Dorothy From Kansas, Part 5
I'm writing up a storm this week! Here's part five. It's from Tanaka's perspective. I'm gonna be changing perspective frequently as the story goes on. In fact, it's gonna be a while before we see the story through Faye's eyes again. Don't worry, though, we'll get back there. For now, you get the world as Tanaka sees it. Next you'll get Miguel. You'll find out who he is later. OK, more story!
CAPTAIN’S LOG : STARDATE : JANUARY 22, 2100
Today was the day when it all began. All the work I have been doing, all the research I have been undertaking, all the plans I had been making, they all came down to today. Today was the day I had been planning for ever since Faye first woke up.
I dropped in on Faye two days after our trip to RetroConn. I had stopped in on her the day before, but she seemed preoccupied with something. She was trying on outfits or some such nonsense. RetroConn was a wonderful time, but I would have had more fun if Faye hadn’t run off by herself for so long. She seemed to have an idea in her head that just because a place was virtual, it was not dangerous or you could not get hurt. I hope for her sake she was not proven wrong.
I linked into her simulation and appeared on the White House lawn. Faye seemed to be sticking with using the White House as her dwelling. It seemed an odd choice. There was always so much empty, unused space. Another odd aspect of it was that no matter how many times I tell myself it is a simulation, it always feels strange to walk up to the front door of the White House and knock. Nevertheless, that is what I did, and the knock thundered throughout the building just as she and I had programmed.
“Um... who is it?” she asked, sounding strangely frightened. The mere question was puzzling and unsettling. Who would she be expecting to drop by here besides me?
“It is Tanaka,” I yelled back.
“I’ll be right down,” she replied. Of course, she could have simply teleported straight to the door, but like many who were new to the sims, Faye preferred to move about as though she was in the real world. I did not mind. It was cute, really, and it did not take her that long to get from the White House bedroom to the front door.
When Faye did get to the door, she was a peculiar sight. She was wearing a White House bathrobe, she was soaked from head to toe, and she was drying her hair with a towel. She had obviously been in the shower, which struck me as peculiar.
“Why were you taking a shower?” I asked. “You do know you do not sweat or gather dirt or anything like that, right?”
“I know,” she muttered, looking a bit shy. “It’s just that sometimes you feel like a shower.” She was obviously embarrassed at being caught in such a pointless activity, so I decided to leave it alone. I did have another question about her behavior, though.
“Why did you ask who was at the door when I knocked? Who else would come by here besides me?”
“Well,” she said, still seeming a bit shy, “I met some people at RetroConn, and I gave them my contact information, so it was possible I might have had some other visitors.” As much as I wanted to move directly into my presentation, this was an issue that needed to be addressed immediately.
“You gave away the web address for my server without asking me?” Faye then stop looking shy. In fact, she glared at me with an anger that I had never seen from her before.
“Yea, well,” she growled, “I guess I don’t think of it as your server so much as I think of it as my home.” Sweet Faye. She still did not quite understand how things worked.
“Your home,” I explained, “Is a simulation running on my server. There are many, many other files and programs running on the same server as you, and when you give someone access to my server, you give them a potential backdoor to hack into my other files, some of which are quite sensitive.”
“So you’re telling me I can’t have visitors?” She still had a very confrontational mood about her. I wondered what had gotten into her, why she was acting this way.
“You can have visitors, but we still have to keep my files secure.” I thought for a moment. None of this would be an issue once Faye and I embarked on our adventure together, but I could see that this was something she wanted settled immediately, and I always tried to give her what she wanted. “I tell you what,” I said. “I’ll get another server, a dedicated server, that will only run you and your programs. Then, you can give that contact information out to whoever you wish. You will just have to email your new friends and give them your new web address if they choose to visit you. Does that work? Will that make you happy?”
“Won’t that make me just as vulnerable?”
“No,” I explained. “You are a Ghost. You are an extremely complicated program. Plus, I’ve quantum encrypted you for your protection. It would take someone at least a year to hack into your program, and they would need to have another quantum computer.”
“Quantum encryption,” she said, puzzling over the words. “You had my whole program quantum encrypted?”
“Yes, of course I did. I want you to be safe.”
“Oh. Well, thank you. Thank you very much.” There was a long pause after that before I decided to call Faye on her confusion.
“You have no idea what quantum encryption is, do you, Faye?” Faye laughed slightly and covered her mouth, just a tiny bit embarrassed.
“No,” she admitted, “But it sounds very impressive. It’s quantum. It sounds like something that would be expensive and difficult and all that. Quantum.”
“You deserve the best protection I can give you. I want to make sure you are safe.” Faye then looked up at me and her lip quivered slightly. She looked like she was about to cry. Then, she ran over and hugged me very tightly, like she was hanging on for her life.
“I’m sorry, Tanaka,” she cried. “I should have listened to you. I should have stayed safe.” Obviously, I was worried. Something had happened to her.
“Faye, what is wrong? Why are you crying? Did someone hurt you?” Faye pulled away and turned her back on me.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she muttered. “I just want you to know that I’m sorry and I should have listened.” I was tempted to press the issue, but Faye seemed like she had her mind made up. In any case, she decided to change the topic.
“Tanaka, I have to ask you something?”
“Of course,” I said. “You can ask me anything, Faye. What is on your mind?”
“How many bioroids and SAIs do you own?” This again. Faye kept getting caught up in these things. She was extremely uncomfortable with the concept of owning sentient beings. I can understand it, if I had been transported straight from 2019 to today, I would probably have similar confusion. You really have to have grown up in an era that has them to understand the ownership of manufactured creatures. Still, this argument was getting tiring. I had been really hoping that Faye and I would not have to have this conversation again.
“Well, Faye,” I sighed. “That is complicated. Do you mean how many do I own personally or how many are owned by Soong Heavy Robotics?”
“The grand total,” Faye demanded. “How many do you and your company own?” I shrugged my shoulders and looked to the floor. I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to move on to my announcement, and I was thoroughly annoyed by this sidetrack.
“I don’t know, Faye,” I admitted. “Personally, I only own one bioroid. My secretary model, Tanya. I don’t own any SAIs. As for my corporation, I have no idea. I have long since stopped taking part in the day to day management of Soong. In all honesty, Soong probably owns a lot of both, but I don’t have a number for you. Then it depends on whether or not you count the times we contract work out to another company that uses bioroid or SAI labor. It would be hard to come up with a specific number.” I paused and waited for her inevitable protest.
“How can you be OK with that?” she whined. “How can you be OK with owning people? How can you be OK with slavery?” There was that word again. Slavery. Faye threw that word at me every time we had this conversation.
“It’s not slavery,” I explained, yet again, “if the being in question is happy! Any bioroid can travel to Europe and get full citizenship, Europeans are big on bioroid liberation. Bioroids who get to Europe are automatically considered refugees and allowed to live as free citizens. Very few actually go there. You know why? Because they’ve been designed from birth to be happy with their situation! That’s even more true with SAIs. We design their thought processes from the ground up. They’re all very happy.”
“They're better off as slaves,” Faye yelled back at me. She was more angry about this than usual. “That’s what people have been saying about slaves since the beginning of time, you know that?”
“But this time it’s actually true!” Faye turned her back on me and sighed. I really did not want to deal with this. I had much more important things to talk about.
“Faye, I don’t want to fight. Can we please talk about something else? I have something fantastic to show you.” Faye turned around and looked at me. She was clearly still upset, but she didn’t like arguing with me anymore than I liked arguing with her.
“All right,” she said. “But this conversation isn’t over. Understood?”
“Understood.” She then sighed, took a deep breath, and looked up at me, shaking her shoulders as if she was trying to shake off the argument.
“So,” she said, smiling again. “What is it you have to show me?” I smiled. The moment was finally here.
I changed the simulation from the White House to the bridge of the Bebop-Maru. I had modeled the bridge after that of the Next Generation Enterprise, modified for zero gravity, of course. I was hoping she would notice. She and I started floating in the zero gravity environment.
“Whoa!” Faye yelled. “Tanaka, you gotta tell me when you’re gonna turn off the gravity! I’m wearing a bathrobe, for Christ’s sake!” Faye transformed her clothing into a tight t-shirt and jeans more appropriate for zero-G. I probably should have thought of that.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Where are we?” Faye asked. I got excited. This was where it all started.
“This is the bridge of the USV Bebop-Maru. My spaceship.”
“You have a spaceship?!” Faye yelled, excited.
“No,” I admitted. “But I could. This is a simulation of what I’m planning to build. It’s a good ship! It has an acceleration rating of 0.04 G, and it can do 140 kilometers per second. It’s fairly well armored and it has three light laser towers. Light lasers were the only ones I could get on the civilian market.” I took a deep breath before I carried on. “I want to build this, and I want it to be our ship.”
“Ours?” Faye asked, looking extremely confused. “What are you talking about? Why are you talking about building a spaceship?”
“Well, when I say ours, I mean I will be captain, and you will be first mate.”
“OK,” she said. “I’m still confused. What is the ship for?” I was really hoping for that question.
“It’s fast, it’s well armed, and it has a brig onboard. It’s a ship for bounty hunting, like the Bebop! Hence the name!” Faye floated there and started at me for a very long time. Then she finally spoke.
“You want you and I to become bounty hunters?” I was worried. She didn’t seem to understand what a fantastic idea this was.
“Yes,” I said, simply. She paused to think, once again, for a very long time.
“You are a 120 year old man, and I am 80 years out of date. Also, neither of us have any experience in law enforcement whatsoever. This seems like a terrible idea.” I wasn’t prepared for this. I thought Faye would embrace the journey we were about to go on. Apparently, I would have to convince her.
“Faye, we live in a world not unlike that of the world of Cowboy Bebop. Space is lawless, and needs bounty hunters to track people down. We have the chance to live in the world we’ve been dreaming and fantasizing about!”
“There’s a difference between watching that stuff on TV and actually living it out, Tanaka! This is crazy! We would have no idea what we were doing!”
“We could learn!” I said, trying hard to persuade her. “I’m not talking about us leaving tomorrow. The ships isn’t even built yet, we’re just floating around in a blueprint. I’d have to sell off a lot of my assets in order to afford to build this, it’s not something I could do quickly.”
“Wait a minute,” she asked. “How much of your assets?” I wasn’t sure what difference this made.
“Well, pretty much everything. I’d have to sell my interest in Soong, my private jet, empty out my stock portfolio... pretty much everything besides my house.”
“So you wouldn’t own anyone anymore, then, would you?” Now I saw what she was getting at.
“Well, I would still want to keep Tanya, “ I said. “Tanya is like family, and she has nowhere else to go. Everyone else, yes. I would no longer own anyone.” She seemed to be thinking it over, slightly. That was definitely a selling point for her. I decided to press the issue.
“Faye, all my life, I’ve worked a normal, boring, mundane job, and I’ve dreamed about living a heroic life. I’ve dreamed about adventuring. Since you woke up, I’ve been thinking about my childhood, and the urge to live this life got stronger and stronger. The more I thought about it, the more I thought ‘Why not?’. I’m 120 years old. I have far more years behind me than I do in front of me. I want to spend the rest of my life living my fantasy. I want us to be heroes.” That line seemed to strike something in her. She looked off as she was remembering something.
“I am not Kirk, Spock, Luke, Buck, Flash or even Arthur fucking Dent,” she muttered. I smiled. We played this game occasionally.
“No, you are John Crichton!” I yelled back at her. “I got that one.”
“What?” she asked, looking confused.
“Your quote. It’s from Farscape. John Crichton said it. I win.”
“Yea,” she said, looking confused. “Yea, he did. That’s weird.” I had no idea what she was talking about, but she seemed distracted. “”He doesn’t want me to do this.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Never mind,” she said. “Let’s suppose, just for a moment, that I’m considering this. You’re a very old man, Tanaka. Wouldn’t this be very unsafe for you? For that matter, wouldn’t it be unsafe for me? I’m not old, but I would have no idea what i was doing.”
“I would have a Nightingale system installed in my body. That’s basically a cybernetic nurse. It will monitor my heart rate, brain function, breathing, everything. It can administer the equivalent of CPR and all forms of first aid. It’ll be like having a trained nurse following me everywhere. I’d be totally safe, or at least as safe as anyone else. As for you, we haven’t built your body yet! I could make you the most powerful, badass robot out there! You would probably be the safest one among us.” She started to smile at that.
“I have to admit,” she said. “I don’t really have anything else I was planning to do with my life. It seems as good a career as any, I guess. And it does sound fun. Still, it seems a little crazy.” I wanted to push her further, but as much as I wanted this, as much as I knew it was our destiny, I needed her to know everything when she made her decision.
“There is one thing you should know,” I mumbled under my breath, thinking I was shooting my plan in the foot. “Once we fly away from Earth, you will not be able to connect to the Net anymore. Information can only travel at light speed, so when we get far enough into space, real time communication won’t be possible. We could not go to places like RetroConn again.”
“So I would be disconnected from the Net, and people on the Net, they wouldn’t be able to contact me at all, would they?” She seemed almost excited by this.
“No. You would have to say good by to all of your new friends.”
“I’ll do it!” she exclaimed, suddenly.
“Really?!”
“Yes,” she yelled as she floated to me and hugged me tightly. “Let’s do it, Tanaka. Let’s get a spaceship, fly away, and never look back.” Success! Then she hit me with the catch. “I have a few conditions, though.”
“I am listening, Faye.”
“We’re going to need a crew, right?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “Neither one of us knows how to fly a spaceship.”
“OK. If we’re going to do this, I don’t want anyone on our ship to be owned. I want you to hire a crew and pay them a salary. I want everyone on the ship to be free.” That put a dent in my plans. I had wanted to create my fantasy crew to match my fantasy ship.
“Faye, I cannot do that for everything, we are going to need an AI.”
“If the crew isn’t free,” she said, turning her back on me. “Then I’m out.”
“OK,” I said. “I’ll hire an AI from Europe. AIs are full citizens there, I can hire an AI who has full citizenship rights and pay him a salary like anyone else. Will that make you happy?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “If we can do that, then I’m onboard.” She hugged me once again. I hugged her for a while, then I started thinking about what hiring a crew meant. What I would have to do, or rather, what she would have to do. I didn’t want to put her in this position, I wanted to keep her safe, by my side, but I did not see another way.
“There is something you should know, Faye,” I said, letting her go. “If we are going to hire a crew, we should hire people who have been in space, or at least on Mars. We want people who will know there way around a spaceship.”
“Yea. So?”
“Well, I’m flesh and blood. It can take me weeks or even months and a lot of money to travel across the solar system, but you, you are digital. I can send you to Mars in a matter of minutes. I could send you out as far as Saturn and it would only take a few hours. Faye, if we are going to hire a crew, I’m afraid you will have to do it. Without me. I’m afraid I will have to send your program around the solar system to conduct interviews. Do you think you can handle that?” Faye looked a little scared, but excited at the same time.
“You think I’m ready to do that on my own?”
“No,” I admitted, flatly. “I would want to teach you more about the solar system and train you for at least a month. I do not think you are ready yet. But I think you will be.” Faye smiled back at me.
“OK,” she said. “I’ll do it.” She then made a strange motion with her legs that looked like she was trying to jump for joy but forgot she was in a zero gravity environment. “I’m gonna see the solar system!” She yelled, excited. “I’m gonna fly through space at the speed of light!” Sweet Faye. I loved being around here. She made everything about my world, everything I took for granted seem like a fantastic miracle. She then grabbed my hand tried to pull me towards one of the doors. She needed more practice moving in zero G. “Come on,” She said. “Show me around the rest of our ship.”
And with that I took my first officer on a tour of the Bebop-Maru. Phase One was complete. Everything was falling into place. In a matter of months, I will be a Starship Captain.
CAPTAIN’S LOG : STARDATE : JANUARY 22, 2100
Today was the day when it all began. All the work I have been doing, all the research I have been undertaking, all the plans I had been making, they all came down to today. Today was the day I had been planning for ever since Faye first woke up.
I dropped in on Faye two days after our trip to RetroConn. I had stopped in on her the day before, but she seemed preoccupied with something. She was trying on outfits or some such nonsense. RetroConn was a wonderful time, but I would have had more fun if Faye hadn’t run off by herself for so long. She seemed to have an idea in her head that just because a place was virtual, it was not dangerous or you could not get hurt. I hope for her sake she was not proven wrong.
I linked into her simulation and appeared on the White House lawn. Faye seemed to be sticking with using the White House as her dwelling. It seemed an odd choice. There was always so much empty, unused space. Another odd aspect of it was that no matter how many times I tell myself it is a simulation, it always feels strange to walk up to the front door of the White House and knock. Nevertheless, that is what I did, and the knock thundered throughout the building just as she and I had programmed.
“Um... who is it?” she asked, sounding strangely frightened. The mere question was puzzling and unsettling. Who would she be expecting to drop by here besides me?
“It is Tanaka,” I yelled back.
“I’ll be right down,” she replied. Of course, she could have simply teleported straight to the door, but like many who were new to the sims, Faye preferred to move about as though she was in the real world. I did not mind. It was cute, really, and it did not take her that long to get from the White House bedroom to the front door.
When Faye did get to the door, she was a peculiar sight. She was wearing a White House bathrobe, she was soaked from head to toe, and she was drying her hair with a towel. She had obviously been in the shower, which struck me as peculiar.
“Why were you taking a shower?” I asked. “You do know you do not sweat or gather dirt or anything like that, right?”
“I know,” she muttered, looking a bit shy. “It’s just that sometimes you feel like a shower.” She was obviously embarrassed at being caught in such a pointless activity, so I decided to leave it alone. I did have another question about her behavior, though.
“Why did you ask who was at the door when I knocked? Who else would come by here besides me?”
“Well,” she said, still seeming a bit shy, “I met some people at RetroConn, and I gave them my contact information, so it was possible I might have had some other visitors.” As much as I wanted to move directly into my presentation, this was an issue that needed to be addressed immediately.
“You gave away the web address for my server without asking me?” Faye then stop looking shy. In fact, she glared at me with an anger that I had never seen from her before.
“Yea, well,” she growled, “I guess I don’t think of it as your server so much as I think of it as my home.” Sweet Faye. She still did not quite understand how things worked.
“Your home,” I explained, “Is a simulation running on my server. There are many, many other files and programs running on the same server as you, and when you give someone access to my server, you give them a potential backdoor to hack into my other files, some of which are quite sensitive.”
“So you’re telling me I can’t have visitors?” She still had a very confrontational mood about her. I wondered what had gotten into her, why she was acting this way.
“You can have visitors, but we still have to keep my files secure.” I thought for a moment. None of this would be an issue once Faye and I embarked on our adventure together, but I could see that this was something she wanted settled immediately, and I always tried to give her what she wanted. “I tell you what,” I said. “I’ll get another server, a dedicated server, that will only run you and your programs. Then, you can give that contact information out to whoever you wish. You will just have to email your new friends and give them your new web address if they choose to visit you. Does that work? Will that make you happy?”
“Won’t that make me just as vulnerable?”
“No,” I explained. “You are a Ghost. You are an extremely complicated program. Plus, I’ve quantum encrypted you for your protection. It would take someone at least a year to hack into your program, and they would need to have another quantum computer.”
“Quantum encryption,” she said, puzzling over the words. “You had my whole program quantum encrypted?”
“Yes, of course I did. I want you to be safe.”
“Oh. Well, thank you. Thank you very much.” There was a long pause after that before I decided to call Faye on her confusion.
“You have no idea what quantum encryption is, do you, Faye?” Faye laughed slightly and covered her mouth, just a tiny bit embarrassed.
“No,” she admitted, “But it sounds very impressive. It’s quantum. It sounds like something that would be expensive and difficult and all that. Quantum.”
“You deserve the best protection I can give you. I want to make sure you are safe.” Faye then looked up at me and her lip quivered slightly. She looked like she was about to cry. Then, she ran over and hugged me very tightly, like she was hanging on for her life.
“I’m sorry, Tanaka,” she cried. “I should have listened to you. I should have stayed safe.” Obviously, I was worried. Something had happened to her.
“Faye, what is wrong? Why are you crying? Did someone hurt you?” Faye pulled away and turned her back on me.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she muttered. “I just want you to know that I’m sorry and I should have listened.” I was tempted to press the issue, but Faye seemed like she had her mind made up. In any case, she decided to change the topic.
“Tanaka, I have to ask you something?”
“Of course,” I said. “You can ask me anything, Faye. What is on your mind?”
“How many bioroids and SAIs do you own?” This again. Faye kept getting caught up in these things. She was extremely uncomfortable with the concept of owning sentient beings. I can understand it, if I had been transported straight from 2019 to today, I would probably have similar confusion. You really have to have grown up in an era that has them to understand the ownership of manufactured creatures. Still, this argument was getting tiring. I had been really hoping that Faye and I would not have to have this conversation again.
“Well, Faye,” I sighed. “That is complicated. Do you mean how many do I own personally or how many are owned by Soong Heavy Robotics?”
“The grand total,” Faye demanded. “How many do you and your company own?” I shrugged my shoulders and looked to the floor. I didn’t want to do this. I wanted to move on to my announcement, and I was thoroughly annoyed by this sidetrack.
“I don’t know, Faye,” I admitted. “Personally, I only own one bioroid. My secretary model, Tanya. I don’t own any SAIs. As for my corporation, I have no idea. I have long since stopped taking part in the day to day management of Soong. In all honesty, Soong probably owns a lot of both, but I don’t have a number for you. Then it depends on whether or not you count the times we contract work out to another company that uses bioroid or SAI labor. It would be hard to come up with a specific number.” I paused and waited for her inevitable protest.
“How can you be OK with that?” she whined. “How can you be OK with owning people? How can you be OK with slavery?” There was that word again. Slavery. Faye threw that word at me every time we had this conversation.
“It’s not slavery,” I explained, yet again, “if the being in question is happy! Any bioroid can travel to Europe and get full citizenship, Europeans are big on bioroid liberation. Bioroids who get to Europe are automatically considered refugees and allowed to live as free citizens. Very few actually go there. You know why? Because they’ve been designed from birth to be happy with their situation! That’s even more true with SAIs. We design their thought processes from the ground up. They’re all very happy.”
“They're better off as slaves,” Faye yelled back at me. She was more angry about this than usual. “That’s what people have been saying about slaves since the beginning of time, you know that?”
“But this time it’s actually true!” Faye turned her back on me and sighed. I really did not want to deal with this. I had much more important things to talk about.
“Faye, I don’t want to fight. Can we please talk about something else? I have something fantastic to show you.” Faye turned around and looked at me. She was clearly still upset, but she didn’t like arguing with me anymore than I liked arguing with her.
“All right,” she said. “But this conversation isn’t over. Understood?”
“Understood.” She then sighed, took a deep breath, and looked up at me, shaking her shoulders as if she was trying to shake off the argument.
“So,” she said, smiling again. “What is it you have to show me?” I smiled. The moment was finally here.
I changed the simulation from the White House to the bridge of the Bebop-Maru. I had modeled the bridge after that of the Next Generation Enterprise, modified for zero gravity, of course. I was hoping she would notice. She and I started floating in the zero gravity environment.
“Whoa!” Faye yelled. “Tanaka, you gotta tell me when you’re gonna turn off the gravity! I’m wearing a bathrobe, for Christ’s sake!” Faye transformed her clothing into a tight t-shirt and jeans more appropriate for zero-G. I probably should have thought of that.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Where are we?” Faye asked. I got excited. This was where it all started.
“This is the bridge of the USV Bebop-Maru. My spaceship.”
“You have a spaceship?!” Faye yelled, excited.
“No,” I admitted. “But I could. This is a simulation of what I’m planning to build. It’s a good ship! It has an acceleration rating of 0.04 G, and it can do 140 kilometers per second. It’s fairly well armored and it has three light laser towers. Light lasers were the only ones I could get on the civilian market.” I took a deep breath before I carried on. “I want to build this, and I want it to be our ship.”
“Ours?” Faye asked, looking extremely confused. “What are you talking about? Why are you talking about building a spaceship?”
“Well, when I say ours, I mean I will be captain, and you will be first mate.”
“OK,” she said. “I’m still confused. What is the ship for?” I was really hoping for that question.
“It’s fast, it’s well armed, and it has a brig onboard. It’s a ship for bounty hunting, like the Bebop! Hence the name!” Faye floated there and started at me for a very long time. Then she finally spoke.
“You want you and I to become bounty hunters?” I was worried. She didn’t seem to understand what a fantastic idea this was.
“Yes,” I said, simply. She paused to think, once again, for a very long time.
“You are a 120 year old man, and I am 80 years out of date. Also, neither of us have any experience in law enforcement whatsoever. This seems like a terrible idea.” I wasn’t prepared for this. I thought Faye would embrace the journey we were about to go on. Apparently, I would have to convince her.
“Faye, we live in a world not unlike that of the world of Cowboy Bebop. Space is lawless, and needs bounty hunters to track people down. We have the chance to live in the world we’ve been dreaming and fantasizing about!”
“There’s a difference between watching that stuff on TV and actually living it out, Tanaka! This is crazy! We would have no idea what we were doing!”
“We could learn!” I said, trying hard to persuade her. “I’m not talking about us leaving tomorrow. The ships isn’t even built yet, we’re just floating around in a blueprint. I’d have to sell off a lot of my assets in order to afford to build this, it’s not something I could do quickly.”
“Wait a minute,” she asked. “How much of your assets?” I wasn’t sure what difference this made.
“Well, pretty much everything. I’d have to sell my interest in Soong, my private jet, empty out my stock portfolio... pretty much everything besides my house.”
“So you wouldn’t own anyone anymore, then, would you?” Now I saw what she was getting at.
“Well, I would still want to keep Tanya, “ I said. “Tanya is like family, and she has nowhere else to go. Everyone else, yes. I would no longer own anyone.” She seemed to be thinking it over, slightly. That was definitely a selling point for her. I decided to press the issue.
“Faye, all my life, I’ve worked a normal, boring, mundane job, and I’ve dreamed about living a heroic life. I’ve dreamed about adventuring. Since you woke up, I’ve been thinking about my childhood, and the urge to live this life got stronger and stronger. The more I thought about it, the more I thought ‘Why not?’. I’m 120 years old. I have far more years behind me than I do in front of me. I want to spend the rest of my life living my fantasy. I want us to be heroes.” That line seemed to strike something in her. She looked off as she was remembering something.
“I am not Kirk, Spock, Luke, Buck, Flash or even Arthur fucking Dent,” she muttered. I smiled. We played this game occasionally.
“No, you are John Crichton!” I yelled back at her. “I got that one.”
“What?” she asked, looking confused.
“Your quote. It’s from Farscape. John Crichton said it. I win.”
“Yea,” she said, looking confused. “Yea, he did. That’s weird.” I had no idea what she was talking about, but she seemed distracted. “”He doesn’t want me to do this.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Never mind,” she said. “Let’s suppose, just for a moment, that I’m considering this. You’re a very old man, Tanaka. Wouldn’t this be very unsafe for you? For that matter, wouldn’t it be unsafe for me? I’m not old, but I would have no idea what i was doing.”
“I would have a Nightingale system installed in my body. That’s basically a cybernetic nurse. It will monitor my heart rate, brain function, breathing, everything. It can administer the equivalent of CPR and all forms of first aid. It’ll be like having a trained nurse following me everywhere. I’d be totally safe, or at least as safe as anyone else. As for you, we haven’t built your body yet! I could make you the most powerful, badass robot out there! You would probably be the safest one among us.” She started to smile at that.
“I have to admit,” she said. “I don’t really have anything else I was planning to do with my life. It seems as good a career as any, I guess. And it does sound fun. Still, it seems a little crazy.” I wanted to push her further, but as much as I wanted this, as much as I knew it was our destiny, I needed her to know everything when she made her decision.
“There is one thing you should know,” I mumbled under my breath, thinking I was shooting my plan in the foot. “Once we fly away from Earth, you will not be able to connect to the Net anymore. Information can only travel at light speed, so when we get far enough into space, real time communication won’t be possible. We could not go to places like RetroConn again.”
“So I would be disconnected from the Net, and people on the Net, they wouldn’t be able to contact me at all, would they?” She seemed almost excited by this.
“No. You would have to say good by to all of your new friends.”
“I’ll do it!” she exclaimed, suddenly.
“Really?!”
“Yes,” she yelled as she floated to me and hugged me tightly. “Let’s do it, Tanaka. Let’s get a spaceship, fly away, and never look back.” Success! Then she hit me with the catch. “I have a few conditions, though.”
“I am listening, Faye.”
“We’re going to need a crew, right?”
“Well, yes,” I said. “Neither one of us knows how to fly a spaceship.”
“OK. If we’re going to do this, I don’t want anyone on our ship to be owned. I want you to hire a crew and pay them a salary. I want everyone on the ship to be free.” That put a dent in my plans. I had wanted to create my fantasy crew to match my fantasy ship.
“Faye, I cannot do that for everything, we are going to need an AI.”
“If the crew isn’t free,” she said, turning her back on me. “Then I’m out.”
“OK,” I said. “I’ll hire an AI from Europe. AIs are full citizens there, I can hire an AI who has full citizenship rights and pay him a salary like anyone else. Will that make you happy?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “If we can do that, then I’m onboard.” She hugged me once again. I hugged her for a while, then I started thinking about what hiring a crew meant. What I would have to do, or rather, what she would have to do. I didn’t want to put her in this position, I wanted to keep her safe, by my side, but I did not see another way.
“There is something you should know, Faye,” I said, letting her go. “If we are going to hire a crew, we should hire people who have been in space, or at least on Mars. We want people who will know there way around a spaceship.”
“Yea. So?”
“Well, I’m flesh and blood. It can take me weeks or even months and a lot of money to travel across the solar system, but you, you are digital. I can send you to Mars in a matter of minutes. I could send you out as far as Saturn and it would only take a few hours. Faye, if we are going to hire a crew, I’m afraid you will have to do it. Without me. I’m afraid I will have to send your program around the solar system to conduct interviews. Do you think you can handle that?” Faye looked a little scared, but excited at the same time.
“You think I’m ready to do that on my own?”
“No,” I admitted, flatly. “I would want to teach you more about the solar system and train you for at least a month. I do not think you are ready yet. But I think you will be.” Faye smiled back at me.
“OK,” she said. “I’ll do it.” She then made a strange motion with her legs that looked like she was trying to jump for joy but forgot she was in a zero gravity environment. “I’m gonna see the solar system!” She yelled, excited. “I’m gonna fly through space at the speed of light!” Sweet Faye. I loved being around here. She made everything about my world, everything I took for granted seem like a fantastic miracle. She then grabbed my hand tried to pull me towards one of the doors. She needed more practice moving in zero G. “Come on,” She said. “Show me around the rest of our ship.”
And with that I took my first officer on a tour of the Bebop-Maru. Phase One was complete. Everything was falling into place. In a matter of months, I will be a Starship Captain.