The Great Ship Buddha - The First Day - A Story In Three Parts

Hello, my name is Xu Schribetti, I’m the cook, and I’m telling the story of the Great Ship Buddha. Although it’s not the Great Ship Buddha, not the name at least, the name of the ship was the Barracuda. It’s just that with the wears and tears on the ship, the arrac was gone, so it was just B------uda, and the Empire said it was a Great Ship, because of the size of its jaw.

The Buddha is shaped like a fish. The jaws on the head, the head’s near the front. On top of the “head” are the computers, positioned like an 8 on its side. Underneath the computers is the flight deck, where the captain captains the ship. Right underneath it is the jaw. Planets, suns, everything in the universe fuels the Buddha. The jaws breaks down everything.

It used to be that the old Great Ships had to stay on a planet, drill for metals, oils so the ship could fix itself and keep flying. After it had finished on the planet, it would swim through nothing to the next. However, the enemy could jump them while they were at that stop. So now the Great Ships swim and eat. They never stop. We found one planet a long time ago, but we ate it before we could live on it. It’s nice, because now we don’t have to deal with moving to gravity.

I’m talking from the Dining Hangar, 8000 feet for all 80 of us, and so big it’s like cooking a Cornish game hen in a turkey-roasting pan. Each Buddhist (our name for space sailors) get their own table, and each of them looks at the Captain’s elevated table at the centre. He comes out of the tubes ten years before the rest of us, so we know who to follow, the powerful father. The old captain trained him. He’s got this Manchu Fu beard, and never washes his uniform. He’s got a cane, a weakness cloned into him. He’s a religious Buddhist – one of the reasons why the ship’s named the Buddha. Not every Buddhist on the ship follows Buddha, just him.

I argued for the same meals for everyone – it’s easier to make – but the Captain vetoed it. But no, that’s not right, he wants caste equality, even though only two castes now because of bad cloners, his caste and ours.

I’m watching the computerized robots, placing supreme copies of my own beef bourignon on indefatigably round plates. It’s one of my favourites…I really enjoys the subtlety of cookings.

I walk by the meals, among the people, to see if they like the meal. I’ve been cooking since I ate a teen. I’m asking the Captain’s second-in-command, John, if he would like some salt and pepper when I spy the Captain in the act of consumption. Does he like? He didn’t touch his steak.

“Thank you. The meal is fine, but my mind is aflutter with the horrors that are and the horrors yet to be.”

The Captain always talk that like. It make me laugh, I think it’s weird, but I’m not Captain, so maybe it’s me.

Then John start to stand up, so I got off the uplifted stage where his tables, like you pull your hand away from hot pan.

“Gentleman and gentlewoman, throughout time, leaders have said that they face a crucial point in their history. More often than not, it was meaningless, or said at too late a time. But for the first time, the fate of the human race truly rests upon what we do next. As you know, we were part of Operation Last Exodus – a mission meant to put the last remaining healthy humans onto ships from the apocalypse that the Milky Way Homelands endured. Three ships, the Submission, the Crusader, and our own Barracuda would find a planet capable of sustaining life, with abundant natural resources, and conquer it. We would not have to be on this ship from the moment we emerge to the moment where our bodies are expelled into space. There have been rumours that the Submission and the Crusader were facing serious technical trouble with the breakdown of their Consumption Engines, and that they were seriously considering cannibalizing one or each other’s ships to survive. We have lost contact with both of these ships during an altercation, and there is a possibility that their conflict has resulted in mutual destruction. This has significantly hampered Operation Last Exodus, both in terms of trade and people resources necessary for continued operations. With that, I’m turning it over to the Captain to tell you what our next course of action will be.”

John sat down, and the Captain stood up.

“Shall we give way to consumption, desire, excess, and build more ships, to replace the two we have lost, the two that ate themselves to death? Certainly not. Shall we become ascetics, demand restrictions on what we are currently consuming? Certainly not. I have a middle way, a planned flank right through the middle, routing both these enemies of entropy and asceticism.”

The Captain talks funny. I smile at the way he talks, even though I don’t really know what he’s talking about. John does, and after everything’s settled, I hear him say:

“I think he’s going to change what the flight path of the Buddha, and its subsequent consumption. He’s going to use something in the computers, maybe…to figure out what we need to keep going, rather than break down every planet we see. The Buddha’s so old, it can’t keep eating the way we’ve been eating. The Crusader and the Submission consumed too much, took over too many things, so they had to eat each other. And now he’s going to stop that. I think.”

That was the first of the last three days.