Orbit Needs You

a scene from a new story

The knock came again.

Professor Zhena Döch paused in his lecture. His hands dropped from their gesture and his mouth closed in a frown. "I said come in."

The student closest to the door — today it was little Thiy — shook her head. "Professor, none of us can hear anything."

"Really?" Zhena took a step toward the door. "Are you — ? Ah." He smiled at his student,wagging his finger. "You wouldn't pull a joke like this on an old man, Miss Thiy."

"Oh, Professor, you're not so old." She dimpled at him. "But really, nobody's knocking here."

"It must be on your end," said Meyar, seated next to Thiy.

Zhena turned to her. He valued Meyar's eagerness to learn — she had the mind for it — but sometimes he wished she didn't always sit in the front row in those distracting tops with the square necklines.

The knock came for a third time and Zhena jerked up his head. "My end," he repeated. "But that's not — oh!" He had been about to say "that's not possible," but of course it was possible for there to be a visitor on his end of this virtual lesson. It just wasn't good. Not at all.

"I'm sorry, ladies, I mean, students, but I have to get this. I'll message you with the homework. My apologies. Show me real view."

The lecture hall was replaced by the cell of Zhena Döch. He stood alone in a cube three meters on a side, with a bioprinter, smart-matter furniture, and a communication link. In his first days here, he had confirmed that the apparent gravity was due to spin, and the strength of the Coriolis effect indicated that this habitat was small. Its diameter might be no more than the height of this cell. Zhena might be gigameters from Orbit, and completely alone.

The door slid open.

Behind it waited an orderly, white and black, padded, the size of recliner on four large wheels.

Zhena drew back, holding his arms up in front of him, mouth dry with fear and disgust. He knew it was useless to resist, but it had been so long since he'd had to. The last orderly that they'd sent was…when? And why knock? Why bother knocking? As if he had a visitor. As if he could open his own door. Forty years. That was how long it had been.

"What are you doing here?" Zhena heard the whine in his voice, hated it, and hated them for making him like this. Turning him into this. "I haven't done anything."

"Get out of the way!"

Zhena squinted. That was not the voice of an orderly. It was far too annoying to be artificial. A person? It was! They'd sent a person.

"My God!" Zhena dropped his arms and craned his neck to see around the orderly. "Welcome!"

The orderly wheeled into the cell and pivoted, exposing a man in the uniform of an officer the Rebel Order. He was short, his face not plump, but soft, as if it had been molded out of dough a few minutes before.

Zhena didn't care. "My God," he said again, stepping forward, arms outstretched. "You're the first human being I've seen in forty years!"

The Orderly rolled between him and Zhena. The officer squinted at him from around the corner of the machine, face scrunched.

"Tell him!"

"This is Captain Vwa Mes of the Rebel Order of Orbital Authority, here to deliver a message." A pause, where Captain Mes failed to do so. The orderly continued. "Professor Döch, Orbit needs you."

Zhena took a step back, confused. "Needs me? You have me."

Mes emerged from behind the robot, tugging down the hem of his beige tunic. "We need you to work for us."

"I'm already working for you," said Zhena. "My team recently completed the designs for the ship to colonize Europa."

"Yeah, it blew up."

"It failed? Why wasn't I – oh, but of course I am being told." Zhena ran his hand over his scalp, trying act like an engineer and not a kicked dog. "I appreciate – I can't tell you how much I appreciate — that they sent you here in person to tell me. What exactly happened?"

"They blew it up, I said."

"Who blew it up? My ship?"

Mes groaned and rolled his eyes. "Explain it to him."

"Your level of compliance so far has been excellent," said the orderly. "You should be proud, Professor Döch. We certainly are, which is why we are upgrading both your need-to-know and consent thresholds, as well as your standard of living."

Zhena had been about to ask again who had destroyed his ship. Now, he saw that they didn't want him to know that. Perhaps the Rebel victory hadn't been as complete as he'd been told. Or maybe they just wanted him to think that, the manipulative bastards.

The old instincts were waking up. Zhena passed his eyes over that hateful beige uniform. What question would they expect from him? "You're moving me? But, what about my students? I was in the middle of a class."

"Come on," said Mes. "You don't have any students."

Zhena stared, half-formed plans dissolving. "What?"

"Explain it to him."

"Professor Döch," said the orderly. "The students in your simulated classrooms were also simulated."

"How long?" asked Zhena.

Mes stared at him. "How long what?"

"Your participation in training environments began with your period incarceration," said the orderly.

"Who was the last real person I talked to?"

"We don't say 'real' any more."

The orderly waited until Mes had finished before it spoke: "Before Captain Mes, the last time you spoke to a human personality running on a neurological substrate was Her Honor Shew Mikhawa, the judge who sentenced you."

Zhena swayed on his feet. "Forty years. For forty years you've punished me."

"Stop talking like that," snapped Mes. "You've just been playing games all this time, and you didn't even figure it out until now."

Zhena tried to wrap his mind around the enormity of it. All of his post-war career. All those students, colleagues, students who had graduated to become colleagues. "Why expend so much energy on me?"

"From the beginning of your incarceration, the models trained by your lectures provided solutions to technical problems that offset their compute expenditures."

Had the enemy been so cruel? Yes. And they still were.

"How I wish you would just give me an honest punch in the gut," he said. "Or kill me."

"Maybe we will," said Mes.

Zhena took in the curl to his little lip. The little canine behind it. "You're a soft little turd," he realized. "You're less real than my simulated students. Why would the rebels send you? Or are you the best they have?"

Captain Mes had flinched back, hand to his chest, eyes squeezed shut as if he'd been physically attacked. It didn't look like an act.

"That's — this is barbaric!" His brows furrowed and his lip stuck out. "I'm a captain in the Rebel Order! He can't speak to me that way."

The order rolled forward. "Professor Döch, this is the best you deserve. You are a traitor, a Techie, and a resource-sink."

Zhena looked up at the impassive wall of plastic foam. "You told me Orbit needed me."

"Threaten him!"

"If you want any sort of life, you will respect your commanding officer and follow his orders."

Zhena bared his teeth and nodded. "Any sort of life," he said. A life. A lie. A prison.

He leaned sideways until he could meet the boy's eyes. "I'm sorry, sir," Zhena said. "I've been alone for a long time. A very long time."

Mes sniffed and looked away. "Now make him agree to help us."

"I was not threatening you, Professor Döch," said the orderly, "but your life could well be at risk if if you do not give your whole-hearted cooperation to the war effort."

"Or worse," said Mes.

Zhena did not ask 'what war?' or 'against whom?' because the rebels would never tell him they had a worthy enemy. Them and their beige suits and their information hygiene. They'd kept him imprisoned for forty years. Him! Zhena Döch! He had written the book on orbital warfare, and those spoiled children had torn it to shreds. They'd drowned Zhena's ships in cheap robots, killed his friends, locked him away, tricked him into playing their stupid games. They'd tricked him.

The rebels had told Zhena he was forgiven, that he was a professor, teaching his valuable incites to the next generation. They'd told him he was still important and useful, and he, Zhena Döch, had believed them.

He was so tired. And for all he knew this was yet another trick. They might be testing him, or testing a new demoralization technique. This orderly and this contemptible little parody of a soldier might be virtual, or simply lying. Zhena, himself, might be an emulation in a server bank, or a brain in jar. Or in hell.

But he had been a teacher for a long time, and an engineer for longer. There was a problem here, and Zhena found the old eagerness rising in him. His hands reached out, itching to grab and fix.

"How exactly," he asked, "did my ship fail?"

The above was a sketch of a scene for a new story idea, currently called “Eccentrics.” It combines some scifi ideas I’ve been thinking about for years, but what pushed it over the edge into reality is the writings of Neil Howe, John Carter, and Curtis Yarvin. See if you can guess how.