Destination Europa: Chapter 3

Inputs and Outputs

May 17, 2024

Previously, Earther engineer Tark approached Quill in the mess, asking to talk to him about something important. Quill is still upset at learning that Bowen (accidentally or otherwise) did cause his bad trip the previous night.

Quill saw that Tark was talking to him. He could see her mouth moving, and he could hear the sounds, but the words were slipping off the surface of his mind like water droplets on glass. He could hear all the words bouncing in from other conversations all around him in the mess too, all rattling and jolting and tugging at him from all sides.

Björn, why are these • potato peels still not in the compost?

So I says to him, I don’t think he really likes you…

You know what? We are going to • kick ass next week…

Quill felt his eyes slide left and right, trying to match the sounds with their sources. Behind him, he heard the clank and clatter of the conveyor belt taking dirty food trays back into the kitchen, and the metallic clang of pots inside. Everything was too loud and too bright. The heathery purple of the seats banged like rocks against the cream of the table-tops. The green trailing vines of lüluo coiled poisonously in the planters by the partitions. He focused on the corner of Tark’s collar, the row of tiny stitches at the edge of the blue material, the tiny holes in the weave, gaps in the fabric of space-time. One thousand, nine hundred and sixteen days to go. 1916. World War One. The trenches. It’ll be OK in the end.

“Dr. O, are you OK?”

Quill took a breath and forced himself to look at her face. He blinked, and applied a dampening filter to his visual and aural inputs.

“I — yeah — sorry, what were you saying?”

“I was wondering if I could talk to you about something. But maybe this isn’t a good time?”

Focus. Don’t lose this opportunity.

“Yeah, no, happy to talk. But I need a few minutes. Somewhere quieter.”

“Of course.” Tark looked concerned. “Would tomorrow be better?”

Quill shook his head. “Just give me half an hour? How about I meet you, uh, in the coffee cabin by Engineering?”

“The one on Deck 11?”

Quill nodded. The other voices were quieter now, muffled by his filter, and he felt his heart rate beginning to ease.

“Great! Thanks, Dr. O!”

Tark moved away with her tray, and Quill started towards the door. He turned his aural filters to maximum, blocking out everything except emergency sounds, and sank into the silence with relief.

A hot heavy hand landed on his shoulder. Quill jumped half a foot in the air, aided by the half-g gravity of the Blue Ring, and turned round to see Demas. He could see his mouth moving, a trace of sennepsaus at the corner of his beard. Warily, Quill turned his aural filters back to their normal setting.

“The • is the matter with you?” Demas was saying.

“Sorry. Filters were on, I didn’t hear you.”

“Right. OK, listen up.” Demas lowered his voice. “We’re meeting tonight.”

“What? Vampyre practice?”

Demas looked irritated. “No!” he hissed. “The letter! All of us are going to be there. Except Bowen, too scared of his Earther overlords. Can we count on you, bro?”

Quill was suddenly glad of his arrangement to meet Tark. “Sorry, mate. I have something on. Another appointment.”

Demas raised an eyebrow. “Oh, that’s convenient.”

“It’s true,” said Quill, annoyed. “And even if I didn’t, I’m still not sure I would want to be involved. We knew what the deal was with SymbioNor when we signed up.”

“Yeah, but you know as well as I do that the FSS • are getting a lot more money for the same amount of work.”

Quill made to turn back toward the corridor. He knew that pursuing the argument would be fruitless. “Anyway, I got to go. See you later.” He walked out without looking back to see the expression on Demas’ face.

One thousand, nine hundred and sixteen days. I want to go home. This time will pass. You shall not pass! Gandalf on the bridge facing the Balrog. When I was a kid, I used to think the Balrog looked like the Green Giant on those tins of corn from Earth. Who knows why.

Quill allowed the silence of his cabin to soak into him, allowed his thoughts to swirl and settle like mud on a river bottom. He lay on his bunk staring up at the pale green underside of the shelving above his bed. Lord, help me. Help me not to mess this up, whatever it is.

His thoughts uncurled a tendril towards the Fiducezol hidden in his drawer. It had been a while since he’d taken any. Perhaps it was time. Perhaps thinking of it right now was a hint from the Lord. He pushed himself off the bed and rummaged in his underwear drawer, pulling out the opaque white bottle and shaking it gently. The capsules inside rattled. Still plenty left, over half this bottle, and he still had another three bottles cached away. He’d been trying not to take it lately.

A miracle drug, he thought bitterly as he extracted one of the torpedo-shaped capules. Originally developed by PharmaNor to enhance loyalty among FSS soldiers, it was now widely used in the Norsker states, though only allocated to patriotic citizens. It tended to reduce doubt and increase devotion to one’s highest priorities. The FSS crew and colonists on the Leifr had annual slow-release implants of the stuff, but the Martians and other non-FSS crew were barred from it. It was Rob, his former team leader back in Inverness days, who first saw its potential for bolstering Alliance members in difficult situations. Mars society frowned on it, and Alliance leadership had never been convinced of the ethical grounds for it, but Rob thought of it pragmatically and insisted Quill took a supply with him. Just another thing that would get Quill in trouble if he was ever caught.

He slipped the capsule into his mouth and felt the sweet taste of the outer coating before he washed it down for its payload of finely-tuned probiotics and neurcotics to unpack in his stomach. Sweet as honey on my tongue and sour in my stomach. Ezekiel? or is that Revelation? It would take at least half an hour before he felt any effect, but then it would last probably nearly a week. He stood up. Time to go.

The coffee cabin was quiet. Deck 11 had no viewports, but the coffee cabin had a faux-nautical vibe that gave the impression of being below decks on a steam ship of days gone by. There were ancient photographic prints screwed to the walls, showing engineers on the ships and oil rigs of SymbioNor’s ancestor company, through the generations and agglomerations up to the present day. The fleather banquettes huddled in booths around wood-effect tables gave it something of the feel of an old pub, so that one might expect a grizzled whaler or a sou’-westered trawler captain to come staggering in for a tot of rum, if alcohol weren’t strictly forbidden aboard SymbioNor vessels. Instead, there was a vending machine in the corner from which one could get coffee and tea and hot chocolate. It was a popular place for engineers on their breaks, but at this hour of the clock, there were only one or two people in a couple of the booths.

Quill spotted Tark in a corner booth, blowing steam from the surface of her tea. He helped himself to a cup of sweet chai, closing the lid carefully before carrying it across the room. The “gravity” gradient on RG-class vessels made it hard to calibrate one’s movements enough to avoid liquid slopping out when walking.

“Hey,” he said, sliding into the seat opposite Tark. He clipped his cup onto the magnetic strip on the table and carefully opened the lid.

“Hey. You OK?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Sorry about just now. I, uh, I was just a bit stressed about something.”

Tark shrugged. “I get it.”

“So, what did you want to talk to me about?” he asked hopefully.

Tark answered by opening up an interface on the table. “I’ve been working on that assignment you suggested?”

Quill’s heart sank. He had been hoping it might be something deeper. “The one about the oxygen?” he asked. He had invited the Habitat Engineering students to try an exercise in hand-calculating oxygen consumption and production aboard the Leifr, to illustrate the need for old-school skills in situations where an ai was not available, or to cross-check an ai’s analysis.

“Uh-huh. But I found something weird.” Tark looked up from the interface, where she had been digging into her files, and looked Quill in the face.

“OK,” said Quill, trying not to sound weary. Probably a mistake in calculation. Earthers generally couldn’t calculate for toffee. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Tark zoomed in on the columns of data and began to walk him through the oxygen consumption, standard estimates per person per day for 120 people, and production, based on the output from the farm and other plants scattered around the ship.

“Have I missed anything?” she asked at the end.

“I don’t think so,” said Quill, sipping his chai and looking at the numbers. “Your calculation looks fine.”

“But aren’t the numbers a little off? Like, the balance is out, look. Inputs and outputs don’t match. Consumption is higher than production.”

“Think about the uncertainties,” said Quill. “It’s not a big difference. It’s 1% level, and that’s within tolerance limits.”

“Yeah, but over a long voyage, isn’t that important?”

“It could be, if there was a sustained 1% deficit one way or the other, in the same direction. But the chances are that sometimes consumption is a little higher, sometimes production is a little higher, and in the end it balances out.”

Tark looked at him uncertainly. “So if we wanted to check, we’d need to look at historical data from the whole voyage?”

“Sure, if you really wanted to. But there’s an easier way. Hey, AiLeifr!”

“Good evening, Dr. O’Neill,” said the voice in his ear. He had set it to approximate the tones of Douglas Rain, the voice actor from the old classic 2001. He knew that Tark would also be hearing the ai, in whatever voice she had chosen.

“AiLeifr, what’s the status of the reserve oxygen supply? How much have we used since departure?”

“The reserve oxygen supply is within expected tolerances, Dr. O’Neill. I am not able to give you precise data without prior authorization.”

Quill raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected the data to be locked.

“OK. AiLeifr, can you give us a summary of current O₂ production and consumption? Ship-wide?”

“Oxygen production and consumption are within normal tolerances.”

“Well, that hasn’t told us anything,” said Tark brusquely.

“It’s told us something,” said Quill. “It might not give us data on the reserves, but if there had been a long-term drain of some sort — let’s say some kind of leak — it wouldn’t have said within expected tolerances.”

“I guess. But you’re the one who’s always telling us not to just accept what an ai spits out. You’re the one who’s always going on about how the Ransom One disaster was caused by inaccurate inputs to their ai.”

“I know…” Quill stared into his half-empty cup. He stirred the chai gently, watching the warm liquid climb high up the sides of the vessel.

“So shouldn’t we look into it a bit more? Double-check?”

“If you want to,” said Quill. “Feel free.” Like him, Tark’s work would not really begin until they arrived at Europa, and working out this kind of problem would be good practice for her even if it was completely unnecessary.

“Right,” said Tark. “I’ll start with a more detailed Fermi estimate. Would you mind if I check in with you again about it?”

“Sure, agreed Quill. A thought came to him, and a burst of boldness. Maybe this is a chance. “Are you, uh, worried about this?”

She gave him an odd look. “Not really. Maybe I just don’t have enough to do.” She closed her interface.

“How do you normally pass the time?” Don’t sound creepy. “Like, what things do you find meaningful?”

Tark rolled her eyes at him. “Dr. O, I like you, you’re a good person, but right now you sound like Jörg.”

Quill blinked. “Who’s Jörg?”

“You don’t know him? Jörg from Personnel? On the FSS side? Short blond dude? I think Swedish?”

Quill shook his head. “I know who he is, I think, but I don’t really know him to speak to. We don’t have a lot to do with the FSS admin.” He thought a little guiltily of the argument Demas and the others were fighting with the SymbioNor Personnel department.

“You should meet him. I’ll try to introduce you, actually.” She downed the last of her tea.

“OK, but why?”

“You’re into all that faith stuff, right? The meaning of life and all? Like, that’s what you were going to start on about just now, right?”

Quill nodded, a little sheepishly and then more strongly. He felt a surge of energy, of love for God and eagerness to talk. Is the Fiducezol kicking in already?

“Well, Jörg is totally into that too.”

Quill sat bolt upright, sending a high wave through his chai that nearly spilled over onto the table. “What?”

“Yeah. He’s always trying to talk to me about it, on the down low when no-one else is listening.” Tark hesitated. “To be honest, he’s a bit too pushy. I don’t really like him that much. But you might hit it off.”

“OK,” said Quill, a little dazed. He had no idea there were any other believers on board.

“OK, I’ll set something up. Thanks for your time, Dr. O.” She flashed him a quick smile, gave him half a wink, and got up to leave. Quill watched her shuffle along the banquette, her aikon trailing behind, when something occurred to him.

“Oh, Tark?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever had any issues with aikons on board?”

She stopped and turned back to face him. “Like what?”

“Like, not seeing someone’s aikon?”

She shook her head. “I don’t even know if that’s possible. Unless there was some kind of glitch, you know?”

“I guess so. Never mind. See you later, Tark.”

Quill sat thinking for a while after Tark left. About Jörg, then about the oxygen. An uneasy notion swelled from the depths of his consciousness and eventually slit the surface like the fin of a shark. What if there was a real oxygen imbalance, because of what Bowen and the others were doing at the farm? Was it possible that the shroom experiments were using too much oxygen? Mushrooms didn’t photosynthesise, did they? But surely they weren’t growing that many? Still, the thought nagged at him on the way back to his cabin, competing with his excitement at hearing about Jörg. What if Tark pulls on a loose thread that leads to a lit fuse?

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