Unwilling From Earth Read online

  He opened the door to the cupboard which got the jumpsuit and bedding from the previous evening and found a fresh jumpsuit and a pair of light shoes in the same light grey colour. They had flexible soles and the uppers had the appearance of canvas.

  He slipped them on and found they were a perfect fit. Unsure of what to do with his own clothes that he had been wearing, he carefully folded his suit and tie, dumped his shirt, underwear and shoes into the same cupboard he had got the overalls from and laid his suit and tie on top of them.

  Mark decided the two most important things on his agenda today were trying to get something edible out of the food synthesisers and sort out the issue with the toilet paper. He walked to the Command Centre and found Alan sitting at the console.

  “Did you sleep well?” Asked Alan.

  “Yes thanks, best night’s sleep I have had for a long time which is surprising as I don’t usually sleep well in strange places.”

  “That’s good, and last night's meal?”

  “Yes, it was right where you said it would be.”

  “I meant, was it pleasing to you?”

  “Er, the pizza tasted of salty cardboard, the chips were inedible and the cola was flat but it was cold, which was good.”

  “From my knowledge of human food that does not sound like a satisfactory eating experience. I will teach you how to instruct the food synthesiser today so you can experiment until you get acceptable results. Do you have any programming experience?” Asked Alan.

  “I got an A star for Software Design and Development at school and IFG sent me on several courses over the years. Although I never worked on any of the corporate systems, I developed several departmental systems. I also contribute to the development of Big Byte, the open source version of IBM’s Watson system.”

  “That’s good. We’ll work on the food synthesisers first and then on making sure you get the responses you expect from the AI’s that you will be communicating with.”

  “Ah, yes, and I need to sort out the toilet paper. I noticed the clothes and shoes you have got for me are a perfect fit, how did you manage that?”

  “You were scanned as soon as you came on board so the central AI knows your exact dimensions.”

  “What, you’ve made scale images of me?”

  “The scan was like the 3D scans that your medical organisations do but much more detailed.”

  “Oh.” Mark said. He didn’t know what to make of that. “Why?”

  “So that amongst other things the clothes and shoes made for you fit.”

  Mark thought that sometimes trying to get a sensible answer out of Alan was like trying to nail jelly to a wall.

  “I could do with some breakfast and tea - can you make edible versions of those?” Asked Mark hopefully.

  “I’ll order tea now - it should be in the dispenser over there.” Alan said gesturing to an alcove in the wall opposite the door.

  Mark walked across and picked the cup which appeared to be porcelain, but was heatproof, and tried the tea. He was pleasantly surprised to find it was hot and tasted of tea. Not very good tea. It was weak, and it had less milk than he preferred but it was palatable. He thought of the tea Sally used to make him at work. She had learnt to make it exactly to his taste. He felt a pang of guilt at leaving without saying goodbye. It would be Friday today so in a few hours she would know he wasn’t going to turn up. He checked his mobile phone for the time and remembered that the battery was flat.

  “Are there any clocks around here, I haven’t noticed any.” Mark asked.

  “We don’t measure time so we don’t have clocks.”

  “So how do you know what the time is?”

  “As part of not measuring the time the way you do, we don’t need to know what the ‘time’ is. It is always ‘now.’”

  “So how would you know how long to boil an egg for?”

  “First, I would never do something so barbaric as boiling an animals embryo and second, if we need to measure a fixed duration we tell our AI’s to do a countdown for us or just alert us when required.”

  Mark shuddered at the thought of having a machine implanted into his brain. “Right, I would use my mobile phone for that but the battery is flat. Can you provide me with a charger please?”

  “I can do better than that. I will get you a - I’m not sure what the best description for it is - it’s like a tablet computer, a bit bigger than your mobile phone and it doesn’t need charging. It’s for temporary use.”

  “Does it tell the time?”

  “No. The reason we don’t measure time like you do is because humans have a planetary based culture, so time passes at the same rate wherever you are in your single biosphere. The People have always been a spacefaring civilisation and as I’m sure you are aware, the greater the gravity potential the slower time passes. Your Einstein worked that out in your time reference 1907 and your scientists then measured this in your time reference 1959. Now first, it is not possible to get away from some gravitational potential...”

  Mark interrupted “Yes I know all about, well, a bit about time dilation due to gravity and speed, but what’s this ‘gravity potential’?”

  “Gravity potential is - complicated.”

  “You’re clever, explain it to me in simple words.”

  “All right, I’ll put it into as simple words as I can. The gravitational potential is the gravitational potential energy per unit mass and is equal, in magnitude, but negative to, the work done by the gravitational field moving a body to its given position in space from infinity. That’s a greatly simplified explanation but I think it sums it up quite nicely.”

  “Er, do you have an even simpler explanation that I might understand, bearing in mind that I’m not a physicist?” Asked Mark.

  “Let me think. OK, a really, really simple explanation would be that gravitational potential energy is the energy an object possesses because of its position in a gravitational field.”

  “Why didn’t you say that in the first place? Why did you have to make it so complicated?” Mark said, testily. “Anyway, you were saying?”

  “I thought I was making it simple. Where was I. Ah yes, therefore it is not possible to escape the effects of a gravitational potential on time and if you also factor in the effects of relative speed on the rate at which measured unit of time elapses, it is obvious that even with your human culture’s belief in the so-called cosmological principle there can be no such thing as a standard universal or even galactic time. That being so, measuring time in the way you do would be meaningless to the People.”

  “The People? You mean your species?” Asked Mark.

  “We call ourselves the People and we are known as the People. I have proposed you for the honour of being made a Friend of the People which has been accepted.”

  “Big deal.” Thought Mark, but he kept his opinion to himself.

  “But if you don’t measure time, you must still have a relative time frame otherwise how can you have a recorded history - or maybe you don’t bother with one.”

  Alan took in a deep breath and straightened his back. He carefully and slowly put all four of his hands flat down on the console. “Recording our history is of prime importance to us. Our frame of reference is based on events that affect the People.”

  “Sorry - I didn’t mean to cause offence.” Said Mark. “But does that mean during a, a - segment of time, if nothing happens that affects the People, then as far as you are concerned, no measurable time has passed?”

  “That is correct.”

  “So if an interplanetary war broke out and two civilisations wiped each other out, as long as nothing affected the People during the war, you would consider no time had passed?”

  “In theory, that is correct, though it is inconceivable that an interplanetary war or an inter-species war would not affect the People.” Explained Alan.

  “Now, you have learnt enough about the realities of an interstellar civilisation for one day and we have a lot to go over. Tomorrow
I’ll continue your induction into the culture you are now part of, but right now we have a much more prosaic task ahead of us, teaching you how to use the synthesisers to get food that pleases you and their other capabilities. That will take a long time.”

  “OK but just one more question - how do you know so much about us - a lot more than I do and a lot more than you could have just picked up when you are not even human?” Asked Mark.

  “I spent a long time on Earth, I arrived by your calendrical reckoning in 1642…”

  Mark interrupted and said “Wow. So you are over four hundred years old!”

  “Considerably older. As I was saying before you interrupted me, I learnt a lot while on Earth, but I don’t know all of this. I rely on my AI to monitor what I am talking about, retrieve all the information I might need, put it into context and deliver it to me as I need it. Your AI will have the same access to your archive and any other information you need.”

  “Thanks but I’m not having a machine in my head.” Said Mark emphatically.

  Alan walked over to the synthesiser and pulled out a small device that looked very much like a standard tablet computer and handed it to Mark.

  Farewell To Possessions

  Alan patiently taught Mark how to use the tablet computer he had given him. Using the tablet was so unlike anything Mark had seen before, it took some time for him to see the logic behind it. The tablet depended on a mixture of touches and swipes on the screen and complex gestures just above it. The icons on the screen were three-dimensional symbols which looked different depending on their angle of rotation. Depending on the context, the character’s angle of rotation changed, so they looked different - but they still had the same meaning. Mark asked Alan if it could be set to use English commands - an English command shell - but Alan said he had to learn the People’s script as he would come across it sometimes, and the programming syntax, which was, of course, alien to him. Fortunately, Mark’s programming experience stood him in good stead and by the end of the day he had a basic grasp of how to create and modify a program, or pattern as the synthesiser programs were called, and save it for future use.

  The day’s work learning how to use the tablet computer, and how to program the synthesisers was exhausting. Mark returned to his quarters tired but still keen to try out his new skills. He had learnt that although most items were synthesised, or 3D printed as he preferred to think of it, within the synthesisers, some items were transported by the same mechanisms used to remove items left in the synthesisers for recycling.

  Mark's first attempt in the synthesiser was to make a decent roll of toilet paper. After a few only moderately successful attempts he ordered one to his satisfaction. Mark saved the pattern and ordered another six rolls to keep in the cupboard in the bathroom. As he was removing these from the synthesiser, he remembered that he had put away all of his clothes, including his suit and shoes in there. They were no longer there. Realising they must have been removed for recycling he ran back to the Command Centre and said to Alan: “I left all of my clothes in the synthesiser this morning and now they have been taken for recycling - where are they? I want to get them back.”

  “Why did you put them in there if you wanted to keep them?” Asked Alan.

  “Because I thought it was just a cupboard! How was I to know that they would be removed for recycling!”

  “I see. An easy mistake to make. Why do you want them back? They have all been worn.” Said Alan.

  “Because that was one of my only two suits and my best pair of shoes!”

  “Hmm. Well, they have been recycled now but it is simple enough to make you new ones.”

  “I don’t want new ones, I like the ones I’ve got. How do I get them back?”

  “You mean you liked the ones that you had, not the ones that you’ve got.” Alan said. “They will have been reduced to their chemical components by now so they can be reused for something else, but you can have new ones to replace them.”

  “Oh for god’s sake! If the toilet paper and pizza is anything to go by a newly synthesised suit would fit someone with three legs and hunch back!” Mark said grumpily.

  “Do the clothes you are wearing fit?” Asked Alan.

  “Well, yes.” Replied Mark, grudgingly.

  “And are they comfortable?”

  “Yes, but I could do with some underwear, I am not entirely happy with going commando.”

  “Making clothes is a lot easier than making food. The main AI knows your exact measurements, and the archive contains detailed specifications of human clothing as far back as your history goes so you can have perfectly fitting Church’s or John Lobb shoes or any other design you like made with the same or better precision than their hand made shoes. You can have suits that are as well made, perfectly fitting and as well designed from any you could get in Savile Row. And you can have as many as you like. Hundreds if it will make you happy. If you ever go back to Earth, you could be the best-dressed geek in Winchester.”

  “Well, OK. But I would have still liked to have my old stuff back.”

  “Yes, I can see the attraction of a crumpled, grubby suit with cuffs that were starting to fray, a broken button and the seat of the trousers getting shiny with wear. Never mind, I am sure you can make do with a perfectly pressed suit that looks like it cost twelve thousand pounds and a pair of shoes that look like they cost two and a half thousand.”

  “You seem to have a pretty good handle on the cost of clothes, particularly for someone who I only saw dressed like they got their clothes from the Salvation Army.”

  “I told you before, my AI fetches this information and delivers it to me as I need it. And I was dressed like that to conceal my appearance and fit in as an ordinary person.”

  “To fit in as an ordinary person?” Said Mark. “I’d give you three out of ten for effort.” Mark said, sarcastically.

  “Nobody else realised that I wasn’t human.” Alan replied, with a touch of indignation in his voice.

  “To be honest I am amazed you weren’t burnt at the stake or stoned to death,”

  “There were a few occasions when I was chased by suspicious mobs. More than a few actually. And there is a cult in North Dakota who think I came from Venus to rule them. Ridiculous! Have you ever been to Venus? It’s awful. Anyway, if you want to make some new clothes, you will find everything you need in the archive. Except - you will need to train your AI to access it first.”

  “As I’ve already said many times, that’s not going to happen. I’ll manage with the souped-up tablet computer you gave me.”

  Mark left the Command Centre and walked back to his quarters. “Just think,” He said to himself, “I could have started a lynch mob and saved myself all of this trouble.”

  When he got back into his quarters, using his newly acquired skills Mark ordered up a pizza. Feeling ambitious he ordered up a stuffed crust with mozzarella, pepperoni, bacon rashers and tandoori chicken.

  About a minute later the door to the synthesiser slid silently open and the aroma of freshly cooked pizza came out. The smell of it made Mark’s mouth water. He hadn’t eaten much since he had been on board and although he had tried some of the food he and Alan had been making while he was learning how to program the synthesiser, most of it was pretty gross.

  He eagerly pulled out the plate and noticed that it didn’t look quite how he expected. The pepperoni slices were rather bright red. What he assumed was the tandoori chicken was a lumpy orange sludge and the bacon rashers were slightly grey pink slices a centimetre thick. “Still,” he thought “its food.”

  Mark took the plate to the table and sat down to eat. He hadn’t thought about any cutlery and forgot to program it to be ready sliced. He gingerly tore a large piece off - it was very hot, and took a bite. The consistency was right. It smelt good. The flavour was indescribable. Mark spat it out in disgust, jumped up and ran the few steps to the synthesiser and ordered a cola. It only took a few seconds to arrive and Mark took a good swallow of it to take a
way the taste of the pizza. It was only after his mouth was full that he thought it might be as disgusting as the pizza but it was the same as he had the previous evening. Cold, but flat.

  Mark was still hungry. He put the plate with the pizza - including the mouthful he had spat out, back into the synthesiser and while waiting for it to be removed ordered a fork from the synthesiser. He had already created the pattern for that during his training by Alan, and a few seconds later the door slid open to reveal a shiny new fork. He then programmed the synthesiser to make scrambled eggs. He had made some earlier during the day even though Alan had expressed disgust at eating an embryo. Mark pointed out that it wasn’t a real embryo, just a synthesised version of one, but that didn’t seem to matter to Alan. It was palatable but not great, but Mark thought he knew where he had been going wrong. He retrieved the pattern made earlier and made some modifications, then submitted it. After about a minute, which was longer than Mark expected, the door slid open. It smelt right, and although a bit pale for scrambled egg, it looked right too. Mark took the plate and sat at the table. Having learnt from the pizza fiasco he took a tiny bit on the fork and hesitatingly put it into his mouth. With the glass of cola in his hand, he was ready to spit out the scrambled egg if it was foul. He was surprised to find it tasted really good. Not quite like real scrambled eggs, slightly creamier with a bit more texture. In fact, Mark preferred this to the real thing. He eagerly ate all of it and drank the cola. He made sure to save the new pattern and ordered a mug of tea. It was the same as he had drunk earlier. Mark was now confident he could improve it, but that could wait until later.