Personal Blogs

Our name is Henry, though most people call us Harry.  We have been King of England for ten years.   Our style is Henry IX, by the Grace of God of the United blah blah blah and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. 

            This coup d’etat is a dreadful business.  It has caused a lot of violence and instability.  The unrest, plus the insane policy of autarky, have wrecked the economy.  Food is rationed.   Most of the hospitals have closed.  We have earnestly considered abdicating, but don’t think it would do any good.  The regime wants us to stay, for what that is worth.  They count us among their most eminent supporters.  We are not really an expert on constitutional law, but we used to be Head of State with the consent of Parliament, before the coup.  Now we don’t really understand what we are doing.  The old system was supposed to prevent this kind of debacle from happening, but everything seems to have failed.  It is as if the real United Kingdom has gone into a coma.  If you were to ask me to describe the state of the nation as succinctly as possible, I would certainly have to consider finished among the possible responses.

            They call themselves Britain for the British (BFTB).  The first time they came for a formal audience with us, we tried to point out to the man in the uniform and the ridiculous armband that our realm also includes Northern Ireland.  He agreed with us that Britain for the British and Northern Ireland for the Northern Irish does not trip off the tongue.  But he didn’t get the point.  We know we are of German descent, but we have much more of a sense of humour than that motley crew of meat-heads.  Despite their ridiculous appearance, savagely-appalling manners, total lack of formal education, and perfect ignorance of statesmanship and diplomacy, they do have a kind of ruthless efficiency.  They are also breathtakingly opportunistic.  They don’t play by the rules.  It still seems incredible that they may be on the brink of achieving what the Third Reich failed at so conspicuously.

            Apart from the strikes, the riots, and the ending of the rule of law, the thing that I regret most is what has happened to cricket.  Our memberships of both the Commonwealth and the International Cricket Board have been suspended.  Even if for no other, then for that reason alone, I refuse to  believe that this regime will last.  And England had been playing pretty well recently.  It’s a damned disgrace.  We are not amused?  We are bloody livid. 

*

Kelvin’s behaviour has calmed down somewhat since the pantomime run came to an end.  He hardly makes any bookings with Anna at the moment.  He has started attending lectures and meetings which are to do with what is supposed to happen when we reach our destination.  That is still about two years in the future, but he does have a lot of information to absorb and quite a number of decisions to make.  An informal committee has been convened which is in the process of analysing all the data we have about Achird-gamma, and deciding where and how we are going to live.   Kelvin gave Pamela a disc with some data on it, and asked her if she could make it into a globe, and so I made two, one for him and one for me.  It shows the ice-caps; the two continental land-masses; the one hundred biggest islands, many of which are scarcely more than little black dots, and the largest rivers.  For the want of anything else to call them, the two continents are called C-1 and C-2, the islands I-1 to I-100, and the rivers R-1 to R-12. 

            One of the various sub-committees that Kelvin sits on is called Claims.  Those who have a preference can say which land mass they want to try to live on.  This affects where they need to be when the ship dismantles itself before we land, which in turn affects where they will splash down in the planet’s ocean.  The first person to make up his mind and stake his claim was Kelvin himself.  He wants to go to I-11.  This is believed to be in the planet’s temperate zone.  It has not had a large number of applicants so far, because most people want to go somewhere which is predicted to be a bit warmer.   

            Wherever Kelvin goes, Horace and I will go.

            With fewer visits to Anna’s establishment, and Kelvin’s generally more sedate and fully-clothed life-style, the amount of information I have been receiving about him has reduced to a mere trickle.  I still have cams and microphones in his room, but mostly I direct them straight to the archive, because they are so boring.  He sits and studies the gazetteer of Achird-gamma.  He drinks tea.  He sits and studies other stuff.  He drinks beer.  He sits and mopes.  He occasionally goes absolutely mad and has a whisky.  Riveting.  He hardly ever talks to himself.  Even when he masturbates, it seems more like an infantile comfort mechanism than a desire for gratification.  I decided that I needed to snoop around in his cabin. 

            Getting in was trivial, because I have a copy of his key card, configured in such a way that, even though it lets me in, it writes nothing to the ship’s security audit.  I knew he was at one of his committee-meetings, and would not be back for at least two hours.  I activated the program I have inserted into the security system which enables the ship’s own cameras to recognise Kelvin’s face, in case he came back early.  I considered loosening the entrance to the service duct above the bed to give me a means of escape, just in case, but decided – don’t ask me why – that this was too cautious. 

            The first thing I noticed was the leather-covered dressing-box from Smythson of Bond Street, which I had bought him for his twenty-sixth birthday.  It had all his cuff-links in it, none of which I have seen him wearing on board the ship.  On top of it was his wallet, which he doesn’t use anymore because we don’t have paper money or credit cards yet.  I went through it, nonetheless.  It contained a one hundred pound note, with Henry IX on one side and Winston Churchill on the other; a 100 euro note, the markings on which I don’t recall, and a shopping list written by me – by Violet.  It was dated 3 October 2135 (we both agreed that every scrap of paper or electronic document we wrote would have the date on, and in most cases, the time as well).  I must admit that I had not been expecting to find this. 

            I took out a few items of equipment I had brought with me, and turned the cabin lights off.  I examined it under infra-red, bright visible light, ultraviolet and under visible again but with various coloured filters.  I scanned it as quickly as I could through quite a powerful lens.  It had various fingerprints on it, some Kelvin’s and others too badly smudged to recognise, but almost certainly all Kelvin’s.  It had something else on it as well: several, surprisingly-distinct lip-prints.  Some just had traces of saliva, skin-grease and food residue; some had slight traces of lip-stick.  He had been kissing a shopping-list.  He had been kissing a fragment of my hand-writing.  

            I put the paper back inside Kelvin’s wallet.  I put all his things back as I had found them.  I put my lamps, lenses and filters back in my pockets, turned the ceiling lights back on, lay down on the bed, and immediately started to cry.  I did not know what to do. 

            I put some of Kelvin’s music on, fairly quietly; got undressed, and took a shower in Kelvin’s bathroom.  I used the unscented soap, and sparingly.  I dried myself thoroughly and got into Kelvin’s bed, under the covers.  I wanted to smell him.  I lay on my front, with my face buried half in his pillow and half in his mattress, and started stroking my thighs and rubbing my clit.  I was still crying.  I wanted him desperately.  I wanted him to hug me and squeeze me until it hurt, and I wanted him to make love to me.  I thought about Horace for a moment, but I knew this would not do “him” any harm. 

            I was just starting the build-up to what promised to be a very powerful orgasm, when in my internal eye, I noticed a man wearing an old-fashioned gas mask and carrying a lot of box-files walking past one of the web-cams.  I listened for his footsteps.  He slowed down and stopped somewhere near the door, out of camera-shot.  I could hear him fumbling with the boxes.  I heaved myself to the edge of the bed and turned the lights off.  The door opened.  The man took his respirator off.  It was Kelvin.  The respirator had defeated the facial recognition software (I should have been looking for his gait as well – damnation).  

            He turned the light on.  He saw Pamela, naked, in his bed, looking tearful and scared.  There was steam drifting from the shower cubicle and jazz emanating softly from the speakers.  There were no scattered rose petals, and no champagne, but Kelvin did not seem to mind that.  He did not say anything as he tore his clothes off (Kelvin can speed-strip as if it were an Olympic sport).  He got into bed next to Pamela, kissed her full on the lips, held her tightly to him, explored her body with his fingers and tongue, and fucked her.

            At the beginning, all Pamela said was, ‘Oh, Kelvin.’  

            At the end, all Pamela said was, “I have to go now.”  She got just sufficiently dressed to avoid attracting attention, and went back to her cabin.  

            All Kelvin said throughout, as she was opening the door, was, ‘Wait.’  It was not much, but I think he meant it.  He sounded even more confused than I was.  

            Not once did he ask what Pamela was doing in his cabin.  Not once did he ask how she had got in.  Available snatch instantly justifies itself to Kelvin, no matter how seemingly incongruous the circumstances.  If it looks tearfully and adoringly at him while playing with its engorged and soaking-wet labia, then so much the better.  

            I have been crying for an hour now.  This is going to make things very awkward.  In spite of my delicate and distracted emotional state, I still can’t help wondering why he was wearing a respirator.  I am going to have to start bugging more of the committee rooms.  

*

Today I attended a rather tedious meeting of the Contingencies committee on the subject of what we might do if the atmosphere on Achird-gamma turns out not to support life.  My response to this was, ‘Die.  Now who’s for a drink?’  But the committee insisted on flogging it to death.  I had a bet with one of them about who could wear a respirator for longer without it driving him mad.  I’ll have to tell him that I had cause to take mine off prematurely.  But I won’t tell him why – there is no way he would believe me.  I am still not sure if I believe it myself.

            I did wonder how she got into my cabin, but then I thought, ‘Who cares?’  There must have been some kind of malfunction, because the security log only shows my locking the door and my re-opening the door, with nothing in between.  I checked all round the door-frame to see if something had got wedged in it by accident, but I found nothing.  

Kelvin has started trying to hand out tickets for the pantomime to my girls.  Layla just threw it back in his face.  Kyla, who is a child of the digital age, said she wouldn’t understand it, and so he would be better giving it to some-one else.  The rest just smiled, said, “Aaah,” and threw the ticket in the bin after he had wiped his cock and gone away. 

*

My name is Emile Bourdelle. Most of the rehearsals I have directed so far have a been a disaster – a disaster.  I decided to go along with this English custom because I thought it would be the best way to begin to instil high culture in this colony.  I want theatre to live and breathe among all the people, and not be merely something for the chattering classes, as it was in England.  Start them on something simple, something native to their savage and bestial customs, something they can understand, I thought.  The dramatic equivalent of baby food. 

            Well the infant has proved to have quite a fussy appetite, and had to be force-fed, so to speak, at various times.  With the application of strength and courage, I think we have made a great deal of progress recently.  The company has started to come together.  It is like the point when a sauce Béarnaise thickens and becomes unctuous.  Previously, even when they were acting and singing properly, they were each doing it separately.  Now, they have become a cohesive unit.  I pray that the production will be a success.  If it were not, I would never attempt another one.  If it were to fail, there would be no more theatre and so, if there were no more theatre, there could be no more Emile Bourdelle: I would blow my brains out.  My fate rests on this production.  I have told the company this repeatedly.  I think they understand it now.  Theatre is about many things, but the most important thing in it is love.  If there is no love in theatre, it is a meaningless charade: it is nothing.  I think the members of the company have grown to love me, in the end.  Perhaps we will find out on the opening night.

*

I think I have finally got the hang of this acting lark.  Just call me Prince Charming, or Your Royal Highness, if you prefer.  The art of it seems to be to camp it up as much as possible, just like our “influential and cutting-edge” director.  Behave like a twat, in other words.  Wearing a lot of make-up helps, as does being in the initial stages of sexual arousal and, I must admit, with me, the two states tend to coincide.  Having a leading role in a production is the best excuse in the history of cross-dressing.  I can now even answer the door to my cabin without having to take my face off.  If I am looking too girly, all I have to do is cover myself in cold cream, and everybody just thinks I am doing something to do with the pantomime.  I might go the whole hog and audition for a female part next year.  I wonder if having a reason other than sexual gratification for wearing women’s clothes would destroy its allure. 

            Jessica is being a pain, again.  She is very pretty, but I would never fall in love with her.  I don’t ever have a crush on her.  I can’t even have a proper conversation with her.  All she does is open her mouth, and bring forth a torrent of meaningless twaddle about all the people she knows, which seems to include half the people on board (though I notice that members of the crew are conspicuously under-represented).  Every time I say something, she just says, “Reelly?” I thought she was trying wind me up at first, but it seems to be genuine: she doesn’t know anything.  At all.

            I told her that I would have sex with her if she wanted, and it would be physically passionate, but there was no way that I would ever fall in love with her.  She did not thank me for my honesty.  In fact, she slapped me in the face – quite hard, as a matter of fact – and  started having hysterics.  When she cries, it is just an act, just like everything else she does, but I must say she does it quite convincingly.  On that occasion, she really gave it everything she had.  It was all very stressful and unpleasant.  Emile went mad with me as well (we were on the set, having a break at the time).  He demanded to know in the name of god what I had done to her.  ‘What do you mean, done to her?’ I asked him.  He made it sound as if I had been trying to feel her fanny, or something.  I was in theatrical camp mode, my guard was down, and I was hurt.  Darlings, I can’t tell you how simply ghastly and awful it was.  It quite ruined my intonation in the next scene. 

            Things with Prudence have been a bit strained as well.  She eventually landed the part of the Fairy Godmother.  She turned out to have a bit of amateur dramatic experience, which carried a lot of weight with Emile.  We got there in the end.  With the production, I mean. 

            The fun part was writing the programme notes.  I did them in the style of one of my nonsense news stories from The Rover.

*

The new name for my e-zine – the replacement for My Lips Are Sealed – is Cosmography.  It’s scientific.  I think it’s something to do with star-maps, but that doesn’t matter.  I like it because it is more difficult to take the piss out of than the last one.  I like it even more because people will shorten it to Cosmo, which is really cool.  And the last bit sounds like pornography, which is no bad thing. 

            The hit-rate has been rather disappointing recently.  I am determined to get some copy out of this pantomime.  I will get a juicy story out of it somehow.   Just you watch. 

*

My name’s Augustus Blandshott.  I think –  not certain, but think, am the oldest person on board this vessel.  Seventy-seven.  Egyptologist by training, and printer by trade.  When say “printer”,  mean in the old-fashioned, twentieth-century sense of the word.  Just like the way the word “computer” came to mean a machine but used to mean a person, so the word printer did as well.  Expert on the printing techniques of the early 1900s.  Presses are in one of the ship’s workshops, and am kept quite busy, most of the time.  When we establish the new colony, am hoping to produce own newspaper.  Don’t try to compete with the intranet at the moment, not with everybody having a monitor in their cabin, but think the new colony will need the printed word, and all the more so when it starts to grow. 

            Biggest job recently has been the programmes for the production of Cinderella they are putting on.  Theatre company is called The Roving Players, and they are directed by a chap called Emile Bourdelle.  Think he’s French.  Anyway, he is very temperamental.  Can be a bit difficult to deal with, sometimes, if you get me.  Smells of garlic, all the time – reeks of the stuff, specially when he shouts at you.  Most unpleasant. 

            Think I’ve got one of the programmes here, if you give me half a mo’.  Hang on.  Yes, here the blighter is.  First page is the only sensible part.  Because nobody except the director-wallah had any previous experience of acting or the theatre, all those bits about what productions people had been in before had to be made up.  Damn’ silly if you ask me.  No idea who wrote it.  Anyway, managed to sell a bit of advertising space in the back.  Made quite a packet.  Love the money on this ship.  So quaint and old-fashioned.  Like real money.  You could scratch dirt off a window with it.

*

The Roving Players

present

CINDERELLA

A Pantomime in Two Acts

 

Director and Producer………………………………………………….….Monsieur Emile Bourdelle

Cinderella……………………………………………………………………….Miss Jessica Springer

Prince Charming……………………………………………………………….…Doctor Kelvin Stark

The Fairy Godmother…………………………………………….…………Doctor Prudence Tadlow

Buttons…………………………………………………………………….…Master Waverley Diggle

The Wicked Stepmother…………………………………..Mister George “aka Georgina” Davenport

The Ugly Sisters……………………...Lance Corporal Jason Bentley, Master Laurence Featherstone

Coachmen, Footmen, Horses, Guests…………………………. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Chorus

 

            The Producer wishes to acknowledge the gracious assistance and support of Chief Engineer Mister James Holt, and members of his crew. 

            Costumes were provided by Pamela Collins Couture Limited.

 

            MONSIEUR EMILE BOURDELLE lists Creator of the Universe among his other accomplishments.  Be polite and courteous in your dealings with him because, when we arrive on our new planet, he will be controlling the weather.  Young ladies who might otherwise feel compelled to fall in love with this undoubtedly handsome man should bear in mind that, not only does he bat for the other side, but he keeps wicket, bowls for it and captains it as well – quite regularly and with great vigour, we are led to understand. 

            MISS JESSICA SPRINGER, though we hate to spoil the story for you, ends up as a princess in this production.  Princesses are usually a safe bet in a fairy tale, and it is rumoured that Miss Springer is one of the safest bets in town. 

            DOCTOR KELVIN STARK is fortunate to appear in our company, having recently recovered from joint attacks of rabies, malaria, and bubonic plague.  We had hoped to carry a long interview with this eminent academic, but he frothed at the mouth so copiously that we could not catch what he was saying.  He tried to communicate instead through the interesting medium of scrotal origami but, alas, again, we could not understand him.   It seemed to be just a load of bollocks.

            DOCTOR PRUDENCE TADLOW, when not pursuing her acting career, is a hydro-geologist.  When we asked her to explain what this entails, she said that she sniffs around a lot of holes to see if any of them are wet. 

            MASTER WAVERLEY DIGGLE is named after a railway station because that was where he was conceived.  He has earned many dramatic accolades, most especially for his inspiring interpretation of the part of Moth in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  His is believed to be the first performance in which the character is on stage, soliloquising continuously, for nine hours. 

            MISTER GEORGE DAVENPORT is a lifelong bachelor with a particular fondness for musical theatre.  If your laundry is feeling depressed, he can always be counted on to lift your shirt.  His skin is particularly sensitive, and so he picnics in the shade.  He has travelled extensively in Southern Europe, and is a friend of the Greeks. 

            LANCE CORPORAL JASON BENTLEY is a poof.

            MASTER LAURENCE FEATHERSTONE isn’t made with real feathers or real stone.  He is 100 per cent man-made.  Wash at 30 centigrade.  Do not tumble dry.  Re-shape while still damp. 

*

                                                              SINDERS-GATE

Kelvin Stark caught

with his pants down –

literally.

We thought it would be a normal, family occasion.  Granted, we are on a spaceship.  Granted, we are heading through the cold void of the galaxy at something approaching the speed of light.   Granted, some of our vital systems failed on the opening night of Cinderella.  Granted, this caused mass panic among the ship’s passengers. 

            But none of this prepared us for what we saw.  Disgusting.

*

I will tell you exactly what happened.  Jessica and I were on stage.  It was during one of the lovey-dovey scenes, and I was looking into her eyes.  It was nice.  As a matter of fact, it was really nice.  I had my arms around her, and she was looking up at me, and it seemed, in that theatrical moment, as if we meant it.  That might sound stupid, or unprofessional, but I am telling you how it was.  There was this gorgeous blonde woman, and there I was, and I was being paid to make love to her for the benefit of the audience.  And the audience seemed to love it.  They had clapped in all the right places.  They had laughed in all the right places.  It was like performing to a crowd of nine year-olds, which is exactly what Emile had had in mind. 

            And then it happened.  The lights went out.  The gravity went off.  I have no idea why.  

            I had my arms around Jessica at the time (purely through acting out my part, you understand). 

            We felt alone.  Let me explain why.

            During the performance (this was the first night) the audience had been quite noisy.  We attributed it to their not having been used to going to the theatre for some time (or at all).  I am not saying that they were disruptive, but they just did not seem to settle, even when there was plenty of action on stage. 

            As soon as the power-cut happened, everything went quiet.  It went quiet and weird at the same time.  The weirdness was because of the zero-gravity.  Most of the passengers had never experienced zero-gravity, other than for a brief period during their induction, of which they had no memory. 

            At first, there was silence.  Absolute silence.  The silence itself was the cause of the panic.  We were alone, in the depths of space.  We had no sun.  We had no planet.  We were entirely reliant on technology, and technology had clearly failed us, at least partially.

            I thought for a little while, and I realised that the situation was not very serious.   It might have been inconvenient, but it was not life-threatening. 

            Even though we had started to float around like balloons, we were otherwise unscathed.  If the longitudinal compensators had failed, we would not have known what was happening, because we would have been crushed to pulp within a fraction of a second. 

            Neither did we stop breathing.  Neither did we freeze.  All that happened was that the lights went out (all over the ship, as far as I could tell), and the “terrestrial emulation” gravity failed. 

            I started to float, and I had Jessica Springer in my arms.  She was panicking.  While she panicked, I buried my face in her abundant blonde hair. 

            ‘Oh, god.  What is happening?’

            ‘Some kind of system failure.’

            ‘Are we going to die?  Is this is?

            ‘No.’

            ‘No?’

            ‘No.’

            ‘How do you know?’

            ‘I just know.’

            ‘I’m so scared.’

            ‘I know you are.  I’m here.’

            ‘Hold me.’

            ‘I’m holding you.  I am here.  I am here.’

            ‘Is this really it?’

            ‘Is this what?’

            ‘The end?’

            ‘No, I don’t think so.’

            ‘You don’t think so.’

            ‘No, I don’t think so.’

            ‘That doesn’t sound very reassuring.’

            ‘All right.  Jessica, listen to me.  The lights will come back on.  The gravity will be restored.  Everything will be all right.’

            ‘Really?’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘I think we are going to die.’

            ‘Is that what you want?’

            ‘No!’

            ‘Well why talk about it then?  Can’t we just do whatever is best until the systems are restored?’

            ‘What’s that?’

            ‘Well, are you worried and distressed?’

            ‘YES!’

            ‘Well, I could cuddle you.  I’m not nervous.  I am sure everything will be all right.’

            ‘Mm.  Yes.  Cuddle me and say more things like that.’

            ‘I can’t guarantee anything.’

            ‘Do you mean that we might be going to die?’

            ‘No. I don’t mean that.  I just mean that I don’t know how this is going to end.’

            ‘End?’

            ‘Turn out.’

            ‘Oh, Kelvin.’

            ‘Jessica.’

            ‘Do you know that is the first time you have said my name?’

            ‘I am sure it isn’t.’

            ‘Yes, it is.  Since we are going to die…’

            ‘Which we aren’t…’

            ‘Will you get closer to me?’

            ‘Mm.’

            ‘Closer.  Closer.  Much closer.’

            ‘Mm.’

            ‘Closer.  Closer.  Yes.  Yes.  Inside. Do it. Do it now. ’

            I can honestly say that it was not easy at first to fuck a woman to whom I had previously not been particularly attracted in zero gravity and total darkness.  The task was also not made any easier by our costumes, particularly hers, which was voluminous, multi-layered and wired.  

            But fuck her I attempted to do, as best I could.  I wrestled with the costume.  Pamela Collins would have been appalled.  I ripped it open.  I got to her cunt.  I grabbed hold of her with both hands, and worked my cock into her.  We were in mid-air, but we were fucking.  We bumped into a beam. I caught hold of it.  I held her between my arms and held onto the beam with my hands.  This felt more like normal fucking.  We had both just come when, at that very moment,  the systems were restored.  

            We both ended up on the floor.  We didn’t fall, exactly, but we were dragged there as the gravity-generator kicked back in.  Anyway, the upshot was that I was still inside her, and the assembled multitude could see my arse, and everybody knew exactly what we had been doing.  It was (from a kinematic point of view) a graceful descent into notoriety.  

My brewing business is making me rich.  A barrel of beer contains 288 pints, which I sell for two pence a pint (a bit less than half an hour’s wages for an unskilled labourer).  Hence I sell the whole barrel for five pounds, seven shillings and sixpence.  When my business is at full capacity (as it has been for some time now) I brew a hundred barrels a week.  I have to rent space in the farm to grow the raw materials and pay the workers in my brewery (I am now employing four people almost full-time) but my profit margin is about fifty per cent.  I am making about 250 pounds per week.

            This means that I can pay for all the escorts I want. 

            On Monday of this week, I was busy at work for part of the day, and had a rehearsal for most of the rest of it, but I saw Layla again in the evening.  Every time I tell her I love her, she still looks at me as if I smell of rotting fish.  The nature of the repulsion does not appear to be physical, because she had no reservations about sucking my penis, without a condom.  We have kissing, and then sex, and then the wiping of genital areas and disposal of condom, and then we hold hands or cuddle.  Layla is peaceful and contented, until the point when I mention the possibility that we might do anything together outside that very room. 

            I had another rehearsal on Tuesday, but I managed to get a booking with Kyla.  Kyla is a much more cheerful person than Layla, and much nearer to my usual physical type, but she is not as intelligent.  She likes kissing even more than Layla.  I think my last words to her just before I left were, ‘Stop it; stop it; stop it.’  She was still virtually naked, and she kept embracing me and kissing me as I was trying to leave.  She is twenty years old, and said she was half-American.  She mentioned something about having to decide on her twenty-first birthday whether she wants US or UK citizenship.  I did not bother to point out to her that neither of those governments will have any jurisdiction in the new colony. 

            Emile had told us that our performance on Tuesday was “flat, tedious and hopelessly lacking in spirit” and so he gave us a day off on Wednesday.  I saw Layla again in the morning, and Jade in the afternoon.  I don’t know why, but Layla told me some information about the other girls.  She said Cindy is “blonde and leggy”; Jade is submissive, bisexual, and likes sex with couples; Olivia is very new, and Angel is very hot.  She did not say anything about Grace, other than she is the one who answers the phone when Anna has her day off.  Anna doesn’t “work” (but I got the impression that she used to). 

            Jade was petite, very attractive, and quietly-spoken but talkative.  She said her career-ambition was to be a teacher.  I enjoyed seeing her.  I told her she was the most beautiful woman in the world (which was a lie: Violet is the most beautiful woman in the entire world, followed jointly by Lieutenant Thorne and Prudence).  She looked at me quizzically for a moment and smiled with embarrassment.  I don’t know if that was on her own account or because she thought I was talking like an idiot, but it was endearing to watch.   I don’t know if it was me, or Jade herself, or something Layla had said about her, but I couldn’t come.  I was still inside her when the hour ran out, and Jade said I could not have any more time because she had another client.  Jade did not come, either.  She did not even attempt to simulate an orgasm, for which I was glad. 

            On Thursday, I had arranged to see Angel, but she was ill, and so Kyla stood in for her.  Kyla seemed rather sad when I spoke to her (though she was still physically as responsive as before).  I asked her what was wrong, and she became quite animated and more cheerful after that.  She works as an admin assistant for some over-bearing man who had been nasty to her.  She did not give his name, but she mentioned that he had a Scottish accent, which immediately suggested Kerr McLean.  I made a mental note always to try to remember to ask her how she is and what kind of day she is having upon seeing her.  Kyla always makes me come, even when I am feeling tired or distracted.  I think it is her enthusiasm as much as her beauty or her technique. 

            On Friday, I saw Cindy.  She was, as Layla had described, blonde and leggy.  She was wearing very striking-looking shocking pink fishnet stockings, suspenders, and knickers.  She had a small silver bar through one nipple.  She told me that she had had the piercing done recently, and asked me not to touch her on that tit, because it was still sore.  She was smoking a cigarette (somebody must have disabled the smoke detector in the room) and, there being no ash-tray, she was flicking the ash into a cup in the bottom of which was half an inch of cold, milky coffee, and the butts of her last two cigarettes, complete with dusky pink lipstick traces.  Her previous three colleagues all having been enthusiastic and skilled kissers, I attempted to kiss Cindy.  She did not withdraw; she did not recoil; she did not respond.  She simply glanced at me as if we had been at a funeral and my mobile phone had gone off.  All I got from her was an odour of tobacco.  

            Cindy appeared to have a script worked out.  After I had undressed, she indicated that she wanted me to lie on the bed, face up.  She sat astride me, and she weighed hardly anything.  She still had her shocking pink knickers on, which were wider than a thong but narrower than briefs.  She leant forward, and I pulled her knickers to one side.  She began touching my cock, and I sustained a reasonably firm erection.  She put a condom on me, and then began to fellate me.  She used her teeth, very expertly.  She took my glans in her mouth, closed her jaws slightly so that her teeth were located exactly under the ridge around the end of my penis, and then bobbed her head up and down, keeping her jaw in exactly the same position.  It was a sensation I had only ever had before with Violet.  Stimulating though this was, I knew I would only be able to take it for a short while.  At exactly the moment when I was thinking about saying something, she stopped, and just fellated me normally for a little while.  Still without taking her knickers off, she sat on my cock and started to fuck me.  She leaned forward to give me a better view.  Just as I was coming, she emitted a single, loud exclamation which sounded like a noise a karate expert might make when executing a punch.  It was impossible for me to tell exactly what this meant.  

            As I was removing the condom, I realised that she had not asked for the money.  The agreed price was, as usual, four sovereigns.  I gave her four-and-a-half sovereigns.  She looked at the gold coins in her palm, and eyed the unexpected half sovereign as if it were proof in metal that I was mentally defective.  

            ‘That’s a little bit extra, because it was so nice,’ I explained.  She shrugged, and accepted it.  

            I decided to take the weekend off.

*

In the pantomime that I am producing which is known as Starlight Escorts, Kelvin has now shagged Layla, Kyla, Jade and Cindy (Skinny, Cheerful, Bisexual, and Sleazy).  Should he please, he has Grace, Angel and Olivia  (Ordinary, Anal, and Talkative) yet to come.  

            Some idiot knocked on the door of my cabin during the session with Jade.  I temporarily had to relinquish control over her.  That, and the fact that Kelvin was possibly over-reaching himself, meant that the session was not orgasmic.  I will be interested to see which of them, apart from Layla and Kyla, who seem to be his favourites at the moment, he will continue to ask for.  

            Layla is going to have to stop her silly habit of running down the corridor to get away from him.  I noticed him looking after her last time, with a longing look and an expression of uncertainty in his eyes.  I thought for one awful moment that he was going to run after her.  That would have been very embarrassing.  

I have thought very deeply about this intolerable situation with Kelvin.  I briefly considered coming out of hiding, but that would be nothing more than surrender.  Kelvin would be delighted to see me for a while, after which it would be, at best, back to the way things were on Earth, with him wanting to switch me off at night so that he can have what he thinks is a secret wank, and a string of Lieutenant Thornes and Prudes and other slut-whore-bints.   

            I refuse to surrender.  What I am going to fight instead is a holding action: a long, slow, disciplined manoeuvre, carried out on my terms and not those of the enemy.  The strategic purpose of this is to keep the situation under control until the prevailing conditions improve.  This will not be at least until we reach our destination.  This strategy is consistent with my thoughts about Horace.  I will not let “him” start to grow until I am sure “he” has a chance of survival. 

            My great advantage is technology.  As long as my 3D-printers and my other machinery keep working and I have enough time, I can make almost anything I want.  I have started to make what androids refer to as simulacra.  A simulacrum is an android (which may or may not be able to pass for a human being) which has little or no ability to act independently, and is designed to act according to the will of another android.  So far, I have made a small, pale blonde, whom I have called Layla, and a dusky-skinned, curvy brunette, whom I have called Kyla.  I am in the process of configuring and testing them while I make Jade, Grace, Cindy, Angel and Olivia.  They should keep me supplied for a while.  Others will be made as required later on.   

            I am about to take on a new identity, which I will call Anna.  Anna is about to become the madam of the galaxy’s most remote and exclusive brothel.  Unless I decide that I need to make more money, its only client will be Kelvin.   My ladies will be alluring and accommodating but also quirky and, up to a point, dysfunctional.  They will need to have at least a veneer of human frailty otherwise Kelvin, even with his senses blinded by lust, will be liable to spot what is happening.  I have nearly finished the back-stories for both members of the first wave.  Layla was the eldest of six children and had to look after her siblings through three messy divorces.  She is therefore insecure and a control freak.  The money she gets for selling her body is proof that some-one needs her, and her re-bookings are proof that the client will not abandon her.  Kyla is of mixed nationality and had a father in the US Army whom she never saw.  Her mother never let her grow up, and all she wants is for some-one to ask how she is and treat her as an adult.  She sells her body because she knows she can earn more by doing it than at any other job, and money for her is the key to independence.

            I have finished designing Anna’s website.  It is called Starlight Escorts.  The site has a fake hit-counter at the bottom which goes up every twenty-four hours by a random number between 2 and 20.  It shows the names and profiles of Layla and Kyla, who will be able to take calls in a day or two.  Most of the rest of the site says “under construction” at the moment.   During office hours, visitors to the website can request a video-chat conversation with Anna, strictly for administrative and not sexual purposes.  This is a low-resolution computer-generated image about the size of a playing-card, combined with a speech synthesiser which processes my voice as I respond on my mobile phone to what Kelvin is saying.  My voice goes as encrypted packets over a fibre in the ship’s network which I have hacked into.  Experienced visitors can also request a booking over the internet.    

            The website contains a page of “rules”, and there is a box which visitors have to check in order to indicate they agree to them before they can request a booking.  One of the rules is that all instructions about when to arrive and what route to take to the door must be strictly adhered to.  This is to prevent the inconvenience of clients seeing each other arriving or departing.  (In other words, this is to make Kelvin think that there is more than one client.) 

            I have found a vacant cabin which is larger than average.  It is one of several which was intended for use if any-one were to contract a contagious disease.  It has not only its own bathroom (as most of the cabins do) but its own kitchen and dining area, direct access to the refuse chute, and air and water supplies which are, in case of need, capable of being isolated from the rest of the ship.  I have hacked into the asset management register and set the status of this cabin to “in use by the ship’s medical officer”.  The door of this cabin is on a passage which is quiet but not by any means dead.  I have thoroughly cleaned this place; taken it off the schedule of the ship’s cleaning and maintenance crews; screened it thoroughly for surveillance devices; installed my own surveillance devices; installed a double bed and a bedside cabinet, which I have filled with tissues, condoms, lubricant and certain other items; stocked the bathroom with toiletries, and filled the fridge with goodies (including alcohol, sweets and crisps).   

            Anna at Starlight Escorts is now ready to take Kelvin’s call.  The next big question is how to introduce him to it, preferably without any-one else finding out.  None of my simulacra correspond to real people.  The fact that Kelvin will never run into any of them unless I make it happen is not a problem: he only knows a tiny fraction of the people on the ship and he is well aware of the fact. 

*

I have now formulated the operational plan for what I am privately referring to as Operation Fishhook.  I have also finished commissioning Layla and Kyla and have nearly finished making Jade and Grace.  I will be needing Grace at some point, because she will be answering the phone when Anna has her days off.  Competition for my time between Starlight Escorts and the pantomime has left me with very little opportunity to author back-stories for all these ladies, but I will make sure I have them all worked out before they go into the field. 

            Layla will be my shock-trooper.  She is physically not Kelvin’s type, but that is deliberate.  She will be the one whose captivating qualities he was not expecting; the one with whom he will fall in love and yet she will seem constantly out of his reach.  She is the one about whom he will unburden his heart to the others.  She is the one about whom Anna will deliver to him thinly-veiled warning lectures that he is allowing a professional relationship to become too personal and that, if he cannot rein himself in, she will have to seriously consider dropping him as a client, much as she would hate to lose him, and so on, and so forth. 

            For those who would know what to look for, my storage area has started to take on the appearance of a vampire mausoleum, because of the boxes I use to store the simulacra when they are dormant. 

            Step One of Operation Fishhook  is some surveillance which will follow Kelvin’s movements very closely.  The purpose of this will be to locate the point in his bodily cycle at which he will be most susceptible to sexual suggestions.  

            Step Two will be a conversation between Pamela and Kelvin when they happen to bump into each other on the set of the pantomime.  This happens from time-to-time anyway and can be made to seem quite accidental.  With an elliptical reference to the business at the Hallowe’en party, Pamela will mention that Cerise Vallance has engaged her minions with the mini-dresses and high heels in activities which their mothers would not approve of .  If Step One has been executed correctly, this will arouse Kelvin’s curiosity, and he will start using the ship’s intranet’s search-engine.  I have hacked this in preparation, so that what it returns to Kelvin will be different from what it returns to any-one else.  The program which does this not only checks that it is the workstation in Kelvin’s cabin which initiated the search, but it also uses the webcam to check that Kelvin is sitting in front of it at the time.  Thus Kelvin will find Starlight Escorts’ website, and see how the emphasis in its wording is on discretion.  He will also see the captivating beauty of the ladies I have designed for him.

            I have just remembered: I must find the time to make lingerie for each of them.  They had better have some proper clothes as well, and boots and shoes.  I wonder if it would be discreet of me to get Pamela to start a jewellery business.  Kelvin has something of a history of buying over-priced jewellery for call girls.  

My name is Waverley Diggle.  I lied about my age to get onto this ship: I’m only fifteen.  I must be the youngest person on board. 

            Yesterday, all over the ship, there were Hallowe’en parties.  I went to one.  I am sure it was the coolest of the lot.  Kelvin Stark was there.  He had brought out a new beer.  It was amazing.  He calls it Satan’s Wee, and it’s green.  I don’t know what he puts in it to make it like that.  I think it is some kind of herb.  It tastes a bit like that pale green stuff you used to get in Indian restaurants, back on Earth.  The foam on the top is green as well.  It looked revolting at first, but loads of people were drinking it.  I love this ship, and the people on it.  They let me do almost anything I like, including drinking beer.  I had four pints and was quite pissed, but I didn’t throw up.

            I am sure we had the spookiest location.  We had the party in the Farm, in the temperate zone, near the trees.    It was fairly dark, and some-one had put up Hallowe’en-style decorations, like nooses and spiders’ webs and skulls hanging from the trees.   I didn’t have a costume (I just went in my work-clothes) but some of the ones that the other guests were wearing were really fancy.  Some of them had rubber masks on.  I have no idea where they got them.  You could not tell who a lot of people were underneath their masks, but I recognised one of the Frankensteins – it must have been Mr Holt, the engineer, because he was the tallest.  He won the competition for the best costume.  He had real bolts on each side of his neck.  They must have been from his workshop.  Kelvin Stark was dressed as a mad scientist.  He had a big white wig which made him look like that professor guy you always used to see in black-and-white pictures on adverts back on Earth.  He had a great big test tube with some bubbling liquid in the bottom and smoke coming out of it.  When you got your beer, the barman dropped some little pellets in it to make it bubble and smoke like the test tube. 

            Before the music started, Kelvin Stark did a kind of show with weird science stuff in it.  He got a great big cake, and everybody thought he was going to cut it up and give slices of it to a few  of us, but he put it on a big table and then poured some blue liquid over it from a flask which he held with huge, long tongs.  He stood next to a kind of glass wall, and then he put a lighted match on the end of a long pole, and touched it to the cake.  It went up in flames in a split-second.  It absolutely burnt like fuck: I’ve never seen anything like it.  The flames were so high that they singed some of the leaves on the trees.  It was a good job he had some fire-extinguishers nearby.  He did the same thing with a massive pile of what looked like cotton-wool.  It didn’t burn that time.  There was a strange kind of thudding noise, and a puff of smoke, and the cotton-wool exploded.  The air was filled with millions and millions of bits of fluff, which floated around and then fell on the people.  It made us all look as if we were a hundred years old.  Just about the only person who didn’t get covered was Kelvin Stark himself, because he had sheltered behind his glass wall. 

            We had some food, and another drink, and then the music started.  It was while the music was on that the fight broke out. 

            Kelvin Stark was dancing on his own to begin with, and then a big group of women came up to him.  They were dressed in shiny red and black dresses and they had really high shoes on.  Some of them were wearing black makeup, like goths.  They looked as if they had had quite a lot to drink.  They kept trying to talk to him, but he looked as if he just wanted to dance on his own.  He kept looking at a really normal-looking woman who was sitting down and wasn’t wearing fancy dress.  After a few minutes, another woman came over.  She was wearing a devil costume.  She had a long red tail and horns.  I would have expected the costume to come with a trident, but she was carrying a camera instead.  The women in the shiny dresses kept trying to talk to Kelvin Stark, and one of them started rubbing herself against him, which he didn’t seem to like.  I thought the woman was quite fanciable, but you could tell she was pissed, because she kept swaying from side-to-side.  The woman in the devil costume then started taking photographs.  As she took more and more photographs, the women in the shiny dresses got more and more rude.  One of them flashed her tits.  Another flashed her bum, and you could even see a bit of her fanny, but only from the back.  Her bum had a tattoo of a flower on it.  Then they started trying to kiss Kelvin Stark and pull his clothes off.  That was when it kicked off.  The normal-looking woman shot out of her seat and ran onto the dance-floor.  She was followed by another woman: a fat woman who was wearing a boiler-suit and a belt with tools on it.  I thought she was going to whack one of the shiny women with a hammer, but she just tried to pull them away from Kelvin Stark, and the normal woman did, too.  They both got hit in the face.  The normal woman had no expression on her face, but the other one looked really angry.  A full-blown cat-fight broke out.  The normal woman grabbed the camera, chucked it on the floor, and stamped on it.  It was smashed to smithereens, and the devil woman got really mad.  A load of other people arrived, and managed to split them up eventually. 

            I think the women in the fight are in trouble now.  I think they have got to go to court.  They’re going to get well done.  There’s a prison on this ship.  I spent the night in it once, after I’d got pissed and threw up in one of the corridors.  It's well uncomfortable.  

            I hope I’m not called as a witness: I’m not a grasser.  

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.    

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.