Becoming Chosen

I have to laugh about how earlier futurists worried about the crew of generation ships being bored. With only one ship, a limited amount of resources, and a voyage of hundreds of years, there will always be something to do.

- Quote attributed to Devon Schultz, Chief Design Engineer

Punishment detail was not hard work. In fact, Ronan worked harder on the Surface Crew than he did in cleaning air ducts. But then it wasn’t meant to be hard, it was meant to show how far one had strayed from the Way.

Duct cleaning was a job mostly done by little machines called Skitters. By being assigned to do this work, the whole crew was being told your value to the Officers. It was as humiliating as it was easy.

The air ducts were perfectly smooth squares two meters on each side. They had been fused or excavated from the rock of the ship by some technology the Builders didn’t share with the Tech. The only good that could be said about this detail; it was that at least you could work with a partner. Assuming someone else was on the Officers shit list.

“I am sorry I got you into this, Ronan,” Ami said, as she worked her damp dust-mop along a section of ceiling.

Ronan sighed; it was not the first time Ami had apologized. “Yes, you’ve said. It doesn’t matter at this point anyway. What’s important is what the Captain said about keeping our heads down. If you want to make it up to me, make sure that Jon, Lynn and the rest actually do it.”

“I will,” Ami said instantly, “I was just so sure that if I showed my section leader how much better it would be, she’d have to accept it.”

Ronan didn’t reply right away. He knew exactly how Ami felt, but he had promised his Uncle that he would do all he could to keep her from being a problem. That meant he couldn’t just say what he thought, he had to say what would make the situation better. He let out a disgusted grunt. If this was what being an adult was all about, they could keep it. No wonder all the senior crew were so cranky all the time!

“You should have known what was going to happen. You saw what they have done to me,” Ronan said. He could feel Ami opening her mouth to object, but continued on before she could get a word in. “But it doesn’t matter now. We’ve been asked by the Captain to help him, and promised that things will get better. So, from now on, we act like good little Tech and stay off Nesbit’s trouble list.”

Ami set her long-handled mop down and leaned against the rock wall, and gave Ronan a skeptical look. “Do you really think things will be better? Or is that just the Captain trying to keep a lid on us until we knuckle under like everyone else?

His friends tone was a combination of pleading and doubtful. Ronan turned to face her. Ami was short for a Tech. Even though she was fifteen and had had her growth spurt she hardly came up to Ronan’s shoulder. Her height made many people underestimate her, made them treat her like she was younger than she was. It was part of why she was so adamant about changing things. She’d show everyone who ever looked down on her what a mistake that was.

It didn’t make her the easiest friend to keep, but if one could get past the hard-case attitude, there was not a more loyal friend in the ship.

“Well, things are going to change. They have to, once we start decelerating into our new system. But that doesn’t mean the new paths will be any less annoying or arbitrary. It’s a safe bet the Builders have a whole set of new manuals for most of the paths of the Way. Things inside a star system are not going to be the same as out in the Great Void. So, we’ll all have to change.”

Ami’s eyes bunched into the squint she always wore when she was thinking something through. Combined with her round cheeks and button nose it conspired to make her look even younger than usual.

“So, we might need improvements like my capacitance fix for the pressure doors in a few years?”

Ronan shook his head, “No. Well, maybe. But probably not. You’re not thinking big enough Ami. We are going to a planet. Everything in the Way is about keeping the ship in good repair for the journey. Once we’ve arrived, we won’t need the ship. We’ll move to a planet.”

“What do you think it will be like? A planet?”

“Oh, like the Habmo’s, only a lot bigger.” Ronan said with a shrug.

Ami’s eyes got big at the thought. Like most of the Tech she found the wide open spaces in the Habmo’s intimidating. It seemed unnatural to have the roof so far above one’s head.

“What if we can’t take it?” Ami asked in a quiet voice.

“Oh, don’t be silly. If the Farmers can handle it, then it shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

“Easy for you to say, you go out on the surface every day and stare the Great Void in the eye.”

“The Void doesn’t have an eye, that’s part of the problem,” Ronan quipped back. “Besides, when you’re on the surface you spend all your time looking up at the rock above you. There isn’t any time to watch the stars spin around. It’s one of the first things they teach you, never watch the spinning. You get dizzy and lose your orientation. One step off the grid and you’ll be flung into the Void for all time.”

There was a buzzing from both of their data-sets. It was the positional tracking telling them they were not moving along fast enough. Ronan rolled his eyes and tossed his head towards the long tunnel stretching out before them.

“Let’s get a move on. No point in being given extra shifts for working too slowly.”

Ami nodded and set to work with a will.

They worked for a while, in companionable silence, making up the time they had lost and even pulling ahead a bit. It was its own reward to catch up to some of the Skitters and then clean around them. It always made the little machines twitch, mutter and then scuttle off as their programming sent them to a new, and dirty grid.

Ami was tormenting one of the little remote units by swirling the end of her mop around and around it, just fast enough to keep it from seeing a clear path to rush to its next cleaning area. The poor thing was emitting beeps and whistles as its tried to escape.

“You’re causing extra maintenance, Crewwoman Sunderland,” Ronan thundered in his best imitation of FO Nesbit. “If it breaks down, it could be the end of us all!”

His friend flashed him a toothy grin and let the machine escape. It shot up the wall to the ceiling, turned upside down and ran away on clicking feet into the darkness ahead. Before it reached the end of their light, the machine ran across what looked like a square pressure door set flush with the top of the tunnel.

“Aha!” Ami said, moving forward to stand under it. “I was hoping we would run into one of these!”

Ronan glanced down at his data-set. A small window showed 2:05 in green. They were two minutes ahead of where they should be, so they could spend a little time looking

“What is it?” he asked.

Ami had taken her data set off her belt and was scanning the door. “This is an access to the construction tunnels. The Builders used them when they were putting the ship together.

Ronan felt a chill run down his spine. “That’s a pressure door! is the Breath-Sucker on the other side?”

Ami rolled her eyes. “No, you great baby, it’s pressurized on the other side. The Builders didn’t think we needed to use them, and keeping them pressurized was easier than having dangerous voids all through the ship.” She pulled out a set of probe wires and plugged them into the data set, then squinted up at the hatch. “I don’t suppose you’d care to give me a lift? I can’t reach the access panel from here?”

“What access panel?” Ronan asked taking a closer look at the door. It was set up as a standard pressure door, but he couldn’t find a control panel anywhere.

Ami shone her lights at one corner where two jacks were tucked away nearly out of sight. “Right there. C’mon, Ronan, I want to take some readings.”

“Rust and ruin! “Ronan nearly shouted. “What were we just talking about? We’re supposed to keep our heads down and not make trouble! Weren’t you listening?”

“I was listening. But I don’t think you were. The Captain asked us to not speak up, to not suggest better ways of doing things. Fine, I can do that, but there is nothing in the Way that says we can’t learn things on our own. We just can’t use the information.”

The reasoning was too clever by half for Ronan. “Do you really think that will keep Nesbit from throwing you into a different way, like recycling, if he catches you?”

“That’s why we need to hurry, so he won’t catch us,” Ami replied, her tone utterly sincere and reasonable.

“Fine,” Ronan relented, “But you cannot use what you find out, you cannot talk about what you find out, and you will be the very model of Tech in public from now on. Yes?”

“Of course, I will! I promise!”

Ronan frowned and made a cup with his hands. It was probably a mistake. But if letting Ami do this put her on her best behavior for a while, it would probably be okay. By the time she was standing on his hands he was already wondering what the read-outs she was getting would show.