The Mission

by Phillip Donnelly

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

Suddenly the bedtime voice broke into the video blog of a Gen 1 ‘couple’. The voice, equidistant between male and female, chanted “lietime... lietime... lietime...” and would not stop until Mark lay down on the mattress that had just emerged from the wall. He sighed and looked up at the ceiling video. He had changed to a Gen 3 video blog. Mark could see the BluesPurps in the young man’s eyes, even though this term had not yet been coined. Mark fell asleep as the sad face tried to explain his feelings, a six-foot wide ghost from the past on the ceiling screen above him.

“...When my father’s generation were retired at 55, and the Gen 2’s came to an end, something else died on the Ship. In a way, I sometimes think our very humanity died with them.

“They were the only people who actually knew the First Generation, the Earthlings. The Gen 2’s were the last point of real contact with the Blue Circle, and even if they were not true Earthlings they had at least known real Earth people. Association made them human. They lived and loved in a way that we cannot seem to do anymore. We are losing ourselves.

“This voyage to the Saipods and their cities of glass is going to take 42 Generations, and even as we approach the speed of light, I’m beginning to wonder if we’ll make it. The First Generation focused on technology but now we see the real problems are the monsters of psychology.

“A malaise has gripped Generation 3, and suicide rates reached double figures last week. Each day brings a higher death toll. Some blogs are saying we need to isolate the depressed to stop them spreading their unhappiness. There are even rumours of Mood Camps, but I don’t believe them.

“Emotion Committees are being set up and I’ve applied to join one. We must learn to create a sense of purpose for this generation. Knowing that we are a step in the line to Generation 42 is not enough. We must create something else. I don’t know what, but there has to be a reason, a purpose.

“We are doomed to live now, one of the lost generations, but the future depends on the present. We must believe in the future and we must know our past, but we must also believe in the present.”

* * *

Mark, like every other member of the 5000-strong crew, was awoken by waketime man. His mechanical and unpleasant voice repeated the same phrase over and over until Mark got out of bed: “Wake Time... Wake Time... Wake Time...” He tried to ignore the voice and hold on to the memories of a dream he had just had about walking with a girl with no face through the deserted corridors of the ship; neither of them communicating and both of them searching for something, looking for an exit of some kind, but never finding it.

The dream left his head when he got out of bed and stood up for the Morning Mantra. Like everyone else on the ship he had repeated this mantra at the beginning of every day since before he could remember:

Gen 26, we live in the Heavens,
Honoured is our name
Our Ship has come from distant Sun
Bringing Earthlings into Heaven
Give us this day the will to be
And let us not question our purpose
As we were in the beginning
Humans without end
A-Men

It was Day 5, so he put on his blue Day 5 overalls and went quickly to the canteen, secretly hoping to meet Rea on the way, or at least hoping to be able to sit beside her in the canteen. When he got there, it was already half full and he had difficulty finding her. He realised that it might have been the first time since childhood that he had actually sought someone out, that he had not just sat anywhere and exchanged pleasantries with whoever happened to be at the same table.

When his roaming eye found Rea, Mark’s heart muscles started to behave erratically. He considered going to one of the Doctor Androids immediately to have this anomaly investigated, but then he remembered a First Generation video blog in which a woman had described her heart as ‘missing a beat’ when she saw her husband, and he thought this was probably what had happened to him.

He walked over to the long table at which Rea was sitting and waiting for the Servant Droid to bring her a wakemeal.

When she saw him sitting down she smiled. She smiled in a way he had not seen before, at least not from anyone in Gen 26, and then he returned the same smile, a natural, authentic smile that erupted from within. They both felt nervous for no reason, but also excited. They wanted to say something, but something beyond a pleasantry, something more meaningful than a mantra.

As they stared at each other, communicating with their eyes, an emotocam spotted them making prolonged eye-contact. Its programming told it to alert the director droid whenever it witnessed one of the behaviours that had been seen in Gen 1-3 video blogs but had subsequently disappeared, one of the lost emotions and extinct behaviours.

Director Droid 5 immediately ran a full body scan on Mark and Rea and noticed an elevated heartbeat, raised serotonin levels and even some indicators of sexual excitement, such as nipple arousal and penile extension. It immediately booted up a complete android camera crew and deployed seven floating camera droids around Mark and Rea, determined to get every possible angle, to be ready for every possible close up, to record every single emotion.

A compere for a new Reality Show was also hastily dusted off and booted up. It called itself Dave Droid, and it had last been used on a long-discontinued quiz show called ‘The Droid is Right’ from Gen 8.

Dave approached the couple and immediately introduced himself and the Show.

“Hi there, viewers! I’m Dave Droid, and I’ll be your host for the Ship’s latest Reality Show: The Mark and Rea Show. Hold on to spacesuits viewers ’cos what we got here is a good old-fashioned Lovvvvvvvvvvvvvvvve show! Let’s get to know the lovebirds right away!”

He bent down, stuck a microphone between Mark and Rea, and went on: “So, how do you feel now? Tell the viewers all about your emotions. Share your happiness!”

As he spoke, the physical symptoms of their desire were simultaneously displayed as medical readings at the bottom of the live vidcast, evidence to the viewers that Mark and Rea were really feeling something and that this was not a simulation.

The clear signs of emotional attachment, combined with the titillation of the symptoms of sexual arousal, led to the Mark and Rea Show immediately being syndicated across the entire Ship, and the vidcast was beamed live across all ten giant screens in the communal canteens.

Everyone looked up from the yellow liquid that was always wakemeal on day 5, and stared into the eyes of the couple, immediately recognising something that was missing in their own lives, something that they needed but had never had. They did not need the screens to keep flashing the word ‘love’ in gaudy red letters.

A primordial wordless hunger arose within the viewers and the wakemeals of 5,000 starving emotion vampires lay uneaten on the canteen tables as the emotion suckers glared up at the vidcast screens, ravenously gobbling up the spectacle. Mark and Rea were the new stars of the Ship, living vessels for the emotions everyone on the Ship realised they craved but could not experience directly.

The compare repeated his question to the couple, this time more nervously, noting that the signs of love were fading rapidly in both of them.

“Tell us how you feel. Tell us!”

There was a long pause, and Mark and Rea stared hopelessly at each other. There could be no escape from the cameras now, no privacy, no secrets.

Suddenly, their stare broke apart, their gaze fell to the table, and all emotions were swept away, cauterised, cleansed.

The compare Dave Droid pleaded with Mark and Rea to answer him. “Tell us how you feel! Share your emotions! We need to know. Tell us!”

Mark looked straight into the camera and spoke with a cold and clinical voice, a hollow voice full of BluesPurps, the voice of the lost generations:

“We are Gen 26. We believe in the Past, the Future and the Present. We know where we’ve come from and we know where we’re going. We are Gen 26.”

to Challenge 381...