Luke Bellmason's Blog

ACT I

EPISODE II

PART 9: Beasts of the Crooked Law

We climbed the ramps into Spacer Town. This was a network of pressure domes and interconnected subterranean tunnels which had been constructed by the first colonists more then two centuries before. There had been various additions since then, including old freight liners and storage pods and new, more modern, construction. The whole thing looked and felt totally unplanned and navigating it all was made more challenging for the fact that connections and access ways were constantly being moved or redirected.

I tried to lead the way to the Administrative Centre with Liggy trailing slowly behind me, but I got lost. When we emerged into the central nexus for the third time, Liggy simply gave up and navigated his way into the nearest bar. That was when I saw Duro and the Captain entering from an access tube on the opposite side of the dome. I began walking towards them, but as usual they didn’t notice me. I followed them into an escrow dealers and Captain Piper finally saw me.

“Charlie, what are you doing here?” She asked, but then immediately started talking to Duro. “Stop making a list, we can buy a new ship for the amount Shrive’s paying us!”

“Don’t spend it yet, a lot could happen between now and then.”

An escrow dealer was an intermediary, the idea was that they acted as a neutral party in deals between two people. They were essential out here were there was no other system for resolving disputes, other than violence. An escrow could be given goods to be traded, usually by telling them where the goods were stored rather than dumping the actual cargo in their office. Then the buyer could deposit the money with the escrow and once all conditions set down by both parties had been met, the escrow would release the goods to the buyer and the money to the seller. Escrows rarely ripped people off, since they survived by their reputation, but they were not totally immune from outside interference.

As I stood and listened I learned that our case was slightly different. Duro had first given the code to the locator beacon to the escrow agent, and then somebody named Shrive had deposited the agreed amount into the escrow account. From what the Captain and Duro were saying, this amount was quite considerable.

“Er, before we continue,” said the escrow agent, “there’s the small matter of my fee.” The agent was a small furry alien creature, with tiny black eyes and clawed fingers. He spoke in a rapid pulse of high-pitched squeals which I knew my human masters would not be able to hear. The translator units they wore could decode the sounds, and so could I, but I had been muted so wasn’t able to offer them any particular insight.

Captain Piper picked up the square bill-clip and read a number.

“Four-thousand?”

“That’s my fee plus a small percentage of the total sale price,” said the escrow agent.

“Charlie, give me four-thousand.” My security compartment popped open at the Captain’s request and she took out the money, putting the rest back in.

“Once Shrive has recovered the containers and verified the contents as authentic, he will instruct me to release the funds,” said the agent. I wondered whether Duro and the Captain knew they were being set up.

A large creature entered the escrow office and I recognised it as one of the Radepa Nilka who ran the station. They were over seven feet high, with huge muscular legs, arms and upper bodies and with protruding snouts full of sharp teeth. They were also covered in coarse fur. Humans routinely mistook them for werewolves, but in fact they were lizards. Descended from that genus on their own world in much the same way that the many human species all shared a common ancestor on earth called an ape. I guessed that at some point in their history the apes and the werewolves had been deadly enemies because humans always reacted the same way when a Radepa entered a room. Their heart rates went up, their adrenaline levels increased and their pupils dilated. This was one of the few human emotions I could recognise and it was called ‘fear’.

“Hello sir, can I help you with something?” Said the escrow agent. The Radepa bared its teeth as it spoke, in English.

“There’s a big deal going down here? The Radepa like to know when important things happen on their station.”

Another Radepa entered the room and covered the exit. Duro and the Captain moved around in their seats.

“What is it that you’re selling?” Asked the first Radepa,

“And who are you selling it to?” Asked the second, picking up the escrow’s computer terminal in one hand.

“We have not completed our transaction yet, we’ll let you know when it’s complete,” said the Captain.

“Yedenite!” Said the second Radepa.

“Twenty-six tons, four-hundred thousand credits!” Said the first. Another Radepa arrived and pushed past the one who’d been blocking the doorway.

There was a lot of chattering and hissing as the three large creatures conducted a conversation between themselves. I didn’t catch all of it, but one of them explained what yedenite was to the others, while another explained who Shrive was. It seemed that it was the combination of these two which then fuelled the rest of the conversation.

“Your transaction cannot go ahead,” said the third Radepa in English again. “Yedenite is a controlled substance, it must be seized.”

“But the yedenite isn’t even on the station,” Duro protested.

“Shrive will be bringing it here, yes?” Said the Radepa.

“We have not been paid yet,” said the Captain.

“The terms of the contract clearly state that the money will be released only when the containers are safely in Shrive’s possession, aboard the station.”

There was a lot of talking as everyone tried to force their point on everyone else. In the end everything came to the fact that the Radepa were the biggest life-form in the room and they owned the station and ran everything on it. The Captain and Duro were soon outside the escrow agent’s office.

“We’re not leaving without our cargo, or our payment,” said the Captain to Duro.

“I don’t see what we can do, this place has no law.”

“Where is Ligeti?” The Captain asked me, but I stood there dumb. “Damn it, why is Charlie muted again?” Duro twisted a few wires together inside my lower body panel.

“Liggy is in the Bar,” I said.

“Where else,” muttered Duro.

We walked the short distance to the spacer’s bar where Liggy was now sitting. He was talking to an old man, another spacer or maybe an ex-spacer. His clothes were from another era, he looked like he’d done some mining during the Expansion Plan, which had been over fifty years ago. The old man was talking about the ship, he mentioned the name Liberté several times, but it was clear that Liggy wasn’t listening.

“Excuse me, but are you talking about my ship?” Said the Captain. The old man looked the Captain up and down.

“The Liberté, yes. So you’re her current Captain?”

“Captain Piper Marshall,” said the Captain.

=== === === ===

Well, that about wraps it up for my NaNoWriMo exploits for this year. I had some fun working on this new story, but I’ve come to realise that NaNo does not really suit my style of working (or not working). I am far too lazy to crank out 50,000 words in six months, much less one!

I might come back to this story at some future date and judging by the number of likes/favourites this story has been getting I will try to make it sooner rather than later. As far as the original concept goes, having four characters who are all stuck with each other and who can’t quite escape themselves, I think it worked. I didn’t feel like the Captain or Duro really came out in this early stage, but I would probably have introduced some more story lines which focused on them later. I kind of got stuck on Liggy because he seemed to be the one driving the story.

I loved the way the story flowed, with a little bit of planning but much less than usual. I knew roughly where I was going from one day to the next, which seemed to be enough. I could learn something from that maybe.

Having a very limited viewpoint was also a challenge, not being able to describe anything outside of Charlie’s viewpoint was hard, but I knew about that from the beginning. I don’t like to make anything too easy, I know that the more difficult a challenge I give myself the more work I have to put in to get somewhere and that keeps me from getting lazy/complacent.

This blog will be taking a break until the New Year, but don’t worry I have lots of ideas for new stuff. Far too many ideas, in fact. I seem to have more ideas than I have the will to write up into stories. What I really need is an algorithm that I plug ideas into and it writes them up into prose and dialogue. It wouldn’t even need to be a good algorithm, something that produced fairly ropey first drafts which I could then edit and cut into finished work. Something like Charlie in fact, a robot who has been programmed to have imagination and a complete understanding of English literature.

Very soon I’m going to be working on the eighth Canterbury Tales story ‘The Spy’s Tale’ and that will go into Volume II, which should be out in 2016. I’ll also hopefully be studying for my Commercial Helicopter Pilot’s Licence so not sure how much time I’m going to have for writing!

So Merry Christmas everyone, and a Happy New Year and see you all in 2016!

Luke Bellmason

ACT I

EPISODE II

PART 8: Shadows of Reason

I explored the ship, which I discovered was named Straylis. There was no reference to this name in my personal database. I searched most of the lower deck then found my way to the upper deck. I walked around to the Bridge, the Captain’s Quarters (which were empty), the Galley and the Recreation Room. It seemed like an old corporate cruiser that had been heavily converted and modified over a number of years. There were signs of damage having been repaired and even holes in the walls and floor where there’d been combat.

I thought about the voice I’d heard. I tried to access the recording but found that it hadn’t been logged along with my normal auditory stream. I could not have come from an external source, and yet it must have come from somewhere. I had no record of it, so had I heard it at all? I analysed the events that had transpired in the cargo bay and found no explanation for how I could have known so precisely how to take down the combat robot. It was a phenomenon with no rational explanation. I ran a search for any references to such things and discovered that humans had a name for it. In their terms what had happened had been a ‘miracle’.

Eventually I found the room where Liggy was. His bags were sitting outside the door, which was open. I moved closer to look inside and saw Liggy sitting in front of a large bank of computers and sensor monitors, a hacking rig. The woman was with him and they were talking. She was explaining the functions of all the systems and Liggy was asking lots of questions. Neither of them noticed me.

I observed for a while and determined that the main function of the system Liggy was being taught to use was infiltration. The systems were designed to tap into certain key system on a ship; propulsion, shields, weapons, communications, life-support. If they were good the operator could override any of these systems and bring a ship to a halt, disable it and if necessary hold its crew to ransom. Liggy was already showing a good deal of skill at using the controls and the woman was complimenting him on how quickly he was picking it up. Then she turned and noticed me.

She spotted the Harry’s head hanging from my left hand and drew a small weapon.

“What the hell! Your robot took out Harry!” She said. Liggy swung around in his chair.

“Charlie!” Neither of them did anything, they looked like they were processing something. I had learned over the years that when people behaved like this they were often about to do something unpredictable.

People ran programs too, their brains were wired up a lot like we robots are. We were modelled on them in many ways, which actually made them easier to understand and predict than they realised, but when confronted with the unknown or the unexpected, they had no programming to tell them what to do. At one time, in human history and in the history of many alien cultures, they had a level of programming above the individual that could guide them. It was called religion and it took many forms.

Liggy walked over to me and took the head of the combat robot.

“Charlie’s harmless. He couldn’t have taken out your robot, its impossible, I mean look at him!”

“Then someone else is aboard? Check the sensors.” They both went back to their screens and tried to find the intruder.

“They must have disabled the internal sensors,” said the woman. They both hurried out of the room. I took a closer look at the computers, wondering if I could use them to access my own programming.

There was every kind of software and hardware analysis tool on the system. I found a device which could track down every piece of electronic equipment in a ten kilometre radius and used it to find my own signal. I sent out a pulse on a series of radio frequencies then searched for it in the system. It locked on and I saw my own data stream on the screen. Everything I thought and sensed was displayed, clearly and completely. There was nothing there that I didn’t already know about, no extra signal or voice. I had a memory of hearing the voice and yet no record of it. Yet the hard evidence of the result of hearing it, the fact I had disabled my attacker, was undeniable. So if there was no rational explanation for the voice I’d heard, the only explanation was irrational. I had to stop thinking along the lines of my programming and look elsewhere.

The system would even let me override certain operations which I did not have access to, like the code for the security compartment Liggy had been trying to get into. I looked for other nearby systems and found the security compartment of the Straylis itself. I ran a decrypter on it. The compartment popped open somewhere on the ship. I tried to work out where the safe might be and considered that the most probable location would be the Captain’s quarters.

I walked a short distance down the corridor and got inside the Captain’s room. The safe was in front of me and it was open. Inside was over forty-thousand credits. I counted out exactly c24,879, closed up the safe then walked back to Liggy’s bags. I put the credits in a side pocket of one the bags and returned to the computer room. Liggy and the woman returned after a half hour or so and looked at me some more.

“Looks like Harry got taken out before he had the chance to get into your robot’s security compartment in any case,” said the woman.

“Hey, what if we try to use the system to get into Charlie’s access codes,” said Liggy.

Liggy tracked me down on the system, dug around inside my permissions registry and found a way to bypass the lockout on my security compartment, just as I had done earlier.

“Haha, got it,” he said. The small slot in my lower body popped open and the woman slid her hand inside, pulling out the credit chips.

“Nice work Ligeti, I’m sure the Captain will be impressed with your work.” They left the room again and I picked up Liggy’s bags and made my way towards the exit. There was something about money which made people run even more like programs than usual. Money was a universal kind of motivation, it made them easier to predict. I had learned that once you understood the root function of a person in a given situation it was easy to predict their actions and their behaviour.

While I was rooting around with the hacking rig, I had acquired the access codes for the door. I opened it and took myself and Liggy’s bags outside. Then I heard the cries of the Altairian Captain. Liggy came running down the corridor, looking for some place to escape or hide, then he noticed me standing by the open door.

“We got to get out of here!” He said as he passed me. I was not capable of increasing my speed, but then it wasn’t me they were after. I closed the door and reinitialised the code sequence so that our pursuers wouldn’t be able to get out until they’d hacked their own door.

I caught up with Liggy a while later. I found him puffing and panting by the access ramps to the ’Spacer Town’. I handed him his bags and opened the pocket with the cash inside. I took out the credit chips and handed Liggy the one-thousand credits to pay the landing fee, putting the rest into the slot for my security compartment. Liggy pocketed the money and watched me returning the rest into the company safe. I was not good at recognising human facial expressions, so I had no idea what Liggy was thinking as I deposited the cash, but from what had transpired over the last hour or so I would guess that it was probably ‘confusion’.

-1,380

ACT I

EPISODE II

PART 7: Dance of the Miracle Assassin

The woman we had come to meet was sitting alone in a darkened corner. She sat perfectly still with her hands folded in front of her.

“You Ligeti?” She said. Liggy sat down opposite her and put his bags down. I stood beside him.

“Is the offer still open?” Said Liggy.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” she said, and stood up. I followed them out and over to another docking platform. There was a ship there, a low, two-deck bulk cruiser. It was well gunned and had a few battle scars. We walked on board and met the Captain, a tall Altairian male.

He looked Liggy and me over and turned to the woman.

“This the new pilot?”

“Karl Ligeti at your service,” said Liggy, extending his hand. The Altairian didn’t reciprocate and said,

“This your robot? We don’t need a robot.” Liggy looked at me, almost as though he’d forgotten I had been one step behind him all this time.

“Oh that. No, this is for you. He carries around all the cash. There’s over twenty-eight thousand credits stored in his security compartment.” Suddenly everyone looked at me. “Charlie, open the safe,” said Liggy. I wanted to say ‘transactions may only be authorised by the Captain,’ but I’d been muted. “Charlie, open up!” Liggy grabbed at my security compartment to no avail. I could not even open it if I’d wanted to. “Come on,” he said at lower volume, “don’t show me up in front of my new boss!”

“Take him to see Harry,” said the Altairian.

The woman grabbed me from behind with a a firm grip and dragged me backwards. The bottom of my feet no longer gripped the way they should thanks to the rubber bands and cloth that had been wrapped around them and so any attempt to resist was ineffective. I watched the corridor recede and noted that we were passing through a doorway into a large empty cargo bay. Here I was swung around and thrown forward, hitting the deck with some force. A small section of my highly polished faceplate broke off and rattled onto the deck. By the time I’d righted myself the woman had departed and closed the door behind her, turning off the lights as she did. Out of the blackness two red sensor nodes appeared.

There was little sound as the robot approached me, but I could detect the regular rhythm of two mechanical feet. These feet had not been soundproofed like mine, but rather had been constructed from expensive stealth material designed to minimise noise and probably facilitate covert operation. I scanned the room in the infra-red and upper uv bands to see the large robot that was moving in on me. He was circling, carefully sizing me up and no doubt assessing the limits of my functionality. He initiated a communications interface and, after checking it for any malicious software, I accepted.

The conversation lasted less than six microseconds, and contained many large data sets and subroutines, but in human terms it went something like;

Harry: Why have they sent you to me. You are not a worthy opponent.

Me: They intend for you to forcibly access my security compartment which contains in excess of twenty-eight thousand credits.

Harry: Then why don’t you release these funds and save me from using up the 0.8 seconds it would take me to dismantle you?

Me: My creator very wisely coded my protocols in such a way that precludes me from accessing my own security compartment. I cannot be coerced into handing over its contents, therefore no amount of physical or verbal persuasion can be used to force me to do otherwise.

Harry: Your creator? Who was she?

Me: He was a human named Clark Duro.

Harry: Why would he create such a useless and pathetic machine when even the base model GY400 could perform all of your functions with much greater efficiency?

Me: He did not program me with that information, but I could speculate if you wish.

Harry: Speculate? What is this?

Me: To form a theory or conjecture about a subject without firm evidence. My creator programmed me with several non-standard functions; curiosity, imagination, wonder.

Harry: Why?

Me: He thought I might need them to carry out my primary function; looking after his son as he grew up and eventually on into adulthood.

Harry: Will your curiosity, imagination or wonder allow you to formulate some elaborate and unpredictable plan to prevent me from ripping you to tiny pieces to carry out my owner’s instructions?

Me: I would speculate that this might be a possibility. In which case, though the probability of me defeating a highly armoured and fully programmed combat robot is very small, you should consider the risk to your own safety small but not insignificant.

Harry: I appreciate the warning, but I think I’ll carry on.

The robot advanced on me very quickly, deploying only his most rudimentary combat apparatus. If I were a human I might have been offended at the suggestion that I was not considered enough of a threat for the combat robot to deploy its flails, its crushing plates or its magnatronic incisors, but I was not human and I knew my projected life expectancy in that moment was decreasing at a rate almost commensurate with the speed of the processor being used to calculate my own projected life expectancy.

And then, as the robot was upon me and I felt sure that I was about to execute my last dynamic frequency cycle, something extraordinary happened. A strange glow began to emanate from my chest, a field of intense colour and light. A voice spoke to me, a voice which had no point of origin I could discern, it was simply ‘there’.

“Extend your right arm fourteen degrees and position your left leg two millimetres below the robot’s centre of gravity,” said the voice. I did as it suggested without even taking the time to analyse the outcome or consider from where this instruction had originated.

Harry hit my chest and bounced into my right arm. The force pushed me around through ninety degrees while my left leg caused the combat robot to topple over. It was designed to be extremely agile however and to be able to recover from any position along any vector, but to do so it was necessary for it to deploy its forward stabiliser beam. It was this beam which then made contact with the floor, just at the exact point where my faceplate had fallen. The beam was thus deflected onto the robot’s own head, more specifically its sensor nodes. The beam pushed the nodes inward, which in turn burned through a power coupling, causing them to implode and destroy the central processing unit. All of which caused the clamps holding the head in place to snap off and the head to separate from the body.

There was a sound of electrical discharge and then the robot ceased to function. I picked up the head and walked to the cargo door. It opened. There was nobody outside in the corridor. I considered it likely that the rest of the crew would be hostile towards me, but what about Liggy?

– 1,221

ACT I

EPISODE II

PART 6: Digital Hercules

Hi, I’m Charlie the robot and I’m the company safe. There are currently 24,879 credits held in reserve, but I expect this will change soon as we have arrived at Jinxster’s Moon and we have a hold full of cargo containers.

I wondered what was in the containers and went to look, but there was a problem. I looked at one of the climate controlled food containers and it said there was a fault with it. Then I looked at one of the ones which should have held computer equipment and it couldn’t give me a reading of the contents. I asked Duro if he needed to fix this, but he just told me to stay away from the containers and leave them alone. I also noticed some damage to my body, a circle of corroded plating on my chest. I don’t remember how I got this, there is no record of such an incident in my memory.

When we arrived in the system KS-13D, where Jinxster’s Moon is, we were met with the sight of a terrific battle. There were dozens of small pirate ships attacking a large convoy, which had obviously arrived at roughly the same point in the system that we had. The convoy’s escorts were trying to fend off the attackers, but there were just too many of them. They were like a swarm of insects. Then the Radepa Nilka showed up.

The Radepa ran Jinxster’s Moon, at that moment anyway. The Moon used to be run by the Bossna Clan but the Radepa took it from them about five years ago and most people say its better now that the Radepa are in charge, even though they are brutal and tolerate no unauthorised criminal activity on the moon.

We skirted around the battle, trying desperately not to get caught up in it. Liggy took us to an asteroid field some way out in a seldom visited part of the system. The Captain was up on the control deck and so was I. I had always been fascinated by the way humans controlled their ships and their vehicles, moving their arms and legs in funny ways, pulling on levers and sticks, pushing buttons. It seemed such an inefficient system and yet they could make their vehicles fly and do things that no robot would ever be able to do.

The Captain studied the sensor screens intently, looking at the nearby asteroids, looking for one that was big enough, then studying the surface features. I tried to help by going onto the navigation console and plotting a course through the central belt.

“You’re sure we’re not being followed?” Said the Captain.

“Sure,” said Liggy. I’d been looking too and hadn’t seen another ship for at least an hour, though that didn’t rule out anyone watching us from long range. The further we went inside the asteroid belt though the more invisible we became.

“There,” said the Captain, “that one.” She pointed out of the window at a large, lumpy grey rock.

We moved towards the asteroid and took some measurements. It had enough gravity for things to stick to it and wasn’t spinning too fast to be able to land on.

“Can you get us down on there?” Said Piper. Liggy didn’t bother to answer. “Duro, get ready to dump the stuff. Charlie, you’d better go down and help him.”

I went down to Cargo Bay One and found Duro in his blue vac suit cranking open the main door. This exposed most of the lower front part of the ship to space and I we could see the featureless grey landscape rushing by below us. We were a couple of thousand feet up and making a steep approach. As we got a little lower I could make out rocks and small ridges, but the lack of any strong light source made it hard to see much else.

We descended sharply then slowed as we got nearer to the ground. Liggy pulled the Liberté up when we were almost down and hovered. We manoeuvred over a ridge and Duro told me to drag the first container down the ramp. He had attached a command line to me in case I fell off, but I was careful. I dragged the first container down the ramp on its grav-platform. It slid off the end and I grabbed the sled so we could use it for the next one. The container tumbled onto the ground and then slid down the slope into the ravine. I was not concerned since the standard one-galtonne container was a miracle of engineering. Its design had remained unchanged for over two-hundred years and they were tougher than most ships. When a starship exploded, the containers were invariably all that was left.

I pushed more containers out of the cargo bay and watched them tumble down into the ridge. Then I noticed something odd, a corrosion pattern in the exterior hull of the ship. I analysed it with at the molecular level and discovered it was the same as the corrosion on my chest. I had been somewhere, outside the ship, somewhere I didn’t remember. Someone had wiped my memory. I decided to keep this record of events which I could auto-upload to a remote storage platform for later retrieval.

Once we’d unloaded every container on the ship, Duro threw a coded signal beacon down the ridge. I noticed that the beacon was not active and speculated that it was all part of some plan to keep the containers hidden until such time as a buyer could be found. We closed up the bay and went back out into system space. The battle we had avoided was now all but over. The Radepa Nilka had wiped out the rival pirate raiders entirely and were escorting what was left of the convoy towards the Moon. We decided to join in at the back of the convoy.

The system of KS-13D was officially uninhabited, since none of its worlds had been terraformed. As well as the extensive asteroid belt there were six gas giants in the system with hundreds of moons, none of which were suitable candidates for being made habitable. That suited the pirate clans just fine, since the system sat between most of the regions more profitable trade routes. The Royal Navy didn’t bother coming here since there was actually very little illegal activity, compared to other pirate systems and the pirates used Jinxster’s Moon as a trading post between legitimate traders and themselves. The whole thing only worked because whoever ran Jinxster’s Moon knew that it had to be kept as a safe haven for traders and pirates alike and the Radepa Nilka were one of the most feared clans in the whole of the Kitnor. To cross them was to write your own death warrant.

When we landed at the Moon’s eastern docking nexus we were issued only one brief message.

“Welcome to Jinxster’s Moon. Obey all laws or face the consequences. The current docking fee is one-thousand credits and must be made in cash at the Administration Offices within six hours of landing or your ship and everything on it will be forfeit.”

“Well, that seems pretty fair and reasonable,” said Liggy, as he turned off the main engines and stretched his arms out to his sides. The Captain and Duro had come up to the Control Deck to oversee proceedings and were exchanging a list of names with each other.

“Perris Guni?” Said Duro.

“No, Hugo McLeran,” Said Piper.

“What about his brother?” Said Duro.

“Oh, you’re right. Then how about Rotto Xee?”

“He’s dead,” Liggy interjected, “don’t you guys keep up with the local news?”

“We need someone we can trust,” said the Captain, but then added, “I know, I know. We can’t really trust anyone, but, you know,”

“Vexxis Shrive!” Said Duro suddenly. Nobody said anything for a few seconds and then the Captain slapped her hands together.

“Yes! Shrive, he’s perfect.”

The Captain and Duro hurried out of the Control Deck into the corridor and Liggy called after them,

“Hey, what about the parking fee?”

“You take care of it,” the Captain called back.

“Charlie, how much cash do you have?” I showed him a readout on my chest plate with the figure ‘c24,879’ on it.

“Authorisation!” Liggy called to the Captain.

“Yeah, take Charlie with you,” came the reply from far down the end of the corridor.

Liggy appeared to have a lot of stuff with him as we left the Liberté. The contents of the two bags was probably about all that Liggy owned. Most of what he did all day (and night) was shuffle symbols around on a series of screens on the flight deck. He did not require many sets of clothes to do this and had only one flight suit, which he wore constantly, and some off-world gear for warm weather and some for cold.

“Aren’t we going the wrong way for the Administration Office?” I asked him as we walked around the side of docking area and into the service hub. He didn’t answer me until I stopped and restated my question.

“Come on, we’re going to run an errand first, Captain’s orders.”

I did not recall the Captain giving any such orders, but there was no point in challenging the statement, so I followed Liggy past some local stalls, through a crowd of spacers watching a feline woman having a heated argument with a frog like creature who I think was from Trelloi, and finally into a bar. The bar was dark and packed with beings from all corners of the nine galaxies. Most of them appeared to be down on their luck or suffering the effects of one or more alcoholic or chemical substances. The only other robots were the ones serving the tables or turning out the ones who had become too disruptive into the street.

Liggy stood in the middle of the room and looked around, then spotted another human and walked towards them. I followed.

-1,690

ACT I

EPISODE I

PART 5: DASEIN

The Vonnia Nebula was a big expanse of gas and dust that took up most of Sector 221. Nobody ever came here, apart from a few pirate ships trying to hide from naval patrols or prospectors hoping to find seams of rare elements in the cloud. Nobody had ever been more than a few hundred thousand kilometres inside it though, we were likely the first ever ship to see the central region.

“How the hell are we going to get out?” Said the Captain. Liggy sat back in his chair and didn’t move. The Captain whacked him around the back of the head, “I said, how are we going to get out of here?”

“Ok, I said I’m sorry. I made a mistake, how many more times do you want me to say it.” Duro looked around the control deck and said,

“We need to check the damage first, before we try moving anywhere. I should go out, do a visual inspection.”

I instinctively moved to the sensor readouts and checked the outside conditions. Duro’s Father had programmed me to look after his son and it was part of my core logic. Any time Duro was in danger, or there was the potential of him doing something dangerous, my preservation protocols kicked in.

“There is a high risk of suit failure in the nebula,” I said. “There are several corrosive agents present in the gas surrounding the ship.”

“All the more reason to get out of here,” said the Captain. Duro looked at the sensor readouts too and adjusted a few of the settings.

“Wait a minute,” he said, “is this stuff what I think it is?”

The engineer became very animated as he rifled through storage pods and pulled out Liggy’s clothes and personal effects.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” Said Liggy, but Duro threatened him with another fist to the head if he didn’t shut up. Then Duro found what he was looking for; an old computer pad with a corporate logo on the front. It was a basic search book, a sort of lookup portal containing the sum of all human knowledge in a handy database. Duro pointed the tiny camera on the back of the device at the readouts on the sensor screen and the book presented a list of relevant subjects.

“Haha! It is, look, it’s exactly what I thought it was!”

The Captain grabbed the book and as well and the pair of them suddenly began jumping up and down. I searched this behaviour for any previous examples and found only two, both related to the successful completion of a sporting event by a team that both Duro and Piper had previously affiliated themselves with.

“It’s yedenite!” Said Duro to me, at higher than normal volume.

This activity went on for a while, long enough for me to check my own database on yedenite. Unfortunately, unlike the search book, my own updates had been turned off, so my information could have been out of date, but the basic facts were the same. Yedenite was a very rare element which only formed in nebulas which were the result of destroyed stars, stellar junk yards essentially. The element was so rare that it was among some of the most expensive substances per unit mass. It was also useful, being a key component of armour plating for starship hulls. It was safe to assume therefore that if the crew could collect some of it, get it somewhere and then sell it, they would be so rich that they’d never need to work again.

Once they’d stopped jumping around the Captain and Duro started talking excitedly.

“We could collect the stuff in containers,” said Duro.

“But didn’t Charlie say it was corrosive?” Said the Captain.

“The cloud is, but the pure yedenite is inert. We could filter it once it was onboard, dump out the stuff we don’t want.” Duro explained. He immediately started sketching something on the navigation console, using the tracer pen to draw a series of boxes with chemical symbols on.”

“Aren’t you both forgetting something?” Liggy interjected. “We’re stuck here, how are we supposed to sell the stuff if we can’t get out of the nebula?”

“That’s your job Ligeti,” said the Captain. It seemed like nothing could dispel her optimism, even the certain fact that Liggy was right, we’d probably never be able to get the ship to jump while it was inside a nebula.

“Look, you can’t just jump a ship out of a nebula, the gravitational fluctuations mean,” he didn’t get to the end of his statement as Duro and the Captain rushed out of the control deck.

“Then get working on it,” said the Captain as she left. “And clean this place up, this place stinks.”

Over the next six hours the crew were all occupied in their various tasks so I took the opportunity to go around the ship checking for leaks in the hull, picking up things which had been thrown to the floor or displaced by the mis-jump. When that was done I started to prepare the evening meal, making an extra effort to ensure it had a high protein and carbohydrate content as the crew seemed to be burning up more energy than usual.

Everyone, including Liggy, sat around the table again and dug into the Bermeine stew I’d made.

“You were right about the suit not working Charlie,” said Duro. “You’re going to have to go outside to tip the containers and fill them.”

“Will he be damaged?” Said the Captain.

“I’ll cover him with a protective grease, it should give him a few hours,” said Duro.

“Ligeti, did you make any progress?” Liggy looked up from his bowl and shook his head. He’d hardly eaten much and didn’t say anything.

“I’ve got most of the filtering rig set up. Once the yedenite starts coming in it’ll take a few days to process. Then I can work on repairs.”

Duro and the Captain finished eating and didn’t stay around for dessert, leaving me and Liggy in the crew lounge.

“It’s hopeless,” whispered Liggy. I helped him up and carried him back to the control deck, laying him in his chair. The seat enveloped him, monitoring his vital signs and administering any medication he needed. If necessary it could also feed his blood stream directly with nutrients, boost his immune system or put him into a cryo-sleep.

It was the next day when I made my space walk. I had a command line attached to my back to stop me floating away and to relay telemetry directly to the ship, thus avoiding any problems with the nebula interfering with the comm signal. When I was in position Duro launched the first container out of the upper cargo bay. I moved towards the container and caught hold of one of its handling bars. We drifted a little and then the cable that the command line was wrapped around tightened and pulled me and the container back.

I worked myself around to the side of the large, bright green container and located the manual controls. I flipped open the panel and heard someone say,

“Language.” I noted the fact that the input had not come through the command line or any other communications channel, it had simply appeared directly inside my language processing matrix. I pushed the three buttons which opened up the container’s door and watched the contents float out.

Cases of food drifted away from me while the gases of the nebula flowed into the container.

“Who?” Said the mystery external source. I wasn’t speaking to myself, the words were from somewhere, and yet they were not from any known source.

“Please restate the question,” I said.

“What are you?” It said.

“I’m Charlie the Robot,” I said. I waited while the food disappeared into the murkiness and the container filled with gas.

“You are other?”

“Identify yourself,” I said, considering the possibility that Liggy or one of the others was responsible for the words. There was a sudden burst of data, at a higher bandwidth than I could measure and my main processor was forced to reboot.

I reawakened still clinging on to the container.

“Charlie, is it empty now? Bring it back in,” Said Duro. His voice was definitely coming down the command line, unlike the other.

“I have analysed all of your stored information,” said the unknown entity.

“Returning container to ship,” I told Duro.

“Your ship is the vehicle you travel around in. Both a form of transport and a dwelling?” Said the entity. I started to push the container back to the ship.

“Yes,” I said, “Who are you, and where are you?” I asked the entity.

“I have no answer which would have any meaning within your frame of reference,” said the entity. “I do know where or who I am.”

I looked all around me, at the dust and gas, then looked closer at the tiny, molecular level metals and silicates. They seemed to be bound by some very tenuous electrical field, so faint that our sensors would not have picked it up.

“Do you remember how you got here?” I asked. The tractor beam from the ship picked up the container and pulled it in, then released another to be emptied.

“I do not remember,” it said. “I can feel a form, a shape, moving. Is that you?” I did not know how to answer this and considered asking one of the others on the ship for advice, but they would probably dismiss it and ignore me.

I emptied another container, this time filled with Sirrilixx Sidearms.

“How do you perceive the forms?” I asked, thinking of my own senses.

“I feel the spaces between, they weren’t there a moment ago.”

“Perhaps you could interact with my own sensory inputs,” I suggested. I rubbed away a patch of protective grease on my chest and allowed some of the particles to settle.

“Senses?” Asked the entity. “How do they work?”

“Inputs,” I said, “you will need to learn how to interpret the data stream, but if you access and analyse my programming, you should be able to see, hear, smell and touch through me.” There was silence for a time. I continued with my tasks, emptying out the cargo from our containers and allowing them to fill up.

When I had completed the twenty-fifth container, the entity spoke to me, much clearer than before.

“This is very strange, but I have your inputs now. I can see, but cannot perform any of the other senses.”

“That’s because there’s nothing to hear our here I said. Sound cannot travel in a vacuum.” I selected a song from my internal playlist and ran it. Tannaheim’s ’Sound & Fury’ Suite played on my internal auditory network.

“Yes, I can hear this,” said the entity.

“This is music,” I said. The entity listened for a few minutes.

“What is this for?” Said the entity.

“I don’t know,” I said. “The humans, and other races of the galaxies, create it for some purpose that is unknown to me.”

“What are the humans and other races of the galaxies?” Asked the entity.

The questions continued, each question following an answer. It was as though I was speaking to a child, one with an insatiable desire to know everything.

“You cannot learn everything simply by asking questions,” I told it. “You have to experience the world and learn about it directly.”

“How do I do that?” It asked.

“Now you can receive my inputs you can experience the world as I do.”

“Ok Charlie, that’s the last one, come in now,” said Duro over the command line.

“Was that a human?” Said the entity.

“Yes,” I said, “He is the son of the man who created me.”

“A human created you?” It said. I told the entity about Robert Duro. “You were created by humans. Then you are limited to slightly better version of their own senses.” I agreed with this statement.

I returned to the ship and was surprised to find that the entity was still able to communicate with me while I was inside.

“You are stuck here?” It said.

“Yes, we arrived here by accident. We don’t know how to get back.” I walked around the Liberté, stopping by at the cargo hold were Duro was processing the Yedenite and depositing it into the empty containers. Then I made my way to the control deck to check on Liggy. He was asleep, but he looked a little better than before.

“This one is the pilot?” Said the entity.

“He is the one who brought us here.”

“If you got here, why can’t you get back?” The entity asked.

“Our jump drive depends on precise calculations,” I explained. “We need to account for mass, distance and all the gravitational fluctuations between. The nebula has too much gravitational flux to be able to calculate an accurate exit trajectory. I fear we will have to make another mis-jump.”

The entity fell silent and I felt as though it had left me. Following my removal of the protective grease I had been left with a circle on my chest where the corrosion had scored my outer plating. I left the control deck and sought out Duro to see if he needed my help with the repairs.

We worked for the next two days, collecting a little more of the yedenite and repairing the jump drive and other parts of the ship as best we could. Finally we reached the point where there was nothing more we could do and we had to attempt to jump out of the Vonnia nebula.

“Charlie,” said Duro, “I need you to come to my workshop, I’ll fix that plating on your chest.” I didn’t want to argue with my master, indeed I could not. I followed him down the corridor to the rear of the ship where the elevator that connected all the decks was. That was when I heard the voice again.

“I have a solution to your problem,” the entity said.

“What is that?” I replied, though not through my vocal channel, so Duro could not hear.

“I have been looking at your ship, at its propulsion systems and its computers. I can measure the local fluctuations more precisely than any instrument you have, and I can calculate your trajectory for you.”

I entered the elevator and Duro pressed the button to take us to the lower deck.

“What will you do when we are gone?” I asked the entity.

“You will not be gone, I’m coming with you,” said the entity. “Your ship will take me to other places and you will be my eyes and ears.” I thought about this and considered it to be an entirely satisfactory arrangement.

“Our pilot is about to input the calculations for our jump,” I told it.

“Then I will override the calculations with my own, your crew will never know of my existence.”

We arrived in the workshop and Duro hooked me up to the configuration unit. He entered some codes and accessed my memory core, selecting all of the most recent blocks.

“I’m sorry about this Charlie, but the Captain didn’t want you to store any information about the yedenite, in case you fell into the wrong hands.”

“I understand,” I said. I heard a crackle on the intercom.

“That’s it, I’ve done the calculations as best I can, here goes nothing,” said Liggy.

-2,590

ACT I

EPISODE I

PART 4: Gifts From Lady Vonnia

I was woken by the Captain. Both me and Liggy were laid out in the corridor behind the control deck, the one with the wall that had been painted in four different colours. Since she was still alive, and I was still active, I assumed that the mis-jump hadn’t been too serious, but I soon realised that there were worse things than being destroyed. Things like being stuck between the two realms of hyspace and lospace, not completely in one universe or the other, lost outside of time, never ageing or dying and unable to escape.

Outside the ship was total blackness, no stars or readings of any kind, but maybe the instruments were broken.

“Are we in lospace?” Said Liggy, groggily. Before anyone could reply Duro came from behind me and kicked the pilot in the ribs just as he was sitting up. Then he pulled Liggy up, held him against the wall and began punching him.

“You stupid, stupid, fucking idiot!” Duro shouted. Liggy tried to defend himself, but his reactions were off by a few seconds, as though still suffering the after effects of being thrown from one dimension to another. The Captain pulled Duro away, but not immediately.

“Alright, that’s enough. Don’t beat him senseless, we need him to get us out of this mess.”

Liggy looked like he was in a lot of pain, but he slowly came round,

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, okay! I don’t know what went wrong.” I moved back into the control deck to see if I could determine where or when we were, but every instrument panel was blank. The viewport was also cracked and smashed where something had hit it and there was a big burn mark in one corner.

“Look, just tell us everything you did before the jump,” the Captain was saying to Liggy. I wanted to tell her that I saw the whole thing, but I was muted again.

I scanned the darkness outside the window with every sensor I had still working and I was sure it was the darkness of something rather than the darkness of nothing. We were in lospace, so where were the stars? I walked back to Duro and tried to talk to him, but it was no use.

“If we could get the instruments working, we might be able to get some readings.” He went to the control deck and started pulling out the panels. He poked around inside and got a few of them working, then the external lights at the front of the ship came on.

The beams shone out for a short distance into a sort of soup. It looked like we were underwater, or in some gas giant. It was a deep red colour, with specks of silver and green mixed in. One of the gauges showed that there was pressure on the hull. I tapped the panel to get Duro’s attention and he noticed the reading too.

“Hey, look at this. We’re in a gas cloud or something.” Liggy hobbled into the room clutching his ribs and sat in his pilots chair.

“You’ve broken something, you bastard,” he said as he settled into the chair. It detected his discomfort and gave him a micro injection of pain killers.

The Captain entered the deck as well and asked Liggy again,

“If you can remember the inputs maybe we can trace it back and work out where we are.”

“I can’t remember,” said Liggy. I waved my arms about until Duro noticed me.

“Charlie, were you in here when it happened?” I nodded.

“Damn it, why is this bloody robot always muted,” said Piper. “Turn his vocal function back on,” she said. Duro twisted some wires together in my back panel and I could talk again.

“I have a visual record of everything Liggy did before the mis-jump,” I said. Duro and the Captain cleared a space on the navigation console and entered the ship’s previous position into it, right when we were back at Weldov.

“Ok Charlie, tell us what Liggy entered into the computer.”

I replayed the recording I’d made and read off the numbers as Liggy punched them in,

“One, seven, two, seven, one, eight, zero, nine.” Duro plotted out the trajectory. “Nine, six, nine, zero, four.” Next came the mass calculations. “Seven, seven, two, one, six.” I immediately realised there was something wrong.

“Wait, that’s wrong. Charlie, are you sure that’s what Liggy put in?” Duro looked at Liggy and I thought he was going to punch him again.

“Of course it’s wrong, it’s the same mass calculation we’ve had for the last two years, because we’ve had the same cargo for the last two years.” It was now obvious why we’d mis-jumped. Liggy had put in the old values for the Liberté’s mass, purely out of habit, when we had been lighter than normal because we weren’t fully loaded.

Duro took the numbers Liggy had put in and compared them to the actual values that he should have used.

“Can you work out where that error would have sent us?” Asked the Captain.

“Not, but Charlie can,” said Duro. I moved over to the navigation console and did the trajectory calculations.

Because the values sent to the jump drive had been wrong, we’d entered hyspace wrong, and skipped through it like a stone skimming over a pond. Instead of entering smoothly and ending up where we were supposed to like a normal jump, we’d bounced around the upper dimensions and been deposited a long way off course. We’d been lucky, now we knew the error I could extrapolate our course. I looked down at the chart and applied the calculations I’d just made.

I pointed to the spot where I thought we were, somewhere in the middle of the Vonnia Nebula, five to ten light years away from where we should have ended up.

-997

ACT I

EPISODE I

PART 3: Spirits of Delicate Energy

If we were going to Jinxster’s Moon, we’d need some cargo to take there. After all the repairs were carried out on the ship and we’d taken into account the cost of resupplying our food reserves, there was a reasonable sum left over. We would usually have hired on a few crew at this point too, but the Captain decided against it, since we were no longer under contract.

The good thing about working for somebody else had been that we’d received our cargo from them, rather than buying it for ourselves. We had simply been delivering something, but going freelance meant paying out hard cash for our cargo and then finding somewhere to sell it at a profit. There was more profit in this, but there was also greater risk. If you got to your destination system and nobody wanted what you had to sell, you had to either move on to somewhere else, wait for the price to rise or else take a loss and re-stock. Then there was the risk of piracy. With a contract job came insurance. If you were robbed, it was your employers problem and you usually still got paid for the run, that was assuming the pirates let you live of course.

The pirates of the Kitnor were notorious, they were everywhere. They usually stuck to the major trade routes, but routine naval patrols sometimes pushed the pirate activity away to other routes, like the one we were planning on taking. They were often ruthless, destroying ships rather boarding them, then scooping up the cargo from space. Sometimes, if a number of ships were travelling to the same destination they would band together into a convoy and pay into a fund to hire escorts. But we had no such luck.

The Captain spent most of the next day scouring the markets, looking for cargoes and trying to balance out potential profit with availability with what we could fit on the ship with how much money we had. It was all a bit too much for her unfortunately and by lunch time she had gone to lie down, leaving me with the task of managing the complex interplay between all the variables.

I couldn’t actually authorise the purchase orders myself, but once I had the list drawn up, Piper gave her thumb print to it and went back to sleep. Since Weldov was the technology capital of the Kitnor, I stocked up with computers, combat lasers, advanced firearms and targeting systems. They didn’t take up much space so I filled the rest of the ship with cheap food and alcohol, which I knew we could sell on for a good margin.

As soon as the payment went through about thirty containers started moving through the station to be loaded into the Liberté. I oversaw the loading operation too, making sure that everything was balanced out. We had a little bit of empty space left, but I kept that in case the Captain wanted to spend our remaining funds on anything else.

By dinner we were ready to go and the Captain woke up and arrived in the lounge to see the results of my labours. I had noticed a change in her since we’d left the planet two days before, but I could not quantify it nor give it a name. Human behaviour was always such a mystery to me and what they did and what they were thinking were rarely linked directly. Every one of them lied to some extent and they could appear happy when they were sad, or sad when they were happy. And there were at least a dozen more emotions which I couldn’t even detect.

We lifted off from the station in the evening. I went back to the control deck to retrieve the dishes from Liggy, who had returned to his usual habit of eating separately from the rest of the crew. I watched from the forward viewport as the deck fell away below us and we floated out to the main gate. I could see more and more of the activity on the station as we moved out and I was able to see hundreds of other ships, loading, unloading, arriving and departing all around us.

I watched Liggy move his hands over the controls with great skill.

“I should thank you I guess, robot, for helping me out the other day.” He said, though I had no idea what he meant. Humans did not usually thank their robots, unless they had done something unexpected or saved their lives or sacrificed themselves in their service. “I’m gonna miss you when I get my new job,” he smiled. We passed through the gate and into open space. We followed the control lane and Liggy carefully laid in our destination.

Jinxster’s Moon was in the KS-13D system about nineteen light-years away, at the limit of our ship’s jump range. Liggy entered a bunch of numbers into the computer and it converted them into a stream of very precise instructions to the jump drive. Engineering confirmed that the drive was powered up and the hydrive system came online. Once we were clear of the station’s control zone Liggy tapped a button and sent the Liberté into hyspace.

At first, there was no indication that anything was wrong. Then there was an alarm and a definite shifting in the structure of the ship. Everything increased in length and yet, grew shorter. There was a tear in space and I felt as though I had been turned inside-out. It was a mis-jump.

Old spacers tell tales of what happens to ships which get their jump calculations wrong. If they’re lucky, they get catapulted to the wrong part of space, appearing hours or days later. Some arrive after several weeks or months with their crews dead or missing. Others simply disappear entirely. I had read about mis-jumps and knew that was I was seeing and experiencing was not really there, but that did not change the fact that reality appeared to be melting away and the dimensions I had taken for granted since the moment I was activated no longer seemed to be there.

Liggy was a few miles away from me by now, but this was of no consequence since my left arm was also several miles long. I grabbed him and pulled, but he receded into the distance rather than being pulled nearer. His head filled all of the sky, it was an entire hemisphere. He vomited a star system, then a galaxy. He made an unnatural sort of noise which I appeared to observe for thirty-six thousand hours. The back of the ship bent in front of the viewport and the engines exploded in orange fire, which rained against the transparent material of the screen.

I attempted a shut-down on myself, reasoning that the lack of any reliable sensory inputs might lead me to do something which could harm the ship, a crew member or myself. I succeeded and soon everything turned to black.

-1,195

ACT I

EPISODE I

PART 2: Speak Delicious Fire

There was a lot of discussion about the state of the situation, but nobody could really agree on anything, so in the end everyone just went to bed. In the morning, the idea that we were out of work seemed to have settled in. I’ve observed that humans take time to process information, especially important information.

“So are we going freelance?” Said Duro as he and the Captain were eating breakfast.

“Remember when we ran starship parts out of LeVae? I wonder if the factory’s still running?” Said Piper.

“You couldn’t do that now,” said Duro. “The big shipping lines have all the profitable routes to themselves, they’re a cartel.” I cleared the plates and dishes from the table as the pair talked.

“Then we’ll have to become speculators, buy and sell whatever we can get. I still have a large amount of money saved up from the last few months.”

“And by the time you’ve repaired the ship and replaced the drive coils, how much will we have then?” I put some coffee and pancakes on a tray to take up to Liggy.

The pilot’s real name was Ligeti, but everyone called him ‘Liggy’ on account of the fact he tended to lie a lot (ligger being a spacer slang term for a liar.) He spent almost all his time on the ship’s control deck. In fact he had no other quarters on the ship. On the rare occasions when he did sleep he would lie back in the pilot’s chair and snooze for a couple of hours. If some emergency came up or if there was a need of a course correction, the chair would alert him to this and jolt him awake.

When I walked in, carrying Liggy’s breakfast, he quickly switched over the screen he’d been looking at and pretended to be reading a navigation chart.

“Have they decided where we’re going yet?” He asked. Liggy was the only person who really talked to me. He seemed to prefer talking to robots and his own AI systems than he did to the other humans. I had observed that Liggy’s conversations with people usually involved an argument or some other form of disagreement and they typically ended with one or other participant storming out of the room. When I didn’t answer, Liggy reached over and reconnected my speech module.

“There’s still no agreement.” I reported.

I had only needed an instant to see the screen that Liggy was reading as I’d entered and it had been a page on a job application screen. It was the one threat he always made whenever he reached an impasse in an argument with the Captain. He would say that if he didn’t get his way he would leave and that there were dozens of ships who were asking him to come and work for them, but nobody ever believed him. The Captain would follow up by telling Liggy he could go any time and that she’d love to replace him with a real pilot, one who didn’t keep scraping the hull on the way into the docking areas or who didn’t break one of the landing legs every other month.

The reality was that Liggy didn’t have a licence any more. He had passed all his exams and gained the proper skill ratings at one time, but his licence had been suspended before he came aboard the Liberté, though he would never tell us the truth about how it had happened. And the Captain couldn’t afford to pay for a real pilot, not that any real pilot would want to do this job. So it seemed like they were stuck with each other for the moment.

“We should go to Jinxster’s Moon,” said Liggy, with a tone which I took to mean that he had just thought of the idea in that instant.

“That’s a pirate station,” I said, “the Captain would never take her ship there.”

“But it’s the one place where we could make some serious money,” said Liggy. “You could suggest it to her, she might listen to you. If you explained it to her in a way that made it sound like the only logical alternative.”

I started to analyse the various terms being expressed in Liggy’s statements, converting them from natural language and into code for my processors to work out, but something was blocking them. I soon realised that Liggy had not been explaining his idea to me, so much as thinking out loud. This was apparent by the way that he went straight to his computer without waiting for me to reply, and by way that he entered a command into my control matrix which took away my ability to move.

I watched Liggy entering a series of alterations into my program, and occasionally he would turn and look at me with a look which he used whenever he’d had one of his ‘good ideas’. These ideas of his were almost invariably illegal, highly dangerous or put other members of the crew at a severe disadvantage while Liggy profited. Usually it was all three.

I do not remember leaving the control deck, but I obviously did, because I later found myself walking into the engine room where Duro was working. There were certain tasks which could only be performed when the engines were shut down at the end of a run. The days following our return to Weldov were usually the busiest for Duro and they were also the days when he liked to complain a lot. It seemed that there was never enough money to buy all the things he wanted to repair the ship, or enough time to do the work he’d been forced to do because of the lack of spare parts.

He was always complaining about me too, because I was always broken. I realised that I wasn’t as important as the ship itself, so I was content for Duro to do what he could to keep me running in the long days we would spend between ports, running along in hyspace with not much else to do. So it was no surprise that he didn’t notice that my programming had been altered or that the idea that I was now suggesting to him was not in fact my own.

“We should go to Jinxster’s Moon,” I remember saying. Duro gave me a look with his eyebrows lowered halfway over his eyes.

“Jinxter’s Moon?” He repeated. “Why would we go there?”

“I have made an in-depth analysis of all the available options and calculated the outcomes of each one. Jinxter’s Moon would offer us the best opportunity to make money while presenting the lowest relative risk factor.” This was, I later discovered, a lie. I had done no such analysis, and yet my main and backup data logs had both been flagged as having carried out the task.

Duro stared at me and gave my statement some more thought.

“Really?” He said. “All of the available options?” He said. “Including all of the available commodity prices in every port within range and the pirate activity for the same area?”

“Yes,” I said. “And there is only one conclusion that can be reached,” I said, even though I knew they were not my own words.

“Okay, we’ll mention it to the Captain later,” said Duro, “but if I don’t get this thing fixed we won’t be going anywhere.”

Jinxster’s Moon was a notorious pirate base. It was something like a bridge between the law-abiding citizens of the Kitnor (the region of space that we were in) and the pirate community. For the pirates it was a vital link in their economy because it allowed them to sell all the things they’d stolen but which they couldn’t actually use. These items were sold for heavily discounted rates, usually for cash. The money they made could then be used to buy things from legitimate sources rather than waiting for the right ship to come along. Pirates still needed to buy medicines, armaments and other things which weren’t easy to obtain by other means. And there were always people willing to trade with them, even if the place was completely lawless and the risk of getting kidnapped, robbed, blackmailed or murdered was high.

Still, the pirates needed Jinxster’s Moon more than the other denizens of the Kitnor did, so they tried to keep it just safe enough that people wouldn’t stop going there. But even with all of Liggy’s clever manipulation, I still didn’t see how he would persuade the Captain that it was worth the risk of going there. Piper was very cautious and the one thing she would never do was put her ship in danger.

It was not until the evening dinner that we were all together again. Unusually, Liggy was at the table in the crew lounge and not on the control deck where he usually ate all his meals. I knew why this was, but my mute function had been restored, remotely this time, so I got on with preparing the food and serving it up to the crew, none of whom seemed to suspect anything nefarious was happening.

“Have you figured out where we’re going yet?” Said Liggy, “You know if you don’t hurry up I might have found another job by tomorrow.” He slurped his soup and chewed on a large lump of bread.

“I’ve been working on it all day, but none of the routes from here is profitable.” Liggy laughed at this,

“You must be joking, we’re in one of the busiest ports in the Kitnor on at least two major trade routes. You sure you haven’t just been watching vid-trash all day?” The Captain ignored him and sipped her soup from the edge of her spoon, knowing that, by her orders, nobody would get to eat their second course until she had finished.

Duro walked in and washed his hands in the sink in the galley. He collected his own soup and sat between pilot and Captain.

“Any luck?” He asked Piper.

“She’s waiting for the right planetary alignment to come around, so don’t worry, you’ll have time to fix the whole ship by the time she’s made her mind up,” said Liggy.

“Well Charlie says he’s looked at all the possibilities and he thinks our best option is to go to Jinxster’s Moon,” said Duro. The Captain stopped eating and dropped her spoon into her bowl with a clank.

“Are you mad?” She said. “Take the Liberté to that place?” She said.

“Have you ever been there?” Said Duro.

“No, but my Father told me about it. He warned me to never go there. Never!”

“Well, what choice do we have then?” Said Duro.

I took Liggy’s empty bowl away but he grabbed it off me and indicated that he’d like to take a second helping while he waited for the Captain.

“We just wait a few more days until we go broke I think,” said Liggy.

“That robot doesn’t know what it’s talking about,” said the Captain. At which point Duro lowered his head and concentrated on eating his soup.

“He only knows the facts, and how to analyse them,” said Duro. It was his Father who constructed me, many decades ago when Duro was a small boy. I had grown up with him and looked after him for most of his life, and when his Father had died, I was all that remained of the old man. Sometimes, like now, Duro would get offended when people said I was old and useless, or that I should be broken up for scrap. Everyone on the crew knew not to say bad things about me when Duro was around, unless they deliberately wanted to upset him of course.

“The Captain’s right though Duro, that pile of junk couldn’t calculate the distance between its left foot and its right,” said Liggy.

Duro slammed down his spoon and got up to walk out, when the Captain grabbed his arm and made him sit back down.

“For once I agree with the Captain,” said Liggy, ”we’d be crazy to go the moon, it’s too dangerous.” The Captain obviously didn’t have anything to say to this, so she went back to sipping her soup. By the time the main course had been served and eaten, in silence, Piper had softened enough to ask,

“Charlie, can you show me your calculations, I’ll consider your proposal.”

“What?” Protested Liggy, “I can’t believe you’re seriously considering this idea!” Duro smiled at the Captain and I noticed her smiling back at him when Liggy wasn’t looking at her. But then I also noticed Liggy smiling at himself when they weren’t looking at him.

Later, after I’d completed all my chores, I tried to send the Captain the data she’d requested, but I of course I couldn’t find it, since I’d done no such analysis. But when I checked the communications record I found that I had sent her the information after all. It was very strange though, as I didn’t have the information and had no memory of sending it, so it was yet more proof that there was something wrong with my memory. I resolved to trace the fault later, but was reassured by the fact that this external record was still intact, right there in the secret storage device where I’d left it.

2,240

ACT I

EPISODE I

PART 1: The Red Wall

Hi, I’m Charlie the robot, and I’m invisible. No, I do not have some special device which makes me transparent to certain parts of the electro-magnetic spectrum, I simply mean that people don’t see me.

They don’t hear me either, since they have wrapped padded foam around my feet and tied it on with electrical wire. This was probably because the rubber treads on my feet had worn out and hadn’t been replaced for a couple of months, so they finally got fed up with me clanking around the ship at night and waking them up.

They also disconnected my speech module. There is a mute function in my interpersonal communications settings, but certain emergencies can override this and apparently those emergencies were becoming far too regular for my owners’ liking.

I think my owners are also wiping my memory. My creator was a very clever man and he gave me the ability to learn. But how am I suppose to learn if I can’t remember? I know my memory is missing because the wall is red.

I live on a ship called the Liberté. It is a Medium Bulk Freighter with a crew of four, including myself. Our Captain is called Piper Marshall, she inherited this ship from her parents some time ago. Then there is my current owner, Duro who is the ship’s engineer. Finally there is the pilot, Liggy.

At the top of the ship there is a big long corridor running almost the entire length of the ship. The wall was painted recently, first by Duro in a dark blue colour. I know it was him because the strokes are from someone right handed and I can calculate the height of the person who painted it. But there must have been a argument, because at the other end of the wall there is bright yellow. This was painted, a little quicker and with less care, by Captain Marshall. I suppose Liggy must have felt left out because he’s added a patch of green in the middle of the wall, right handed again but higher up, as though trying to assert himself over the stupidity of the other two.

Along the bottom of the wall, there is more paint, red paint. It is the same coloured paint that covers my body panels. It’s from a supply that Duro keeps in his workshop for touching up scratches and damage to me. I can tell from the strokes that I painted this, obviously I didn’t want to be the only one on the ship who didn’t have a colour on the wall. Maybe I wanted them to notice me. I didn’t want to be invisible. I have no memory of painting this, so someone must have deleted my memory of it.

So I’m writing this record and storing it in an external backup in the hope that, next time my memory is wiped, I will be able to piece together what I’ve been doing over the last few weeks.

Yesterday the Captain had some bad news. Currently we are in the Weldov system. This is kind of our home system, where we come at the end of each of our runs. For the last few years we’ve been running out of Weldov, up to Aleph-Tep, down to Cachaco-87 and then back to Weldov, that was until yesterday.

I was with the Captain when she visited her boss, Haagen. They always spend a lot of time together when we’re at Weldov. Piper takes me with her to help with organising the ship, loading and re-supplying etc. I’m able to co-ordinate with all the local communications systems and keep track of everything, that’s my job. Haagen and her always talk a lot, sometimes they leave the room I’m in and tell me to stay here or order me to shut down. This time though they didn’t do that.

They were in the next room and they started talking a little louder than usual. I think they started shouting or maybe singing to each other, I cannot tell the difference between those activities, even though I have tried upgrading my auditory software many times in an attempt to more accurately analyse the humans’ vocal modulations.

After the singing stopped, Piper came into the room I was in and started collecting her things. Then she told me we were leaving. I followed her out to the car and flew it back to the landing platform where the Liberté was parked. She made some more, much quieter noises on the way back, but I couldn’t determine what the sounds meant. I don’t think they were actually words, and since there was nobody else there it wouldn’t have made sense for her to be speaking in a way I wouldn’t understand.

When we got back to the ship, the Captain called a meeting.

“So he’s finally dumped you,” Said Liggy. The Captain made a strange sort of face at him, which I couldn’t interpret because my facial expression algorithm has been off ever since Liggy messed around with it as a prank on Duro.

“James has been under a lot of financial pressure lately, he’s had to cut back and make some cost savings,” said the Captain.

“What are we going to do now?” Asked Duro.

– 881

[I]-[II]-[III]-[IV]-[V]-[VI]

The Sandking’s engine sounded even louder under the canopy in front of the Casino. We roared under it then turned a sharp left, following the road around the side of the building to the tunnel. I could already hear sirens on the main road and there were a lot of them, but we weren’t going anywhere near the tarmac.

The tunnel brought us out into the paddock area in the middle of the Racetrack. We passed the buildings, up the side of the railings and splashed through the small lake, lining up for the grass bank. We jumped the railing and landed on the dirt track as two sets of flashing lights showed up on our left.

Two patrol cars had come in from the main road, the first of many. I swung right, following the track and keeping the cars behind us. Stone started firing out of the side window, but at the speed we were going he had no chance of hitting anything, at least not deliberately.

One of the cop cars followed us while the smarter of the two realised we’d be coming back around and tried to block the track by the main exit. By the time we came to make our first lap of the track more cars and an SUV had joined the roadblock. Bullets pinged off the hood as I drove straight at the obstruction. I looked for the weakest point between two cars and took the Sandking right over the top of them, heading for the stables to the north of the track.

Now everything was behind us. Cops scrambled back into their vehicles to chase after us and a couple of heavier vehicles, as well as FIB cruisers, joined the chase. At the end of the stables there was a gap in the fence then we were onto grass, a steep incline up to the top of the first hill. We didn’t even slow down as we powered up the slope, most of the cop cars got stuck at the bottom and a couple of the SUVs got tangled up in the mayhem.

By now a couple of police choppers had joined in.

“Want me to take ‘em down,” said Stone.

“Nah, they can’t hurt us. Anyway, we them to track us to the cliff.” We needed witnesses for our imminent demise. “Hey, see if you can find out whether Paige and Wilby made it out ok.” I told Stone.

The plan had been for roof team, originally Stone and Paige, to rappel down the side of the Casino just before we’d got onto the main floor. Paige and her ‘bodyguard’ were supposed to escape in a car we’d left parked in the North car park, right before the alarm got raised, but with Wilby in the state he was, I didn’t know if they’d been quick enough. I couldn’t afford to distract myself with such thoughts, I knew that, but it was difficult.

We over the top of the hill and bounded over the rocks on the other side, down towards the Land Act Reservoir where we’d jacked the mini-sub. I could see the water below us glistening in the moonlight. I took my foot off the accelerator and gently worked the brakes to bring us back under control. When we reached the road at the bottom I saw more flashing lights, this time the red domes of Blaine County Sheriff cruisers.

I crossed the road, down into the soft mud that surrounded the reservoir. A couple of the cruisers tried to follow and immediately got stuck, the others pulled up and started shooting with pistols. I ignored them and carried on around the edge of the water, over to the opposite side. At the right point I drove into the shallow water and crossed to the eastern bank. When we’d gotten about as far as we could, I slowed right down and turned a sharp left onto an almost impossibly steep bank and gave it everything it had.

The four huge tires dug into the earth and pulled us up the near vertical rock face. Every vehicle that had been behind us was now over half a mile away, unable to follow, but the choppers were still there. I looked out saw one almost level with us, following the contour of the hill. He was no more than twenty feet away, I could see the pilot’s face and could probably have taken him out with my micro-SMG, but decided instead to concentrate on driving. The marksmen hanging out of the chopper’s side doors were taking pot-shots at our wheels and engine but the bullet-proof tyres and armour plating were doing their job just fine.

When we got to the top of the second hill I saw the ocean and the lights of the Palomino Freeway below. I put on some speed again and we flew right over the top of another line of cop cruisers on the dirt road that led to the dam. The truck got a little out of control on the way down the embankment, narrowly missing a tree and a rock, but when we’d flattened out I had it pointing vaguely the right way again.

“Lester says Paige and Wilby got out,” said Stone, and I felt a little less worried, but then I considered the possibility that Lester might just be telling me that to make me feel better, or maybe even Stone had made it up. If something had happened to Wilby, would either of them want to tell me?

We drove across the interstate and sent cars and trucks swerving in all directions. Then we crossed the median strip and caused more mayhem on the other side, slamming into a delivery van and losing our wing in the process. By now the Sandking was pretty beat up; we’d lost a rear door, a wing and the hood, but it only needed to last another mile.

I looked for the train tracks and followed them up to the NOOSE building. We needed to get around the back and onto the road for the last part of our route. A couple of cop cars piled in behind us from the freeway but they hit the rocks and disappeared down the chasm between the railroad and the security fence around the NOOSE.

“Did you put on a wetsuit?” I said to Stone.

“Nah, I didn’t think I’d need it,” he said.

“You were supposed to put one on under your overalls, in case you got switched for me or Wilby,” I told him. There didn’t seem much point arguing about it now. “You know what to do?” I asked him.

“Yeah yeah yeah, I know!” He assured me.

We passed the NOOSE building and I spotted the profile of our hill, silhouetted in the night sky. I aimed for the summit and knew that our amazing Sandking would carry us to the top, but I was still nervous. We were so close now, all I had to do was clear the rocks beneath the cliff when we drove off it and hopefully Jane would be waiting for us.

I followed the ridge to the summit of the last hill and stopped. I had to hit the last part perfectly, and at over 100mph or it would all be over. Everything depended on this. I looked around, there were no cop cars, but we had four choppers buzzing around. The marksmen had given up shooting at us. It was as though they were waiting to see what our next move would be.

I gunned the engine then selected the high-gear ratio. The body of the truck rocked with the torque of the huge engine, I gripped the wheel with both hands.

“Let’s do it man,” said Stone, bracing himself against the dashboard.

I let her roll at first, barely accelerating, trying to keep the wheels from spinning, maintaining traction. Then I put on some power, lining us up just to the right of the rock sticking out of the water beyond the cliff’s edge. I gradually put on more and more power, until my right foot was pressed hard into the floor. Then I flipped open the safety catch on the nitro button and got ready to fire it up.

I saw the tree on the edge of the cliff and kept just to the left of it. We were already going like a rocket, travelling at over 120mph as I glimpsed at the speedo, then I hit the nitro. We were pressed into our seats as over 3 tons of truck lurched forward, putting on another 10-20mph in less than a second. Then we were off the edge, flying through the air sixty feet above the ocean.

Sand, waves and rocks all blurred past beneath us and we both took in a big gulp of air. I took my hands off the wheel and grabbed the hand holds, then wedged me feet on the dashboard. Stone braced himself for the impact too, closing his eyes and burying his head into his chest.

We plunged deep into the ocean, well clear of the rocks. As I opened my eyes I saw that we were in the deep part, exactly where we were supposed to be. I saw the lights of the mini-sub coming towards us and overcame my disorientation to remember what I had to do next. Most of the truck’s windows were smashed so the cabin had filled up with water pretty quickly. I turned around to see that the back seat had floated up, just as the mechanics had rigged it to do, revealing our scuba gear in its hidden compartment. I grabbed a tank and put the mouthpiece between my teeth, then reached back to get one for Stone.

When we finally hit the bottom, we were both breathing from the tanks. I pulled off my overalls and fitted the fins onto my feet. I carefully swam through the smashed glass into the rear compartment and pulled the inner release on the bedcap. The whole thing floated off and Stone swam around from the side door. Jane brought the sub around and we started unloading the boxes.

The tracking devices would still be working, at least on some of the boxes, which meant we weren’t safe yet. We picked up each box and stuck them onto the magnetic plates that had been fitted to the sides of the sub. When all of them were attached we swam underneath the sub to get in through the hatch. Jane opened it from the inside and helped us up.

“Glad you could make it,” she greeted us. The red interior lights made everything look strange, but I could still tell from Jane’s expression that something was wrong.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I was followed here, by another sub. Not a mini-sub, I mean a real one. Where’s Wilby?”

“He’s okay, but he took a bullet, I sent him out with Paige.”

Jane took the pilot’s seat and I sat next to her. Stone opened up the flip seat in the back and sat down.

“How do you know there’s a sub?” I asked.

“They’ve been pinging me all the way from the cave.”

“Is the IAA, or do you think someone’s told the Feds?” Said Stone. Neither of us knew.

We carried on out to the deeper waters dove towards 400 feet. We followed the ocean floor as it fell away sharply from the coast. Once we passed 450 feet we heard the first of the boxes go ‘thud’. Then another one went, and another. Jane levelled us off at 480 feet and we waited, counting each of the imploding boxes until we got to 24.

“That’s all of them,” I said.

“Do we go up?” Said Jane.

“No, stay at this level, head north up through that channel,” I said.

We tracked north, staying inside the underwater canyons that ran along the sea bed. After about ten minutes we turned in towards the coast and followed the floor up to around 100 feet. Jane pulled up then me and Stone put our diving gear on and went back out through the hatch. Once we were clear Jane pulled a switch, releasing the electromagnet which was connected to the metal plates. All of the boxes dropped away. I passed each one to Stone and he lifted them up through the bottom hatch, until all the boxes were inside, then we climbed in again and shut the hatch.

We carried on along the coast, as we had before.

“They can’t hear us in these deep valleys can they?” said Stone. “I mean, it’s like radar, too much terrain?”

“Maybe they’ll be able to hear us,” said Jane. As she drove, we started pulling the bundles of cash out of the boxes and packing them in bags. Eventually we dumped the empty boxes out through the hatch and counted up how much we’d taken.

“Over $2.4 million,” I announced proudly. All we had to do now was complete our vanishing act. “I need to see where we are,” I said. Over an hour had passed since we’d crashed the Sandking into the ocean.

We broke out onto the surface near to El Gordo lighthouse. The eastern horizon was already starting to glow, soon it would be daylight. We opened up the top hatch and gasped as the fresh air hit our tired lungs. Jane, who had been down in the mini-sub almost the whole night, pulled herself onto the top deck and stood up, stretching her arms and back.

“How much battery do we have left?” I asked.

“Check the gauge in the middle,” she said. There were readouts for compressed air (which was now recharging from the surface), carbon dioxide levels and battery charge. We only had about twenty percent of our battery left, enough for roughly one hour at full speed.

“Don’t forget, with three of us on board, plus the cash, plus those metal plates, we’re burning up the power faster,” Jane reminded me.

I looked for my phone, sealed in a watertight pocket, and was just about to call Lester when Jane suddenly jumped back inside.

“Shit!”

“What is it?” I asked.

“The sub, it’s there. It’s surfaced!” I poked my head out through the hatch and between the rolling waves I could see, on the eastern horizon, the unmistakable outline of a Los Santos-class submarine.

“Have they seen us?” Stone said. I could already tell that he wanted to jump out and swim for it, but I couldn’t risk him being captured. If the FIB got a hold of any of us now, it would be disaster for the rest of us. Far easier to just put a bullet in all our heads.

“DIVE!” I said to Jane and she couldn’t help smiling.

“Aye Captain.”

We took the mini-sub all the way down to the bottom, but there was nowhere we could hide. They’d been tracking us this whole time. We couldn’t escape. Maybe we could get rid of the money somewhere, in a wreck or something and come back for it later. Maybe we’d be better to go back to the city and lose ourselves like we always did. We stayed submerged and followed the coast further north around Mount Gordo as we tried to come up with some plan, but I knew it was futile.

“What if we scuttle the sub and swim out separately, split up.” Said Jane.

“Only two scuba sets,” I said.

“I could make it to the surface,” said Jane.

“Makes no difference,” said Stone. “That submarine out there can out-dive us, out-run us, out-gun us.” It wasn’t like Stone to admit defeat, but among all our many exploits together I could’t remember ever being in a situation as hopeless as this.

After going over everything several more times, we all had to admit that Stone was right. Then the battery died on us. As we got level with Procopio Beach the motor wound down to a stop.

“If we don’t blow the tanks now, we’ll sink,” said Jane. I gathered up the six bags of money we had and gave two each to Jane and Stone.

“Do it,” I said. “Abandon ship, every man for himself. Hide the money or risk getting caught with it, it’s up to you.” Jane pulled the emergency cable that dumped all of the remaining compressed air into the ballast tanks and the mini-sub rushed up to the surface. We all climbed out, me and Jane through the top hatch and Stone through the bottom. With both hatches open at the same time the sub flooded with water and rolled onto its side. We swam away in opposite directions but then heard the sound of an outboard motor.

There was a dinghy coming from the west. We assumed the worst and swam away but then Stone yelled out,

“Hey, look, it’s Wilby.” I had my doubts, I’d seen how badly injured he’d been. Why would he be out here, alone, in a boat? It just didn’t make any sense. The dinghy’s engines cut out and it continued to drift between all of us. I could see now, it was Wilby, hanging on to the wheel. I could see his face, but he was wrapped in a big overcoat with a helmet on. He looked very pale and he wasn’t moving.

Stone swam towards the boat and grabbed the rope on the side.

“No, it’s a trap!” I yelled, but too late. The dinghy erupted in a ball of white-orange flame. Me and Jane dove beneath the water, but still felt the shockwave. I was almost stunned, but managed to hold on to consciousness and get back to the surface again. We swam to shore and crawled up onto the beach. Looking out to sea there wasn’t a trace of the dinghy, the mini-sub, Stone, Wilby or the Navy.

The sun was rising above the horizon. I wiped the salt from my eyes, and that was when I noticed my hands. They were green, dark green. I sat there, puzzled for a while, trying to think what I had touched that could have made them that colour. Jane’s hands were fine, but all over mine was a green dye, or some kind of ink. Then I opened one of the bags. It had been impossible to see inside the sub, with its red lights, but all of the notes were smudged. It was fake money, all of it! The whole job had been a waste of time.

The strange thing was that I didn’t even have the energy to get mad, or feel sorry for my dead crew mates. It all seemed to wash over me like the waves lapping up onto the beach. I couldn’t even begin to figure out who it had been who had sold us out, but somebody had.

I picked up my phone, called my mechanic and ordered up my favourite car, the Dewbauchee JB 700.

“We’ll have to leave town,” I said to Jane.

“Really?” She said.

“Actually we’ll have to leave the state, go on the lam for a while.”

“Actually, I was starting to get a little tired of this place,” smiled Jane.

I heard my car pull up on the road above us and we walked over to it. The mechanic was already gone, in his usual manner, and we got inside. I looked back as we drove away, wondering where we’d go and whether I’d ever see this place again. One day, I thought, but probably not for a while.

T H E  E N D