'23kpc' Chapter 34: Escalating the Questions

At the height of confusion, it helps to know somebody who knows somebody

[Image: “interior living room” (modified for use here) by DeviantArt user “arclabelle.”I think this comes pretty close to depicting the Captain’s living room I’d imagined.]

Reminders:
(a) The complete ‘23kpc’ story so far
(b) The ‘23kpc’ Reader’s Guide

Last week:

Guy and Missy were talking with Matty out on the ship’s “deck”: actually a corridor, with wallscreens cleverly tuned to simulate the view from an Earthbound oceangoing ship. They’d just started to discuss further the network of wikons spread across the galaxy by passing ships; it suddenly struck Guy that the wikons were capable of much, much more than simply receiving and broadcasting news and information among the fleet. They actually transferred entire shipboard cultures—

That’s when he felt a playful nudge: The Pooch, Durwood, needed to be somehow entertained, or at least attended to. Absent anything like real Pooch toys, Guy looked around for something, anything, he could use for a brief game of “fetch”…

…and impulsively grabbed the plastic lid of Matty’s cocktail glass, spinning it out and over the edge of the deck. The deck on this level of the ship is one of three, with a couple below it; they’re all separated by a few meters from the wallscreen, so that the disk “fell”¹ out of sight down below. Durwood took off over the edge, too; grabbed the disk in mid-air; and, rather than returning immediately, disappeared somewhere on the lower deck, out of the humans’ line of sight.

All well and good, entertaining the humans as well as The Pooch. Durwood would find its way back, homing on the remote leash which Missy held. But then something surprising happened: the always-blinking green LED on the remote went out — for the first time in Guy and Missy’s experience.

Guy continues this week:

Chapter 34: Meeting Jincks

Back in the old days on Earth, of course, people had real dogs. Even now, if any people remain there, I bet the real dogs are still palling around with them, fetching sticks and balls, licking faces, pooping.

But taking the creatures into space? The firms who built the starliners had to make compromises, on this as on much else. They had to worry about every single cubic millimeter of air, every gram of food, every milliliter of water, and of course — at the other end — every molecule of waste (solid, liquid, gas, or in-between and all-the-above). The result: Pooches. Not quite everything you’d get from real dogs, maybe. But real close — sometimes heartbreakingly so. And just as essential to the overall mental health of the humans aboard.

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say starcruising folks who’ve never owned a Pooch have never really lived. One fellow’s meat vs. another’s poison, so on and so forth. But a definite line lies between the skeptical Matty types and those, like Missy and me, who regard Pooches as extensions of their owners’ personalities — of their selves.

Matty can’t understand, for instance, why his straightforward question of fact about the remote’s LED seems to have energized such normally unflappable (if not always level-headed) individuals, to a state resembling panic. We leap to our feet and take turns grabbing the remote from each other and stabbing at the buttons, moving to the railing to look down, coming back to the chairs to grab the remote again, and chanting unproductive, magical incantations like What are we going to do?! and ShitshitshitSHIT...

The remote, see — that green LED? It never goes out, except maybe when we’re dorming and The Pooch is in the R&R shop. It doesn’t even change color. It just, well, pulses. I don’t have the slightest idea what a fully extinguished LED might mean. You can’t switch a Pooch off unless it’s parked at “home” and its owners’ dorming cylinders are switched on; you can’t remove its power pack unless you work in the maintenance shop and have the specialized tools et cetera; and you therefore might need a functioning remote at any instant.

So anyhow yeah, it’s true, Matty may not really understand our attachment to Durwood. But Matty’s also our good friend, and he can see we’re unnerved.

“Hey, hey,” he says, his voice suddenly soft, each of his hands and arms going into comfort mode and draping around our shoulders. “Easy, kids. Let me make some calls for you.” He moves a short distance away and pulls a v-com from his pocket.

Missy and I continue to stand at the railing, holding and reassuring each other, glancing down now and then to the spot where we last saw The Pooch. But I’m also watching Matty, trying to read his face as whoever he’s talking to speaks. He frowns. Nods. Comes to the railing himself and looks down, and holds the v-com so the other party can see — I guess — about where Durwood disappeared.

Then he turns his back to us again, walks a bit further away. Other people out here on the deck are starting to notice something’s up, and whispering among themselves, and pointing, and then looking suddenly away, embarrassed, when they realize I’m watching them. The ones with Pooches of their own may not know the details, but their instincts are working hard: they’re fussing with the remote leashes, reeling their charges in a bit closer.

Still carrying on his conversation, Matty turns back this way. He frowns at the v-com. Looks in our direction. Shakes his head. I’m no lip-reader, but I can see him pretty unambiguously say Sure just before hanging up. He steps back in our direction, but even before he reaches us my own v-com buzzes in my pocket. I take it out and look at the screen: not a call, but a calendar notification for an appointment I never made or agreed to — understandable, since the appointment is time-stamped only a few seconds ago.

Missy and I, says the description in a florid typeface, are cordially invited for IMMEDIATE Cocktails — it’s capitalized like that — in the Captain’s quarters.

There’s a P.S., too: “Bring Matty,” it says. “And bring remote.” The appointment originates from the Captain’s own account, but it’s not signed by him. “All best,” it closes, “D&I.”²