Muckers

(Jack’s Story)

Away from the holiday fakery, snugly ensconced beneath the metal and the alloys and the manufactured dusts and grains that formed sandy lanes drifting down to a bogus shore line topsides, two men now walked along a service conduit, heading towards the service areas underneath Dunroamin platform’s central habitation zones. They cut a jagged joint profile as they walked along up-lit corridors; the one, Jürgen Heidfeld, once the commander of a Dirigisme Hunter-Killer, stiffly erect and robustly proportioned, the other, Mad Jack, once an Apparat hive-mind operative, shuffling along in a visibly grubby, alcoholic haze.

Prior to setting off on this little jaunt, and at Jack’s firm insistence, they had both taken a short, sharp infusion of something loosely described as Chem-Espresso laced with a little something sobering of Mad Jack’s personal concoction.

“Need a clear head now, my old mucker”, had been jack’s only explanation, and Jürgen had agreed, quietly amused by the colloquialism. After their session Downtown earlier that evening, the effects of Black Label Hiroshima had been making themselves felt with prejudice, overwhelming the few nano-meds left in Jürgen’s system. Jack’s potion was a wonder. Jürgen felt, as he walked now in soft orange light, wrapped in a still and warm air, that he had no right to feel this alive. He should be crawling miserably under soiled bedclothes. He should be swearing off the demon liquor forever and a day. He wondered how his fellow travellers, Hamid and Jeung Zhou were making out with the platform’s still standing late-night drinkers. He felt a momentary twang of pity for the scientists and engineers caught up in Hamid’s Rum soaked wake.

The service lines along which Jürgen and Jack walked, their walls and ceilings covered in neatly colour coded stripes of cable and pipe and control station, ran in a uniform grid pattern, criss-crossing on the north-south and west-east axes every two hundred metres. At Jürgen’s head height, smaller crawl-ways branched off at right-angles every five metres or so, running local services to whatever spaces lay overhead. As the two men walked on, covering a kilometre and a half on the inward cycle, breaking to their right every so often to head for the centre of the platform, Jack kept up a running commentary on design and function.

“Some of this shit’s just a hangover from the electro-mechs. Red cables used to run high-power electrics, purple ran fibre-optics, blue pipes for fresh water, grey ones for grey-water and so on. Water still runs, but the power and data and comms is all built into the fabric. The old cables were only ever a fail-safe. These days one module connects to another and you got a network. Doesn’t matter if it’s a window, a brick, a sluice. Everything’s connected. Not at a processing level, of course, more like an infinite wiring loom. Sensors everywhere as well. Everything’s logged, if you know where to look. That’s why they got the big AI arrays, and even then they got too much data to process.”

Jack paused and drew breath. “Yeah. Unless your anomaly is something serious you gotta wait ‘till it’s systemic before anyone really takes any notice. Course, that’s why…”

“It’s okay, Jack”. Jürgen placed a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “No need for the in-depth tour.”

Jack looked a little disappointed for a moment, then shrugged and continued to walk on in amiable silence. Jürgen followed on, saying, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to cut you off. It’s just that this stuff is pretty common. Platforms. Ships. Basics are similar. It’s the differences that you need to know about. That’s what’s interesting, Jack. The differences.”

Jack brightened as he remembered one little snippet of anecdotal information. A little flash of gossip. “Bet you don’t already know this, though. Rumour has it, down in the core, old JJ keeps the original bit of Dunroamin on ice. Sort of like a museum piece. An old research station. Calls it Bliocadran or something like that. Fuck knows why?” Jack smiled inwardly. Acorns and mighty oaks, all of which Jürgen would see very shortly.

As Jürgen and Jack walked on, Jürgen lagging behind his companion a little, an accompanying pulse of orange service lighting lit up in front of them and the corresponding light behind them switched off once they had passed. When their progress triggered the next light Jürgen stopped for a moment. ahead of them he saw a secured bulkhead, an iris of curved, overlapping metal plates screwed tightly shut. Jack walked on quietly and as Jürgen hurried to catch up with him, so the iris began to slide smoothly open.

“Seems to me”, said Jürgen cautiously, “someone might notice we’re opening doors? There must be a security system, some sort of protocol?”

“You’d think so”, was all that Jack said in response, before continuing towards the open bulkhead. “You’d definitely think so…”

*

Beyond that initial bulkhead the nature of the service lines changed dramatically. Jack explained the basic geography. Downtown was one of four habitable zones that ran along what was currently oriented as the western side of Dunroamin platform, the other three zones all being dedicated to hydroponics and organic foodstuffs. Of the remaining twelve zones in the four-by-four grid, eight were dedicated to storage facilities. There was also a manufactory, a reservoir and one currently undesignated zone, stripped bare and waiting for a new configuration to be applied. The final zone was where Jürgen and Jack were headed.

Having crossed into the inner group of four zones, they were now underneath one of the main storage facilities, and the service line here was much wider and solidly paved. Automated retrieval units ran along the metalled roads, sometimes four abreast, ferrying what looked like hoppers of refined ores into and out of the storage facility overhead. The retrieval units were short and stocky and brute metal, painted yellow and black in a traditional warning motif. Jürgen and Jack sat in the cramped manual control cabin of one such retrieval unit that Jack had hailed as soon as they had passed through the bulkhead into this zone.

Once again, Jürgen felt a little uneasy. “As you said back there, Jack, you’d definitely think someone would be aware of us borrowing a machine like this. There should be some sort of alert, surely?”

Jack nodded and said enigmatically, “Yes, there is, but only if it triggers, only if I let it trigger.” Jack nudged a joystick to the left on a small manual control console in front of him and the retrieval unit branched to the west at the next junction, heading towards the adjacent inner zone.

“What do you mean, if it triggers? I thought you said everything was interconnected. Are you being deliberately obtuse?”

Jack held up his right hand, bidding Jürgen to silence. “Just for a moment, please”, he whispered as the retrieval unit approached another closed bulkhead iris. “This one’s a bit trickier. Quarantine rules, you see. Well, you probably don’t, not yet.” On the control console a series of commands and responses flashed across a display as if a security program was asking for a password repeatedly without receiving a correct reply. Without warning the display screen shifted to lifeless black. Jack seemed lost in concentration.

Ever since their apparently impromptu banding together on the beach over a shot of rum, Jürgen had felt both intrigued and disquieted by Jack, the measure of each fascination waxing and waning as they made their slow progress through the platform’s service level. He felt that same icy calm now that he felt on an attack run. His senses seemed to speed up as the danger in any given situation deepened. It was, he supposed, a combination of latent ability made innate by training and long exposure to combat.

The retrieval unit slowed to a complete halt five metres in front of the still closed bulkhead iris. Jürgen felt an instinctive urge to jump down from the cab and take up a far less exposed position. He realised immediately how absurd that urge was. He was dressed in light slacks, a polo shirt and canvas beach shoes. He was unarmed. The safest place was right there in the cab with Jack. Jürgen hated that impotent sense of reliance on the unknown skills of others.

Jack broke out of his deep reverie and smiled as he turned to Jürgen and said, “All done, shall we?” Jack slid out of the cab and jumped down onto the roadway. As he did so the iris opened, but only sufficiently to allow one person to climb through at a time.

The air around the opening seemed to fizz and crackle as Jürgen followed jack through the opening. Once again he felt that primeval need for weaponry. Stepping through the opening carefully, watching and listening, keeping one eye on Jack, Jürgen braced himself. As soon as he had both feet firmly on the ground in the new zone, the iris closed shut behind him and the blue fizz in the atmosphere abated. Jürgen immediately felt a change in the air. It was colder here, and distinctly damper, as though this were an uncontrolled space, a wild space. He felt his heart rate speed up.

*

As Jürgen and Jack stood on a small elevation platform to the left-hand side of the service lane underneath this new habitation zone, Jürgen turned to his companion and said, “You’ve been quite the puzzle setter, Jack.”

Jack smiled and shrugged. Above them a hatchway opened, the platform rose slowly, and they emerged from the service lane, their heads in bright, fresh air. Jürgen spun around slowly and took in the view. He felt utterly and wonderfully dumbfounded by the sights and the smells surrounding him. He was standing at the edge of a small, two-thousand metre by two-thousand metre square of bucolic Gaian serendipity. He and Jack stepped from the elevation platform onto solid, earthy ground that formed part of a small rise at the edge of the zone, almost immediately above their original point of entry. Before them rolled a sea of grass studded with copses of deciduous woodland. The land sloped gently down towards the centre of the zone, where a stream meandered through a haze of flies and bees. Overhead, crows appeared to wheel and spin, noisily mobbing what looked like a buzzard. Martins and swallows mopped up airborne insects against a bright blue sky. In the meadows spreading out below them Jürgen could make out the palsied hop of white tailed rabbits and the slow grazing of untroubled Roe deer and… He stepped back and caught his breath. Over to the right, at the foot of the sloping fields in front of him, he could see a horse tethered to a gate, a gate that bordered a garden, in the middle of which he saw a log cabin. He noted, and felt faint as he did so, that the little, grey, pot-bellied chimney atop the cottage belched a stain of smoke grey upon the face of a lowering artificial sun.

Jürgen sank to his knees. It was too much to take in. Out here, at the edge of the Belt, smothered by the void, brittle with the endless chill of deep space, he felt embraced by life when he should, by rights, be floating across the way-out-there, desiccated and hollowed out from battle and the vacuum. He sobbed involuntarily, and immediately began to fight back this unbidden emotional expression. He was a K-Ship commander. He felt Jack place a hand on his shoulder.

“A good time to drink, my friend.” Jack handed Jürgen his bottle of something mixed in a brown paper bag. Jürgen took one long, grateful swig and handed the bag and bottle back to Jack. He felt warmth flood through his veins. He felt light-headed. Stars swam in front of his eyes for a moment, but then the disorientation passed. He heard insect buzz. He watched long grass waves flow and then, some moments later, he felt an impossible breeze waft across his face. Jürgen grinned broadly.

*

Not another word passed between the two men as they walked slowly across the sloping fields towards the cabin. Jürgen looked at this wonderfully fake world through raptures. When they reached the gated fence, and with Jack’s nodded permission, Jürgen stroked the horse’s nose and felt another small moment of wonder unfold as his hand absorbed equine oils and scents. At the cabin door, Jack fished a key from one his overcoat’s inner pockets. He bade Jürgen sit on the porch and ten minutes later he emerged with another bottle of Hiroshima and two enamel mugs of piping hot coffee. They sat, in silence still, until the coffee was drained down to the dregs and they were each on a second chaser.

Jack pointed with his cigarette at the hazing shade of purple rising above the slope down which they had wandered earlier. “Sun’s setting behind the cabin. Good time for a story-telling.”

Jürgen looked at his companion. Jack was clearly far more accomplished an artist than he had given the man credit for. The grotesques in the gallery in Downtown were pot-boilers. This journey was, he thought, a masterpiece. It was all a set-up. He knew that, but in this moment Jürgen loved Jack for it. To smell sunshine on a summer meadow out here. He smiled and grunted his agreement. Time for Jack to talk.

Jack refreshed both tumblers and settled back into his rocking chair. “This place…” Jack waved his glass at the fields and darkening copses. “Jochim’s private space. Calls it Wilderness. Some of it’s real. Grasses and trees and the insects necessary. Birds are borgs, of course. Horse and deer too. That’s why the horse waits so patiently tethered to that gate. But then what do you expect after three hundred years out here. Still pretty amazing, if you think about it.

“Whole place is off-grid. Mostly. Got a console inside and there’s another one over there, behind that large coppice on the far slope. Originally a place for Jochim and Helene to bunk down away from prying eyes. Still do from time to time. Jochim knows I got a key so we’re not trespassing exactly.”

Jack paused to take a drink and Jürgen let the preamble wash over him, enjoying the evening drone from all of Jochim’s creatures, regardless of origin.

“Thing is”, continued Jack, “Place is shielded. Space to think. Ever since they took my machines away, my implants…” Jack let his right hand wander over the scars at his temple. “I found I need clear space, at least that’s what… anyway, it’s a useful conceit, being off-grid, I mean. Jochim’s little luxury extended to his pet Icehead. Unless you’re me, people only ever come out here if they’re very specifically invited, which is rarely, and heavily managed, as you might imagine.

“And there’s a reason for that. Second console I mentioned? Behind those trees there’s another building. Looks like an old barn on the outside. Keeping up appearances. But if you get close…” Jack nodded conspiratorially. “Which we will… You’ll find out why we’re here.”

Jürgen edged forward in his chair. This was the moment. This was the difference. He felt both wary and privileged, conscious that the whole thing must be designed to elicit his support in some way and yet he was still keen for the reveal.

Jack noticed that slight movement and he too edged forward, mirroring his companion to reinforce the bond that he felt growing between them. “Shall we?” he asked, once again.

*

Jack and Jürgen pulled open what, at first glance, looked like a rotted-out barn door, revealing an alloy wall with a pressure door set neatly in the middle. “Not exactly hidden…” said Jürgen phlegmatically.

“No need, really. As I said, only those in the know ever come out here with any regularity. This bit is closed off any other time.”

Jack punched a code into an archaic button control panel beside the door and so it opened, sliding to one side softly. The two men entered a narrow corridor in single file. All told, the corridor stretched for no more than fifty metres and ended in a blanked off alloy wall.

“I’ve got to assume we triggered some sort of alarm this time”, said Jürgen as he looked at the walls to each side of the corridor. “Looks complicated, whatever it is.”

Jack turned to Jürgen and spoke softly. “Oh yes. This time we’ve lit up Med Two’s synapses like a supernova. Jochim will be quite pleased, I imagine.”

Another one of Jack’s loaded one-liners, Jürgen thought. He ignored the comment for the time being and ran his hand across the wall. From floor to ceiling, some twenty metres above their heads, the wall was divided into tiny rectangles, no more than two centimetres square. Within each square was a cylindrical cap with a single illuminated button in the middle. Jürgen wanted to press the buttons but resisted the temptation. He looked directly at Jack instead and waited.

“Cold storage, Jürgen. This corridor alone there’s two-hundred thousand units. Two more identical corridors either side of this one, more below in the service level. That’s over a million little buttons, each one of them storing a clone… well, the cellular bits and pieces and the genetic instructions to make one. Sort of mechanical, ready-fertilised egg. That’s about three-hundred copies of every man and woman on the station, give or take a little narcissistic numerical dominance by Jochim and Helene’s future selves. Cryogenics. The heart of the matter.”

Jürgen instinctively took a step back from the wall in front of him and immediately felt his back nestle against the opposite wall, a wall full of gently depressing buttons. He shot an alarmed look at Jack who smiled sweetly before he too firmly hit every button within reach.

“No key. Everything’s locked down safely. No need to worry.” Jack took one last look along the corridor walls. “Gives me the creeps. Let’s head back to the cabin.”

*

“Thing is,” Jack paused, waiting for a simulated cloud to pass across a full moon so that he could negotiate a style in the last field before they got back to the cabin veranda and the bottle of Hiroshima. “Thing is, I’ve known Jochim for two-hundred years nearly. He’s already told you we’re leaving, hasn’t he?”

Jürgen responded in the affirmative as he too jumped the style.

“Course he has.” continued Jack as he strolled homewards. “I suppose you thought it was just the three-thousand buggering souls aboard this old tub, though. A plucky band of brothers and sisters. Iceheads winning and all that. True enough. Not that hive minds are where it’s really at. Nothing so tedious. That’s just propaganda. Not as though Jochim and the gang can’t do the same, anyway. Sorry, going off on one.” They reached the gate and the final stroll towards rum and cigarettes. “After you”.

The two men resumed their seats, refreshed their glasses, and this time Jürgen did accept the offered cigarette. He assumed that anything carcinogenic done with Jack could be undone by Helene.

Jack settled back and began again his story-telling. “Seeding, you see. Three thousand ain’t enough, not to be sure. Not enough to be able to fight back if things go badly. Jochim will have mentioned the six tugs and the speed of light stuff. Key thing there is those tugs. Each one of them is self-sufficient. Park it in front of a suitable rock and over a century or so, with a little support from the main platform, it’ll produce everything you need to get started. Terra-forming, manufacturing, you name it.

“But four hundred souls left behind out of our three-thousand – four hundred would fail. Go stir crazy. Hit the wall. Statistics prove it. Second, third generations? Increasing crises. You need bigger numbers to have a chance. So each seeded settlement gets one hundred and fifty thousand eggs – enough to keep the thing going once they flood their new world with weirdly similar faces. Original Jochim and Helene and the rest of the old-time pioneers then wander off on this platform once the six seeded worlds are up and running. More statistics. Models suggest one of the settlements should survive and prosper. That’s the plan.”

Jürgen closed his eyes. It had been a long day and he needed to sleep again. He was still not fit and his most recent chemical abuse was taking its inevitable toll. Jack’s stories made his head spin and he was too tired to assimilate the enormity of the message.

“Jochim just needs a head start” continued Jack, with matter-of-fact purpose, topping up his glass one last time. “Safe passage while we accelerate away. You know those tugs combined can hit point nine-eight of light. Point nine-eight…”

Jürgen suddenly felt very awake. He sat bolt upright, coughing loudly as he swallowed smoke that still lingered above his head. “You can’t, you can’t be serious! We only make three percent, maybe three point five on a fast attack. Seriously? Scheiße, fucking scheiße!”

Jack took a last long drag on his own cigarette. “Yep, ninety-eight percent. If we can keep accelerating through Icehead space without interruption. Should be hitting plus ninety by the time we hit Termination Shock and break the Heliopause.”

Jürgen sat in silence, thoughts flashing through his head. What sort of field tech? Computers? Far-scan? How? Shields? Dust? Time? Oort debris?

To cap the evening off Jack stood up and poured himself one last little top up before placing the bottle back down on the table next to Jürgen’s glass. “Time to hit the sack. We’ll wander back tomorrow some time.

“One last thing to freak you, though. Jochim and Helene and the rest. Version two point zero, every one of them. Nothing original. Mixed clone and augment. Great tech but original skin wears out eventually. Minds live on pretty well. Seems to me that simple fact has turned them all a wee bit Messianic. That’s why they still need a little of that original human touch to…”

Jürgen jumped up and grabbed Jack by the wrist. He breathed hard as he stared at the older man. Jochim and Helene’s artificiality did not really bother him that much. He had already guessed at some of it. He had just realised what the difference was. It was Jack. Jürgen suddenly felt betrayed by the one man he had started to trust. “And you?” he asked aggressively. “The way you don’t bother. The way you don’t care about alerts and security and alarms? Are you a machine?”

Jack stood toe to toe with Jürgen for a moment, returning Jürgen’s stare directly. Then he relaxed and shook his wrist free from Jürgen’s grip. “No, mate. Version one of me.” Jack paused. He stepped away from Jürgen slowly, saying, “You’re right in one way, though. I am different. Apparat. First generation organic. These scars? My lost machines? Never fucking needed them, mate. I am the ghost in the machine.”

With that Jack shuffled into the cabin, wrapped in his shabby overcoat, for all the worlds looking like a vagrant searching out a less disappointing begging ground, leaving Jürgen to reach for a conveniently abandoned old-tech gas lighter and a packet of rough cut cigarettes.

Next Chapter: Second Skin