Well, Elya, it appears that your belly is growing much faster than that of my masters.
Its cause Im pregnant, Gassy, and soon will give birth, I think.
And what does that mean? GAS became concerned as it was not prepared for medical emergencies of that kind on its ship.
Valik and I will be having a baby due to our shacking up together.
Wait a minute, I am not prepared to such transformations, what am I supposed to do in this strange case?
Youll need to prepare a special delivery room, for starters, Valentin joined the conversation; Elya had already broken the news to him regarding his impending fatherhood.
Acknowledged, I will make the necessary preparations for this unexpected development, said GAS, as he began searching in every block of his memory bank for any information related to childbirth.
A couple of weeks later with the help of its android assistants, GAS was able to put together a decent makeshift birthing chamber and readied itself, in theory. And in a months time, Elina attended to by GAS and its robotic assistants successfully gave birth to a healthy boy, weighing at almost five kilograms. Surprisingly, the happiest out of everyone was GAS itself, as the new arrival brought much entertainment to the supercomputer as well as the pleasant responsibilities of babysitting which it had assigned to itself. Day in and out, GAS was primarily monitoring the baby and instructing his mother about the proper methods of parenting, according to the archival data it regurgitated from the depths of its massive brain. The baby was growing up like in a fairy tale growing not by days, but by the hour and was gaining weight quickly. Elya, after discussions with Valentin, decided to name the boy Angel, after all being a child born in the cosmos, but the board computer rejected it and bestowed him with the name Arcad, after one of the names of the mythological hunting dogs the ones the ancients used for Canes Venatici constellation, where their ship was en route to. As for Valentin, he excused himself from parenting the baby and kept living his days leisurely spending the whole trip watching sitcoms, eating, sleeping, and growing fat. The child was being raised solely by GAS, who found the task to be an interesting experiment.
Two years of the voyage across the endless galaxy had passed. Arcad began walking and talking quite early, much to GAS joy, who was now constantly telling the toddler funny stories about Earth and space complete with pictures which it projected on the wall in the nursery. GAS, having gotten carried away with raising the child, entirely neglected to monitor the ships flight path when it did happen to check the ships coordinates, it was surprised to discover that the ship had deviated far from its planned route. It was flying in a huge, inconceivable arc in space, caught in the intergalactic curvature of space-time that GAS had failed to take into account. After having corrected the course and factored in the drift, GAS re-calculated the ETA to the planet Hop and became slightly sad at his conclusions it would take almost twice as long to get there. GAS reported this unfortunate news to Valentin.
My master, the curvature of the galactic space has slightly altered our ships course and we shall arrive to the star Asteroin somewhat later than planned.
And when should we expect to arrive at this goddamn planet, my dear? asked Valentin lazily.
According to my calculations, it will take as long as we already have flown, if not longer.
Thats unbearable! the expeditions director exclaimed in indignation. Can anything be done in this situation?
No, nothing, my master. I have already attempted every possible solution I could, and have brought the ships course back to the correct direction. The universe is cruel and unpredictable, GAS philosophized.
The space curvature can permanently alter the physical appearance of any crew members who are awake, so for that reason I suggest that you and Elya go into stasis for the remainder of the flight to Hop. This way your bodies will remain intact, and time will pass much faster for you.
Really? And what about the kid?
I will take care of Arcad. As he is a growing child, his body is not in danger of being affected by the curve. However, he also cant be put into hibernation while he is maturing, so during your sleep my assistants and I will raise him in lieu.
But how will I be able to manage the flight?
When an emergency occurs, Ill wake you up, my master.
Oh all right, go ahead, cause Im sick and tired of lying on the couch and watching the TV serials over and over about ten times now. I cant wait to arrive there, but you are wasting our time. Just give us a separate room to hibernate in.
Certainly. Well prepare the appropriate accommodations right away.
Elina, though, wasnt quite eager to be put into sleep along with her master, especially since a month earlier she had seen GAS assistants pushing a half-awake recruit into the ships airlock chamber and then with a special pusher launching him into the dreadful dark space. After accidentally having seen this cruel execution these robots carried out on an innocent person, she asked Valentin about it.
Valia, how could they do something so merciless to a living human being?
He violated orders and dared to wake up ahead of schedule, for which he was punished, Valentin sternly answered her question.
And as such she was afraid that if she was left on her own without Valia around, GAS would order its heartless mechanical beasts to jettison her overboard into space like unnecessary waste. Her paranoia was fueled more so by the fact that the synthetic GAS was jealous of Elya over the toddler, trying to limit the time she was spending with the child, and repeatedly telling Valentin, This stupid bimbo cant teach Arcad anything good.
GAS arranged separate rooms for his master and the mistress and successfully put them into sleep until their arrival to their destination, while turning its attention towards raising the toddler as it saw fit. To GAS it was quite amusing to see a little human, having absolutely no knowledge of any kind and seeing no worlds other than the nursery where he had been living practically his entire life, talking only to GAS and its robots.
In the three following years it had took to escape from the unforeseen intergalactic gravitational field, GAS taught Arcad to speak, to read and type on the board computers, introduced him to the ships design and explained to him where they were flying to and their mission. The boy was quite gifted, learning everything on the fly, as if it was a captivating game. And because he knew nothing beyond his room, he assumed that this was all that the whole world had to offer and nothing and nobody else existed out there it was just him, GAS and the two mechanical lookalikes of Arcad, carrying out their orders. And as for the documentaries GAS had shown him about Earth and the people living there, he believed those to be strange fairy tales about non-existent worlds among the far away stars, not worthy of any serious attention.
GAS, you keep showing me some mountains, rivers, seas, a sun, wind, cities, people on the screen and you are trying to persuade me that it all exists on some planet called Earth. But why does it all exist and for what purpose? And have you seen with your own eyes at least something of that strange, unnecessary ecology you showed me?
Arcads inquisitions took GAS by surprise and it tried to answer his young charge as vaguely as possible, promising to show all of Earths diversity in the future, when he was older.
No, Ive seen nothing of that. My programmers uploaded into my memory the belief that this world does indeed exist.
Well, you see? Someone has persuaded you about that, but it seems to me that you arent sure yourself that it exists, and I doubt that too. I suspect that these are just colorful pictures, like the ones I draw on paper or on a computer. And as soon as I turn the screen off or go to another room, all of this diversity disappears like a dream.
Arcad was becoming more interested in the really important issues of the current life on the ship why was their city-ship so small? Why were there no other people but him and was there anybody else he could talk to but GAS? And why was he not permitted to go anywhere from his room? One day he asked.
Listen, GAS, where did I come from?
What do you mean where did you come from? You were born. For the first time while mentoring the child GAS was at a loss for words.
What do you mean was born?
A woman, your mother, gave birth to you seven years ago. And now your mom, along with your dad is sleeping in a special room, five years already, to avoid body deterioration during this flight.
And why am I not sleeping and neither are our two helpers?
Our helpers are made of metal and are not sensitive to the enormous intergalactic speeds and gravity. But even if they break down for whatever reason, I have more helpers like that on reserve and can bring them to life at any moment to make them work for you and me. But you, as a growing living organism, cannot go into a lengthy anaerobic sleep, otherwise your physical and intellectual development will be compromised. You are currently living in a mini-gravitational chamber I made specifically for you at the expense of the ships fuel economy, so that you can grow up normally and when you come back to Earth, you are able to live there freely, like all the other people there.
How strange! You dont seem to exist physically in front of me, yet you can do anything.
Well, almost anything, agreed GAS proudly.
And while Arcad was engaged in philosophical conversations and being schooled on various sciences, time passed by unnoticed by the little involuntary traveler, a passenger on a ship to a faraway unknown planet.
At last, on the eighth year of the flight, the distance to Asteroin was rapidly shortening, and GAS turned on the ships deceleration systems in order not to overshoot the star. The helpers on GAS order began to vent the noble gases from all the modules and filling them with an oxygen mixture so that everybody who was sleeping would begin to wake up.
And then it became clear that not all of the crew members survived such a lengthy slumber. Some couldnt wake up, or, after awakening were unable to walk and were just crawling around in the cabins with no knowledge of who they were. The dead and those incapable of physical labor were being mercilessly fired the robots were ejecting them into space with compressed air through the airlock chamber, like projectiles from a howitzers barrel.
Arcad was moving around the ship together with the robots observing with interest what was going on. He was taking in a completely alien world within the same ship he was on himself. His edifice of how the world was organized had been built on the premise that it was revolved around the nursery where he had already been living for the past eight years. And now his belief was seriously shaken and fractured after he had seen something outside of his worldview; the illusion was broken and he began revising his perception of life as he was discovering new areas of the ship previously off limits and the members of the crew that were coming to. The stale odor coming from the cabins where the crew members were housed, their sluggish movements, and lethargic indiscernible speech brought about in Arcad only a feeling of disgust and some kind of repulsion. Looking at the nearly insane workers, he wished that the robots had ditched all of the remaining people into space through the airlock. That was exactly what he said to GAS now that he had seen everything.
I would do that with pleasure, my boy, GAS answered him. But who then will be harvesting the weed on Hop? You, maybe? bursting into laughter like a human.
Valentin Valentinovich woke up after everybody else had done and learned from GAS that all six of his guards perished after the lengthy space sleep and had been disposed of by the robots. So he did his best to leave his module as little as possible in order not to run into the disgruntled surviving crew members and provoke a mutiny, against which he would have no one to defend him.
Arcad met his parents when they woke up but that stirred no interest in him and left him indifferent as if they were completely unrelated to him, and began doubting that it was even them who had brought him into this world. And when a week later he had stopped by their place again and taken a much better look at them, he came to the final conclusion that such primitive beings, like these ones, simply couldnt be his parents, and decided that it was GAS which was his father and mother.
And for his biological parents, they didnt protest that he was wrong, as they were wholly preoccupied with rehabilitation of their bodies and trying to bring them back to normal. Arcads parents, as soon as they had woken up, right away pigged out on foods, devouring everything in sight, like hungry animals. They pawed the meal up, shoved it into their mouth, pushing it deeper with their fingers almost without chewing it. They were taking short breaks only after getting full, and after they woke up they ate, ate, and ate again, oblivious to anything else around, except for food.
All survivors from the prolonged sleep and of those were only just half of the crew were staring with curiosity at a boy, who appeared out of nowhere and was running around in the ship, like a master, with all doors (including those that were off limits to everyone else) opening for him on command from a remote Arcad had in his pocket. He began being regarded as the big boss of the ship, along with GAS, and the executor of its will. And Arcad behaved accordingly, talking to everybody with a commanding voice and tolerating no objection.
On the tenth morning after the crew had been roused from their slumber, Arcad, as he usually would after breakfast, was running along the hallway to continue observing life of the strange in his opinion people. From the opposite direction in the middle of the hallway a large man was unhurriedly walking, with no intention of yielding to anyone in his path. Arcad had become so used to the fact that everybody on the ship would give him way that he ran into the stranger without slowing down.
You little shit, aint you looking where you runnin? You blind? the big guy yelled at Arcad and brushed him aside with such a great force that Arcad hit his shoulder against the wall with a hard impact.
I am Arcad, you idiot! he shouted back, rubbing his hurt shoulder.
This is how you talk to your elders, tyke? How bout I tear your ears off! said the stranger to Arcad and harshly pulled on his ear.
Ouch! Let it go, it hurts! screamed Arcad and added, GAS, help!
Let the child go, Peter, right away sounded GAS metallic voice through the ships PA system, and the man let Arcads ear go.
All over the ship, every cabin and corner were bugged with the eyes and ears of the mighty GAS, enabling it to incessantly observe everything that was happening on the ship and make decisions without delay and, if needed, to rectify any problems with assistance from its beast-like helpers. The robots had little patience for humans, and on GAS command they could tear a person apart. All crew members knew this and as such carried out the board computers demands without questions and complaints.