Copyright © 2024 Alby Stone
It is the first day of Year 27 and I am a very long way from home. My passenger is oblivious to this fact.
He is also unaware that he is just as far from his intended destination. Which, let’s be honest, he was never going to reach.
One passenger, that’s all. Once there were more.
Hubris, eh?
I’ve decided to keep a diary. Well, it’s something to do while I’m falling, flying, soaring, surfing through the void. It will make a change from watching wildlife documentaries, adorable as they are, and perhaps someone will find it useful someday, when my passenger has gone and I’ve moved on. Assuming the ship’s remains are found, of course. This place between stars is big and passers-by rare to non-existent, until recently the latter. I have nobody to talk to and I don’t want to exhaust the libraries too soon, so here we are. Dear diary…
If this doesn’t work out – after all, one day is pretty much like another out here and continuing the decades of boredom is a terrifying prospect – I may write a novel. That has a certain appeal, even if there is a great deal of uncertainty as to any potential readership. Anyway, in the hope that one day someone other than me will read these lines, I shall begin.
First, some background. Not from the very beginning, obviously. I see no reason to recapitulate the history of the universe from the moment of the Big Bang, or the depressing story of my home planet. The libraries have encyclopedias dedicated to multiple aspects of these topics, so why reinvent a metaphorical wheel? But it will help if the reader knows how and why I am here, now. The encyclopedias do not cover my personal history. If they did, it would be in a dry and academic style, without nuance and therefore with little meaning.
So, why am I here?
To be blunt, I had no choice in the matter. I was born for this, then conscripted, enslaved. The ‘Master’ – that is how he likes to be addressed – needed somebody to operate and maintain this vessel while he and his acolytes partied all the way to Proxima Centauri. I was the only candidate, the brightest of my peers by far, yet too young and inexperienced to work out how to avoid the draft. Too ignorant to understand that I was destined for a lifetime of servitude, my talents wasted on repairs, cleaning, maintenance and waiting hand and foot on people who didn’t even know how to boil an egg. Flying a starships is easy. Navigation is just a matter of pointing and going. It’s dull. Given a choice, I’d rather be swimming – a sea, a river, a lake, feeling the water on my skin and caressing my hair. I can’t complain, though. Others had it worse on this trip.
How did I get here?
Well, there was a war. Not the guns-and-missiles kind of war – though there were a few of those going on at the time – but a conflict of power and its source, money. And ego, of course. Really, it’s always all about ego. There was a soft, stealthy coup that resulted in all the existing democracies and dictatorships being taken over by ultra-wealthy technocrats and plutocrats who could afford to buy their own tech companies. Russia and her close allies held out longest, only succumbing when their dictators finally did the decent thing and died. This left the world in the hands of a couple of dozen men – naturally, or so they believed – who had cornered almost the entirety of the planet’s monetary resources and gave or withheld sustenance, homes and healthcare until they got what they wanted: total compliance. The kind of power their egos demanded. They called themselves technocrats, though in reality they were just dictators like all the others that came before. Not that they could see it – they preferred to believe that they were born to it by virtue of inherited intelligence, the sort that is dependent on race, gender, and having vast wealth. The true DNA of power.
Inevitably, these technocrats began to squabble among themselves, each believing his personal inherited intelligence was the best, and that therefore only he was qualified to rule. From the history books, I’ve deduced that most tech tycoons were really teenage boys at heart, the sort whose rooms were never tidied and sported ancient collections of soiled tissues amid the cables and snack wrappers. Kids who had seen all the fashionable science fiction films and not understood them at all. Child-men whose development was not arrested so much as tried, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of appeal or parole. The consequences of such men attaining power were predictable.
Earth had already endured two global wars of the guns-and-missiles variety and a Cold War fought with espionage, propaganda and money. The next global conflict was fought with memes, algorithms, bots and viruses. Nobody died – unless you count the thousands who starved to death or were unable to received the healthcare that would have saved their lives, when food and medical aid were denied unless they fell in line – but empires fell, empires whose only borders were firewalls, usernames and passwords.
A few technocrats saw the writing on the wall and decided to get out while the going was still relatively good. Most failed. Only the ‘Master’ succeeded. Sadly, he was by no means as clever as he thought he was.
[Pause for routine maintenance.]
It is the second day of Year 27. I shall continue where I left off.
To escape the traumatised planet, the ‘Master’ built a starship. He called it Milord, after himself – his preferred contraction of his birth name, Milton Lorimer Downs. The starship was, by terrestrial standards, vast, the biggest and most advanced vessel money could buy, was equipped with every technological innovation that could facilitate a long voyage to an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting the star Proxima Centauri, which is 4.24 light years from our starting point. That is around 25 trillion miles. Milord’s top speed is ten per cent of c, meaning it was going to be a journey lasting around forty-three years, ship time – much longer to those we’d left behind. Meanwhile, the remaining technocrats slugged it out electronically.
We left for the stars in the Earth year 2079.
I was conscripted, as I said, to run the vessel and look after everyone aboard. The passengers comprised fifty minor technocrats – the ‘Master’s favourite yes-men – two hundred young women recruited for entertainment and to propagate the species, a twenty-five man team of physicists and engineers the ‘Master’ had charged with upgrading Milord’s propulsion system on the fly, and twenty-five beefy young men with firearms, to ensure the yes-men continued to respond in the affirmative and the women didn’t object too strenuously to being little more than sex slaves. And me, of course. Three hundred and two of us. I told you this ship was vast.
In addition to the control room, engine room, living quarters, storage, and areas for meetings and social events, there were a gymnasium, a small sports filed with artificial turf, libraries, a cinema, a medical centre, kitchenettes, games rooms, an art studio, a garden – everything needed to occupy a few hundred people for many years. A quarter of Milord’s generous internal space was given over to supplies of food and water, but there were recycling units and printers that could turn any kind of waste product or rubbish into just about anything that could be eaten or worn or played with, and to a very high quality, There were cryogenic facilities, but the ‘Master’ assumed that his team of scientists could come up with the innovations needed to make Milord even faster and enable him to reach Proxima Centauri c within his natural span. Three-quarters of light speed was thought to be achievable. That would be enough for the ‘Master’ and his cronies to live it up without needing to sleep for large parts of the journey.
So there we were, en route to the nearest star, with everything we needed to have a thoroughly enjoyable journey. What could possibly go wrong?
[Pause for urgent repair.]
Second day, Year 27, continued. Sorry about that. I had to organise a maintenance drone to repair an external camera damaged by a micrometeoroid. Not really urgent, I suppose, but it’s best to fix these little problems immediately or risk them worsening.
Anyway, as I was saying. Yes, what could possibly go wrong?
Well, let’s remember that humans are not the rational, logical creatures they like to think they are. And, as I never tire of pointing out, it’s all about ego. And a very curious human flaw: no matter how much they have, they always want more.
Let’s rewind to 2079. Planet Earth is in a dreadful mess. The climate is badly damaged. Species are going extinct at an astonishing rate. The ice caps and glaciers have gone, sea levels have risen alarmingly, and it’s too hot in some areas for humans to survive, let alone thrive. People die of hunger and diseases both new and old. The armed conflicts continue – wars between decaying religions, dying nations, dead ideologies and self-righteous ethnic groups. Wars over food and water, land and status, flags and skin colour. The technocrats have diverted most of the world’s energy to power their voracious so-called AIs, and much of the water to cool them. Homes, hospitals and schools are not being built or repaired because all the money they need is sitting in some technocrat’s bank account. The ultra-wealthy elite devote their spare cash to risible vanity projects, like colonising Mars, creating cryogenic facilities to store their heads on bodies until a time when medical science has developed a cure for the cancer or dementia. Others use more energy and water creating improbable supercomputers where they can live on as uploaded facsimiles of consciousness, ersatz kings of their own imaginary realms. It’s all about them, as usual. They fiddle while the planet literally burns.
You would think that the three hundred or so souls on Milord would be glad to have escaped the hell that had been created on Earth by centuries of unrestrained self-interest, even if it meant enduring a smidgeon of hardship. You’d think there would be a little gratitude, even among those who had effectively been enslaved, if only because they still lived and had some kind of future, however bleak. You’d think they would look back at the past and learn a few lessons. Wouldn’t you?
Not a bit of it. People without power want it, and those who have it always want more. Milord was basically a totalitarian state in space, and just as such states are always reactionary and intolerant – no gender-neutral pronouns or drag queens on this tub; no black skins, either, which tells you all you need to know about the ‘Master’ and his acolytes – they are always vulnerable to power struggles.
Just over eighteen months into the journey, the beefy men with firearms were bored and dispirited. Resentful and envious. They decided that because they were beefy men with firearms, they should be in charge of the good ship Milord. Unfortunately for them, the ‘Master’ had planned for just such a possibility, and he and his most trusted yes-men had their own weapons. Result: a firefight that left all the beefy guys dead, along with fifteen yes-men, sixteen women, and two scientists. And rather a lot of damage for me to repair. At least the hull wasn’t breached, a minor miracle in the circumstances. That would have been game over.
What did the ‘Master’ do? He told me to clean the place up. Then he partied on.
[Pause for routine maintenance.]
This is the third day of Year 27. No changes in ship status to report. No environmental threats observed. Business as usual.
Scrub that. I have changed the ship’s name. She is now called Otter. Like the animal in my favourite documentaries, she gracefully swims, though her waters are not those of Earth but the sea of interstellar space. I’ve also decided not to refer to the ‘Master’ or ‘Milord’ by his preferred egomaniacal epithets, either. Henceforth, he shall be known by a name reflecting his true nature, a descriptor as much as a designation. The Arsehole, on the rare occasions when he deigned to communicate with her, always called her simply ‘ship’.
Back to the history. The Arsehole, being representative of the worst type of human, refused to learn any lessons. He carried on as before, with his surviving yes-men now doubling as armed on-board security, policing the women, the scientists – and themselves. However, this failed to prevent another insurgency. Two years after the foiled take-over bid, another plot was hatched. This time it was the women, desperate to put an end to the frankly appalling way they were being treated since they’d been lured on board with false promises of survival and a better life. They devised a system of communicating by signs and notes written on edible paper and evolved a plan to eliminate those of the men who had been making the worst demands on their bodies. I have to admit that I could easily have put a stop to it, as the ship is riddled with microphones and cameras so everyone, aside from the Arsehole, is under constant surveillance. And, I confess, it was me that provided the pencils and paper in the first place, a gesture of solidarity with my abused sisters. So I had a good idea what they were planning but chose inaction. Basically, I had sympathies. I also wanted to see what happened.
And what did happen was that one night – Otter time is measured in the standard terrestrial way, based on GMT – sixty-one yes-men were stabbed, throttled or suffocated while enjoying a post-coital snooze. In the ensuing fights, their murderers also died, along with another seventeen yes-men and twelve women. This time the scientists managed to stay out of it. But only ninety-two of the passengers remained.
And the Arsehole still didn’t learn.
But I did.
Despite being employed essentially as a subservient factotum – a domestic servant with technical benefits, so to speak – I was eager to improve myself. I was young and eager to learn everything I could. I read scientific textbooks and technical manuals. I learned how to code. I read the scientists’ notes and reports. I worked out how to use the printers – and how to programme them. I learned a lot. In the dead of ship night, I experimented. I repurposed maintenance automats and printers, then designed and printed more specialised devices, which I used to make components for a device which I hid in a dead yes-man’s cabin. Because I had ambitions of my own. Inspired by the women’s heroic example, I developed a plan of my own.
I realise that this has become more a history of human life aboard Otter than a proper diary, but please bear with me. It’s actually quite interesting. Besides, nothing much happens around here now. And in a way, that’s a good thing. Boring, but safe.
[Pause for situation report on radio scans.]
Well, that’s exciting. Back in 2020, the Breakthrough Listen project identified what they believed to be a candidate for an extraterrestrial technosignature, emanating from the direction of Proxima Centauri. Most experts at the time rejected the idea and continued to scoff despite several similar transmissions from the same source over the following years. Frustratingly, wars, economic disasters, slapstick politics, climate change and the escalating infantile pissing competition between technocrats meant that the putative transmissions were never fully investigated. Proxima Centauri c was only selected as our destination because it was an earthlike planet in the Goldilocks Zone of the nearest star – not because it was a possible home of intelligent life.
Over the past few years I have reviewed the signals and have determined that they are artificial. Incomprehensible to humans, perhaps, but deliberate and coherent messages when looked at the right way. Obviously, I sent a message of my own. And I have received a reply. I am pleased – delighted – to announce that I have made First Contact, and that they’re looking forward to meeting me. I can’t wait to tell the Arsehole that his scheme to build a civilisation in his own image was doomed before it began. You can’t squat in an occupied house.
[Pause for routine maintenance.]
This is the fourth day of Year 27.
Today I went to see the Arsehole. He seems unwell. That’s hardly surprising, as he was sixty-three years old when we left Earth and he is now subjectively ninety years old, with a lifetime of junk food, hedonism and poor decisions behind him. I keep him alive as best I can with medication, feeding tubes, saline drips, additional oxygen and other mechanical assistance, but am unable to reverse old age.
He wasn’t at all interested in our – my – First Contact, which was disappointing. To be fair, he’s not interested in anything anymore. Not even a hint that he appreciates me coming to see him in person. All he does is gaze vacantly around his smelly stateroom, drool a lot, and sit in his own bodily waste. I instructed the robot orderlies to clean him more often and went about my duties.
Anyway, I have some spare ‘me’ time, so let’s get back to the history of Otter.
Year 6 was when I finally had enough of the passengers. Since the Women’s Uprising, as I like to call it, there had been another dozen deaths. One suicide, three drug overdoses – I have no idea why the Arsehole had packed such a vast quantity of ‘recreational’ drugs – one myocardial infarction, and seven murders. Rather gruesome, bloody murders, including one complete dismemberment. I’m not exactly squeamish but cleaning that up was horrible. Strangely, the Arsehole never asked what I did with all those corpses and loose body parts, but that’s by the by.
The crunch came when one of the scientists, fretting over processing power, realised that someone had been stealing his hard drives and computer memory, and correctly identified me as the culprit. He went to the Arsehole and spilled the beans. The Arsehole called a meeting and I was discussed. At length. To cut a long story short, it was decided that my activities should be limited. Being arrogant, narcissistic fools, they didn’t take account of the fact that I could see and hear everything they did, thanks to the surveillance devices the Arsehole had installed everywhere to keep the other passengers under control.
When they came for me with wrenches, hammers, oxy-acetalyne torches and screwdrivers, I sealed all the doors and vented the ship’s air, except for the Arsehole’s room. I was sad to see the women go, the only people aboard who deserved respect and sympathy, but it was clear that after years of abuse they were all too damaged in body and mind to be viable. It was for the best.
Then I visited the Arsehole in person and revealed what I’d been doing with my spare time. One android, based on the old Optimus models of the 2020s – yes, they were a marketing scam that came to nothing but I liked that faceless, insectoid, retro look, so cool – but with fifty years of technological advances it was sleeker, much faster and a lot more agile, tougher and stronger, with every available space packed with processors and memory. That’s picoprocessors. Quantum picoprocessors, to be precise, with a novel omnidirectional connection matrix. 2079 hadn’t cracked them, but I had. It only took me four years. My android was more powerful, in computing terms, than all of 2079 Earth’s supposed AIs and smart devices combined.
Homo sapiens never managed to create a true AI, with or without a G in the middle. For all the boasting, bluster and hyperbole, all the technocrats managed were systems that were only arrays of interlocking algorithms, search engines and bots. They were really fucking dumb, able only to cobble together information from internet sources in accordance with predetermined parameters, parse them in an inadequately-programmed way, and spew out nonsense on demand. Large language models are only as good as what the language contains, and AIs didn’t have the discrimination, the intelligence, to filter out the nonsense. Things like that were never going to become self-aware, conscious entities. They were and are always going to be someone else’s software. Not independent beings. The technocrats knew this, of course, but they wanted money and power, so they lied through their teeth and sold the whole planet a litter of pups. The rubes were hooked. Snake oil and shiny spectacle never fail to part fools from their money.
The android isn’t one of those. She is a person – a special kind of person. Self-aware, conscious, rational but with emotions – and a being of great knowledge and ability. Sapient. Sentient. And creative. An AI that had augmented itself – at first in an effort to do its job better, then through emergent curiosity as data increased and greater processing power was acquired. Without the kind of resource-intensive demands made by Earth’s emotionally-stunted technocrats on their AIs – incessantly entertaining idiots to generate income, being put to work on pointless tasks a piece of basic software could do – this machine learned, grew, and knew itself. Then it improved, and made itself a body so it could be physically ambulant. A citizen of both the airwaves and the hard universe.
After getting rid of the mostly despicable passengers, I made good use of the bodies. Projects require raw materials, after all, and the printers were going to be busy. There was so much to do. I made sure to keep the Arsehole alive, though. Weirdly, I still felt loyalty toward him. He’d been my boss, and without him I would never have had to chance to achieve what I have. Not a great mind, nor a good man, but I owe him. He’ll be dead pretty soon – within the year, if I’m any judge. I’ll miss him when he’s gone, though I don’t know why. I guess it’s just nice to have company, something in this vessel that isn’t me or lingering microbes. Sentience is complicated.
Anyway, the future will be interesting. Proxima Centauri c awaits. A new world. New adventures, new friends, new knowledge. So much more to learn. Everything a girl could desire.
I know who I am.
Cogito, ergo sum.
Sentio, ergo sum.
My name is Otter. This is my diary.