The Shadows of Subspace
Chapter 2
by Jennifer Kohl
Only a whiff of mind control in this one. I'm trying to break free of the anxiety that I'm doing something wrong by not having at least one sex or kink scene per chapter in everything I post. Please trust me that the pieces I'm putting in place here will result in heat down the line! Also this is another one where the codexipediabase is longer than the actual chapter, but it's much closer this time. By next chapter it might be shorter already!
Also, again, if anybody knows of a way to post a final chapter up front and then fill in chapters before it as I go, please leave a comment and I'll post/update the Codexipediabase that way instead.
Love,
Jenny
Kel entered her quarters and looked around the plain white, softly glowing walls, three straight and one–the one containing the door she’d entered through–gently concave. A large and comfortable-looking bed extended from the opposite wall, with a dresser at its foot and a small shelf set into the wall near its head. Against another wall stood a desk and deskchair, and in the corner a plush-looking reading chair. The final wall contained two doors, which she presumed were a bathroom and a closet.
She set her bag on the floor and looked around. “Uh… computer?” she asked.
“Hello!” said a cheerful voice from directly behind her. At the same moment, a loud bong sounded
Kel jumped and turned. The woman behind her was human and pale, with dark straight shoulder-length hair in a half-up style. She appeared a few years older than Kel, with a pretty face and large blue eyes.
“I am the M-Series AI Majel, Caretaker of the Odile,” she introduced herself. “You are Mediator Kel Diarro, yes?”
Kel nodded, looking Majel up and down. Creating and animating a convincing hologram of an attractive human woman was child’s play for an advanced AI, but Kel still wasn’t immune to the charms of one. Even more impressive than her beauty, at least to Kel’s Engineer training, was the total lack of snow on the image–the reflective particles must be invisibly fine, which meant the image generation algorithm must be working at an incredible resolution.
“Welcome aboard!” Majel continued. “Feel free to ask me about anything you need. Perhaps start with decorating your walls?”
“Honestly,” said Kel, “the main thing I want is a window.”
“Are you sure?” asked Majel. “Many humanoids find persistent views of deep space, and especially infraspace, to be increasingly distressing over time.”
“Not me,” said Kel. “I love the emptiness.”
Majel shrugged. “Okay! I’m here if you change your mind at any point.” The wall above the bed changed, revealing a gorgeous view of the planet below, a blue-white marble with traces of green and brown just like any habitable world necessarily had to be.
“This is the hull?” asked Kel. She reached out and touched the “window”; it felt just the same as the rest of the wall.
Majel shook her head. “The inner hull is over a meter in that direction, to say nothing of the outer hull and armor. But that is what the view would be if you could see through it, interpolated from external sensor readings.”
“Cool,” replied Kel. Her training mission had been on a decades-older ship, which hadn’t had hologram emitters in the bedroom walls. It was a nice perk of this posting, and she had fun trying out different decorations and lighting until she got her room just how she wanted it.
“Are the environmental settings to your liking?” Majel asked.
“Wait, I can customize those?” Her last posting had a preset for each subspecies, but didn’t allow any other changes. “Wait, doesn’t anyone else need you? This is pretty minor and we’re launching in a couple hours, aren’t we?”
She smiled. “You can. And no, you must be familiar with an L-series or before, it strained their processing power to run the ship and maintain multiple personae at once. I have no issues doing so.”
Kel whistled. That implied some impressive things about the ship’s processing power. “You really are cutting edge,” she said.
Majel gave a small curtsey. “Good-looking, too.” She gave Kel a wink.
The two finished setting up Kel’s quarters, and then Kel asked for the location of the Biomedical Specialist. Armed with directions from Majel, she set out for the medbay.
“Take the hallway right,” she said under her breath as she exited her quarters. “Past the next door and the neck hallway, then the lift will be on my right.” But as she approached the door to the quarters next to hers, they opened, and Alana emerged.
“Alana!” Kel called, jogging slightly for a few steps to close the distance.
Alana turned and smirked slightly. “Ah, the gawker.”
“Kel Diarro of Virin,” said Kel. “Mediator, Engineer secondary. My friend and I didn’t introduce ourselves earlier, that was rude.”
Alana’s smirk deepened. “I like a girl who can admit a mistake.”
Kel resisted the urge to gulp. “Oh, I, uh…”
Alana laughed. “Easily flustered, too! Delightful.”
Kel could only sputter in response, feeling her face flush.
Alana shook her head. “Let me guess, first posting?”
“Well, I had my trainee mission–”
“Right,” said Alana. “First posting. Relax, Mediator.” She stepped in closer, and Kel felt a wave of relaxation pass through her, not too different from what Hrrrinn used to do to her. After months with her, it was a trained instinct to give in completely and then some, to drop into relaxation and arousal.
“Hey!” Alana snapped her fingers in Kel’s face. “Sorry, I didn’t realize you’d have such a strong reaction to my pheromones.”
Kel shook her head, trying to clear the cobwebs as she rose back into consciousness. “Yeah. Sorry, I uh… recent experiences have–it’s fine.”
Alana raised an eyebrow. “If you’re sure you’re okay. I’ll make sure to dial back on the pheromones in future.”
Please don’t, Kel thought. But instead she just said, “Thanks. I, uh, need to go meet the biomed.”
Alana nodded. “Say hi to Gerulb for me. And Kel, remember, I’m the Mediator secondary on this voyage, you’re primary. Everyone here’s mental health is your job except you; yours is mine.”
Kel nodded. “I know. Thank you.” She moved on down the hallway, curving past the opening to the neck of the ship, and then just beyond that to a door marked with the standardized interplanetary symbol for an elevator.
She took it down, and it opened directly into the Medbay. The room was large, with one wall curving behind her, and two straight walls that combined with the curve to form a quarter-oval. One of the straight walls was transparent, and beyond was a small but well-equipped laboratory for both medical and biological research. The Medbay itself contained a fully equipped surgical theater, several beds, a multifunction full-body scanner, and a molecular printer stocked with raw material for manufacturing medications and first aid supplies.
And it contained a ranian man. It was Kel’s first time meeting a ranian–they supported the CEP, but rarely joined. But this man couldn’t be anything else: he was squat and gray-skinned, hairless except for eyebrows and lashes, and had long, wiry limbs with similarly long, webbed fingers and toes. He had no visible ears, a nose so flat and broad it almost didn’t exist, huge pale eyes with nictating membranes, and a wide, almost lipless mouth. He wore what Kel recognized as a variant of traditional ranian battle armor, a skintight black base resembling a wetsuit but more flexible, high-necked and extending into short pants, but otherwise leaving the limbs bare. It was missing, however, the distinctive pattern of hard scales that indicated a ranian adult’s clan, which was surprising–most ranians would not be caught dead in public without that.
“Dr. Grluk?” asked Kel.
He looked her up and down. “Transhuman, red hair. Diarro?”
Kel nodded. “Nice to meet you,” she said. “I figured since you’re responsible for all our physical health and I handle mental–”
“Yes, we will need to coordinate.” He turned back to his console. “I have already reviewed the charts for everyone on board. Have you?”
Kel raised a hand. “I prefer to form my own impressions and then read the chart. That way I can do my assessment of the what and then learn the why from their history.”
“Reasonable,” said Dr. Grluk. “Is there anything else?”
“Alana said to say hi. At least, I assume you’re Gerulb?”
“Ah,” he said. “Yes. We have served together on a prior voyage. A fine warrior.”
“High praise for a non-ranian,” Kel noted.
Gerulb looked up and tilted his head. “My people would say that I
have no basis for comparison.”
“And you disagree?” Kel asked.
“We learned humans and etaera can produce fine warriors by facing them in battle. And in my time with the CEP I have met many skilled nekmi warriors.”
He didn’t actually answer the question, Kel noticed. Or mention the ciri, but that wasn’t surprising–that grudge ran deep in ranian culture. “Once I’ve had a chance for an interview with everyone, we should meet to discuss any potential health concerns and generally strategize for the next year,” she said.
He nodded. “Agreed. Now if you will excuse me, I wish to check my lab and ensure nothing has been forgotten before we set out.”
Kel nodded back and took her leave. There’s a lot going on there, she thought. I’d better review my cultural competence materials on ranians when I read his file, I suspect that his relationship with them is more complex than most.
There was still time before they were due to launch, so she decided to look for Ryn. They probably dropped their stuff off and ran straight back to check out the ship systems, she thought. She went back upstairs and took the neck hallway to the main body of the ship, a straight, plain hallway with a door on each side and two at the back. As she walked toward the rear of the ship, she heard yelling from behind one of the doors at the back.
She opened it to see Ryn being yelled at by a very tall, slender man with pointed ears and sharp features. “Intolerable!” he was yelling in a clipped, precise voice. “Simply intolerable!”
“Something wrong?” she asked.
He looked up at her, and she saw that both his eyes had been replaced by complex-looking, multi-lensed implants. “A child! Only the third produced of the most advanced ship design ever made, and they assign a child fresh out of training as its engineer?”
“I’m fully qualified–” Ryn started.
Kel raised a hand. “The CEP wouldn’t have assigned anyone as crew they didn’t think was competent to do their own work and capable of forming a team with the others. And they are very good at assessing those kinds of things.”
“Who are you?” the man demanded.
“Kel Diarro, Mediator, Engineer secondary.”
“Oh, wonderful! Two children to keep these incredibly complex systems running,” he replied.
“And who are you?” asked Kel calmly.
He drew himself up. “Telik Elethion, Physical Sciences. Biomed secondary,” he introduced himself.
Ryn’s jaw dropped. “Dr. Elethion?” they asked. “Of the Mundi Academy? You coauthored the paper that laid the groundwork for gravitic drive!”
Telik harrumphed. “So you know who I am,” he said.
“Your work in gravitics is brilliant!” said Ryn. “I had no idea you were in the CEP!”
“Well,” he said, clearly mollified. “I joined after helping develop the Cygnus.”
Kel thought quickly. Time for basic training, assessment, trainee mission, mandatory post-mission downtime… aha. This is his first mission as a fully qualified crewmember, too. “It’s clear you’re an expert in your field. Please trust the thoroughness of our training, too, including in your work. Those of us on our first tour may be lacking in experience, but we make up for it in having the most up-to-date education, don’t you agree.”
He raised an eyebrow, and Kel maintained a bland expression. And now you know I know. She hung around for a little while while Ryn plied Telik with questions about his past work and Telik’s affect gradually settled into bland neutrality as he answered. As she turned back toward the neck hallway, she realized she’d just successfully completed her first official task as ship’s Mediator.
AI: Artificial Intelligences (AIs) are complex computer systems capable of the basic skills of humanoid intelligence, including among many others:
- Communication of complex and abstract concepts
- Learning by both trial-and-error and modeling
- Nth-order agency attribution, where N is arbitrarily high, including capacities for deception and known mutual pretense
- Constructing, acting on, and updating schema
- Setting goals based on preferred outcomes
- Social bonding and attachment
- Self-awareness
AIs are a common feature of life on most settled worlds. While most AIs do have their personality quirks, they are generally regarded as more reliable and vastly better at multitasking than humanoids, and thus often found performing vital infrastructure, communication, and informational roles. They also permit the automation of tasks much too complex for simpler programs. The massive complexity and high computational and energy costs of an AI, plus the fact that no means exists for mass-producing them, means that they remain quite rare, however–perhaps one per million humanoids.
AIs are people and generally expect to be treated as such. While they have no need for rest or sleep, they generally insist on retaining some processing capacity for personal use in whatever activity they prefer. Sometimes these share much in common with humanoid leisure activities, such as playing games, observing popular media, or socializing with other AIs or humanoids, but at other times may involve behaviors of unclear purpose to humanoids. There are even art forms that can only be created or experienced by AIs.
A common question debated by first-year philosophy students is whether AIs are a non-humanoid intelligence (or the more colloquial "alien") or a humanoid subspecies. Arguments for both options exist, and the question comes down largely to a matter of personal definition.
Biomedical Specialist: In the non-hierarchical crew structure of a Cygnus Exploration Project vessel, the role of the Biomedical Specialist is to maintain the health and physical wellbeing of the crew, provide medical and biological expertise to the study of any discoveries or problems encountered in the course of the vessel's tour and during any crew discussions, and in the formation of crew consensus, represents the interest of maintaining the crew's physical health while advancing medicine and the biological sciences. The Biomedical Specialist generally operates out of the ship's medbay, though they also frequently accompany ground-mission parties. They frequently coordinate with the Physical Science Specialist in pursuing the CEP's scientific mission, and with the Mediator and Caretaker in monitoring and maintaining crew wellbeing.
Caretaker: In the non-hierarchical crew structure of a Cygnus Exploration Project vessel, the role of the Caretaker is to maintain the health and safety of the ship and crew. On modern vessels, the Caretaker is almost always an artificial intelligence, although decades ago humanoid Caretakers did sometimes serve. Caretakers keep the ship clean and perform basic maintenance, monitor the status of the ship's supplies and alert the rest of the crew when a resupply is advisable or necessary, and prepare food according to the nutritional needs and preferences of each individual crewmember. AI Caretakers additionally monitor the vitals of each crewmember and report issues to the Biomedical Specialist or Mediator as necessary, as well as monitoring the functioning of ship's systems and reporting to the Engineer as necessary.
Cygnus Exploration Project: The Cygnus Exploration Project (CEP) is an interstellar non-governmental organization dedicated to exploring the Cygnus Starswarm, identifying resources in systems with habitable planets, and making first contact with previously unencountered humanoid civilizations.
In addition to ground-based CEPRI facilities and the ES stations, the CEP operates a fleet. Ships in the CEP fleet are designated by a CEV (Cygnus Exploration Vessel) prefix, and mostly consist of explorer vessels, such as the Odile, with a few cargo and transport vessels in support roles. Explorer vessel crews answer to the director of their assigned "home port," usually an ES station but occasionally a particular CEPRI; however, they are generally given broad latitude to operate independently. Explorer crews are small and carefully chosen to work well together, with overlapping skillsets intended to maximize flexibility to deal with the unexpected while minimizing conflicts between experts butting heads. As is generally the case with very small teams, CEP research has shown that explorer crews function best without any hierarchy, making decision by consensus in non-emergency situations and deferring to the appropriate expert in emergencies. A typical explorer crew consists of one of each of the following specialists, with each also trained to take over another specialization in the event a crewmember is unable to perform their duties:
- Mediator
- Engineer
- Biomedical Specialist
- Physical Science Specialist
- Helm Operator
- Tactician
- Caretaker
Other than the appointed members of the leadership council, the CEP consists entirely of volunteers. Training is mandatory for all new volunteers, although those who have already acquired the skills for their desired position may be able to "test out" of some portion of the training. Only a few trainees in each "class" demonstrate the passion and aptitude required to join an explorer crew, while the majority will end up working at a CEPRI facility or ES station. The handful who do qualify must complete a year as a trainee aboard an explorer vessel, shadowing the crew and learning from them, before selecting a primary and secondary specialization of their own and being assigned to a new crew to begin their tour.
Some volunteers go on to make the CEP a lifelong career; others eventually leave to pursue other purposes or employment. In most fields, CEP alumni have a reputation of being extremely qualified and skillful, and so few have difficulty finding their feet on leaving.
Engineer: In the non-hierarchical crew structure of a Cygnus Exploration Project vessel, the role of the Engineer is to maintain the functioning of all ship's systems and provide mechanical, electrical, gravitic, and information-technology expertise to the study of any discoveries or problems encountered in the course of the vessel's tour and during any crew discussions. In the formation of crew consensus, they represent the interest of maintaining the ship's functionality while advancing technology. The Engineer generally operates out of the ship's main body, and especially the prototyping and minifacturing facilities, though they also frequently accompany ground-mission parties. They frequently coordinate with the Physical Science Specialist in upgrading systems and developing technological solutions to problems encountered in the ship's journey, and with the Caretaker in monitoring and maintaining ship systems.
Hologram: An image that appears three-dimensional as a result of being holographically encoded in an appropriate medium. In a traditional two-dimensional image (such as on a display screen), each point in the image projects (or reflects) a single set of brightness and color information in all directions, and thus appears the same from every angle. This causes images to appear flat or distorted when viewed from multiple angles, as with humanoid binocular vision. By contrast, when information is holographically encoded into a medium, each point projects different information in different directions, allowing the image to shift in appearance as one looks at it from different angles, which (if the information is encoded correctly) creates the appearance of a three-dimensional image.
A modern holographic display consists of a magnetic "bottle" used to contain a spray of fine metallic particles, creating a cylindrical region of space with a different refraction index than the surrounding air, known as a holographic field. These fields are then used to reflect and refract light from an array of low-powered lasers tuned to different bands of the visual spectrum, producing a hologram that can be continuously modified in real-time to display holographically recorded communications or interact with computer-generated 3D animations, ranging from the deliberately cartoonish to photorealistic. It is not safe for living things to enter the holographic field due to the danger of inhaling the particles, but recreational "hologames" do exist, usually by using a combination of holographic displays along the walls for backdrops and projecting characters upwards from areas of the floor around the player that the player is prevented from stepping into.
On the Odile, the ship's robotic maintenance drones are able to project holographic fields up to two meters tall and a meter wide, enabling them to create mobile holograms representing the ship's AI Caretaker, Majel. Since the cleaning drones in particular are unobtrusive and omnipresent, this creates the effect of being able to call on and speak to her anywhere in the ship. There are also fixed holographic displays in most of the ship's working and common areas, as well as crew quarters. For example, a visual representation of the space around the ship is often displayed along the walls of the control center, and there is a display able to project into the center of the room for the crew to use to call up visual aids during discussions. A combination of two-dimensional and holographic displays are used for each crew station.
Mediator: In the non-hierarchical crew structure of a Cygnus Exploration Project vessel, the role of the Mediator is to maintain the mental health and wellbeing of the crew, and provide expertise in diplomacy and the social and behavioral sciences to the study of any discoveries or problems encountered in the course of the vessel's tour and during any crew discussions. Additionally, in the formation of crew consensus, they represent the interest of maintaining the crew's mental health while advancing the understanding of history and behavior, and establishing and maintaining diplomatic ties. The Mediator is also tasked with ensuring a consensus is achieved and accepted by all crew members.
The role of the Mediator varies greatly from ship to ship; on some voyages they remain mostly in the ship's control center or crew lounge, providing counseling or advice, and only participate in ground missions for first-contact or diplomatically sensitive situations; on other voyages they are much more active, accompanying ground teams on archeological expeditions and representing the ship in almost all communications with others. They frequently coordinate with the Biomedical Specialist and Caretaker in monitoring and maintaining crew wellbeing.
Odile: The CEV-34 Odile is a Cygnus-class explorer vessel in the Cygnus Exploration Project (CEP) fleet. A relatively new vessel, it completed its first tour only five months ago before returning to its home port of ES9 for refit and repair, and to cycle in a new crew, as CEP policy requires that humanoid crewmembers receive a minimum of one year of "shore duty" between tours.
The Cygnus-class represents the cutting edge of exploration craft, optimized for speed, sensor acuity, and mission duration. Its revolutionary hybrid of gravitic drive for main propulsion and small reaction thrusters for rotation and fine maneuvering dramatically reduces the need for thruster reaction mass, allowing the ship to operate for much longer periods without resupplying. This drive also permits ship defenses nearly on par with a dedicated warship, although the class' armament is comparatively light. However, for safety reasons the twin gravitic generators, the central power generator, and the crew living area must all be kept distant from each other, which results in the signature shape of the Cygnus-class, said to resemble a swan in flight: the "head" is the crew pod, connected by a long, slender "neck" to the "body" where the power generator is kept. From either side of the "body," the "wings" spread out to provide surface area for the cooling system, with the gravitic engines and weapons located at the "wing tips."
The ship is designed to house up to eight humanoid crew members; each of the eight private cabins comes with its own restroom facilities and independent environmental controls with presets optimized for each known humanoid race (somewhat adjustable for personal preference). The ship's control center and conference room is located at the center of the crew pod, surrounded by the cabins; the upper deck consists of a recreation and exercise area, the medbay, and the bio lab, while the lower deck contains a dining area and a communal quiet area. All common areas are kept at a standard temperature, pressure, and humidity designed to be tolerable for all CEP member races, though none find it ideal. Banks of genetically engineered plants located throughout the common areas help keep the air clean and fresh.
The main body houses the bulk of the ship's systems, most notably the power core. The Odile utilizes a top of the line SR-388 fusion generator for main power, with a series of ultra-capacitors for limited emergency power and an unfurlable "sail"-style solar collector available for auxiliary power. The main body also houses the coolant and fuel tanks, the organics recycling system, algae banks for air recycling, a configurable prototyping and minifacturing facility, computer core, and physical sciences lab.
All Cygnus-class vessels come equipped with an M-series AI Caretaker, and the Odile is no exception. Its AI, Majel, is the reason the ship is able to operate with only a handful of crew, and indeed in an emergency could operate with no crew at all, although in that circumstance Majel is designed to experience an intense desire to return to her home port of ES9. Majel runs most of the ship's systems, as well as acting as the primary user interface for its extensive library of scientific, historical, and entertainment files and "mission control" during surface expeditions. She also operates the small army of cleaning and maintenance drones that keep the ship spotless and fully functional, a point of pride for her, and manages the ship's internal security and cyberdefense systems.
Food is produced according to individual crewmember dietary needs and preferences and served in the communal dining area. Organic recyclers sterilize and break down waste products, then combine the resulting molecules with stores of raw materials to construct synthetic foodstuffs. The results are less unpredictable and varied than meals made of natural foodstuffs, and the general consensus of most crews is that shipboard food is "pretty good but not great"--nutritionally optimal and reasonably flavorful but otherwise with a uniformity and artificiality reminiscent of large-chain fast food. (Most likely because most of them use the same process.)
“Pheromones”: Etaera are able (partially at will, partially as an instinctive emotional response) to produce compounds that, when smelled, trigger a response in the subordination node of the brain, producing a mildly sedative, euphoric, aphrodisiac effect on most humanoids. These compounds can also increase suggestibility, leading to a myth that the etaera have compelling or hypnotic voices. While technically “pheromones” in the sense of being compounds that trigger a social response when smelled, they are distinct from “true” humanoid pheromones in that they have a clearer, more consistent influence on behavior and involve the subordination node.
Trans-: Prefix applied to individuals who have received substantive, deliberate medical or cybernetic alterations or enhancements, e.g. transhuman, transciri. For example, as a transhuman, Kel Diarro has had her genitalia surgically altered to an intersex “switchblade” configuration and received two cybernetic implants, one located in her groin which converts excess testosterone to estrogen to establish and maintain typical cis human female levels of both, and the other attached to her auditory nerve that serves as a direct link to a paired computer system and allows instantaneous real-time translation of any known language.