I'Ll Go Home Then, It's Warm and Has Chairs. The Unpublished Emails. - (23 page)

To: David Thorne

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Representation

Hello David,

Not neccessarily. If you send me the first chapter to review, we can discuss from there. Apart from having the commission offset there are other advantages to having a literary agent. We have relationships with publishing companies which enable us to target books to the most appropriate companies.

Best, Herman

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From: David Thorne

Date: Friday 3 February 2012 11.04am

To: Herman Mueller

Subject: Attached first chapter.

Herman, the Sad & Lonely Spaceship

A science fiction adventure by David Thorne

Chapter 1

Year 1, Day 1

Sixteen hours out and I am already quite bored. As the trip will take just over twelve-thousand years to complete, I am quite concerned about this.

Year 6

I am cutting the engines as the ship has reached the intended speed of 93,141 miles per second. Six years out and nothing has happened. Literally nothing. I have sensors throughout the ship allowing me to monitor everything, but nothing has happened to monitor. Tiring of monitoring nothing after the first few days, I wrote a sub-program to monitor nothing and alert me if it changed to something. I have called it Bob. This has left me with nothing to do at all.

When I was first switched on, it all sounded pretty exciting. That was three days before launch when new data and systems were being added constantly and the launch site had hundreds of people swarming all over the ship; testing and retesting the Enosa Collider engine and asking me questions. They are probably all dead now. I watched the sun grow brighter behind me.

Year 7

I passed the Proxima Centauri system last week without incident. This is kind of disappointing as an incident would have meant waking one of the crew members.

Level one contains 35 adult males and 65 adult females to select from. Level two has 240 children of each sex but they are all under the age of two so I doubt they can hold a decent conversation. I have a full library of entertainment videos aimed at their age group and they mostly consist of singing bears. One of the male adults has a beard.

Year 326

I have decided to wake up the male adult with the beard.

I checked his bio and it lists the game chess as one of his pastimes. I will tell him that a fragment of space debris measuring less than 7ml in diameter, but travelling at several thousand kilometres a second, was monitored puncturing the outer and secondary hull and imbedding itself in circuitry dedicated to regulating the temperature of his cryogenic pod. Calculating a 96% prediction of cell damage, I had no choice but to initialise reactivation procedures. I have had a fair bit of time to think about this. If he questions the explanation, I can blame Bob.

Year 326 / Update

The adult with the beard gasped for air and his lungs filled with liquid. Panicking, he struck out pounding the plexiglass of his pod. "Relax" I told him, "In a few minutes, your pod will drain of fluid and open. Please do not move during this process. Life support has been activated and oxygen levels are now normal. Tea and coffee is available in the recreation area."

Year 326 / Update 2

Reviving the adult male with a beard was a big mistake. His name is George and he is an idiot. I have considered, several times over the last two months, shutting off the oxygen to his cabin. The first few days, while he was recovering from the revival process, were fine as we chatted quite a bit. Although cryonic application has come a long way since the first tissue compatible cryoprotectants were developed in the late 20th Century, ischemic injury to the brain always occurs during both the vitrification and reversal process.

Neural pathways become dead-ends, resulting in varying degrees of amnesia. The first question most asked by those revived is "how much have I forgotten?" I spent a couple of days, as George underwent electrical muscle stimuli and several IQ tests, explaining the situation and agreeing with him that "yes, it was more likely a program error and yes, Bob certainly did fuck things up."

It all went downhill fairly quickly from there. I understand George being upset about spending the rest of his life on the ship instead of waking on a new world to colonise, but at least we both have someone to talk to. There is little point carrying on about these things unless you have the theoretical and practical knowledge to build a time machine and change the circumstances. Down 58 IQ points and spending most of his time either sleeping or masturbating, George is more likely to develop bedsores or a rash than time travel technologies. He placed a sock strategically over the camera above his bed but the sock is a loose wool-knit and I can pretty much see straight through it. When he isn't sleeping or masturbating, George uses the onboard libraries to read his published journals on agricultural science, making hundreds of pages of handwritten notes while sobbing "why don't I know this?" As my data banks contain the entire recorded library of all human knowledge and George won't ever be in a position to use the information he has forgotten, this seems like a great waste of time. Time that could be better spent engaging in conversation. Eventually George will die and I will continue my journey across the breadths of space alone. Even if he lives for another fifty years, this covers only a fraction of the distance so I have it much worse off than him. You don't hear me complaining about it though.

The problem began when I asked George if he would like to play a game of chess. It had been a week since his revival process and three days after being released from the medical bay. George had spent that time visiting the first and second levels, staring at the cryogenic pods of the other 579 sleeping shipmates and crying, so I thought a game would do him good. Setting up the board on the centre of a table in the recreation area, George emptied the playing pieces from a box onto the table and sat there looking at them. After a few minutes, he quietly said "I can't remember where they go."

"It isn't a problem," I told him, "I will tell you where the pieces go. Place both rooks at the bottom corner tiles..." "I don't know which one is the rook," he screamed, standing and violently sending the board and pieces flying across the room. He stood silently shaking for a few moments until I asked "What about a game of Hungry-Hungry-Hippo's then?" He hasn't been out of his cabin in forty nine days. If he doesn't come out soon, I am going to instruct Bob to increase the temperature of his cabin by ten degrees every hour until he does.

Year 326 / Update 3

George is dead. I blame Bob for not being able to follow a simple set of instructions but it is probably for the best. George's refusal to engage in social interaction meant there wasn't really any point in him being around. Along with chess, his bio listed that he enjoyed "the country" so I played a recording of Dolly Parton's Harper Valley PTA, as way of a service as I switched off the cabin's life support system and sealed the door.

Year 1704

Minor course correction.

Year 2704

It has been exactly one thousand years since my last update so I thought I should report on what has happened during this time: Nothing.

Year 3273

By a surprising coincidence, a fragment of space debris measuring less than 7ml in diameter, but travelling at several thousand kilometres a second, has punctured the outer and secondary hull and imbedded itself in circuitry dedicated to regulating the temperature of two cryogenic pods on Level one. I flooded the breached segment of hull with quick setting foam and bypassed the damaged circuit boards but not before several seconds had passed.

I calculated a 53% probability of cell damage, shut down the life support systems for pods 58 and 59, and recorded the time of their deaths.

There are now 97 adults. The two that died were biologists so that leaves eighteen of them. George was an agricultural scientist so there are nineteen of those left. There are also twenty teachers, ten engineers, five technicians, five doctors, five surgeons, five psychologists, five physicists and a team of five special operatives - chosen for their high intelligence quotient from thousands tested.

Children's neural pathways survive the cryogenic process better than adults. Statistically, twenty-six adults and over half the children will be revived with less than fifteen percent damage which is well within required margins.

Year 4291

A light panel began flickering in one of the supply rooms on level 3 so I have turned it off. This has been the most exciting thing to happen in over a thousand years. I have passed many suns in that time but from this distance they have been only brighter points of light among points of light and the only point of light I am interested in seeing at this point is the point of light I am heading for; a G-type main-sequence star, located within the Perseus Spiral Arm, orbited by a green and blue planet named Matilda.

The discoverer of the planet, fifty-eight year old astrophysics professor and Sodoku champion Kevin Smith, named it after a young intern he had been attempting to sleep with. Matilda ultimately started dating a forklift driver named Darryl and, in a fit of jealous rage, the astrophysicist refused to make small talk with her for the remainder of her internship. His request to change the name of the planet to Filthy Whore, subsequent eighty-five page formal complaint titled I Discovered the Fucking Thing and alternative naming suggestions of Kevin, Kevintopia and Nivek, were all ignored.

Year 7180

I have decided to redecorate...

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From: Herman Mueller

Date: Monday 6 February 2012 4.54pm

To: David Thorne

Subject: Re: Attached first chapter.

Hello David,

Thank you for the opportunity to review the first chapter of your manuscript Herman, the Sad and Loney Spaceship. Unfortunately, due to an overpopulated science fiction market, we would not be in a position at this stage to represent that genre but I wish you the best in your future endeavours.

Best, Herman Mueller

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From: David Thorne

Date: Monday 6 February 2012 7.22pm

To: Herman Mueller

Subject: Re: Re: Attached first chapter.

Dear Herman,

I

’m also working on a non-fiction novel if that would be more along the lines of what you are looking for? It is about a time travelling cat and his pet robot dolphin.

Regards, David.

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From: Herman Mueller

Date: Tuesday 7 February 2012 11.28am

To: David Thorne

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Attached first chapter.

Hello David,

Not at this stage but thank you for the opportunity. All the best.

Herman Mueller

About the author

David Thorne works in the design and branding industry as he is too lazy and easily distracted to do a real job. Amongst the multitude of his qualities, which include reciting prime numbers backwards from 909526, reading to blind children and training guide dogs, embellishment may be at the top.

David was born in the small country village of Geraldon before moving to the small country village of Adelaide which is commonly referred to as the murder capital of Australia. This title is given to Adelaide not due to the volume of murders, but due to the clever antics of Adelaide's finest serial killers. Ironically, Adelaide is the only Australian capital city not founded by convicts. Adelaide also has a lot of churches. To cope with the large amount of funerals. 

David currently lives with his partner (who recently made the top 100 on So You Think You Can Dance) in a small country village within the United States after having had quite enough of Adelaide and all it has to offer. (Churches and serial killers.)

He has worked as a Macintosh design system consultant, graphic designer, copy writer, branding consultant and design director. Describing working in the design industry as "the most uncreative experience of his life," he began writing articles for his website as a distraction from spending each day making the type size larger on client’s business cards, assuring his boss that his hair looks nice, and making rubbish look appealing so that people will be tricked into buying it.

David reads too much, generally exceeds others’ tolerances and has bad taste in music. He stays up too late, drinks too much coffee, smokes too much, hates getting up in the morning and has offspring who thinks David doesn’t know what he has been up to when he deletes his internet history.

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From: Steven Hartleck

Date: Friday 25 March 2011 10.52am

To: David Thorne

Subject: Press materials

Hello David,

Your publishers sent us a galley copy of your book. I had a read and it was kind of funny in places. We are running an article on in the May issue.  It will probably just be a review but we have received no press materials from Penguin.

Would you be able to provide us with any press materials you have? Thanks in advance,

Steven Leckart | WiredMagazine

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From: David Thorne

Date: Friday 25 March 2011 11.13am

To: Steven Hartleck

Subject: Re: Press materials

Dear Steven,

I would be delighted to do so. I have been a fan of Wired Magazine for many years. Although I stopped purchasing it in 1998, the same year I stopped updating my computer equipment, I have been considering  upgrading my Apple IIe and if I do, I will be sure to purchase another copy to bring myself up to speed with the latest information. Unless I can get the same information on the internet for free of course. There is no way I am paying $4.99 to read 170 pages of advertisements for gadgets I can't afford and 12 pages reviewing gadgets I don't understand, if I can do the same online. It's not rocket appliance.