There is a gateway to the imagination you must enter before you are conscious and the keys to the gate are symbols. You can carry ideas through the gat.... but you must carry the ideas in symbols.
SOMETHING WENT "Tick."
He heard it quite distinctl...metallic sound. There it went again: "Tick."
He opened his eyes and was rewarded with darkness, an absolute lack of radiant energ.... or of receptors to detect energy.
Am I blind?
"Tick."
He could not place the source, but it was out there - wherever out there was. The air felt cold in his throat and lungs. But his body was warm. He realized that he lay very lightly on a soft surface. He was breathing. Something tickled his nose, a faint odor o.... pepper?
"Tick."
He cleared his throat. "Anybody there?"
No answer. Speaking hurt his throat.
What am I doing here?
The soft surface beneath him curved up around his shoulders to support his neck and head. It encased hips and legs. This was familiar. It ignited distant associations. It wa.... what? He felt that he should know about such a surface.
After all.... .
"Tick."
Panic seized him. Who am I?
The answer came slowly, thawed from a block of ice which contained everything he should know.
I am Raja Flattery.
Ice melted in a cascade of memories.
I'm Chaplain/Psychiatrist on the Voidship Earthling. W.... we. . .
Some of the memories remained frozen.
He tried to sit up but was restrained by softly cupping bands over his chest and wrists. Now, he felt connectors withdraw from the veins at his wrists.
I'm in a hyb tank!
He had no memory of going into hybernation. Perhaps memory thawed more slowly than flesh. Interesting. But there were a few memories now, frigid in their flow, and deeply disturbing.
I failed.
Moonbase directed me to blow up our ship rather than let it roam space as a threat to humankind. I was to send the message capsule back to Moonbas.... and blow up our ship.
Something had prevented him fro.... somethin....
But he remembered the project now.
Project Consciousness.
And he, Raja Flattery, had held a key role in that project. Chaplain/Psychiatrist. He had been one of the crew.
Umbilicus crew.
He did not dwell on the birth symbology in that label. Clones had more important tasks. They were clones on the crew, all with Lon for a middle name. Lon meant clone as Mac meant son of. All the crew - clones. They were doppelgangers sent far into insulating space, there to solve the problem of creating an artificial consciousness.
Dangerous work. Very dangerous. Artificial consciousness had a long history of turning against its creators. It went rogue with ferocious violence. Even many of the uncloned had perished in agony.
Nobody could say why.
But the project's directors at Moonbase were persistent. Again and again, they sent the same cloned crew into space. Features flashed into Flattery's mind as he thought the names: a Gerrill Timberlake, a John Bickel, a Prue Weygand....
Raja Flatter.... Raja Lon Flattery.
He glimpsed his own face in a long-gone mirror: fair hair, narrow feature.... disdainfu....
And the Voidships carried others, many others. They carried cloned Colonists, gene banks in hyb tanks. Cheap flesh to be sacrificed in distant explosions where the uncloned would not be harmed. Cheap flesh to gather data for the uncloned. Each new venture into the void went out with a bit more information for the wakeful umbilicus crew and those encased in hy....
As I am encased now.
Colonists, livestock, plants - each Voidship carried what it needed to create another Earth. That was the carrot luring them onward. And the ship - certain death if they failed to create an artificial consciousness. Moonbase knew that ships and clones were cheap where materials and inexpensive energy were abundan.... as they were on the moon.
"Tick."
Who is bringing me out of hybernation?
And why?
Flattery thought about that while he tried to extend his globe of awareness into the unresponsive darkness.
Who? Why?
He knew that he had failed to blow up his ship after it had exhibited consciousnes.... using Bickel as an imprint on the computer they had buil....
I did not blow up the ship. Something prevented me fro....
Ship!
More memories flooded into his mind. They had achieved the artificial consciousness to direct their shi.... and it had whisked them far across space to the Tau Ceti system.
Where there were no inhabitable planets.