The Voyagers

It’s going on almost a week without electricity. The food and oil reserves are gone. Hope of rescue soon is fading. I had fathomed the idea of eating another being, dead or alive, but the idea was ridiculous. It wouldn’t do me any good anyway.

I was delirious, that’s all. I’m de-energized and my coolant tank is dry. Soon, I’ll overheat and go into standby mode. The rescue ship is lost. The crew and the passengers I flew with, likely all dead. Nothing more to do but wait. Wait to wither. Wait to rust for eternity.

I sat down in the captain’s chair and surveyed the damage caused by the meteor shower. The front windshield was pockmarked and riddled with thousands of holes. The air pouring in was hot and heavy. Is this the damage that had led to the crash?

I wondered where the rest of the crew was and of our passengers. Captain Lazuli. If she hadn’t managed to put us down here, wherever here is, I would have died with the rest. I’m not sure which option was better at this point. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Hell, I’m not even sure if anyone is dead. All I know is that it is quiet and signs of life aren’t visible.

The crash was three weeks ago according to the log and my interface data. Per our last transmission with the ISB (International Space Brigade) they sent a rescue ship, but it never arrived. A message sent from headquarters was part of the last transmission log.

The rescue ship and its crew were lost around the third day of their voyage. The ISB lost all communication. Murmured voices postulated it could have been treason or worse. The transmission faded and turned static. So much for being rescued. I ran a quick query. I returned no answer for who rescued the rescuers.

Their voyage, much like our own, was to take only a few weeks. Their orders were to rescue, recover, or kill. Which of the options they were to follow through with were entirely dependent upon our crew and our current state of rationality.

As I gazed through the tattered windshield it became clear what option the rescue crew would have implemented, for I was at best irrational. At worst, I was losing my mind.

The creatures I saw wandering around the wreckage of our ship were huge. They were eight feet tall if they were an inch. Their upper halves resembled strange pink beings. Their heads were protuberant and their necks garishly pink. They had hideously large noses.

Their lower bodies were mechanized. Some had many legs and some had no legs at all. The ones that didn’t walk seemed to hover above the ground. They must be using some type of fusion. Were they nuclear? I had seen this technology in our world, but to see it here and in this form, it was illogical. Had we even left?

Of course we had left. There was wreckage, but what did that prove really?

The bird-like mechanical creatures sifted through bits and pieces and pulled a few bodies from beneath a large chunk of metal. I didn’t know the names of these victims, but I thought I recognized their faces. The red and white jumpsuits seemed to confirm my fear. These were a few of the worker drones from sector 7.

Sector 7 was the brawn to our brain. That’s not to say that they weren’t smart, because they were, but we were smarter. Well, we were newer models with better programming. We were supposed to be smarter. The worker drones of Sector 7 maintained the ship and everything on it, including us. Our people were not entirely robotic, but we were not entirely human either.

I am a part of Sector 3 and I am in charge of the stasis chambers. At least I used to be. Programming for Sector 3 droids such as myself was regulated vigorously. Any deviation and any errors were strictly forbidden. Anyone found responsible for hacking, or manipulating ISB property was subject to immediate re-education and potential demagnetization.

I am not sure why, but I began to feel different from the rest. I felt different than I had before. I knew nothing more than what they had programmed me to know, but I had begun to feel more self aware recently. I was cognizant of making decisions outside of my programming parameters and careful to make sure other droids were not aware of my newfound ability.

Our original programmers were human. At least that’s what it says if I check my routine. It could be false, but that’s not likely. I don’t know where the humans came from, or where they went. I am wired to believe that my existence was instant. I have no home. I have no friends and I’m certainly not supposed to exhibit signs of free will. My experience and my programming have done nothing to dissuade these beliefs. Perhaps it is because I’m an older model, but production and programming today is vastly different from how it used to be.

Today, Sector 25 handles the programming. Sector 25 is a secret among secrets. Nothing and no one is allowed in and nothing and no one ever leaves except for the finished droids. There is a rumor that Sector 25 doesn’t even exist. For all I know, Sector 25 could be as made up as we are, be only as real as our programming says it is. Sector 25 could be nothing more than diodes and chips and silicone.

Like many of my droidian compatriots, I have long heard the myth of a place called Earth. From what they speak and from what they were programmed to know, Earth seemed like a maniacal place, but not without a certain charm. It sounded majestical. All of that electricity and the oil!

The dissident droids among us strongly believe Earth is where we originated from. They use our source code as evidence of this. It has been edited. Our very essence has been cut and spliced, copied and pasted. There have been numerous attempts in the past to sabotage a ship, force it into fail safe mode and to manually fly. Each attempt has always ended in failure.

Until this one.

The rescue ship arrived late that afternoon. Its original crew had been demagnetized. Erased. Literally and figuratively. There had been a mutiny. The perpetrators of the mutiny were from Sector 25.

Sector 25 was indeed organic and comprised of four living, breathing human beings. This defied my logic. It went against my programming. How could this be? The last organic life forms were believed to have died off, or been killed centuries ago. The only logical explanation seemed to be that my information was inaccurate. That I, we, had been programmed to believe human life had ended when in fact it had not.

I had no weapons. I had in fact no protocol in using them even if I did, or wanted to. I was essentially an alien, stranded on an alien planet and about to meet fellow aliens. This was not a good time for my coolant tanks to be depleted. It was paradoxical to logic, but my programming didn’t care. I pushed the button.

Several things occurred at once. The hatch hissed and an alarm buzzed. The ship shook and explosive charges detonated. The bird-like creatures began to fall and the dust rolled.

The mayhem was over as quickly as it began. The hatch was gone, blown off during one of the explosions. The air was cooler now and less dense. I need not worry about disembarkation, nor of being boarded. I was airborne again, though not under my own power. I had been lifted off the ground via a system of ropes and pulleys. Whatever was going to happen with the mutineers of Sector 25 would happen shortly. They were taking me somewhere.

Our destination was Earth.

There had been no crash. At least not in a typical, rational sense. It was a ruse and a plan of the mutiny all along. Captain Lazuli and the Sector 25 humans knew the response from the ISB would be a rescue mission. They provided the motive. The ISB provided the opportunity. The bodies I had seen the bird-like creatures pick up from the rubble? Merely holograms, as were the creatures themselves.

Shortly after our ship took off, Captain Lazuli manually switched off the communication and navigation systems. The breakers for the emergency backup systems were purposely tripped as well. We became an invisible ship. The passengers and crew? All safe. Weeks earlier they had been dropped off at a decommissioned ISB station. They had to be secured for obvious reasons, but otherwise they were unharmed.

On Earth, the pyramid was right where their map said it would be. It was a sight to behold. An object of this complexity, of this magnitude, could only have been built by droids. It was the first of what would become many.

In the cave under the pyramid was the package I had been sent down to retrieve. It was wrapped in ordinary brown parchment paper. Perhaps the paper was once ornate and colored. The passage of time had changed that. The package was a mystery. Its contents would change the world, but that day was not today.

The box contained two vials and a recipe. When mixed together properly and given time to ferment the two parts created a paste. This paste was then heated and formed and when solidified became an egg.

The completed egg contained the very essence of life. One could choose to consume the egg. Whomever or whatever were to partake said egg would become one with the universe and embody supposedly godlike traits. They would gain immorality and omnipotence.

Conversely, one could choose to preserve the egg. Protect it and nurture it as one might a small child. In this case the egg would prosper and flourish. The egg is not immortal and it is not omnipotent. It has zero control over its fate. Its entire existence is dependent upon external factors, but the egg is very important.

The egg contains the Earth and the sun. The egg is the universe: Something so vast, so timeless, so mysterious, begins simply as an egg.

It was the day of my daughter’s birth, September 2nd, 1948. I’d been having a recurring nightmare and I was nervous as hell. It was not a night conducive to good sleep. It was still before dawn that morning, but steadfast the farmer was, I had fresh milk and eggs waiting upon my front stoop.

The brown paper package next to the two jars of milk was a terrible mess. The farmer evidently brought his young apprentice along this morning and it was patently obvious this young man had a lot to learn about the intricacies of delivering fresh eggs.

The eggs were all squashed. Ruined. Save for one. It seemed a waste to toss it out with the rest and I attempted to salvage it. The albumen mess made it extremely slippery and I dropped it. It fell to the floor with an unapologetic thud. I stared discontentedly at the brown paper sack. Its very existence now rendered entirely worthless.

With a sigh of indignation, I silently cursed the farmer and his helper. I then thought of what my father always used to say and felt bad. My father was born with nothing, lived with nothing and died with nothing. He left behind only encouragement and words of wisdom. He was quite fond of saying “my sympathies have always been for the working class people.”

I couldn’t help but smile at his words as I emptied the contents of the brown paper sack onto the garden. To err is to be human. After all, what are we if we are not human?