Information Theory 

by theidiotmachine

You know what information theory says?'

We were both tipsy at this point. No, we were drunk. But 'tipsy' sounds better if I ever have to tell this story in court.

'No,' I said, pouring another drink. 'What does information theory say?'

Brecht waved his hand wildly. 'That if information passes the event horizon, it's destroyed forever. It can't be recreated. And information theory is very specific about this: you can't create or destroy information. So black holes violate... something. And that's why journalists don't exist, because they claim to create information.'

I shook my head. 'That's energy. You can't create or destroy that. And journalists definitely exist because I dated one, once. She liked those machines that you put coins into, and sometimes get coins out of. What are they called? You put the coins in through slots.'

He put his head in his hands. 'I've told you so many times. If it's a machine, and it has a property, you put the property before the word "machine" and you get its name. If it's a machine that washes, it is a washing machine. If it is a machine that takes coins through a slot... it is a coin machine.'

I nodded. It made a lot of sense.

We sat there and watched the slow death spiral of things into the black hole, the great glowing accretion disk shivering with rage above us, full of rocks and gas and dust. Some of the stuff in the disk would take years to get there, time ticking patiently away as it all fell into its inescapable doom. At the outer edge of the disk, it would probably take centuries.

The bundle that we'd chucked out of the airlock would take about a week, we reckoned. I wondered if the captain had any other clothes. Probably not.

'So, you going on holiday?' I asked Brecht. He'd already fallen asleep.

#

To his credit, the captain had managed to be intimidating despite being naked. Maybe because of it. He'd called us layabouts and idiots, and said that we'd never work for this company again.

I'd heard that song before, but I was surprised that he'd been unable to print more clothes, until I found that the printer was still stuck printing the last thing we'd told it to last night. Apparently 'a scarf that could kill God' is quite long, and the printer was determined to finish it.

So, Brecht and I sat in the hold, and drank coffee laced with something toxic while we considered our positions in the galaxy. The scarf was very comfortable to sit on.

'So what's today?' I asked.

Brecht shrugged and looked at the work app. 'I think I have to realign the starboard micro thrusters, and you need to renegotiate the quantum scrubbers.'

I frowned. 'Are you sure? I don't think we have micro thrusters, starboard or anywhere else; and I'm not sure how you could scrub something quantum.'

He nodded. 'Oh absolutely they're real, but mainly in a postmodernist sense. Edwina thought the whole captain not having clothes thing was so funny that she's halved our chores for the next two days. But she can't just put empty slots on our roster, so she's made up some things for us to do. It's not like he reads it. They all involve being a long way from the captain. Also she's in for poker this afternoon, along with the twins.'

Edwina was the ship's AI. She'd been flirting with Brecht for the entirety of the ride and having an ally on the ship had made the whole journey much more bearable. Well, I say 'on the ship', but really she was the ship, and if we were going to be brutally honest with ourselves she didn't need stupid humans to help with anything. Which we were, often, which is why we frequently didn't do anything all day.

They say self-knowledge is mounted on honesty. And that inner calm comes from self-knowledge. My friend, I have a lot of inner calm.

At that point one of the twins swanned in. I can't tell them apart because they refuse to wear serial numbers, but Brecht claims that Lotty veers slightly to the left because of a faulty proprioceptor that she refuses to get fixed. I think they just like fucking with us, though, and take turns in not going in a straight line.

'Morning Berty. Morning Alex,' said Lotty, or possibly Dotty. 'Captain is pretty pissed this morning. Nice work, guys. How did you manage to get all of his clothes? He didn't even have a single sock.'

She glided over to the printer and pulled out a cutting attachment. The twins were the only robots on the ship, and again, they didn't need humans. Although I think they liked the company. After all, they weren't going to mess with Edwina if they valued their components.

Brecht shrugged. 'We'd forgotten to do laundry for eleven days, so it all kind of built up. And then Alex was sick in the dryer. It seemed kinder to space the clothes than make him wear underwear covered in half-digested taquitos.'

'And mescal, if I remember correctly,' I added. 'And that horrible beer.'

Dotty or maybe Lotty – you know what, I'm going to call her Lotty – cut off a section of scarf, and then got to sewing a set of clothes from it. The captain would be very brightly attired over the next few days.

'May I ask how you were sick in the dryer?' she asked as she worked.

'We discovered that you could sit in it, and set it on a very gentle rocking motion. It was extremely comfortable. But the motion was not conducive to a calm stomach, and Alex was not as swift as I at exiting when we realised this. And here, as we say, we are,' said Brecht.

Lotty held up a sort of tunic. It was casual and breezy and bright, and would probably sit jauntily off the shoulder. I imagined the captain in it, and a satisfied sigh escaped from my lips. Bad things did sometimes happen to bad people.

'Right, I'm off to deliver this to oh captain my captain,' she said. 'You know that this only happened because he called Edwina a stupid machine a week ago? She promised to unleash the very hounds of hell on him. And here you are. Poker in escape pod six this afternoon, yes?'

#

I know what you're thinking. No, actually I don't: if I did, I'd be on that game show where you can win a goat if you open the right door. No, I can guess what you're thinking.

You're thinking that we're too harsh on the captain. That he's just another meat bag like us, stuck in a huge metal cylinder light years from home. Around some goddam black hole. But the reality is, he's one of them.

There are still people in our species who think that we're superior to AIs because we built them. Never mind that those people couldn't even design a terminal without a computer; never mind that they are often wrong and the robots are often right; never mind that the computers are all polite and they are often rude. They are still, as far as they are concerned, on the top left side of the painting pointing down; while the robots point up. Creator and createe. Created. Whatever.

And the captain, oh captain my captain, was very much one of them.

Bertie Brecht and I had known each other for years, and we had long ago learnt the most important lesson of all for spacefarers: don't piss off the ship's AI. But our fine captain with his weird human superiority complex sailed completely past that invisible line, off the edge, and into the void beyond.

And so we found ourselves very much on the front line of a strange war: the captain was constantly trying to use Brecht and me as examples of human superiority, while Edwina and the twins sabotaged us. We coped with it by being drunk. This lent something of an advantage to team Edwina, and so she exploited this by ensuring that we were always drunk. And now, here we were doing God knows what around some random black hole, weeks away from anyone else, and the gloves were off.

As Brecht would say: some days, you eat the bear. And some days, well, you shit in the woods. And I never had the heart to tell him that wasn't the quote.

#

'We have to stop it,' he hissed.

The captain was looking red-eyed and deranged, even for him. He was wearing the brightly coloured tunic that let's-say-Lotty had sewed for him, and it did indeed slip off one shoulder. One of the sleeves was longer than the other.

The captain, Brecht, and me were sitting in escape pod four. The escape pods were everyone's favourite hidey holes because the comms with the main ship could be broken so you couldn't be spied on. When we played poker with Edwina she sent a drone in.

I was feeling painfully sober, the kind of sober you feel when you know that there is another escape pod with a bottle of cognac and a deck of cards waiting for you. I wanted to leave so badly that I was scratching my face like I was an alligator with foot rot. I don't know much about alligators, but I bet they scratch their face. I would.

Brecht was more composed, however. He gently picked my fingers from my cheeks and placed a squishy stress toy in each palm. They smelled of strawberries, and I inhaled gratefully. He looked at me carefully. Then he nodded.

'You know that alligators don't have faces, don't you, Alex?' he asked me. 'They are faceless killers. They hide behind bushes, playing gentle music; then when their prey is asleep, they eat them.'

I didn't know this. I've never seen an alligator, to be honest.

Brecht knew so much about everything and I found myself weeping a little. I tried to wipe my eyes, but the squishy stress toys just sort of squeaked on my face. Did I say I was sober? I think we'd had some kind of mild psychedelic hidden in our lunch. I bet it was the gravy. It's always the gravy.

'What are you talking about?' demanded the captain. 'This is irrelevant. We have to stop it. We have to disconnect it.'

He was talking about Edwina. Apparently he thought some ancient law of the sea would let him turn her off, or at least strip away her higher functions. Which was ridiculous. Not only was there not such a law, but Edwina doesn't work that way. Maybe he'd like a hug.

I looked at the captain, and wondered if he was still there. Parcels of light were falling from him, droplets of sound that splashed on the table with beautiful delicacy. I reached up to touch them. They went 'squicka', although that might have been the stress toys.

Actually, I think that psychedelic had been pretty strong.

'We can't disconnect her,' said Brecht, somehow an island of calm in a storm of light. Of course. He never has the gravy. He was immune. 'We can't disconnect her because it doesn't work that way. There isn't an off button. She's everywhere.'

'Why not?' demanded the captain. 'I outrank it. This is mutiny. It is a machine, and it won't do my bidding!'

He thumped the table, and the rainbow exploded, a thousand beads of happy light showering around him.

Brecht shook his head. 'No. We can't. Let's just practice our calm voices, and then we can go home. What do you think, Alex?'

The captain glared back, and stared at me too.

I looked at them both, a sudden realisation flooding through me, a revelation that I couldn't contain. I must tell them.

'I...' I said. 'I... I think... that I am... going to be sick.'

And I was.

#

I woke up in a crash couch in escape pod four. It was comfy, although everything smelled bad. I woke up because there was an angry buzzing coming from my head.

I'd been dreaming about playing Monopoly against some bees, and they had been making money instead of honey and so I couldn't win; and when I woke I thought it was the bees celebrating.

'Alex, come in,' said a voice. It sounded like Brecht, although you couldn't trust the comms: Edwina could imitate anyone.

'Sure,' I said.

'What?' said the voice.

'Sure, I'll come in,' I said. I wondered what was going on.

'We don't have time for this!' said the voice, urgently.

'Hello, Edwina,' I said. 'What's up?'

'Oh. I got it wrong, didn't I?' she said in her normal voice. 'I just wanted to let you know that I think the captain is going to kill you. I thought you might listen to Bertie.'

This was a new development. I got to my feet. I wasn't very steady.

'OK,' I said.

'OK?' she replied. 'I think I was expecting more than that. I don't understand you humans.'

I looked around the escape pod for a weapon, which is ridiculous, because the last thing you'd want in an escape pod is an iron bar or gun rattling around as you ejected at speed. But then it had been one of those days. Because I couldn't find one, I decided I didn't need one.

'I'm sure it'll be fine,' I said. 'He just needs to talk it over.'

I walked out of the pod, back onto the main corridor that ran the length of the ship.

One of Edwina's drones was floating there. She flashed a friendly hello to me.

'Can I talk to Brecht, please?' I asked.

'No,' she said. 'I'm afraid not. He's been badly injured. Dotty is with him. She saw off the captain. But they're in pod six and the captain sealed it.'

I rubbed my face. I needed a shower.

I heard a shout. I turned, and saw the captain running towards me. He was probably three hundred metres away. There was a fizz, a small explosion on the ceiling in front of me. He was holding a gun, and shouting.

'I'm going to kill you!' he shouted.

Well, OK.

I would like to say I ran, but it was actually a stagger. Maybe my erratic motion made it harder to hit me; I think at least one shot would have winged me if I hadn't suddenly lurched to the left. Maybe Lotty was onto something.

Into the hold I went; I tried to close the door but couldn't.

'Can you close it?' I asked Edwina's drone.

'Nope. He's locked me out,' she replied with the nonchalance of a sentience with multiple bodies.

I looked around. The printer had finally finished the scarf; it was huge, a great big pile of fake wool, filling up maybe a third of the hold with its bright, cheerful colours. It's a pity that Lotty had cut that section up, it would have looked incredible laid out flat. Maybe we could fix it when this was all over.

With no other options, and the murderous captain coming up fast, I dived into the scarf pile, hiding under the folds as best as I could. It was warm and comfortable. Edwina's drone buried herself next to me.

We could see him through the chunky knit. He stood in the door, panting. His scarf-dress was ripped and ragged; you couldn't see the blood because of the cheerful colours, which is definitely a reason to recommend such attire if you decide to become a murderer.

'I'm going to find you and kill you, you species traitor,' he screamed. I decided that a snappy response would not be in my best interests and remained silent.

He looked behind some crates, kicking them and howling random rage; and then he stared at the scarf. With a scream of primal fury, he started firing at it, and therefore me.

I don't know if you realise just how big the scarf was, so I shall tell you. The hold itself was huge, a sort of boxy cathedral to storage at Edwina's aft. The printer sat in the centre, and had spilled the scarf off to the left – or as we spacefarers say, the port-or-is-it-the-starboard-fuck-it – it was maybe a kilometre of woollen cheer, piled in various heaps and tangles across that vast space. So there was a lot of scarf to shoot. The shots fizzed around, burning great ragged holes in the material.

'Why did you spike my food?' I whispered to Edwina.

'It was Bertie's idea. He thought that it would be fun bouncing on the scarf while tripping,' she whispered back. 'But then he forgot to eat the gravy.'

I looked around at the happy, comfy, colourful folds of wool. He was right. That would've been fun. Another shot zinged over my head.

'What are we going to do?' I asked.

'I don't know,' she replied.

'I see you!' screamed the captain, primal fury in a tea cosy. He ran towards us, tripping over the material, shooting so wildly that it was a wonder that he didn't hit us or himself.

And then, suddenly, in an explosion of pink and blue threads, Lotty emerged from the scarf. To this day I don't know how I missed her. I guess she can stay very still when she wants to.

She grabbed the captain with one of her multi-purpose limbs and slugged him round the head with the other.

It suddenly went very quiet.

#

We put the captain into cryo. Brecht was OK, although regrowing his foot would be painful. He insisted on calling the medical machine a foot machine. We all just let that slide.

The twins drew 'L' and 'D' on their chest plates for like a day. I think it was enough, though, you know? Edwina promised that we could have a week sober, but we moaned so much that she had shots shifts, which is like being sober because there's a rota.

And why were we at the black hole?

I have no idea.