My Diary

2002-11-08

Okay, I'm a bit less scared now.

I think the main reason is that I am bored out of my mind. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but this is not a very big spaceship, and there's not a lot in it, and there are exactly three things to do here: panic, watch the view, or dictate into this thing and hope someone's listening.

Oh, yeah, I've found out how to edit the text before sending it, which helps.

I'm currently sitting in the pilot's chair. I'm assuming it's the pilot's chair because it's sitting in front of the window. There are no controls, so I don't know how anyone would pilot this ship, but that's what I'm calling it.

I'm not here because it's comfortable (it is), but because it's the only chair on the ship and the floor's cold.

Okay. Let's try a bit less of the random wittering and a bit more of the constructive description.

I have been kidnapped by a spaceship. Starship, rather; assuming I can trust the view out of the window, we're going a lot faster than the speed of light. When I got aboard I wasn't aware it was a spaceship; a sort of wooden shed structure had been built round it.

It's not big. I'm not sure about the outside dimensions, but inside it's about five metres by five metres and the outside can't be much bigger. There's one cabin, with one piece of furniture, that I'm currently sitting in. The rest of the décor consists of the big window or viewscreen or whatever in front of me and a number of hatches in the walls.

There are no controls. Anywhere. I did discover that I can talk to the ship, and it talks back, but it's not what I would call intelligent. Let me give you an example.

Ship, what are you?

I am a starship.

Where were you built?

I do not have that information.

Take me back to Earth.

I do not know that location.

Earth is the planet that you left when you started this trip.

You do not have clearance to change my navigational databases.

Take me back to the planet you just left.

You do not have clearance to change my mission profile.

It's definitely not a person, it's just a machine. What's more, it's a machine it's practically impossible to get useful information out of... it doesn't appear to have any terms I know about programmed into it, despite it speaking fluent English.

Ship, how long have we been travelling?

The current journey has been underway for 0.2 temporal units.

How far have we travelled?

In the current journey, I have travelled 895 spatial units.

Make that four things to do. Panic, admire the view, dictate, or argue fruitlessly with the ship.

[break]

We've just passed a star.

The view's impressive. The window is slightly curved and occupies most of the front of the cabin. When sitting in the chair I have an excellent view. One of the few things the ship will let me control is the internal lights, and so I'm sitting here in the dark watching the stars slide past.

We're not moving that fast compared to, say, Star Trek. The stars aren't rushing past in a flood, they're crawling past sedately, one at a time. First one star and then another will start drifting away from the centre of the window, pick up speed, and disappear off to the side. I reckon we're doing about a light year a minute.

[break]

I've just asked the ship what it has in the way of food on board, and in response it opened one of its hatches and there was a kind of airline lunch tray on it. There was one big container of brown paste, and three little ones of pink, green and blue pastes. Plus a plastic spoon. The big container tastes a bit like humous but without the garlic. The pink paste is sweet, and green one is sharp and the blue on is sour.

It's not very exciting, but it's food.

[break]

I sincerely hope the ship has no internal cameras. I've just found the toilet.

I asked it where to put the dead lunch tray and it opened another hatch. Inside was a bucket. It instructed me to place any waste materials, biological or otherwise, in the bucket and replace it in the hatch, whereupon it would be recycled.

I have to crap in a bucket and then the ship eats it. Get me out of here.

[break]

Another fruitless few hours spent staring at the stars. I have no idea where we are. If I was right about a light year per minute, then we must have gone about five hundred by now. The Milky Way is off to one side; as far as I can tell we're progressing down the spiral arm.

However, I've noticed something interesting. There are vague striations visible against the starfield. They're very faint, and they're only visible when the lights are all the way out. They converge at a point dead ahead and go radially outwards. They're rippling slowly.

[pause]

Ah. That's interesting. I leant forwards to get a better look and they moved against the stars. Parallax. I'll just... [pause] yes. They seem to be just outside the window. They seem to be describing the surface of a sphere or ellipsoid or something enclosing the ship; the place where they converge is the foremost point. Hang on, I want to sit down again.

[pause]

I reckon what I'm seeing is the surface of a forcefield or hyperspace bubble or something like that. If we're travelling through normal space, then the amount of interstellar dust hitting us would be quite extreme... something must be shunting it off. Hmm.

But if we're not travelling through normal space, then all bets are off... oh, good grief, I'm so far out of my depth here it's not funny.

I need some sleep.

I'm going to tell this thing to transmit and continue tomorrow, or at least, when I wake up. Oh, yes; this dictation device is really slow. It took about an hour to send my last message, assuming that's what the light meant. I hate to think how long this one will take.

Sod it. See you tomorrow.

[transmit]