Noumenon

Nika laughed.

We knew the layout of Mira like we knew our faces in the mirror. Part of our training had included two isolated years aboard, cordoned off from everything and everyone except the other ships. Mother and Father and a few instructors had stayed with us for the test run, though, to make sure everything went well. We proved we could be self-sustaining, and that we could handle the isolation.

So we walked down the corridors unerringly. It was just a few hallways, a couple of turns, and an elevator ride to the mess hall.

Yes, decorations were something we had. Yes, booze a plenty, too. Strange, I know. When we were teenagers we’d all taken bets on what they would deny us aboard. Anything distracting we were sure was out: no porn, no implant games. Drugs were something we all had on our lists. No alcohol, no cigarettes, and no caffeine.

But we were delighted to find out how wrong we’d been. Nothing illegal made it onto the manifest, of course. But we had plenty of luxuries—plenty of vices.

There was one noticeable difference between the items that made it aboard and those that didn’t, however. If it wasn’t reusable or renewable, it wasn’t there.

We could grow our own chocolate, though, like the other luxury plants—coffee, tea, etc.—but quantities were limited. We still had to ration it.

You’d never have guessed we were rationing anything at the party. And to be honest, sustainability was the furthest thing from our minds that day. We were strutting out into the galaxy, with our whole lives ahead of us. What could one day of indulgence hurt?

Before then, that party, everything had been controlled for us. If we were ever allowed alcohol before, it had been doled out by someone. Controlled by someone. Our intake of sweets, dyes, and artificial flavorings had all been regulated. We were each in the best of health, had no addictions, and no bad habits. But it wasn’t of our own choosing.

The party was a raucous mess before it hit its first hour. We’d never experienced such freedom before. No one to tell us no, to sit up straight, to stop yelling, that making out with your supervisor while sitting on top of the cake was a bad idea …

As with a lot of children who find themselves loosed from parental chains for the first time, we didn’t know when to quit. Though we were the kindest, most empathetic group of genes you could ever find, feelings were bruised and faces soon followed.

At some point Nika disappeared toward her quarters with a botanist she liked. “Go find someone and have a little fun,” she giggled at me on the way by. “Or I can stay here and you can try to convert me.”

“You’re not my type.” I stuck my tongue out and winked.

“Oh, I am. I am so your type,” she said.

She was right. And if it were any other straight girl giving me lip, I would have put salt in her next cup of coffee. But this was Nika—the sting was only skin-deep—so I just brushed it off and planned to embarrass her in front of her new bunk-buddy every chance I got.

Many of my friends followed her lead, slinking off with their significant—or not so significant—others to have some private time.

The hours stretched on, and the more bottles that were opened the more fist fights broke out. Turns out alcohol makes a boxer of the gentlest of souls. Insults flew. Someone broke someone else’s nose and forced the medics to set up a makeshift first-aid station. The soberest of the group found themselves unfairly playing nanny to those that had overindulged.

Me? I was all about the dancing. Brawlers to the left of me, criers to the right, and me in the middle doing a horrible rendition of a dance that was supposed to be done to marimbas. But I couldn’t care less about supposed to’s. I just flipped the hem of my skirt back and forth, remembering the way my mom used to shake her hips in the kitchen.

We were rowdy and uncouth, elated and hot-tempered.

And until a sharp whistle blew and a loud order was barked, we hadn’t realized that the bridge crews weren’t celebrating with us.

Captain Mahler demanded attention. When he walked into a room, it fell silent. Even at that party, high on life, as soon as we knew he was there, we shut up.

There was Mother and Father.

And then there was the Captain.

“Having fun?” The question was clipped … and rhetorical. He took to a table near the entrance, climbing atop it like a man who’d just conquered Everest. Several members from his command team stood by the doors.

There wasn’t anything malicious in his voice, nor in his stance. But I did feel like I was about to be reprimanded. His sharp, dark eyes projected a smug understanding. He wasn’t disappointed, or angry with us. But the unspoken message was clear: you can’t control yourselves, and that makes me better than you. It was as if our drunken displays were an illustration of the very reason he was in charge of this ship and we were not.

In a sense, Mahler wasn’t one of us. He was an original, not a clone, and one of only a handful aboard. His illustrious military career (if one can have an illustrious military career in a time of global peace) had gotten him a direct invitation. Why on Earth he’d accepted, no one was sure. He had to leave everything he was born for behind.

But he had. As had a fair few of those in command. I took another look around and realized no one partaking in the festivities was from Mahler’s division. I knew the captain of Bottomless quite well—he wasn’t around.

All of the captains were with their ships, of course. And all of the command crew were at their posts. They had jobs that needed attending to while the rest of us fooled around in the mess.

I looked up at a clock on the wall—five hours had flown by since the party began. Captain Mahler had to have known about it long before his appearance. He let us have our good time, indulged us. But now he was here to remind us it was time to face responsibility.

“I want this place spotless in an hour, and everyone in bed no more than fifteen minutes after that,” he said. “All who participated in the merriment must participate in the cleanup. If anyone does not contribute, there will be consequences. I expect everyone to report for duty at 0700 tomorrow. You’ve all heard of hangovers, and by tomorrow many of you will be intimately familiar with one. This does not excuse you from duty.”

He scanned the room, laying his eyes on each of us. “There’s a time and place for everything. Today was a momentous day, one we’ll all remember—the first half of, anyway.”

Uncomfortable laughter cropped up here and there around the room, but dropped off almost immediately.

“It was a day worth celebrating—and we have. Now, though, we must focus on business. The business of setting up our society, engraining it in ourselves. You led different lives on Earth—sheltered and formal lives. I understand the desire to break from those constraints. But there was a reason for your well-regulated upbringing. The training wheels have come off, but that does not excuse you from duty, or dedication, to your positions aboard these ships. We must take pride in our stations, in our commitment to each other. In responsibility.” He looked at his watch—an antique piece, perhaps an heirloom. “All right, your hour starts now.”

I lunged at the pile of soiled cake-plates nearest me, and dropped them into the compost chute on my way to Nika’s room. I hadn’t a clue what the punishment for not cleaning might be, but Nika would never forgive me if I let her endure it.

Besides—I sure as hell wasn’t doing this by myself.

Days later, it was time to compose my first message home.

I.C.C. sent automated messages back all the time. Short snippets of information about functionality and position, but that was it. I had to tell Earth about us—our societal status, our functionality, any major events, and any major problems. I had to keep mission support abreast of all that was happening.

There were three main communications rooms on Mira. One was part of the bridge and was used for ship-to-ship. The second was on deck six, and was a mirror image of the comms centers on all the other ships. That was where most of the “reporters” worked out of, gathering the data that I would then compile. The last sat on the lowest deck opposite the shuttle hangar—more of a closet than a room, what with all of the equipment stashed inside. It was well guarded, and only I and my cycle partner—the person who would take over when I retired, and in turn train a new clone of myself—had clearance to enter. It was where all Earth-to-convoy messages came in and went out. Inside stood a small desk, a small chair, and a good-sized server bank which extended beyond my sight and back into a long access tunnel beyond.

I called the servers my Enigma Machine, because all of their computing power was focused on sending and receiving coded messages. The messages came via a time subdimension we had yet to figure out how to physically move through. But even if we didn’t fully understand it, we could send information through it just fine—better than fine. It was the fastest communication method known, and would ensure us practical mission-to-mission support communications for a long time.

While the system was fast, it was also limited. For one thing, my Enigma Machine needed a mate back on Earth in order for my messages to actually make it to a set of human eyeballs.

For another, SD communication was comparable to SD travel, which meant is was equally as problematic, with a few exceptions. An SD drive made a pocket of “normal” space around itself and nearby matter, protecting it in a bubble. And the drive could independently move that pocket in and out of normal space; in other words, it could dive and surface. But SD communications couldn’t work that way—there was no physical engine I could attach to an encoded electromagnetic signal. Instead, there was a part of my Enigma Machine that created a bubble of its own and forced a dive, and a twin Enigma Machine on Earth that pulled the communiqué to the surface and coaxed the bubble to pop.

And the two machines had to be synced. The odds of randomly intercepting an SD packet were astronomical—pun intended. The Enigma Machine on the receiving end had to know which subdimension the information was traveling through, what trajectory it took through space, and how to unravel the “skin” that maintained the bubble once the packet was intercepted.

“Not exactly a ham radio, is it?” I’d joked the first time a teacher had introduced me to the concept. Unamused, she’d gone into further detail about how difficult SD communication was, and how I should be honored to be one of only a handful of people trained to use the methodology.

So, honored I was.

The system was fast, yes, and complicated, yes, and a huge energy suck, sure. But despite its advanced nature, it could still only handle so much data at a time. And by so much, I mean not a lot. So once the message was transferred to my implants or a holoflex-sheet, it needed further decoding, and that’s where my job could truly get tricky.

I smoothed the front of my clothes, making sure nothing bunched uncomfortably. My official on-duty uniform was a well-tailored, denim-blue jumpsuit. Not the most stylish of work-wear, but it distinguished me from the black of security officers, the vermillion of the engineers, the Italian-yellow of the emergency medical teams, the purple of the educational division—and everyone else who wasn’t in communications.

The color coding had been Mother’s idea, though I heard Father was against it. Thought it was too much like gang paraphernalia or something.

Well, if the botanists and the microbiologists ever start calling themselves the Sharks and the Jets, and go snapping in unison through the halls, we’ll know he was right.

In the days previous I’d gathered my notes, made my summaries, and translated them into the special shorthand. Of course, five days in, there wasn’t much to report.

People were working, doing their jobs well. Though, to me, the convoy still felt more like a clubhouse than a well-oiled machine. We were free, after all. This was our house—it was only fair we should make our own rules, rather than be confined to whatever our parents had set up.