LIFE AS WE KNOW IT

Lying on his back, eyes closed to the sun, Max Dourif swatted lazily at a fly as it buzzed over his face.  He felt a faint tickle as it settled on his arm, and he brushed it off.  A brief interlude, and then it returned.  Frowning, he wished it away.  The buzzing subsided.  Shielding his eyes with a hand, he turned to face Ellie, who sat nearby.

  “I’m heading down to the lake in a little while,” he murmured.  He glanced at their two children playing a short distance away, and added, “They’ll probably want to tag along.  How about you – coming or staying?”

  Ellie looked up from her book, strands of her dark hair streaked across her face.

  “Staying,” she said.

  She returned to her reading.  Dourif rolled onto his chest, his back having begun to itch against the warm grass.  He rested his chin on his arms and stared down at the green blades.  A long line of ants was weaving its way between the jointed stems and narrow leaves, their intense activity in direct contrast to his own lethargy.

  How do they know where they’re going, he wondered?  It must be like a thicket to them, down there…

  Raising a hand above the marching troop, he pointed his index finger down and waited.  A slight gap in the line, and he dropped his finger to the ground.  The approaching ant hesitated before the new obstruction, and then quickly circumvented it.  The rest of the troop followed suit, seemingly oblivious to his finger’s presence.  Sighing, Dourif dropped his head to one side.  He closed his eyes, made a mental request for the early afternoon to be extended, and the breeze abated, becoming an everlasting moment under the brilliance of the golden sun.

  A muffled thud broke the stillness.  Turning his head, Dourif opened his eyes to see that Ellie had dropped her book.

  “What is it?” he muttered heavily.

  “Something’s wrong, I’ve lost contact with Tillich’s unit.”

  Dourif groaned.  He closed his eyes again, tried to return to that everlasting moment, but felt Ellie prod his bare shoulder.

  “Honey, snap out of it,” she said.  “I need you to check on something.”

  “Not now,” he burbled.  “Go back to what you were reading.”

  “I’m serious!  I’m getting strange readings from Tillich’s unit.”  Retrieving the book, she proffered it to him.  “Here, take a look!”

  “Well, wake Tillich!  Tell him to snap out of it, and to take a look at it himself.  It’s his unit, after all.”

  “I told you, I can’t get through to him!” Ellie said tightly.  “I’m shut out, and he’s not responding!”

  Now there’s a surprise, Dourif thought.

  “Then wake Ferris.  He’s the medic…”

  “I am!”

  Dourif grunted as he rolled over.  Sitting up, he snatched the book from Ellie and stared down at its pages.  The read-out from Tillich’s stasis unit, printed on the fine paper, was abnormal.  He dropped the book and got to his feet.  Brushing at his short-cropped hair, he gazed toward the long grass where the children were playing.

  “Daddy’s got to go to work now!” he called out.  “But not for long!  I’ll be back before you know it, and we can head down to the lake then!”

  He glared down at Ellie.  She was flicking through the pages of her book.  Stopping at a chapter entitled ‘Awakening’, she began to mumble the first few lines out loud.  Dourif cast his eyes over the green field, up to the blue sky beyond.  He breathed in the smell of the grass, felt the warmth caress his skin, closed his eyes, and –

  - with a start, he found himself in the confines of his stasis unit, a glass panel blinking green and red just above his face.  He groaned, reached up, and fingered the many wires and tubes that ran from the unit’s monitoring system to his cranium.  He tugged at their ends.  After a few seconds, he had completely detached himself from virtuity.  He opened the stasis unit’s hatch and sat up, and the lights in the ship’s stasis chamber came on.

  To his right were Ferris and Tillich’s stasis units, set at right angles to one another.  They resembled giant red ants squatting on the chamber’s metallic floor.  Four jointed cylinders jutted out from their sides and disappeared into the bowels of the ship.  From each of the unit’s hatches, a large hose snaked upward to the central nexus, from which the E.L.I. and the gateway system operated.

  Newly designed and recently installed on all interstellar ships as well as on Earth, the Martian Colonies and Jupiter Station, the gateway system utilised a negative mass generator, or nemgine, to open a bridge to another universe from which to draw its energy.  In essence, a portion of its structure was located in an entirely different reality, though a complex series of magnetic and gravitational fields kept the resultant radiation at bay.

  Dourif rubbed his jaw, and cursed.  He scratched at his full-grown beard.  Brown hair spilled down to tickle his neck and shoulders.  The unit’s body-maintenance programme had evidently malfunctioned.  At least it had continued to trim his nails.  Repairs, however, would have to wait.  He swung his legs free from the unit and stepped down.  The ship’s floor felt cold against his bare feet, at odds with the warmth he had experienced in Virtuity.  Staring around the grey egg-shaped chamber, he sensed the endless possibilities within Virtuity slipping away as actuality reasserted itself.  He was no longer purely mental; he was now bound by the corporeal as well.

  Reaching for his bodysuit, he tugged it on then started toward the adjacent units.  Inside the nearest one, Lee Ferris remained inclined, no doubt in the middle of an angry exchange with his wife.  Peering through the unit’s glass panel, Dourif saw that Ferris was pouting.  Not that he had much to pout about, Dourif mused irritably; at least his body-maintenance programme was still functioning.

  He started toward Tillich’s unit.  The lights on its hatch blinked happily, though the glass panel was clouded with condensation.  From the outside there didn’t appear to be any problem with the unit itself.  Dourif called for the holographic display, and it was beamed into the air before him.  He double-checked the bio-readings.  They were barely registering.  He patched himself through to Tillich’s Virtuity.

  “Tillich!”

  There was no response.  He imagined Tillich lying on his own patch of grass under the sun, somehow having exorcised Ellie from his programme.

  If I’d managed that – Dourif mused – I probably wouldn’t respond either.

  “Tillich!  I’m not going to wake you!  Just respond!”

  Sighing, he reached for the manual override and slid the unit’s hatch open.  The fetid smell that escaped caused his nasal passages to contract.  He lifted a hand to his mouth, and gagged.  Spatters of brown-green sludge, smeared throughout the unit’s interior, resembled a giant fungal explosion.  Dourif staggered back.

  “Ellie, what the fuck…!  What happened to Tillich?”

  “I’m not sure,” the E.L.I. replied.  “I lost contact with his unit, remember.  You tell me…”

  Cursing the ship’s human response programming, Dourif stumbled toward Ferris’ unit.  He fell against it and punched its speaker-system.

  “Ferris, wake up!  Wake up now!”

  He pictured Ferris playing a game of chess with his wife.  The ship’s medic had never taken to simply lying in the sun or swimming in a stream; in their few brief conversations, Dourif recalled Ferris having expressed such activity to be a waste of time.

  “What the…?” Lee Ferris’ muffled voice called back.  “Leave me alone!”

  “Ellie, wake Ferris up!”

  The lights inside the unit came on, and the hatch slid back.  Ferris’ eyes flickered open.  And then they widened.  He gazed up at Dourif’s shabby appearance, reached up to his own face to feel his jaw-line, then relaxed a little as he felt smooth skin.  Glowering at Dourif, he started pulling the wires from his head.  He lifted himself from the unit and wiped his eyes.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “It’s Tillich… I think his unit’s malfunctioned.”

  Leaning against his ant-like unit, Ferris exercised his stiff muscles.  He reached for his bodysuit and strained to get it on.  He started toward Tillich’s unit.  As he peered inside, he pinched his nose closed.  He glared back at Dourif.

  “What happened?”

  “How should I know?” Dourif growled.  “I’m just the system engineer, you’re the fucking medic!”

  “Ellie, what happened?”

  “Contact with the unit was broken six minutes thirty seconds ago,” the E.L.I. responded.  “Concurrent with that break, my system recorded a change in Tillich’s bio-readings, a transmutation from what they were to what they are now.”

  “Concurrent.  You mean an instantaneous transmutation?”

  “Instantaneous.”

  “And what are they now?” Ferris asked tensely.  “What is… this stuff?”

  “I’m detecting fibre, cellulose, and water.  Amino acids and an abundance of unidentified bacteria are also present.”

  Ferris was silent for a moment as he scratched at his silver-grey sideburns.

  “Ellie,” he said slowly, “what you’re describing is waste matter.”

  “Meaning what?” Dourif asked.

  “Meaning Tillich was eaten.”  Ferris gazed uneasily down at the brown-green spatters.  “Eaten, and then expelled.”

  “Eaten?” Dourif whispered.  “Eaten by what?”

​

Squeezing into the Nessus’ command module, Dourif called for manual control.  Consoles slid out from the module’s walls and three rectangular sections of flooring rose by half a metre.  The nearest section climbed another half-metre, and Dourif sat down in the makeshift chair.  He turned on the ship’s external sensors and stared at the screen.  He was confronted by pitch darkness.  Not even the stars were visible.

  “Ellie, are the ship’s sensors functioning properly?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Well, where the hell are we?”

  “We’re on the surface of a free-floating world, designated SP-133 by the mining probe that discovered it.  It’s currently located near the Epsilon Aurigae star-system.  I detected the probe’s signal, and its degree of excitation indicated it had made a substantial high-grade find, so I decided to investigate.”

  “Play back signal.”

  After a brief pause, the signal was replayed over the screen.  The E.L.I. was correct – there was a great deal of excitation manifest in the transmission, a programmed response to a lucrative find; at least that part of the story checked out.  And as for the darkness outside, a free-floating world was by definition a world without a sun, most probably having been ejected from its system of origin at some remote point in time.  However, that did not explain the complete lack of starlight.

  Dourif activated the ship’s floodlights, and a murky image appeared on the screen.  A dusty, yellow-red terrain dotted with boulders wavered under a thick mantle of yellow-grey cloud.  It was not exactly the most attractive world he had seen, and it was a stark reminder of why he preferred Virtuity.  Reality, in all its absurdity, tended to be far less malleable to the human condition.

  I shouldn’t even be seeing this, he thought angrily; if it weren’t for Tillich and his fucking unit…

  It was standard ship policy for crew members not to be woken, except in cases of malfunction when the E.L.I. could not make adequate repairs or if an important discovery required investigation beyond the capabilities of the automated systems.  And, even then, such cases could be overruled once the ship’s analyst had properly assessed the situation.  Unfortunately, in this case the ship’s analyst – Tillich – was dead, and the nature and exact cause of his death were the problems.  Dourif could not remember the last time he had actually been out of Virtuity.  Like all bad dreams, memories of those moments tended to fade over time.

  “Do scanners pick up any signs of life outside the Nessus?” he asked the computer.  “Or any sign that the ship’s hull may have been breached since landfall?”

  “No,” the E.L.I. responded.

  “Play back Tillich’s bio-readings.”

  As the bio-readings appeared on the adjacent screen, he turned to see Ferris squeezing into the command module.

  “Found anything?” he asked.

  “Ellie’s confirmed that Tillich was definitely eaten by something,” Ferris responded nervously.  “Something alien.  She’s identified the amino acids in the waste matter as dextro-alanine and dextro-glutamine.  They’re right-handed monomers.  All life on Earth uses left-handed monomers.  Which means they could only be extra-terrestrial in origin.”

  “Well, where is this alien, then?”  Turning back to the screen, Dourif prodded it with his finger.  “There’s no indication of anything onboard, of anything having got onboard!  We’re on a dustbowl of a planet with no sunlight…”

  “What’re we doing here?” Ferris asked.

  “Some excitable probe made a discover, and Ellie, in her infinite wisdom, decided to investigate.”

  “Have the scanners detected any sign of life out there?”

  “Nothing.”  Dourif sighed.  He stroked his beard absently.  “But it’s a big world, and the scanners are having a difficult time due to the intense surface pressure, which is at least a thousand times greater than on Earth.  It’s enveloped by a thick atmosphere of mostly hydrogen, probably the remnant of the planetary nebula in which it was born.”

  “Then it is possible for life to have evolved, given those conditions?”

  “God knows.”  Dourif shrugged.  “Possible.  The dense atmosphere’s acting like an intense greenhouse gas, trapping radioactive heat in.  The surface is quite warm.  In fact, Ellie’s found signs of liquid water.  But the lack of sunlight would prove problematic for any organism.  There’s no energy source aside from the radioactive rocks, which on their own would be too weak to support life.  At least, life as we know it.”

  “The earliest Earth-based life used geothermal energy,” Ferris mused.  “It’s possible that something down here is doing the same…”

  “Then it wouldn’t bother coming onboard to consume Tillich, now would it?” Dourif snapped.  He spun around to face the computer again. “What about you, Ellie?  Anything to add?  Surely, with your state-of-the-art system, you can at least come up with something!”

  “My scans of the residue do support Lee’s hypothesis of alien involvement,” the E.L.I. replied calmly.  “However, I’ll need more data before I can reach any further conclusions.”

  “Is that it?  That’s all you have to say?”

  “Wait a minute,” Ferris whispered.  “Perhaps the lack of evidence is evidence in itself.  If this thing were composed of something undetectable, like dark matter, the ship’s systems wouldn’t be able to register it.  Take this planet for instance: save for its gravitational pull and a very low heat signature, there would be no way to detect its existence.  Considering its remoteness, it was sheer chance the mining probe discovered it at all!  And compared to this planet, the mass of a living creature would be negligible…”

  “And the instantaneous transmutation?” Dourif asked.

  “…would suggest that Tillich was swallowed whole…”

  “Swallowed, consumed, and shat out,” Dourif muttered dryly, “all in an instant.  Don’t you see what you’re doing?  You’re using a lack of evidence to justify a false assumption.  Let’s just stick to the facts, shall we!”  He returned to staring at the image of the planet’s surface.  “Consider this world:  no sign of life out there!  So, unless your creature’s natural prey, in fact the entire bloody food chain, were equally undetectable, your alien life form would have nothing to feed on!”

  “Well, maybe they are and maybe they aren’t equally undetectable!” Ferris thundered.  “Besides, what you call facts I call presumptive formulation.  Who knows what form life can take, beyond our limited experience of it?  All I do know is, we’d better find out what happened or the same thing might happen to us!”

  He punched a button on the console angrily, activating the modular furniture.  Several sections of the compartment’s flooring rose to a metre in height.  Bending over the newly erected table, he rested his head in his hands, thinking.  Finally, he turned to glare at Dourif.

  “And what have you come up with?  Nothing!  Well, what’s your analysis of this situation, then?”

  “I think Ellie should run a maintenance check on Tillich’s unit, and on all ship’s systems.  Perhaps some error…”

  “That’s brilliant!”  Ferris gave a hollow chuckle.  “So, now Ellie, an Engineered Living Intelligence system with no biological components, ate Tillich?  Ellie produced bio waste matter!  How is that any different from what you accused me of doing?”

  “Well, it’s just more goddamn likely than…”

  Just then, the E.L.I.’s voice cut in over the speaker-system.

  “The argument is moot.  I’ve completed my scans of the waste matter.  It appears to be exhibiting signs of life.”

​

“That has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Dourif grumbled.  He stared down at the faecal remains, spread over the medi-bay’s gurney.  “How could that possibly be alive?”

  “My scans indicate complex organisation, metabolism, and growth,” the E.L.I. responded.  “It’s also reacting to the surrounding atmosphere, which could be viewed as a sign of irritability.  All but reproduction is prevalent in the matter, and all are evidence of a living entity.”

Ferris stopped his pacing of the medi-bay.  Turning toward the gurney, he stared down at the brown-green slop.  He bent over it for a closer inspection.

  “Perhaps reproduction is evident,” he said.  “If part of this thing’s lifecycle is to consume another organism, to break down living matter and recombine it with elements of its own makeup, thereby creating offspring…” He glanced up at Dourif.  “It’d certainly put a whole new spin on the term consummation…”

  Dourif struck the gurney with his fist, and putrid globules bounced into the air.  He backed away from the stretcher to stare at Ferris hard.

  “Jesus Christ!  I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life!  Living excrement!  What the hell do you know about reproduction, anyway?”

  “I could ask the same of you,” Ferris growled back.  “You and your virtual children…”

  “Max,” the E.L.I. responded coolly, “these are the same criterion I use to judge you to be a living entity.”

  “Not all life exhibits every one of those traits!”  Dourif clenched his fists.  He jabbed a finger toward the speaker-system.  “And even certain inorganic substances have been known to exhibit some of those traits.  Ellie exhibits signs of intelligence, she has the ability to repair herself, but she is not alive.”  He glared at Ferris.  “Do you know what I think?  I think, just as you’ve been postulating that life on this world can exert properties alien to those on Earth, so non-living matter on this world can exert properties that we normally associate with life!  I mean, for Christ’s sakes, it’s a pile of shit!”

  “Ellie says…”

  “Is it also the property of human intelligence to be stupid?  What does Ellie know about being alive?  She’s a fucking personality-construct!  Engineered to be lifelike, but not to be alive.  No wonder she’s mistaken this excrement for life; they share the same ability to mimic life’s processes, of being pseudo-life.”

  “Fine,” Ferris whispered tightly.   “What do you suggest?”

  “As I said before, Ellie should check her systems for a malfunction.  For all we know, it was an undetected error in Tillich’s unit that caused this.”  Dourif turned to the ship’s speaker-system.  “Ellie, run a full diagnostic on all your systems.  Scan for any anomalies.”

  “You really think a shipboard malfunction did this?” Ferris asked.

  “Well, we haven’t found any evidence of life that could have caused this, beyond your feeble speculation about those amino acids.  It’s all well and fine postulating modes of reproduction, but without a parent organism…”

  “Then maybe this is the creature,” Ferris said, pointing down at the slop.  “Perhaps there isn’t any other.  Maybe this is its way of renewing itself, by reverting to an earlier stage in its development – a perpetual lifecycle, making it virtually immortal!”

Jesus Chris! Dourif thought.  What the hell am I even doing here?  I could be swimming in a lake with my kids.  They know nothing of reality; the perfect salve to this absurd situation…

  “My scans have detected an anomaly,” the E.L.I. announced.

  “Where?” Ferris asked quickly.

  “I’ve charted the rate of change in the waste matter’s reaction to the atmosphere, what I described as irritability.  The residue is undoubtedly emitting a series of distinctive smells…”

  “It smells, all right,” Dourif muttered thickly.

  “…that mimics the recursive structures and processes normally associated with complex speech.  I believe it’s attempting to communicate.”

  “What?!?”  Glaring up at the ship’s speaker-system, Dourif ran a hand through his long hair.  “Now you want me to fucking address it?  For God’s sakes, it’s a lump of excrement!  We’ve ascertained that…!”

  “And you’re a bag of bone, tissue, and water,” Ferris spat out.  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is that there are all kinds of patterns in nature!  Recursive patterns, symmetrical patterns… just because Ellie detects a complex mathematical structure to the smells, it doesn’t mean it’s a form of communication!”

  “Fine,” Ferris responded.  “So, if it doesn’t have two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a head – like a human being – you say it can’t communicate.  I see where you’re coming from, and I don’t like it.”  He turned toward the speaker-system.  “Ellie, would it be possible to synthesise those smells and transmit them back toward the creature?  Perhaps we could convince it we mean it no…”

  “You’re going to try to talk to it?”  Dourif shook his head in disbelief.  “Even if it were alive, even if those smells were attempts at communication, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s intelligent.  My God, if you and Ellie came across a dancing bee, would you presume it was intelligent, too?”  He waved his hand and started for the medi-bay’s door.  “Forget it.  Make first contact with a lump of shit, see if I care.  I’ll be in my unit.”

  “Fine,” he heard Ferris mutter after him.  “Go back to your Virtuity, to your pseudo-kids and your mentally-secure construction.  So far you’ve done nothing to further this investigation.  At least I’m taking action, trying to make sense…”

  As Dourif reached the medi-bay’s door, he heard a deep gurgling sound from behind him.  It sounded like the final rush of water before it disappeared down a plug hole.  And at that moment, Ferris stopped speaking.  Dourif turned, and staggered back.  A knot had formed at the centre of Ferris’ midriff, twisting his bodysuit as it sucked him in.  And shooting out behind that knot, a stream of brown-green sludge sprayed across the medi-bay’s floor.

​​

  “Ellie, activate the pre-ignition burners!  We’re getting out of here!”

  He clambered up the metal rungs that led to the command module and squeezed inside the small compartment.  As he collapsed into the makeshift chair, he activated the internal scanners and checked the status of the gateway system.  It would take a few minutes for the nemgine to achieve critical negative mass.  After that, there would be nothing to keep him from putting distance between him and the free-floating world.

  “All systems functioning,” the E.L.I. responded.

  Dourif glanced up at the screen, took one last look at the dusty terrain.  Outside, a storm was raging.  Dust particles, whipped up from the surface, glimmered in the floodlight’s glare, obscuring his vision.  What little he could make out of the surface had become distorted under the intense atmospheric pressure, twisting it into a concave depression like a lewd grin.

  “My scans of the ship’s systems…”

  “Not now, Ellie!”

  “But, Max, I’ve located the cause of Tillich and Ferris’ transformation.”

  Dourif stared tensely up at the ship’s speaker-system.

  “What?”

  “As you requested, I’ve completed my scans of all my systems.  At the precise moment of Lee’s transformation, I detected a gravitational disturbance originating from the nemgine.  Evidence of an external mass intruding into the ship.”

  “Intruding?  From where?”

  “From the other side of the gateway system.”

  “You mean… from another universe?”

  “Through its interaction with the magnetic and gravitational fields protecting the core, the disturbance slung itself directly toward the medi-bay.  That denotes intent.  I realise this is mere speculation, Max, but what if something from the other universe were using the ship’s systems to draw matter from this ship in the same way my systems draw energy from that universe, drawing not for power but in order to consume and reproduce...?”

  My God, Dourif thought numbly.

  “Shut down the nemgine!”

  “But I need that energy to maintain Virtuity.  Without it, our children will cease to exist.”

  “I don’t care!  Shut it down!”

  “Without the ship’s systems, the hull will buckle under the atmospheric pressure.  You’d die anyway.”

God, what a choice! Dourif mused drearily: To be crushed to a pulp on this inhospitable world, or to meet the same fate as Tillich and Ferris, to be transformed into a stinking lump of poop.  In Virtuity I’d be relieved of making such a choice…

  “You may wish to note that my theory regarding communication appears to have been correct,” the E.L.I. said, trying at least to sound upbeat.  “I’m detecting a complex series of smells from each of the residues; they appear to be reacting to each other’s presence.  There’s the distinct possibility that your consciousness would survive the transformation.”

  “Thanks, Ellie,” Dourif muttered.  “What about finding another energy source?  If we could adapt the ship’s systems to operate on a combustion basis, we wouldn’t require the gateway system for energy.  This world’s atmosphere is rich in hydrogen…”

  “It’s possible.  However, you would not be able to make the alterations on your own.  You’d require the ship’s systems to accomplish it.  That alone would make any such attempt futile, as the ship’s systems require the gateway system to operate.”

  “Well, get started anyway,” Dourif said tightly.  “But, Ellie, if anything happens to me before completion, you’re to return to Jupiter Station.  Warn them of this situation and tell them to deactivate all gateway technology.  Tell them it’s too dangerous.  Do you understand?”

  Perhaps they’ve already found out, he thought; perhaps it’s already too late…

  The thought of the whole of the Earth, of the Mars Colonies, reduced to spatters of brown-green sludge made him feel sick to his stomach.  He imagined piles of waste matter stinking up the Martian wasteland – the next stage of humanity’s evolution.  The mere idea caused his stomach to knot up.  He felt a churning from deep within, and, clutching the edge of the console, he glanced down.

  Near to his midriff, his bodysuit suddenly contorted.  As he stared in horror, the suit’s shiny fabric swirled tightly round, becoming like an eddy in a river stream.  And then it collapsed into him.

  My God, he thought!  It’s happening…

​

Powering down the nemgine, the E.L.I. set the Nessus’ forward thrusters to breaking speed.  As the Nessus entered the Jovian system, the ship’s scanners came online and the E.L.I. scanned the looming gas giant.  The scanners detected Jupiter Station, orbiting on the dark side of the planet.  Far below the station, beneath the gas giant’s swirling clouds, a vast storm was raging.  It lit up the planet’s turbulent atmosphere with brilliant, intermittent bursts.

  The E.L.I. transmitted a signal to the station, requesting Clearance for docking.  When the automated response was finally received, it was crackling with static.  But it was of sufficient strength to decode as granting the request.

  Passing through the orbits of Leda and Callisto, the E.L.I. shut down the Nessus’ forward thrusters, allowing Jupiter’s gravitational pull to draw the ship nearer to the station.  A final manoeuvring burst from the Nessus’ port thrusters, and the station’s grappling hooks reached out to latch onto the hull.  The E.L.I. monitored the final approach.  As the hooks were released, clamps from the station bit down onto the Nessus’ support frame, locking the ship into place.

  In the stasis chamber, the hatch to Dourif’s unit snapped open, and the waste matter slopped out.  It gathered itself together then started to scrape across the floor.  As it reached the outer airlock, it came to a stop and waited.  It emitted a putrid odour, and, through the ship’s ventilation system, the E.L.I. responded in kind.  The airlock opened, and the excrement shuffled onto the station.

  There was no sign of life on the dry dock, nor was there any in the station’s outer pylon.  Not even the usual robot envoy that would have ordinarily been sent to greet the new arrival.  It tested the air briefly, before moving on.  Reaching the final set of doors that led to the central habitat, it detected a faint odour that clung to the air.  As the doors swung open, the smell shifted in strength, becoming momentarily more palpable.

  It was the distinct whiff of conversation

​

...ends