Crisis Memes - 8 - Thu 07 Aug 2256 10:45

The brighter lights on the Command Deck only served to illuminate the haggard faces of the crew, and the stacks of dirty bio-plaz cups and food trays that littered the area. There was a strong smell of coffee, spicy food and body odour. Amber and Selena were picking their way through the mess, scooping the rubbish into large bin-liners.

Seated in a side area, a group of people were staring intently at images on the screens of portable PC’s. Holding her bin-bag, Amber leaned between them, reaching for empty cups. She noticed that they were all looking at pictures of star systems, flicking between two images that appeared to her to be exactly the same. She had been advised by Selena not to disturb anyone, but finally her curiosity got the better of her.

“What are you looking for?” she asked one of the female officers.

“A needle in a haystack,” came the reply. Then the woman looked up with a surprised expression. “You’re not an AI unit,” she said.

“No,” confirmed Amber. “I’m a volunteer. So, what do you mean by ‘a haystack’?”

The woman smiled. “An old phrase my mother used to use. Just now it means that we’re looking for a moving dot that’s hiding in the middle of a lot of stationary dots.”

“Oh, you’re planet spotting!” Amber said. “We learned about that in astronomy class. Do you know that’s how they discovered some of the planets in the Solar System – just by looking at two pictures taken at different times and spotting the objects that moved in relation to the stars.” She paused, and then added, “It’s kind of an old fashioned way of doing it now though – can’t you get the computer to analyse it.”

“Not at the moment – we didn’t ever expect to get ourselves this badly lost and the program for ‘planet spotting’ as you call it, is probably item six-billion and one on the list to be recovered from the archive, just ahead of the star-maps for this region of the Galaxy.”

Amber sat down in an adjacent chair, her housekeeping duties forgotten.

“Why would you need star maps? I would have thought someone would recognise the constellations from memory even if we are off course.”

“Constellations are three dimensional – their shapes change depending on your point of view.”

“Yes, I understand that. But surely some of the crew must have been in this part of space before.”

“I’ve been on the Tintagel run twice, and I can tell you that we’re not in any part of space that I recognise. The ships navigation system puts us over twenty thousand light years away from Earth – which can’t possibly be correct. It would have taken us 80 Translocations and twenty years to get that far. If it’s true, then ‘off course’ is an understatement. Where would the energy come from to make a translation of that magnitude?”

Amber realised that the woman was thinking out loud rather than expecting an answer.

“Well, wherever we are, we need to find a rocky planet or moon that has accessible heavy metals so we can repair the Star-Drive.”

“No spare parts on board?”

“Maintenance supplies is all we have, and it needs a complete rebuild. That’s economics for you – carrying a complete spare unit isn’t a commercial option at a hundred billion bucks a time. So we need to look for a source of raw materials.” She turned back to her screen.

“How about the droids?” asked Amber, “Can’t they scan the screens quicker than humans?”

“Too sensitive. They pick up every pixel that’s different, and the picture resolution we’re working with isn’t that great. Good old eye-power is what we’re stuck with for now.”

“Can I help?” Amber asked, with no further though about housekeeping duties.

“Well, you seem to know the theory and I guess you can double check some of the images we’re already processed. There’s no harm in a fresh pair of eyes looking them over.” She rubbed her temples. “We’re all pretty tired and could quiet easily have missed something. OK, pull up a seat.”

The process was easy and Amber was soon methodically scanning images. “What happens if I find something?” she asked without taking her eyes of the screen.

“Just shout and I’ll take a look. My name is Zhang Kuo Rui by the way - call me Kuo. If we find something promising, we can allocate some more resources to analyse it further. The priority is to find a rocky planet or moon with a sun bright enough to get the solar panels powered up. Water and vegetation would be a bonus.”

“Do you think we can survive until the star-drive is fixed or we get rescued?”

Kuo shrugged. “One step at a time young lady, and more to the point: do your parents know where you are?”

Selena was close by, holding two bags of waste. “I will update them,” she said.