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

This is how the second day began. I woke up at 2 a.m. time relative to the ship. The computer chip in my brain told me that the Captain had entered a new heavy calculations program which may affect day-to-day procedures. I then go back to sleep, and mares running through the night come, but I forget them when I wake up.

So’s I start to make a breakfast meal. I call up the recipe from the computer’s memories banks. Oh, I’m sorry, I meant to tell you earlier about the ships magnificent computers, but I go to talking, and I’m not a story teller, and I’ll stop and start explaining right now.

Each computer has 80 GHK, what every human being ever has ever known times 80. The computers are so powerful that they run the ship’s repairs, food production, oxygen production, everything. We don’t do much but watch and eat what the computer does and make. Everyone just inspects it, or fixes it occasionally.

All the information is in the computers, from the earliest pots and pans to Middle Ages delicacies to recipes you can only make with molecularly precise computers. We can download that it straight to our brain, anywhere in the ship. We know everything, if we bother to ask. I don’t ask a lot. But don’t get a wrong about me, I like the computers, because I don’t have to carry around flash cards for my recipes.

There is one recipe that’s not on the computer, though. It’s an especially good one, my favourite. I invented it. I’ve made it a few times, for myself, to experiment, and it’s delicious. I’ve checked, and no one else has made a variation on the recipe. No one else has combined that precise amount of ingredients.

It exists within the computer, as a possibility of ingredients that the computers have listed, but it is not named, not specified, not remembered. The computers have not measured and made it so everyone can eat it. The computers do not know that this recipe tastes good, that I have named it, created it, and I do. Which means I know more than the computers know, because I can ask them whatever I want them to tell me AND I know my own secret recipe. I’m thinking that I’ll make it for people someday.

If I did it, the computers would add it to their thousands of recipes. They follow their programming; I follow my recipes. The only difference is I have taste buds, so I can tell if they made an error when they reproduce it. I’m feeling tired, so I have the computers make lunch without me. I taste it, and it’s good. It usually is.

I gave some of it to the Captain, but he didn’t want it, because he was smoking hashish and glaring for thousands of miles. He said he was starting a fast; for how long should I not make food, I asked.

“Buddha went twenty years. He never had your cooking, though. You’ve had good taste, and I shall miss what you’ve made.” And he left, slowly, leaning on his cane.

It was a good meal I made for the Captain. I walked through the aisles, delivering some of the plates because the computerized waiters were slowing down. There was one man talking something I couldn’t understand. He was handsome but he was angry, shouting. People gathered around him. You knew he wanted to change things; he listened to people to tell them their wrongness. It was frightening, the loudness, the screams, the scariness. I delivered the plate to them, trembling, and walked away. I think I heard them call my name, but I kept walking. I didn’t want to trouble anyone.

The computer-controlled egg timer was a second late. This was another odd thing. The alarm clock was connected to the computers, and everything was going slower for the computers. I freaked out and hurried my cooking. I started thinking about death. God is just a word, so when I die, I won’t see black or white. I won’t see a colour, and I can’t imagine not seeing anything, just seeing that horrible uncolour. But my brain keeps trying anyway, trying to imagine the uncolour.

But perhaps I should just take a deep breath, calm down, and relax. I get to making my meal for the night, the old routine, before all this. That will be very relaxing and good for my health. Yes, that will be quite all right.

Behind me!

“Hey, Xu.”

I jumped back. “Hello, John.”

“Listen, a lot of crew members are frightened, and wish to determine the cause of our current problems. So they’re all skipping supper while they try to fix the problem, and determine what exactly is the nature of the Captain’s program. Thanks.” And he walked off, not looking back.

I wait a while, looking down, then I gets to cooking some filet mignon with a transcendent sauce. I likes it, it has a colour. I try a piece of it, the Captain’s filet mignon which he rejected. He said he was going to fast for twenty years, and he’ll die of starvation, so I’m going to get good eating until the new Captain’s in. It’s so good, it’s quantum steak, measured by massive computers, with a few chemicals done strictly to induce pleasure. It’s so good, so good

A yell! I’m so shocked some food falls from my mouth. The yeller’s from the handsome man, yelling something about me, about survival, about how bad the Captain is, but I don’t want to get involved. I like the Captain, how he talks. This man is yelling but I don’t know what he’s talking about, he’s scary. I think if I talk to him he’ll make me do things. So I sit down, he leaves stompily, and goes on to the next fellow.

I want to talk to someone now, to know what’s going on, why there are people coming, what the program was, about the two ships blowing up. I don’t know who else to talk to. I go to talk to the Captain sometimes. We usually talk about food.

He’s in a maintenance room of wires, smoking hashish, sitting cross-legged, and his eyes are closed like he’s sleeping, no wrinkles. He’s sitting on the roots on the other side of the “tree” in the centre – big cables that make sure power gets to the ship, covered up in eons-old duct tape. It’s nice, like the ship’s sauna in here. Ports grow out from the top of the “tree”, like ten drills. I have to duck under one of them to approach the Captain. I get really close, but then I figure, what if he gets mad? What if I’m demoted, or they kill me and get a spanking new clone to replace me? I’m very replaceable, only the cook, I cook chicken, I chicken out, hiding on the other side of the tree. Then John comes up, walks past me, and talks to the Captain.

“Hello, John.”

“Hello, Captain. I just wanted to let you know, sir. They’re planning a mutiny.”

“I know, and I sympathize with them. They shouldn’t have to endure this ship, this horrible world. They think that my machinations will kill them, so they make war. And while you can’t make a better world through war, you can certainly survive. They just fail to see that I am making a better world for my crew using my power over the computer. Do you want power?”

“What do you mean by that rhetorical question?”

“Exactly what I said, dear boy. Do you want power, John, the ability for men to do things that you order them to do?”

“I don’t know, sir. I mean, I know the question, but I don’t know what to say in response.”

“Well, you shouldn’t want power. It’s an illusion. You can do things with the power they gave you. You can’t force anyone to change, to do something contrary to their desires. So what you do with power is give people things that are good for them that they don’t want. And hope they come to want it.”

“I don’t understand. I fail to ration out your reasoning.”

“In a days time you will have all the answers. The computers will tell you the answer. I told them to.”

The Captain walked over to my side, winked at me, and left the room. I thought about leaving, but I just stood there. Another person came up to John, asked him what was going on. Did he know what was going on?

“Well, Xu overheard it, too. But I don’t suppose HE’D know what was going on,” John said.

So the other fellow asked him what he thought was happening.

“Well, I mean, I’ll try and decipher this for you simply. The theory I guess is that the Captain is putting in a program in the computers software to find a planet we should stay on. We’ll still consume, but on one planet, the middle way. No one will like the transition to gravity, but he’ll use his power to force them.”

I still didn’t know what was going on. I just stared, but then John gave me a look like I was stupid. I just wanted to get out of there and go to sleep. I left them. It was a scary sleep.