The Stargazer

The Stargazer
By Gazza-N

The headmaster gave Dana a condescending look as she entered the office. She showed no sign of emotion, but her eyes stayed fixed on the headmaster as she walked in and slumped, uninvited, into one of the chairs in front of the desk. Sixteen years old, with silky shoulder length black hair, she could have been a hit with the boys if it weren’t for her universally infamous attitude.
The headmaster stayed silent for a minute or two, and then he sighed. “What are we going to do with you, Miss Rae? You’re one of our most promising Navigation students, so I’ve tended to ignore your little - let’s call them ‘eccentricities’ – up to now.  However, this latest incident… I cannot ignore it. What could possibly have gone through your mind?”
Dana kept her eyes fixed squarely on the headmaster’s. “I only told the truth. The fact that it’s something that people don’t want to hear isn’t my problem.”
“Miss Rae, something that you have yet to learn is that there is a time and a place to voice your opinions, regardless of their verity. Calling the senior bridge staff ‘defunct and useless old men high on their own self-importance’ on an official school tour is simply unacceptable! And as for it being true…”
“So you call dodging ion storms and the odd interstellar asteroid every few months useful? The computers and the robots fly the Worldship, those old men are just there for show! They don’t even know where we’re flying to until the computers tell them! You should know all that better than anyone. You’re training their replacements after all!”
“…Sir.” she hurriedly tacked on. The headmaster felt his patience rapidly slipping away, but he managed to keep his voice steady.
“Miss Rae, one of the many reasons that we’ve survived aboard the Worldship for so many generations is because the Designers so carefully stipulated what roles needed to be filled and how to fill them. The Navigator was one of the most important. Considering our place in the Designers’ WorldScheme we ‘old men’ have the right to be proud of what we do.”
Dana kept her mouth shut, but her expression more than conveyed exactly what she thought about this piece of information. The headmaster sighed again and shrugged dejectedly. “Miss Rae, you are here because you have considerable talent, and I’d like to see that talent applied somewhere other than the Robot Pits. Watch that mouth, young lady. Someday it will get you into more trouble than you think! You may go, but I warn you that I will not be as lenient the next time this happens.”
She stood to leave. And the headmaster watched her go. She was still one of his best students, and asides from bruising some egos she hadn’t really done any harm. Now if only she would change her attitude. Perhaps if she spent more time with her peers than with that robot…

*****


The real tragedy was that despite her outburst on the Bridge, Dana loved Navigation. This was natural: on completion of their basic education at age ten children were assessed to determine what roles they showed the most aptitude in and assigned to their further education accordingly. The problem lay in that her romantic teenage mind had infused a certain poetry to their situation. A humble asteroid modified into a self-sustaining starship, destined to be a bastion of humanity, the last-ditch attempt of a dying race to find a new home. How, mocked by the light speed barrier, generations of selfless colonists braved the unknown challenges of interstellar space for centuries until, finally, victoriously, the Worldship reached their new home. For her, life was supposed to be exciting and adventurous. It was because of her passion for Navigation that she had felt so violated when seeing how useless her future profession seemed to be. The Navigators were meant to be the fearless captains of this voyage, but the Designers had reduced them to figureheads, and this wasn’t just limited to the bridge staff. Every aspect of the colonists’ lives seemed mundane and empty compared to the visions of glory and excitement in her mind, once again all thanks to the Designers. Yet they accepted this without question, and this angered her more than she could say.

Because of this it was only natural that Dana Rae was attracted to the Stargazer. This robot had been sitting there ever since anyone could remember, motionless on a pedestal that stood against the rock wall in the forward observation room. Even the eldest of the elders could remember it in its customary position, staring out of the massive panoramic window at the unchanging starscape ahead of the ship. Partly because it did no harm, partly for posterity, and mainly from almost total ignorance, the ship’s people simply let it be. Dana was well aware that it was only a mechanical puppet, but she identified with it more strongly than she could with any human for one reason – it was a rebel. In the highly automated environment of the Worldship one seldom, if ever, saw an idle robot. The Stargazer (an inevitable nickname) was an oddity, an anomaly, a nonconformity in the everyday structure of the Worldship. In its inactivity it seemed to challenge the will of the Designers in the most profound way possible, as if it were saying “WorldScheme? Here’s what I think of your precious WorldScheme”.
There was a second aspect of the Stargazer that drew her to it. Nobody else knew this, since nobody else had ever bothered talking to it before, but it happened to know quite a bit about the stars that it had been observing over the past century or so. Dana had but to point out the most insignificant star at the furthermost corner of the observation window and the Stargazer would unleash torrents of information on its type, age, distance from the Worldship, planetary systems, and anything else one could care to know. Other than being educational, Dana found that it helped her to relax and detach her mind from all her problems for a while. In fact, she spent the majority of her free time with it, there in that dimly lit cavern in the nose of the ship where hardly anyone ever went. It was her sanctum, her escape.

An escape that she needed more than ever at that moment. She sat quietly at the foot of the pedestal and followed the Stargazer’s gaze, trying to sort things out in her mind. The headmaster had of course called her parents after the meeting, and their reaction was as predictable as ever. Her mother had thrown the now-familiar screaming fit about how she was an embarrassment and should be ashamed. Her father, however, had refused to speak to her at all. She could understand this, and she suddenly was very ashamed. Her father happened to be one of the bridge staff, and had been thrilled to see his little angel selected to follow in his footsteps. The other bridge officials must have given him hell, never mind the Captain…

“Warning. Anomaly detected”. The Stargazer’s clear monotone voice broke the silence suddenly. Dana jumped. It was the first time she had ever heard it speak of its own volition.
“Warning. Anomaly detected,” it repeated.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “I don’t see anything…”
“Anomaly is gravitational in nature. Visual perception is not possible at this range and with anomaly at current quantum state. Ship’s sensors indicate gravimetric conditions similar to those prescribed in the central database.”
Suddenly the lights dimmed and an alarm shrieked out across the cavern. Then the ship started to shake violently, toppling the Stargazer from its pedestal and throwing Dana into the rocky wall. She felt a piercing pain in her forehead and blood oozed into her eyes as collision alarms went off all over the ship. She struggled dizzily to her feet. She could hear people running and shouting. What the hell was going on?

Another loud crash and she was thrown into the Stargazer’s pedestal. This time, though, she didn’t get up again.


*****

“…incredible! And almost precisely where they predicted it would be on the Galaxy map!”

Voices… So far away…

“Even still, I’m surprised nobody picked it up until we practically flew into it! What were you people doing up there?”

Getting closer…

Where was she?

“Please. This thing’s gravity well is so localized that you can’t detect it until you’re right on top of it. At least the Worldship’s collision protection systems kicked in at the right time, otherwise…”

She knew that voice…

“Otherwise your daughter would have been sucking vacuum right now, Mr. Rae. It’s been a pleasure talking, but please excuse me. I have other patients to attend to. Your daughter will be up in no time.”
“Of course. Thank you, doctor.”
Dana opened her eyes to see her father above her. Her head was so sore… And there was a tickling sensation overlaying the pain that just made it more uncomfortable.
“Hey Dad. What happened?”
“Hey! Welcome back! You know, we’ve always told you that hanging out with that robot all the time would cause trouble.”
“Shut up dad. I don’t want another lecture right now. My head hurts…”
Her father gave a start, then gave a sad little smile. She could see that he had been worried sick. It made her feel even worse.
“I’m sorry Dad. I…”
“Shhh… Don’t worry about it. I would probably feel the same way in your position. You fractured your skull in that little fiasco, I’m afraid. You’ve been out for the past couple of days.”
Of course. The tickling sensation was from the cellular regenerators that they used to accelerate the body’s healing process. They often used them for fractures and lacerations, and Dana was no stranger to having bones rebuilt. She opened her mouth to repeat her question, but her father beat her to it.
“As to what caused it, I think the Captain’s report will explain it a little better than I could.” He reached over to the vidscreen on the wall, called up the file, and the Captain’s face appeared. What surprised Dana the most was that for the first time in memory he looked excited about something. Very excited.

“Fellow colonists, this is the Captain. We on the bridge would like to apologize deeply for the momentary negligence that brought about this evening’s collision. We would like to explain the exceptional circumstances of the accident.” Then he gave a little chuckle. “However, we are sure that upon understanding our situation you will be more than willing to forgive us.
“What we encountered this evening was no asteroid or other interstellar debris, as is widely believed, nor was our encounter an accident, although it did occur sooner than expected.”
Dana fumed. Not an accident? His tone would be different if he was stuck in the infirmary having his skull rebuilt. Seeing his daughter’s expression, her father smiled a little.
“Just wait!”
“What we have encountered is what Navigators and physicists refer to as a ‘wormhole’, a highly localized gravity well similar to a black hole. However, rather than crushing objects that enter it, it instead redirects matter to a second gravity well in another region of space-time. In effect, it acts as an instantaneous shortcut between two points in the Universe.
“Last night we accidentally clipped the outside of the wormhole’s gravity well, net result being that the intense gravitational forces threw us off course and overcame our inertial buffering. Although we still take full responsibility, the accident was caused in part due to a slight error in our Galaxy map – wormholes tend to drift slightly over time and this one moved a little closer than we expected. We once again apologize for our error.
“Now what does this mean for us? Well, the Designers knew full well about this wormhole. It has in fact, we now know, been our destination since the Worldship was launched. According to the flight plan, this wormhole is meant to take several centuries off of our trip, meaning that should we succeed, this current crew might well reach the New World within our lifetimes.”
“As such, the executive council and the Bridge have voted unanimously that preparations be undertaken to enter the wormhole within the next week. You, the colonists, are of course welcome to voice any misgivings within this period. However, until substantial evidence is found to contradict our course of action, planning will continue, and your respective duties will be given to you some time within the next two days.”
“I thank you for your attention.”

The screen went blank. Dana’s father looked at her.
“Well?” he asked. She looked stunned.

Then a little smile crept across her face. Her boring life was about to interesting at last.


*****

If Dana hadn’t known better, she would have sworn that the Worldship was about to explode. Everywhere people and robots were rushing around as if their lives depended on it, shuttling miscellaneous machinery, stockpiling and classifying food stores, inspecting bulkheads, tweaking computer terminals, and generally being busy. The Captain’s announcement had clearly made an impact, and the entire crew was making sure that the ship would survive the transit, and that they would survive should anything go wrong. It was as if the fire of adventure had finally been ignited – finally the journey was real for them. Dana couldn’t help but feel a little smug, and the urge gloat was pretty strong. Instead, she helped out as she was asked to. All lessons had been cancelled for the week leading up to the wormhole transit so that the teachers’ skills could be fully utilized, so the ship’s youngsters were used for the grunt work.
She had been recruited by Terence from Engineering, an energetic young man only a few years older than her. The Chief Engineer had run countless simulations of the transit and had identified weak spots in the Worldship’s structure that were most susceptible to damage and/or total collapse from the gravitational flux in the wormhole. Terence’s job was to inspect these weak spots and determine how best to reinforce them. Dana’s job was to cart his heavy equipment around. It was interesting work, but really demanding. She also happened to find Terence pretty cute, so it kept her more interested than she would otherwise have been. Fortunately, Terence wasn’t a bad guy in the least, and he gave her plenty of attention, and breaks while he performed his inspections. As they tended to take more than an hour in most cases, she was free to do as she pleased until she was called back. She tended to spend them right where she was.

“So where are we going?” she asked on the fifth day. “I thought we’d been all over the ship already! My arms hurt!”
Terence laughed. “Not everywhere yet - we have one more area to inspect. You think you can manage that stuff for another minute or so?”
“Sure.”
“Besides, I think you’ll like this one.”
“Why’s that?”
“Never mind. We’re here!”
Dana took this as her cue, and dropped the equipment as quickly as she dared near the wall. Then she turned around and saw nothing but stars.
“I know you like to come here during your breaks,” said Terence as he set up his probe near the edge of the observation window. “I figured I’d save you the walk, since it’s our last inspection and all.”
“You’re kidding me. What’s so dangerous about the observation deck? Nobody ever comes here anyway!”
Terence started his probe. “Wow, that whack against the head must really have warped your brains! Think about it - this room is right at the nose of the ship and has nothing but a three-by-ten-meter wide hypertensile glass wall between it and oblivion. No outer bulkheads, no fire protection, no emergency exits… Cripes, girl, why do you think you survived that cracked skull? This is the first place the medics checked after we clipped the wormhole! This is the biggest hazard zone on the ship!”
Dana sat in shocked silence at this outburst. She had never expected a lecture from Terence, and certainly not here. Terence looked back at her and saw her downcast eyes, dropped the probe and sat next to her.
“I’m sorry. I’m just a little upset. The Designers were supposed to plan for every eventuality, yet never even bothered to put detailed descriptions of the ship’s emergency systems in the database. When I took this job it was because I never wanted anybody to get hurt. But they did.”
“The Designers didn’t bother telling us a lot of things, did they?” There was venom in her voice.
Terence sighed. “No. I suppose not. All I know is that we’re still flying, over a century after the ship was launched. I guess those old geezers knew what they were doing and just didn’t want us screwing up the works. Still after all this… I wonder.”
Dana sat up. “Wonder what?” she probed. Could he be thinking what she suspected?
“Not just me, most of the people on the ship as well. First, the almighty Galaxy Map that the ship flies by was flawed, so we had the accident. We should really be glad it was flawed. I mean, if it weren’t for the accident we would probably just have flown through that wormhole without a second thought. Thing is, according to our recent calculations we would have been crippled. Fatally.”
He continued. “Now that we’re finally looking for them, we’re finding redundant systems all over the ship. Did you know that the central computers are running at a fraction of their full processor capacity? Did you know that there are Hundreds of Zettabytes of scientific and engineering data sitting in the central database that we can’t access until we reach the New World? We wouldn’t even know they were there if we hadn’t searched for and found the flags in the data structure, and we STILL can’t hack past them. It’s just… weird. What did those men take us for? Idiots?”

“Anyway, I’d better get back to work,” Terence said, and went back to his scanning. Dana just sat quietly, staring out at the stars. She should have said something like: “Hey, what’ve I been telling you morons for, like, ever?” She should have gloated at her victory. But she didn’t know what to say. In these two days since she had been released, the entire crew seemed to have gone from being her collective enemy to being her collective partner in rebellion. It was… disconcerting. She looked up and to her left, at what was once her only ally - the Stargazer, which had reinstated itself to its pedestal after the accident.
“Hey, what’s up?” said Terence suddenly. She must’ve zoned out for longer than she thought. He had already finished his scan of the window and had caught her staring at the robot. He walked up to the Stargazer and gave it a curious look. “Interesting robot. What does it do?”
Dana got up and walked over. “Oh, that’s just the Stargazer. It’s been sitting there forever.”
He slowly looked it up and down. “Oh? Does it actually do anything?”
“Sure it does! Sometimes I ask it questions about the stars and it gives me information on them. It’s pretty useful for my Navigation course.”
“Interesting… I never figured that it was fully functional! I always thought it was a statue of some kind, to be honest!”
“Not many people do know what it does. I think I’m the only one who ever bothered to use it.”
“Ah…” Terence stood and stared at the Stargazer a little longer, then turned to fetch his gear. “I’ll be needing your help again, Dana. One last hop to the stores and we’re done!”
She tried to play it cool. “Oh, no problem!”
“Oh, and thanks for all you help, I don’t know what I’d have done without you! Let’s get together sometime!”

*****

“What the hell is this?” Dana Rae stormed. When Terence had said they would get together, this wasn’t what she had in mind. She had walked onto the observation deck to find several men in Engineering uniforms clustered around the Stargazer. Among them were Terence and another man she wished she would never have had to see again. The latter gave her that all-too-familiar condescending look, but it was touched with an edge of gloating.
“Ah! Miss Dana Rae! The infamous grand anarchist! I suppose you feel very good about yourself now that last week’s little outburst has turned out to be valid after all!” It came in a flash: he was the Worldship’s chief engineer, and he had been among those on the bridge on that field-trip day that seemed like an eternity ago. He was bound to be bitter.
“What is going on, Captain?” she repeated.
The Captain slapped Terence on the shoulder. “Ah well, young Terence here has enlightened us as to this poor defective robot. We’re here to put it to good use!”
“Defective? It hasn’t done anything wrong!”
“Nor does it serve any purpose, Miss Rae. Here, let me show you,” he turned to the Stargazer. “Robot, state your function.”
A pause. “This unit’s function is to observe and compare the visible stellar configuration to that in the Galaxy map, as well as provide a verbal interface with the galaxy Map database.”
The Captain shot a victorious glance at Dana, then continued: “And what is the purpose of this comparison?”
Pause. “Comparison is to verify the relative position and heading of the ship from its origin.”
“The computers already track our relative position based on our travel time and known velocity. In other words, you exist to perform a redundant function.”
“Unable to parse statement.”
He gave Dana another evil look. “And its speech recognition is obsolete as well. Oh dear…”

Dana returned the look. “You’re loving this, aren’t you? What about the Will of the Designers? The WorldScheme? What happened to everything having a purpose?”
The Captain laughed. “And what happened to young Dana Rae, champion of the anti-Designers? Surely this past week hasn’t changed your opinions this much? No, I’m afraid this is long past overdue, young lady. Spending time with nobody but this robot has done nothing but fuel your antisocial tendencies, culminating in your unwarranted outburst on the bridge. Antisocial tendencies that now lead you to oppose the very course of action you advocated when it was unpopular!”
She floundered for a second, then shot back her riposte. “I said the people on the ship were useless. All the robots have a purpose.”
“Those are your emotions talking, young lady. Has it perhaps occurred to you that the Designers intended this as a test of our ability to think? To adapt, like any species must to survive? We would surely have died had we not discovered your little friend - we need the metal for the reinforcements to the weaker areas of the Worldship. No, I’m afraid the robot goes, for your personal good as well as the good of the crew.”
With this, the Captain signaled the men, and they picked the Stargazer up and carried it to its doom.

Dana stood there and watched them carry it out. Then, crushed and defeated, she left the room.


*****

The Worldship made the transit the next morning, in a spectacular blaze of no glory at all. Ironically, a large majority of the crew had gathered in the observation area to watch the exciting flight, only to experience a momentary gravitational pull towards the reinforced window and… a new starfield. Dana laughed to herself, a hollow, mirthless laugh.


They had destroyed the Stargazer for nothing.


*****

On the bridge, unbeknown to the colonists, an error message blinked up on the Galaxy Map console. It was quite simple and direct. ‘Origin unknown’.
“What is this?” asked the Captain.
“It seems that the time/velocity algorithms in the Galaxy map are unable to function. Something about having lost the origin…”
The Captain pondered for a minute then realized the problem. “The wormhole. It performed an instantaneous transit, so the Map wasn’t able to extrapolate our current position using the regular time-velocity algorithms. We just have to designate this as our new origin.”
The Navigator got to work typing, but his grin turned to a frown.
“Sir, I can’t. The sensors can’t tell us where we are on the Map either. It says something about needing an optical input for comparison.”

In a moment that seemed like forever, the Captain realized his folly… It would take the computer a million years to extrapolate each star’s location from the radio sensors alone. It would take a man just as long to optically compare snapshots of their current position to a point on the Galaxy map. And there were an infinite number of viewpoints… Something that an independently maintained optical sensor could perform in a second. A sensor that was capable of accessing every point of view in the Galaxy Map in a second and, instantly, comparing it to what it saw. Perhaps a special robot, for which they lacked the materials and knowledge to build.

The most technologically advanced starship ever built, and nowhere to fly it. The collective knowledge of the species and no way to utilize it. No idea where they were, and no idea where they were going.

Not now, not ever.