Destination Europa: Chapter 5

Optics

This is Destination Europa, a psychological sci-fi thriller set aboard the R. G. Leifr, a colony ship headed towards Jupiter to establish a settlement on the ice moon Europa.

← Previous chapter

→ Next chapter

Navigation Index

Previously, Quill learned that the possible anomaly in oxygen balance aboard the Leifr was not due to Bowen’s shroom production, but now they are faced with another mystery: stolen strawberries.

A bee fizzed past Quill’s face, zagged through the denuded strawberry tray, and landed on one of the flowers on a neighbouring set of plants. Bowen was still staring open-mouthed at the ragged ends of torn stems where the ripe fruit had been taken. Quill spotted a scrap of red on the floor, and stooped to pick up the remnant of flesh clinging to pedicel and calyx.

“Whoever pinched your fruit must have eaten them on the spot,” he commented. “This one, anyway. Consider it a compliment to your skill as a gardener?”

“No,” said Bowen. “No! Quill, this is no laughing matter.”

“It’s just a few strawberries,” said Quill, trying to soothe his colleague.

“No!” snapped Bowen. “It’s a whole tray! And we do not, we cannot, tolerate theft. What would happen to the running of the farm, the whole ship, if anyone can willy-nilly help themselves?”

A fine irony from someone who uses ship resources for private projects. Quill kept the thought to himself.

Bowen turned and stormed towards his office, a little further round the Blue Ring. Quill followed, and hovered in the doorway of the cramped cell as Bowen cleared a mess of plant pots, plastic tubing and fat syringes from a surface so that he could open an interface.

“Shut the door,” said Bowen abruptly.

“What are you doing?” asked Quill, curious, squeezing into the space behind Bowen and allowing the door to seal behind him.

“Should be easy enough to track down the stealer,” said Bowen. “But I don’t want any of my staff to overhear.” He glanced over his shoulder at Quill. “You guys think I have it easy here, but not everyone on my team is happy with lil’ ol’ Martian me being over them.”

“I never thought that,” objected Quill, but Bowen wasn’t listening. He was flicking windows open on his interface.

“The berries were there last night when I left. So they must have gone between around six o’clock and just now. But I guess we can assume it wasn’t during the morning shift when there were more people around. AiLeifr!”

“Yes, Dr. Zhang,” came the smooth voice in Quill’s ear. “How can I help you?”

“AiLeifr, who was in the strawberry section of the Farm between eighteen hundred hours yesterday and just now? I am authorizing access to location data within the Farm in my capacity as Chief Botanist.”

“Authorization granted,” said the ai. “From 1800 until 1927, no-one was in the Farm except Junior Botanical Officer Joseph Rock. He passed through the strawberry section on his way to the exit in Sector B. The next person to pass that area was Apiarist Olga Samson, at 0612 this morning. Following her, Rock returned at 0649. Then at 0824, Senior Botanical Officer Murdo MacDonald entered the area and spent some time in the orchard, leaving at 1137.”

Bowen nodded. “Yes, MacDonald was pruning the apple trees. I wonder if he saw anything?”

“You yourself passed through the area at 0901,” the ai went on, “before returning with Dr. O’Neill a few minutes ago.”

“Yes, yes,” said Bowen impatiently. “Is that everyone?”

“SymbioNor Terraform Specialist Safira Manrique passed through at 0934. That is everyone who has passed within two metres of the strawberry section during the time period you indicated.”

“Safira?” said Quill.

Bowen shrugged, but Quill thought he saw a faint flush creeping up his neck.

“OK,” Bowen continued. “AiLeifr, can you access optical from Samson from her entry into the Farm until she passed by the strawberry trays? Can you see the fruit on Tray, uh, 14B?”

“Are you allowed to do that?” asked Quill. “Access people’s optics, I mean.”

“Sure,” shrugged Bowen. “As long as they’re within my jurisdiction —the Farm — and part of my team.” He saw the shocked look on Quill’s face. “What? Don’t imagine SymbioNor doesn’t do the same with you guys if they need to.”

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” came the ai’s voice. “Apiarist Samson’s optical feed does not have line of sight on the particular tray you have mentioned.”

“What about Rock, then?”

“How long does it keep the recordings?” asked Quill. He felt sick.

“AiLeifr, how long do you keep optical feed for FSS personnel?” asked Bowen.

“I have capacity to store optics for all shipboard personnel for up to ten days. However, per FSS protocol, I clear the cache for FSS personnel after seven days.”

“JBO Rock’s optical feed shows the tray in question, albeit briefly,” the ai went on. “I can count approximately eight strawberries in that tray.”

“Display the image,” ordered Bowen.

A frozen frame from Junior Botanical Officer Joseph Rock’s eyes appeared on Bowen’s interface. Only part of the strawberry tray was visible, but it was clear enough that the only strawberries in it were the unripe ones.

“OK. Thank you, AiLeifr.”

“You’re welcome, Dr. Zhang.”

“Are you sure this is worth it?” asked Quill again as Bowen strode purposefully towards the apiary.  He knew Olga Samson only from Bowen’s description of her as a prickly man-hater. The Queen Bee.

“Nobody steals from my farm!” retorted Bowen again. Nevertheless, he slowed down and straightened his overalls as they approached the sealed door to the beehives, with the bees streaming in and out through their hatches. The Apiarist’s office was tucked into a corner with one door onto the farm and one into the apiary itself.

“Olga!” he said, sticking his head into the office. “Good afternoon!”

“What do you want?” she replied, without looking up. She was knitting. Skeins of yarn strung from thick balls of red and purple, coalescing in her meaty hands like silk from the abdomen of a giant spider.

“Uh, did you happen to notice the strawberries when you came in this morning?” asked Bowen tentatively.

Olga glanced up briefly. “No. Why should I?”

“Someone’s stolen a bunch.”

“Well, it wasn’t me.”

“I didn’t say it was. I just wondered if they were already gone when you arrived.”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. I take it you’ve already violated my privacy by looking at my optics.”

Bowen shuffled his feet. “The workplace isn’t a private domain, you know.”

Olga shrugged and turned away, ostentatiously clicking her needles.

“What are you knitting?” asked Quill, breaking in unexpectedly.

The rhythm of the clicking paused for a second then resumed. “A sweater. So I can wear something in my off times other than this • uniform.”

“But where do you get the yarn?” asked Quill. “I mean, do you bring it? Doesn’t it need a lot?”

“I recycle. Knit one, wear for a while, knit another one, unravel this one. Knitting takes time, un-knitting takes time. More time killed. But someday I leave space and knit whatever I want. Or never knit again, I don’t know.” She looked at Quill then, and he saw sadness in her eyes.

“OK,” said Bowen. “Thanks, Olga.”

“Bye,” said Quill. “Thank you.” Try to show her some love. He tried to make eye contact again, but she was looking back down at her knitting.

“I’d better talk to Joe Rock,” said Bowen, a few paces back into the main part of the farm.

“You think he did it? Like last night or something?”

“It would be out of character. But, you know, space,” said Bowen. “I think this is his longest voyage so far.” Quill understood. Space did funny things to people.

Our records show that your quarterly expense report is overdue. Please log in and complete your QFR-3 form on FamilyNet as soon as possible.

Quill shut the secure shell abruptly, breathing hard in annoyance. 1914. One thousand, nine hundred and fourteen days and I’ll be home, then a little bit longer and I can be free of the Alliance and its bloated bureaucracy and this wretched finance system forever. It didn’t seem to matter how many times he messaged the Finance Department. There always seemed to be some new intern who didn’t understand that on an interplanetary voyage, he wasn’t spending anything and that every message from the Alliance office increased the risk of the FSS noticing him.

He thought uneasily about how casually he’d seen Bowen access Olga Samson’s optical stream. He knew that according to FSS law, his cabin was designated private space and that the ship’s ai should not be accessing or storing his visual or audio inputs while he was in there. But you never know. He heard the voice of a veteran missionary at his Alliance orientation course. Always assume that when you’re connected to an ai, your data is visible. Like an old-time postcard. The postie shouldn’t read your granny’s greetings from Gran Canaria, but there’s nothing to stop them.

Quill had been going to try and finish his update letter, but he was too annoyed to re-open the secure shell. He paced the three steps backward and forward in his cabin, unable to settle. He picked up the Luna Wolf figurine and thought about painting some deeper shading on the armour, perhaps some brighter highlights on the pauldrons. I’m too tense. Maybe I need a psil-pill. Maybe I should see Doc Engebretsen. Not with Fiducezol in my system though. Ha! Looks like the ole Fidz is doing nothing for my loyalty to the Alliance, whatever it’s doing to my faith. Maybe that’s a good thing. He put the Luna Wolf back down and paced again.

A ping from Bowen. Quill sat on his bed and scanned the message. He’d seen Bowen again at dinner but there had been no further news of the strawberry thief then. Bowen had put in a request for the ai to scan all personnel optics for glimpses of ripe strawberries.

Request denied. FFS. “Insufficient evidence,” my ass. They say because location logs show no-one was there apart from Rock, it’s an internal Farm affair and not willing to spend ai compute time on it. Imma ask Safira to help out.

Safira? Quill wrinkled his eyebrows.

Sorry, bro, he replied. Maybe just let it go? What can Safira do?

He couldn’t figure out Bowen’s response. Haha. Quit trying to be funny. It doesn’t suit you.

After a few minutes puzzling over whether he had committed an accidental double entendre, he shrugged it off and decided to watch a movie.

He skimmed through the list of options in the Leifr’s library, as he’d done at least eighty-four times since leaving port. Nearly all the movies were made in the FSS, as one would expect, and he’d already seen all the Martian ones. He spotted one he’d overheard Tark and the other Earther engineers discussing recently. Moskstraumen. It had won a clutch of awards, including Best Human Performance for the legendary Connery Khan. I should watch it. Help deepen my understanding of FSS culture. He cued it up. But is it right for me to watch horror? Is it good for me? He took off his uniform overalls and curled up on his bunk, convincing himself into a compromise.

“AiLeifr, show this movie without explicit sexual content. Or profanity.”

Quill awoke to see the screen frozen on an aerial view of a deep fjord among dark trees. He sat up groggily, his neck stiff from the awkard position in which he had dozed off. He checked the time. 0135. Three odd numbers. Nice. He closed the interface at the foot of his bunk, and lay back down, knowing he’d have to get up to go to the bathroom and brush his teeth before going to bed properly. I’ll have to finish the movie another night.

That was a weird one. What was happening before I drifted off? Connery Khan’s character was trying to get to some place before the kraken came out of the Moskstraumen… They were walking on a narrow sandy beach, like the one they’d gone to that time in the Lofoten Islands that summer holiday. It was nearly midnight, and the sun lay low above the horizon, the water silver-blue and the sky yellow as daffodils. Priska walked a step or two ahead of him, feet bare on the soft sand, eager to get to the water. At the tangle of seaweed and driftwood and scraps of old fishing net that marked the last high tide, she turned to him with a mischievous smile, and stripped off her top, that striped one she had liked, and her shorts, showing her swimsuit underneath. He took off his own clothes, and they raced to the water’s edge, then shrieked with the cold and the joy of being alive.

Priska swam out into the fjord, where the water deepened to black beneath her. She floated, lithe and taut, and called to him, taunted him with his lack of confidence in the water. Quill shivered. This was nothing like the blue-tiled swimming pool in Ransom City.

A black tendril curled up from underneath and coiled round her ankle. Quill called out to warn her, but no sound came from his throat. She didn’t see it, she lay easy in the water, wavelets lapping at her body. Another tendril came, and the first thickened into a tentacle and curled up her leg, and now she did see it, and she thrashed in the dark water. Quill tried to swim, but the current was too strong, and the harder he swam the further away she grew. He saw her kicking and trying to tear off the tentacles, but they tangled her arms and then her torso, dragging her down until she gave up and disappeared beneath the surface of the water.

Quill woke, heart racing, a scream stillborn in his dry mouth. I should have tried harder. She’s gone, and I should have tried harder to stop her. To save her.

He got up and went to the bathroom, but felt too shaken to go straight back to his cabin. He made his way along the night-lit corridors to the Observation Lounge on Deck 9. At this time of night it was empty. Quill slumped into one of the recliners and watched the universe spin beyond the viewport until the fear in his veins faded and he dozed off again.

Quill woke with the skin of his shoulderblades prickling beneath his t-shirt. It was cold. There’s someone else in the room. He didn’t move, but his unfocused eyes blinked once or twice, his brain trying to sort the images in the viewport in front of him. Then he screamed. Priska. Her face, dead-eyed, floating outside the window, fringed in a green-blue glow, like bioluminescence, like the ghost of an aurora. Just her head, from the neck up. The pale green lips moved, as if saying his name, then the head disappeared. The Leifr continued its slow rotation, and Jupiter slid into view again.

Quill slid off the recliner, falling onto his hands and knees beside the viewport. He looked around at the empty room then retched, vaguely surprised that nothing came up. Priska. I should have tried harder. I’m sorry.

← Previous chapter

→ Next chapter

Navigation Index

If you enjoyed this story, let me know with a like, comment or share!

Cover image of Jupiter © National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, colour modification by SDGL.

Divider image: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M. H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL team, adapted by SDGL.