Reality – the Fragile Frontier.
Real Date 27 February
2001.
These were the voyages
of the Star Family.
This is report of
proceedings from the onboard DataCore Null019580
The ship, Wedded Bliss,
has been searching the Reality Galaxy now for nigh on 15 years, encountering
strange peoples, fighting staggering battles and surviving absolute
destitution. It has clung together as a
unit despite all the odds.
Monn Star, the captain
of our ship, succumbed to stress induced Spaced Out Sickness, and caused
several episodes of internal bickering that have put the crew on extreme
edge. His outbursts and peculiar
mannerisms were at first tolerated by the crew, but as they became worse, they
tried to ignore him and pretend he wasn’t there. But as it is with all captains, well or sick,
they must have control. Finally, after a
period of intense internal self-commitment, Monn Star hyper Fantasised himself
into a catatonic overload, and was whisked off to the sick bay to be cared for
by the ships superb facilities, coupled with my expert system knowledge.
Sunn Star, the
navigator and command equal, had been running things for some time and had no
problems fulfilling Monn Stars duties, as well as carrying out her own. But I noticed that even though she was
manifested as the 2 I/c, the ease with which she took command suggested that
she had in fact been in command all along. Monn was nothing but a figured head,
with a head full of irrelevant professional information, as far as the crew was
concerned.
As a machine, I found
this bemusing. How could humans treat
each other so offhandedly? In my
cognisant thought banks based on logic and computation, this interaction did no
make any sense. Sure, Sunn was more than
qualified to drive the ship, as Monn was also, but the sudden diminishment of
care and responsibility to her former partner puzzled me. To put it mildly, it did not compute. And then I remembered my circuits weren’t
wired for a Reason and Understanding process and I was adrift solely on my
logic drives. Damn!
Monn got better, thanks
to the sickbay’s myriad of complicated functions and to a little enlightenment
from some stellar force. Although he
didn’t make a full recovery, the drug the sickbay put him on returned most of
his life to him. On the insistence of
Sunn, to aid his recovery, Monn was sent to the Quiet Quarters to further aid
his recovery and in the solitude of these quarters, with its vast plasdome
window, he spent the next few weeks meditating and staring out into
Reality. The galaxy’s vastness assisted
his thought process, as I monitored him from the various sensors in the room,
and he seemed to understand his situation and had taken a large grasp of what
he saw in that huge empty space.
When he thought he was
as fully recovered as he was ever going to be, he left Quiet Quarters and made
his way to the bridge, to resume his normal duties, and to once again become
captain of the Wedded Bliss. Here again
human nature surprised me. Sunn Star,
and siblings Moon Star and Rock Star, had been running the ship quite nicely in
his absence, and decided that in view of his recent illness, and the pain that
he had caused during the period leading up to his incarceration, they no longer
needed him, and they had altered their course in Reality and were now headed
for the far off Fantasy Galaxy, which sits adjacent to the Reality Galaxy. They suggested Monn took one of the Wedded
Bliss’s many shuttle pods, and head out on his own, as he was now surplus to
requirements.
Monn could understand
their reasoning, but he found the logic flawed, as I did. Unable to budge the reticent members of the
crew out of their plan, especially Sunn and Moon, he acquiesced and reluctantly
set off in one of the shuttles. To his
dismay, he found all the controls had been pre-set and locked in place. My sensors, which were locked into all
functions applicable to the huge star ship, including its vessels, monitored
Monn’s dextrous yet hesitant manipulation of the onboard control computer, and
I noticed he was seeking his destination.
A long lonely cry emanated out of the cabin as he read the
destination. My readouts indicated that
Sunn had sent the craft in the direction of the Limbo Galaxy. My memory banks told me that this galaxy was
a place of despair and anxiety.
I caught some movement
on the bridge and marvelled at what I saw.
All three remaining crewmembers were now seated, with headsets donned,
and were listening to music of their own liking. Sunn Star, listening to Roger Waters, decided
to show her former partner some sympathy and relayed the music through to the
disappearing shuttle, thinking it would at least cheer him up a little on his
journey. She told the other crew members
of what she was doing, and they all smiled.
In the shuttle however,
there were no smiles. My audio pick up
only encountered the wail of pain, as if the torment of the period leading up
to his illness had suddenly come back. And then he spoke out loud, to no one - but
to everyone.
“Don’t play that music,
any music. Why can’t they understand, while I was in Wedded Bliss and we shared
it, it was fine and I would have been happy.
That’s what it is like in Reality.
Why can’t they understand that I can’t stand anything from Wedded Bliss
now that I have been cast out of it?
Why?”
Now I am a computer, as
I said, with no Reason or Understanding functions, but somehow my logic
facilities discerned his distress, and I could see the reason, and I could
understand. And I could also understand
the reason why Sunn had conducted her actions.
But what I couldn’t understand was why.
I programmed a self-search within my logic banks, and after a short
period, the word Love kept on coming up as the key to all the scenarios.
Suddenly, Reality
dawned on Wedded Bliss, and I reasoned at that instance that one crewmember,
maybe two judging by their mannerisms, no longer loved Monn. Now this was an
interesting logic equation. How was Sunn
going to navigate the vast universe without Monn’s vast experience and superior
technical capabilities? How was she
going to handle being the Captain, and crew, and mother and keep the ship in
Reality? How was she going to look at
her former partner and not feel a certain amount of guilt at his predicament?
The decision came
sooner than I expected. With Monn still
heading away from the ship, she chose the largest of the shuttles, with an
attached pod vessel, and abandoned Wedded Bliss, selling it to a passing Mining
Consortium who left it floating aimlessly in the Reality Galaxy as a halfway
house for recalcitrant miners of truth and delusion.
As she sped off with
her siblings to live on the borders of Reality and Fantasy, she sent a small
pod with Monn’s personal belongings, and some memorabilia of their time on
Wedded Bliss, and half the proceeds from the sale of the ship, so he could set
himself up somewhere and have the siblings come to stay with him. The gesture
was received with a fair amount of reluctance, and even more wailing, but it
went a little way to restoring his wounded pride.
Real Date 2 August
2001.
From my permanent position,
I have been monitoring the interaction of the former Star family. Humans are an enigma! Although both sections, Sunn and siblings on
one side of Reality, and Monn on the other, have managed to survive their
different experiences, the interactions being placed on Moon and Star are
starting to have an effect. Monn’s
imposed exile in Limbo is affecting the kids one way, and Sunns’ choice of
Fantasy is affecting them another. Their
fleeting trips through Reality to each parental environment is starting to have
affects on both, and logic tells me that nothing good will come of this.
Computations of my datacore confirm my
analysis. I have information to suggest
that single parent upbringing is dysfunctional for the sibling and that they
never learn the bias of thought. It doesn’t condone argument to come to a
common ground, for the betterment of the siblings involved.
Case in point. Recently, both siblings had that unusual
event humans celebrate, a birthday, and the events were held momentarily in
Reality at a neutral space station for such events. Even though both Sunn and Monn were tolerant
of each other, the interaction was not pleasant, no matter how hard they
tried. As a result, Moon and Rock
noticed their parent’s unease, and lack of Love, and logged the occasion in
their memory banks as something to avoid when they grow up.
But once again my logic
banks picked up the inanity of this process.
Something learned is never avoided, it is recreated, whether in thought
or in action. Monn had said often in his
chats to himself that he was endlessly sorry for the things he had done when he
was suffering, but he kept on asking himself what else did he have to do. I deduced his vision of true love had been
blinded by his illness and had caused his partner and siblings to look at a
side of him even he didn’t know he had, and which he now loathed more than
Reality itself. Cause and effect meant
that the children were no longer the same because of it, as was his partner, as
was he. But he had survived the drama,
as had they. He hadn’t lost love, or his
vision, or his soulmate. He had lost
himself for a time.
And this showed in
their interactions in Reality. Sunn,
although displaying compassion and friendliness, had lost shared love, dreams,
and vision. But she still had it in
abundance for her siblings. By her
reactions though, when she was around Monn, she displayed tension and hurt, a
result, logically, of the actions of Monn’s period of Space Sickness.
Moon also displayed a
lot of those traits, but she hadn’t got to a stage when she could understand
the full magnificence of Reality and also had much to learn about human nature,
although she was pretty close to being there.
She was too much like both parents to be affected by either.
Regrettably, or maybe
even thankfully, Rock, who suffers from a partial abnormality of the brain, was
not adversely affected and missed most of the period through ignorance.
As I explained, I am a
computer without Reason or Understanding, and am locked solely into Logic and
Computation, but I do know that the Star Family as individuals will survive,
but as a family, whether they ever find Reality together again as a family only
time will tell. The Universe is bigger than any Galaxy.
Before I sign off this
message, let me display two lines from a song I find quite calming as a
computer:
“I’m just a soul whose
intentions are good,
Oh, Lord, please don’t
let me be misunderstood!”
The End
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