Konstantin
a short story
by
Beth Powers
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Copyright 2012 by Beth Powers
Cover Design by Beth Powers
First Printed in Shelter of Daylight, October 2012
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Konstantin
My name is Konstantin. I am a starship. Sometimes I forget that I was once a man.
My brother would say I still am, but Neil always was a romantic. He’s the reason I have one foot this side of the grave, but he’s also the reason a pretty dark-haired lady is trying to hack the ship’s computer. She sold him a sob story for her passage. And now she is trying to stop him from ever having a chance to regret his decision. Romantic notions lead to nothing good.
Neil, in his misguided benevolence, landed me in this tin can two years ago. I was twenty-eight with the universe at my feet when I lost control of my gravcycle, slid on ice, and plowed straight into a guard rail. The doctors tried to hide the pity that dripped from their faces as they told me the damage to my spine could not be repaired. I was paralyzed from my navel to my toes. I’d barely swallowed that when I contracted some vile disease in the hospital that started eating its way up my spinal column, intent on immobilizing my other half. In the not too distant future, it would reach my brain and kill me. To say that I didn’t take the news well is an understatement. Neil found me after my second attempt to end my life. Back into the hospital I went. I woke up as a starship.
Currently, my slowly-wasting physical body rests, half-frozen, in a special compartment in the hold. While I was in the hospital unable to object, Neil convinced some tech doctor to hardwire my brain to the ship’s systems. I had the means to end it after I’d found out what he’d done—the life support to the chamber that housed my body was under my control.
But I couldn’t do it. I, who had so desperately wanted to hasten fate, couldn’t even pull the plug on my poor dying body that was slowly wasting away. My brother’s hopeful face haunted me. He had been so proud of himself for devising a solution that he believed we could both live with. Death might end my pain, but it would destroy Neil. Considering the current mess he had landed us in, perhaps I should not have been so kind to him.
While filling our hold with a munitions delivery destined for the police forces of the fringe worlds, we had picked up passengers to supplement our income. With a full hold, we usually took two at the most, which along with Neil (I didn’t count), made for pretty cramped quarters. We had our cargo and passengers loaded, but at the last minute, as Neil was locking down the cargo while I closed the ramp, this woman ran up, begging him to wait. She was wild-eyed and gasping as though something dangerous was chasing her. I flipped through the exterior viewscreens but could see no sign of pursuit. She adjusted her grip on the duffel bag slung over her shoulder and gave my brother an assessing look from beneath thick lashes, “I need passage.”
Neil shook his head slowly, “Sorry, we’re full.”
“Wait,” she stepped onto the ramp, stopping him with a hand on his arm. As I increased the resolution on the feed, I could see tears forming in her eyes, “I’m trying to get back to my family. My husband is powerful, and—and if I wait for the next ship, I may never get another chance. Help me. Please.” Neil always has had a soft spot for a good dramatic story. He protested, but she had him with those wide puppy dog eyes. I bit my virtual tongue instead of objecting because we could really use the money.
As soon as everyone was on board and the ship was locked down, I set the pre-flight checks into motion. I switched back to the common room’s feed just as Neil introduced the Konstantin’s A.I. I activated the hologram, which was a fairly honest approximation of what I had looked like before the accident. I hadn’t paid much attention to the other two passengers—an older man and a young blond woman who acted like she’d never been on a starship before, eyes darting around nervously. She flinched back as I appeared next to her. In order to get her name, I quickly reviewed the recording of the conversation that Neil had conducted when the first two passengers had boarded. “I didn’t mean to startle you, Taylor,” I spoke from the nearest speaker.
She blushed and glanced down, “You didn’t—it’s only—I don’t like space travel, being surrounded by nothing but darkness.” She shivered, “It makes me…uncomfortable.” Bump “uncomfortable” up several degrees and maybe that would have matched how her body language was telling me she felt toward spaceflight.
“Is there anything I can do to make your flight more comfortable?”
“No,” she gave me a tentative smile, “I’ll be fine. Thanks for the offer.”
Neil returned from guiding the older man to his bunkroom. “Taylor, Konstantin will show you to your bunk while I finish getting the ship ready. If you need anything, just ask. I’ll be in the cockpit for takeoff.” I had already instructed the computer to lift off as per the directions being piped in by port control. But if he wanted to play pilot, I wasn’t going to complain. I sent a quizzical look his way, but he only gave me a crafty smile in return. Neil didn’t usually instruct the “A.I.” to take care of passengers. But then this A.I. hadn’t shown much of an interest before.
I raised the holo hand, formed of light particles, and gestured, “Right this way.” I flipped my image through various projectors to lead her. When we reached Taylor’s bunkroom, I reiterated Neil’s words to let me know if she needed anything and clicked off the hologram.
Our trip was scheduled to take a total of seven days. Normally, I kept away from the passengers—no one wanted to chat with the A.I. But by the second day, Taylor hadn’t emerged from her bunk. I thought about asking Neil to check on her. Technically, I could access the video feed to her bunkroom, but I preferred to give the passengers some semblance of privacy, and frankly, most of the time I didn’t care. I activated my hologram outside her door and raised my hand to knock. Then I remembered that my hand was insubstantial and would have no effect on the door. With a mental sigh, I used the nearest speakers to approximate the sound of a knock.
She slid the door aside and regarded me silently with saucer-wide eyes. I could see panic lurking in their depths. “Can I help you?” she asked finally in a very small voice.
I don’t know what I had intended on saying, but the words that came from my holographic mouth were, “Can I interest you in a game of triangles?” I rushed on, “I know playing against the computer isn’t as challenging as a live opponent—”
Taylor interrupted, “Yes.” She stepped back, almost looking relieved. “Come on in.”
I turned off the hall hologram and materialized in her bunkroom. The size of a large closet, it contained a simple cot opposite a collapsible table and bench that folded down from the wall. I took the bench, shifting my hologram into a sitting position while Taylor sat cross-legged on the bed. I projected a triangles board on the table between us.
Midway through the second game, I asked Taylor where she was headed. She looked up with a strange expression on her face. After a few blinks, she answered, “My boss let me go—due to overstaffing—and she sent me with a reference to someone on one of the fringe worlds.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a bodyguard.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what to say, but I dropped the hologram’s eyes, not wanting to appear to be assessing the likelihood of her effectiveness at her job.
A smile spread across her face. I could
see it because I wasn’t looking through the hologram’s eyes. “What? I don’t look like a bodyguard?” she teased, “Or how can I function as a bodyguard if I’m clearly irrationally terrified of space travel?”
“I didn’t say that,” I insisted weakly although it wasn’t far off from my assessment.
“But you were thinking it.” She had me there, but her words startled me. Out of reflex, I jerked the hologram’s eyes up as I studied hers. She appeared not to notice it odd that I—whom she believed to be a glorified computer—was thinking. Instead, she answered her own questions, “To the first, that’s why I’m good at my job. To the second, I only work for people who stay put.” She moved her piece decisively and