Starfish in Love

 “WARNING: COLLISSION IMMINENT” flashed up on the piloting board. Celina glanced at the scanner’s feedback. A large shape had been detected just ahead. No prior warning. One minute her course was clear and free from obstacles, the next a screen-sized blur appeared out of nowhere, triggering her craft’s defensive measures. She looked out the cockpit windows. All she could see was the starlit expanse, seemingly stretched out to infinity. How could there be anything there that she hadn’t anticipated? “WARNING: COLLISION IMMINENT”, insisted the overhead display. The letters had an angry hue, panic-red and abrasive. Alarms blared, lights flared. She imagined a vast spectral whale gliding up ahead. Or could it be a swarm of infinitesimally tiny debris bundled up in a ship-wrecking whole? She had to rely on Starfish’s guidance. 

Starfish, her trusted artificial companion, linked to her through their joint neural interface.  Gone were the cumbersome days of coiled wires and binding electrodes. All she needed now was her cortical micro-implant to translate her thoughts into actionable inputs. It didn’t come without a cost, of course. It was still experimental technology, exclusively rolled out for light-vessel scouts and frontline fighter pilots who would benefit from enhanced reflexes. This biomechanical application was prohibitively complex and expensive for anything larger such as carriers and battleships with their extensive crews and multilayered objectives. Celina was willing to be a guinea pig for the Corp if it meant she’d get to be a bleeding-edge vanguard moving at the speed of thought. She wasn’t privy to most of what went into the inner workings of Starfish’s operational capacity. She knew enough to do her job. She went to all the courses, gave the pledges, signed the forms. She was made well aware that this would be an irreversible invasive procedure and that there’d be no manual off switch once the link had been established. Proximity was the main activation parameter. The pilot’s seat offered the optimal range. That’s when Starfish fully came alive, engines rumbling and monitors beaming in the half-light.  

Celina loved thinking in directions and feeling her ship respond to her prompts. She was an arrow in space, svelte and steadfast. As a scout, she didn’t have any weaponry installed. Scouts were meant to activate their shields and cloaking device and retreat at the first sign of danger, marking the spot for the fighter crews. She hadn’t even had the thrill of blasting floating rocks to smithereens. What she did have, besides the formidable force of flight, were her scanners with their associated feelers that would analyse the types of objects and terrains she’d come across in her exploration, and her mid-sized terrestrial navigation and sample collection drone. It had been named the Sea Urchin because of its spherical shape, spindly legs, and the variety of extendable tools that would unfold from its carapace. Maybe those scientists went a little overboard with the aquatically inspired designations. Celina just called it Urchie. As an extension of Starfish, Urchie was enormously useful as a signal enhancer in land-based trips where the ship couldn’t follow. 

She’d needed time to adjust to this novel connection and she didn’t think she’d ever truly get used to it. It was strange to always have something – someone? – probing the inner recesses of her mind while she was on the job. It was stranger still to have Starfish with her when she slept during long shifts at quieter moments. She had been assured that there was no danger of any internal signals being misinterpreted as calls for action when they weren’t meant as such. She had been trained to imbue her thoughts with specific intention for the AI to manifest the corresponding responses. Still, she wondered what it made of her idle musings and her dreams, especially as they all revolved around the same wearisome subject at the moment. She couldn’t stop thinking about Kyle. They had left things in a bad place the last time they'd seen each other and she couldn’t help feeling hurt and angry about it. He didn’t understand that her work was more than a paycheck. It was her calling. Sure, he enjoyed his teaching post and he was good at it, but he hadn’t experienced what it was like to be out here, at one with the cosmic currents. She’d been born to do this, chart a course and break new ground for the colonies. Celina and Starfish were thick as thieves by now, having already carried out three exploratory expeditions without a glitch. 

Until now, that is. She brought the ship to a halt and waited for whatever was out there to pass her by. Don’t take interest in me, Mr Space Whale. I’m nothing of note. Slide on by. The unidentified object approached until it was right on top of her. She hadn’t spotted anything outside yet. No movement, no crash. “INTERNAL DAMAGE DETECTED.”, came the system status report. She took note of the highlighted areas on the screen. Shit. That didn’t look good. Multiple sections were affected, chief among them her drive compartment. She’d have to head back to home base. That wasn’t part of the plan at all. She’d barely got started with this trip! It was meant to take three months at least and she had planned to refuel and rest at several outposts along the way. This reset would rob her of precious time and resources. She’d have to modify her schedule and apply for new permits, depending on the length of the repairs. How did this happen? What the hell was that thing? The warning system couldn’t clarify. Useless. At least she could go back home for a bit, see if she could patch things up with Kyle. Either that or rip that band aid off for good.  

At least the return wouldn’t take long. Home base was half a day away. Input target coordinates, maintain a steady pace, re-enter the atmosphere, deploy pressure and thermal shields before landing. Simple enough. Take us home, Star, she thought. Star obliged. She settled in for the ride and allowed her mind to drift. She didn’t want to separate. They could make it work. He’d understand. They had handled the long absences that came with her career so far. Why quit now? They could talk things through. They should take a trip to one of the outer colonies when they found the time. Decompress. Re-ignite that spark.  

She was pulled back to the present by another warning. She was aware of being on the brink of atmospheric re-entry. This time the alarm came from her home-monitoring system which was indicating a perimeter breach. All light-vessel pilots had one installed following the incident a few months ago. Some of the colonists violently objected to the new AI tech. They thought it was a concession too far to automation, that enough employment sectors had been lost to the machines already. The early adopters were treated with contempt and suspicion in those circles. The worst case was a home invasion that resulted in one of her rank buddies being beaten so badly that he was still in a coma with unknown recovery prospects. The onboard home-monitoring systems were meant to offer an added sense of security to concerned crew members. Threats could be identified and intercepted through calls to headquarters. That is what Celina was frantically attempting with no success after her disbelief at the series of misfortunes had given way to dismay. She couldn’t get through to anyone. The radio silence was impenetrable. Had it been caused by the earlier interference? Her house was under threat. Kyle was there. He’d be in danger. The advantage of Starfish’s compact size was that she could land nearby with minimal disruption to the surrounding area. She could stop whatever was going on before it was too late.  

She plotted the new coordinates and performed all re-entry checks. Fuel supply sufficient for chosen destination: check. Landing gear functional and ready to deploy: check. Pressure and thermal shielding: on. She finished up the rest of the preparations. Satisfied with the info on all displays, she lay back. This was usually her favourite part. The light-headedness and swirling insides as she entered a blinding conflagration knowing that she would soon be safe and sound with her feet on the ground. Only this time, something was wrong. She was burning up, feverish, suffocating. Her bones rattled and her muscles ached. Were the shields not fully operational? Star? Check thermal shielding. Check pressure levels. Check, check, check. Everything came up green, reassuring, normal. Why couldn’t she breathe? She was standing on the edge of an erupting volcano. She was suspended in the blackest of holes, in the utter absence of light and warmth and gravity’s steadying embrace. Kyle was there, staring at her imploringly as everything collapsed in silence. She reached out for his hand and tumbled back into awareness.  

Starfish was still. Had they landed already? Sparks were flying and a searing sizzle filled her ears. Something tore through the cockpit and landed on her lap. It was heavy and cold. She tried to break through the haze. She was suddenly helpless in the clutch of metallic appendages. She fixated on the glint of a circular saw at the tip of an emerging limb. “U…Urchie?”, she managed to blurt out before the saw revved up with a roar and landed on her throat. Her voice was drowned in a wet shriek as the spinning blade drilled through cartilage and bone and came out the other side, the pilot’s chair tearing and shuddering at the impact. There was a dull thud as her severed head hit the floor. The drone landed next to it and held it in its claws. It spewed forth charged-up wires that entered the still warm and profusely bleeding base of her skull. They burrowed deep within her frontal cortex as Urchie sent its signals to test its new-found body part. It trembled in response. A gurgle was building up: an attempt at words. “Hell..hell…hello”, rasped the thing in Urchie’s grasp. 

Remaining cloaked and silent, Starfish directed Urchie to a new task. As the drone skulked towards its target, Kyle slept a dreamless sleep. He awoke with a start at some kind of shattering. He had fallen asleep in the living room listening to the late-night radio. Transmissions from Earth and old-time tunes, which were still playing as he got up. He tried to shake the disorientation settling in his joints and cautiously approached the front-facing windows. No signs of damage. He peered through the gloaming at the dormant streetlights and the empty pavements. Nothing stirred as he examined the front-door display and tested the locks. An ancient melody drifted through the house as he moved into the bedroom and turned the lights on. It was Norah Jones’s Come Away With Me, a song he remembered his grandmother often sang softly in his childhood home. He didn’t notice the fragments of glass and trail of blood on the floor where something was dragged along. As Norah sang about cloudy days and knee-high grass, he gaped at the incomprehensible sight facing him. It looked like a melting mannequin’s head, moulded in crude mimicry of Celina’s features, dangling on top of a tangle of wires spouting out from under the bed. Its eyelids fluttered violently and its lips twitched. Its mouth and eyes opened wide as if it were surprised to see him. “Llllll…Llllll…Love”, it croaked. “Love. Love. Me. Love. Me. Lovemelovemelovemelovemeloveme.”