A Big Red Tale

Hard conversations were always served with a hot meal on the Orion’s Heart. The ship’s dining hall was decorated to tell the story about the crew’s origins; each member’s home world and culture were represented on a mural behind the long table. Other than offering the comforting ambiance of home, it was also one of the few places where even Orion couldn’t see or hear - unless he was present in the form of his projection.

“We have to see the surface of this planet for ourselves. If we can confirm that there is no complex life on it yet, it could be humanity’s next best chance at living on an organic world again. Orion, I know this is hard for you,” said Elyse as she put her fork down and reached out for Orion’s hand. “But we will be back in a week, I promise. You just keep an eye on Cluster for us.”

Cluster wagged his tail at this and jumped up on the bench like he always did. Elyse and Jaelen made some space for Cluster. Even a good boy like Cluster couldn’t brighten Orion’s mood. His gaze was heavy with worry for his friends.

“But you won’t be back. What am I supposed to do? I feel so useless, Elyse. I am a ship that can’t steer itself. I am not supposed to be docked without my crew.” The ship’s metal beams creaked and moaned, and Orion’s eyes filled with tears. “I can’t help you from here.”

The humans continued to eat, drink and laugh. All they knew was that they needed to recharge before their journey into the unknown. The sounds of emptying plates and glasses was mixed with an excitement in their voice that only mortals could experience.

Rover - or more precisely, Rover’s hologram - walked through the dining hall’s doors. The chatter stopped as the crew’s movements froze and their images flickered. Rover walked around, looking at each crew member. “Pullock. Eldrin. Jaelen. Elyse. Xalon.” This was an exercise they have been doing every evening for the last 6 months to help Orion remember. “I brought you some new pictures of everyone. And I found a voice message where Eldrin and Jaelen are talking about Big Red.”

“Thank you. My memories are fading so quickly.” While his system worked away on the newly present data in the background, Orion looked out the floor-to-ceiling window on the other side of the room. They were still orbiting the same planet, anchored by its gravitational pull. “We need to find them. We need to bring them home.”

The planet’s oceans were dyed red, dark as blood, presumably by the vast amounts of iron present in its rocky core and mantel leeching into the water at the continental faults. The color’s reflection gave the dining hall mural a red hue, which, in Rover and Orion’s mind, was a warning sign they should have listened to all those months ago. Such was the nature of hindsight.

Once the pictures and the voice message’s data were fully analyzed by Orion’s neural systems, they went through that evening’s memories again. They were trying to find out what Jaelen and Elyse said at one point to the other crew members about the emergency protocol for the landing. Since the dining hall had no surveillance, Orion’s memory was the only record they had of that dinner.

“Each emergency communications package will have a remote that can call for and steer the rescue pods.” said Elyse.

“If your pod gets separated before landing, we regroup at —” Jaelen’s hologram started to slide apart, “— ollange — YyWAaa — shlopp. Medical assistance systems will be available during the whole flight.”

“Ollange! That’s a new word!” Rover screamed with feverish excitement. Cluster started jumping up and down around Orion with him. “Good boy, go fetch!” Rover said and generated a hologram ball to throw to the dog.

Hours later, they were sitting on the floor in front of Jaelen’s projection, playing and rewinding the memory segment. “— ollange — YyWAaa — shlopp, — ollange — YyWAaa — shlopp, …”

“I think it sounds like… orange?” Orion made the dining hall one huge projection of Big Red. He spun the planet’s model around, looking for orange patches near the landing site.

“An orange shlopp… an orange slope?” Rover shrank himself down and floated around the landing site to get a better look. Shrinking was more space efficient than making the whole model bigger. He flew around the globe a few times. “I think I found it.” he pointed at the mountain range around 15 km away from where the crew wanted to land. One of its sides was indeed very orange. It seemed like there must have been a stream hurling down the rocky surface for millennia and eventually it left it discolored.

“Rover, you beautiful genius! That must be it!”

“Yes! But wait… now what? How will we get there?” Rover scratched his head. He hadn’t really had time to seriously consider making a plan for a rescue mission. He didn’t want to deal with the weight of his hopelessness, so he only ever focused on figuring out the easy parts. “You and I… we can’t steer the ship. I can only enter my mechanical body in the rover launch area, and you…” Rover didn’t know how to phrase it. Intergalactic regulations made it impossible for inorganics, as in persons whose thinking systems were of less than 85% organic tissue, to have physical access to any steering or life support system components to protect human lives in the event of a hacker attack or a computer virus infection. Rover and Orion were inorganics.

“I know, I know. But,” Orion smiled for the first time since the crew went missing, “I have an idea. Oooh Clusteeer! Who is a good boy?”

***

“So this is your idea?”

“Exactly! I already trained him to pull the chair over here,” Orion pointed at the console area, “and to put his paws on the steering globes.”

Orion and Cluster demonstrated for Rover what they had been working on so far, with a ta-da at the end of their performance.

“I mean, it is impressive. I’m just not sure that we can teach him to actually steer the ship.”

“If you really think about it, he is really just the other side of the same coin as us.” Orion said. “He is around 5% non-genetic material. Actually, space traveling dogs are always made smarter than regular dogs on purpose. He has all kinds of bots in his body to help him stay healthy and happy. And according to my research, he is around 25% more intelligent than his organic counterparts. This is supposed to enable him to complete tasks if a helping hand is needed; dogs can be trained to do all kinds of things, like search and rescue, carrying equipment, retrieving different items, and the list just goes on. On the other hand, our neural networks are around 10% organic.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of that. I still don’t get your point.”

“Well, I checked the system information on both of us a few years back, after I learned some interesting facts about the regulations. Apparently, human cells are really hard to clone legally, especially brain cells. So, neurons are synthesized from dog brains in most cases… and this is true to you and me. Essentially, we are part dogs.”

“I- I never knew that.”

“Supposedly, it doesn’t make a big difference. But—”

“There is always a but, isn’t there?”

“— But inorganics who were born after this regulation do seem to be more loyal to their human friends. Do with that knowledge what you will. But, to get back to my original point; I think we can work out how to train Cluster based on his brain patterns. We just have to think like a dog.”

“I guess that shouldn’t be too hard for us, then. And what about the thrusters?”

“Since there is no crew on board, I have emergency control authorization, which basically allows me to accelerate and decelerate enough to get us close to the surface safely.”

“And then?”

“And then we drop you off. In your mechanical body.”

Rover’s eyes grew three sizes. It all sounded like a great plan until the part where he might get stranded in his mechanical body on a strange planet. Alone. Forever. However, after a few moments of shock, and fortunately for all involved, Rover did decide he was going to be a team player. He truly was a very loyal friend.

In the next two weeks, Cluster had the best time of his life. To be fair, it was the most attention he had got in a while. Rover had figured out how to make hologram balls that gave feedback to Cluster’s brain chip when he bit into them, which took the game of learning to a new level. And, being a shepherd breed, Cluster loved learning new things. He was making a lot of progress each day, and after the second week of training, Captain Cluster was ready for his first real life flight.

***

“Cluster, right!” Orion gave the command “Slooow now, slooow. Good boy, Cluster.”

Cluster was wagging his tail and barking with excitement. He was doing great, but his drool did have to be cleaned up constantly by the cleaner bots, otherwise it could have damaged the console. Yuck.

“Okay, we are potentially looking for three crash sites, the pods’ signals disappeared around… Here! Cluster, straight ahead!” Cluster steered the ship straight.

Rover pushed himself as close to the window as possible, while Orion was monitoring the feed from the cameras and sensors. They were getting close enough for the heat sensors to pick up smaller measurements that could be emitted by the humans — if they survived.

“Orion, look! I think I can see something.”

It was the orange slope. They were close enough to see it now. Moments later, the crash sites pinged on the computers. Finally, the systems were able to link again. They had lost signal 11 months ago, and now they could go through logs to see if there was any activity after the crash.

“Jaelan and Elyse survived, there is a lot of activity in their ship. It only stopped around 2 weeks ago.” said Orion and opened the next pod’s logs. “Pullock and Eldrin… pronounced dead on site. It looks like they didn’t make it.”

Rover bit his lip as tears of both joy for the survivors and grief for the dead slid down his face. “And Xalon? He was alone in his pod.”

“I’m checking… it seems he survived the crash. But his logs suddenly stop 5 months ago.” Orion looked at Rover. “We have to have hope. And we have to bring home whoever’s still out there.”

Rover wiped his tears and clenched his fists in determination. “You’re right. I’m heading to my launch pad. We will bring them back.”

It was an hour later when Orion’s voice came through the intercom.

“We are getting close now, Rover. We are dropping you in 2 minutes. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready. I have the remotes for the emergency pods, medical supplies, food and water. Is there anything else that they might need?”

“I don’t think you can carry any more, Rover. We need you to reach them, first and foremost. We will following you as best as we can but we need to gain some elevation. You won’t be alone.” the launch pads doors were starting open. Air burst in violently.

“Copy that.” said Rover and jumped off the ship.

He landed with a big thump, but his systems showed no damage to his mechanical parts. His mechanical body, which was an actual rover, was ideal for the rocky terrain. He first headed to the crash sites and checked each pod, which were the size of a standard crew bed cabin at around 16 square meters. Their doors, when fully operational, created a vacuum seal, so that the occupants were supplied with breathable air inside. On planets such as Big Red, the space suits and the pods both collected water vapor and split the molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, which meant that the air supply was technically infinite as long as the equipment stayed intact.Rover didn’t find anybody in the pods, only a bloody suit with Elyse’s initials. It looked like she might have obtained an abdominal injury, from which she lost a lot of blood. Her chances of survival didn’t look great.

Rover’s sensors picked up a trail of microbial and genetic material left behind by humans. It looked like the humans made the long journey to the orange slope on foot. He hoped their suits were in good condition, since Big Red’s air was not breathable for humans. On the way he saw what seemed to be a graveyard. On closer inspection he found three headstones - they read Eldrin, Pullock, and Jaelen. This meant Xalon could have survived after all. Rover placed a rock at each grave and said his goodbyes, as Orion watched from the ship. It took 3 hours for Rover to arrive to the slope, where the trail faded.

Rover was about to give up the search, when after hours of looking everywhere, he thought he had heard something from a cave. “Shh! Stay quiet now,” the voice said again.

“Orion, I think I can hear Elyse. I’m going to investigate now. We might lose radio connection, these rocks are huge.” Orion gave the go ahead and waited impatiently.

As Rover entered the cave, he could already see a heat signal.

“Rover! Xalon, it’s okay, it’s Rover!” Elyse shouted. “You came to save us! Ouch… sorry, Rover, I can’t stand up.” she said, holding onto her stomach.

“I’m so incredibly happy to see you! Don’t worry, I brought medical supplies.”

“Rover, oh my God! How did you do it?” asked Xalon.

“You have to thank Cluster. But first, Elyse, let me treat your wound.”

“Wound?” Elyse looked perplexed. “Ohh, this? I’m so stupid, how would you have known? Rover, meet little Jay.” Elyse pushed something big from her chest up to her suit’s face glass.

Rover was hit with the realization. “You have… a baby? So, this is why your suit, that you left behind, had a lot of blood on it.” Rover broke down. It was really hard to cry in a mechanical body that didn’t produce tears. “Hi there, little Jay.”

“Actually, Jaelen and I had a baby. He… he slipped while trying to send a signal to the ship and hit his head. We were so scared. After he was gone, Xalon and I didn’t want to be around the pods anymore. We were almost out of food anyways. Jay was born 4 weeks ago, so walking here was not easy.” Rover only noticed then how exhausted Elyse looked. “But you found us. We are so lucky, Rover.”

After exchanging hugs and checking all human’s vitals were good enough for air travel, Rover rolled outside to call the emergency pod and tell Orion with the happy news.

***

“Are you three ready to meet Captain Cluster?” asked Rover as they was approaching the ship.

“I’ve never wanted to play fetch more.” said Xalon.