Jasmin (part I)

In space, nobody can hear the ecstatic moans of illegal orgasms.

Poets have waxed poetic on this theme, the beauty of space. And being a technician rather than a poet, my waxing generally is reserved for my moustache. Not that I often wax my moustache, though occasionally on special occasions, such as a meeting with a provincial princess, or in preparation for a truly hot date, I do. Which is to say, not very often.

The ultra-twinkling brightness of the stars, the rings of Saturn when viewed close up, the colorful phases of the Tryxostian moons in the springtime cycle, all very spectacular. But for me, none compares in the slightest with the simple silence of space.

True, there is the quiet hum life-support, and all the intrinsic functions of a galactic-bound starship to contribute their gentle lulling whirr, but in the still of night, when all is still, you can hear what I’m talking about.

The absence of sound. The space for deep thought, for profound reflection, a silence that gives birth to sounds of yet unconceived beauty. The sonic darkness that gave birth to the incredible rainbow of aural possibility.

And if it weren’t for cloaking escape pods, I wouldn’t be here to write these words today. See, the unpleasant part of this story happens towards the beginning, so you may want to shut your eyes just now. It will be over soon.

It began (I suppose) with an ear-splitting rumble, the hull of my ship being seized in the harsh grip an Imperial klepto-beam. I knew what was next -- the auto-scanner beeped with an incoming message. The comscreen lit up with a horribly familiar face.

The irony of it was that, just at that moment, I had been working on a deflection shield for the very klepto-beam which now had my ship in its throes.

See, I’m an inventor. The ship I was on held together only for a monumental balancing act of adapting salvaged components for unintended purposes.

“Greetings,” greeted a horribly familiar voice over the comsystem, with the sonority of gravel in a garbage disposal.

The voice, I well knew, belonged to Darvo Wedge, the sleazy nephew of His Imperial Highness.

You’d think that with all of our human technology and problem-solving ability, we would have by now routed out the bane of human greed and intolerance. But no, not even in this modern era of the twenty-fifth century.

Wedge piloted a Mercedes Galaxy Jumper, model GJ-130, the most expensive Sport-Utility vessel money could buy. And money he had, being the silver-spoon heir to one of the wealthiest fortunes in the Imperial Galactic Realm. The ship he flew was a custom model, engineered in the shape of a giant “W,” at his command, with the fuselage at the middle point of the “W,” and the engines at the endpoints of the sloping outer lines. Kind of like the Klingon ‘bird of prey’ from that old scifi TV series. “W” for “Wedge,” he would say, though most who had encountered him would say “Worthless” or “Weasel,” or worse.

And I could see from the edges of the comscreen, he was still surrounded by the same crowd of goons, the type who, when planet-bound, would be found riding on those barbaric abominations from the late twentieth century, the Harley-Davidson motorcycle. In case you have never heard of them, these hideous contraptions were designed for the basic purpose of creating an awful and intimidating racket, much to the sophomoric delight of cowardly bullies (redundant, I know) who had never worked out the difference between people paying attention to you because they like you, and those paying attention because you’re being an inescapable source of irritation.

“Blessings of Noxigoth to you,” continued the seedy gravel-train. “My name is Darvo Wedge of the Imperial Inquisition. Simply swear your devotion and loyalty to Noxigoth as your sole source of wise counsel, salvation and guilt, and we will be on our way. If you refrain from so executing this holy oath, we will, out of the profound kindness of our hearts, spare you the suffering of eternal damnation by the only means possible, namely the purification by fire. You have thirty seconds.”

Funny thing was, they recited the same damn litany in English, no matter what language their victims spoke, whether they could understand English or not. The Inquisition recognized only one savior and only one mother-tongue. I also knew damn well what ‘purification by fire’ meant, and it made my blood boil. A napalm-torpedo.

My anger got the better of me, I regret to say, and I rudely flipped on “transmit.” In a way, silence was pointless, since it would result in the same consequences as the string of insults I was about to unleash.

Adrenaline surged. “Darvo Wedge, your idiotic right-wing dogma is as worthless as that pathetic piece-of-crap idol you worship.”

Harsh laughter replied, crackling through the comsystem as I hastily threw supplies into the escape pod. “Ah, my good friend Xithnous, so we meet again,” he gloated. “I thought that I last saw you from the rear window of my shuttle-craft, as you lay helplessly stranded on a dismal forlorn rock of a planet to die.”

“Which, unfortunately for you, I didn’t.” (be sure to ask me to tell you that story sometime. Anyway:)

Harsh laughter again. The oil-drenched gravel continued: “My misfortune indeed. I wish to remind you that, out of my kind-heartedness, I am willing to forgive your heresy, and will grant you an additional thirty seconds during which you may repent before I lob a napalm-torpedo in the general direction of your pathetic sack of scrap-metal.”

His irritating cackle was joined by the gloating mirth of his crewmates.

I really should do something about that temper of mine. At this point, no further response was practical, so I switched the comsystem to ‘mute,’ to conceal what I did next:

The frantic sounds of my tossing as many practical implements as I could lay my hands on, into the escape pod, and myself stepping inside. The cylindrical glassene window swiveled shut around me, and I activated the cloaking device (of my own design) before the tiny coffin-shaped pod silently jettisoned itself from the soon-to-be-smithereens craft which I had so lovingly maintained for all these months.

The inky silence of space surrounded me, embraced me with its cold harsh beauty, and through the glassene window I weightlessly watched my ship recede.

Drenched in sweat, I switched on the comsystem, keeping the volume muted to monitor the interaction as I fired up my PDA to calculate a trajectory the closest inhabitable planet. Hopefully with a proximity of less than a century of travel time. These escape pods were well capable of outlasting their inhabitants, and a significant percentage became floating coffins -- that is, those from which their occupants had not self-ejected in an act of suicidal escape from unimaginable boredom.

Nervously, I pushed these thoughts from my mind. There had to be a way out.

The greasy gravel churned nauseously. “Xithnous, my friend, I hope that you are saying your prayers to Noxigoth at this moment, that you may find salvation in the afterlife. For I regret to inform you that your time is up.”

More chortling mirth.

The radar beeped, and I could see the blinking point of light trace a path from the luridly overwrought Mercedes towards my poor faithful little ship. It should here be pointed out that a napalm-torpedo does not literally contain napalm (which would have no effect on a modern space-going vessel) but was rather named for its mode of destruction.

A horrid design from the wars of the last century (I forget the exact historic details), it engulfs the target in a shroud of microparticles which employ atomic-level nuclear fusion to direct and reflect intense infrared radiation inward towards the object surrounded. The result is, that the ship is subject to an intense heat which permeates whole interior, usually with the result that the inside heats up at a gradual but constant rate. Each item on board the ship catches fire as one by one they reach their point of inflammation, as the temperature inside increases.

The field is as sticky and persistent as hot tar, and any object which proposes to escape the field winds up itself being surrounded as well. Eventually, the hull collapses and the entire thing caves in onto itself. The process can take anywhere from ten minutes to a half an hour, depending on the construction of the ship it victimizes.

The modern equivalent of being burned at the stake.

Contact. I watched with great sadness as my the surface of my poor ship began to glow with the disintegration. Coupled with relief that Darvo had apparently not detected the cloaked craft I now uncomfortably observed from. There was a sense of satisfaction, I suppose, given that I had designed the cloaking circuitry myself. Adapted from a design I had downloaded from the Galactranet.

But I have to say the satisfaction was somewhat muted by the experience of watching the spectacular fireworks as my hard work was demolished at the hands of a dim-witted megalomaniac.

“Getting warm, Xithnous?” gloated Darvo mistakenly, chuckling. “Too late to repent now, as you know there is no way to reverse the napalm effect. My only regret is that you have switched off your comsystem, so that I cannot monitor the details of your physical destruction. Rest assured, of course, that we will pray most fervently to Noxigoth for your eternal salvation.”

The glow grew brighter, and sparks of disintegrating hull-material began to fly out into space. My poor ship was not as sturdily constructed as the one Darvo and his silver-spoon cronies flew, and would collapse relatively quickly.

Indeed, in a few moments, it did just that, creating spectacularly colored fireworks as the various objects on board exploded into into charred or vaporized fragments, flying into all directions in space.

A few of the colorful comets flew in my direction, but whizzed harmlessly beyond into the emptiness of space, and soon the sparks and fires had died out and the spectacle was over.

Darvo grunted a sound of disappointment, no doubt on account that rapidity of the event had left him insufficient time to savor my doom, and soon his ship, too, had departed, leaving me once again in the silence of space which I so ardently enjoy.

You might wonder why I had not merely yielded to Darvo’s simple proposition, and falsely affirmed my devotion to the hideous idol whose conquest he sought to promote. The answer lay in what would follow, for it was not sufficient to merely speak a simple word or two. Noxigoth required actions to back up the words.

Now for the wealthy, this was easily accomplished by a discreet charitable donation to a certain agent of the inquisition. But for those with insufficient funds, it was another story. Namely, “indentured servitude” (the term used by the Inquisition) for an indefinite period, which generally wound up being for the remainder of one’s lifetime. “Perpetual slavery” would be an accurate description.

There are those who seem to specialize in escaping from such ordeals, but I prefer to avoid the whole issue. I find the prospect of a brief period of confinement in a claustrophobic space-pod better than that of endless toil for an unjust cause.

Usually when I wind up in this sort of fix, I can send a g-mail to someone over the Galactranet begging to come pick me up. But besides waiting to connect until I was absolutely sure that Darvo was out of range, I was kind of enjoying the solitude. Plus, I was finally getting a chance to work on the anti-klepto algorithm undisturbed.

Funny thing about space technology nowadays, the basic hardware hasn’t changed in centuries. The key changes have been algorithmic. The central processors are getting faster, and the algorithms more efficient, but the G-field operational engine remains basically unaltered from the original design of several centuries ago.

It was with the advent of cheap, small nuclear fusion generators as a power source, that the discovery of the G-field soon followed, unlocking the corridors of outer space and galactic travel.

Just as computers in the late 20th century cars began to make fuel injection more efficient by instantaneously adjusting flow according to the temperature and other factors, the key to applying the G-field is intensively reactive manipulation on sub-microscopic, sub-temporal levels.

Similar to DNA, where combinations of a few simple proteins yield a mind-boggling array of permutations and wondrous possibilities. Or the computer, built entirely on combinations of the simple binary ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ yet which engages in a dazzling spectrum of activities in all realms of knowledge.

Likewise, the G-field is very simple. It can be used for gravitation, propulsion, temporal acceleration or reversal, a tractor beam, or any one of a myriad of possible applications, many of which have yet to be realized, or even conceived of.

The klepto-beam is one of the many devices based on the G-field. Thing is that, while the klepto-beam algorithm is widely used and published, it is also widely believed to be susceptible to security exploits. It had been extensively reverse-engineered, and a fair amount of work had been done (for obvious reasons) to try and crack the algorithm, but so far without reliable success.

In approaching the problem, I kept thinking of something I had read long ago in some spiritual book somewhere. Something like:

To gain what you want,
relinquish your desire.

The spiritual meaning was clear to me - that because desire causes only troubling emotions, desire is not what we want.

But it seemed also to to unlock an algorithmic key that I was searching for. The existing attempts to break the hold of the beam were like contrasting desires, which only fed the conflict taking place. It was only by complete acquiescence to the force of the beam that its grip could be broken.

As I found soulful solace in the contemplation of this noble paradox, I glimpsed, disappearing to my left, a star somewhat brighter than those around it. Still musing, I again observed the same star a minute or so later, appearing to my right, tracing an arc across the sky, and then disappearing to my left. Also, I noted that the star seemed to be growing. Something about the halo of light it subtly emitted caught my attention.

With an abrupt rush of excitement, I jammed my finger on the thrust button to stop the rotation. Glancing down at the radar, I confirmed my suspicion. It was a ship! Dead in the void, perhaps, but a ship nonetheless! Filled with all sorts of mysterious unexplored technological gadgets! I twirled my moustache.

By the way, I’m a technician. Did I mention that already?

As I manoeuvred the pod to get a closer look, my astonishment grew. A Sabre DX-42. I had seen pictures in books, and a model once in a museum, but never a full-sized one in real life. The thing was huge.

Once a coveted top-of-the-line family-sized luxury cruising vessel, they stopped making them over a hundred years ago when the company, embroiled in a bizarre sexual scandal, was forced out of business. Truly a shame, and it was never fully resolved whether or not the scandal was entirely a competitor’s fabrication.

I gave a low whistle, in spite of myself. It was a classic, a collector’s item. Looked to be in good shape, too. At least, a tour of the exterior hull didn’t reveal any serious flaws.

What could have gone wrong then, to cause its owners to simply abandon it?

A twinge of anxiety in the back of my mind was immediately overwhelmed by an engulfing electrical surge of intellectual curiosity.

I found the airlock portal, and began probing the entry codes with my PDA, when I noticed that it was unlocked. Looked like someone had entered, recently, by force. Rather than politely dialoguing with the security mechanism, someone had used an electro-jimmy to jam the circuits by fusing the gates into an open state.

An old trick, and more modern ships featured protection against such rude strategies, but this grand old vessel was built in a time of greater trust and openness and was no match for such crudity.

In fact, these older ships often had a public access point for emergency workers to use in case of disaster, information which whoever had boarded recently was apparently too dim to realize. According to the logs in the entry recorder, whoever it was had spent a little over an hour inside the ship within the last 24 hours, and (according to the log) had since departed.

The entry method oozed with the signature of a certain not-very-nice dignitary of the Imperial Inquisition, whose ship-destroying capabilities I had recently experienced firsthand.

My sense of dread had embellished on itself a bit with this discovery, but curiosity surged ahead. A Sabre DX-42! Truly amazing. Even a Sabre DX-30 would have been a joy to explore, as would one of the MX models. But this was the very top of the line!

It was likely that Darvo’s sole interest was to ensure that all inhabitants had been duly converted; and thus, when he had found the vessel abandoned, or perhaps had rather abducted any unlikely inhabitants, he had summarily departed.

Nonetheless, I disengaged the safety catch on my disrupter pistol as I dialed entry code.

My pod resurrected from memory the ancient docking protocols, and the two ships elegantly aligned and joined. All around the edges of the door frame, I watched the suction bolts twist shut, and there was a brief hiss as the air pressure equalized between the two cabins.

Like the doors of an elevator, the two doors -- that of my pod and of the elegant older vessel -- slid open in unison. The gentle indirect lighting already illuminated the all-white entry hall of the Sabre’s airlock, and as I pushed myself inside from the zero-G weightlessness of outer space, I felt the comfortable tug of the larger ship’s gravitational system pulling me down to step onto the plush deep-red carpeting.

The outer airlock doors slid shut (as a safety precaution) and as the inner doors opened a soft, richly anharmonic chime sounded, reminding me of an old clock in a British mansion. I pointed my disrupter pistol ahead of me as I gingerly stepped into the hallway.

Eerie silence.

Wringing my mind for details of the ages-ago museum visit, I tried to remember the Sabre’s floor plan -- (never had I owned a ship with an actual floor-plan!) the bridge should be around the corner. Right...

...Here. I braced, brandished my disrupter in the faces of...

An empty room. Lowering my weapon, I stepped around to the main console, which stood like a hulking bulk in the middle of the room. The thing was honkin’-huge. Nowadays, it would have all been collapsed into virtual consoles, to make for a much smaller, lightweight control panel. But such technology in that era would have been considered unreliable.

Glancing up at the giant main display screen, I saw the poster pasted crudely to it, and rolled my eyes.

Not wanting to sully his hands with such drudgery, Darvo had probably noted the location coordinates and left the task of transporting the ship with lower-class indentured servants who handled his dirty work for him. But why hadn’t he just let one of his goons fly it back? Surely even he would have recognized its value as a status symbol.

The answer came as I began flicking switches to try and raise the main display. About half the systems were completely out. Bringing forward my PDA from the side-pack it was stowed in, I found an adaptor to plug it into the main emergency interface plug, supplied in such cases where the main console was experiencing failure.

The first screen that popped up bore the simple message:

I continued examining the control console. A quick diagnostic confirmed what I had observed, that a software glitch had resulted in the failure of about half the systems on board the ship, apparently at random.

I punched a few keys and holographically projected debugging screens flashed in the air around me. As I watched the streams of figures flickering past, an inkling of a memory stirred.

Yes, now I remember. The early models of the Sabre had a serious flaw, one that had not been corrected until after several hundred of them had been manufactured: “A simple software glitch which was not fatal, but essentially left the main drive systems paralyzed, along with other various other systems on board the ship.

I recalled having seen a downloadable patch somewhere on the Galactranet, and was about to set out searching for it when I heard a beeping from the panel, like the finishing cry of a microwave oven. A red light was blinking.

When I stepped over to see what it was, I blinked. Catastrophic failure of cryonic system imminent.

Whiskers of Zorntrog. Cryonics? Nobody had used cryo for space travel in over a century. It was only on those earlier flights, before the discovery of infra-space corridors had reduced intra-galactic travel time to a fraction of what it had been...

Frantically, I paged through the pages of documentation handily stored in the main console, finally turning up a floor-plan. The cryogenic chamber was right... there.

I yanked the plug on the PDA so I could take it with me, and dashed down the hall, to the left, the right, the right, and to a sealed door. Shit.

I used my PDA to index the entry codes it had retrieved from the main console, and the door slid open.

Inside the chamber were three pods. Two were open, and obviously unoccupied, but the third one, on my left, bore a blinking red light that echoed the alarm from the control panel.

Like a plunge into cold water, the realization stunned me. There, inside the sarcophagus before me, was a live human being. Or rather, a human being whose life was now in my hands.

Damn. I really didn’t know much about cryo, but I had to do my best.

What I did know was this: that an unregulated thaw was a not-very-pretty thing to watch, let alone to experience. Without the encephalogical neuromotor damping, the subject would resume consciousness before the thaw had completed. Meaning that they would wake up, icy-cold and paralyzed, and then proceed to freeze to death, contract severe gangrene, or both.

Taking a deep breath, I set down the PDA, and set it to searching the Galactranet for any information on cryogenics that might help me. Then I set it aside, and examined the cryo-pod for clues as to the cause of failure.

The cause was soon obvious. I knelt down to examine. In the oblong base of the unit was an unpopulated socket where the cryo-regulator should be.

That was weird. How had the cryogenic system functioned for several hundred years without a regulator? Once the freeze had stabilized, the system would maintain integrity, even without a control system, for maybe a day or so. But what had happened to the regulator?

I looked frantically around the room, thinking maybe it had popped out or something and rolled across the floor. I started thinking of other systems that might have a generic controller that would fit into the standard regulator port once the software had been reprogrammed. Surely I could find something to download that would fit the bill, but it could take hours, and by then it might be too late.

Woefully wishing I had spent more time studying cryogenics in school, my eye rested on the two unoccupied pods. Cryo had seemed like such a waste of time, at the time, back when I was into blasting thudding speakerfuls of British rock, chugging kegs of beer, and downing bongloads of Sorlolian Rastaweed with my buddies.

Something about the two unoccupied pods nagged at the unconscious regions of my consciousness, when all of a sudden the dawning realization struck me upside the head:

Both of the unoccupied pods had regulator units in them.

Puzzling.

With a jolt, I arose and carefully examined the controller of the nearest sarcophagus. Seemed to be fine. I pressed the release latch and gently twisted it free.

Kneeling again at the base of the occupied pod, saying a prayer to Krishna, Hanuman, Garuda and Buddha, I reverently placed the device into the socket, feeling the delicately sensuous click of a perfect fit as it twisted into place.

Immediately it set to beeping and flashing, and the old-fashioned flat-panel display on the wall adjacent flickered to life.

“Diagnosing thermal and bio-sensors, please wait...”

Then: “Diagnosing status of cryogenic stasis, please wait...”

Then, a question: “It appears that a thaw is taking place. Continue with thaw, or resume cryogenic stasis?”

I pressed the “thaw” button.

The screen flashed: “Commencing re-awaken sequence for subject:

Name: Jasmin McCloud.
Biological age on entering cryogenic stasis: 11 earth years.

“Please verify the integrity of the silicon protective layer.”

Here I set my jaw once more. The results of integrity-loss in the silicon layer were the sort of sight requiring a surgeon’s stomach at the very least. Sickening images flashed through my memory, that had been projected on the screens of college classrooms, or found in the sort of sensationalistic tabloids silently hawked in superstore-chain checkout-stand racks, that delighted in such headlines as ... I couldn’t stand to continue the train of thought.

Bracing myself, I pressed the button to unlatch the sarcophagus lid. All around the edges, a pneumatic sighing signaled the equalization of pressure as the seals released. Seeing that the hinge was at the head, I gripped footside edge, and slowly lifted the heavy, insulated cover. Swirling wisps of freezer-fog flowed slowly down to the floor. I raised the lid fully, to where the spring-loaded struts supported it in the ‘open’ position. I waited for the opaque white mists to part, like the curtains of an old-fashioned stage play, or a cinematic dissolve from white into the next scene.

In spite of myself, I gasped at the pale statuesque beauty that had ploughed forth through the snowy shrouds to reveal itself before me. Uniformly covered by the fully intact diaphanous layer of shimmering silicon granules, lay the nakedly healthy glacial body of an eleven-year old girl. Anatomically correct.

Her dark hair was long and straight, frozen in smooth, graceful swirls, stylish bangs cut across her blissfully carefree brow. Eyes closed, red lips slightly parted to reveal the the playful white tips of front teeth, her expression was one of peaceful contemplation, as if dreaming of bunny-rabbits and cherry blossoms. Smooth and flat chested, not even a hint of breasts yet, nor any trace of bodily hair aside from the flowing locks that graced her shoulders, gently touching the two reddish buttons lovingly painted by evolutionary design on her thin upper torso. The curling burgundy-colored folds of skin at the crux of her beautifully thin legs stood forth in brazen youthful nakedness.

An ice-statue of an ivory angel.

How many moments passed before I awoke to the self-conscious guilt of my boorish gawking?

I gulped, and hit the ‘OK’ button.

“Please replace the sarcophagus cover,” the screen requested.

Drinking in one more appreciative glance at the wondrously delicate beauty before me, I reflected that this draught would most likely be my last glimpse of such perfection. Surely once she awoke, such a thing would be impossible.

Reluctantly, I lowered the lid, and pressed the ‘continue’ button.