by MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, Alternate Reality News Service Interstellar Travel Writer
In space, nobody can eat ice cream.
In a distant sector of – no, wait, that’s not right. In space, nobody can have a dream.
In a distant sector – dangit, that’s not right, either. Dance on a light beam? Fish for bream? Swim twice in the same stream? Apparently, there are a lot of things you can’t do in space. Too bad none of them are relevant to this article.
In a distant sector of the galaxy, two ships run by artificial intelligence have been calculating how best to destroy each other for over a thousand years. The United Confederation of Planets has proclaimed the area around the ships to be off limits until it can figure out how to get the ships to stand down.
Within hours, ships full of tourists arrived to view the action. Broadly defined.
“It’s like a zen version of the Hundred Years War,” explained Faith Orangaru, the press liaison for Hear Them Scream Cruise Lines, one of the companies flying tourists out to the war zone. If we’re being generous.
“I paid 10,000 ziggurats for this? Plus tax?” complained Spaced Out Adventures customer Ota’otaku’flototaku Gin. “For that kind of money, I could have bought a jet pack and had enough left over to pay for the gas to fly around the world three and a half times – four if I didn’t stop in Guilford!”
“When you visit the pyramids, do you expect them to shoot lasers at each other?” Orangaru countered. “Of course you don’t. You go there for the history. History doesn’t shoot lasers. History stealthily sneaks up on you from behind and hits you between the eyes when you least expect it!”
“The tour itself is a dead loss,” Dib’dibbler’dibblerfang Whiskey, the member of the Gar’begar’begarrah race who runs the gift shop on the Spaced Out Adventures ship, admitted. “I mean, two ships just hangin’ about in space – you see more interesting conflicts in the alley down by the Puppy and Pepper Mill, and it’s only three inches wide! Naah. If there’s any money to be made – and there’s always money to be made – it’s in the merchandise. Care for an ‘AI went into space, and all I got was this lame starship battle’ t-shirt? Made of the finest Xanaxian silk – guaranteed not to melt the first three times you run it through the washing machine! Only $29.95. Tell you what: I may be gnawin’ off me own arm, here, but I’ll throw in a special mug with the two ships on it. What’s so special about the mug, you ask? When you fill it with a hot liquid, atomic bombs appear between the ships! When you fill it with a cold liquid? The ships seem to turn into Belarrappappian dancing girls! The mug alone costs $39.95, but I’ll give you the t-shirt and the mug for the low, low price of $64.95! You can’t ask for fairer than that!”
Suspecting that firing on unarmed civilian ships would not be a good look for the Confederation, and keeping in mind that most of its fleet had better things to do with their time, it sent a sanitation patrol cruiser to “monitor the situation.”
“Did you have to use scare quotes?” asked Adam Quark, captain of the vessel. “Couldn’t you allow me the dignity of monitoring the situation without the mission being in question?”
What does monitoring the situation mean? “It means we’re observing the state of affairs,” Captain Quark explained.
But what is the ship actually there for? If something untoward (in nautical terms: near the back of the ship behind the unused storage room nobody ever goes into because rumour known by most of the crew is that it contains haunted cheese) happens, what is the crew prepared to do?
“Well, we…we have been tasked with the…umm…task of assessing any situation as it develops,” Captain Quark told me. “In extreme circumstances, we are fully authorized to communicate the situation to Star Armada command and await further instructions.”
That’s it?
“Don’t say it like it belongs in scare quotes,” the Captain objected. “This sure beats collecting spent rocket boosters and ejected liquid waste!”
Then, holding up a mug, Captain Quark asked, “Have you seen one of these before? I got it from the gift shop on the Gar’begar’begarrah ship. Wait until you see what happens when I put iced tea in it!”