Personal Blogs

My name is James Holt.  I am the ship’s Chief Engineer.  Dr Stark has asked me to  write an article for his intranet site which explains how the ship’s propulsion system works.  My heart sank when he told me this was not allowed to contain any equations and must be written in language that an idiot could understand.

            I would say that there are two important principles to grasp.  

            The first, and the easier one, is how the ship’s power plant generates energy.  Our fuel tank is full of liquid methane which we scooped from the surface of Titan.  We heat this up until the methane molecules fall apart and we get carbon (which we don’t need) and hydrogen.  The hydrogen atoms go into a nuclear fusion reactor at very high temperature, where they join together to form helium.  This process generates an enormous amount of energy.  The contents of the fusion reactor are held inside a very strong magnetic field, which is what stops them from flying in all directions and vaporising the ship.  The energy from the fusion reactor is used to power all the ship’s systems, from the air-conditioning to the propulsion unit.  

            Inside the propulsion unit is the device on which our entire ability to reach another solar system is based.  A conventional rocket works by throwing material out of the back of it, and thereby generating forward motion by the reaction against the stuff that is thrown out.  Our vessel (which I will refer to by its unofficial title of The Irish Rover, since that is what everybody calls it) does not work like that.  I will try to explain how it does work by some analogies. 

            Imagine that space-time is a pool of water.  Imagine also that the ship is like an aquatic creature living in that pool of water.  The aquatic creature sucks water into itself and then squirts it out the back, thus driving itself forward.  So does the ship, except that the stuff it squirts is not water, it is space-time.  Consider another analogy.  You are a man trying to get across a large room to a chair on the other side.  The room has a very loosely-laid rug on the floor.  The rug represents space-time.  You can either walk across the rug to get to the chair, which is how vehicles such as cars, aeroplanes and conventional rockets travel, or you can grab the rug and pull it towards you.  What we are doing now is analogous to doing both: we are both flying towards our destination, and pulling ourselves towards it at the same time.  Each little bit of space-time that we compress immediately relaxes back to its original state after we have gone over it but, by that time, we have moved a bit closer to out destination and that is all we are concerned about.

            Dr Stark asked me to say how fast we are travelling.  We reached our maximum speed some time ago, and are currently travelling at about 0.9 of the speed of light.  We re-use the same technology that the ship’s motor relies on to control gravity and inertia and thereby prevent the occupants of the ship from being crushed to death.  If all the systems on board are working properly, the only people who can tell we are moving at all are those who can see an instrument panel or an astrodome (and access to both is restricted to senior members of the crew).  

            Our speed is not the only thing that determines how long it will take for us to reach our destination.  The real distance of 19.4 light years between Earth and the Achird system will seem much less because of the effect I have described.  To an observer on board the ship, the journey will appear to take about four years.  

            Dr Stark has also asked me to explain the changes that the ship will undergo when we prepare to land on Achird-gamma, but I will save that for when we are much nearer our destination.

*

My French tutor is called Pamela Collins, and she is a good teacher: very patient.  She has one rule, which is that no spoken English at all is allowed in class.  If we don’t understand something, we have to express our lack of understanding in French.  There are about ten people in the class, all of about the same ability.  When I am not contributing, I look at Pamela and try to work out what she is about.  I cannot decide whether she is asexual, or the world’s worst lesbian, or just very neglectful of her appearance.  Her clothes look like industrial cleaning rags that have been sewn back together. 

            Since I started attending her classes, I have noticed that she seems to have gravitated towards me in the refectory and the bar.  She doesn’t speak to me.  She doesn’t speak to anybody, but I have started to notice that she is there.  I tend to speak French more enthusiastically when I am slightly drunk.  If I engage her in conversation, she answers, but as soon as I stop, she stops.  She doesn’t drink much, either.  If it weren’t for her language ability, she would be completely unremarkable.  I can’t even visualise what she looks like when she is having an orgasm.  The only thing that Pamela has in common with Violet is the way she writes the letter f. 

            Last night we had a party to celebrate one year on board the ship, and Pamela was there as usual, but still did not contribute any merriment.  I thought for one moment that I had seen a tear fall from her eye, but I may have imagined it.    

*

That party last night was awful.  It was the worst I have felt since I was wearing the wedding dress at the St Martin’s Lane Hotel.  Kelvin, whether he was conscious of it or not, was basking in the glow of his celebrity.  Men were slapping him on the back and shaking his hand, and women were fluttering their eyelashes at him and swooning.  It was nauseating.  You used to be able to rely on Kelvin to behave like a surly teenager on such occasions, and be cold, distant, and uncommunicative.  He used to have no interest in what any-one else said, or did, or thought.  Too much adoration seems to be re-shaping him into a public figure, and I don’t like it.  The only other person who seems to see through him is Prude.  I must admit she went up slightly in my estimation after she made that formal complaint about me.  I have removed all my surveillance devices from her cabin.  I don’t feel threatened by her any more.

            Among all the drinking and dancing last night, the thought that I could not suppress and which made me saddest of all was about Horace.  I allowed myself another little peek at “him”, all four cells of “him”.  For “his” sake, I hope the planet we are heading for turns out to be habitable.  I sometimes look at Kelvin and wonder why we could not have stayed at home.  I remembered the night Horace was conceived, and I allowed myself another tear.  I did feel better for a moment.  I at least had a moment of clarity: I stood up, oxidised all of what little alcohol I had drunk, did a large acetaldehyde burp into the face of the person next to me, and went back to my cabin.  I lay on my bunk, waiting for the sound of Kelvin returning to his, which he did somewhat unsteadily about three hours later.  I can see him as well as hear him if I want, but it is somehow more compelling and often funnier just to listen. 

            He was singing The Irish Rover when he fell through the cabin door, slammed it shut behind him, and tottered into the bathroom.  He remembered to brush his teeth and drink his two tumblers of water (and he still has not worked out why he gets worse hangovers since he stopped living with me).  He took his clothes off, which was quite a struggle, and dropped them all on the floor. I happen to know that his cabin is on Pamela’s job-sheet for tomorrow, and so she might be picking them up.  He crawled into bed, and his singing gradually quietened.  After a while, I thought I could hear him crying again.  He said something, but it was so quiet that, even after applying various transformations to the data, I still can’t make it out. 

Pamela has started hanging around “The Farm”.   This is the nearest thing that the ship has to a large, open space.  Most of the food production is done by machines.  They scoot along on rails in between huge trays of plants and lights which are stacked close together, just wide enough apart for the plant they are growing to reach the required height.  We certainly have a varied diet of vegetables and fruit.  The only commodity we lack which causes complaint is rice (especially since many of the colonists are of Asian origin).  We even have tea and coffee growing onboard.  There are no weeds and no pests, but the machines plant, water, feed, monitor, and harvest (they even harvest the tea, which requires highly advanced technology).  The lowest level of The Farm is suitable for people to work in, and is also a place of leisure.  It is a bit like visiting a huge garden centre, except that the light from above is artificial (we get all the energy we need from the fusion reactor in the ship’s power plant). 

            Passengers and crew are encouraged to visit the farm as often as possible, as a means of avoiding depression.  It is divided into “climatic zones”, and this is mainly for the benefit of the humans rather than the plants.  There are three “forests”: tropical, temperate, and coniferous.  These have occasional, artificial rain, and the coniferous one has snowstorms.  Kelvin has started publishing the schedule for these precipitation events in The Rover, under the heading “Weather”.  There is a myth circulating that these trees are necessary to generate our oxygen, which I happen to know is not true.  I sometimes go into one of the forests and hide for long periods, watching out for copulating couples.  I have not seen Kelvin yet, but I happen to know that the ship’s captain is having a clandestine gay relationship with one of the staff in the sick bay. 

            Kelvin’s favourite spot seems to be the fishpond.  This is where they breed the carp which are our main source of protein. Like the agricultural area, most of it is automated and utilitarian, but part of it is landscaped and used as a place of relaxation.  There is an oriental-style bridge under a weeping willow tree that he and Prude like to stand on when they are at their soppiest and most nauseatingly sentimental.  I am pleased to note that Kelvin always seems to be stone-cold sober during these trysts.  One of the ship’s regulations says that it is an offence punishable by three days in the brig to dispose of waste in the fishpond (and this specifically includes pissing or shitting in it). 

            It would  be particularly embarrassing for Kelvin to be found committing such an offence.  As well as being well-known for his partial authorship of the mission that we have embarked on, he is also frequently seen in the public gallery in the ship’s law court.  I must admit that I enjoy attending court sessions as well.  The best ones are those presided over by Judge Fitzgerald.  He is a florid-faced Australian lawyer with silver hair, a beer-belly, a loud voice, and a perfect knack for allowing counsel, accused and audience to have their fun without ever losing his grip on the proceedings.  The prosecutor is usually a woman called Cecily Johnson.  She is well-spoken, conscientious, and has an impeccable academic record, but is also inexperienced, unworldly and idealistic.  During the hearing of a case of alleged public indecency, she broke the first rule of advocacy (never ask a question to which you do not know the answer) and had to ask one of the witnesses what “felching” was.  There was hushed silence among the audience.  The witness’s answer (which was so word-perfect that it could have been read from the Oxford English Dictionary) produced uproar which even Judge Fitzgerald took several minutes to quell.  Counsellor Johnson’s well-bred, ivory cheekbones turned bright crimson.  This case left quite an impression on Pamela, because I had been hiding in the tropical forest where it took place, and it looked at one point as if I might be identified and ordered to be appear as a witness. 

            As you might expect, half the crime on the ship is due to drunkenness, and this is partly Kelvin’s fault (a fact for which he assumes no moral responsibility whatsoever).  The ship has its own currency (which is expected to continue in circulation after we land).  Kelvin has started investing by renting growing-space in The Farm, and manufacturing-space in The Factory (the portion of the ship where most of the workshops are).  He grows barley and hops.  The barley he makes into malt which, with the hops, he then makes into beer.  More recently, he has also started making whisky.  Thus far, his whisky has been good for little more than removing stains or producing a burning feeling in the oesophagus, but his beers are excellent, and in great demand.  He is already getting a return on his investment and, if he keeps on like this, he will already be wealthy by the time we reach our destination. 

            He is even showing signs of a flair for marketing.  His first product was a bottled beer, a dark mild (3.5 per cent alcohol) with a full-bodied, sweet, nutty flavour and a chocolatey finish.  He called it Black Mischief, and promoted it by, among other things, serialising Evelyn Waugh’s novel (from which he had stolen the title) in The Rover.  Sales of the beer and the hit-rate on The Rover’s website both went up at the same time.  I felt sorry that the late Mr Waugh was not around to collect royalties.  Black Mischief is now established as the drink that many people have at the beginning of a session: too much of it is considered to make you feel thirsty.  In pursuit of something lighter and more refreshing, he came up with a pale ale which is almost like lager.  He called this Light Brigade.  The label has a picture of men on horseback and cannons, and the slogan “C’est magnifique, mais c’est n’est pas la-geeer”.  Pseuds buy it because they think this is clever, and the rest of us buy it because it tastes good and is 5 per cent alcohol.  I believe he is working on some others, but he wisely spends time getting the recipe just right before going to market.     

            Apart from semi-public sex, litigation, and getting drunk, another shipboard pastime (I won’t call it entertainment) is learning to drive.  In the era when we left Earth, cars drove themselves, or were driven remotely by powerful, central computers.  No such system will exist when we arrive (until we can build one ourselves) and so we are having to resort to old-fashioned methods.  We have a number of government surplus vehicles which passengers are encouraged to learn to drive in one of the empty cargo-bays.  This was mildly amusing at first but, once you have seen one person reversing into a pile of packing cases and cursing, you have seen them all.  Driving a vehicle is something that my algorithmic brain is particularly good at, but I pretend to get it wrong sometimes, just to maintain my cover.

            Ostensibly to earn money, I have volunteered as a chamber-maid. All the passengers have to have jobs.  This caused consternation at first, particularly among the academicians of the more abstruse subjects.  Egyptologists and orientalists (who are well-represented among the colonists, mainly at Kelvin’s behest) are allowed to work in their chosen field, as long as they can get people to pay to attend lectures.  A handful of them have succeeded in this, but most have failed.  Given its size and complexity, the ship has a crew which is very small in number.  Nearly all of them are employed in keeping it moving, pointing it in the right direction, and making sure that it does not strike any obstruction.  The passengers are supposed to be responsible for, among other things, keeping the living quarters and food preparation areas clean.  They have had trouble recruiting cleaners and “cabin refreshment operatives” (maids).  As soon as I heard this, I abandoned all my schemes to do with picking locks and scrambling cam-feeds.  In my role as maid, I can go almost anywhere unnoticed.  I am currently deciding whether it is worth systematically bugging all fifty-thousand cabins, or if that would just be taking a passion for thoroughness a bit far.  I don’t have that many microphones or cams, but I have my 3D printers in my luggage container (which we are allowed to access while we are travelling) and so I can make as many as I want.  It took a few days before I was given a worksheet which included Prude’s room, and a few days more before I got into Kelvin’s, but I have them both under surveillance now.  This has made shipboard life much more interesting (and sick-making).

            He has had his leg over, at long last.    

Kelvin is going to hate this: he is scared of heights.  Small groups of us are taken up in a lift.  All we can see is the metal cage around us, and the grey, metallic, curved skin of the craft we are about to board.  The lift veers from side-to-side in the wind, which is uncomfortably warm.  The only illumination comes from flood-lights on the ground, which is just enough for me to be able to see my hand in front of my face, but destroys all sense of scale.  My internal aneroid barometer thinks we have ascended about 18 metres. 

            We had been hurried into a hut by mute, uniformed figures.  Inside, we changed into our flight-suits.  We gaped at each other, trying to work out what we were supposed to do, and which fastening went where.  After the ascent in the lift, we are now hurried again to our “seats”, which seem to be covered in foam padding at least a foot thick.  We are strapped in.  The lift descends for the last time.  The door closes.  We are in virtual darkness and surrounded by the low murmurs of confined humanity.  We stay like this for what must seem to the others like hours, but which I know is just thirty-seven minutes, and then the engines are ignited.  The vibration is terrifying, but the take-off seems worse.  We rise with ponderous slowness, and then accelerate to the point where the force is crushing and any movement, including breathing, seems impossible.  I use one of my tricks and switch over to anaerobic operation for a while.  I go into a dormant state until we dock, by which time we are weightless. 

            If the last craft we were on was a cattle-truck, the one we have just boarded is a hotel.  This is a good thing, because I believe we are going to be stuck in here for several years.  I can’t see outside, but gravity behaves normally: up is up, and down is down, and things which are denser than air descend if you drop them.  The passage I am being conducted along looks remarkably like that on a ship, with framed doors on each side, mats on the floor, and lights in the ceiling.  I am escorted into a lift, with a member of the crew and nine other passengers.  Everywhere in here seems to be made of metal, and so I doubt if I would be able to detect Kelvin now, even if he arrived still wearing one of my fabric microphone-transmitters.  One of my fellow passengers, who seems very nervous, is humming a tune which I recognise as “The Irish Rover”.  That is what I am going to call this vessel. 

            I am now in my cabin.  It is small, but habitable.  There is a single bed and a desk, both fixed to the floor; two upright chairs; a bookcase; a chest of drawers; a wardrobe, and door which leads to a small bathroom.  The desk is equipped with some kind of computer workstation, which I have not tried to use yet, and on the walls are digital screens which seem to be showing some kind of rather vulgar slideshow, which I must see about changing.  First we have a picture of a camel with the Pyramids in the background at sunset.  Now we have a vintage car driving along a winding mountain road.  Now a lighthouse with waves crashing on the rocks below it.  I touch the screen and a menu appears.  One of the options is “Mirror”.  I choose that one, and it does what you would expect it to.  That is much better.  I sit on a chair and look at my “reflection” (which is actually an image from a digital camera being played back to me). 

            ‘My name is Pamela Collins.  My name is Pamela Collins,’ I say to myself silently, over and over again.  I look at my reflection, and think, ‘Why doesn’t she put some make-up on?’ but that is undisciplined, and I must change.  I must put more effort into becoming Pamela.  Pamela is my friend.  Pamela is going to enable me to sneak right up to Kelvin without his knowledge (when he finally drags his arse here).

            Since I have nothing better to do, I make an ultrasound and electronic sweep of the room, including the bathroom,  the ceiling and inside the chest of drawers and the wardrobe.   I find nothing, except some plumbing pipes and some wires which lead to the light switches, the air-con controller, the workstation and the towel rail. 

            I’m bored.

*

I have been here for over two days now.  I know this partly from my internal clock, but also because the lights in the cabin and the passages work on a twenty-four hour cycle, which they have now been through twice.  I was doing a survey of every part of the ship I could reach, in order to check for restricted access areas that might not be marked on the maps, and I was on the deck which is the next one above where my cabin is, and I saw Kelvin.  All his outer clothes were new, and untouched by me, but his underpants were still talking to me: I got a kind of stereo effect from his footsteps along the passage, which I could hear both externally and internally from the microphone.  I was proud of Pamela: she managed to suppress the desire to run towards him.  I followed him at a discreet distance, with stooped shoulders and gaze directed at the floor, which is how Pamela usually walks.  He did not notice me, until he got to the stairs, looked at the map, realised he had gone the wrong way, and doubled back on himself.  I walked past him, but then executed the same manoeuvre that he had.  He went up several decks to the nearest refectory.  I waited until he had filled his tray and sat down, noted that he was on his own, and then went back down the stairs to the deck with his room on it.  There is a narrow screen on the outside of each cabin-door in which the occupant can display a message.  Most of them are blank.  A few of them are lewd, suggestive, or obscene.  Kelvin’s simply says, “Dr Kelvin Philip Alexander Stark, PhD”.  Some wag with untidy, masculine handwriting had stuck a label underneath which said, “The Alpha Male”. 

*

Life on board ship seems to be picking up as the passengers get to know each other and their surroundings.  We have access to an intranet, on which there are various forums and electronic papers, some of which have already sunk to the depths of salacious speculation and personal insults.  Forum moderation seems to have been replaced by a feature which automatically puts the cabin number of the author against all posted items.  You can sometimes hear the resulting thumps on doors and altercations late at night. 

            Kelvin started an e-paper and announced a competition to find a name for it.  I suggested The Rover, explaining the reference to my pet-name for the ship and the Irish folk song, and I won.  Kelvin sent me a very polite email of congratulation, which demonstrated clearly that he does not suspect who I really am. 

            The Rover is a strange publication.  It is published, according to Kelvin, whenever he “has enough material” (for which read, “when he feels like it”).  A small part of it is devoted to an update from the ship’s navigator on how far we have got, which nobody ever reads.  Another covers any shortages, bottlenecks, breakdowns, or standing orders to do with the running of the ship.  This is useful but boring.  There is usually a feature article about something academic, often from art or literature.  I think Kelvin chooses the subjects for these, but gets specialists to write them.  Tabloid-style prurience he leaves to other publications.  Any column inches he has left over are filled by the main driver of the circulation, which are what purport to be computer-generated articles containing pure nonsense.  Here is a recent example.

Court News.

Her Majesty the Queen Mother yesterday attended Ascot, where she was heard to belch so loudly in the Royal Enclosure that several hats were blown onto the course. The oncoming horses trampled them to fuck, reversing several times just to make sure of a thorough job. This has fanned the flames of the recent, hotly-contested investigation into race-fixing, in which it has been found that the animals themselves have instituted an arrangement whereby the one with the silliest name will always be allowed to win.  The odds have shortened considerably on “Fanny Haddockbonker The Third” for the Derby. 

*

Kelvin has another paramour.  Her name is Dr Prudence Tadlow.  Apart from being a stuck-up cow, she is a hydro-geologist with a PhD from Imperial College, London.  They still seem to be at the stage of getting embarrassed and mumbling to each other when they “happen” to meet, but all the signs are there.  For some stupid reason, Prude always wears a boiler suit and a utility belt, the latter very powerfully accentuating the curves of her “fuller” figure.  Kelvin also seems to have noticed that she has thick, fragrant, chestnut-brown hair, green eyes, and a very attractive, intelligent and punchable face.  They are so ridiculously awkward together, sometimes Pamela just wants to throw a packet of condoms at them.    

            I was behind Prude in a crushed queue in the refectory the other day and I managed to do a quick scan around her kidney area with ultrasound.  She seems to have disgustingly healthy ovaries.  I have a good mind to draw to her attention the standing order which says that passengers must refrain from getting knocked up before we reach our destination. 

Violet has gone.  She has taken some of her stuff, but not all of it, which I think is selfish and lazy.  I have no idea where she went.  Unfortunately, I have very little to absorb me for the next few days.  I have settled my affairs, resigned from my job, and emptied my bank account.  I had nobody I wanted to say goodbye to, apart from Rose, with whom I have already exchanged goodbyes, and Violet, who left without a word.  I have disposed of all my possessions except those I will be including in the sale of my flat or travelling with (and most of those have already been despatched).  Today I woke at 8am, went back to sleep for two hours, got out of my sleeping-bag, got dressed, did not shave, did not have breakfast, and sat and stared at the wall for a while.  I then packed the remainder of Violet’s possessions into bin liners and took them to the dump.  There were a few mementoes that I decided to keep.  One of them is Violet’s registration certificate (in effect, my “android licence”).  Another is one of the tampons.  She did not take any of the tampons with her (I counted how many were missing from the box when I found them).  That makes me even more mystified.  I cannot work out why she would not take with her something that she had an inexplicable reason for needing in the first place.  I am now walking round the neighbourhood, trying to decide where not to have lunch. 

            I am now technically committing a criminal offence.  Failure to report the disappearance or abnormal behaviour of an android is against the law.  The registered owner of an android is required at all times to know the android’s exact location.  I don’t even know which continent she is in. 

            She did not even write me a note.  The first indication I had that she had gone for good was when I tripped over her keys in the hallway.  She must have locked the door and then put them through the letterbox.  It occurred to me when I realised that there was no note to wonder how many samples I had of Violet’s handwriting (which was, while neat and businesslike, also endearingly feminine).  I went into the spare bedroom and looked for the box that we both used to use for greetings cards and letters to each other that we did not want to throw away.  It had gone.  I am hoping that Violet took it, and that she did not destroy it.  I then went through the wastepaper baskets, and found a crumpled shopping-list that Violet had written.  It reads as follows. 

 

3 October 2135 

Shopping List

Goat’s cheese

Yoghurt

Lemons

Coriander

Chicken

Fresh mint

Ground almonds

 

Cotton wool pads

Nail varnish remover (the expensive stuff)

Toothpaste

Toilet paper for Kelvin’s arse

Mouthwash for Kelvin’s foul breath problem

Extra large tissues for when Kelvin wanks off

 

Red wine

Beer for Kelvin to make into wee wee

 

I smoothed it out and put it in my wallet.

                                                                       *

Goodbye for now, Kelvin.  I hope you don’t think that you have got rid of me.  Here are your keys back.   I wonder what our house will look like, when are finally living together, as man and wife.

            I can still hear him.  I am sitting in a café in Hyde Park, well within the 3 kilometre range of the listening devices.  He is playing low-tempo jazz to an accompaniment of clinking bottles and glasses, which is usually a sign of an emotional crisis.  I started writing him an email (I don’t need a keyboard to do this: I can compose them inside my head and then send them).  I got halfway through, realised that I could not decide whether I was being sad, angry, or factual, and just deleted it.   I can just about hear him padding from room to room.  He will have had a couple of whiskies or vodkas to start him on his way.  He will have a bottle of something fizzy when he is in the bath, in about half an hour, then a bottle of red with the Indian takeaway or pizza he will order for dinner (if he has any), and then he will sit opening cans of beer until he either passes out, or realises he is de-hydrated (in which case he will have two large tumblers of water and three mugs of sugary tea). 

            He will have the worst hangover he can remember in the morning, without me to metabolise the alcohol and give him saline.  I am tempted to come back in the morning, just to listen to him again, but I have places I need to be.

            My name, for the foreseeable future, is Pamela Collins.  My background story is that I am a multi-lingual electrical engineer from Shrewsbury.  I am 24 years old.  I got a 2:1 from Loughborough University.  I can speak and write Russian, Spanish and French; I can speak Mandarin, and I have a basic knowledge of spoken Japanese.  I am neither artistic nor musical.  My favourite book is “The Lord of the Rings”, which is the only thing I’ve ever read other than textbooks.  I can’t cook.  My favourite meal is instant noodles, crisps and Lambrini. I have no dress sense and I never wear heels.  I hardly ever wear make-up: not because I’m a lesbian but because I’m boring.  Kelvin will not remember interviewing me, and will not be able to find any-one else who remembers interviewing me.  This will be attributed to my uninteresting personality and appearance.  If it weren’t for my practical skills, I would never have been selected.

            I have been very careful about changing my appearance.  I must be quite unrecognisable.

            I used to be 5 feet 7 inches tall, and had a curvy figure with E-cup breasts.  My hair was a dark treacle colour, very thick, slightly wavy, and usually down to my shoulders (though I often wore it up).  My skin was unfashionably pale, and my belly and my thighs unfashionably large (which was just the way Kelvin wanted me).  My eyebrows were dark and thin but not plucked out of existence as current fashion would dictate.  My fingers were long, slender, strong, and my nails always impeccably manicured. My ears were pierced, and I had no tattoos.  My legs were completely smooth, but I had lush, dark pubic hair and hairy armpits. My labia were prominent and a certain shade of pinkish-red, about which Kelvin gave very exacting instructions. 

            I wonder how many women in history have run surveillance on and then left the man who decided what colour their cunt would be.

            Pamela Collins is 5 feet 10 inches tall with gangly arms and legs, a flattish chest, and a body like a biscuit-barrel.  She has mousy, pale brown, curly hair which is given to greasiness.  Her eyebrows and eyelashes are pale and almost invisible.  Her skin is pale and freckly with lividly pink cheeks.  She ought to wear that special face-cream that goes opaque-white if the wearer blushes, but she has never heard of it, and would not fork out for it even if she had.  She has eczema on her hands and feet, and her nails are bitten.  If anybody got the chance to see, he or she would find that she shaves her pubice and her armpits.  Her vulva is an almost featureless slit which Kelvin would never bother to click on if he saw it on a website. 

            I am going to report as early as possible at the airfield from which the plane takes off to take us to the launch-site.  I will then engage every-one I can find in conversation in a low, monotonous voice with a West Midlands accent, and watch them run away.  Kelvin will walk straight past me but, unless he has thrown all his clothes away and bought a complete new wardrobe, I will know he is about to arrive as soon his car gets within 3 kilometres of me. 

My full name is Doctor Kelvin Philip Alexander Stark, PhD.  I am a failing academic at one of the UK’s largest universities.  I work in the School of Chemistry, where I am liked by some of the students and despised by most of the other staff, some of whom I also despise.  I am not good at getting five academic papers out of a project which only merits one.  I am very good at cracking abstruse scientific problems, but not good at turning the findings into funding.  I believe it is worthwhile to spend time on teaching students.  This is heresy which the university cannot tolerate for much longer.  I am twenty-seven years old, and my academic career is nearing its end.

            I feel very fortunate to have been born into an era which includes the possibility of interstellar travel, and in a way that I myself can take part in.  I love my home, and I am bitterly reluctant to leave it, but a chance like this never comes more than once in a lifetime, if it appears at all.  I am not running away from anything (certainly nothing of greater importance than my failing career).  I recently began, and then had to end, a relationship with a very attractive and warm-hearted woman called Lieutenant Rose Thorne.  I will never forget Rose, but we both knew that our love was always going to be overtaken by events. 

            Apart from my home, the thing I am most sorry to be leaving behind is my companion android, Violet.  You would not think it to look at me, but I have spent an enormous amount of money on her.  She is probably the most advanced non-military android in Europe – possibly in the world.  To me, she is human.  I know how many people find that impossible to accept, but such people are ignorant and prejudiced.  Just because she is made of synthetic materials, and includes electronic and mechanical components in most of her systems, it does not mean that she is lacking in humanity.  She has an independent intellect.  She is capable of the full range of human emotions, including love and hate.  She feels empathy and antipathy just as we do.  Her brain, like ours, is extremely complicated.  Hers includes both electronic parts (which are algorithmic) and neural networks with biological constituents, which are non-algorithmic.  She is highly intelligent and learns very quickly.  She can speak and write several languages fluently.  She can paint pictures and play the guitar.  She is a superb cook.  She could fight a world heavyweight boxing champion and win easily.  I often get the feeling that she is capable of feats that neither of us have yet considered. 

            I must admit to having felt a certain embarrassment and moral compunction about starting the affair with Rose.  The reason for this is that a very active part of my relationship with Violet is sex.  That is the part that is most difficult to explain.  Violet is absolutely not a sophisticated version of one of those ridiculous inflatable dolls.  Her humanity includes sexual desire and the most complex of responses.  When I have sex with her, I try to have regard for her needs as well as my own.  I abstained from sex with Violet while I was in a relationship with Rose.  This was out of regard for the fact that sex with Violet is real and hence would have been adulterous while I was with Rose.  I regret the fact that I could not bring myself to discuss any of this with Violet.  In effect, I simply kicked her out of bed, which was cold and unfair.  It compounded the fact that I had had to tell Violet that we are going our separate ways, about which I also feel bad (though at least I was up-front and honest about that, which is a relief). 

            My affair with Rose is the only explanation I can think of for Violet’s increasingly strange behaviour.  I get the impression that she is trying to punish me.  She has been spending inordinate amounts of time away from home, with no credible explanation.  I have not challenged her about this, because I have also been spending a lot of time away, mainly in attempts to procure equipment for the Alpha Project.  Violet is deeply resentful of the fact that she has no legal rights and is not, under English Law, a “natural person”.  I give her an allowance and she has her own bank account, set up, in the eyes of the law, under deception.  There are times, I must admit, when she seems to transfer some of her anger about her oppressed social position onto me.  I do not feel that I deserve this.  I believe in her humanity, and I challenge anybody to point out an example of when I have treated her as a slave. 

            Violet has done a number of very strange things recently, but two of them stand out as inexplicable.  The first is to do with something she did (or did not do), and the second is something I found, which I assume is hers.

            I happened to mention the impending departure (which – damn and blast – has been delayed because of some stupid virus in the space lab central computing cluster).  I phrased it in a way that implied that Violet would be coming to see me off.  She told me very sternly that she would not be coming, and would in fact say her last goodbye to me a few days before I set off.  I thought about this for a while, and decided that I did not want it to be like that.  I did not want what should be our last few days and hours together to be taken away by petulance.  I ordered her to come with me to see me off.  She told me she would not do it.  I ordered her again.  Again, she told me she would not.  I ordered her in what then amounted to the fourth time.  She still said no.  This is supposed to be impossible.  Part of Violet’s software configuration is a control mechanism required by the Control of Complex Mobile Electronic and Biomechanical Assemblies Act which sets the number of times she can contradict her legal owner’s instructions.  I have put this setting at a value of 3.  My tentative hypothesis is that Violet has learnt so much, and absorbed so many behavioural data, that it has outstripped her capacity to maintain a consistent structure, free of contradictions.  To this extent, she seems to be suffering from the android equivalent of insanity.  I must admit that I have no idea what I might do about this, even if I had the time.  A software and data restore would be brutal and unthinkable.

            Amid the discomfort and confusion created by this disagreement, I was in the flat on my own recently, and was quickly trying to pack fresh clothes and towels for yet another equipment-hunting expedition.  I found that our combined absence had put us behind with the laundry, and we seemed to be very short of face-cloths.  I was searching at the back of the bathroom airing cupboard, among the pile of dusty textiles that we hardly ever use.  It seemed easiest to take everything out and sort through it.  Wrapped inside an old, threadbare towel, I found the last thing on Earth I would have expected to see.  It was clearly new; it had been opened, and its contents had apparently been used.  The object surprised me so much that I had to sit on the edge of the bath to prevent myself from collapsing.  It was a box of tampons.  

            Neglecting for a moment the sheer, insane, biological impossibility of Violet’s needing to use tampons, what I cannot comprehend is why she felt the need to hide them.  Whatever she thought she needed them for, she could surely have told me about it.  

I have infected the main computer at the space lab with a virus emulator, in order to delay the launch date by a few weeks.  The “virus” itself is very benign: all it really does is cause scary messages to pop up unexpectedly, but Kelvin confirms that they are going to have to do a full security audit and data cleanse, which will take a long time.  I have gone to a great deal of trouble to make them think that it originates from Central Asia.  

            The reason I needed the delay is that I am tantalisingly close to a breakthrough in my work on the artificial uterus.  I have had all the necessary enhancements made to my vascular system.  The geneticists have finished designing my genome, and my ova have been synthesised.  My ovaries and fallopian tubes have been fitted, but they are not yet connected to anything.  The uterus is the key.  We have been gestating rabbit foetuses by the hundred, and counting the number of cell-divisions before lack of optimal conditions causes them to stop growing.  We are still messing about with different combinations of blood composition, amniotic fluid, and lining materials.  It is the lining that is the real bastard.

            Apart from the elusive breakthrough, the main problem I am having is satisfying my academic co-workers when they keep asking me why I am not publishing anything.  The head of department has been talking expansively about a possible Nobel Prize nomination, but I do not care about any of that.  All I care about is developing the capacity to conceive and carry Kelvin’s child before the launch of the Alpha Project takes me away from my research lab. 

            When I am not working, I am hacking.  I have leaked certain details of our findings to most of the world’s major biomedical engineering companies, in such a way that they have each felt compelled to start research programmes of their own.  Every few days, I hack into their systems to see if they have come up with anything useful.  Results so far have been disappointing, because my team (not surprisingly) is always in the lead, but I find it reassuring to have a backup plan.  

            Kelvin tells me that all fifty thousand places on the Alpha Project have now been filled, after a sudden increase.  He insists on referring to them as “berths”, which made me do a double-take at first, because I had “birth” with an “i” on my mind.  His main problem was that hardly anybody believed he was serious when he asked them if they wanted to drop everything, never see their friends or family again, and start a new life on a new planet (assuming we get there alive).  At first, various government departments made difficulties about letting anybody know about the mission at all.  Kelvin pointed out to them, with perhaps less politeness than is customary when dealing with senior civil servants, that it was not possible for him to find volunteers unless the volunteers were allowed to know the salient facts about what they were volunteering for.  

            The upshot of these various influences (plus the recent economic downturn) has meant that members and ex-members of HM Forces are over-represented among the colonists.  The downturn came into play because some flavour of the month in the Treasury realised that anybody who went would not be entitled to pension rights.  The new government has recently disbanded a battalion of Gurkhas, all of whom would have been entitled to pensions.  

            Kelvin still refuses to tell me anything about the mission, because of course he thinks that I am not part of it.  I have managed to find out the important points for myself.

            The mission has five phases.

            Phase 1 is the launch of an unmanned craft that comprises two parts: the fuel scoop and the interstellar propulsion unit.  This is initially bound for Titan, one of the moons of Saturn.  It had long ago been established that the sea on Titan (the only body in the solar system apart from Earth to possess  liquid on its surface) is almost entirely composed of methane.  It would therefore make a very good source of fuel for the rest of the mission.  The fuel scoop will fly low over the surface of Titan, scoop up several million cubic metres of liquid methane, and then leave the surface in order to participate in Phase 3.  The fuel does not need oxidant, because it is “burnt” in a nuclear fusion reactor rather than a conventional burner.  

            Phase 2, probably the easiest, is the launch of the habitation and life support module and its journey to the vicinity of Saturn for rendezvous with the other craft.

            Phase 3 is the rendezvous and docking of the two craft to form a single vehicle, capable of interstellar flight and keeping fifty thousand people alive for several years.

            Phase 4 is the journey to the new star, during which observers on Earth will lose contact with the mission.

            Phase 5 is the descent. 

            Phases 1 and 2 are further complicated by the fact that the craft concerned has been constructed in orbit around the Earth.  This means that another vehicle will be required to take the crew up to the habitation module.  We have to receive training for this part of the mission.  The main part of the interstellar journey is supposed to feel normal (if you call living inside a tin can for several years “normal”).

            The estimated probability of success for the five phases is (I discovered from one of the most secret documents) eighty-five, ninety-five, seventy, sixty, and fifty per cent, respectively.  That means that the chance that the whole thing will work is seventeen per cent, or about one in six.

            It is still overwhelmingly likely that, even if all five initial phases go perfectly, disaster will strike the Alpha Project somehow.  Kelvin appears not be worrying about this, and neither am I.  

            I have started assembling my equipment.  Kelvin has some ridiculous notions about limiting the amount and complexity of technology that the colonists are allowed to take with them, his hypothesis being that the colony will be able to re-invent and re-develop every advance that mankind has made in the last two hundred years.  This is the silliest idea I have ever heard.  Even Kelvin admits that the new colony will be by no means without technology.  There will be satellite communications, computers, and modern analytical instruments.  There will also be a few small nuclear power-plants, but there will be no planes, trains, ships, modern manufacturing plant or state-of-the-art hospital facilities.  Kelvin predicts that daily life for the first couple of decades will resemble that of small-town America in the 1930s.  I can hardly wait.  I have obtained the largest pair of 3D-printers that will fit into my storage container.  The first is mainly to make body-parts for me.  The second is to make parts to repair the first one if it breaks down.   I am taking these along with plenty of raw materials, including some rare metals. I am currently trying to locate a second-hand tunnelling electron-microscope in good condition.  

*

I have a new pet.  She is called Rosalind.  She is a black rabbit and is the first mammal in the world to be “born” from an artificial uterus.  She was brought to full term, and is strong and healthy (in fact, she is trying to get her teeth through my skin at this very moment).  Her DNA is also synthetic.  She has a biological father, called Zeus, but her “mother” is technology.  

Part 6.

Cuthbert Dry-Monotone explores what writers of exciting and engaging non-fiction have in common with the best fiction-writers.  In this episode, he is fortunate to be able to talk to the celebrated cookery writer and broadcaster, Nigella Lawson*. 

[Nervously.] “Er…Er…I’m here with, um, Nigella…”

“Lawson, darling – Nigella Lawson.”

“Er, yes.  Of course.  Nigella Lawson.” [Trying to sound more confident.] “The eminent TV personality and food expert, Nigella Lawson.  Now, er…, before we continue…”

“Yes, darling?”

[In subdued tones.]  “I…er…I’ve been having a few problems recently.”

“Yes?”

“I must admit that I’m rather nervous about this interview.”

“Nervous, darling?”

“Yes.  Very nervous.”

“Don’t worry, darling.  I promise to be gentle with you.”

[Slightly off-mike.] “Oh god: it’s started already.  What I am going to do?” 

“Just relax, darling.  Come and sit here.  Now, what did you want to talk about?”  [Pause.]  “Now come on, darling.  Don’t be shy.”

“Did the researchers speak to you before we started recording?”

“Of course, darling.  They were simply sweet.”

“Ah, good.  In that case, I was wondering if we could start by discussing how the idea of the ‘inciting incident’ – a concept from fiction writing – might apply to, for example, a TV cookery programme.”

“Well, it is all about creating excitement.”

“Yes?”

“About doing the unexpected.”

“Yes?”

“It’s all about passion.”

“Yes?”

“It’s about arousal.”

[Slightly off-mike.] “Oh, god.”

“Let’s take a simple kind of cuisine.”

“Yes?  What cuisine?”

“Well, English food, for example.”

“Yes, that sounds a safe enough option.”

“Safe.  Exactly, darling.  Safe.  Safe means boring…tedious…tired…worn-out…”

“Right.”

[Slightly off-mike.] “A bit like your clothes, darling.  And a go with the iron wouldn’t hurt, either.”

“What?”

“English food.  Let’s start with an ingredient in English dishes which is a bit boring.”

“Errr…”

“I know: a sausage.”

“Oh, god.  This is worse than I thought.”

“In English cooking, we use sausages to make…what?”

[Mumbling.]  “Toad-in-the-hole.”

“IN THE HOLE!  That’s it, darling.  Or hide-the-sausage, as I like to call it.”  [Sound of a man whimpering.] “Now, the sausage needs to be excited and aroused.  It needs some heat.  What can we use to give it heat?  A chilli.  Look at this habañero chilli, darling.”

“Yes.”

“Look at its pinkish-red folds.”  [Sound of more whimpering.]  “Now, I am going to use the pinkish-red flesh of the chilli to arouse the sausage.”  [Sound of heavy breathing.]  “Just let me part the folds of the chilli…Now, the meat of the sausage is covered.  We need to unzip it.”  [Breathing gets heavier.]  “Finally, let’s rub the moist flesh of the chilli on the naked and unzipped sausage.”

“AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGG!  Call an ambulance, QUICK!”  

 

* None of this is true.  Any resemblance in this piece between the character depicted and the real Nigella Lawson is simply a product of our dirty minds.

In spite of Kelvin’s dalliance with the unknown woman, I have been happy today.  I recently returned from the android equivalent of hospital where I had two enhancements, one of which was paid for by Kelvin and the other – the more expensive – by me.  The one Kelvin paid for is wonderfully useful: I now have an ultrasound imaging system, with emitters and detectors in my fingers, toes, head and abdomen, software to Fourier-transform the signals, and a data bridge to enable the non-algorithmic part of my brain (the part I’m using now) to “see” the images.  I have been round the house touching things and looking at them with my new sense.  The most interesting thing I discovered was a jar of couscous which we hardly ever use, inside which Kelvin had concealed a bottle which turned out on further inspection to contain vodka (some cheap stuff from the corner off-licence).

            Kelvin arrived home from work, and I hugged him just after he had come through the front door.  This made him suspect that either I wanted something or had broken something which belonged to him.  What I was actually doing (as well as making a genuine display of affection) was trying out my ultrasound on him.  The emitters do not make any vibration which is detectable by humans.  I got a very good three-dimensional image of the inside of Kelvin’s torso, and discovered that he had probably skipped both breakfast and lunch: his stomach was completely empty. 

            ‘Shall I make us some dinner?’ I offered.  He nodded.  He was not talking.  I went into the kitchen to get a bottle of wine (a nice red Bordeaux) and poured us each a glass.  I was planning to cook fillet steak (Kelvin likes his almost burnt on the outside but raw in the middle, and relishes the sight of blood running out of it).  I was also planning to get Kelvin through dinner without letting him get too drunk. 

            While I was waiting for the chips to cook, I went back into the sitting room to see what Kelvin was doing.  He was not reading.  He was not even drinking very quickly.  He was twirling his wine round and round in the glass, and staring towards the corner of the room.  I could see in an instant that there was no point in asking him what was on his mind.  My best guess at what he was thinking about was that it must be something to do with his paramour and, whatever it was, it was making him sad.  One possibility was simply that she had dumped him, but any woman who would have done that to Kelvin would have had to be such a bitch that he would never have had anything to do with her in the first place.  A better hypothesis was that he had found out that she was not able to join the “Alpha Project”.  I had no hard evidence for that, but it fitted with all the behaviour that I could observe. 

            Kelvin came out of himself a little bit over dinner, and at least had the decency to praise the food I had prepared.  After I had loaded the dishwasher, I took the wine bottle away from him and poured him a small, decoy brandy.  He seemed to be getting sleepy as well as miserable, but he looked at me with a bemused expression.  After he had taken a few sips and was beginning to look a bit more spread-out on our big sofa, I made my move.  I slipped onto the floor in front of him and started to massage his thighs, gently at first.  He tensed, but then he always does.  He always starts by thinking that he does not want it.  He relaxed after a minute, and soon after that he was getting into it and I made the strokes a bit harder, gradually moving from his outer to his inner thighs.  I unzipped him and, in indecent haste, pulled his trousers and his boxer-shorts down and off.  I took his socks off.  I started gently to massage his cock and balls and, at the same time, I slipped a finger into the cleft of his buttocks.  He began to moan with sexual arousal, never realising that I was using ultrasound to check out his prostate (it was fine – no enlargement or abnormality).  I noted with pleasure that his hydraulics were in good working order and seemed unimpaired by alcohol.  I wanked him slowly but firmly and gently kissed his balls for a little while, but never let him get anywhere near ejaculation.  He groaned some more, and I gave him the look that meant ‘Shall we go to the bedroom?’  He did not say anything, but I saw that he meant ‘Yes’.  I was thoroughly wet by then.

            I could offer Kelvin exactly the attire he finds the most alluring: skirt off to reveal stockings and suspenders; shiny high heels; blouse open, and bra left on but pulled down so that my tits were hanging out.  I lay down on the bed, he stuck his cock in me, and he fucked me slowly but deeply.  We both came quite quickly.  Kelvin looked visibly relieved, and not just sexually. 

            Kelvin got up to get more booze, but I did not mind.  He finished the opened bottle of wine, offering me some but I knew he wanted me to refuse, otherwise he would have had to open another bottle.  He then had a couple of stiff brandies.  He fell asleep in my arms, without getting up to brush his teeth, and without drinking a big glass of water – with him a sure sign of mental exhaustion.

            When his breathing was slow, regular, and loudened by the effects of the alcohol, I took my arm from around his body and moved down the bed to near his feet.  I decided to try out the other enhancement: the one Kelvin did not know about.  I have started to be fitted with a basic vascular system.  I took out a little pouch of dermal anaesthetic which I had taped to the inside of my arm earlier, and applied it generously to a patch of skin on the instep of each of Kelvin’s feet, where he has a couple of nice, prominent veins.  I gave it a few minutes to take effect.  I opened the index finger of both my left and right hands and extended from each a sterile hypodermic needle which I very slowly and carefully inserted into each of the veins.  I began to suck blood from his left foot, metabolised the alcohol, added a tiny bit of glucose and saline, and then pumped it back into his right foot.  When his blood alcohol level was down to about 20 milligrams per hundred millilitres, I withdrew the needles, gently wiped the skin, and put on some stuff to cover up the holes.  However Kelvin felt when he woke up the following morning, he would not have a hangover.  

            While he was asleep, he started to have a vivid dream, and moaned something a few times.  It sounded like “Lieutenant Thorn”.  

Cuthbert Dry-Monotone talks to a successful writer about his long and eventually fruitful endeavours to be published.  During the conversation, he hopes to prove that SPUE has never been afraid to make use of the experience of writers on the margins of mainstream literature. 

“Good afternoon.  Welcome to Part 5 of this…” [Sound of suppressed sob.] “…audio CD.  I am here with Marmaduke Smugg, the best-selling author of Money for Old Rope.  He is going to explain how he approached the extremely difficult task of getting his work published.  Hello, Marmaduke.”

“Hello, Cuthbert.”

“Can you tell us what kind of work it was that you first tried to publish?”

“It was a short story – about 1500 words.”

“I see.  And did you research what kind of publication you were going to submit it to?”

“Yes.  Extensively.”

“And can you explain what methods you used to do this research?”

“It was mainly looking at the top shelves in various newsagents’ shops, especially the one behind the railway station with the blacked-out windows.”

“Er…Isn’t that a sex-shop rather than a newsagent?”

“Whatever.”

“And how many, er… ‘publications’ did you submit your work to before it was finally accepted.”

“Approximately one.”

“One?”

“Yes.”

“Approximately.”

“Yes.”

“I see.  And what was the next thing that you wrote?”

“A screenplay.”

“A film script?  And what was the film called?”

“Red Hot Anal Nurses Rubber Double-Ender Extravaganza.”

“Er…I think we might edit that out.  Did you get paid for this?”

“Of course: nine thousand pounds.”

[Slightly off-mike] “Nearly enough for a fortnight in the Maldives.” 

“Erm…And what did that lead to?”

“Well, for a start, I had birds with great big bazookas falling all over me for months on end.  And then I was approached by an American concern who wanted to harness my talent.”

“Harness your talent?”

“Yes.  They wanted me to play the ‘sub’ in a bondage-flick called Irrigate My Leather Valley.”

“Er…I think we might edit that out.  What happened next?”

“I started to write Money for Old Rope.”

“I see.  And how did you arrive at the title of that novel?”

“Well, after I had discussed it with the publisher and signed the contract, it seemed rather like, um…, Money for Old Rope.”

“In what way?”

“The publisher told me that they would pay for me to shag a new bint every day for a year, and I had to write a book with exactly three-hundred and sixty-six pages (it was a leap year, you see).” 

“Er…And so…What was each page about?”

“Well…I shagged three-hundred and sixty-six women…”

“Yes?”

“And the book has three-hundred and sixty-six pages…”

“Yes?”

“And so…”

“Each page covers one shag?”

“You’ve got it.”

“With all due respect, that is scarcely literature.”

“Who cares?  I got five-hundred grand for it.”

[Slightly off-mike]  “Could you give me the address of this publisher?”

[Slightly off-mike]  “Not until I’ve seen the size of your todger.”

“CUT!”  [Muttering.]  “I shouldn’t be here.  I really must make a start on my PhD thesis.”

The publisher has just informed me* that I should shortly be receiving a preview of the first chapter of Callum MacIrnbru's latest novel, Plink Plink Fizz.  This is the even-harder-hitting sequel to his hard-hitting earlier work, The Cavities of Despair, and continues the exploits of the gritty, hard-drinking detective, Andrew "A.T." Shilling. 

I can hardly wait.

 

*This isn't true. 

Please feel free to post comments.  I am beginning to feel like the online equivalent of a stand-up comedian performing in front of a virtually silent audience.  A bit of hostility, as long as it was considered, would be better than nothing. 

I have finished Part 4.  It is 760 words.  Here is the opening:

Cuthbert Dry-Monotone, the eminent Reader from the Social Public University Enterprise (SPUE), tries to rescue his career from the barren spell which recently seems to have afflicted it.  His determined attempts to shed light into the dark corners of the human condition yield results which are not quite what he bargained for.

I am not posting the rest of it unless I get two more votes (comments).