Diaspora Ad Astra (14 page)

“You ready?” Lena asked Jeremy, who was fumbling through his pockets for the card he’d programmed. It would act like an anti-virus, deleting anything that had
a similar code as the Sexbomb recordings. He didn’t know how much long-term damage it could do to the server or the other programs, but he had no choice.

Then they heard it, “Ow!” And the dancers began moving into the hall. It was only about a fifty-yard dash to the room doors, but in Jeremy’s state they could
catch up with him easily.

“How long will it take you to hack through the doors?”

“A minute or two.”

“Okay, let’s do it!”

“Wait, I still—” and then Lena pushed Jeremy out of the shaft and into the hallway. He fell on his belly and then he tried to stand but it was too hard with
all the pain he was feeling. Lena landed on her feet beside him, and she pulled his arm onto her shoulder and began dragging him to the doors.

Jeremy stumbled and slipped, blinded by the pain from the fall. He could hear the footsteps and the singing coming closer.

“Move faster, Jeremy,” she said and she doubled her speed, pushing him and almost carrying him to the doors.

When they were finally at the door, Jeremy opened up the latch and started hacking. Lena stood with her back to his, covering him. He didn’t dare break his focus to look
behind him, but he knew that the dancers were nearly on them.

Then one of the dancers’ hands reached him.

Lena, who luckily was a kung fu movie fan, had spent a lot of her free time in the holodeck practicing the moves she saw. She grabbed and twisted the wrist, then delivered a
foot sweep. The zombie-dancer fell and knocked her head on the floor.

The others kept coming. Lena did a roundhouse kick, clearing her front. “Jeremy, get in there!” she said as she kneed one in the stomach, then elbowed
another’s sternum.

Jeremy almost had the door open. The dancers weren’t bothering him anymore. They were focused now on Lena. They were all grabbing for her neural band and for a time she
was able to stay out of their grasps. She delivered double flying kicks, jumping into the air and planting her foot into one chest, then using that impact as momentum to kick with her other foot.
She ran up walls, confusing the dancers as she landed behind them to push the dancers into each other. They fell like bowling pins, but still they got up, got into formation and rhythm, and kept
coming.

Jeremy opened up the door, and when he looked back he saw Lena surrounded by the dancers. He moved to rush over and help her, but the quick movement pushed his zipper towards
him and he stopped in pain again.

He knew there was only one way he could help her. He walked through the doors and commanded the computer to seal them.

***

The main server room was dark. The only light came from the blipping on the consoles and the stars that could be seen through the observation port. The port was the size of a
hockey goal, made of glass, but reinforced from the inside by a metal panel and from outside by a protective shield. The shield consumed a lot of energy, so usually the metal panel was left closed
to prevent any breach. If something were to break the glass, then the vacuum of space would come rushing in and it would look a lot like the endings of the Alien movies.

The metal panel that covered the port had been disengaged, and the vacuum of space was only inches away. A figure stood, in a Darth Vader-esque fashion, with his hands behind
his back, his back to the doors. He faced the stars outside, unsurprised by Jeremy’s arrival. The darkness in the room seemed to suit him and his slow, deliberate movements. Jeremy could feel
a coldness emanating from him. Around his head he wore a neural band.

“Jeremy, you’re always too smart for your own good.”

Jeremy limped to the main server console, but Mr. Santos was on him. He felt a hand smack across his face and he fell down.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m doing this? I’ve always wanted a chance to explain my motivations.” Mr. Santos said, then he chuckled.
“Or perhaps I should try to convince you to join me, to turn your back on these people who’ve never helped you before, and give you a chance to help yourself.”

Jeremy shrank away, unsure of what to do. He looked up at Mr. Santos, and wiped his nose, which was bleeding.

Mr. Santos kicked him, not hard, but as if to get him to talk. “Well, you think you’re the only one who has read those books or seen those movies in the library? I
know how this goes. I know you think I’m the bad guy and you’re the hero, here to save this ship from me.”

Jeremy could feel the blood flowing down to his shirt. He wiped again.

Mr. Santos slapped him again. “Say something, dammit!”

Jeremy tried to hold back his tears, but they came anyway.

“Yes, you’re some hero. You found out what I had done, and now you’ve come here to stop me. Well, stop me now.” Then he kicked Jeremy, this time in the
chest, so Jeremy fell on his back. You think you’re so smart, but you’re weak. You are weak!” Mr. Santos said it not for Jeremy’s benefit, but his own. He had to let Jeremy
know that he was weak. He’d been wanting to do this to Jeremy for so long that he was hoping that Jeremy would be wearing his neural band when he played the Sexbomb video for the class.

“You are a fool. You spend all your time in the library, or in some corner thinking. For what? Will anyone ever appreciate you? You are the only person on this ship who
has ever invented something like this,” Santos pointed to the neural band, “and have they done anything to thank you?”

Jeremy was inching away. He didn’t want to hear any more.

“You’re scared. You think that it’s your duty to help everyone on this ship. All these people who made fun of you when you were a child, all these people who
ridicule you until now. Take things into your own hands, boy! They are all gone. It’s just the two of use here. We can change things right now.”

Santos picked Jeremy up by his collar, and Jeremy winced. “Here, sit down. Computer, chair.” A robotic arm came from one of the panels in the wall and set a chair
beside Santos. Santos pushed him into the chair.

“Ever wonder why we’re here on this ship? Ever get tired of it?”

Jeremy didn’t respond to the question, but Santos knew anyway that Jeremy knew what he was talking about. Jeremy wasn’t shivering anymore, and since Santos had
stopped striking him, he’d calmed down enough to listen.

“I’m going to crash us into the nearest hospitable planet. It should be just half a day away. We’ll move everyone to the side of the ship that will be away
from the impact. We can do it from here. I say we because I want you to be a part of this. After all, without you,” Santos pointed to the neural band on his head, “I would never have
been able to do this.”

Jeremy wanted to pounce on Santos, wanted to tear the neural band off Santos’s head, wanted to gouge Santos’s eyes and scrape out the sockets, wanted to ram a rod
against the back of his neck. He knew he couldn’t do any of those things. Not with Santos watching him. Not in the state he was in.

“I want to leave this ship, Jeremy. Don’t you understand that?”

“Then get off at the next hospitable planet and leave us alone.”

Jeremy was surprised by his smart remark and expected another blow, but instead Santos just chuckled. “Ah, after taking a seat you’ve regained your bravery. So,
ready for a chat, then. I’ve always loved the part in movies where the villain reveals his plans to the hero, because he believes that the hero won’t escape. I wondered what I’d
do all alone if no one else had a neural band on. But since you’re here, I suppose I shall enjoy this.

“It’s not enough for me to get off. Then I’d just be on whatever planet alone. What would I do there? I want everyone on this ship freed. And the only way to
free them is to control them like this. Trust me, I’m not the only one who has decided this. They just didn’t wear bands because I only told them my plans, not my method of getting us
all off this ship.

“What are we on it for? Some journey that we and every generation after us must endure. Some journey our ancestors decided we should take, to finish on their behalf. Damn
them! They control our lives even though they have been dead so long. No, when we crash, we will leave this ship, and we will start our own colony. We will abandon this ship and this way of life.
On a planet, somewhere rich and fertile, we will find our happiness. Not this wretched ship.”

Jeremy could hear the sense in what Santos was saying. He could imagine living on a hospitable planet, just like the Earth that he had seen in so many movies. He could see the
sunrise and sunset every day of his life. He could have a place to explore, maybe a place where he could find happiness, a happiness that he could never find on the ship.

Then he heard the thumping on the door. The scream of “Ow,” booming through the door. He imagined what everyone on the other side of the door must look like. Lena
would be a Sexbomb-zombie again; his brother and sister and mother and father would be somewhere out there, just like her, dancing and drooling, singing to the song.

Not this way, he thought. No, we have a duty. Things became so clear to him now. It was his burden. And it was their burden. He knew, he had read their histories, he knew what
the first generation believed in. He knew what they were really traveling for. It wasn’t for any one of them on the ship; it was for some greater ideal. He could give up, succumb to the
Sexbomb dancers or to Santos’s mad ideas, but then he would know that there was a reason that the ship was traveling.

The first generation of scientists believed in their destination, that planet that they would finally settle on. They believed that the journey would be long and hard, and
that’s why they had built and stocked a generation starship. But they believed that this place that they would finally arrive at would be well worth all the sacrifice and hardship; that it
was worth the journey, no matter how many generations long. And Jeremy believed this too.

Jeremy knew that if they crashed and settled on some planet then most of the people of the ship wouldn’t complain, as long as they were able to live as comfortably as
they had on the ship. But Jeremy knew that they all had a responsibility that they were entrusted with.

Santos relaxed. He humphed at Jeremy, who he thought was accepting his offer. It seemed to Santos that Jeremy had quit, had given in to the idea of crashing the ship. Santos
felt confident in himself. That feeling of superiority he got whenever he attacked a student in class was surging through him. It was his euphoria, his drug, and with it he settled into his own
chair, looking out at the stars, dreaming about the crash and the world they would settle on. He dreamed of how we would tell everyone, with their memories of the past day wiped out, how he saved
them all from doom by maneuvering the starship out of an asteroid’s way and fighting a planet’s gravity as it pulled them down. How, when the ship crashed, he evacuated the ship and
saved the children from the fires. He would be the hero.

Then he heard the card snap into place.

Jeremy had gone from his chair and shoved the anti-virus card into one of the console slots. It was active and began to eliminate all the Sexbomb recordings from the ship.

Santos was furious. He jumped out of his seat and moved toward Jeremy. “Computer, cancel last command.” The computer continued working. The monitor just read out
the amount of time until the delete would be complete—five minutes.

Santos punched Jeremy, then held him by the collar with one hand and punched Jeremy again with the other. “Stop the delete.” He gave Jeremy a backhand slap.
“Stop the delete.”

“I can’t. It’s irreversible.” Jeremy said.

“Why, you little bastard!” Santos threw Jeremy against the port. The glass cracked, but it was held in place by the energy shield. “You just have to ruin it,
huh.” He kicked Jeremy, who was on his hands and knees, in the ribs.

Jeremy fell to the floor, his pants scraped against him and he could not stop the tears from coming, things becoming blurry. He had already figured out the next part of his
plan, but he couldn’t give a command through the sobs that he was suppressing.

“You’re just too smart for your own good, aren’t you?” Santos said as he picked Jeremy up and threw him against one of the computer terminals.

Jeremy’s shoulder banged against it and he was down on one knee. He felt like all his body was throbbing in pain now, some unique ache within each part. He knew he had to
act now if he wanted to get out of this alive.

He began crawling to the other side of the room, toward the energy shield regulator. Santos just thought that Jeremy was trying to crawl away from him, so he kept kicking
Jeremy, just hard enough to hurt him, but not hard enough to stop him from crawling. “Where are you going? It’s just you and me here, no one’s gonna help you, boy. Stand up and
fight, and you may get out of this.”

Jeremy kept crawling, kept fighting back the pain, biting his lips until they bled just so that he could divert the pain in his crotch, even if it was only a little bit. He
could taste the blood in his mouth, and with Santos kicking and taunting him he almost wanted to give up. The shield regulator seemed so far away. He kept going, inching his way on, enduring the
kicks from Santos and all the pain that he could feel throughout his body, especially what felt like a katana blade slicing the tip of his penis, then drawing back, then slicing again.

When Jeremy finally reached the shield regulator, he turned around to face Santos. Santos was still standing above him and Jeremy was on the floor. Then he bit Santos in the
ankle.

His teeth drove through fabric until he bit down on a good chunk of flesh. The blood smeared his cheeks and when he pulled away he had to spit out the chunk of Santos’s
ankle before he could say, “Computer, have robotic arms secure me at the shoulders and waist.” Two robotic arms came out of their panels, clamping on Jeremy so that he was stuck to the
spot where he was. He took off the neural band and the sounds of the Sexbomb dancers began to enter his brain.