Becoming Chosen

You’re all a bunch of Unrighteous bastards! To think my Bessie never learned the truth! She died not knowing being Chosen meant nothing! I should call for the abort, whatever that is, just out of spite. But I won’t. Bessie lived her whole life believing in the Gods of Earth, for her memory and the children we raised I give my consent. Be damned the lot of you!

-Dominic Schultz, The Book of Elders

What a difference a few days can make. Ronan maneuvered though the tables of the dining hall, a tray of breakfast in his hand. Ten days ago, he would have kept his head down, tried to be as invisible as possible. Now there were nods and smiles from crew and officers.

Part of it was the new uniform. He had had no idea when the Captain had appointed him as Miri’s tutor and guide it would include being made an Ensign. Just by changing his clothes from crew gray-green to officer blue, it seemed his past indiscretions had been washed away.

Ami, as usual had a cynical, but probably correct, idea of why.

“They think you’ve given up on changing the Way. They see you being made an officer as vindication of everything they hold dear. Sir,” she had told him just the day before when he had confessed his confusion.

The final ‘sir’ had been said with all the sarcasm his friend could muster. Ronan was glad for that. He wasn’t sure he could stand it if Ami had been serious in showing respect.

Ronan made his way to the table where everyone was sitting. As he arrived Miri looked up and gave him a toothy smile. There was something about her smile that felt like standing under a heat lamp.

At least part of it was the fact that she seemed to do it so seldom since she had arrived. There was something in the book she’d been given that made her moody and thoughtful, even though she had not been willing to talk about it, yet. The other part Ronan was studiously trying to ignore.

“Hi Ronan!” Miri said, “Did you know that the Manufacturing Section turns out a gram of cabling every second?”

He grinned. This fact questioning had become a near standard greeting from Miri. There was so much she had never known, and she delighted in sharing her new facts, even if they weren’t exactly new.

“I think I’ve been told that, sometime,” he allowed.

“It’s just amazing! Do you have any idea how long it takes one of the Chosen to make anything?”

“Be fair, Miri,” interjected Holing Elmherst, who worked on the Manufacturing Crew and probably had shared the fact with her. “We have machines that do all the work. The Chosen do it all by hand, for the Builders sake! You even make your own tools! I doubt even our Section Leader could make wire by hand.”

“But you build the machines that do the work!” Miri objected.

Holing held up his hand and waggled it from side to side, “Sort of. Mostly we just replace failing parts. It’s only once a generation or so that a machine is fully replaced. Even then we use parts made by other machines to build the new one. That’s nothing compared to taking iron and hammering it into shape.”

Ronan dug into his eggs and potatoes while the argument went back and forth. He wasn’t sure how the Chosen would take to all the strangeness of the Tech, but if his friends were any indication the Tech would love more contact.

“Where does the Grand Tour go today?” asked Ami, her mouth full and chewing.

“We get to go see the anti-matter today!” Miri said with a certain relish, and a twinkle in her eye. This had been a running dig of hers ever since she’d heard about the Fuel Facility and its produce.

Ronan rolled his eyes, “You can’t see anti-matter,” he told her, his first line in this little play.

“It exists, doesn’t it?” Miri came back, “It takes up space, it reflects light, so it has to be visible.”

“Yes, it does, and yes, it is, but it’s also the Voids own problem to handle. So, there are no ports to look at it. As you very well know.”

“Hmmph,” Miri said, taking a bite of toast. “You’ve never been on the Way of Fuel, so how would you know for sure? You just wait, Ronan Candemir, this Chosen girl will get them to show her the stuff, say true.”

“Just so long as you don’t open any of the containment vessels!” Ami put in. “That’s a sure way to see the Skin Melter.”

Miri nodded seriously. Ami and the gang had taken to using the child-names for radiation, vacuum, and electrical current with her. The vivid names of Skin Melter, Breath Sucker, and Jitter-Burn seemed to sink in better for her.

“Well, I’ll see it without lettin’ the beastie loose,” Miri agreed.

“You’d better,” Holing said, waving his fork at her, “Else the Fuel Chief will have you scrubbing the inside of the production chambers.”

Everyone laughed at the image and Holing’s fierce mugging.

Across the dining hall, another table of four was in a much less merry mood.

“I can’t believe the Captain has elevated a non-con like Candemir. Now he and his friends think they own the ship!” complained Vince Tolland, a Lieutenant from the secondary bridge crew.

F.O. Nesbit turned his lizard eye’s slowly to take in the happy scene. He turned back to his group of officers.

“Keep your mind on the priorities, Tolland. Nothing the Captain has done can’t be undone when it is time. I’ve had my eye on Candemir for cycles, don’t think for a second I have forgotten him.”

“No, of course, not, F.O.,” Tolland said, casting his eyes down. It was always a balancing act with the F.O. If he thought you were getting out ahead of him, a person’s career could evaporate in an instant.

“The higher they rise, the longer the fall,” the hulking form of Ensign Ferro growled from across the table. Ensign was as high as the huge man was ever going to rise but it didn’t seem to bother him. Of all the F.O.’s associates, Jon-Tom Ferro was the one to be feared. Physical violence was very rare among the Tech, but something about that Ensign suggested, for him, it was only a heartbeat away.

Fact was, Tolland was never very comfortable in the company he had found himself. They all seemed animated by a fire he just didn’t feel. If Nesbit’s plan hadn’t offered a fast way to upper command, Vince would have never been close to any of them.

“Exactly,” Nesbit agree. “Just a couple more weeks, after the Turn, we will be ready. After that, well, anyone who questions the Way will soon find how costly that is.”

The other two at the table laughed nasty laughs, and Vince joined in, feeling a hollow place in his stomach.

Ronan had only visited the Fuel Production areas a couple of times, and those were long ago when he was a little cadet, being exposed to the various Ways of the ship. Seeing it with Miri was a very different experience from the tightly regimented and, ultimately, boring trips he remembered.

When she was discovering a new technology or bit of science there was a, well, light was the only way to describe it, that almost shone through her skin. And it didn’t just stay with her, it was contagious.

“No! Really,” laughed Commander Jager, the Chief of Fuel Production, “No one ever ‘sees’ antimatter.” Before this very minute Ronan would have bet a month of barracks cleaning Jager had never smiled, let alone laughed. The men and women of the Way of Fuel were serious and dour to a fault. Working with the deadly dangerous antimatter was as close to a priesthood as the Tech had.

“But you must have some visual check. After all, sensors can go bad or be fooled,” Miri countered, her smile blazing away at the older man.

Jager nodded, his countenance folding back into its usual serious cast. “That is very true, but it is just too dangerous.” He gestured with one hand to the room filled with workstations and a wall of interlocking electronic. “Antimatter is the only material powerful enough to move something the size of our ship. But that power means a single accident could destroy us all.

“Our Way has the most stringent replacement schedule of any. The systems here in Fuel Production are sextuple redundant. Where other systems have two backups, we have five. And if we get conflicting readings on even one, we stop everything we are doing.

“Take the containment areas.” Jager continued, pointing to the far wall, which was blank. “If a single atom of oxygen got in, and then encountered the anti-lithium, it would annihilate one anti-atom. The energy flash would be enough to destabilize the rest of the anti-lithium in the trap. If that happens, the odds are low the magnetic trap would be able to contain all the vaporized anti-atoms. Once they escape, the whole thing repeats, only larger. The chain reaction would blow the ship apart in seconds.

“Which is why we don’t take any chances, ever. Which includes a window so wondering Agri-Crew can take a peek at a material so nasty it has to live inside the Breath Sucker,” Jager finished with a grin, damping down some of the fearsome image he had painted.

“Okay,” Miri said slowly. Then she turned to Ronan, “And why is it you couldn’t have said that to me? You’ve made me look the fool with Commander Jager!”

Ronan was gob-smacked at the complete unfairness of it all. He had explained, many times! As he stood there his mouth working vaguely as he tried to form a response, he felt Commander Jager’s hand coming down on his shoulder.

“Take a piece of advice from an old man, ensign, sometimes it’s just better to say nothing.”

The Commander’s face was serious, but there was a twinkle in his eye that Ronan was starting to recognize. He had been receiving it quite a bit since he had been shepherding Miri. Sooner or later he was going to have to argue one of the older generation into telling him what it meant.

“So, if we can’t see antimatter, what can we see?” Miri asked, ending Ronan’s embarrassing musing.

“Ah, well, would you like to see one of the rings where we make it?” Jager offered.

“World Around, yes!” Miri said with a grin. “Lead on, Elder, ah, Commander Jager.”

The Fuel Chief escorted the two of them to the serial air-locks that led to production ring three. Inside was a two-meter-high tunnel, dimly lit, and filled with wiring and a pipe as big around as Ronan’s arms running away to vanish as it rose to follow the curve of the hull.

The little group had turned left and was walking along, as Jager explained.

“Each ring is fifteen miles long, and loops the whole ship. Particles are fed into magnetic tracks and accelerated to just a fraction below light speed, then they are slammed together.”

Ronan dropped back a step or two and followed along while Jager lectured. Miri was nodding along. She was hanging on every word. Good, she’d be focused on the Commander for a while, giving Ronan a chance to think about her.

He knew he had it bad for Miri. The question was what to do about it?

Sure, there had been other girls he’d been interested in, but before things could progress beyond shy smiles, he had run into his first batch of trouble. At that point the only girls who would be seen with him were other misfits like Ami.

In a way, it had simplified things, being at the bottom of the social ladder meant he could focus more on improving the Way. Or at least that is what he had told himself. And sure, Ami would be more than up for a session or two of rumpling the sheets, but for all that she was interested in him, he’d never felt anything but brotherly affection for her.

Thing was, Miri was so different. Just one look at her told you she wasn’t Tech. For a start, she wore her hair long, no Tech woman did. There was something in the way the soft waves caught the light that Ronan found fascinating.

Then there was the way she filled out her uniform. Maybe it was just her, or maybe all the Farmers had wider shoulders and hips than the Tech. Who could say? What could be said was that it gave Miri a silhouette that drew his eyes, coming and going.

And, of course there was her smile and personality. The way a fire kindled in her eyes when she was learning a new thing, or the sharp and often sarcastic way she interacted with everyone, from the lowest crewman to the Captain himself.

Added all together, she seemed to be just the kind of girl Ronan had dreamed of in his lonely bunk. But if that was the case, why was there a little voice arguing against trying to get closer to her?

The nagging little voice seemed to come from a place of fear. It said, “she’ll never go for you,” and “you should be with your own people,” and “what will everyone say?” and most guilt inducing, “what will Ami say?”

Miri and Jager had stopped, and were looking up into a turn in the tunnel.

“Let me see if I have the straight of this,” Miri said as Ronan came to a stop with them. “Once the anti-particles are made, they are shunted into the trap. There, they are slowed way down and cooled.” She paused, looking to Jager for confirmation, which he gave in a nod.

“Right, so once they are slower, you fold them together to make the anti-lithium, then they get washed and cooled again, then sent off to the storage areas, yeah?”

“Exactly correct,” Jager said. “You have a better understanding than some of the juniors in the Path of Fuel. Would you like to join our Path?”

This wasn’t the first time a senior officer had tried to recruit Miri. At first Ronan had thought they were being polite, since the Captain had made it clear that Miri’s Way was to be a liaison between the two cultures on the ship. But he was now convinced these offers where genuine. Apparently, the Officers saw some of the same things in Miri that Ronan did.

“That’s very nice of you,” Miri replied, the same as always. “But the Captain says I have to know all this so I can explain it to the Chosen. They are not exactly the most open-minded folk, you know.”

“Ah, well, the Captain knows best, of course. Still if you change your mind…” Jager trailed off, with a hopeful lilt. He then turned and started off back towards the air-locks. Miri followed, giving Ronan one of those diamond bright smiles as she passed by.

It crystalized his thinking. That little fearful voice could take a long walk in the Great Void. There were a few items in the minus column, but they were nothing compared to the pluses.

Right. Trying to be closer to Miri was most definitely on the job list. Now all he had to do was figure out how.