Which AI? Before launch, the ILSE consortium had held a bidding contest that led to two winners, Siri and Watson. Apple’s Siri had scored best in emotional contacts with astronauts, while IBM’s Watson had done best in prognosis and algorithms. It was decided to load both on the spacecraft’s computers. In hindsight, psychologists considered that a lucky choice—more contacts for the astronauts during the one-year flight, and less boredom.
No one had expected the artificial intelligences to argue about areas of expertise. Even if they argued about closing the bulkhead doors, the crew would not notice this. For such emergencies, the AIs were allowed a purely algorithmic cooperation, in which discussions were decided in fractions of milliseconds. Siri and Watson only shared their thoughts with humans when nothing depended on it.
“Good morning, Martin!”
He had selected a low, slightly nasal voice for the AI. This suits Watson, Sherlock Holmes’ friend, he had decided.
“Good morning, Dr. Watson.”
Watson had never asked why Martin preceded his name with a title. The AI probably had found the solution itself. Martin’s media DNA clearly showed he liked the old-fashioned mystery novels by Arthur Conan Doyle.
“Breakfast, and your colleague for today, Jiaying Li, are waiting in the mess room. Work is going to start in 30 minutes. I have awakened you late at your own request, but you have to hurry now.”
There was a certain urgency expressed in the AI’s voice, and Martin immediately recognized the subtext. It had taken him long enough to learn something like this.
The ceiling of his cabin now shone in a warm white. A blue haze was moving across it. He did not look at his watch. On the ship they followed a 24-hour rhythm, but outside space was dark, no matter what time it was. If he took a shower he would have to spend ten minutes less with Jiaying. It was not that he disliked her, but her presence made him insecure when he did not have a specific task. It was necessary to consume food, but this was not a specific task he could talk about with Jiaying. ‘The coffee doesn’t taste of anything today,’ or ‘The pancakes are only lukewarm,’ were among the sentences that had already been uttered about the food—each several times by everyone on board within the first two weeks after launch—and they were not yet near the orbit of Mars.
The structure of everyday life had been designed by psychologists back on Earth. Everything was geared to allow crew members to be alone as often as possible, without intentionally isolating themselves from the rest. Therefore, the astronauts were paired, and each pair was assigned to cover an eight-hour shift. Routine was a desired factor, as it provided stability.
It was also boring. Martin yawned. Then he sat up and dangled his legs over the edge of the bed. His room was tiny. Eight cubic meters of air space—an enormous luxury for a spaceship, although nearly half of it was unused most of the time. In any case, how long does someone stand around in his cabin? Martin pulled down on the zipper of his suit. The elastic material peeled off his shoulders. The suit was cut in such a way that it always exerted a slight pressure against the spine of the wearer. This was to prevent people from growing. In low gravity, the spine expanded and the space between the spinal disks increased. Without pressure, the blood flow in the spinal disks decreased and they became bony—and if that person later walked under normal earth gravity, pain would be the result.
In his cabin, Martin weighed about half of what he did on Earth. He would rather not think about the reason for this. During the first ten days of the journey he could not help imagining being rotated through space like on a swing carousel. By now, he no longer felt queasy, though he stood on the inner wall of a donut with a diameter of twelve meters as it rotated around its axis ten times per minute. He had to avoid thinking of it. Now he pushed the cabin door aside and walked to the combination shower/toilet room, officially called WHC, or ‘Waste Hygiene Compartment.’
The artificial gravity created by the rotation made many things easier. During the training aboard Tiangong-4 he had greatly missed real showers. There, personal hygiene had involved using wet wipes. He was glad some psychologists had insisted on offering this physical comfort. He had never been really convinced by the argument that a shower was impractical under microgravity. Water, some believed, would gather in bulges and cavities of the body. Martin was of the opinion, If humans can fly to Saturn, shouldn’t they also be able to build sanitary facilities that work in zero gravity?
Martin dried off and pulled on the suit again. He looked in the mirror. No, I do not have to shave. It was part of the ship rules—which were designed by psychologists, of course—that no one could get sloppy. Walking naked through the corridor, having breakfast unshaven—such is completely out of the question. Once more, Martin realized how many of the rules here were not due to outer space but were the work of psychologists. They thought the biggest problem during the two-year flight would not be technology, but the crew. Martin considered this a mixture of megalomania and budget strategy, and except for the mission commander, the whole crew agreed with him on that point.
July 10, 2046, ILSE
There actually is wind in space—each time the hamster leaves his wheel, Martin envisioned. He had wiped the WHC dry, and the towel was hung over the tumble dryer. It looked like the bathroom of a cheap hotel on Earth. Once, just out of curiosity, Martin had actually spent a night in a capsule hotel in Tokyo. The toilet there had looked rather similar, and at the press of a button, it had also analyzed the user’s urine and stool. Here, the analysis data went directly to the on-board computer. During the one-on-one at the end of the shift, Siri would probably lecture him on proper nutrition again. The meals were specifically adjusted to each astronaut’s body and to the conditions in space: less iron, as he produced fewer blood cells; more vitamin D, as sunlight was lacking. However, Martin ate what he liked and not what would have been the best for his body.
The impression of being inside a hamster wheel was unavoidable once Martin left the WHC. He stood inside a narrow corridor, the walls of which contained luminous panels. Now, at the beginning of the shift, these emitted a bluish-white light. Some interior designer had really put a lot of thought into this idea, as the panels displayed interesting patterns that did not appear to repeat themselves. At regular intervals there were replicas of well-known works of art on the walls. The floor was covered with a special material that diminished the sound of his steps. Cables and pipes hanging haphazardly from the ceiling marred the hamster wheel impression, though. Such last-minute changes were probably unavoidable in a project of this size, purportedly at 80 billion dollars.
The corridor curved upward before and behind him. Despite this, Martin did not ever feel like he was walking uphill. He knew he moved like a hamster on the interior wall of a ring with a diameter of twelve meters. Luckily, he did not have to rotate the ring by muscle power, as this task was handled by small chemical jet engines placed on the outside of the sectors, in space.
The hard sector ended behind the cabin of his Chinese colleague. It was called ‘hard’ because it was a rigid construction that would not change shape if the pressure suddenly decreased. The four hard sectors of the habitat module were placed like hammer heads at the ends of a cross. The ring was completed by the soft sectors, which had been inflated like balloons. From the inside, Martin could not see that their walls were made of a flexible material. He only noticed the corridor became narrower behind Jiaying‘s cabin. At this location, a mechanism could be seen that would seal off the hard sector in case of a loss in pressure.