55: Run Zero

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I couldn’t get any of the historians to actually tell me what their theory was, which was kind of insulting. Didn’t they trust me? But I decided it was probably because Hali had seen me get so upset about Antarctica. Well, at least when we all learned about Antarctica properly in Education, I’d already know a little bit about it. So that was something.

So the historians had a theory that nobody was going to like because if it was true then it was going to affect the Dragonseye colony? How? I mean, Hexacorallia, fine, if it was something that showed that something they were trying to do had ended in disaster in the past or something, but why would the higher ups on the Courageous care? The Courageous didn’t have a colony bid. The Courageous never proposed a colony bid, it wouldn’t be fair to the other ships, because if we did then everyone would support whatever we said and we’d win every time. We stayed out of the way until everyone else who wanted to make a bid did so, and then we chose which ones we’d support. So if this untethered heart thing was going to hurt Hexacorallia’s chances, then wouldn’t the Courageous want to know about it? So we could make the best decision?

Maybe the historians were wrong. Or maybe I just didn’t have enough information. Or maybe the whole thing was just stupid.

All three, probably.

The historians didn’t have very much work to do on Starlight. We were mostly there to adjust back to standard pull before going back to zero pull on the Dish, because staying at zero pull for too long is bad for your muscles and bones if you’re going back to standard pull later, especially for Hali’s muscles and bones. It seemed like almost everyone on Starlight was there for a reason like that – adjusting to pull, or a new diet, or getting medical care, or just waiting to go from one ship to another. Which was why there was so much fun stuff to do – most of the people there weren’t there to work.

I figured that there probably was a lot of work happening where I couldn’t see it, like the lowest floor of the Courageous with its farms and factories and things. I didn’t go looking. Technically, we were allowed anywhere in residence two, which was half the ship, from the high pull bottom up to the zero pull middle. (Then there was a gap that nobody was allowed to cross and that all goods had to be sterilised to cross, and on the other side, residence one, which I thought was probably a lot like residence two except for people who had been near virus.) But we had been advised to stick to the nearby floors, because we were recovering from zero pull and didn’t want to get too light or too heavy.

I found out really quickly that massages were fun. I had one every day, and on the sixth day, sadly said goodbye to my masseuse, Lerriah zero-four.

“I’m moving down to a standard pull floor tomorrow,” I told her sadly while she put her oils away. “We have to adapt to normal pull.”

She gave me a little bow in response, her long braid swinging. Lerriah had straight hair like Arai’s at home, except It was really long, hanging down past her waist. Like every other citizen of Starlight I’d seen, she wore a black jumpsuit with white writing I couldn’t read on the front and back, and was mostly hairless, though she was part of the one fifth or so who weren’t bald on the top of their heads. It was really easy to tell Starlight citizens from the guests, who had all sorts of interesting fashions and hairstyles and accents. All of the citizens spoke in the same stiff way and wore the same black jumpsuits (though the writing on each looked a bit different), and even the ones who had hair like Lerriah wore it in very plain braids.

“I wish you a speedy adaptation, chi,” she told me.

“My name’s Taya,” I told her, not for the first time. I didn’t like the way everyone bowed and called me ‘chi’ here.

“Of course, Taya.”

“I’m going to miss your massages.”

“Rest assured, Taya, there will be very skilled masseuses on the lower floors as well. Regular massage is very helpful in physical recovery and adaptation of many kinds, and we take it quite seriously.”

“Well, thank you. You’re so good at it, and it’s been really nice.”

Another bow. “It has been an honour to assist you, Taya.”

It was really hard to be friendly with most of the Starlight citizens. I would take it from Terrence, for some reason; when he (turns out that Terrence was a man, not a brennan; whoops) bowed and spoke like that it felt like it was fine, like he could handle himself. But when random cleaners or masseuses or cafeteria workers did it, I always felt like anything I said or did was making their lives harder, like I was forcing them to be super polite when they’d rather I left them alone. I’m not sure why Terrence felt different; maybe I was just used to him. He was always around, doing stuff for us.

Maybe that was it. Terrence’s job was to talk to and help us, but Lerriah probably had dozens of customers that weren’t me, and trying to be friendly was just asking her to pay more attention to me and to remember my name instead of getting back to her job with other customers. I thanked her again, and left. I decided to head to a cafeteria I knew that had these little spicy cakes that I really liked, and then maybe see if anything interesting was playing in the nearby public projector room before heading back to our rooms. The public projector room had seemed kind of silly when I first saw it, since anyone could book a private room to see whatever they wanted, so why go to a big one with other people where you couldn’t choose? But just seeing what was on was a different sort of fun than having to pick something, and it gave me the chance to meet and talk to lots of visitors from other ships.

I saw Terrence on my way to the cafeteria, walking down the hall with a package. Probably something that one of the historians wanted. I gave him a little wave. “Hi, Terrence!”

He gave me a little nod, since the package was too bulky to easily bow with. “Hello, chi.” He kept walking, politely paying attention to me in case I wanted something. I stared at him.

He didn’t recognise me.

“S-sorry,” I said. “I thought you were somebody else.”

“No problem, chi,” he said, sounding unbothered, and kept walking.

He did look exactly like Terrence, though. Unless the writing on his jumpsuit was different? I wasn’t sure. I jogged after him. (Well, as well as I could jog in half-pull.) “S-sorry to intrude,” I said, “but what’s your name?”

“It is no intrusion,” he said. “My name is Terrence zero-three.”

Huh.

I’m not stupid. I know that people with similar genetics look similar. There’s a family on the Courageous with a pair of ‘identical twins’, two boys with the same DNA who were born at the same time, and they’re hard to tell apart until you get used to seeing them. It doesn’t happen much on the Courageous because of the rules for picking the genetics of new kids (I’m not actually sure how the boys’ parents were allowed to make them identical), but different ships do things differently. The two Terrences are probably identical twins.

Or, since our Terrence is Terrence zero-five, the five Terrences. Maybe more. Was that what the numbers meant?

I slowed down so I could look at all the locals around me. There weren’t very many – most of the people on Starlight were guests, or at least on the parts of Starlight where I’d been. And even the ones that were around were easy not to notice; they kind of went about their jobs and only got your attention if they needed it. But walking around, I saw a few more similar-looking locals. A woman sweeping a floor looked the same as a woman pushing a trolley full of boxes. The woman running a cafeteria looked the same as one fixing a vent.

I headed into the cafeteria and asked for the woman’s help getting something. I didn’t care what it was, just a random bit of food that was too high up for me to reach. She fetched it for me.

“Thanks,” I said, “um… what’s your name?”

“Jaxa zero-nine, chi.”

“Thank you, Jaxa.”

“It is my pleasure, chi.”

I headed back out and rushed back down the corridor until I found the vent fixer. I bumped into her lightly, and she dropped her screwdriver.

“Sorry, sorry!” I said, picking it up. “Um, what’s your name?”

“I am Jaxa zero-four, chi.”

“I’m so sorry, Jaxa!”

“It is no problem, chi,” she said calmly, taking the screwdriver from me. “Thank you.”

Wandering around for a while, I quickly found out a few things. One: all of the staff seemed to be named like Terrence; they had a name, and then two numbers. Two: the first number was always zero, and the second was a low number. The highest I heard was eleven. Three: I couldn’t find any pattern in the names. They weren’t virtue names like on the Courageous or the Stalwart, and they weren’t plant names like on the Arborea. They all sounded way too different to each other to be from the same place, it seemed to me, but they definitely were – all the staff were way too similar to each other to have come from lots of different places. Four: I didn’t think that the writing on their jumpsuits was their names. I couldn’t read it, and every jumpsuit had something a bit different on it, but the two Jaxas didn’t have writing that was any more similar to each other than it was to other random staff. I might be wrong about that, though, since I couldn’t actually read it. Maybe I just didn’t know which parts were the name and which parts were the numbers.

Five: I didn’t need to be running around doing this at all. I could’ve just gone right back to our rooms and asked the treegrave in the foyer. I was bothering people for no reason.

That part took me much longer to figure out than everything else. Maybe I am stupid.

The historians were out, so I sat in the foyer, which had two call buttons – one for Terrence, and one for the treegrave. I called the treegrave.

“Hello, chi!” cam a cheerful voice from the ceiling. “How can I help you?”

“Can you call me Taya instead of chi?”

“I certainly can, Taya!”

“Great. I’ve got some, uh, questions about the ship, if you don’t mind?”

“Of course!”

“Well, they’re really questions about the staff.”

“Of course!”

“Some of them might be personal questions? I don’t actually know.”

“Of course!”

Its tone never changed. Was it even listening? The stuff I wanted to ask didn’t seem all that personal to me, but all of these ships had made me really unsure about that kind of thing. There was lots of stuff that Ella would just say on the Stalwart that I thought was pretty personal and she didn’t. There was stuff that they could just look up about anyone in their system and the locals all thought it was fine; what if me looking up information about the staff in the treegrave and thinking it was fine was like that? What if people’s genetics were personal here? What if they had different rules about families, and me asking about Terrence’s family was rude? I just didn’t know.

“Are you allowed to tell me personal information about the staff?” I asked.

“Some information is restricted and some is not,” the treegrave said. “I cannot specify more without knowing what it is that you want to know, Taya!”

This treegrave was way too cheerful. It reminded me of the staff bowing and calling me ‘chi’ all the time. It was weird.

“Okay,” I said. “Why does everyone’s name have ‘zero’ in it?”

“All residence two staff are from zero-runs,” it said in its cheerful voice. “Runs one and higher are not allowed in residence two due to the threat of viral contamination.”

Right, right; virus. “So they’re in residence one?”

“Residence one is indeed staffed by runs one and higher, though most are stationed on the Hearth. The Hearth is where all staff for Starlight are generated, excepting of course run zero.”

“Run zero had to be born somewhere else, because Hearth works with virus?”

“Indeed! Hearth contains the main research facilities for virus. Overflow of Hearth runs were used to staff Starlight until the desire for quarantine became impractical to resist and residence two was built to allow the continual usage of Starlight by guests on both sides of the quarantine. This, of course, necessitated the generation of uncontaminated ‘zero’ runs, who were generated here on Starlight.”

“Quarantine?”

“The isolation of virus-contaminated individuals and materials to limit the spread of contamination.”

“Right. Okay.” So there were lots o groups of Terrences made, but only the ‘zero’ run was here, because the others might have been exposed to virus. That was why all the staff I’d met had ‘zero’ in their name. “Why do the names sound so different from each other? ‘Terrence’ and ‘Jaxa’ and ‘Lerriah’ don’t really sound like they’re from the same ship.”

“The names of Hearth generates are taken from the initial Earth colonist registry of the Courageous. They come from multiple Earth cultures, and as such exhibit inconsistent theming and pronunciation.”

“Terrence was named after a colonist?”

“The Terrences are named after Terrence Loreman, a twenty three year old labourer from the Earth colony of Texas.”

“And do they have Terrence Loreman’s DNA?”

“No. The name designation is arbitrary. Hearth generates are designed with genetics to best enhance their primary purpose.”

“So Terrence has the perfect DNA to be a liaison?”

The treegrave gives a little imitation laugh. “Ah, no. Apologies for the confusion. Starlight residence two is staffed with run zeroes because Starlight residence one was already being staffed with excess Hearth generates. The Hearth had more than was needed, so they were given alternate duties. Running a guest ship is not the purpose that they are designed or primarily used for.”

“What are they designed for, then?”

“The Hearth contains the primary research facilities for virus, and its main focus is using this technology to assist and improve humanity. Hearth generates are designed to be ideal for this job.”

“They’re perfect scientists?”

“No. They are perfect human test subjects.”

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