Inner Shell Ch. 3: Null Impact

Inner Shell
by: frogger

Chapter 3: Null Impact

Try to drain an entire ocean through one faucet, and surely it will wear away before the task is through.
Yet, the ocean is made of my aspirations and I am the faucet.
Is it a kindness to insist that I live up to my dreams?

_____
	Daytime: a lovely time of day. It’s not actually light outside because you’re under two kilometers of ice, but the floodlights and interior mood lighting make the dining area of the common building feel kind of like it’s sunny out. It works well enough to set everyone’s circadian rhythms- except the robots, they can sleep whenever.
	The scent of Italian wedding soup fills the space. It’s a pleasing, almost nostalgic smell- pretty good, considering it was shipped in frozen in a bag, and reheated by one of the housework androids. Bjorn’s trim, boyish face is obscured behind a ladle of the soup as he lifts it up and checks the temperature with the thermal camera feature integrated into his eyes. He seems to be pleased with it, as he spoons a portion into a bowl and carries it over to a researcher. She smiles, thanks him, and he returns a cheery grin. He returns to the pot (which was still, undoubtedly, filled with Italian wedding soup) and recalls the conversation he had had with Astrid the night before.

	I was just beginning to brew a cup of tea as Astrid walked over, probably fresh off doing something important.
	“Evening, Bjorn.”
	Awfully difficult work, that, standing there waiting for tea to brew.
	“Evening.” She repeated.
	We didn’t leave teabags in the cups anymore, because the people tended to forget to take them out.
	“Evening.”
	Then, they had the gall to complain that the tea was too strong.
	“Evening.”
	Still though, sometimes I let Mr. Oaks keep his teabag, because his complaints were entertaining.
	“Eve-”
	“Hi Astrid.”
	“Have you ever wondered what it would be like to die?” She asked as if I hadn’t just ignored her several times.
	“I suppose we don’t die. Haven’t thought about it much, to be honest.”
	“What is death?”
	“Death is part of dying, probably. It’s the bit at the end.”
	“Why would the end be so late?”
	“Late? Chap’s right on time.”
	Her lips pursed and fumbled around a bit, which might have been annoyance.
	“Would you be upset if I died?” Astrid asked.
	I swish the teabag around once.
	“You can’t die.”
	“If I was a person, I could die. What if I was a person?”
	“You are a person.”
	“I just defined a person as something that can die. You stated that I can’t die. Which is it?”
	I have these faint memories of what to say to children when they ask weird questions, but Astrid was beyond what I was rated for dealing with.
	“Dunno.” I responded.
	“You said death is only a part of dying. I think we die slowly. We get closer to the end. But it never comes.”
	“You’re awfully hung up on weird things for a maid.” I pull Oaks’ bag out and pick up the cup. “Tea’s done brewing. I need to take this over.” I say.
	Astrid looks down at the trashcan that I just put the teabag in, then back up at me, and says straightly:
	“The tea is dead.”

	I head down the hallway and knock on a door.
	“C’min.” Says a muffled voice behind it.
	Inside is a room slightly larger than mine. It has a desk, a dresser, and a nightstand, as well as a few belongings, but not much else. There’s a poster for some ska band on the wall. I can help him take that off when he leaves in three weeks. Mr. Oaks himself is at the desk, writing something over a notebook.
	“Your tea, sir.” I hand it to him.
	“Thanks.”
	As I turn to leave, he calls to me.
	“Bjorn? One sec.” I turn back to face him. He’s eyeing over his notes again.
	“If I… were a power supply, how would you measure me?”
	Oh, here we go again. As if Astrid wasn’t bad enough.
	“I know what a power supply is, sir, but I don’t know how they work.”
	“Okay, no biggie. Let’s say instead that I’m not breathing right. How do you measure me?”
	“I’m trained in CPR, provided I can borrow someone’s mouth to do it with, seeing as I don’t have lungs.”
	He inhales while making hand gestures and then asks,
	“Right. How would you measure me?”
	“You, sir?”
	“Yeah.”
	I check my thermal camera.
	“36 degrees.” I hold his wrist up. “Pulse-” He inoffensively pulls it away.
	“Not quite what I meant.” He pauses for a moment and asides, “If I ever pass out in the shower and hit my head on the way down and there’s blood everywhere, feel free to be the one that drags me to the doc. I’d be comforted by that.”
	“Anything else, Mr. Oaks?” I ask.
	“Well, I suppose if you’re the one that mops up the blood, it’d be a bit less embar- oh. Yeah, no, we’re good here, man.”
	“Good night, sir.”
	I closed the door and went to the end of the hall. It was about time I got charged up.

	The android plugged himself in and was blank for a few hours. Eventually, images unearthed themselves in his mind.

	“It was like this. The place was smaller, couple less outbuildings. The tiny crane hadn’t been stored behind the left wing yet. I was in the common room, waiting on Mr. Moretti. Interesting man. His English was good, but a bit funny at times. One of the few men who bothered to wear cologne down here. Yes, I can smell. I think I can smell, anyway. I have a few sensors for it. I can also detect dangerously high concentrations of ozone, carbon monoxide, and a few others things.”
	“Mr. Moretti ate some more of his egg and tomato panini. In case you don’t know what real suffering is, imagine remembering every meal you’ve ever served, and no ability to forget. Anyway, between bites, he explained some things to me.”
	“‘Bjorn,’ he started. ‘Am I saying that right? I swear I say it different every time.’ I told him that he was close enough. ‘As you know, we’re sitting on some rich deposits here.’ He talked very casually, with frequent hand gestures. ‘I could be talking about investor money or gold, and be right either way.’ Yes sir, I tell him.”
	“‘The spec compliance on everything mined here is ridiculous. Never seen anything like it. Anyhow, this concerns you, so listen up. The supplier that we sourced you from has agreed to cut us a good deal on more robots if they get first dibs on what we mine. By us, I mean Global. They weren’t nice enough to extend the offer to CB in general, though.’ He took a bite, and spoke while waving half a panini. ‘That would mean dozens, maybe hundreds of discounts, though. Not worth it for them.’ Moretti drank some water, as his words were getting a bit egged.”
	“‘We’re scaling up the research down here. More people, more stuff to do. Gonna bring in another robot to help you out. How does that sound?’ Very good, Mr. Moretti, I told him.”

	Bjorn recalls one last thing that Mr. Moretti told him: he was leaving early to attend a friend’s marriage ceremony. He found this quite amusing, but wasn’t sure why. He went on to remember watching several people eating during his dreams. It was a sight that he was quite used to.

	Sunday is an interesting day. Most of the researchers have forgotten how to spend their leisure time, and so they mostly loaf around the common area or sit in their rooms, not doing much of anything. Astrid, having freshly laundered some clothes, delivers them to their various owners. In one room, the occupant is playing a videogame on their laptop- a rather typical way for them to spend their Sunday, or indeed, any spare moment.

	I stand and wonder about the activity. People play games presumably for entertainment, but the person did not look very entertained. Actually, they looked quite disassociated, as if they could just be sitting and gazing at a blank screen, though occasionally, they give me a nervous sideways glance as I continue to stare at them. I look into their screen and see what they’re playing. It seems to be some action game in a tropical setting. Their character is high in the air, floating down on a parachute, and shooting other people that are also floating down on parachutes. This virtual activity is perhaps the exact opposite of what they’re doing in reality. After I hang some shirts in their closet, they press the ESC key, bringing up a pause menu, and ask me (somewhat expectantly),
	“Wanna try?”
	“Sure.” I respond. They get up from the chair and let me sit in front of the laptop. I hand them a pair of someone else’s underwear and look at the screen. The cursor responds to the computer mouse under my hand; controlling it is not difficult, but it feels somewhat foreign. I click “resume” and their awkwardness drops substantially as they lean on my shoulder and give me directions.
	“Shoot all these guys.”
	“Yes, sir.”
	About a minute later, my character lands on the ground and I begin shooting every person in sight. They start to complain, but can’t form words, stuttering out sounds instead. The screen fades, with big text saying “MISSION FAILED.” Suddenly, the character is back in the sky, surrounded by parachutes. I’m given occasional instructions again as I play the game for ten more minutes. I don’t see much of a point, and so excuse myself and return to handing out laundry.

	A reflective android, coloured a calming, whitish-blue in the open pre-dawn sky, was on the surface. He held a receipt in his hand, checking it and occasionally glancing up, as a truck, loaded with neatly-packed garbage, disappeared over the horizon. He was among several pallets of boxes on the loading dock at the top of the lift. Using a pallet jack, Percy (for that was the robot’s name) loaded all that would fit onto the lift, which was about half the boxes. He shut and latched the gate of the lift, weaved through the boxes towards the start switch, and toggled it. Finding the sturdiest-looking box, he sat down on it, dangling his legs to and fro to pass the time.
	That’s just how it went, typically.
	Percy wondered about things that he would like to try. He wanted to try driving the truck. You had to keep the truck moving, and you even had to steer! It sounded quite exciting. He looked around the lift, spotting each bit of rail visible through the gaps in the boxes. Percy wondered what the lift was thinking- you see, he hadn’t yet realized that the lift can’t think. He figured that if he is shy, perhaps there are others that are more shy than him. It did not seem all too unreasonable to think that the lift simply did not want to task him with its opinions and merely chose to remain quiet. Percy wondered about the truck. Perhaps its attitude would be similar to the lift’s. He thought they shared something in common. He stopped thinking, and merely passed the time- Percy did not shut down, he was still monitoring the boxes- but he was passive. This was a quite normal for him, and he did not think too much of it.
	After about half an hour, the form of the lift could be seen descending towards the facility. The lights about the dock were gently flashing, warning all the people that weren’t there that the lift was arriving. Percy looked happily at the lights. He liked seeing them. When the facility had been doing more mining about 137 days ago, he had gotten to see the lights many times per day.
	The lift pulled in and came to a stop. Percy opened the gate, neatly arranged the pallets on the side of the loading dock, and rode back up. Sitting down on the lift, he looked at the wall. It was all very similar-looking, but he could still tell exactly where along the shaft he was with a single glance at the wall.
	Arriving near the top of the ride, winds sounded through the shaft, rising in pitch as they he approached the top, like air being blown into the lip of a filling bottle. Percy checked the receipt again, looking at all of the boxes. Although none of them were labeled, he could tell what was in all of them based on their size, and he could tell that all was accounted for by their numbers. He loaded the lift again. He shut and latched the gate of the lift, weaved through the boxes towards the start switch, and toggled it. Finding the sturdiest-looking box, he sat down on it, dangling his legs to and fro to pass the time.
	That’s just how it went, typically.

_____
an impassable space bides.
Its entrances manifold, as by want is collective formed
but by no want is all given;
	only parts in duplicity
and so, desire across ages manifests.
Itself lacking form, as by want is form inspired
ere want, all remaining-
	The impassable,
from Which humanity emerges.