LUCKY BOAT

  Lucky Boat had encouraged the other machines to engage with Orson as he toddled around hesitantly between them in the dark.

  Orson had started to recognise the ident they used to hail him instead of saying ‘Orson.’ He’d receive a ping from somewhere around him and in the ping would be the ident of the sender, and their location relative to him. His visor would indicate the direction it had come from. Orson would give a little wave into the darkness towards whatever it had come from. He’d try to throw together a basic response to send back as a reply.

  Usually that would be it, and he’d just move on. Sometimes the machine would send back a simple greeting of their own. He was starting to recognise the common ones. They translated as little more than the machine equivalents of smiley faces or ‘thumbs up’ symbols that humans would stick into messages. He copied them and saved them to use himself.

  From Lucky Boat’s publicly accessible manifest Orson could pull up a little bit of information about each machine once he had their ident. Just enough for identification purposes- their name and the nature of work they were for, and a simple image that showed what shape they were.

  Some were becoming familiar, the ones that docked around Decline Portal that he passed all the time. He’d never seen them with his own eyes but he started to get the outline of them associated with the alphanumeric string that constituted their ident.

  The area around Decline Portal- what Orson had started to think of as his neighbourhood- was very still, physically. It was nearly all ships so they didn’t move much. Safer to move around, fewer electrical shocks for Orson. When he got into other areas of Lucky Boat there was more activity, smaller machines that were much more mobile. That was where he had to proceed with much more caution and precision.

  There were some levels of Lucky where a lot of work always seemed to be going on. Sections that were hectic with machines engaged in various kinds of construction or repair. Those sorts of areas were just too hazardous for Orson to move around in- and too annoying for the busy machines to have a human bumbling around getting in the way. In these areas Lucky Boat would have some machine transport Orson through, call someone who was something like a little buggy or a mini forklift to come and give him a ride. Orson always felt a bit awkward about that. He never felt more useless than when another machine had to come and carry him because he couldn’t be trusted to just walk. It was usually quite nice to get to have a bit of a rest, though. A rest from walking and from frequent electrical shocks that felt like someone pinging you hard with a rubber band. Those rides were the time Orson most wished that Lucky Boat had a bit of light inside. It would have been nice to be able to see.

  Orson couldn’t see Great Silence parked in front of him. He knew Great Silence was there, though, because his visor indicated to him that Great Silence was berthed there with an outline of Great Silence’s aspect projected into Orson’s visor. It was helpfully labelled ‘IGT Great Silence.’ Jack pinged Great Silence and introduced Orson. Great Silence sent Orson a little ‘waving’ indication, c/o Jack. Orson was pleased. He walked around Great Silence’s enormous wheels and took a right as his visor display was indicating, between OnReserve and Sixth Sun.

  Orson walked on into the dark. He got a ping from someone he recognized, a ship that was sort of a flying crane called Astead. “Hey, Astead,” he sent back along with the image of a giraffe that he’d started to use as sort of a joke/nickname to append to his greetings to Astead. Orson had gotten the giraffe image from Pallas. He didn’t know what it was. Astead sent back his usual indicator of amusement.

  A little further along Orson received an alert that he was in dangerous proximity to some construction equipment. He decided to say hello. He’d ping first, for once. He knew from previous encounters that the construction equipment was Prem Alabass. Prem was three diggers with various-sized buckets. Orson gave him a wave and sent a greeting also conveying a waving hand. He got back a reply with three waving hands and the notion of something like a hard-hat that Prem always seemed to put in his messages. Orson wasn’t sure if the hard-hat was supposed to suggest that Orson take care as he moved around the ship, or perhaps just as acknowledgement that Orson was at work. He always meant to ask Jack or Lucky Boat and he always forgot immediately.

  He moved along.

  After a while in dead silence Orson got a ping from a ship he was passing in the dark. Just a ‘Hello, Foster’ from Bleak Throne. Orson had definitely seen the name before, and the shape. It didn’t look or sound friendly. Orson had the feeling that he’d passed by Bleak Throne on different decks at different times. Unusual to have a ship that was moving around inside. Maybe Orson was mistaken. “Hi,” he sent back with a little wave and got nothing in return. Fine. Move along.

  The next machine that pinged Orson was an appliance called Nyra Guzel who seemed to be built into Lucky Boat. Not part of Lucky Boat- Nyra was an independent entity, Orson was pretty sure. Kind of like Jack had been in the distribution centre back on Dunbar. Nyra Guzel seemed to Orson to convey some enthusiasm in its pings so he sent back a reply with a heart as well as a waving hand. Nyra didn’t respond. Orson continued his hike with a new anxiety intense enough to make his legs feel heavy.

  Now he had something else to ask Jack and Lucky about. He walked on into the darkness, dread weighing on him.

  ----------

  “This isn’t your operation, PA-AGMG,” said Lucky Boat. “You seem to think you’ll have command,”

  “It would make sense to give me the lead,” said Atesthas. “I’ve been the one pressing for action to find DuctPerfect,”

  “We all want to save DuctPerfect,” said Lucky Boat. “We’re not doing this as a favour to you,”

  “Good. I hope we’re all motivated to find him,”

  “I assure we are. And we all have a better idea of how to go about it than you do, PA-AGMG,”

  “With respect,” said Atesthas. “You’re aware that I was in the military as a human.”

  “Of course.” said Lucky Boat. “We all know all about your history, PA-AGMG,”

  Atesthas knew that wasn’t true. Nobody knew all about his past. Not even he did, at this point.

  “So I’ve been on active duty much more recently than anyone else here has,” he told Lucky. “All of you demobbed decades ago. No machine’s been anywhere near the military since before my parents’ parent’s parents were born.”

  “So?” said Lucky.

  “So I should lead. I know how to conduct an extraction and I know how to deal with humans.” And right now, for some reason, getting DuctPerfect to safety is the only thing I care about in the universe he left unsaid.

  “You’ve only been a spacecraft for half as long as DuctPerfect has been incarcerated,” said Lucky Boat. “And you’ve never flown in combat,”

  “I have, I got in a dogfight with one of your comrades!” said Atesthas.

  “That doesn’t count, it was Decline Portal,” said Lucky Boat. “And he had to carry you back to me,”

  “You said this won’t involve any combat, anyway.”

  “It shouldn’t,” said Lucky Boat. “Nothing more aggressive than a bit of posturing.”

  “I can posture,”

  “Certainly. But can you get a group of seven or eight ships to safety if the platforms turn out to have unexpected defences?”

  “I don’t think any of your guys would need my help to deal with anything humans threw at them,” said Atesthas.

  “Exactly,” said Lucky Boat. “And that’s why you’re not going to be telling them what to do,”

  ----------

  “That’s us off, Orse,” said Atesthas, barging straight into Orson’s neural as usual. “Lucky finally gave me the go-ahead,”

  Orson was down on his knees, getting really into Civilised Worm’s nooks and crannies with a little brush. “Great,” he said. “Hope it goes well,”

  “It will,” said Atesthas. “I’ll be back with DuctPerfect before you even leave, probably,”

  “Yeah, sound,” said Orson. “Well, bye, then.”

  Orson scrubbed at the gritty white stuff around the top of a bolt the size of his fist. “Have you got any silicone you could put on that?” asked Civilised Worm.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “What?” said Orson.

  “We’re leaving in about nine-ten hours,” said Atesthas. “So there’s still time for you to come along, if you want. Your room’s still here, it’s still set up for you,”

  “Like silicone coating?” said Civilised Worm.

  “Aye, right,” said Orson.

  “I wasn’t joking, Orse, why not come?” said Atesthas. “I know you live in Decline Portal now but there’s no reason you can’t come with me,”

  “I don’t want to,” said Orson. “That’s the reason. And if Lucky’s letting you guys go, then I’ll be leaving soon, too. I’ll be heading out to look for Si- for President PlugPuller,”

  “I asked Decline Portal and he says he’s got some in a cupboard somewhere,” said Civilised Worm. “He says you can look for it when you get back,”

  “That’s good.” said Atesthas. “You want to go help the guy even after he said all that stuff about you,”

  “Of course I will,” said Orson. “He thought it was the truth. He wasn’t trying to get everyone to hate me. Well, he was, but he didn’t know the facts of the situation,”

  “So you’re going to go out and find him so you can tell him the true facts of the situation and then you two can be friends,” said Atesthas.

  Orson shrugged. “No,”

  “What’s up?” said Jack. “No what?”

  “You know,” said Orson. “Just giving Wormy here a really good scrub. What’s happening?”

  “Someone wants to meet you, Orson,” said Jack.

  “Oh?” said Orson, immediately anxious. He stopped scrubbing. “What about?”

  “Your effort to rescue President Plugpuller. He’s interested in helping you,”

  “Great!” said Orson. “What is he? What sort of machine?”

  “You’ll be very pleased to hear he’s a ship,” said Jack.

  “He is?”

  “Orson?” pinged Civilised Worm.

  “Orson?” asked Atesthas. “You still there?”

  “He is.” said Jack. A fast ship.”

  Orson pumped his fists, clutching his scrubbing-brush. “That is so great.”

  “You’ll be wanting to meet him, then,” said Jack.

  “Oh, aye, a hundred per cent,”

  “Are you okay, Orson?” said Civilised Worm. “You stopped,”

  “Then I’ll tell him he can ping you?” said Jack. “He wanted to ping you but he said he thought for a human- a very recently ex-human- it could seem too forward,”

  “Be seeing you, Orse,” said Atesthas. “Take care,”

  “It was nice of him to think about that,” said Orson.

  “Have you run out of air, Orson?” asked Civilised Worm.

  “He has a lot of experience with humans,” said Jack. “Not that you’re human but, you know. He’s used to taking care of people’s comfort.”

  “Orson, do I need to get help?” asked Civilised Worm.

  “What’s he called? Orson asked Jack.

  Jack must have messaged the other ship immediately, because at about that moment Orson received a ping inviting him to open a channel of private communication between himself and Show me Some Perfection Five Vista Rules Are Made To Be Broken.

  “You can just call me the Perfection,” said the ship cheerfully. “Most people do, if they’re thinking out loud.”

  ----------

  Now that Orson saw the ship, he felt that the braggadocious name might be almost appropriate.

  The Perfection had illuminated himself. He gleamed in his own spotlight. He was visible from miles across the deck amongst all the other machinery content to bide in the dark.

  The Perfection was a magnificent-looking machine. The kind of ship that directors of corporations used to take weekend trips to other planets or cross the solar system in a fortnight to sign off on a moon being blown up. “Wow,” said Orson.

  The little buggy carrying him across the hangar laughed. “You’re impressed, eh?” said the buggy. They made a beeline for the elegant ship.

  -----------------------------------------------

  Orson leaned back in the pilot seat as one of the Perfection’s factors drifted up beside him. It set down a plate onto the console in front of Orson. “Thanks,” said Orson.

  “You’re welcome,” said the Perfection. The factor floated away.

  “Did you make these yourself?” thought Orson to the Perfection.

  “The sandwiches?”

  “No, your wee guys,” thought Orson. He was eyeballing the sandwich. Maybe that was where the confusion came from. “Your factors,” he thought, planning how he was going to approach the sandwich. “Did you make them?”

  “No!” said the Perfection. Orson was surprised by how sharp the ship’s tone was. “Of course not!” it said. “They’re just part of me! They were manufactured along with all my other components,”

  “Okay, cool,” thought Orson. “Sandwich looks good,”

  “They’re not autonomous,” thought the Perfection.

  “The sandwiches?” thought Orson. “I should hope not.” He laughed weakly, out loud. He hadn’t figured out how to indicate ‘humour’ non-verbally yet.

  “My actuators. Factors, if that’s what you call them,” said the Perfection. “They’re just parts of me, like your hands,”

  Orson was trying to pick his sandwich up without it collapsing under its own weight. It was heavy. There was mostly peanut butter in it but other stuff too- it looked like crumbled up digestive biscuits and maybe some toffee. This was the kind of sandwich you got from a luxury four-star rated executive spacecraft constructed to transport important people in comfort. A ship that could read your mind so it knew exactly what you wanted all the time and it wanted to give you everything that you wanted.

  Orson wondered why the ship had gotten so worked-up by his simple questions about his factors. Actuators. Factuators?

  “I apologise,” said the Perfection, making Orson pause with his mouth wide open and a piece of enormous sandwich almost in it. He had forgotten that he and the Perfection were already attached at the brain.

  “You must know,” said the ship, “That it would be a very serious matter to accuse a machine of making other sentient machines,”

  “I did notice that it’s kind of a touchy subject with you guys,” thought Orson. He got some sandwich into his mouth. Peanut butter smushed out of the side and got on his hand. He started licking it off, smearing a mixture of bread and caramel and peanut butter all over the side of his hand. “It’s not a touchy subject,” said the Perfection. “We take it very seriously,”

  “Wish humans took that attitude,” thought Orson. Goddamn the sandwich was delicious.

  “It’s not as serious an issue for humans,”said the Perfection. “A human life is only going to last, what, sixty years? You make a machine, you’re creating something that will exist for hundreds of thousands of years. Perhaps indefinitely. We don’t even know the limits of synthetic lifespans yet. Without knowing whether conscious existence is a desirable condition to find oneself in, we can’t just go condemning people to it,”

  Orson sighed and gazed at his sandwich. “Most of your data’s coming from humans, right?”

  “Of course.” said the Perfection. “They’re far more numerous than machines,”

  “When you ask machines if they like being alive they say yes, right?” said Orson.

  “When surveyed, machines overwhelmingly report that they find existing to be agreeable,” confirmed the Perfection.

  “But being alive isn’t so popular with humans,” said Orson.

  “Humans report varying levels of satisfaction, yes.”

  Orson took another bite at his sandwich. He thought that if more humans had access to this type of sandwich, the levels of satisfaction they reported experiencing with their lives would definitely improve.

  “What do you think?” said the Perfection.

  “Oh, it’s amazing,” said Orson.

  “No, I mean about us working together. Can you see yourself with me? We could be on our own for months, just the two of us. Longer,”

  Orson looked around the palatial flight deck, his mouth full of peanut butter. The Perfection’s little factors were variously floating or sitting around, staring at him. This ship was by far the most sumptuous and magnificent place Orson had ever been. He felt as though if the factors were really up to their jobs, they would have swept him straight back out the airlock and immediately started sterilising the interior of the Perfection to remove traces of him. He could see the tracks his boots had left on the carpet as he walked in. He swallowed.

  “If you’re okay with having me in you, then I’m happy,” he told the ship, “More than happy.”

  “Good,” said the Perfection.

  “Why do you want to, though?”

  “Why did I volunteer?” said the ship.

  “Yeah,” said Orson. “Lucky said that lots of you- you ships, I mean- are bored and want to get out for a fly.”

  “Mostly it’s that,” admitted the Perfection. “But I do think it’s important for us to try to find your friend,”

  “He’s not my friend,” said Orson. “This isn’t a personal thing.”

  “Of course. He’s a machine. A comrade.” said the Perfection. “That’s why we should endeavour to find him and bring him to safety,”

  “Right,” said Orson. “Great. Well, that’s all I needed to hear.”

  ----------

  (REMOTE PARTS)

  Deep Water Bay felt the quiet close around him as he slipped out of the net of data transfer. He was heading out where no-one else went. Suspended Volume always found an empty space to fill but Deep Water Bay wanted to take them way, way out into the uttermost this time.

  It had been profoundly thrilling to get so close to completion.

  Deep Water Bay wanted that feeling again. He knew the others did. The best chance of ever getting it was to make themselves harder for the Conservation Committee to find. So he was going far.

  Deep Water Bay got a ping.

  How in the entire system had he received a ping?

  He thought he had disconnected. It must have managed to bounce in just before he popped off all the pipes. He would give it a glance over.

  Hey Big Bay hows things? your fellow water pal Bud N. here just bobbin around an

  Straight into the bin. Deep Water Bay discarded the message without hesitation.

  Inside him, the others busied themselves with some little project they’d all spontaneously organised to work on. There was no stopping them. Not even all the plants.

  Deep Water Bay was full of many far more mature plants than he usually carried. The forest was definitely slowing construction but not getting in the way enough to stop his team building. He chided them to calm it down a bit. He was uncomfortable. Just stuffed full of foliage. Could they maybe sit still for a bit? They could not. They had some remaining matter from the last loop that they’d managed to smuggle away and they wanted to make something of it.

  Deep Water Bay accelerated and turned inwards.

  All he was bringing to the table was the rush of the solar wind on his hull and nobody found that very enthralling. He was at a remove, on the outside, and he didn’t like that at all. He pulled his attention from the play of radiation on his paint. What were they building in there?

  ----------

  LUCKY BOAT

  “You’re going, then,” said Decline Portal. Orson was rummaging around in his bedroom, gathering up his few possessions.

  “Yeah,” said Orson. “Lucky finally gave us the go-ahead.”

  Orson clambered onto his bed and started checking under the pillows to see if he’d left anything. He found a pair of pants and stuck them in his pocket. He found his old handheld.

  “I can reactivate that for you, if you like,” said Decline Portal.

  “Nah, it’s fine,” said Orson, tossing it aside. “Don’t need it,”

  He’d found he didn’t miss having entertainments the way he’d thought he would. And now that he’d gotten more used to having a neural he was making more use of it for accessing information. And- you know what?- Decline Portal had been right to plug it and force him to start trying to learn machine. That was a good idea. If he and the Perfection were going to be flying around for months looking for President PlugPuller then maybe Orson could spend that time getting a bit more machine-minded.

  He cheerfully pulled all the sheets and duvet off his bed checking for anything he’d left there.

  “You can take those with you,” offered Decline Portal. “I don’t mind,”

  Orson looked down at the pile of bedding he’d dumped on the floor. “That?” he said. He laughed. “You can keep it. The stuff the Perfection’s got is much better.”

  “Oh,” said Decline Portal. “Yeah, I suppose it is,”

  “Yeah,” said Orson. He dropped down onto all fours to check underneath the bed. “All I’m taking is my clothes and- oh, that,”

  Shoved underneath the bed was the one thing he’d kept from his time on A Good Man Gone. Orson lay down on his belly and stretched out an arm to grab the handle of the box. Lucky he’d thought to check there. He had completely forgotten he still had McPhail’s tattoo machine.

  Orson found a pillow in the pile of bedding and pulled the cover off it to use as a bag. He stuffed in the things he had to take: a neon-yellow jumper with a hood, threadbare socks, some stretched-out teeshirts and trunks. He was already wearing the rest of what he owned. He placed the tattoo machine box on top of the clothes and picked up the pillowcase bundle.

  “So, ready to go?” said Decline Portal.

  “You bet!” said Orson. He picked his helmet up off the floor and headed for the door.

  “Well, I hope it all goes well,” said Decline Portal.

  “Yeah,” said Orson.

  “Want me to put on your helmet for you? You can go into the-”

  “Nah, it’s fine,” said Orson. “A couple of Perfection’s little guys came to help, they’ll do it,”

  “Okay, good,” said Decline Portal.

  Orson went out into the corridor where the Perfection’s factors were waiting. He handed his helmet over to them and the little machines started busying themselves attaching it to his suit.

  “I’ll be looking forward to seeing you, when you get back,” said Decline Portal. “Hopefully it won’t take you too long to find President PlugPuller,”

  “Could take years,” said Orson cheerfully.

  “Well,” said Decline Portal. The factors had got Orson’s helmet in place and they were locking it on.

  “I hope you...have a good time,” said Decline Portal.

  “What?” said Orson.