That needs your undivided attention.” Drones the beaten up orange cube of an educational tutor bot named Ed. The tank like treads have begun to wear away very rapidly over the last six months, and the noise Ed makes while maneuvering on the ships metal grated floors is unpleasant in my ears. “I’m sorry, did you just call me Calvin, Ed?” I say, coming out of my revelry rather sluggishy. “No Kelvin, you must have misheard me while your attention was wandering. I was in the process of explaining to you the dire situation in which we now find ourselves.” Barks the science tutor bot. “Wait, wait. I thought we decided to sleep on the bad news then come back here today to gather up our stuff for the grand adventure! I was so excited last night I could hardly sleep. I was kinda hoping we’d find some tucked away corner of The Lark Song that still had living people in it. Silly dream to get swept up in, I know. But, the hope is still there. The dreams are so vivid Ed. I can touch, and taste and feel it. It’s really all I can think about Ed. So what say you? You in, for some gallivanting about today?” I say it with a dopey grin upon my face, with a thousand mile stare in my moist eyes. Sweat has started to dapple my brow. The daft hope of human companionship this far into my forced isolation is tearing me up inside. The sheen of sweat upon my brow glints in the brilliant phosphorescent lights. “I fear that we will have to put the adventure on hold, for now Calvert.” Says Ed in a monotone. We are sitting facing each other, at one of the science labs work benches, even though Ed’s built in sensor array could locate and analyze me from any angle within a fifty meter radius. His sitting and ‘looking’ at me is just an artifact of my personal preferences, stored up in his memory and doled back out to me by his learning algorithms. “You did it again, Kelvin, my name is Kelvin. What’s wrong with you Ed.” I say. “Kelvin, pay attention. I’m not calling you by the wrong name. I said we have some major issues to attend to before we go traipsing over the ship to find that massive blister at the for of the vessel. Can you focus. What is the matter with you Calvin?” the pitch of Ed’s voice has begun to rise. To think of it, Ed’s voice modulation has been all over the place recently. Some times instead of talking he just emits a high pitched whine that rings throughout my head for hours at a time. Hours at a time. Huh. Funny turn of phrase that. I used to crawl through the virtual darkness with only a helmet lamp on to direct me through my adventures between the vessels double hulls. Now that I am out in the open, there is just so much brilliant white light. I can see everything even through my eyelids. The deck lights have begun to emit a strong halo, and a stretched glare across my eyes. Oh lord, I can hear Ed nattering on at me again. Jesus it’s getting hot in here isn’t it. “What did you say Ed? Sorry, I’m just all over the place lately. Oh wow, would you look at that…” waving my hands in front of our faces, I can see a delayed staccato view of my hand as it passes by, as though a blinking strobe light were blasting in my eyes. I can feel the distinct sting of sweat pooling on the surface of my eye balls. Colours are beginning to run together as I feel like I might just drift off to sleep. “Kelvin, my sensors are showing you with a heightened temperature of forty one degrees Celsius. Perhaps you should lie down.” Ed pulls back from the spotless work table we are seated at, and comes around to my side. In the growing dimness of the ship, I try to swat him away. “Leaf me, Leaf me!” I shout, but only a garbled jumble echoes about the room. “Kelvin, I’m going to deliver you to sick bay, and then I have to get to the command deck and check on the status of a few things. I’m going to slave your wrist comm’s to my internal sensor bank so I can monitor you from afar. I’m going to have to leave you unattended for quite some time Kelvin, do you understand?” All around me is dimming into total darkness. I can hear the tank treads rolling over the floors in the halls, and the power lifts whirring under the burden of our weight. Sudden flashes of light, and waves of pain take me as I am jostled harshly. I come to rest in the cool embrace of the med pod quite some time later. I feel the nano bots streaming through my bloodstream, and it feels like I am awash in a thick cool liquid. Then silence. With a loud gust of air, all becomes still.
With tortured movements the orange cube continues to circle the vessel as a silent guard. Stopping in at the science labs, command decks and engineering to perform as many of the required tasks as it is able. To conserve power all life support throughout the ship has been disabled except for the portion of the sick bay where Kelvin sleeps motionless in isolation. His weakened body was put into a medically induced coma once his brain had started to swell. Even in a mostly empty ship a microbial vector had managed to lodge itself deep inside Kelvin. Seems our DIY approach to implanting the new fangled Nano tech left a gaping blind spot in which a bug managed to manifest itself. Having worked it’s way through his ventricular, respiratory, gastrointestinal systems it managed to find an even more dangerous purchase in the brain. Kelvin had been quietly fighting a vicious internal battle, while slowly depleting the sick bays med pod of vital medicines and resources. After a while the med pod had requested Kelvin be transferred out to palliative care where he could be fed a steady drip of whatever could keep him comfortable. But Ed came by every few days to kick on the over rides from various high ranking helping hands. But as the flesh was deteriorated from age and use that would not be an option for too much longer. Ed was the first EDU bot to have ever had all his ai infused programs enabled at once. He had managed to tailor his speech patterns and work schedule to Kelvin specifically. Though Ed was not sentient, he was functionally closer to being so than any other mechanical bot ever created. This left Ed with the knowledge of emptiness, but no ability to feel anything specific about it.
Once it started to take Ed four days to travel between engineering and the sick bay med pod he had to make a difficult choice. Either maintain Kelvin’s over rides or remain within crawling distance of his charging station where his malfunctioning battery could be juiced up, and do whatever operations he could still perform for the now badly failing ship. Having spent four and a half years with Kelvin, it would prove to be the hardest decision the beaten, and badly abused orange cube had ever been entrusted to make. Let the sole survivor of the GCR burst aboard The Lark Song die in the hands of a doubtful med pod algorithm while convalescing, or let the badly damaged research vessel continue to drift off course and succumb to a cascading series of malfunctions and errors. The warning klaxons had long ago burned themselves out. Warnings and blinking lights had all gone cold due to negligence. As the vessel struggles to stay together, a difficult choice remains to be made.
Sitting still in the pitch black sick bay med pod isolation room Ed’s last blinking light has transitioned from a vibrant green, to a bold amber, then to a violent red, and was in the last waning stages of a faintly visible brown. In the vast blackness of the room, a cold Ed has come to rest with his finger poised above the override button. Manually keeping the heavy red button depressed, so that the med pod could not eject the sleeping patient.
After the ship has passed beyond the realm of human explored space, floated through the cold, isolated depths of the cosmos. Inside a massive research vessel The Lark Song a lone, and sudden cough can be heard followed by a sharp and deep gasp for breath. The med pod springs to life, with its white lights sparking to life, to reveal Kelvin, emaciated, cold and twenty years older encased in a small isolation room with no jumpsuit, and no way to get out buried in the depths of a dying ship.
PART FOUR of The Company : Chronicles of Kelvin
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