The Falling Bird

“No, I’ve seen nothing of that. My programmers uploaded into my memory the belief that this world does indeed exist.”

“Well, you see? Someone has persuaded you about that, but it seems to me that you aren’t sure yourself that it exists, and I doubt that too. I suspect that these are just colorful pictures, like the ones I draw on paper or on a computer. And as soon as I turn the screen off or go to another room, all of this diversity disappears like a dream.”

Arcad was becoming more interested in the really important issues of the current life on the ship – why was their city-ship so small? Why were there no other people but him and was there anybody else he could talk to but GAS? And why was he not permitted to go anywhere from his room? One day he asked.

“Listen, GAS, where did I come from?”

“What do you mean where did you come from? You were born.” For the first time while mentoring the child GAS was at a loss for words.

“What do you mean ‘was born’?”

“A woman, your mother, gave birth to you seven years ago. And now your mom, along with your dad is sleeping in a special room, five years already, to avoid body deterioration during this flight.”

“And why am I not sleeping and neither are our two helpers?”

“Our helpers are made of metal and are not sensitive to the enormous intergalactic speeds and gravity. But even if they break down for whatever reason, I have more helpers like that on reserve and can bring them to life at any moment to make them work for you and me. But you, as a growing living organism, cannot go into a lengthy anaerobic sleep, otherwise your physical and intellectual development will be compromised. You are currently living in a mini-gravitational chamber I made specifically for you at the expense of the ship’s fuel economy, so that you can grow up normally and when you come back to Earth, you are able to live there freely, like all the other people there.

“How strange! You don’t seem to exist physically in front of me, yet you can do anything.”

“Well, almost anything,” agreed GAS proudly.

And while Arcad was engaged in philosophical conversations and being schooled on various sciences, time passed by unnoticed by the little involuntary traveler, a passenger on a ship to a faraway unknown planet.

At last, on the eighth year of the flight, the distance to Asteroin was rapidly shortening, and GAS turned on the ship’s deceleration systems in order not to overshoot the star. The helpers on GAS’ order began to vent the noble gases from all the modules and filling them with an oxygen mixture so that everybody who was sleeping would begin to wake up.

And then it became clear that not all of the crew members survived such a lengthy slumber. Some couldn’t wake up, or, after awakening were unable to walk and were just crawling around in the cabins with no knowledge of who they were. The dead and those incapable of physical labor were being mercilessly “fired” – the robots were ejecting them into space with compressed air through the airlock chamber, like projectiles from a howitzer’s barrel.

Arcad was moving around the ship together with the robots observing with interest what was going on. He was taking in a completely alien world within the same ship he was on himself. His edifice of how the world was organized had been built on the premise that it was revolved around the nursery where he had already been living for the past eight years. And now his belief was seriously shaken and fractured after he had seen something outside of his worldview; the illusion was broken and he began revising his perception of life as he was discovering new areas of the ship – previously off limits – and the members of the crew that were coming to. The stale odor coming from the cabins where the crew members were housed, their sluggish movements, and lethargic indiscernible speech brought about in Arcad only a feeling of disgust and some kind of repulsion. Looking at the nearly insane workers, he wished that the robots had ditched all of the remaining people into space through the airlock. That was exactly what he said to GAS now that he had seen everything.

“I would do that with pleasure, my boy,” GAS answered him. “But who then will be harvesting the weed on Hop? You, maybe?” bursting into laughter like a human.

Valentin Valentinovich woke up after everybody else had done and learned from GAS that all six of his guards perished after the lengthy space sleep and had been disposed of by the robots. So he did his best to leave his module as little as possible in order not to run into the disgruntled surviving crew members and provoke a mutiny, against which he would have no one to defend him.

Arcad met his parents when they woke up but that stirred no interest in him and left him indifferent as if they were completely unrelated to him, and began doubting that it was even them who had brought him into this world. And when a week later he had stopped by their place again and taken a much better look at them, he came to the final conclusion that such primitive beings, like these ones, simply couldn’t be his parents, and decided that it was GAS which was his father and mother.

And for his biological parents, they didn’t protest that he was wrong, as they were wholly preoccupied with rehabilitation of their bodies and trying to bring them back to normal. Arcad’s parents, as soon as they had woken up, right away pigged out on foods, devouring everything in sight, like hungry animals. They pawed the meal up, shoved it into their mouth, pushing it deeper with their fingers almost without chewing it. They were taking short breaks only after getting full, and after they woke up they ate, ate, and ate again, oblivious to anything else around, except for food.

All survivors from the prolonged sleep – and of those were only just half of the crew – were staring with curiosity at a boy, who appeared out of nowhere and was running around in the ship, like a master, with all doors (including those that were off limits to everyone else) opening for him on command from a remote Arcad had in his pocket. He began being regarded as the big boss of the ship, along with GAS, and the executor of its will. And Arcad behaved accordingly, talking to everybody with a commanding voice and tolerating no objection.

On the tenth morning after the crew had been roused from their slumber, Arcad, as he usually would after breakfast, was running along the hallway to continue observing life of the strange – in his opinion – people. From the opposite direction in the middle of the hallway a large man was unhurriedly walking, with no intention of yielding to anyone in his path. Arcad had become so used to the fact that everybody on the ship would give him way that he ran into the stranger without slowing down.

“You little shit, ain’t you looking where you runnin’? You blind?” the big guy yelled at Arcad and brushed him aside with such a great force that Arcad hit his shoulder against the wall with a hard impact.

“I am Arcad, you idiot!” he shouted back, rubbing his hurt shoulder.

“This is how you talk to your elders, tyke? How ‘bout I tear your ears off!” said the stranger to Arcad and harshly pulled on his ear.

“Ouch! Let it go, it hurts!” screamed Arcad and added, “GAS, help!”