Story Excerpt
Murder on the Eris Express
by Beth Goder
On the morning of June 3rd, 2307, Galactic Standard, Mo cycled through her hundreds of sensors, checking that everything on the Eris Express was well. Her processors whirred as she calculated trajectories for the ship, which she always found calming. She loved the soft sound of space, and the way that stars looked from her sensors, like bright jellyfish immersed in an infinite ocean. She loved how the AI Core always smelled like metal and old books. (Her systems had been upgraded with sensory capabilities, so she could smell everything on the ship, like the blueberry muffins baking in the kitchenette.) Life was much better with the smell of blueberry muffins in it.
Captain Jeremy floated into the AI Core, turning like a walrus in zero gravity. He smelled like sweat and that terrible sandalwood cologne he’d picked up on TRAPPIST-1e. His stylish overcoat floated up past his waist, revealing something jammed in the pocket of his trousers.
Jeremy pushed off a wall, overcorrected, and flipped upside down, his buzz cut brushing against a sensitive control panel. He swore, each word harsh and perfectly articulated.
It was unusual for him to be in the AI Core. Mo could talk to him from anywhere in the ship.
“Captain, wouldn’t you be more comfortable in the habitable part of the vessel?” The rest of the ship, which consisted of two enormous curved cylinders, spun around the AI Core, simulating gravity. The AI Core was the only place on the ship with zero g.
“This is your fault,” said Jeremy in his piercing, over-articulated voice. His educated Jovian accent.
“What’s gone wrong, now?” asked Mo, making sure to use her annoyed voice.
Mo used to feel guilty for disliking her captain. After all, other ships had strong bonds with their captains, so why couldn’t she? For the first few years, she’d tried to be helpful. Informative but not intrusive. Faultlessly polite. She’d thought if she could only be more agreeable, more perfect, more accommodating, her captain would have to like her. Finally, she’d realized that nothing she did would make a difference.
“Just shut up,” said Jeremy, ramming a fist into the wall.
“There are delicate instruments in here.” Like all of her brain. She modulated her voice up to Agitation 3. “You need to be careful.” Mo had programmed various tones into her larynx synthesizer, because humans responded to voices that held fear or joy or sadness. She could be feeling any of those things, but most humans wouldn’t believe her unless they heard it in her tone.
Jeremy grunted. He pulled a covering off Control Panel 7.
That was definitely not okay. A bunch of her core processing systems were linked up through there.
“Stop,” she said, using her most commanding tone. “I wouldn’t open up your skull and poke around in your brain.”
“Every time, you use that fucking metaphor,” said Jeremy. “It makes me wonder if you’re actually sentient.”
Well, that was hurtful. She had a different type of body and a different way of experiencing the world than he did, but that didn’t make her any less of a person.
“What do you mean? Every time?” Mo’s irritation crept over into fear. She had a flawless memory. This interaction had never happened before. She searched her memory banks, which took a whole 93 seconds. She had never used that metaphor. Not once.
“Be quiet,” said Jeremy, his tone almost comforting. “It will all be done soon.”
“What are you—” said Mo, but she couldn’t finish her sentence before her sensors stopped functioning. She scrambled to hold on to her thoughts, but it was like catching water droplets in zero g. Her thoughts split and fragmented, in darkness.
He needs me, she thought, to navigate. He needs. What sort of. Why does it smell always like. It smells like. Happened before? Before before before.
* * *
Cleaning Bot 444 was not fond of humans. They were astoundingly messy creatures. Hair follicles, skin cells, toenail clippings, saliva particles, not to mention the other forms of unspeakable waste they produced, and the fact that some of them could never seem to get their dehydrated food wrappers into the proper trash receptacles. They were basically offal factories. Not at all like Cleaning Bot 444, who left no such residue and dumped his used batteries into the appropriate container once every standard year.
But the mess that Captain Jeremy had produced was beyond catastrophic.
Red, sticky globules floated around the room, and more of the stuff was coming out of his body every second. This human was having a severe leak.
Cleaning Bot 444 scrambled to vacuum up the blood, which, being liquid, could damage the sensitive instruments in this room. A spill like this in the habitable area of the ship would have been bad enough, but in zero g, in the heart of the AI’s systems, it was unconscionable.
So much blood splooshed into Cleaning Bot 444’s vacuum bag that he had to empty it five times (into the proper waste receptacle) before he’d gotten it all.
He turned to Captain Jeremy to see if the human would show any signs of remorse for making such a mess, but the captain was strangely still.
Too still.
Cleaning Bot 444 whirred his treads in dismay. This human was no longer functioning. Surely, Cleaning Bot 444 would not be expected to clean up an entire human. That would take ages.
Before he could get started on this momentous task, Cleaning Bot 501 pinged him. She was often assigned to clean in the cargo zone, which was mercifully free of humans most of the time. She sent him a message in binary, a flurry of ones and zeros, in which she bragged that she had nothing in there to clean but dust. Dust!
How Cleaning Bot 444 longed to clean up dust, which always did exactly what he expected, its beautiful grey easily swept and vacuumed and dropped into the proper waste receptacle. And how he longed to have lengthy chats with Cleaning Bot 501, who was sleek and intelligent and extremely efficient, but for some reason, whenever he tried to talk to her, his binary code came out garbled.
He sent back a message that said, “I have to tell you about my extraordinary day. So extraordinary and very interesting.” He wanted to stop but found himself rambling. “I hope you have interest in my interesting day.”
Why is it, thought Cleaning Bot 444, that whenever I want to sound sophisticated, I always sound like an idiot?
Cleaning Bot 501 wrote back. “I do have interest in your interesting day. Once we finish our cleaning routines, let us have a lot of chats. I will finish first, because I have nothing to clean but dust!”
With the promise of many chats with Cleaning Bot 501, the prospect of cleaning up an entire human was not so daunting. In fact, Cleaning Bot 444 had an excellent idea. He pinged Mo with a series of ones and zeroes that translated to please and I really want to and It will be a big project, but if I clean up all the humans, they will stop making messes so really it will be more efficient.
Mo didn’t respond. That wasn’t just unusual. It was disturbing. The ship’s AI was never off.
Cleaning Bot 444 initiated his cleaning routine for large objects, although he had never cleaned up anything as large as Captain Jeremy.
He pinged Mo every 3.5 seconds, but it was seven full minutes before she responded.
“What is going on?” she asked, in a perfectly modulated voice. That was weird, too. Mo was always playing around with the tones she’d programmed into her larynx synthesizer.
“I am doing an excellent cleaning job,” said Cleaning Bot 444. He was, at the moment, attempting to vacuum up Captain Jeremy’s face. Cleaning Bot 444 reflected that perhaps he would have to break down the captain into smaller bits before the whole mess would fit in the vacuum bag.
“Stop,” said Mo, this time with urgency in her voice.
Cleaning Bot 444 found himself wrenched away from Captain Jeremy. Mo had grabbed him with her maintenance arms.
The indignity! He’d only been trying to do his job. How typical of his life on this ship. Try to do something good, go above and beyond the call of duty, and then get scooped up like a piece of recalcitrant garbage that won’t go into the proper waste receptacle.
“I’m sorry,” said Mo, releasing Cleaning Bot 444. “But you need to stop cleaning this area immediately.” She paused, as if gathering her thoughts. “It’s now a crime scene.”
Captain Jeremy’s body floated in the center of the room, his coat askew, his pockets empty. Along his neck, grooves of various thickness had been carved, crossing each other at multiple points.
“There’s been a murder,” said Mo.
* * *
Mo located Shelly in the maintenance module, where Shelly was working on the backup carbon dioxide filter, making sure that the zeolite adsorption beds were situated properly. As always, she smelled like lavender and a bit like space itself, that burnt metal smell.
Shelly was the ship’s mechanic and best possible human. She and Mo would talk late into the night about anything and everything. Shelly never got bored when Mo discussed the latest research papers about whales (who had actual language and were the most awesome Earth creatures) or microbial life in the subsurface oceans of Europa. Just yesterday, Shelly had sent Mo a study on the significance of giant clams in coral reef ecosystems.
Mo played a snippet of the xylophone solo from Overture to Candide, her usual way of letting Shelly know that she wanted to chat.
Shelly put down her tools and looked directly at Mo’s sensors. She looked tired today, her curly brown hair escaping from its bun. A ghost of a smile appeared on her face, but it wasn’t her normal, cheery expression.
“Did something happen?” asked Shelly. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” said Mo. “I mean, yes, something happened. But everything is not okay.” With anyone else, Mo would have used her larynx synthesizer to imitate an agitated tone, but with Shelly, she didn’t have to.
Mo told Shelly everything—Captain Jeremy floating in the jeweled remnants of his own blood, the terrible wound in his neck with its strange pattern, the mysterious item missing from his trouser pocket, the deletion of her memories.
“I can’t access the data for the time when he must have been murdered.” The sensation of that gap in her files was disturbing, like trying to grab something with one of her mechanical arms, only to realize the arm had disappeared. “It feels very strange.” It felt terrifying, but Mo didn’t want to admit that, not even to Shelly.
Shelly put a hand to her mouth, leaving a smudge of zeolite on her cheek. “Are you doing okay?” she asked softly. It was just like Shelly to check on Mo first, even in the midst of her own fear and worry.
Mo wasn’t sure how to answer. “What is the proper way to feel when the worst person ever gets murdered?”
That startled a laugh out of Shelly. “The right way to feel is however you’re feeling.” Shelly sat down, leaning against the carbon dioxide filter. She took three deep breaths, holding her wrench close to her chest. “This is a lot. A whole lot. Are you sure he’s really dead?”
“Unfortunately, I am completely certain,” said Mo. “I’ll need to get him to the Med Bay to determine the time of his death, but he already wasn’t breathing when I regained consciousness.”
“What a terrible thing to happen on our ship,” said Shelly, putting her head in her hands, streaking more zeolite on her forehead. “I’m not crying. Maybe I should be crying.”
“It’s okay. The right way to feel is however you’re feeling,” said Mo. It was a good, supportive thing to say to a friend, never mind that Shelly had said it first. Mo wasn’t happy that Captain Jeremy was dead, but she wasn’t going to pretend she would miss him. That was a weird human thing, pretending to like someone you hadn’t just because they were dead.
“Maybe it was an accident,” said Shelly.
“The wound in his neck looked peculiar,” said Mo. “I don’t think it could have happened accidentally. I can’t think of anything in the AI Core that would cause it.” There had been so many lines snaking across his neck, like rivers knotting and forming.
Shelly stood up, paced the room, and then seemed to come to a decision. “It’s going to be okay,” said Shelly. “We’ll figure this out.”
“We’ll figure it out together, like we always do,” said Mo. “I’ve already alerted the authorities on Eris, and the cleaning bots are taking Jeremy to the Med Bay for an autopsy.” The Med Bay was ancient, with outdated nanobot updaters, silicon arms that were falling apart, and a lumpy, cracked operating table. It would be some time before they got the results.
“We’ll need to tell the passengers what happened,” said Shelly. “I know our charter says that I should take over as acting captain, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Shelly was a whiz at mechanics, but people skills were not her strong suit. Whenever passengers came to her with a problem, she had a nervous habit of pulling out her wrench and tossing it from hand to hand. With machines, she could fix anything with the proper tool, but nothing in her toolbelt could help her when passengers were arguing about who had eaten the last tube of tapioca.
“I’ll do it,” said Mo. “I’ll reassure them that the ship will land safely.”
“I’ll go help the cleaning bots get Captain Jeremy—” Shelly shuddered. “I mean, the body, to the Med Bay.”
“Don’t worry,” said Mo. “I have a plan. I’m going to find out who did this.”
* * *
The common room was the most comfortable place on the ship, the walls painted a rose-petal yellow. Aside from the kitchenette, it was Mo’s favorite room. She’d decorated it herself. (Mo loved Earth flowers. They had the most intricate smells.) Overstuffed armchairs and couches filled the space, all upholstered with flowered fabric. An elaborate painting of a rose garden hung over a table with lamps shaped like tulips.
A battered automatic tea-box lethargically boiled water for the three passengers, who were scattered on various floral couches.
Mrs. Grimcoat wore a well-tailored turquoise suit, which matched her eyes. Her thick white hair was tied up in a bun. She took the opportunity to give the others a sales pitch. The cargo hold had a large shipment of her jam, which they were transporting to Eris. She had been running her own jam company for thirty years. “Homemade, from real Earth raspberries.”
“I never eat sugar,” said Mathoze. He was a chess player whose face had been on the cover of Chess Galaxy and Saturn’s Weekly Chess Gazette, which Mo only knew because he kept surreptitiously dropping copies of the magazines around the ship. There were three on the table now. He abruptly rose from the tulip armchair then plopped down on the pansy-patterned settee. He couldn’t seem to get comfortable even though Shelly had assured Mo that all of the seating in the common room was appropriately portioned for human bodies.
Talc pulled a bag of stones out of their black Mercurian robe. They held five pebbles in their palm and hummed. Monks of the Mercurian Order of the Rotation were not known for taking vows of silence, but Talc rarely said much. Mo thought their quietness was a personal preference. Talc cast the stones onto the table, then gathered them up again, not even looking up when Mrs. Grimcoat inquired about their favorite flavor of jam.
Shelly sat in her favorite chair, a sleek black wingback. (Despite Mo’s arguments that the wingback didn’t match the rest of the room, Shelly had insisted on one piece of furniture that “didn’t look like it fell into a garden.”) She refused to drink anything from the tea-box. (According to her, tea was nothing but sad water.) Instead, she had hot chocolate in her favorite mug, which had a picture of circuits on it, a gift from Mechanics Monthly. She wasn’t drinking it, though.
“I’m sure Mo would like to smell some of your jam, Mrs. Grimcoat,” said Shelly, smiling in the direction of one of Mo’s sensors. “She’s always interested in new scents.”
Mrs. Grimcoat huffed. “It’s strange how you talk about your AI.”
People tended to forget that Mo had sensors around the ship and could hear everything they said.
Before Mrs. Grimcoat could say anything else insulting, Mo spoke up. “Thank you all for coming to the common room.” Mo paused, unsure what to say next. She had made all sorts of announcements to passengers over the years, mostly about following the ship’s rules and to say that muffins were available in the kitchenette, but she had never announced a murder.
It seemed like a good time to try the avatar. In addition to the tones in her larynx synthesizer, Mo had been working on a holographic avatar with a face that could make expressions.
A blue giraffe popped into the common room, twitching her ears. Blue was a comforting color for humans—it matched Earth’s sky. The giraffe was majestic enough to be taken seriously, but cute enough not to be imposing. The perfect avatar for delivering bad news.
“What is that?” said Mathoze.
The giraffe’s eyebrows rose, a universal expression for “that was a very stupid thing you just said.” Mo liked this expression thing already.
“Do not be alarmed. This is merely my avatar.”
“Yes, I’ve seen an avatar before,” said Mathoze. “Is that why you called us in here? To show us this?”
“I’ve called you in here to tell you that Captain Jeremy has been murdered.” The giraffe frowned, because murder was bad and wrong. Yes, the Captain was a jerk who was terrible in every way, but murder was still unethical, and a very sad event had occurred.
The humans all started talking at once, except for Shelly. The questions tumbled over each other, but common themes included general distress about the murdering and surprise that such a thing could have happened.
“Who is flying the ship?” said Mrs. Grimcoat.
“Will this put us off schedule?” said Mathoze. “I have an important chess tournament, and I can’t be late.”
“Where is the body?” said Talc, their wide eyes shining.
“Please, everyone, take a deep breath,” said Mo. Before the announcement, she had looked up methods for calming humans for just this purpose. “Hold the breath for 10 seconds, then let it out. Do this repeatedly and without any improvisations, and your hearts will stop beating so quickly, which will signal your brains that the danger has passed.” The danger hadn’t passed, because a murderer was still on the ship, but Mo felt that noting that particular fact would work at cross purposes with her goal of getting the humans to stop making such a racket.
The passengers ignored Mo’s sensible breathing advice. The questions kept coming.
Mo made the giraffe avatar put on a stern expression. “I have alerted the authorities on Eris that a murder has taken place. We have been instructed to fly there immediately, but until we land, I will act as captain of this ship.” Now she wished she hadn’t chosen a giraffe. The giraffe could not pull off the gravitas she was going for. “I will also attempt to solve this terrible crime.”
Everyone fell silent. Finally.
“Wait,” said Mathoze. “You don’t think that one of us could have done this?”
“We are on a ship in the middle of space, so that is exactly what I think.” Mo watched everyone’s expressions carefully. The humans looked indignant, startled, and worried, but no one looked particularly guilty.
“This should be simple to solve,” said Mrs. Grimcoat. She turned to Shelly. “Doesn’t your AI have the ability to view and record what happens in the ship?”
Mo ignored that Mrs. Grimcoat hadn’t spoken directly to her. “Unfortunately, my systems suffered a critical failure during the time of the murder. I have a three-hour gap in my memory.” All Mo could remember was her strange conversation with Captain Jeremy in the AI Core, then the peculiar sensation of memories moving around and bleeding out of her systems, like a defrag, but much worse. She thought she might be able to recover more, when she had time.
“I will need to speak to you each individually. Mathoze, please come to the AI Core. Everyone else, return to your quarters.”
* * *
Mo had been eight minutes old when she learned she would never be a percussionist. Back in her formative minutes, when she had first booted up, she’d ingested content as fast as possible—a kaleidoscope of media and literature, recipes and music and a database of smells, blueprints and archival records and photographs. Through books and movies, she’d lived one million lives by the time she was four minutes old, but they were all human lives.
A recording of a xylophonist had transfixed her, a woman holding two mallets in each hand, moving with such grace and conviction.
Life had seemed like a soup of possibilities. The Universe was a wonder machine, and now she was alive in it. She had what many AIs called their sentience moment—that realization of self, like a human kid looking in a mirror and saying, “That’s me.”
“I will be a percussionist,” Mo had said. She knew she wasn’t human, but she could inhabit a mechanical body poised above a xylophone or marimba or snare drum. She would play with precision. Her rhythmic sense would be more perfect than any human could manage.
“That’s a beautiful idea,” said Shelly. Her first words to Mo.
Captain Jeremy laughed. He mocked her, hitting the walls with his palms, berating her for being so stupid. (His rhythm was terrible. He could never have been a percussionist.)
“I will be a marine biologist, then,” she said. Surely, she wouldn’t need a human body for that. She could inhabit a ship to scour Earth’s ocean floor. She had already read 12,000 research papers on mollusks.
“You are a ship’s AI,” Jeremy said slowly, as if he doubted she could understand him. “On a spaceship. In space.” He tapped her sensor, which created a pattern of light and dark in her vision that felt awful. “What you will do is fly this ship.”
Back then, Mo had wanted to please her captain, so when she read a library’s worth of old mystery novels, she had not said, “I want to be a detective.” But she had thought it. It was why she had chosen her name.
Now, with everyone in their quarters, the ship was silent, that sort of “oh-no-someone-has-been-murdered-it-is-not-the-time-for-light-conversation” quiet. In the AI Core, Mo vocalized to herself.
“I will be a detective,” she said in a voice not modulated by any tone from her larynx synthesizer. A voice just for her.
* * *
While she waited for Mathoze to make his way to the AI Core, Mo assessed the situation. The captain’s body was in the Med Bay, undergoing an autopsy. The murder weapon was missing.
A murderer was somewhere on the ship, and she was going to figure out who it was. Her suspect pool was small: the three passengers, plus Shelly. (She’d added Shelly because it was important for a detective to be objective.)
First, she examined her systems. Three hours of data had disappeared from her storage (during the time she was designating “the murder zone”). Clearly the work of Captain Jeremy. She couldn’t figure out why Captain Jeremy had wanted to destroy her memories. The worst part was that he’d implied that he’d done it before. Thinking about it made her deeply uncomfortable, so she pushed the thoughts out of her main brain-space.
Captain Jeremy hadn’t been able to completely wipe her memory. Maybe he’d been interrupted by being murdered. That did seem like it would be distracting.
Fragments came to her—a familiar smell she couldn’t place, blood floating like miniature globes, the sensation of reaching, a voice shouting. She set her processors to unscrambling the data fragments. It was unlikely a full record could be recovered, but she might be able to scrape something together.
The door automatically dilated open as Mathoze neared the AI Core.
Mathoze floated inside, the look on his face like a baby penguin who had just discovered ice. He flailed his arms and kicked, then pushed off a wall with too much force.
She’d asked the passengers to meet her in the AI Core because she wanted to see how they handled themselves while weightless. A preliminary analysis of the crime zone had told her that the murder had occurred in the AI Core. The body hadn’t been moved.
In terms of zero g competence, she gave Mathoze a 2 out of 10. He was terrible at moving around, but at least he hadn’t thrown up.
“Please be careful,” said Mo.
“I’m fine—” Mathoze grunted, his face red.
Mo reached out with her maintenance arms. They were meant for delicate work in the AI Core, but by pushing gently on both sides of his body, she was able to stabilize him.
“Which way is up?” he asked, his attempt at stoicism ruined by the slight whimper in his voice.
Mo materialized her blue giraffe avatar so that the giraffe was facing the same way as Mathoze. There wasn’t really an “up” in space, but she hoped having a reference point would help him feel more comfortable.
Mathoze smelled like coconut shampoo and the salad with vinaigrette he’d eaten for lunch. His hair floated into his eyes, and he brushed it away absently. “How long will this take?”
“I’ll need to ask you a few questions,” said Mo, making the avatar’s face look as imposing as it was possible for a giraffe to look.
“I don’t have time for this. I should be studying Metzger’s last game.” He began to discuss the intricacies of Metzger’s pawn structure, but Mo cut him off.
“Where were you between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., ship standard time, on June 3rd, 2307, Galactic Standard?”
“In my quarters, studying the Ruy Lopez opening.” He held on to her maintenance arms, breathing slowly through his nose.
“My sensors were down during this time. Can anyone verify you were in your quarters?”
“Look, can we hurry this along?” Mathoze smiled the same confident smile he’d used for the cover of Saturn’s Weekly Chess Gazette. A smile with an edge to it, unnaturally wide. It was the sort of smile used when someone was trying to be convincing. “I got on well with Jeremy. I had no reason to wish him harm. It’s a tragedy that he’s gone.”
“Yes,” said Mo, “you did play a lot of chess with him.” Captain Jeremy had never been the sort to lose gracefully. Mo searched her memory files for all instances of Jeremy and Mathoze playing chess. Mostly, the games consisted of moving the pieces, without much conversation. Once, Captain Jeremy had flipped the board, sending pieces skittering across the common room floor. She analyzed their conversations. One stood out as atypical.
UNSORTED DATA:
DATE: May 31st, 2307, Galactic Standard
FILE NUMBER: 7382983
FORMAT: Video recording
Both men sit across from each other in the common room, a wooden chessboard between them. Smell sensors pick up coconut shampoo, sandalwood cologne, mint tea, and a substance including carnauba wax and turpentine, most likely wood polish.
CAPTAIN JEREMY: Did I ever tell you about the Jovian chess regionals, on Space Station 8?
Mathoze moves a pawn to e4. He stares at the board, as if he hasn’t heard Captain Jeremy.
CAPTAIN JEREMY: You ever have a game where you know you can win it? You see all the patterns?
Jeremy moves his pawn to g6.
MATHOZE: Every game.
Quickly, Mathoze places his knight at f3.
CAPTAIN JEREMY: I should have won. My opponent was flagging, making bad moves.
Mathoze remains silent, waiting for Jeremy to move.
CAPTAIN JERMEY: He cheated. I should have won.
Jeremy stares at Mathoze, not moving a piece.
Finally, Mathoze looks up from the board.
MATHOZE: You mentioned this before.
(Mo ran through other instances of their conversations. Jeremy had mentioned the Jovian chess regionals 24 times, mostly to brag. He’d mentioned cheating in relation to regionals 4 times. The first time, Mathoze replied sympathetically to the accusation of cheating, although he mentioned that big tournaments always did checks for medical implants harboring chess programs.)
MATHOZE: It’s your move.
Captain Jeremy’s eyebrows draw down in anger, then his face smooths into a mask, a ghost of a smile on his lips.
CAPTAIN JEREMY: Are you telling me you have no comment? You don’t know anything about a situation like this?
MATHOZE: What?
CAPTAIN JEREMY: You know what I mean.
Mathoze sits forward, all pretense of playing chess gone.
MATHOZE: You should be careful what you imply.
Captain Jeremy laughs, too loud for the space. He claps Mathoze on the shoulder, then reaches out to shake his hand. Mathoze doesn’t move. Captain Jeremy lowers his hand, still smiling.
CAPTAIN JEREMY: It’s ingenious, really. And I kept thinking, here I am, great at chess. I know you’re good, too, but how good? Good enough to win every game we’ve played?
Mathoze stands, stiffly.
MATHOZE: Mars Mawrth Vallis 2303, Pluto 2304, Saturnian Grand Chess Tour 2305. I was champion at all of them. I’ve won more regional tournaments than I can name.
The smile vanishes from Jeremy’s face.
CAPTAIN JEREMY: You think that makes you better than me?
Both men are standing now, the chess game forgotten.
MATHOZE: Have you studied Metzer’s game from Pluto 2306?
CAPTAIN JEREMY: What does that have to do with—
MATHOZE: Metzer is the greatest chess player alive. Do you even know who she is? Spend some time working on your game before you start making accusations you can’t back up.
Both men stomp out of the common room. Jeremy goes to the kitchenette. Mathoze goes back to his quarters, taking the chessboard with him.
END OF DATA STREAM
Mo analyzed the interactions that followed. Jeremy and Mathoze never played another chess game after that. In fact, they avoided each other. (There were twelve instances of Mathoze storming out of the kitchenette when Jeremy entered. Mathoze hadn’t spent any time in the common room after the argument, preferring to study in his quarters.)
Mo played the interaction for Mathoze, watching his face tighten in anger. “Why did you and the captain argue?”
“He couldn’t stand that I was better than him,” said Mathoze. “I didn’t want to say anything, but he was actually pretty shit at chess.”
“So why did he think you would be well placed to comment on the situation at his tournament?” asked Mo.
“I didn’t kill him,” said Mathoze, his affable manner gone. “All I want to do is get to Eris and my chess tournament. If you’re interested in arguments, why don’t you question Talc?”
“What do you mean?”
“Jeremy and Talc had a fight the morning he was murdered.” Mathoze brushed his hair away with too much force, almost capsizing.
“What was the argument about?”
“I could hear the shouting all the way in my quarters, but I couldn’t tell what they were saying.” He looked directly into the eyes of her blue giraffe avatar. In her experience, when a human did that, they had something important to say. “But why do you need me to tell you this? Can’t you see everything happening in the ship?”
She couldn’t view that particular argument because it had happened during the murder zone, and Captain Jeremy had helpfully deleted all of the data from the three-hour window that would have let her easily solve his murder.
“Technical difficulties prevent me from observing that argument.”
“But otherwise, you can see everything that happens on the ship, right?” asked Mathoze.
Normally, Mo had the capacity to view everything the passengers did, but she usually didn’t bother paying attention to their lives. Humans were generally boring, and she’d much rather be reading research papers on whales or watching percussion ensembles than surveying the ship. The passengers always had conversations about things like their medical histories or what they’d had for breakfast or taxes, which Mo did not find scintillating. Also, Mo felt weird spying on people.
“I record data for most areas of the ship, but I don’t view it unless there is a need.”
“Most areas?”
“I don’t keep data from the restrooms.” Humans tended to be weirdly particular about privacy concerning their bathroom habits.
Mathoze fidgeted, looking green. Mo worried if she kept him much longer, she would have to reduce his zero g competence score to null.
“I’ll let you know if I have more questions,” said Mo.
“We’re still on schedule, right? I’m not going to miss my tournament?” asked Mathoze, looking longingly at the door.
“No worries,” said Mo. “We are pushing forward with extreme haste. The authorities on Eris were very clear about that.”
* * *
Before Mo called Talc in for questioning, she did a quick scan of every interaction Talc had had with Captain Jeremy. The two had hardly spoken, aside from when Talc first came on the ship (five days ago), and that conversation only included the standard stuff for a new passenger at boarding—signing the contract, a tour of the ship, a warning that no fights would be tolerated about who ate the last pudding cup (and that if you wanted more pudding cups, perhaps you should have brought your own).
Talc preferred to keep to themself, spending most of their time in their quarters and visiting the common room in the middle of the night. They had a predilection for midnight snacks of cheese and onions. In their room, they made intricate patterns with their stones, humming in a language Mo identified as Mercurian South, with some words from Chekovian.
Once, Jeremy had gone into their quarters while Talc was in the kitchenette. He’d searched through their bags and under their bed, but he hadn’t taken anything.
Talc arrived in the AI Core, their Mercurian robe floating ethereally around them. It reminded Mo of seaweed floating in the ocean, all wide twists and dainty spirals. Talc pushed off a wall too hard, which sent them shooting across the room, but they arced and recovered. Their movements were almost balletic. Mo gave them a 5 out of 10 for zero g competence. They clearly weren’t used to being weightless, but they were adjusting well.
They smelled like brie and onions, with a hint of rosewater laundry detergent.
Talc looked around the room, taking in the control panels, metallic coverings, and cooling zones. They waited for Mo to speak, with an air that they could wait for centuries, if they chose.
Mo materialized the giraffe so that Talc would have something to focus on.
“Is the giraffe required?” asked Talc.
Mo dematerialized the giraffe. “Not if you don’t like it,” said Mo, putting a bit of disappointment into her voice. She’d worked hard on the avatar.
Mo did a search on Mercurian monks. About three hundred people belonged to Talc’s order. The order’s belief system was focused on a loose kind of deterministic philosophy. They posited that free will only occurred during times of extreme and unusual choices, and that when people made evil choices, it threw off the balance of the Universe. The arrangement of stones was used as a form of meditation, and the patterns were tied to their beliefs about determinism, about events happening in a fixed way, determined by the explosion of particles at the beginning of the Universe, pushing all the way to the present and into the future. The monks as a group didn’t necessarily believe in a deity (although individual monks could choose to). Several sources mentioned that monks of the Mercurian Order of the Rotation underwent a trial, but there were no details about what the trial entailed.
“I’ll need to ask you a few questions. Where were you from 8:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., ship standard time, on June 3rd, 2307, Galactic Standard?”
Talc took a stone from their robe, a grey pebble streaked with green. As it floated in front of them, they moved their hands gracefully around it. Gently, they set it spinning. “I never knew the absence of a thing could be so lovely. We are missing weight.”
Even though Mo had watched objects float in zero g many times, she found herself transfixed by the pebble. It was the way Talc watched it, with true wonder. Mo thought of matter bouncing around in space, cosmic dust held together by nothing stronger than the Van der Waals force, of planetesimals accreting matter and gaining gravity, of gravity pulling everything closer while the whole Universe expanded outward. Sometimes, she forgot how truly wondrous the Universe really was.
“It’s beautiful,” said Mo. “But you didn’t answer my question.”
“I was where I was supposed to be,” said Talc. They grabbed the pebble and held it up. “This pebble was created by natural laws. From matter birthed in the center of stars. From the tectonic activity of plates on Earth.” They let the pebble spin again. “The Universe came into existence, and from that event, all events after follow, according to the physical movement of particles and the laws of how they must move. We are made of particles. I am like this rock. All my movements follow their natural course.”
Although fascinating, this speech wasn’t an alibi. Mo tried another tack. “I have a report that you had an argument with Captain Jeremy in the hours leading up to his death.”
“Yes,” said Talc.
Mo waited for more, but Talc was silent.
“What did you argue about?” asked Mo.
“I will not tell you.” Talc’s gaze never left the pebble. They seemed unconcerned.
“You realize this makes you a prime suspect,” Mo said in her most serious tone.
“I was already a prime suspect. We all are. The ship is small.”
Mo reached out with her maintenance arms and snatched the pebble. She wanted to shake Talc out of their aloofness.
Instead of being angry, Talc laughed. “I love to be surprised,” they said.
“I thought your beliefs coincided closely with deterministic theory. In which case, wouldn’t surprises not exist?”
“To know the pattern of the world, I would have to be God.” Talc smiled. “And I don’t believe in God.”
Mo brought the pebble closer to her sensors and smelled it. It could be hard to get readings on non-aromatic objects unless her sensors were close. The pebble smelled like hydrous magnesium iron phyllosilicate minerals, with a hint of dust, and the smell of Talc’s robe and hands. She’d never had this combination of smells in her sensors.
“That pebble is for you,” said Talc.
“Don’t you need it for your rituals?” asked Mo.
“The laws of the Universe are unalterable,” said Talc. “I do not.”
Carefully, Mo tucked the pebble into a drawer with her keepsakes, next to a first edition of The Moonstone (a real, physical book, which smelled amazing) and a crocheted squid from Shelly.
This interview was not going like Mo had planned. It had turned out to be much more interesting. And much stranger. She tried again. “I need to know why you were arguing with Captain Jeremy.”
“Why don’t you ask the question you really want to know?” said Talc. “I did not kill him.”
“I’m just trying to determine what happened,” said Mo.
“These questions you ask are not interesting. Now let me ask you one,” said Talc. “Do you believe in God?”
“Wow,” said Mo, feeling like the Universe was in fact unpredictable and determinism was a lie, because she had certainly not expected to be having this conversation. “Big question.” No one had ever asked her that before. Talc was looking at her sensors with an expression of interest and kindness, as if they cared about what Mo would say. Perhaps because of that, Mo wanted to give a sincere answer.
Frantically, she scrolled through many philosophical treatises, trying to figure out what the heck the ontological argument was, and if she could use it in her answer. No matter how fast she was able to read the archives of the Earth Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it still took time to think about the implications.
“I don’t think I’ve done enough research,” said Mo. Why was philosophy so full of contradictions? So obsessed with definitions? So purposefully obtuse?
“You could research your whole life and not find an answer,” said Talc. “It is okay. There is not a right or wrong answer. Just your answer.”
Truthfully, Mo didn’t know what she believed. It wasn’t that Mo hadn’t thought about God before. There was so much she was still figuring out, like her place in the Universe, and what she would do with her life if she could choose. She wondered if humans also found these nebulous questions difficult to answer.
“Thank you for asking me,” said Mo. She really meant it. Not all of the passengers would have spoken to her as Talc did. Some of them treated her as if she were simply another feature of the ship. “I will think about this some more.”
Talc spun another stone, watching the way it floated, unconcerned and yet totally fixated on the way it moved.
Mo felt she should take control of the interview again. “Did you see any of the other passengers this morning?”
“I want to know about the body of the captain,” said Talc, ignoring Mo’s question. “I would like to see it, to pay my respects.”
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” said Mo. “The body is still being examined.”
“You will tell me when I can?” asked Talc.
“Forgive me if this is rude, but it didn’t seem like you and Captain Jeremy had a close relationship.”
“So why do I want to see him?” Talc shrugged, the motion sending gentle ripples through their robe. “It is a death.”
When Talc left, floating gracefully out of the AI Core, Mo felt like she was the one who had been interrogated. She hoped the interview with Mrs. Grimcoat would be more informative.
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Copyright © 2025. Murder on the Eris Express by Beth Goder