Surface Detail

She tried to imagine the place full of the monopedal creatures who had built this place, all bouncing along on their single lower limbs. And upside down, of course; she’d be travelling along the ceiling and they’d be bouncing up towards her with each springing step, then sinking back to the wide floor. Back then the great structure would have spun to create the apparent gravity the species preferred, but now there was just the troubling tug that resulted from being balanced on the curve of the singularity’s gravity well.

“Does this thing still spin at all?” she asked.

“Very slowly,” the ship’s drone, floating alongside, said when Nopri didn’t reply. “Synched to the rotation of the galaxy itself.’

She thought about this. “That is slow. I wonder why?”

“So does everybody else,” Nopri said, nodding.

*

“Thank you,” she said as the door to her quarters hinged open like a valve behind her. The ship drone dipped a little and drifted in, carrying her overnight bag.

Nopri looked over her shoulder into the shadowy space beyond. “Looks nice. Would you like me to stay?”

“Too kind, but no,” she told him.

“I don’t mean for sex,” he said. “I mean for company.”

“As I say, it is kind of you to offer. But no.”

“Okay.” He nodded behind her. “Mind your head.”

She watched the little wheeled drone take him away into the shadows then turned to look into her cabin. The door must have been some sort of window once, at ceiling height. That was why it rotated about its horizontal axis, leaving the door itself as a thick obstruction straight across the three-metre-wide doorway. She ducked underneath. It hinged closed.

The cabin looked complicated, with lots of different levels and bits where it just seemed to wander off into the shadows. Doubtless it had made more sense the other way up.

The ship’s drone floated over to report it had found what it was fairly sure was some sort of bed of a fluid-based nature suitable for a human to sleep safely within.

Bathroom location, on the other hand, was still ongoing.

“You are a soldier?” the young doctor asked.

Vatueil rolled his eyes. “Soldier, naval officer, marine, flying serviceman, submariner, space warrior, vacuum trooper, disembodied intellect investing military hardware, or software: all of the above. Does this come as news to you? There is a War Conduct Agreement, doc; I’m not supposed to be subject to any torture or unauthorised interference. You’re entitled to my code and anything it holds but you’re not entitled to run my consciousness at all, and certainly not for any punitive purpose.”

“Do you feel you are being punished?”

“Borderline,” he told her. “It depends how long this goes on.”

“How long do you think it will go on?”

“I don’t know. I’m not in control here.”

“Who do you think is in control?”

“Your side. Maybe you, depending on what you are, or represent. Who do you represent?”

“Who do you think I represent?”

He sighed. “Do you ever get tired having to answer questions with questions all the time?”

“Do you think I should get tired?”

He gave a small laugh. “Yes, I think you should.”

He couldn’t work out why he was here. They had his code, they knew everything he’d come here with. There was nothing that he had come here knowing that they didn’t also know by now. That wasn’t what was meant to happen – a sub-routine should have wiped his personality and memories with the rest of the information carried in the code cell as soon as it realised that he – in the shape of the dark spearhead – wasn’t going to survive the attack; if you were totally destroyed it didn‘t matter anyway but if there was going to be something left then you tried to make sure as little as possible fell into enemy hands.

But sometimes the sub-routines didn’t work in time. They couldn’t be too hair-trigger or they might launch prematurely. So mistakes got made. He was here because of a mistake.

It shouldn’t matter anyway; he’d had a good rummage round his own memories since he’d found himself sitting here in the bland room with the young doctor and he hadn’t found anything that shouldn’t be there. He knew who he was – he was Major Vatueil – and he knew he had spent decades running as code within the giant war sim which was supposed to take the place of a real war between the pro- and anti-Hell sides, but he could recall only very hazy memories of those earlier missions, and nothing at all of any existence beyond those missions.