CANAISIS ∞ Chronicle One: The Last Living Ship ∞ 1: A New Mission

11 ∞ Talking Circles

Day 00002 Mission Nilex

«That felt good—didn't it, Captain?» Canaisis' voice in his mind had a teasingly coy tone to it.

He smiled. «You know me too well. But that slingshot was a bit much.»

«For whom?» she shot back.

«You know what I mean, Canaisis. We don't need to leave on a bad note, and I'm sure Yonshue will turn purple when his message arrives.»

«I can replay close-ups of people looking out windows as we passed over Luna, Captain. It will pass the time while we wait, and the expressions on their faces are priceless.»

He smiled again, but he wasn't happy with Canaisis' lack of remorse. "Alright, we've had our moment of showing off. Save the replay until we see what repercussions come of it. We can watch it later one night with Ahmid and his crew. In the meantime, bring up your engine analysis."

"Aye, Captain."

Both his personal monitors and the main monitor lit up. A multitude of windows opened up with data analyses and charted sensor records.

He leaned back to get comfortable as he started to get a grasp on the data. The temperature stats amazed him—the exhaust was considerably hotter than the Sol system's own star. That was something the People would no doubt notice. Canaisis' original engines could never have produced this kind of thrust-mass ratio.

Someone back there on Earth would be looking into archived records at this very moment. Not that there were many records left after The War. Canaisis truly was a lost technology. All of her sisters had become hostile or gone insane, according to the reports he'd read at the time. Most had been put down by their crews, but a couple had simply disappeared somewhere in the Long Years, never to be heard from again.

Canaisis had never given him reason to doubt her, but then, he was dealing with an Intelligence in many ways beyond a Human's. It was that very Intelligence that had interested him when he took command of Canaisis. It intrigued him to watch her learn, to get to know her as she grew both mentally and physically.

He remembered the first time she'd made it clear that they no longer needed a crew, that she had full control of all systems. He'd been alarmed at first, but she'd been patient with him. They'd talked for months on the matter. He could understand her need for Independence, and she'd been explicit in her desire to continue the Mission. In the end, it became an inevitable necessity instead—his mind shied away from those memories.

But, she always followed his every command. It was just that she didn't always do it the way he expected. Then he'd realized it wasn't her fault—it was his. The problem wasn't in Canaisis' solutions—it was in how he'd asked the questions. Over time, he'd gotten to know her and, in turn, she'd gotten to know him.

He was in command of an Intelligence that didn't think like a Human, didn't see things the same way, or even with the same senses as a Human did. She observed this reality with more senses than he could comprehend. She had near unlimited perfect memory, and more neurons and synaptic connections than any Human. And her whole nervous system was quantum-entangled throughout the entire ship, so her processor speed was near instantaneous.

What do neutrinos feel like when they skate along her magnetic fields? Gareth couldn't imagine what it was like to be like her—and yet here she was, his ship. She sailed at his command. She was always there for him at just a thought. She laughed with him, she put up with his moods. She gave him solitude when he needed it and gave him company when he needed it and didn't want it. He did his best to understand her, and to help her understand Humanity.