Going Interstellar (collection)

“Commander,” said Herndon, “with all respect, we knew what we were signing up for when we left Earth. We’ll have our technology and our medicines to get us started, but, yes, it’s inevitable that we’ll slide backward technologically. After all, we won’t have the infrastructure to make the computers, the fusion power plants, and all that would be required to replace the gear as it wears out. But if we work hard, and if we get some luck, we can leapfrog to an early twentieth century technology base that’s sustainable. Our descendents can then bring things back to where we are today. After all, they’ll have the library and the knowledge. All they will lack is the infrastructure and they can rebuild that!”

“Okay. Let’s say you’re right. We work hard for the next fifty years to establish a colony that will someday mature to the point that our children’s children will have won back what we will have lost. Great. But we’ll be dead in fifty years. It doesn’t have to be that way. We’ve already lived almost a thousand years and we can live another thousand! And that thousand won’t be hard! We can continue to live like kings. I enjoyed being in VR. It sure as hell beats what we’ll face down there.”

Up to this point, Herndon’s part of the argument had been more intellectual than emotional. With Vasquez’s last words, his demeanor changed. He leaned forward and stared at his commander with intensity.

“Commander, are you suggesting we not wake everyone up and just go back to sleep? You think we should just forget about why we’re here and go back to our VR dreams? You can’t be serious. That’s not living! That’s why most of us left Earth in the first place!”

Vasquez stared at Herndon, then at the deck. He slowly raised his head.

“No, Mack, you’re right. We’re here to colonize and colonize is what we’ll do. I don’t know what I was thinking. Let’s get the ship ready and then start waking everyone up.” Vasquez nodded and appeared to accede to Herndon’s argument.

“Thank you, Captain,” Herndon said. He turned away, probably to return to a duty station. Vasquez stared after him and the look of accommodation changed. His features hardened with rage. Rage and determination.

Goss watched in horror as Commander Vasquez reached inside his tunic and withdrew what looked like a piece of computer cabling or a wire harness. He wrapped both ends around his fists, keeping a good foot of bare wire between his outstretched hands. He slowly walked up behind Herndon, who was now totally engrossed in his own thoughts, and garroted him. Took him down where he stood.

Herndon collapsed almost without a struggle. For Goss, who to this point had only seen death in virtual reality, it was both gruesome and captivating. He couldn’t avert his eyes until after Vasquez let the lifeless body of his second-in-command fall to the floor. Vasquez showed no remorse. He strode back to the command chair and spoke to the AI.

“Plot a course to our next destination and prepare to leave orbit. Prepare my sleep chamber and upload VR set twenty-seven. I rather enjoyed that one.”

Horrified, Goss watched Vasquez work from his command chair for another five minutes, apparently performing all the routine systems checks required for the ship to begin yet another long voyage between the stars. Vasquez never again looked at Herndon’s body.

Goss stopped the holographic playback and stared at the floor where the corpse had lain. Herndon had died about a thousand years ago and Goss wondered where the body had been put and what Vasquez must have been thinking when he disposed of it. Had he done it before going back to sleep or had he removed whatever had remained of the body when they arrived at Tau Ceti three hundred years later?

After all that time, the body might have still been there, relatively intact, since the ship powered down all the life support to subfreezing temperatures during interstellar cruise. Or it might have been nothing more than dust that the maintenance robots had long-since cleaned up and recycled. Goss might never know.

It’s tempting, Goss thought. A thousand years of simulated living versus only another fifty of real life. But that’s not really living. Goss now knew what he had to do.

“AI, can I reprogram everyone’s VR sims? Can I overlay something or weave into what they’re experiencing some sort of theme or plot?”

“Yes, as the new commander, you have the authorization to make such changes.”

“Good. Overwrite every single VR simulation, even my own, with a series of real-life, day-by-day experiences of the average person, beginning around the year 1500. Use the historical databases. Don’t make anyone absolutely miserable, but let them experience real life, real work, real love and loss. Let them experience the progression of life from one era to the next until they get close to the time in which we left Earth.”