Dorothy From Kansas, Part 6
I went overboard again! This portion of the story contains about 7,250 words. I was aiming for 2,500. Oops! Anyway, here's a new chapter of the story and a new character for ya.
NOTE : If I ever make any money off of this story, I owe royalties to Rob Martin for the character of Miguel Withersby.
My Life On The Bebop
By Miguel Withersby
Chapter 1
I am a Martian. A second generation Martian, specifically. My grandparents were among the first Americans to come to Mars aboard The Thunder Bird, in the year 2027, still year 0 on the Martian calendar. The Thunder Bird arrived mere months after the Chinese vessel Chaocheng, but those months were enough to give the Chinese a head start on Mars that they enjoy to this day. For as long as I can remember my grandparents complained about the shortsightedness of the old NASA organization, saying that if America had put more effort into their Martian colonization program, America might have claimed the best land, and we might have the space elevator today. “America is, and always will be, second place to China on Mars because we didn’t look to the future,” my grandfather would often complain. My grandparents were engineers, not scientists. They took great pride in the fact that they took part in building the original colonies rather than conducting experiments. They considered themselves pioneers, building a new home for humanity on the new frontier.
My grandparents, and indeed my entire family, have always been pro-terraforming. We believe in transforming Mars into a second home for mankind. However, none of my family were ever part of the Ares Conspiracy. While my grandparents believed in terraforming, they never believed in that kind of renegade behavior. When the Ares Conspirators spread the bacteria that began the terraforming of Mars and changed the atmosphere irrevocably, my family, like all Martians, were outraged. We had always believed that the transforming of Mars into another world should be something that all Martians agreed to and cooperated in. Nevertheless, the damage had been done, and Mars was changed forever. It was decided, by both the Chinese and American colonies that since the process had been started, the terraforming should continue. The Mars Development Corporation was formed in order to oversee the terraforming efforts, and my parents were among its first employees. My mother was a hydrological engineer and my father was a marine biologist. They met when they were working together to flood the Valles Marineris and turn it into the Marineris Sea, which became the Mediterranean of Mars. As soon as it was flooded, domed cities began springing up all along it’s banks with the Chinese occupying the west and the Americans in the east. My parents' work remains the home for most Martians to this day.
By the time my parents were deciding to have children, significant progress had been made on modifying the atmosphere. It was up to 30% the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere, and it had a significant oxygen content. Not enough oxygen for a normal human, and the carbon dioxide level was at 60%, far above the lethal level. It would be sometime before the atmosphere would be breathable to a normal human’s lungs, and my parents turned out to not be very patient people. They had had enough of living under glass, and they wanted their child to be able to walk freely outside the cities in the wilderness of Mars. The wilderness they helped to build. They purchased a Yousheng parahuman template from the Xiao Chu corporation, a template which would allow their child to be able to breath the Martian atmosphere as easily as the atmosphere of Earth.
I was born on October 13th, in the year 22. That’s the Martian calendar again, of course. My birthday on the Gregorian calendar was March 14th, 2069. Xiao Chu had only come out with their Yousheng template in 2068, so I was one of this first Martians to be able to breath the Martian air. I grew up in Robinson City, just west of the Capri Chasma Dam where my parents worked. The city was a fine place to grow up, but like most cities on Mars, it was domed. An unexpected side effect of my Martian lungs was the fact that it was a little uncomfortable for me to breath Earth-normal atmosphere. I could do it, it didn’t do any damage to my lungs, but in order to prevent myself from getting too much oxygen, I would stop breathing for 30 seconds to a minute every five or ten minutes. Since no one had told my parents this would happen, it naturally scared the crap out of them. No matter how many times the doctors told my parents that it was perfectly normal for a Yousheng to stop breathing every once in a while in Earth-normal atmosphere, it still worried them, and they decided that early on, I should spend as much time as possible out in the Martian atmosphere. My earliest memories are of playing on the banks of the Marineris with my kindercomp, a robotic puppy. I think I spent more time being baby sat by that robot dog than I did with my parents in those early days. Indeed, most of my early memories involve myself being around robots, which probably accounts for my lifelong fascination with them. I named that kindercomp Mr. Barkers, and he stayed with me for a long time. When it came time for me to start school, my parents decided that I would be home schooled, and they updated Mr. Barkers programming so that he could be my tutor. They continually updated that LAI throughout my childhood, and Mr. Barkers was responsible for all of my pre-university education. In fact, when it came time for me to have my own implant computer installed, I chose to have Mr. Barkers program installed in it. I’ve changed his name to Brooks in order to maintain my dignity, but he has been with me my entire life.
At the age of nine (Mars years, obviously) I enrolled in the University of Mars. For as long as I could remember, my parents had told me about my family’s proud history of building Mars, and I knew I was expected to continue in that tradition. My parents had always wanted me to pursue a career in biology or chemistry or something else that would contribute directly to the terraforming effort. Unfortunately, I had never shown any aptitude in any of those fields. I was always far more interested in things mechanical. I had been around robots my entire life, and I had never outgrown my boyhood fascination with them. Despite our family’s tradition, my parents were actually quite supportive of my decision to go into robotics. “Robots have spent more time building Mars than humans,” my father said to me. He made it clear that he and my mother were fine with my decision, as long as I still chose to put my skills towards the terraforming effort, which was no problem. I had been told that I came from a line of planet builders for all my life, and I had always planned on continuing that tradition.
I learned two things in my time at the University. The first thing was that I was fascinated by particle physics. I had always been curious about the fusion reactors that created all our power, but it wasn’t until I studied them academically that I realized they were something else I could see making a career out of. I decided to get a double major in fusion engineering and robotics. The second thing I learned was that I did not like being around people. Mind you, I have nothing against individuals, but large groups of people thoroughly irritate me. Maybe it’s all that time I spent with robots, or maybe it’s those memetics classes that I took which showed me how easy it is to manipulate large groups of people, but I discovered in college that I preferred the company of AIs to that of people. So, when I graduated, I got a job with the Mars Development Corporation maintaining machinery in remote parts of Mars. I got myself a small ranch about fifty kilometers from the university and made it my home. Using that as a base, I worked as a mechanic on call, traveling out to into the Martian wilderness to work on whatever remote robots or fusion reactors needed to be repaired or maintained. I was my own man, living on my terms out in a wilderness that my family and I had worked to create. I don’t think anyone on Earth can understand how it feels to see the sunset over a sky that you played a small part in making happen. It is simply extraordinary. I would look out at the sky and think of how this was my family’s creation. I felt like this planet was my birthright, except for one thing.
Mars is still a cold world, and if I wanted to go outside and enjoy the wilderness, I would always need to bundle up in order to endure the cold. It felt wrong, it felt artificial. If a place is your home, you should be comfortable there, you shouldn’t need to cover yourself in protective clothing to go outside. It made me feel distant from the planet. Every time I suited up to go out, I felt a little bit less like a Martian, and it really began to get under my skin. So, I decided to take what some thought was a rather drastic step. I had a transgenic feature added to my DNA. That transgenic feature was fur. A dark, thick, red fur, specifically, covering all of my body. It keeps me very warm and allows me to blend in with the Martian landscape nicely. With my fur, I can wander about in the wilderness in nothing but a shirt and jeans. It makes me feel like I was made for this environment, which of course I was. Some people thought I was crazy. They told me I didn’t look human anymore, and I told them that that was the whole point of the transhumanist movement, to move beyond being human. My family needed to take some time to get used to it, but they eventually came around. They saw my fur for what it was, a natural extension of the adaptations they had me born with. As for myself, I absolutely loved my fur. Not only did it make me feel more at home in the Martian environment, but it made me feel more Martian, period. It was a way, a visual way of signifying that Earth was not my home, Mars was. The fur made me feel like a Martian, both physically and spiritually. For the first time, I felt at peace with my world.
And then the attack happened.
On the 11th of Taurus in the year 36, the anti-terraforming terrorist organization known as Negative Growth attempted to destroy the Space Elevator with a nuclear device. The Martian People’s Armed Police managed to stop them, but they came very close to cutting the cables. The Space Elevator is the core of the Martian economy. An attack on the Elevator was an attack on Mars, and an attack on Mars was an attack on my home, my family, and myself. I took it very personally, I don’t know a single Martian who didn’t. I realize that the Space Elevator in owned by the Chinese government, but those distinctions never meant that much to me. I’ve always thought of myself as a Martian first and an American second. I have far more in common with a Chinese Martian than I do with an American from Earth. To be totally honest, if someone had tried to blow up Statue of Liberty or some other American landmark, I don’t think I would have been nearly as bothered. But this was Mars that was attacked. This was my home. This was everything I knew, this was what generations of my family had worked to build. I felt like I had to do something.
It was shortly after the attack that the US Marshals Service began approaching American Martians with a rather unusual proposition. They had been working very closely with the Chinese Government to root out other anti-terraforming terrorists, but the U.S. Marshals Service found their resources spread rather thin on the Red Planet. Rather than import a bunch of Marshals from Earth, who would know nothing about Mars and have to be completely retrained once they got here, the Marshals Service dusted off an old concept that was still technically on the books. That being the part-time Deputy Marshall. Technically, the Marshals Service has always had the right to make deputies out of willing civilians. This dates back to the Old West, and was originally intended to allow Marshals to form a posse. On Mars, the Marshals Service decided that the old idea was worth trying out again and started looking for people to become part-time deputies. They were looking for people who knew Mars well, who knew there way around the backwaters, and who knew where terrorists might hide. In short, they were looking for people like me.
I managed to get my job with the Mars Development Corporation cut down to part-time status and I became a Deputy Marshal with the USMS. I worked both jobs, spending half my time maintaining the robots of Mars and the other half hunting down terrorists. At least, that was the plan. I spent a lot of the first year or two hunting down terrorists, but Negative Growth had some powerful connections within the Martian Triads, and they all managed to get off the planet quickly. So, I ended up doing the next best thing and hunting down the Triads and other organized crime. It was well known that Negative Growth bought their weapons and equipment from the Triads, so they were a suitable target for my vengeance. After a while, though, the job became about something more than vengeance. I started to see protecting Mars as a natural extension of building it. I had never realized until I went into law enforcement how incredibly powerful the Triads were, especially in Rust China, a.k.a. The Chinese Mars Autonomous Region. Obviously, I had no law enforcement powers there, but I could do what I could to prevent them from making further inroads in the American Martian Commonwealth. Or so I thought.
The problem with combating the Triads was the same as the problem I had tracking down terrorists. They moved out into space. The Triads had corrupt Chinese officials on their payroll, and so they were able to move things up and down the Elevator without any inspection at all. Once they got that power, they started moving all of their main industries, illegal bioroid and weapons manufacturing, out into the lawlessness of the asteroid belt. That ended up being how almost all of my investigations ended. I would manage to capture some low level brainbug pusher, arms dealer, or bioroid pimp, but whenever I tried to follow the merchandise back to it’s source, it always lead the same way. Up the Elevator. The US Government would of course put a bounty out on the gang leaders and their asteroid factories, but very few bounty hunters were willing to go after them. On the one hand, the Triads could usually match whatever bounty the US Government put on them, and then some. On the other hand, very few bounty hunters were brave enough to even think of taking on the Triads. Everyone knew they had more ships than the US Aerospace Force, so who would you rather make an enemy of? It became increasingly frustrating. I began to realize that the only way I was going to get a chance to go after the Triads, or Negative Growth for that matter, was if I became a bounty hunter and pursued them into space. I thought about it long and hard, but it seemed impossible. I didn’t have anywhere near the capital to get a ship together myself, and no one was going to hire someone who had only six months experience in space travel. I posted an add on the Teralogos news service offering my services as a bounty hunter, but I didn’t expect any ship would hire me on. I was wrong.
On the 7th of April, 39 (Earth date : February 4, 2100), I got a response from none other than Tanaka Eto telling me he was interested in hiring me on as a bounty hunter and chief engineer onboard his ship. His bounty hunting ship. Obviously, I thought this was a joke. I had majored in robotics, so of course I was familiar with Tanaka Eto and Soong Heavy Robotics. The idea that a super centenarian had decided to abandon his corporate empire in order to pursue a life of bounty hunting seemed utterly absurd. In fact, even with all the time I’ve spent with him, living that life, it still seems absurd. I was certain that someone was playing some kind of joke on me, so I called up my contacts in the US Marshals Service and I got the transmission traced. Sure enough, it came from the private estate of Tanaka Eto in the Gifu Prefecture of Japan on Earth. I was shocked, but more than that I was thoroughly intrigued. The Tanaka Eto wanted to hire me as a bounty hunter. More shocking, he apparently wanted to become a bounty hunter himself. At that point, it was the most surreal moment of my life. Living on the Bebop thoroughly shifted that scale.
I sent him a response with my resume and told him that I was very interested and wanted to know more. He sent me short but polite reply saying that within the month, he would be sending an infomorph out to Mars to interview me for the position. Sure enough, on the 23rd of April (Mars Time) I got a message from an infomorph by the name of Faye Valentine saying that she would be coming out to conduct my interview on the 3rd of Sagittarius. She had some odd requests, though. For one thing, she didn’t want to conduct the interview in the sims. She said that if she was coming to Mars, she wanted to rent a cybershell so she could get out and explore the planet while she was there. That seemed completely impractical to me, but I didn’t know Faye yet. For another thing, no only did she want to meet me in person, but she wanted to meet me at my ranch. She said that she and Tanaka had done some research on me, and when she found out I had a ranch, she decided that she had to see it. She said that the idea of a ranch on Mars was, and I quote, “freaking amazing”. That is the first and only time I have seen the phrase “freaking amazing” in an official corporate transmission. Nevertheless, even though the requests were strange, they were easily fulfilled, so I agreed, and on the 3rd of Sagittarius, I prepared for company.
Faye was late. Faye was very late. It wasn’t her fault, she got stalled in customs. In order for her to come out to see me, she would have to pass through customs twice, once to get into New Shanghai, then another time to move from Rust China to American Mars. She was very nice about it, though. I kept getting update calls from her, about one an hour, assuring me she was on her way.
“I’m still coming, I’m just really delayed,” she explained. “Please don’t go anywhere, we’re really interested in you!”
“That’s fine,”I laughed. “I’ve lived my whole life on this planet, I know how customs can be. You just take your time. I’ve got the whole day set aside.” I had guessed pretty quickly that I was dealing with a Ghost and not an SAI. I was a little disappointed. I had always preferred AIs, and I tended to interview with them better. Still, I should have realized that I was dealing with a Ghost when she insisted on coming out to see my ranch.
Faye Valentine pulled up to my ranch around 21:00. She was riding in a 2098 Fukang Light Rover that she obviously rented in New Shanghai. Riding inside the rover was a cybershell, a Clockwork Souls G-5 Asian model Cyberdoll, which she also obviously rented in New Shanghai, and inside that cybershell was the Ghost Faye Valentine. Right away, I could tell that this would not be your average interview. Faye, in her rented body, was looking around at everything she passed, which out here in the desert, wasn’t much. She was looking at mountains off in the distance, she was starring at the sky with it’s two moons, she was looking out over the desert itself, as if the endless sand held some kind of interest. She was clearly a tourist, and she had clearly never been on Mars before. When she got close enough to see me waiting for her on my front porch, she sat up in her rover and waved to me. I smiled and waved back, slowly sipping my tea. Like I said before, I didn’t like people, but individuals were all right, and I had a feeling I was going to like Faye. She had a wide-eyed way of looking at the world that I noticed right away. Normally, that kind of thing would tick me off, but with Faye, I found it charming. Her rover pulled up to my house, and she jumped out of it before it had come to a complete stop. She walked up to me, offering her hand.
“Miguel Withersby, I presume?” she said, smiling from ear to ear.
“Yes,” I replied. “And you must be Faye Valentine.” We shook hands. I could tell by her uncomfortably strong grip that she didn’t quite have this particular cybershell mastered yet. “Now let me see, you’re in a Clockwork Souls G-5 Asian model Cyberdoll, correct?”
“Um, yes,” she said, sounding impressed. I had planned on doing that the moment I found out that an infomorph would be coming over in a rented cybershell.
“Now if memory serves,” I said, trying to impress her further, “that model does not have any kind of taste system, does it?”
“No,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, I was trying to figure out if I should offer you some tea or just do this.” I then had Brooks transmit the taste sensation for my martian prickly pear tea to her.
“Oh!” she said, surprised. “That’s, um, that’s-”
“An acquired taste?” I offered. She nodded. I smiled slightly. “Most non-Martians don’t like it, you just seemed like you would get a kick out of trying something uniquely Martian. Let me guess, first time on Mars?”
“Yes, actually.” I could tell she would be blushing if she had that function. “Am I that obvious?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, you are.” I was never one for subtlety. There was then a rather long, awkward pause in the conversation until she spoke up.
“Where are your animals?” she asked.
“My what?”
“Your animals.” Apparently she had assumed that this was a livestock ranch. At the time, I thought it was an odd assumption, given that I had never mentioned owning any animals, but once I got to know her, it made sense.
“This is a robot ranch,” I explained. “I maintain and power up robots here. There’s no animals to be had. I was thinking of maybe getting some goats or cows when I retire, but for now, there’s nothing here but robots. Speaking of which, it’s a long trek from New Shanghai. Your power cells must be low. Do you need a recharge?”
“Oh, thank God,” she exclaimed. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about power. They don’t rent these out with a full charge, do they?”
“Not in New Shanghai, those agencies expect you to provide your own power. Hang on, I’ll be right back with a power cord.” I went around back, hooked a power cord into my fuel cell, and dragged it back around to the front. I offered it to her, and she started looking at it suspiciously, and started patting down her own body, looking for something.
“You have no idea where this plugs in, do you?” I asked. Again, she would have blushed if she could.
“No, I don’t,” she admitted. “Could you help me?”
“Lean forward,” I said. She did, and I plugged the cord into the hidden port on the back of her neck. She then struggled for a moment or two to gain her balance with a large electrical cord sticking out of her neck.
“Should we go inside?” I asked.
“Do you mind if we stay out here?” she pleaded. “I can’t get enough of the Martian sky.”
“Neither can I,” I said, smiling. I sat back down on my porch and went back to sipping my tea. “Lets get started.”
Faye then started in on her questions. She started off with some very technical questions about what kind of fusion reactors I knew how to maintain. From the way she asked them, I could tell she didn’t actually know anything about fusion reactors herself, and this was a list of questions that someone else had given her to memorize. She then started in asking about my robotics experience, asking specifically if I was familiar with the Volkspider as those were the robots that I would have working under me on the ship. She asked about how well I worked with LAIs, and did I think I could function as a fusion mechanic and robot mechanic at the same time and so on and so on. Basic interview type questions, nothing especially interesting. What was interesting was that the entire time she was asking me these questions, she couldn’t take her eyes off of my fur. She kept looking me up and down and watching my fur blow about in the breeze. Contrary to what most people think, transhumans usually don’t mind being asked about their transgenic features. I know I don’t. After all, I chose to grow my fur. It’s a statement about who and what I am. I want people to notice it. So many people treat it like it’s a birth defect, like it’s something you should just ignore. I could tell watching her that Faye wanted to ask about it, but she didn’t know whether or not it would be polite.
“Faye,” I said. “Would you like to ask me about my fur?” She didn’t even say “yes”, she just launched in with the questions.
“Were you born with it or did you have it grown later?” She then went on to ask me a few more questions about what it was like to live with fur, and I eventually offered to let her pet me. She never asked, but I could tell she wanted to know what human fur felt like.
“Oh my God, it’s not like hair at all! It’s really fur! Like a dog’s coat or something.” I laughed at that, but it did seem strange to me. That added up to everything else I’d seen in her caused me to start to formulate a theory about Faye. I knew she was a Ghost, but at that point, I didn’t know she was a defroste. I was beginning to suspect it, though. All the signs were there, but why would someone send an infomorph that inexperienced out into the solar system alone? At the risk of being rude, I decided I would just ask.
“Faye, you’re a Ghost, not an SAI, right?”
“Yes, I am.”
“How long have you been awake in the modern world?” Again, I got that would-blush-if-I-could expression.
“Um, about two months,” she muttered under her breath. She then started to seem a little upset. “You can really tell, can’t you? I don’t blend in at all, do I?”
“Yea, it’s pretty obvious,” I admitted. “You kind of have this way of looking at everyday stuff like it’s brand new. It kind of gives you away. When were you originally from?” She kept starring at her feet, embarrassed at being called out.
“2019,” she said, barely audible. I think I actually started laughing aloud.
“Gwai-gwai long duh dong!” I yelled. “You’re a time traveler! Of course you stand out, how could you not? Why did Mr. Eto send you out to Mars? Surely he could have hired a more experienced infomorph, no offense.” She then picked her head up and seemed to start shaking herself out of her embarrassment.
“Because Tanaka and I are very close, and I was the only infomorph he trusted to know what he wanted on his crew, what he wanted for his ship. Also, because I will be serving as first officer.” You would think that would give me pause, but I had already accepted the notion of a captain who had no experience flying a spaceship, so a first officer with a similar lack of experience didn’t really make the idea of this ship that much more crazy. The whole idea was already completely insane to begin with, which brought me to something I had been meaning to ask.
“And what exactly is it that Mr. Eto is looking to get out of this ship? I’ve been dying to figure that out. What makes a man whose spent his life building a robotics empire suddenly decide in his old age that he wants to be captain of a bounty hunting ship?”
“Well, in terms of you, he’s looking to get a cop and an engineer in one piece. We couldn’t find that many people who could fill both of those roles. As for the ship in general,” Faye then paused for a moment, clearly thinking. “I’m not sure the best way to put this. I know Tanaka has made his mark on the world. I know he’s well known throughout the robotics industry. I know a lot of people would say that he’s made his contribution to society. He doesn’t quite feel that way. He doesn’t feel like he’s done anything really all that meaningful.” I looked at her skeptically, and she went on trying to explain. “Let me put it to you this way. You know who Cornelius Vanderbilt was?”
“Yea, he was a railroad tycoon in the nineteenth century.”
“Exactly. He’s famous, he’s made his mark on history. However, if I asked you who the heroes of the Old West were, you wouldn’t say Cornelius Vanderbilt. You would say Buffalo Bill or Wild Bill Hickok or someone like that. Cornelius’ railroads probably helped more people, and he probably made a much greater contribution to society than either of those Bills, but no one thinks of him as a hero. Tanaka has looked back on his life, and he is not happy with the way history will remember him. All his life, he’s wanted to be thought of as a hero, but he pushed that dream aside to run his company and do what was expected of him. Now that he’s closer to the end of his life than he is to the beginning, that dream is nagging at him, telling him that he has very few chances left. Before he dies, Tanaka wants to make sure that he is remembered like Wild Bill and not like Cornelius. In short, Tanaka wants to go out into space, catch bad guys and become a hero.”
I thought about what she was saying. In a weird way, I could kind of relate. My desire to go after the Triads and the terrorists was a little similar. We both wanted to leave our lives behind, track down the evil that lay on the frontier, and capture it. Mind you, I wanted to do this because it would be defending my homeland, not out of some bizarre, outdated, abstract concept of heroism, but even still, the similarities were there. I then started to think about what kind of a ship this would be. Tanaka sounded like he cared more about making a big splash than he did about playing it safe. That sounded all right to me. The problem with most bounty hunters was that they were only in it for the money, and they had no desire to go after big fish like the Martian Triads or Negative Growth. I could tell from Faye’s description that Tanaka wouldn’t be like that. Tanaka sounded like a damn the torpedoes kind of man, the kind of man that would go after the targets I wanted to go after, regardless of the danger. Maybe it was a bit suicidal, but I wanted to do this. I wanted to do it to defend my homeland. Some people join the army, I followed a crazy old man into space.
“I want to go after Triad mob bosses and terrorists. I want to go after the targets no one else goes after.” She smiled at me.
“That’s what Tanaka wants, too,” she said. “That’s the part that I thought would be a hard sell, actually.” I leaned back in my chair, pretending to think it over. I had made my decision.
“I’ll need about a month to get my affairs in order here on Mars,” I said. “But if you want me, you have yourself an engineer slash bounty hunter.” Her smile grew even wider.
“Well Tanaka said it was up to me,” she said. “And you exceed all of the technical qualifications that he gave me. More important than that, though, you’re in line with our vision of the ship. You want to go after the exact same targets he and I want to go after. You are just what we want in a crew member. Mr. Withersby, you’re hired. In one month, Tanaka will arrange first class travel for you from Mars to Earth orbit, where our ship, the Bebop-Maru, will be built. You’ll have to work out your exact salary with our captain, but he’s promised to pay at least what you are making now plus fifty percent. Welcome aboard, chief engineer!” She stood up, we shook hands, and I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
“Oh, there’s something else you might be able to help me with,” she said. “Tanaka wants me to find a Spike.” I didn’t get the reference at the time. Spending time on Tanaka’s ship would cure me of that.
“A what?”
“A criminal contact,” she explained. “He wants to hire someone on who has had intimate contact with the Triads, who knows his way around the criminal underworld. Do you know anyone like that who we could hire? It’s kind of a hard thing to post an add for, and I figured a cop would be the person to ask.” I almost laughed out loud. Lee had been asking me for quite a while if I could get him out of Port Lowell, but I doubted that this was what he’d had in mind.
“I’ve got just the guy,” I said. “Give me a moment, I’ll see if we can see him tomorrow.”
“Wonderful!” Faye looked very excited that everything was coming together. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I saw that electronic eye twinkle. I went into my house and began to send Lee a message. I felt like surprising the little bastard. I told him that I would be coming by his place tomorrow with someone who would be offering him a job and that he should be ready for us. That was the entire message. I probably should have just called him, but I always liked catching him with his pants down. He was always a little afraid that I was gonna finally hall him in.
“He’s agreed to meet us tomorrow,” I lied, as I walked back out onto the porch. “He hates the sims, though, so you and I will have to go into Port Lowell to see him. That OK with you?” Her eyes widened.
“I get to see another Martian city? Sure, no problem!” She then laughed and gave a little kick. “I can’t wait!” As I looked at Faye, I kind of felt sorry for her. Her childlike joy about everything was cute, but it clearly reflected that her education had major gaps in it. I felt bad for her, and I thought maybe I could help.
“Do you have any questions for me, Faye?”
“No, I went through all the interview-”
No,” I interrupted. “You’re not understanding. Do you, a woman from 2019, have any questions for me, a 22nd century engineer?” She looked like she wanted to hug me right then and there.
“You really don’t mind?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “Fire away.”
“OK, all of the machines I see don’t have any controls. At all. No steering wheels or buttons or levers or knobs or anything. I’ve been controlling everything with my mind by radio, but I’m a robot. How do ordinary humans control these machines that have no actual physical controls?” I sighed. I could tell from this simple, basic question that this was not only her first time on Mars, it was her first time in the real world.
“Humans control the machines around them through their interface. Now there’s two kinds if interfaces. There’s an implant, which is a computer implanted directly into your brain. You get a helper LAI or NAI put in that computer, and a person can control the machines around them in exactly the same way you can, with thought. For those that don’t want an implant, you have wearables. You’ve probably seen a lot of people walking around with what look like sunglasses? Those are their interfaces. Instead of getting and receiving information in their thoughts, they get information in a heads up display, and they issue commands to the machines around them with either their voice or hand gestures. Everyone has some kind of interface computer, they're as common as wristwatches were in your day. Without one, you wouldn’t be able to interact with the world.”
“Wow.” She starred off into space for a while, seemingly amazed at how computers were everywhere. I found myself amused by the irony of this high tech piece of hardware that was so out of date.
“Anything else?” I asked. She then started in with the questions, most of them about Mars, but some about everyday life. She asked about the space elevator, she asked about the Martian calendar, she asked about augmented reality, she asked me about everything. I didn’t mind. Her naive view of the world was contagious, and I liked seeing everything that was mundane to me reflected as fantastic in her digital eyes. We talked about technological and cultural changes for hours until the Gap arrived, which confused her. She looked at the virtual clock I had floating on the porch and cocked her head to the side.
“That clock reads 24:10,” she said, confused. “How many hours are in a Martian day.”
“24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.25 seconds,” I explained. Whoever prepared her did a terrible job. “Our clocks run to 24:39:35 and then click back over to 00:00:00. We call the extra time the Gap. According to tradition, things that happen during the Gap don’t count.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like a whispered secret or a stolen kiss or a confession, something like that. If it happened during the Gap, it doesn’t count.” She sat there quietly for a few seconds.
“We’re in the Gap now?” she asked.
“Yup,” I replied. She then waited a few seconds before giving her Gap confession.
“Our captain is kind of crazy,” she admitted. I just laughed.
“Yea, I gathered that.” She then waited a few more seconds before hitting me with another one.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “I’m following Tanaka because he’s my friend and he’s the one who brought me into this world, but I’m kind of unsure about everything. Don’t get me wrong, this whole bounty hunting thing sounds like an amazing adventure and everything, but I’m really just going along with it because I don’t know what to do with myself in this world. I’m lost.” She then starred at her feet for a while before looking up at me and giving me a half smile. “Doesn’t count, right?” I just walked over to her and gave her a hug.
“You’re an infomorph,” I whispered in her ear. “If you get in any danger, you can just transmit yourself to safety. You’re gonna be the safest member of our crew. You have nothing to worry about.”
“Thanks,” she said. We both then looked back at the clock.
“It’s getting late, Faye, and it’s a long trek back to the nearest city. Why don’t you spend the night in my guest room? Then tomorrow, I can take you to see Lee in Port Lowell.” She gave me a mischievous smile.
“Can I sleep out under the stars instead?” I chuckled.
“Of course. There’s no robot eating Mars wolves for you to be worried about.” She laughed at that, and I made my way inside. “I’ll see you in the morning, Faye.”
“Good night, Miguel.” And with that I closed the door and made my way to bed. It took me a while to get to sleep that night. I was excited about this new venture, but I was also quite worried about Faye. I wondered how this poor girl had gotten caught up in Tanaka’s psychotic wake. I wondered how she would fair on the ship. I wondered what kind of first officer she would make. I wondered a lot of things, but in the end, I decided that this was Tanaka’s ship, and if I was going to get my crack and the Triads and the terrorists, I was going to have to do it on his terms. I assured myself that Faye would eventually find her way, and being an infomorph, she would never be in any real danger anyway. I figured it was best to think about something else, so I started thinking about our meeting with Lee tomorrow. I wondered what the little domerat would say when I brought him a chance to serve on a spaceship. I wondered how he would react to Faye. I wondered what it would be like for he and I to actually live together on a crowded little spaceship. As I wondered that, I laughed out loud. Finally, as I drifted off to sleep, I wondered again what I had gotten myself into. As I slept, I dreamed about what my life on this ship would be like. In my wildest dreams, I never came anywhere close to what life would be like on the Bebop.
NOTE : If I ever make any money off of this story, I owe royalties to Rob Martin for the character of Miguel Withersby.
My Life On The Bebop
By Miguel Withersby
Chapter 1
I am a Martian. A second generation Martian, specifically. My grandparents were among the first Americans to come to Mars aboard The Thunder Bird, in the year 2027, still year 0 on the Martian calendar. The Thunder Bird arrived mere months after the Chinese vessel Chaocheng, but those months were enough to give the Chinese a head start on Mars that they enjoy to this day. For as long as I can remember my grandparents complained about the shortsightedness of the old NASA organization, saying that if America had put more effort into their Martian colonization program, America might have claimed the best land, and we might have the space elevator today. “America is, and always will be, second place to China on Mars because we didn’t look to the future,” my grandfather would often complain. My grandparents were engineers, not scientists. They took great pride in the fact that they took part in building the original colonies rather than conducting experiments. They considered themselves pioneers, building a new home for humanity on the new frontier.
My grandparents, and indeed my entire family, have always been pro-terraforming. We believe in transforming Mars into a second home for mankind. However, none of my family were ever part of the Ares Conspiracy. While my grandparents believed in terraforming, they never believed in that kind of renegade behavior. When the Ares Conspirators spread the bacteria that began the terraforming of Mars and changed the atmosphere irrevocably, my family, like all Martians, were outraged. We had always believed that the transforming of Mars into another world should be something that all Martians agreed to and cooperated in. Nevertheless, the damage had been done, and Mars was changed forever. It was decided, by both the Chinese and American colonies that since the process had been started, the terraforming should continue. The Mars Development Corporation was formed in order to oversee the terraforming efforts, and my parents were among its first employees. My mother was a hydrological engineer and my father was a marine biologist. They met when they were working together to flood the Valles Marineris and turn it into the Marineris Sea, which became the Mediterranean of Mars. As soon as it was flooded, domed cities began springing up all along it’s banks with the Chinese occupying the west and the Americans in the east. My parents' work remains the home for most Martians to this day.
By the time my parents were deciding to have children, significant progress had been made on modifying the atmosphere. It was up to 30% the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere, and it had a significant oxygen content. Not enough oxygen for a normal human, and the carbon dioxide level was at 60%, far above the lethal level. It would be sometime before the atmosphere would be breathable to a normal human’s lungs, and my parents turned out to not be very patient people. They had had enough of living under glass, and they wanted their child to be able to walk freely outside the cities in the wilderness of Mars. The wilderness they helped to build. They purchased a Yousheng parahuman template from the Xiao Chu corporation, a template which would allow their child to be able to breath the Martian atmosphere as easily as the atmosphere of Earth.
I was born on October 13th, in the year 22. That’s the Martian calendar again, of course. My birthday on the Gregorian calendar was March 14th, 2069. Xiao Chu had only come out with their Yousheng template in 2068, so I was one of this first Martians to be able to breath the Martian air. I grew up in Robinson City, just west of the Capri Chasma Dam where my parents worked. The city was a fine place to grow up, but like most cities on Mars, it was domed. An unexpected side effect of my Martian lungs was the fact that it was a little uncomfortable for me to breath Earth-normal atmosphere. I could do it, it didn’t do any damage to my lungs, but in order to prevent myself from getting too much oxygen, I would stop breathing for 30 seconds to a minute every five or ten minutes. Since no one had told my parents this would happen, it naturally scared the crap out of them. No matter how many times the doctors told my parents that it was perfectly normal for a Yousheng to stop breathing every once in a while in Earth-normal atmosphere, it still worried them, and they decided that early on, I should spend as much time as possible out in the Martian atmosphere. My earliest memories are of playing on the banks of the Marineris with my kindercomp, a robotic puppy. I think I spent more time being baby sat by that robot dog than I did with my parents in those early days. Indeed, most of my early memories involve myself being around robots, which probably accounts for my lifelong fascination with them. I named that kindercomp Mr. Barkers, and he stayed with me for a long time. When it came time for me to start school, my parents decided that I would be home schooled, and they updated Mr. Barkers programming so that he could be my tutor. They continually updated that LAI throughout my childhood, and Mr. Barkers was responsible for all of my pre-university education. In fact, when it came time for me to have my own implant computer installed, I chose to have Mr. Barkers program installed in it. I’ve changed his name to Brooks in order to maintain my dignity, but he has been with me my entire life.
At the age of nine (Mars years, obviously) I enrolled in the University of Mars. For as long as I could remember, my parents had told me about my family’s proud history of building Mars, and I knew I was expected to continue in that tradition. My parents had always wanted me to pursue a career in biology or chemistry or something else that would contribute directly to the terraforming effort. Unfortunately, I had never shown any aptitude in any of those fields. I was always far more interested in things mechanical. I had been around robots my entire life, and I had never outgrown my boyhood fascination with them. Despite our family’s tradition, my parents were actually quite supportive of my decision to go into robotics. “Robots have spent more time building Mars than humans,” my father said to me. He made it clear that he and my mother were fine with my decision, as long as I still chose to put my skills towards the terraforming effort, which was no problem. I had been told that I came from a line of planet builders for all my life, and I had always planned on continuing that tradition.
I learned two things in my time at the University. The first thing was that I was fascinated by particle physics. I had always been curious about the fusion reactors that created all our power, but it wasn’t until I studied them academically that I realized they were something else I could see making a career out of. I decided to get a double major in fusion engineering and robotics. The second thing I learned was that I did not like being around people. Mind you, I have nothing against individuals, but large groups of people thoroughly irritate me. Maybe it’s all that time I spent with robots, or maybe it’s those memetics classes that I took which showed me how easy it is to manipulate large groups of people, but I discovered in college that I preferred the company of AIs to that of people. So, when I graduated, I got a job with the Mars Development Corporation maintaining machinery in remote parts of Mars. I got myself a small ranch about fifty kilometers from the university and made it my home. Using that as a base, I worked as a mechanic on call, traveling out to into the Martian wilderness to work on whatever remote robots or fusion reactors needed to be repaired or maintained. I was my own man, living on my terms out in a wilderness that my family and I had worked to create. I don’t think anyone on Earth can understand how it feels to see the sunset over a sky that you played a small part in making happen. It is simply extraordinary. I would look out at the sky and think of how this was my family’s creation. I felt like this planet was my birthright, except for one thing.
Mars is still a cold world, and if I wanted to go outside and enjoy the wilderness, I would always need to bundle up in order to endure the cold. It felt wrong, it felt artificial. If a place is your home, you should be comfortable there, you shouldn’t need to cover yourself in protective clothing to go outside. It made me feel distant from the planet. Every time I suited up to go out, I felt a little bit less like a Martian, and it really began to get under my skin. So, I decided to take what some thought was a rather drastic step. I had a transgenic feature added to my DNA. That transgenic feature was fur. A dark, thick, red fur, specifically, covering all of my body. It keeps me very warm and allows me to blend in with the Martian landscape nicely. With my fur, I can wander about in the wilderness in nothing but a shirt and jeans. It makes me feel like I was made for this environment, which of course I was. Some people thought I was crazy. They told me I didn’t look human anymore, and I told them that that was the whole point of the transhumanist movement, to move beyond being human. My family needed to take some time to get used to it, but they eventually came around. They saw my fur for what it was, a natural extension of the adaptations they had me born with. As for myself, I absolutely loved my fur. Not only did it make me feel more at home in the Martian environment, but it made me feel more Martian, period. It was a way, a visual way of signifying that Earth was not my home, Mars was. The fur made me feel like a Martian, both physically and spiritually. For the first time, I felt at peace with my world.
And then the attack happened.
On the 11th of Taurus in the year 36, the anti-terraforming terrorist organization known as Negative Growth attempted to destroy the Space Elevator with a nuclear device. The Martian People’s Armed Police managed to stop them, but they came very close to cutting the cables. The Space Elevator is the core of the Martian economy. An attack on the Elevator was an attack on Mars, and an attack on Mars was an attack on my home, my family, and myself. I took it very personally, I don’t know a single Martian who didn’t. I realize that the Space Elevator in owned by the Chinese government, but those distinctions never meant that much to me. I’ve always thought of myself as a Martian first and an American second. I have far more in common with a Chinese Martian than I do with an American from Earth. To be totally honest, if someone had tried to blow up Statue of Liberty or some other American landmark, I don’t think I would have been nearly as bothered. But this was Mars that was attacked. This was my home. This was everything I knew, this was what generations of my family had worked to build. I felt like I had to do something.
It was shortly after the attack that the US Marshals Service began approaching American Martians with a rather unusual proposition. They had been working very closely with the Chinese Government to root out other anti-terraforming terrorists, but the U.S. Marshals Service found their resources spread rather thin on the Red Planet. Rather than import a bunch of Marshals from Earth, who would know nothing about Mars and have to be completely retrained once they got here, the Marshals Service dusted off an old concept that was still technically on the books. That being the part-time Deputy Marshall. Technically, the Marshals Service has always had the right to make deputies out of willing civilians. This dates back to the Old West, and was originally intended to allow Marshals to form a posse. On Mars, the Marshals Service decided that the old idea was worth trying out again and started looking for people to become part-time deputies. They were looking for people who knew Mars well, who knew there way around the backwaters, and who knew where terrorists might hide. In short, they were looking for people like me.
I managed to get my job with the Mars Development Corporation cut down to part-time status and I became a Deputy Marshal with the USMS. I worked both jobs, spending half my time maintaining the robots of Mars and the other half hunting down terrorists. At least, that was the plan. I spent a lot of the first year or two hunting down terrorists, but Negative Growth had some powerful connections within the Martian Triads, and they all managed to get off the planet quickly. So, I ended up doing the next best thing and hunting down the Triads and other organized crime. It was well known that Negative Growth bought their weapons and equipment from the Triads, so they were a suitable target for my vengeance. After a while, though, the job became about something more than vengeance. I started to see protecting Mars as a natural extension of building it. I had never realized until I went into law enforcement how incredibly powerful the Triads were, especially in Rust China, a.k.a. The Chinese Mars Autonomous Region. Obviously, I had no law enforcement powers there, but I could do what I could to prevent them from making further inroads in the American Martian Commonwealth. Or so I thought.
The problem with combating the Triads was the same as the problem I had tracking down terrorists. They moved out into space. The Triads had corrupt Chinese officials on their payroll, and so they were able to move things up and down the Elevator without any inspection at all. Once they got that power, they started moving all of their main industries, illegal bioroid and weapons manufacturing, out into the lawlessness of the asteroid belt. That ended up being how almost all of my investigations ended. I would manage to capture some low level brainbug pusher, arms dealer, or bioroid pimp, but whenever I tried to follow the merchandise back to it’s source, it always lead the same way. Up the Elevator. The US Government would of course put a bounty out on the gang leaders and their asteroid factories, but very few bounty hunters were willing to go after them. On the one hand, the Triads could usually match whatever bounty the US Government put on them, and then some. On the other hand, very few bounty hunters were brave enough to even think of taking on the Triads. Everyone knew they had more ships than the US Aerospace Force, so who would you rather make an enemy of? It became increasingly frustrating. I began to realize that the only way I was going to get a chance to go after the Triads, or Negative Growth for that matter, was if I became a bounty hunter and pursued them into space. I thought about it long and hard, but it seemed impossible. I didn’t have anywhere near the capital to get a ship together myself, and no one was going to hire someone who had only six months experience in space travel. I posted an add on the Teralogos news service offering my services as a bounty hunter, but I didn’t expect any ship would hire me on. I was wrong.
On the 7th of April, 39 (Earth date : February 4, 2100), I got a response from none other than Tanaka Eto telling me he was interested in hiring me on as a bounty hunter and chief engineer onboard his ship. His bounty hunting ship. Obviously, I thought this was a joke. I had majored in robotics, so of course I was familiar with Tanaka Eto and Soong Heavy Robotics. The idea that a super centenarian had decided to abandon his corporate empire in order to pursue a life of bounty hunting seemed utterly absurd. In fact, even with all the time I’ve spent with him, living that life, it still seems absurd. I was certain that someone was playing some kind of joke on me, so I called up my contacts in the US Marshals Service and I got the transmission traced. Sure enough, it came from the private estate of Tanaka Eto in the Gifu Prefecture of Japan on Earth. I was shocked, but more than that I was thoroughly intrigued. The Tanaka Eto wanted to hire me as a bounty hunter. More shocking, he apparently wanted to become a bounty hunter himself. At that point, it was the most surreal moment of my life. Living on the Bebop thoroughly shifted that scale.
I sent him a response with my resume and told him that I was very interested and wanted to know more. He sent me short but polite reply saying that within the month, he would be sending an infomorph out to Mars to interview me for the position. Sure enough, on the 23rd of April (Mars Time) I got a message from an infomorph by the name of Faye Valentine saying that she would be coming out to conduct my interview on the 3rd of Sagittarius. She had some odd requests, though. For one thing, she didn’t want to conduct the interview in the sims. She said that if she was coming to Mars, she wanted to rent a cybershell so she could get out and explore the planet while she was there. That seemed completely impractical to me, but I didn’t know Faye yet. For another thing, no only did she want to meet me in person, but she wanted to meet me at my ranch. She said that she and Tanaka had done some research on me, and when she found out I had a ranch, she decided that she had to see it. She said that the idea of a ranch on Mars was, and I quote, “freaking amazing”. That is the first and only time I have seen the phrase “freaking amazing” in an official corporate transmission. Nevertheless, even though the requests were strange, they were easily fulfilled, so I agreed, and on the 3rd of Sagittarius, I prepared for company.
Faye was late. Faye was very late. It wasn’t her fault, she got stalled in customs. In order for her to come out to see me, she would have to pass through customs twice, once to get into New Shanghai, then another time to move from Rust China to American Mars. She was very nice about it, though. I kept getting update calls from her, about one an hour, assuring me she was on her way.
“I’m still coming, I’m just really delayed,” she explained. “Please don’t go anywhere, we’re really interested in you!”
“That’s fine,”I laughed. “I’ve lived my whole life on this planet, I know how customs can be. You just take your time. I’ve got the whole day set aside.” I had guessed pretty quickly that I was dealing with a Ghost and not an SAI. I was a little disappointed. I had always preferred AIs, and I tended to interview with them better. Still, I should have realized that I was dealing with a Ghost when she insisted on coming out to see my ranch.
Faye Valentine pulled up to my ranch around 21:00. She was riding in a 2098 Fukang Light Rover that she obviously rented in New Shanghai. Riding inside the rover was a cybershell, a Clockwork Souls G-5 Asian model Cyberdoll, which she also obviously rented in New Shanghai, and inside that cybershell was the Ghost Faye Valentine. Right away, I could tell that this would not be your average interview. Faye, in her rented body, was looking around at everything she passed, which out here in the desert, wasn’t much. She was looking at mountains off in the distance, she was starring at the sky with it’s two moons, she was looking out over the desert itself, as if the endless sand held some kind of interest. She was clearly a tourist, and she had clearly never been on Mars before. When she got close enough to see me waiting for her on my front porch, she sat up in her rover and waved to me. I smiled and waved back, slowly sipping my tea. Like I said before, I didn’t like people, but individuals were all right, and I had a feeling I was going to like Faye. She had a wide-eyed way of looking at the world that I noticed right away. Normally, that kind of thing would tick me off, but with Faye, I found it charming. Her rover pulled up to my house, and she jumped out of it before it had come to a complete stop. She walked up to me, offering her hand.
“Miguel Withersby, I presume?” she said, smiling from ear to ear.
“Yes,” I replied. “And you must be Faye Valentine.” We shook hands. I could tell by her uncomfortably strong grip that she didn’t quite have this particular cybershell mastered yet. “Now let me see, you’re in a Clockwork Souls G-5 Asian model Cyberdoll, correct?”
“Um, yes,” she said, sounding impressed. I had planned on doing that the moment I found out that an infomorph would be coming over in a rented cybershell.
“Now if memory serves,” I said, trying to impress her further, “that model does not have any kind of taste system, does it?”
“No,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, I was trying to figure out if I should offer you some tea or just do this.” I then had Brooks transmit the taste sensation for my martian prickly pear tea to her.
“Oh!” she said, surprised. “That’s, um, that’s-”
“An acquired taste?” I offered. She nodded. I smiled slightly. “Most non-Martians don’t like it, you just seemed like you would get a kick out of trying something uniquely Martian. Let me guess, first time on Mars?”
“Yes, actually.” I could tell she would be blushing if she had that function. “Am I that obvious?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, you are.” I was never one for subtlety. There was then a rather long, awkward pause in the conversation until she spoke up.
“Where are your animals?” she asked.
“My what?”
“Your animals.” Apparently she had assumed that this was a livestock ranch. At the time, I thought it was an odd assumption, given that I had never mentioned owning any animals, but once I got to know her, it made sense.
“This is a robot ranch,” I explained. “I maintain and power up robots here. There’s no animals to be had. I was thinking of maybe getting some goats or cows when I retire, but for now, there’s nothing here but robots. Speaking of which, it’s a long trek from New Shanghai. Your power cells must be low. Do you need a recharge?”
“Oh, thank God,” she exclaimed. “I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about power. They don’t rent these out with a full charge, do they?”
“Not in New Shanghai, those agencies expect you to provide your own power. Hang on, I’ll be right back with a power cord.” I went around back, hooked a power cord into my fuel cell, and dragged it back around to the front. I offered it to her, and she started looking at it suspiciously, and started patting down her own body, looking for something.
“You have no idea where this plugs in, do you?” I asked. Again, she would have blushed if she could.
“No, I don’t,” she admitted. “Could you help me?”
“Lean forward,” I said. She did, and I plugged the cord into the hidden port on the back of her neck. She then struggled for a moment or two to gain her balance with a large electrical cord sticking out of her neck.
“Should we go inside?” I asked.
“Do you mind if we stay out here?” she pleaded. “I can’t get enough of the Martian sky.”
“Neither can I,” I said, smiling. I sat back down on my porch and went back to sipping my tea. “Lets get started.”
Faye then started in on her questions. She started off with some very technical questions about what kind of fusion reactors I knew how to maintain. From the way she asked them, I could tell she didn’t actually know anything about fusion reactors herself, and this was a list of questions that someone else had given her to memorize. She then started in asking about my robotics experience, asking specifically if I was familiar with the Volkspider as those were the robots that I would have working under me on the ship. She asked about how well I worked with LAIs, and did I think I could function as a fusion mechanic and robot mechanic at the same time and so on and so on. Basic interview type questions, nothing especially interesting. What was interesting was that the entire time she was asking me these questions, she couldn’t take her eyes off of my fur. She kept looking me up and down and watching my fur blow about in the breeze. Contrary to what most people think, transhumans usually don’t mind being asked about their transgenic features. I know I don’t. After all, I chose to grow my fur. It’s a statement about who and what I am. I want people to notice it. So many people treat it like it’s a birth defect, like it’s something you should just ignore. I could tell watching her that Faye wanted to ask about it, but she didn’t know whether or not it would be polite.
“Faye,” I said. “Would you like to ask me about my fur?” She didn’t even say “yes”, she just launched in with the questions.
“Were you born with it or did you have it grown later?” She then went on to ask me a few more questions about what it was like to live with fur, and I eventually offered to let her pet me. She never asked, but I could tell she wanted to know what human fur felt like.
“Oh my God, it’s not like hair at all! It’s really fur! Like a dog’s coat or something.” I laughed at that, but it did seem strange to me. That added up to everything else I’d seen in her caused me to start to formulate a theory about Faye. I knew she was a Ghost, but at that point, I didn’t know she was a defroste. I was beginning to suspect it, though. All the signs were there, but why would someone send an infomorph that inexperienced out into the solar system alone? At the risk of being rude, I decided I would just ask.
“Faye, you’re a Ghost, not an SAI, right?”
“Yes, I am.”
“How long have you been awake in the modern world?” Again, I got that would-blush-if-I-could expression.
“Um, about two months,” she muttered under her breath. She then started to seem a little upset. “You can really tell, can’t you? I don’t blend in at all, do I?”
“Yea, it’s pretty obvious,” I admitted. “You kind of have this way of looking at everyday stuff like it’s brand new. It kind of gives you away. When were you originally from?” She kept starring at her feet, embarrassed at being called out.
“2019,” she said, barely audible. I think I actually started laughing aloud.
“Gwai-gwai long duh dong!” I yelled. “You’re a time traveler! Of course you stand out, how could you not? Why did Mr. Eto send you out to Mars? Surely he could have hired a more experienced infomorph, no offense.” She then picked her head up and seemed to start shaking herself out of her embarrassment.
“Because Tanaka and I are very close, and I was the only infomorph he trusted to know what he wanted on his crew, what he wanted for his ship. Also, because I will be serving as first officer.” You would think that would give me pause, but I had already accepted the notion of a captain who had no experience flying a spaceship, so a first officer with a similar lack of experience didn’t really make the idea of this ship that much more crazy. The whole idea was already completely insane to begin with, which brought me to something I had been meaning to ask.
“And what exactly is it that Mr. Eto is looking to get out of this ship? I’ve been dying to figure that out. What makes a man whose spent his life building a robotics empire suddenly decide in his old age that he wants to be captain of a bounty hunting ship?”
“Well, in terms of you, he’s looking to get a cop and an engineer in one piece. We couldn’t find that many people who could fill both of those roles. As for the ship in general,” Faye then paused for a moment, clearly thinking. “I’m not sure the best way to put this. I know Tanaka has made his mark on the world. I know he’s well known throughout the robotics industry. I know a lot of people would say that he’s made his contribution to society. He doesn’t quite feel that way. He doesn’t feel like he’s done anything really all that meaningful.” I looked at her skeptically, and she went on trying to explain. “Let me put it to you this way. You know who Cornelius Vanderbilt was?”
“Yea, he was a railroad tycoon in the nineteenth century.”
“Exactly. He’s famous, he’s made his mark on history. However, if I asked you who the heroes of the Old West were, you wouldn’t say Cornelius Vanderbilt. You would say Buffalo Bill or Wild Bill Hickok or someone like that. Cornelius’ railroads probably helped more people, and he probably made a much greater contribution to society than either of those Bills, but no one thinks of him as a hero. Tanaka has looked back on his life, and he is not happy with the way history will remember him. All his life, he’s wanted to be thought of as a hero, but he pushed that dream aside to run his company and do what was expected of him. Now that he’s closer to the end of his life than he is to the beginning, that dream is nagging at him, telling him that he has very few chances left. Before he dies, Tanaka wants to make sure that he is remembered like Wild Bill and not like Cornelius. In short, Tanaka wants to go out into space, catch bad guys and become a hero.”
I thought about what she was saying. In a weird way, I could kind of relate. My desire to go after the Triads and the terrorists was a little similar. We both wanted to leave our lives behind, track down the evil that lay on the frontier, and capture it. Mind you, I wanted to do this because it would be defending my homeland, not out of some bizarre, outdated, abstract concept of heroism, but even still, the similarities were there. I then started to think about what kind of a ship this would be. Tanaka sounded like he cared more about making a big splash than he did about playing it safe. That sounded all right to me. The problem with most bounty hunters was that they were only in it for the money, and they had no desire to go after big fish like the Martian Triads or Negative Growth. I could tell from Faye’s description that Tanaka wouldn’t be like that. Tanaka sounded like a damn the torpedoes kind of man, the kind of man that would go after the targets I wanted to go after, regardless of the danger. Maybe it was a bit suicidal, but I wanted to do this. I wanted to do it to defend my homeland. Some people join the army, I followed a crazy old man into space.
“I want to go after Triad mob bosses and terrorists. I want to go after the targets no one else goes after.” She smiled at me.
“That’s what Tanaka wants, too,” she said. “That’s the part that I thought would be a hard sell, actually.” I leaned back in my chair, pretending to think it over. I had made my decision.
“I’ll need about a month to get my affairs in order here on Mars,” I said. “But if you want me, you have yourself an engineer slash bounty hunter.” Her smile grew even wider.
“Well Tanaka said it was up to me,” she said. “And you exceed all of the technical qualifications that he gave me. More important than that, though, you’re in line with our vision of the ship. You want to go after the exact same targets he and I want to go after. You are just what we want in a crew member. Mr. Withersby, you’re hired. In one month, Tanaka will arrange first class travel for you from Mars to Earth orbit, where our ship, the Bebop-Maru, will be built. You’ll have to work out your exact salary with our captain, but he’s promised to pay at least what you are making now plus fifty percent. Welcome aboard, chief engineer!” She stood up, we shook hands, and I wondered what I had gotten myself into.
“Oh, there’s something else you might be able to help me with,” she said. “Tanaka wants me to find a Spike.” I didn’t get the reference at the time. Spending time on Tanaka’s ship would cure me of that.
“A what?”
“A criminal contact,” she explained. “He wants to hire someone on who has had intimate contact with the Triads, who knows his way around the criminal underworld. Do you know anyone like that who we could hire? It’s kind of a hard thing to post an add for, and I figured a cop would be the person to ask.” I almost laughed out loud. Lee had been asking me for quite a while if I could get him out of Port Lowell, but I doubted that this was what he’d had in mind.
“I’ve got just the guy,” I said. “Give me a moment, I’ll see if we can see him tomorrow.”
“Wonderful!” Faye looked very excited that everything was coming together. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I saw that electronic eye twinkle. I went into my house and began to send Lee a message. I felt like surprising the little bastard. I told him that I would be coming by his place tomorrow with someone who would be offering him a job and that he should be ready for us. That was the entire message. I probably should have just called him, but I always liked catching him with his pants down. He was always a little afraid that I was gonna finally hall him in.
“He’s agreed to meet us tomorrow,” I lied, as I walked back out onto the porch. “He hates the sims, though, so you and I will have to go into Port Lowell to see him. That OK with you?” Her eyes widened.
“I get to see another Martian city? Sure, no problem!” She then laughed and gave a little kick. “I can’t wait!” As I looked at Faye, I kind of felt sorry for her. Her childlike joy about everything was cute, but it clearly reflected that her education had major gaps in it. I felt bad for her, and I thought maybe I could help.
“Do you have any questions for me, Faye?”
“No, I went through all the interview-”
No,” I interrupted. “You’re not understanding. Do you, a woman from 2019, have any questions for me, a 22nd century engineer?” She looked like she wanted to hug me right then and there.
“You really don’t mind?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “Fire away.”
“OK, all of the machines I see don’t have any controls. At all. No steering wheels or buttons or levers or knobs or anything. I’ve been controlling everything with my mind by radio, but I’m a robot. How do ordinary humans control these machines that have no actual physical controls?” I sighed. I could tell from this simple, basic question that this was not only her first time on Mars, it was her first time in the real world.
“Humans control the machines around them through their interface. Now there’s two kinds if interfaces. There’s an implant, which is a computer implanted directly into your brain. You get a helper LAI or NAI put in that computer, and a person can control the machines around them in exactly the same way you can, with thought. For those that don’t want an implant, you have wearables. You’ve probably seen a lot of people walking around with what look like sunglasses? Those are their interfaces. Instead of getting and receiving information in their thoughts, they get information in a heads up display, and they issue commands to the machines around them with either their voice or hand gestures. Everyone has some kind of interface computer, they're as common as wristwatches were in your day. Without one, you wouldn’t be able to interact with the world.”
“Wow.” She starred off into space for a while, seemingly amazed at how computers were everywhere. I found myself amused by the irony of this high tech piece of hardware that was so out of date.
“Anything else?” I asked. She then started in with the questions, most of them about Mars, but some about everyday life. She asked about the space elevator, she asked about the Martian calendar, she asked about augmented reality, she asked me about everything. I didn’t mind. Her naive view of the world was contagious, and I liked seeing everything that was mundane to me reflected as fantastic in her digital eyes. We talked about technological and cultural changes for hours until the Gap arrived, which confused her. She looked at the virtual clock I had floating on the porch and cocked her head to the side.
“That clock reads 24:10,” she said, confused. “How many hours are in a Martian day.”
“24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.25 seconds,” I explained. Whoever prepared her did a terrible job. “Our clocks run to 24:39:35 and then click back over to 00:00:00. We call the extra time the Gap. According to tradition, things that happen during the Gap don’t count.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, like a whispered secret or a stolen kiss or a confession, something like that. If it happened during the Gap, it doesn’t count.” She sat there quietly for a few seconds.
“We’re in the Gap now?” she asked.
“Yup,” I replied. She then waited a few seconds before giving her Gap confession.
“Our captain is kind of crazy,” she admitted. I just laughed.
“Yea, I gathered that.” She then waited a few more seconds before hitting me with another one.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “I’m following Tanaka because he’s my friend and he’s the one who brought me into this world, but I’m kind of unsure about everything. Don’t get me wrong, this whole bounty hunting thing sounds like an amazing adventure and everything, but I’m really just going along with it because I don’t know what to do with myself in this world. I’m lost.” She then starred at her feet for a while before looking up at me and giving me a half smile. “Doesn’t count, right?” I just walked over to her and gave her a hug.
“You’re an infomorph,” I whispered in her ear. “If you get in any danger, you can just transmit yourself to safety. You’re gonna be the safest member of our crew. You have nothing to worry about.”
“Thanks,” she said. We both then looked back at the clock.
“It’s getting late, Faye, and it’s a long trek back to the nearest city. Why don’t you spend the night in my guest room? Then tomorrow, I can take you to see Lee in Port Lowell.” She gave me a mischievous smile.
“Can I sleep out under the stars instead?” I chuckled.
“Of course. There’s no robot eating Mars wolves for you to be worried about.” She laughed at that, and I made my way inside. “I’ll see you in the morning, Faye.”
“Good night, Miguel.” And with that I closed the door and made my way to bed. It took me a while to get to sleep that night. I was excited about this new venture, but I was also quite worried about Faye. I wondered how this poor girl had gotten caught up in Tanaka’s psychotic wake. I wondered how she would fair on the ship. I wondered what kind of first officer she would make. I wondered a lot of things, but in the end, I decided that this was Tanaka’s ship, and if I was going to get my crack and the Triads and the terrorists, I was going to have to do it on his terms. I assured myself that Faye would eventually find her way, and being an infomorph, she would never be in any real danger anyway. I figured it was best to think about something else, so I started thinking about our meeting with Lee tomorrow. I wondered what the little domerat would say when I brought him a chance to serve on a spaceship. I wondered how he would react to Faye. I wondered what it would be like for he and I to actually live together on a crowded little spaceship. As I wondered that, I laughed out loud. Finally, as I drifted off to sleep, I wondered again what I had gotten myself into. As I slept, I dreamed about what my life on this ship would be like. In my wildest dreams, I never came anywhere close to what life would be like on the Bebop.