Destination Europa: Chapter 8

Printing Problems

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.

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Previously, Quill heard how on older spacecraft, bit rot could potentially cause hallucination-like glitches in the ai, although Ai Technician Dirk Stockinger maintained it was highly unlikely on the Leifr. But then he had a late night proof-reading Demas’ letter…

Summer sunlight slashed across Quill’s face, so bright that before he opened his eyes he could see it buttercup-bursting through his eyelids. Outside the window, songbirds in full voice, louder than he’d have thought possible. His head was pounding. That had been a good bottle of whisky. Talisker, best in the FSS. He turned, reaching out an arm for Priska, and banged his hand hard on the cabin wall.

That was a good bottle of whisky, that weekend in the Lofoten Islands. Quill propped himself up in his bunk, fighting the bitter aftertaste of his memories.

“AiLeifr, lights down 20%. Why is it so bright? And why the birdsong?”

The lights dimmed to normal morning spectrum.

“I was following your preset wake-up pattern for oversleeping.”

“Oversleeping? I’ve only been asleep for..” Quill turned on his visuals to check the time, then scrambled out of bed. “Songbirds off.” It was almost 11, and his message alert was blinking red in the corner of his eye. Demas, of course, wondering why he hadn’t passed the qube on to Singh yet. And a much earlier message from Kiran Singh, saying he would be at breakfast at 0830 if Quill wanted to bump into him then.

Quill pulled on yesterday’s t-shirt and overalls, ran his fingers through his hair, and in his haste to get to the bathroom leapt too high in the low gravity of the Green Ring, banging his head on the corridor ceiling. As he brushed his teeth, something nagged at him. I realised something, right before falling asleep. Something about the ai. He spat and rinsed his toothbrush, then messaged Singh before going to look for him in Engineering.

He took the Blue Ring corridor aft to Deck 11, where their offices were. Like Quill, Kiran Singh was a habitat engineer. As he dropped into the Blue Ring, a psalm came unbidden to Quill’s mind. Lord, from the depths I call to you. Psalm 130. He walked a few paces, hardly seeing the one or two folk passing the other way. The words chimed and glowed, and the taste of them as he mouthed the sounds was like sweet water in a sandstorm. I clung to that psalm, after Priska. What’s happened to me since then? Am I a bad person? I’m a bad missionary, I know that by now. Lord, from the depths I call to you; Lord, hear me from on high. The old metric version they had sung when he was growing up in Ransom City, feet dangling from the high funguswood pews while the precentor sent the line soaring into the heavens. I need this. I’ll spend some time meditating on it tonight. As he reached Deck 11 and turned right towards the cramped space they had been allocated in the Green Ring, a more disquieting thought came to him. Would I be feeling this way without the Fiducezol? How much of this desire, this heart’s cry, is really from me? He shook it off. That was a question for another time. He tapped on the door of the office that Singh shared with two other engineers.

The office was empty, but there were several interfaces open on the desks and walls. Singh’s team was in charge of the HVAC systems for the future Europa base, and they had been working on optimizing some of the designs. SymbioNor protocol required interfaces to be locked or closed if you were away for any length of time; he must have just popped out for something, perhaps to the bathroom. Quill stretched and thought about going to his own office, a few doors down, when he heard voices approaching.

“It doesn’t make sense, Kiran.” That was Jules Wong, one of Singh’s team. Quill wondered whether she was in on Demas’ protest. “Oh, hello, Quill, you alright?”

“Hi, Jules. Hi, Kiran.” Quill had his right hand in the pocket of his overalls, fingering the qube. He realised he hadn’t thought of a good cover story for why he was looking for Singh. His head was still pounding. “How are you guys doing?”

“Good, good,” said Jules, sitting down at her workstation and setting down a printed model of some pipework. “That beastly printer is acting up again though. I swear I reloaded, what, three days ago?”

Singh stuck his hand out for a handshake, giving Quill a meaningful look.

“What happened?” asked Quill, making sure to look at Jules while he took his hand out of his pocket with the qube safely in his grip, then palmed it to Singh.

“Oh, something wrong with the cartridge calibration, I reckon,” Jules replied. “Reporting the level is low when it simply can’t be. Kiran, can we get one of the Leifr techs to look at the thing?”

“If we must,” said Singh with a sigh, putting his hand in his own pocket. “But you know what they’ll say. ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again?’ All that crap. Remember last time?”

“I know, Kiran, but last time didn’t make sense either. It’s that or I’m going crazy.” Jules fixed them both with a steely glare.

“What happened last time?” asked Quill.

“Oh, just their attitude,” said Singh.

“Printer powder was reading low, less than a week after reloading. But that horrid weaselly little fellow insisted there was nothing wrong with the machine. Suggested that perhaps my memory was faulty.”

“Well, Julie,” Singh started, then stopped as Jules stood up, hands on her hips. She was a good two feet shorter than her boss, but he stepped back and nervously tweaked his moustache. “OK, OK! I’m not saying I don’t believe you! It would just be an easy mistake to make, that’s all! You know how it is, one week is much like another on here.”

“So the printer’s running through powder faster than it should?” asked Quill.

“That, or the calibration is off,” said Singh. “Or we’re going crazy.” He laughed. “And at this point in the voyage, honestly I’d say it’s a toss-up. Relax, Jules, I’m talking about me, not you.”

“Why don’t you open it up and take a look?” said Quill.

Jules shook her head. “Not allowed. Because the printers are part of the structure of the Leifr and therefore FSS rather than SymbioNor. We’re not allowed to touch them.” She rolled her eyes. “Believe me, I was about to ignore that particular stupidity, but as soon as I came near the thing with a screwdriver, AiLeifr ratted me out.”

There was a narrow silence where the three of them looked at each other. No-one felt comfortable pursuing the topic, unsure of where they all stood.

“Alright, I’ll leave you be,” said Quill. “See you guys later.”

He headed out the door. His stomach growled. May as well just head to the mess for an early lunch. Still, out of curiosity he decided to go via the printer bay. He had a model of some struts he wanted to print for the next day’s Habitat Engineering class anyway.

The printer looked normal. Quill tapped on the machine’s interface, then opened his own interface on the wall next to the it and set up the print job. A warning message flashed up.

LOW POWDER LEVEL IN CARTRIDGE 1.

“AiLeifr, what’s the status of this printer? Why is it showing low powder?”

“The printer is operating normally. Low powder level occurs when there is less than 10% of the cartridge remaining. I suggest topping up.”

“But Engineer Wong topped up three days ago. Has there been unusually heavy usage?”

“Negative.”

“Then why has it run out already?”

“I am unable to answer that question, Dr. O’Neill. Would you like me to arrange a technician for manual inspection?”

“Sure,” Quill sighed. It might help get their attention if someone other than Jules put in the request this time. “AiLeifr, what is the status of the other printers aboard?”

“All printers are operating normally.”

“OK, thanks.” Quill stooped to open the cupboard beside the printer and pulled out the sack of powder. It was nearly empty. Jules is right. This bag was replaced not that long ago. Who’s been using it? And why does AiLeifr not recognise there’s been heavy usage?

He attached the valve at the mouth of the sack to the printer cartridge input, and activated the refill. The cartridge reached 34%, then the sack was empty. Good enough for now. Quill detached the valve and the printer began to hiss and whirr. He crumpled up the thin plastic of the empty sack and pushed it into the recycling slot. As he did so, his eye fell on something on the ground, in the dark corner between forest-green floor and mint-green wall. It twitched. Quill jerked involuntarily, the sudden movement taking him off his feet and halfway to the ceiling, his skin crawling and his mind flashing back to the lacquer-brown cockroaches that had infested their unit in Ransom when he was a boy.

As he landed back on the floor and stooped to look closer, he saw that it was not a cockroach, but a bee. One of the bees from the Farm.

Quill carefully scooped the tiny furry body into his hand, glad the Leifr bees were engineered to be stingless. It seemed barely alive. He curled his palm gently around it and started toward the Farm, pinging Bowen as he went.

“Hey, bro, you in the Farm?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I found something that belongs to you.”

“You found the strawberries?”

“No! I should say, something that belongs to Olga. I found a bee.”

“Outside the Farm?”

“Yeah. I’m almost there, I’ll go straight to the apiary.”

Olga Samson stood up so fast that a ball of purple yarn fell to the floor of her office and bounced, trailing a long spidery strand behind it.

“Give it here!” she demanded.

Quill uncupped his hand nervously and showed her the half-dead bee.

“Impossible.” She shook her head as she peered at the bee. “You found where? Deck 11? Impossible. Put here.” She opened a desk drawer, pulled out something like a watch-glass, and syringed a droplet of clear liquid onto it. Quill placed the bee gently on the glass. It fell on its back and was unable to right itself. Olga pulled a pair of tweezers from the front pocket of her overalls and turned it onto its front, then pushed it to where it could reach the sugar solution.

“Why is it impossible?” asked Quill. “Couldn’t it have escaped through the airlock when someone was coming or going?”

Bowen appeared at the apiarist’s office door, pulling off a pair of gardener’s gloves. “It could have. Happens occasionally,” he said. “But from here to Engineering, that’s a lot of doors to go through and a lot of eyes that should have seen it before now.”

“Will it be OK?” said Quill. Olga shrugged, her attention no longer on them.

“You know what?” said Bowen in a low voice. He had an excited gleam in his eye. “This could be connected to the strawberry thief.”

“You’re not still trying to track that down?” said Quill.

“I ran out of ideas there, but this could be a new lead!”

“How?”

Bowen ran a hand through his unruly hair. “I dunno, maybe the bee was in the strawberries when the thief took them.”

“Dude, that seems.. unlikely? Occam’s razor. The bee could have just escaped. Anyway, the strawberries was what, day before yesterday? How long could it have survived out of the Farm?”

“Bee needs food at least 24 hours,” said Olga, still focused on the watch glass. “Our bees, usually more often, but outside Farm it can survive maybe 24 hours. Not more.”

“There you go,” said Quill. “If it got out with your strawberry thief, it would be dead already. Come on, let’s go to lunch.”

It was much later in the afternoon, when he was finishing his gym slot, that Quill remembered the model he’d started printing earlier, before he found the bee. Not only that, but he had left an open interface in the printer bay. He bounded down the corridor to Deck 11, the sweat chilling on his spine. What’s wrong with me? What was I thinking? Security 101, never leave your interface unattended. Don’t panic. Take a breath. It’ll have timed out long before now. But what if someone found it and poked around before then? I haven’t always kept my workspace as clean as I should. Stop being paranoid. Who would do that? Lord, from the depths I call to you! But he didn’t stop until he reached the printer bay again. The wall was clear. Nothing but the printer’s own interface blinking silently. On impulse, he checked the printer status.

CARTRIDGE 1: 32%.

Normal. No more than would be expected in a few hours. No sign of the struts he had printed, though. His gym towel was draped round his neck, and he ran it over his face, wiping off the sheen of nervous sweat.

“Looking for this?”

Safira, coming out the door of his office, holding out the model. He jumped, and had to steady himself on the wall of the printer bay.

“Oh, hi, Saf. Yeah, thanks.” What’s she doing in my office?

“You should be more careful,” she said, her eyes boring into him. “Leaving your printouts cluttering the place up is one thing. But leaving your interface open in a public place…” She shook her head, then beckoned him into his own office. He followed, and she closed the door. Quill felt the heat of his own body, boosting the kinetic energy of the water and salt and fatty acids and pheromones oozing from his chest and back and armpits and filling the tiny room. His office-mate, English Cuthbert, wasn’t there. Safira was standing uncomfortably close to him.

“Quill, you have to be more careful,” she repeated, her voice low.

“Yeah, understood,” he said, though he felt she was trying to tell him something more. Something other than basic interface hygiene. “But Saf…”

“I’m not sure you do understand,” she said. “It’s not just about SymbioNor, you know.” She handed him the model, which she was still holding.

“Got it,” he said. “But Saf, uh.. What are you doing in my office?”

She rolled her eyes dramatically. “I help you out by picking up your stuff and delivering it to you, and you just get all territorial over your space?”

“No, that’s, that’s not what I meant! I mean, I do appreciate it, picking up the model and everything. And the, uh, reminder. But, I mean, were you looking for Cuthbert, or what?”

“Just passing by,” she said briskly. “Right, see you later. Vampyre practice at nineteen-hundred, remember? Last chance before the big day.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a shower slot before then?”

“Ha ha.”

The door closed behind her and Quill slumped into his office chair. What’s she up to? Was she flirting with me? Or was she trying to tell me something? What’s going on? Is it about the dispute? Worried SymbioNor might find the letter? Or the FSS? He got up wearily and went to get some water. There was a slight puddle around the foot of the dispenser down the corridor, as if someone had let the water run too long and overspilled. Why can people not clean up their mess? Quill knelt and soaked it up with his gym towel, then stood and filled his flask. He took a long swig. Priska wouldn’t beat around the bush like that. She always said just what she thought… He remembered her face as he’d seen it in the Observation Lounge the night before last, and shivered, then froze with his flask halfway to his mouth. Jonas Johannsen’s words from the night before had come back to him. That doesn’t explain why it was the Máni I saw, he had said. And the sleep-submerged realisation from the night before resurfaced like a released balloon. A cosmic-ray accident in the ai hardware might just produce a glitch, a halllucination, even if that was unlikely. But even with a glitch, how could AiLeifr have shown him Priska? She’d never been aboard the ship, never imaged in its memory. A chill uncurled down his spine that was colder than evaporating perspiration ought to be. Whatever he’d seen, it wasn’t a hardware problem.

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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.