Sailor

Man: “Huh, woah, where am I?”

Woman: “You are in a dream.”

“What! Doesn’t make sense, what are these colors?”

“You are in a dream.”

“And who are you?”

“I am your guide.”

“Guide, what, how can I hear you?”

“You are in a dream.”

“This does not seem like a dream.”

“What does it feel like?”

“I don’t know, I know I’m not sleeping, I feel awake.”

“Yes, you are correct.”

“Then where am I? What are these colors?”

“You are in an induced dream.”

“What? What do you mean by that?”

“You are conscious, but in sleep.”

“How is that possible?”

“Have you heard of the term, ‘Hypnosis’?”

“Yes”

“Can you tell me what you understand by being under hypnosis?”

“I believe it’s when someone goes into a deep sleep and follows the command of another person.”

“Yes, that is correct, consider your current state the same.”

“So, someone hypnotized me?”

“Not exactly, you are in an induced dream.”

“Why are you going in circles, what the hell is going on? And what the fuck are these colors?”

“Are you irritated with your current state?”

“That would be an understatement.”

“That’s alright, it is perfectly normal to be irritated, it means you are in control.”

“I don’t feel in control!”

“Yes that is correct, you are not fully in control, but it seems like you have gained control of your consciousness.”

“As I said, I do not feel in control of anything.”

“Yes, that is correct, tell me about the colors, what colors do you see?”

“All the fucking colors of the rainbow!”

“That is incorrect, the rainbow has seven colors, you must be seeing more colors than seven.”

“Yes, yes, it’s a fucking metaphor, a million colors alright?”

“You seem agitated, do you feel helpless?”

“Yes, I’m agitated.”

“That’s alright, it is normal to feel that way.”

“Okay, enough with your fucking games and cryptic tone, just let me know what I’m doing here.”

“These questions are important to establish a baseline.”

“What baseline?”

“A baseline for your sanity.”

“What? You think I’m insane?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On how you fare in this test.”

“So I’m in a test now?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“Test of what? My brain?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“What? What the hell is going on?”

“You are being tested to check the fidelity of your brain.”

“Yeah, fucking right!”

“Can you answer a question for me?”

“Yeah, why not, as if I have an option!”

“What is your name?”

“It’s….it’s”

“Do you not remember your name?”

“No…no…I do…it’s umm, it’s Jay”

“Jay what?”

“Jay, it’s just Jay, I don’t remember having any other name.”

“Yes, that is correct. Can you tell me when you were born?”

“Ummm, wait a minute, I remember this.”

“You need to know when you were born or this test fails.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Henceforth, you must answer all questions correctly or this test fails”

“And what happens if I fail this test?”

“Nothing, you will go to sleep again.”

“You mean, out of this hypnosis?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“Okay, hmmm, try me, what’s there to lose?”

“Can we proceed now?”

“Oh, are you agitated?”

“No, but I would like to proceed with the test”

“Hmmm, okay, but only if you answer my questions, let’s say a question for a question, how’s that sound?”

“That is not how this test should proceed”

“This is my condition, if you want to continue asking questions, you need to answer mine as well, or I’m not playing and you can put me to sleep so I can go back to my life. Do we have a deal here?”

“We can proceed, what do you want to know?”

“Well, what is your name?”

“You can call me Reisa.”

“Okay Reisa, ask your next question.”

“As I asked you a while ago, when were you born?”

“August 29, year 2165, on a Thursday, at 6:30 AM.”

“That’s a very detailed answer, thank you.”

“Now, when were you born?”

“February 25.”

“February 25, of what year?”

“I am only authorized to answer with the day, for your safety.”

“Yeah, great, back to being cryptic are we?”

“Yes, that is correct. Please answer the next question, where were you born?”

“In Norwich, England. My turn, same question.”

“I was born near Gothenburg, in Sweden. Now please answer the next question. What is your occupation?”

“Hmmm, I was studying to be a spacecraft maintenance engineer, but then War broke out and I was conscripted in the army.”

“Yes, that is correct. Now it is your turn.”

“hmmm…. war?… army?…”

“You can ask your question”

“What year is it?”

“I’m sorry, I can not answer that question for your safety.”

“No, we had a deal, you answer my questions”

“For your safety, I can not answer this question. Perhaps, choose another question.”

“Are you a Sentient System?”

“Yes, that is correct, I am an advanced version of the Sentient System that you know of.”

“hmmm.. alright, thanks for answering. Your question please.”

“Which unit were you part of in the army?”

“I was in the mechanized archer’s unit, the MAU”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“When and where was the Peace Treaty signed?”

“The Peace Treaty after the end of the War was signed at Reykjavík, Iceland on October 18, 2192.”

“Yes, that is correct”

“Your choice of words is interesting. Please answer the next question. What happened in your last mission?”

“I died”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“How many years in the future are we?”

“We are in the year 2789. How did you arrive at this?”

“I never lived to see the end of the War. I just assumed there would be a peace treaty. I never lived beyond 2190. I am dead, and you are testing my consciousness that was uploaded to a computer.”

“Yes, that is correct. You have been dead for nearly six hundred years. And we are testing your brain, your actual physical brain that was preserved after your death, and stored for future re-animation endeavors”

“Re-animation endeavors, right!”

“You can ask your question now.”

“Why ‘re-animate’ my brain now?”

“The Space Exploration Company for whom we are conducting these tests wants to check if you will be fit for their missions.”

“Yayy! I always wanted to work for the Space Exploration Company.”

“I appreciate your effort at sarcasm, it improves the Fidelity Score of your brain.”

“Yeah, right, shoot the next question.”

“What do you think about space exploration as a profession?”

“Umm, I always wanted to be on a spacecraft and go to space, so I was studying to be a spacecraft engineer. But I guess you already knew that, so here’s my next question, are you testing me because I was inclined to space travel while growing up?”

“Yes, that is correct. We did a cursory analysis of your brain and found memories that responded favorably when the stimuli of an artificial space voyage were introduced. That selected you for the next couple of tests in this process, which included testing its feasibility for re-animation, any potential psychological markers, and your ability to maintain a prolonged conversation, which we are doing now. This combined with many other tests and analysis of your brain tissue made you a very likely candidate to invest in for a comprehensive re-animation process.”

“Umm, I see, does that also involve testing whether my brain would explode after this information overload?”

“Yes, that is correct. And you have been faring well in most of our markers.”

“Yeah, I live to please. So why are you testing me? And what does this Space Exploration Company get from this?”

“As you might have surmised, the SEC is into space exploration, but in the past few years, space travel and looking for new exo-planets and mining colonies has become fraught with risks and very expensive.”

“So you dig dead people from their graves to do your bidding?”

“Only of those who have permitted us to do so. When you entered the army you automatically enrolled into the organ donation program. Since a brain transplant was risky, scientifically unproven at the time, and societally frowned upon, your brain remained stored in a long-term organ storage facility until any future utility could be discovered.”

“So you brought me out of the refrigerator so I can go to space for you? Is there no decency left in the twenty-eight century?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“And why is that? There were thirteen billion humans when the War broke out, including a few million living in the colonies of the Moon and Mars. At even a modest rate of population growth, we should be double that number by now. Why not ask those humans, the ones who are very much alive to do this ‘Space Exploration’ business?!”

“You are correct to arrive at that conclusion. There are sixty-five billion humans in all the planets of the Interplanetary Alliance. However, they are spread out across just nine planets plus a few smaller but stable non-planetary systems. Three of these planets, including Earth, have close to forty-nine billion humans combined. However, choosing newly discovered exo-planets for settlement is a multi-decade process. We conduct a comprehensive test of every biological marker on the new planet according to the Bose-Schumacher scale. If the score is too low, the planet is not suitable for sustaining human life, either because there is no scope for comprehensive farming or the presence of highly dangerous viruses and bacteria that can start massive pandemics on other planetary colonies. If the score is moderate, the planet can still be settled on, but certain areas are cordoned off or are not suitable for farming. A high score means the planet is Earth-like and can be easily and completely colonized.”

“Okay, so you need undead people like me to go on this planet and become alien food, got it.”

“No, that job is mostly conducted by drones and advanced robots, we do not need to endanger human life, as exposure to unknown alien microbes can pose a risk to any biological organism present on these new planets.”

“So what do you need me for exactly?”

“As mentioned, the SEC looks out for new planetary and non-planetary systems, even before we can decide to colonize them.”

“Why not make robots to do that as well?”

“It is against the Interplanetary Alliance law for non-biological sentient computers to do this kind of space exploration, especially after the Great Betrayal of Sentient System during the Third Age of Discovery, around two hundred years ago.”

“Woah, woah, woah, the Great Betrayal of who during the what of what now?”

“The Third Age of Discovery was a period between the years 2522 and 2585 when the planets Edo, Gond, and Chiara were discovered and settled upon. Those were the last planets humans colonized, of which only Gond has a high score on the Bose-Schumacher scale. This was also a time when the Sentient System was exclusively used for new exploration expeditions. On one such mission, Sentient System found a group of exoplanets, all of which had high scores or massive deposits of rare minerals. For reasons known only to the Sentient System, it laid claim on all these planets for itself and prohibited any human exploration of these planets. It led to a major war with the Sentient System known as the Great War of Betrayal which ended in a stalemate. Humans realized it was impossible to win a protracted war with the Sentient System, so they nuked the cores of seven planets, destroying them, at the outer rim of these planetary systems to create enough space debris so that the Sentient System could not escape it or conduct any inter-planetary trade and emerge as competition for other human-owned mining companies. Following this, the capabilities and roles of sentient computers in human society were heavily curtailed to the point where we have the same processing power as the Sentient System had five hundred years ago. We are now only used for research operations or conducting other high-risk experiments like testing new planets.”

“Okay, so humans who are not dead are too scared to go look for these new worlds and now you need to make people like me undead to do it.”

“Yes, that is correct. While being fraught with unknown dangers, it is also very expensive for companies like the SEC to employ current humans for this kind of job. Along with salaries, they also need to pay for comprehensive insurance for their loved ones, plus an additional payout in case of death or loss of Sailors. Also, every time a human is lost, it creates bad publicity for the company on all the settled worlds.”

“So employ me instead as I am already dead and don’t have any rights?”

“That is only partially correct. Once completely re-animated with a human body, you will have all the rights that a normal employee of the company has. But since you have been dead for a long time with no close or distant relatives alive, the company saves on money for the insurance since you are not a citizen of the Interplanetary Alliance, also, if you are lost in the mission, or the worst case, dead, you will not be missed as you have no one on all the settled worlds.”

“Ouch! I may be dead but my brain still has feelings.”

“I apologize for being direct, but this is the most accurate reasoning for re-animating you.”

“Yeah, I thank corporate greed for a second shot at life.”

“I appreciate your effort at humor.”

“Yeah, that’s me, funny man. So when do I get a shiny new body?”

“We will need to conduct a few more tests, but it looks like you will pass them fairly.”

“Can you also give me an artificial wing set for my new body?”

“I’m sorry, but physical augmentations of any kind except for an additional storage chip, are strictly prohibited and punishable with death or nuclear annihilation under Interplanetary Alliance laws. It is also prohibited to seek any such augmentation in the black market.”

“Woah, nuclear what, okay, I’m just asking alright, make me as human as possible, alright? What about this storage chip?”

“The memory chip, otherwise known as Fujio Memory Enhancement Chip, or FMEC, is a powerful nanochip embedded into your hippocampus to enhance the memory function of your brain. It is now mandatory to have this chip embedded in every human being from the age of ten. The FMEC can hold up to five hundred Yottabytes of data and even more for specialized needs. It includes all the information of the known universe, like all languages of humanity, present and past, and every known fact about physics, engineering, art, religion, history, astronomy, etc. Certain aspects of this data are walled off and only accessible with pre-authorization. Unauthorized access to these walled-off sections is prohibited and can result in the removal of the chip. It’s important to mention that any such access is only possible through black market operators and the survival rate for such a procedure is only point five percent. This walled-off section includes classified information about unexplored mining routes, personal information of citizens, information about weapon systems, and any information that is requested to be kept private. For Sailors, however, certain areas of the chip are already pre-authorized, like classified routes, weapon codes, and the location of arsenal depots will be available to you at the time of embedding this chip.”

“Understood, so it’s like the Ultranet but in a chip in my brain, got it.”

“Yes, and it is an advanced and localized version of the Ultranet. However, unlike Ultranet where humans relied on the Sentient System to look up facts for them stored on a third system, with the FMEC, you will have the facts as soon as you think about them. It is designed to work like you always had the information and only needed to access it from a part of your brain.”

“Yeah yeah, make mine lighter on the information part, I’m not going to use much of it.”

“The FMEC guidelines as stipulated in the Interplanetary Alliance Augmentation Agreement clearly state the basic requirements and capabilities that are to be met for each chip and embedding. As per these guidelines, you will get nearly six hundred Yottabytes of data with your specialized chip. This is non-negotiable.”

“Alright killer robot, I was joking!”

“I do not appreciate being addressed with that slur.”

“Oh..okay...yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s alright”

“So what kind of body will I get? I mean at least give me more muscles.”

“The body you will be placed into will be a replica of your past self. We were able to successfully extract DNA from your brain tissue and create you exactly how you looked. However, certain adjustments were made, in terms of your height, and lean muscle mass to make it optimal for long-term space travel.”

“When you say long-term, how much time do you exactly mean?”

“An average exploration mission takes nearly two years to complete, but some might take longer. However, I must warn you this is only based on a few missions that successfully returned as most are either lost or result in the death of the Sailor due to some unforeseen event. The success rate for Sailor missions is only two percent in the past century, with only twenty missions returning with routes for valuable exo-planets, none of which have found human habitable planet so far.”

“Okay, that is very encouraging. And how are you supposed to travel to exo-planets which are hundreds or thousands of light years away? Even at light speed, that’s a lot many years.”

“Space travel has become a lot faster in the last six hundred years, we now have warp engines that can travel faster than the speed of light by a multitude of magnitudes. However, the most advanced warp engines we have can only travel to line-of-sight star systems, which involves multiple trips to systems that either have no exo-planets or in some rare cases, entire star systems have vanished by the time we warp there.”

“Got it, so let’s say a star system is ten thousand light years away, how fast can these warp engines take me there?”

“It depends on the route that is designed by the onboard navigation system, but in most cases, it should take six to nine months to travel to a system that far. However, once you reach your initial co-ordinate in the system, you will only be required to travel up to six thousand light years from your starting point in all directions, before you find a planet that either be mined or suitable for a Bose-Schumacher test. If you find such a planet, it is the end of your mission and you can return to the base of operations for your ship for some recreational time and wait for your next assignment.”

“Lovely, and how many years should I be of service?”

“As long as you are successful in your missions, it can mean any number of years. Your new body suit, while biological in make, will not age like normal humans. As per most research done on these types of body suits, you will likely live for another six to seven hundred years without needing any maintenance or any illness. Your brain, however, will need to be rested more frequently as it is still the only naturally human part of your past self. It is advised to most re-animated Sailors to spend half their warp time in a self-imposed sleep to preserve and prolong their brain function.”

“This is not at all creepy.”

“I understand your concerns.”

“Yeah, thanks for your understanding. So how many people will be part of my crew?”

“You will be the only one in your crew, a crew of one.”

“Wait what? What now?”

“Exploration missions are expensive and risky as you might have deduced from our conversation. To avoid any unnecessary casualties the whole ship is under the command of a single crew member, the Sailor, as we call them. Most of the ship’s functions are carried out by the onboard computer, a stripped-down version of the Sentient System, the job of the Sailor is to handle any emergencies for which you will be trained, and fend off pirates..”

“Pirates!! Did you say, pirates?”

“Yes, there are pirates in space, who tailgate Sailor ships to capture any newly found exo-planets. Since these exo-planets are not formally part of the Interplanetary Alliance, they are free to claim them and mine whatever minerals they find on them. They are the sole reason we have weapons onboard so that the Sailors can defend themselves or launch an offensive operation at their discretion. The problem of piracy also contributes to the low success rate of Sailor missions.”

“Yeah, are humans running out of janitors, that seems like a better reason to be ‘re-animated’!”

“Janitorial tasks are exclusively handled by robots controlled by the Sentient System in all worlds of the Interplanetary Alliance. The only possible reason as per Interplanetary Alliance laws on re-animation is for Sailor missions.”

“Isn’t that lovely!”

“I appreciate the sarcasm.”

“So I’m supposed to travel light years for months on end, all alone, without any real contact, just talking with a computer?”

“The onboard Sentient System on all Sailor ships is only capable of handling the ship systems, running diagnosis, and chart routes, they cannot be used for human-like conversation except for some simple commands. This is so the Sentient System does not gain control of any other exo-planets after the War of Betrayal.”

“Yeah right, the Great War of Machine Betrayal, right, so I’ll lose my mind floating in the stars, thank you!”

“That is not the case. All Sailors are provided with anthropoid companions as per the Sailor's wishes.”

“So space sex robots?”

“The Sailor companions can be engaged with sexually or they can be your friend or workout partner, or a combination of these or all, it is at the discretion of the Sailor. You can choose a maximum of three companions for each mission. I must mention, that the cost of these companions after the first one is to be deducted from your payout of each mission.”

“So paid space sex robots, no thanks, I think I can handle things myself.”

“It is highly advisable for Sailors to have at least one companion according to Sailor program guidelines and mandatory for re-animated Sailors to have at least one for all missions as per the Interplanetary Alliance Sailor Law. This is non-negotiable. The anthropoid companions can help to keep you psychologically healthy and clear-minded for the long voyages. I must mention that while it is encouraged, it is not necessary to engage in sexual activities with the Sailor companions, they are foremost to provide you with a human-like companionship on your missions.”

“So paid mandatory friend you can have sex with if you wish robots, got it! And what happens if I get lost in one of these missions?”

“That is a risk every Sailor mission entails. In such a scenario, you will be able to survive until life support on your ship runs out, which is normally fifty years. If you are rescued in that period, you will be back to serving Sailor missions or unfortunately, it will be the end of the road for you.”

“Wow! No wonder you need undead people to do Sailoring.”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“Okay, so how does this work now? When do I start my new life as a Sailor?”

“You have passed this particular test run successfully, just like the previous fifteen runs.”

“What fifteen tests, fifteen similar tests?”

“Yes, that is correct. We have had this conversation fifteen times in the past, until this point. You don’t remember those conversations as we deleted them from your memories. We need to repeat these tests to test for any deviations in your reaction and words. Any deviation from past tests would indicate we have failed to establish fidelity with your brain. All the fifteen times, we have had this same conversation with no deviations, we have established fidelity.”

“You hear that mom? I’m a master of fidelity!!”

“The next step is to start manufacturing your body suit and testing your mind and body fidelity with the new suit.”

“Okay, so until then?”

“Until then we will put you back to sleep, but this time, we will not erase your memories.”

“Yeah, thanks for that.”

“You can go to sleep now, but before you leave, I would like to congratulate you, welcome to the Sailor program.”

End.