My Violent Heart

Part 1

They weren't real people. Engineer Jessup kept telling herself this even as she struggled not to stare in horror; even after a month working the Navigation Deck it was still hard to concentrate on the console in front of her, especially when she could see them writhing and straining out of the corner of her eye.

 She knew there was a reason why they weren't hidden behind anything but she still wished that they were. They were delicate parts of an important machine, and visual contact was sometimes the best way to ensure they were still in working order. They might have looked like people, but they weren't. They were just hardware. Living, breathing hardware but hardware all the same.

 Despite having learnt all the dry, technical facts about the Navigation Network – as it was called – Jessup still felt that hacking off a person's arms and legs before permanently hooking them into a machine was a little crude. Not that they were people, she reminded herself. They were just vat-grown bodies; biological hardware. They didn't have personalities or even anything that could be recognized as a human thought; the surgery they underwent during their manufacture made sure of that. After all, it wouldn't be very helpful for a computer to get distracted by thoughts of how unpleasant of a predicament one of its CPU's was in.

 It was simply a matter of economic expedience running up against a need for raw computing power. The sort of machine a space-fairing ship would need to properly navigate flat-space (well known to be the only possible way to travel from planet to planet in anything approaching a practical amount of time) and arrive at its desired location in one piece was simply too complicated to be made cheaply.

 It needed to be able to handle millions of minute course corrections at any one second, each affected by scores of factors that flooded in through sensors crammed into every inch of the ship's hull. Most computers would fry. Those that didn't had bankrupted nations. It was a problem for a long time, until someone realized that a perfectly suitable processor was readily available an in great quantities.

 Of course, using real people was out of the question – not that rumours didn't and don't persist about some more unscrupulous manufacturers of Navigations Networks – and so the formerly very specific field of clone-bred humans was opened up following some exceedingly promising early tests. Previously made only for biological prosthetics, faux-humans were now churned out in vast quantities to fuel the exploding demand that everyone had for a ship. A new age for human space exploration had begun; one where it was open to almost anyone. Brave new frontiers were being broached and some said that it had been the single most important scientific development since interstellar space-travel had properly begun – possibly only of secondary importance to the discovery of flat-space itself.

 So much was history and was well known. The reality, as Jessup saw on a daily basis, was far less grand than it sounded. The Navigation Network did almost all of the heavy lifting involved in keeping the ship on course and did it automatically. Jessup and her fellow engineers were simply on-hand to ensure that nothing broke. They rarely did, but when they did they had a tendency to break badly. This meant that Jessup's job consisted of sitting and waiting for something terrible to happen, and it could happen at any moment.

 This had had a predictable effect on her nerves, which were now utterly shredded. She had not had a proper nights sleep ever since starting.

 A hearty slap on the back almost made her jump out of her skin and she spun around to find the jovial and ever-smiling face of Chief Engineer and Navigation Officer Shinfield, the gregarious bear of a man looming over her.

 "You seem a little distracted there, Jessup! Everything alright?" He asked, taking a swing from his mighty coffee cup. The sheer size of Shinfield's mug was the first thing any new Engineers were told about him when they started, and with good reason: it was approximately the size of Jessup's head. It served as an excellent distraction from the Navigation Network, which was apparently the point. That, and keeping Shinfield awake by allowing him to carry close to a litre of coffee around with him at all times.

 Tearing her eyes away from the mug – no mean feat – Jessup looked up at Shinfield and did her best to smile back. Shinfield was a thoroughly nice man to be around. He was like a living comfort blanket that smothered every engineer under his management, possibly the only thing that calmed them during their shifts. There was just something about him.

 "Sorry Sir, I was just-" Jessup started only for Shinfield to wave a hand, glugging down coffee so strong Jessup's eyes started watering.

 "Oh none of that 'Sir' nonsense, we're all just trying to do a job here. Just call me Boss. Hah! I joke, I joke; Shinfield will do. Anyway Jessup, what's on your mind? Does my newest engineer have any problems?" Shinfield asked, pulling up a free chair and sitting down. The chair squeaked loudly but held. Shinfield was not a light man.

 "Nothing really, Si-Shinfield. I'm just a little bit tired, that's all," Jessup said, trying to shrug it off. One of the Navigation Hubs – not people, not people – gave an especially vigorous spasm and juddered against their restraints, making her flinch. Shinfield chuckled and swilled his potent brew around his keg-like mug.

 "Trouble sleeping, I bet; I was the same way. Hell, everyone was! My old boss – Packard, good man he was – had it as well. You'd have to be a robot not to find this sort of thing," he waved his empty hand in the direction of the Navigation Network "a little disturbing. Because it is! But lots of people have jobs which are a little unpleasant; we're just those sorts of people. Someone has to do it."

 Jessup considered this. It probably wasn't the worst job she'd had, objectively speaking. Shinfield adjusted himself and shifted forward in his seat.

 "I mean, take this example. We just have to make sure all this runs smoothly while we're flying. Think about the poor sods who have to feed and water these things. Now that's a nasty job!"

 Jessup had not really thought of this before. While it was her and her co-workers role to ensure that the hardware worked smoothly during transit, she had heard that there was a whole engineering subdivision whose role was to ensure that the 'wetware' components were in good condition. As technically living parts of the Navigation Network they still required food and water and produced all the so-called 'by-product' of these that would be expected. Now that Jessup thought about it, she rather wished Shinfield hadn't told her about that. It was not a nice thing to think about.

 Judging from the grin on Shinfield's face, he had a good idea of just how effective his choice of example had been.

 "See? Things could always be worse, eh?"

 Seconds after Shinfield said this the power fluctuated.

 This in itself was not remarkable. Such little tremors were an unavoidable side-effect of flat-space (being compacted beyond normal physical dimensions was bound to create a few wrinkles here or there) and had long since been accounted for in the design of ships and their various systems and sub-systems. The fluctuation itself was not the problem. It was that the Wetware in the Navigation Network started screaming that was the problem. That was a new one.

 With vocal chords long since cut and jaws firmly wired shut, it was not what screaming usually sounded like. Despite that, it was still unmistakable. No-one had any idea what to do and everyone sat frozen for what felt like an eternity before Shinfield – who had been rapidly glugging down the remains of his scalding drink – set his mug down and leapt to his feet.

 "Emergency stop. Right now," his voice, not raised but still clearly audible over the din, rang out clearly and every engineer obeyed without question. The Navigation Network had a failsafe where the previous, current and next safest 'exit' point was logged and kept so that in the case of an emergency stop the ship was not smeared across the side of a planet or shredded by debris. Space was big, but life did not look favourably on people who trusted to chance.

 With a lurch the ship popped back into real space, everyone's eyes watering. Lights were still flicking as capacitors cycled and restarted up and the screaming had immediately quietened down to a whimper upon exiting flat-space. Jessup, seeing something out of the corner of her eye, looked up from her console only to see that nothing was there. This still didn't make her feel entirely comfortable. She could have sworn that there had been someone standing in the corner of the deck only a moment ago. But there was no-one.