Orbits

Tom & the Ship, featuring a Landing

"Where did you learn this?"

"The ship told me."

"Why would the ship tell you?"

"Because I asked it. Kind of."

The idea struck him as so odd, Tom was at a loss for words.

"I asked to see outside my pod." She paused before anticipating his question. "I was curious. And the ship told me. Just like that." She twisted her lip. "Maybe it needed to tell someone, and it chose me."

"That's ridiculous. The ship is a ship."

Natalie shrugged. Her hair danced like a current of air. She had dark, dark eyes. 

"It's just that if I was forced to watch without ever announcing anything but the time—and not even that, because why would anyone want to know the time anymore—I would get lonely, you know, and want to talk."

"That's ridiculous."

"Then why do we talk?"

"Because the ship's algorithms paired us together."

"Because the ship knows that we require relationships in order to survive."

"I don't want to leave."

"You have no choice in the matter. Your pod will detach on its own and land on the planet and eject you and disappear." She smiled. Almost seemed annoyed. "We might finally meet in person."

"I want to talk to the ship. It'll answer me if I ask it a question?"

Nathalie shrugged. "I don't know."

"But it answered you."

"Maybe it only answered because I didn't expect it to."

"I like it here. I like the ship."

"I did, too."

"I really do like it here." But Tom sounded hard. "I don't want to leave. Can't we go on searching for a new home forever?"

"We'll tire of it, eventually."

Tom could not imagine that. The Mind Map was infinite: any fantasy, any whim, could be reenacted, created, felt. And did he mention back massages? And stimulations?

Until Nathalie's message, he'd nearly forgotten he was on a ship. Months travelling through the vacuum of space had repressed all memories of "Earth" to the size of flickable dust. He did not remember the others—and there had had to have been others, back on "Earth." Friends and family and perhaps even lovers, before the darkness of the pods and Nathalie, his assigned partner. There must have been cities, and fear, and a takeoff. But trying to remember it all was like trying to thin purée just by stirring it. He didn't have the patience anymore.

The ship and his pod were all that remained. The ship was like a silent friend who read your mind and gave you all you wanted but was otherwise invisible and unnoticed—that was the ship. The pod was like a cruise boat that sailed on your dreams and made more dreams with the ripples—that was the pod. They fed and clothed and spoiled him.