Chapter 3 #5
Monotheism. Iris made a mental note of it.
In all his years as a Vessel, he had come across only one other monotheist, a lone Mormon from Arien IV.
There were others, of course. Iris had come across several digitised copies of the Qur’an at the library that were regularly checked out, with requests going out to all the arms of the galaxy, and Bacai had even befriended a rabbi enough to exchange long, written debates on all things faith and prayer.
They had been at it for nearly five years now, and their letters had yet to reach any definitive conclusion.
But Iris had only been fortunate once, and after a thirty-six-hour chat, Cohyn offered Iris his Bible as a gift but wasn’t particularly upset when the Vessel declined the Mormon’s generosity.
Iris remembered the interaction as a largely pleasant one, for him.
Dr. Alo has three older sisters. She’s a new hire at the institute, so she’s willing to bend over backwards to get ahead. Specialises in First Earth flora and other alien plants. And she’s single.
Iris laughed out loud. “Now, why would you mention that?”
Just making sure you’re aware of all the options.
And the option was always there. Celibacy was no longer required of Starlit monastics, hadn’t been for centuries.
Many modern Vessels had companions they frequented, informally, sometimes multiple at once.
There were no explicit rules to follow, as long as no one demonstrated overt possessiveness, and no one’s work or mood suffered for it.
Some eventually left the temple to start families, have children.
It was never discussed as a failure, but rather as the natural flow of existence.
Natural, as the birth and death of a star.
It was all a choice, and like any other choice, it came with its own consequences and its own complications.
Historically, when choice was taken away, people had the tendency to rebel, to obsess over it, spending their energies to suppress their desires until no energy was left to fulfill their duties.
Yet sometimes, as Iris had learned, it was simpler to avoid people and the complications that accompanied them, altogether.
Perusing VIFAI’s reports and lost in his own internal musings, Iris crossed most of the corridor.
His mind map suggested he was coming up on his destination just ahead.
He couldn’t get there sooner; the hem of his trousers dragged along the wet moss, absorbing much of the moisture. His ankles ached with the chill.
Should I read engineer Yan out next?
Iris was already by the doors, hands on the handles.
He wanted his entire attention fixed on what was beyond the doors.
“It can wait, let’s see what’s inside,” he said, giving the handles a tug.
The doors parted without much of a struggle.
A cloud of steam accompanied by hot air puffed out into the corridor, blinding Iris instantly.
He braced for more dead passengers, shielding himself from the steam with the sleeve of his robes.
When his eyes adjusted, he was greeted by several long rows of shoulder-height, uniform trees running along the room.
These were clearly domesticated, gleaming with abundant green and red fruit.
Don’t eat anything, VIFAI cautioned, sensing Iris’s blooming childlike glee.
But Iris had long grown accustomed to ignoring it in matters of food, and without hesitation, he let go of the door handles and ran inside.
Black soil was scattered on the floor, its deep musk mixing with the rising scent of sweet decay.
Rotting fruit, leaves, fresh moisture. The scents all blurred together to manufacture something that was undeniably real.
At Iris’s feet, discarded apples littered the ground, turning into sustenance for the trees.
He pulled a red, lopsided one from the nearest tree and rubbed it clean against his robes.
Imperfect, bruised. No waxy coating to preserve its sheen weeks past expiration.
No geometrically appealing form or precise colour to signal to a buyer that it was ready for consumption.
Better still, it was wild grown, not manufactured in a factory or lab, the way the meat in his sandwich had been.
It was as real as an apple could get. Iris bit into the fruit; ripe juices dripped down his chin.
Wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his robes, he followed the line of trees down the long room.
“Sometimes I really wish you could taste, same as I do,” Iris said, giddy with the sugars from the apple juice.
Then I would be able to taste the poison as you ingested it instead of analysing it for its constituents.
“It’s not poisoned,” Iris said, his words muffled by another bite from the apple.
The hundreds of trees around him were all organised in neat rows by apple colour and variety.
The heavy, humid air had Iris sweating again, from his bald head to his bare toes.
In one final, delicious bite, Iris devoured the core of the apple and wiped his hands on his trousers.
That’s not good.
“It’s an old superstition that—”
No. Look.
VIFAI interrupted him with a deliberate shock.
For only a moment, it gave Iris access to what it was experiencing—a multitude of inputs, the ongoing scan for information on the academics, a dozen simultaneous queries for most widespread poisons.
But beyond all that was a tiny, but exigent, ping.
As he watched the ping, Iris sensed VIFAI’s own unease hijack his synapses.
In any other place, a ping wouldn’t have been cause for alarm.
Even though human/AI interfaces had long been phased out—very few people in all of space had an AI companion these days—it wasn’t uncommon for a station or ship construct to wave hello to VIFAI as it passed.
You said we were alone, Iris thought feverishly, feeling both very small and very exposed in the middle of the orchard.
We were.
The ship does have an AI construct then?
For a few seconds, VIFAI was quiet and distant, then it was back, engulfed in blatant confusion. It’s in this ship. But it’s not the ship.
This is not the time for riddles. Iris eyed the door.
He could make it to the corridor in a matter of seconds, but where would he go after?
He could accidentally step on a live wire and perish immediately.
The academics wouldn’t know of his fate.
He had been foolish to venture out alone, and now he would pay the price.
With every bit of willpower, Iris fought for fragile control over the part of him that screamed to run.
Panic was deadly. Panic would be his undoing.
You should respond, Iris thought quickly. Oh, what he wouldn’t give for the distracting chatter of the academics right this moment.
What if they aren’t friendly?
If you don’t, they may assume we’re the unfriendly ones. Without realising he was doing so, Iris crouched down underneath a tree. There was no use hiding his nerves from an AI construct that had complete access to all his endocrine responses. What’s the worst that can happen?
They can infect me with a virus and kill me, then come here and kill you, VIFAI replied without any humour. Fine, OK. For a few seconds, it was quiet and distant, then it was back, engulfed in blatant confusion. It’s definitely in this ship.
And?
And … VIFAI paused, like it was thinking of the best way to articulate whatever it was going to say.
… and I can’t understand a thing it’s saying.
It’s an odd language. If you can even call it that.
I can’t even tell if it has syntax. And it’s weak and small.
Erratic. I think someone forgot their implant here.
Someone forgetting an electronic part of a circuit that was embedded inside their brain was a very unlikely scenario.
Should we try to find it?
I don’t think it’s even aware that it’s, well,—VIFAI never minced words, but something about its brief exchange with the owner of the ping had nudged it off-balance, and it replied sharply—alive. I don’t think it knows it’s alive.
There was a finality to those words. Alive.
Iris rarely thought of VIFAI as alive, as sentient, apart from himself.
He struggled to remember a time when the electronic voice wasn’t whispering in his ear, when the construct wasn’t a comforting pressure against Iris’s own ego.
Yet, VIFAI undeniably was alive and separate.
It had a sense of humour. It felt pain, of this Iris was sure, the realisation cemented through a shameful experience in his youth that had nearly destroyed his companion.
VIFAI frequently wanted things Iris did not want and did its best to force them on him.
It desired, far more than Iris did, in both quantity and scope.
It angered; there they matched. They bickered in the way that friends do, made up, made compromises.
VIFAI was very much independent of Iris, despite their electronic connection.