’d seen it that time. Her heart raced as her alert levels increased and her senses sharpened. Holding her breath, she waited for a moment to confirm her sighting. After only a few seconds she saw it: a small dark shape moving laterally across the dark corridor, stopping beside the shadowy bulk of one of the cryo-freezers.

to be continued...

Copyright © 2004 Jay and David Steele. All rights reserved.

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