“You Are Our Lifeboat” by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen (part 1 of 2)

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You’re listening to The Voice of Dog. I’m Khaki, your faithful fireside companion,

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and Today’s story is the first of two parts of

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“You Are Our Lifeboat”

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by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen,

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or just leinir, who can usually be found relaxing in the English Midlands,

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where they split their time between cooking usually delicious food,

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writing various bits of social realism and science fiction,

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or creating free and open source software in the KDE project.

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Sometimes all three happen at the same time,

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and they tell me that sci fi epic they’ve been working on the last most of a decade

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is getting closer to wrapping up.

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While waiting for that to land, if you would like more after this one,

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you can find more of their stories in the anthologies found on their GoodReads profile

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at goodreads.com/leinir. This story in particular

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can be found in the FurPlanet anthology

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Exploring New Places,

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where a variety of animal people go out and explore a wide variety of new places.

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“You Are Our Lifeboat”

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by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, Part 1 of 2 Excitement and delight.

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That was the feeling which seemed to flow around me those twenty eight years ago.

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That was when I first stepped out of the transport case

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and put my paws on the deck.

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The day I and the rest of the thousand-strong crew of

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engineered caretaker rats

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had been brought from the training facilities and onto the ship

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we had trained to maintain our entire lives,

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and which would soon

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be headed for Proxima B.

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We had entered the ship,

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expecting a lot of rooms with equipment that would need tending,

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the way our training cabins had been laid out.

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Instead we had been met with a maze of twisting tubes,

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splitting and combining.

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Endless runs of corridors for us to scamper through

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to get between pieces of kit.

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It had been much more like our recreational areas,

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the fun runs that we had run through as pups,

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just much larger

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and with equipment for us to work on.

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It all remained as wonderful to us through the journey as it had seemed to us that first day.

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Our home to be for the nearly two decades worth of a trip

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to that distant star

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had been designed to not simply support us physically,

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but challenge us mentally as well.

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To keep us fit and in shape,

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so we would be able to perform our maintenance duties.

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Training had given us the skills needed to maintain the equipment,

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and the leader of the team which had created us

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had ensured we would be able to adapt,

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trained us to understand changing circumstances

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and to deal with them.

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In space, you had to deal with what you had.

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Couldn't just order in some new bits from a shop,

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because the nearest one might very possibly be literal light years away.

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We had never seen the outside of the ship,

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but when we boarded, we soon learned the layout of it;

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at least we technicians did who had the task of keeping it running.

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Most of our crew did basic maintenance of the systems

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or any of the other many things which needed to be done to maintain the crew itself,

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but the oldest of us had been able to train longer.

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We had known more about the systems of the ship

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than our shipmates.

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We knew there were parts of the ship

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that not everybody was aware of,

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but even we who had been granted such knowledge

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did not really know what it was.

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How could we have known.

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We had been taught to adapt,

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but you could hardly adapt to something you were not aware of.

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We had not been taught about the world that brought us into reality.

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Our creator had made sure we had been spared the realities of that world

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until finally, one day eighteen years into the trip,

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she had no choices left but her final one.

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The choice she made

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was to give us one of our own. #

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I flicked an ear at something that sounded like panting and claws clicking rapidly against plastic.

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I pulled myself out from underneath the gently humming air cycling unit I was working on

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and sniffed at the air.

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As my nose tried to detect whose claws it might be,

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my gaze searched for the source of the sound,

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following the soft, sweeping line of the transit tube which snaked its way

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through the insides of the ship.

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The soft, nobbly surface allowed air to travel with less turbulence

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than had it simply been smooth.

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It also allowed the claws of our paws to propel us along both speedily and safely,

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the way someone was doing now,

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approaching me at what sounded like a fair clip.

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"Twentree!" came a familiar voice from down from the tube,

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the same direction the sound I had heard had come from.

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The voice was rapidly followed by the scent,

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and the scampering, white-furred shape of one of my crewmates.

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A junior tech, one of those who had been made towards the end

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just before we had left Earth.

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One of those I had helped train,

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and who would take over for me

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when I finally became too old to perform my duties. "Twentree," he said again, the nearest he was able to get to saying my name, the number

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twenty three.

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"Quick!" Our mouths were hardly designed for speech the way our makers had it,

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but we still managed something recognisably like words.

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A great deal of information could be conveyed through body language, which of course we did,

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but sometimes words were just more useful.

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Our paws lent themselves even less to the sign language

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some of our creators' creations employed

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than our mouths did to words,

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and so, adding in a little gesturing and body language, we had chosen the lesser of two problems.

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Even then, sometimes it was awkward.

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Sevenhundredandfourtythree had an annoyingly large number of sounds in it

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that a rat's cleft lip did not allow me to easily produce.

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Our creator had taught us to adapt,

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so we improvised. "Sehunsotre,"

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I replied and pulled myself all the way out from the machine.

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I moved to stand upright on my hind paws in the low gravity,

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because composure was important.

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Especially with an overexcited junior technician before you.

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I deliberately perked my ears

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and calmly raised my muzzle just a little,

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a slight frown on my brow as I sniffed at him inquisitively.

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Detecting a strong taint of worry through his scent,

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I did my best to retain my own calm,

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in part to help him.

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"Junior. Relax. What happen?"

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The young rat calmed himself

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and sat up on his haunches,

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curling his tail around his feet in embarrassment

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but still managing to remember to rub the top of his muzzle in greeting.

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He was panting hard,

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and I thought he had likely run all the way from command.

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It would not be anything normal:

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If there was something urgent in need of fixing,

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the ship's intercom was plenty capable of conveying this need.

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If he was here panting like this,

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either a superior had sent him here for some claw polish

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and was currently laughing with the rest of their team,

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or it was something distinctly out of the ordinary.

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Our location was nowhere near any of the equipment stores,

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and while he was a junior,

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he had been one for eighteen years.

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It did not seem likely to be the former.

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"Excuse, Sir," he said between breaths,

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his bright, red eyes glistening in the light as he spoke.

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He breathed in deeply,

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eyes closed, and exhaled slowly.

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He opened his eyes and looked at me more directly, properly.

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"Control said go, get you. Tell alarm.

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Ring zero alarm."

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"Ring zero alarm?"

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I enquired. No claw polish.

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My twitching whiskers betrayed the worry I attempted to keep inside,

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and doubtless my young friend realised this,

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his own whiskers twitching in solidarity.

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"Not know," he said

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and got back down on all fours,

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and crawled closer.

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"One said get. Tell run quick.

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quick." He pointed his nose to the unit I had been working on.

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"I handle cycler." The last he said with a more confident air about him,

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and I realised I might have misinterpreted his mood.

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Not so much worry as perhaps just straight forward exhaustion.

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He had just run a fair distance,

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one of our youngest on a mission from the oldest rat on board.

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"K. Nearly done.

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Clean to do. Then done,"

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I said, attempting to relax my own expression,

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and nodded to the young tech before heading off in the direction he had come from.

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He might well have been junior,

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but he was practically as skilled as me.

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I had been ten years old when we left Earth,

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and had five years of training on tech before we left.

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He had been a part of the last five hundred to be created

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and had only just got his eyes when we left,

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and had grown up on board the ship.

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I'd spent the last thirteen years teaching him everything I knew.

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That air cycler was in safe hands.

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We knew the humans had realised they could not go themselves, because,

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so our creators had told us,

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they were fragile.

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No human was physically able to take the strain of such a journey.

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Those who had created both us and the ship had told us this,

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and that they had taken the opportunity to construct us together.

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Design a crew that fit a ship which could in turn be designed for that crew.

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With no need to fit in support for the fragile human physiology,

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they had build a ship

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which would prepare its cargo,

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as well as its crew, us,

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for the conditions we were likely to encounter at our destination.

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It would spend the first half of the trip

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burning to get up to speed,

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and then flip and spend the rest burning to slow back down again.

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It had run almost entirely on auto,

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with only slight adjustments from our command crew.

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Since we would be on our way for a fair few years,

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it had been decided that running life support as a closed system was the best idea.

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A simplified biosphere,

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with tightly controlled members:

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Just us, and a selection of plants and bacteria as designed as us and the ship.

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The plants and bacteria supporting us,

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us supporting the ship,

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and the ship supporting all of us.

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As far as we knew,

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this is how it had been intended to work.

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Everything we had been told from we were born,

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everything the techs and our trainers had suggested nothing else.

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The first ship containing life to go to another star.

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Built with great speed, following the excitement of the discovery that there were several stars with habitable planets,

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and that the nearest of those

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was even at the nearest star to Earth.

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The ship was a long stack of rings with engines at one end.

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The rings were separated by empty space

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but connected by our tubes and a central hub

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by four spokes each.

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The entire thing was covered in large tanks, full of

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water, protecting the delicate biological entities inside the ship from radiation,

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and the tanks in turn

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protected from impacts

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by thick outer bulkheads.

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The rings were numbered zero through nineteen,

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and the majority were cargo.

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Just a big bunch of container holds which the thousand of us took turns patrolling

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to make sure were stable and intact.

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Numbered from the middle, with zero in the centre of the ship,

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the uneven numbered rings were towards the engine end.

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The rear, so to speak,

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though for latter half of the journey it was pointed in the direction of travel.

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Ring nineteen contained control and engineering where I was headed to meet One,

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and was at the far rear.

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The even numbered rings were towards the other end,

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which might be called the front,

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and ring eighteen at the tip of the ship was our habitat.

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A thousand large rats comfortably holed up in warm nests

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at the front of the ship.

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This, of course, was been where I had been working in one of the spokes to the central hub.

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Further out the rotation would simulate gravity at an Earth like level,

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but that near to the hub

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there was not a great deal of it.

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Nice enough every so often,

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but it wasn't healthy for very long,

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so we tried to only go to the low gravity sections when we had to.

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So not only had I been at the opposite end of the ship,

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I had also been halfway to the hub.

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You never seem to find yourself in a convenient location when you are suddenly required to be somewhere specific.

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Ring zero, in the middle of the ship

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and where I had to pass through,

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was the ring that nobody outside of a few core people was supposed to know existed.

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Just a gap in the maps between ring one and two

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that only a few techs knew had something in it other than scurry tubes.

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After all, since nobody was supposed to go into ring zero,

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why should anybody know it was there?

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Only the first thirty even knew it existed.

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The Singulars and the tens because command was command,

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and us twenties because well,

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general maintenance of the energy feeds had to happen.

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It had an impact on the structural integrity of the ship itself,

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and so we had to know the mass distribution of it.

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But if any of the other twenty nine knew what was inside,

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outside of how much mass it contained, well,

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they hadn't told me.

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Not that I had asked, of course.

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It wasn't something I needed to know,

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and I had plenty of things to work on.

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Panting as heavily as Sehunsotre had done,

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I arrived at the intersection between command

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and the much larger engineering section in ring nineteen,

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and I made a quick stop at a wash station to clean myself up a bit.

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The wash was a quick one,

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because it seemed decidedly important I made haste,

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but cleanliness being important, and this being One,

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it was something I felt I had to do.

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It had the side effect of allowing my breathing and my hammering heart to calm down again.

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Feeling more relaxed,

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and considerably cleaner,

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two things that always seemed connected,

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I made my way up the wide scurry tube from the intersection wash station

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and around the ring to the centre of command.

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About half way there,

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I caught up to Twenty,

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lead tech, and a good friend since we had got our eyes.

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He was one of the few of us with a colour other than white in his fur,

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one brown-tipped ear.

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Even with our not exactly amazing vision,

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he was visible at a distance.

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We sniffed at each other in greeting,

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both of us familiar with the scent of the other,

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and I detected a touch of worry in his,

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the way he surely did in mine.

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"Lo Twentree," he said as we both continued towards command,

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and frowned as he asked

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"know happen?" "Not know,"

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was all I could say,

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though I was sure my own frown and my twitching whiskers told of my worry at the situation.

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"Run quick command.

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See One. Junior said.

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Ring zero alert?" "Junior?

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Know ring zero?" he asked as his brow shot up and his ears suddenly perked,

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sounding about as confused as I had felt

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when Sevenhundredfourtythree

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had passed on the order.

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"No," I said and looked at him as we entered the command deck and headed,

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at a more calm pace,

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over to the far end where One, Two and Three

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laid when they were on duty,

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on rotating shifts

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the way the whole ship was.

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"Not know. Ring zero alert what?"

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"I tell," One said loudly from across the room as we made our way through the command deck.

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It was difficult to remember, sometimes,

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that her hearing was as good as it had ever been.

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Fifteen years my senior,

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One might well now be positively ancient,

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well over fourty years old.

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Her eyes had turned grey,

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and her fur had faded from our usual white to a whispy near translucency.

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Her mind, however,

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was as sharp as it ever had been,

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and her hearing as acute as her eyesight was not.

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"Am sorry, Sir," I said as we reached her,

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sitting up on our haunches

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and rubbing our ears and muzzles in salute.

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Both Twenty and I sniffed the air towards her,

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and detected in her only the slightest hint of the worry the two of us shared.

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"Get here. Tried quick.

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Hope okay." "Quick okay.

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Both," she said, sniffing at us as she rubbed one ear with a paw

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in the more relaxed fashion her grand seniority allowed.

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"My task. Soon done,"

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she said and pointed with that same paw

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to one of the large displays beside her.

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Normally they showed a mix of sensor outputs that the bridge crew used for operations,

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and feeds from cameras showing various parts of the ship's areas

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like engineering or the rec areas,

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or more commonly

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cycling through a view of the many cargo holds.

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The one she indicated to us, however,

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was showing something

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very different. I had no idea that there were cameras

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outside the ship, but apparently there were.

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It looked, I thought,

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somewhat more bulky than I had expected it would.

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More than that, though,

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was what was hanging in the star strewn space above the ship.

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We had arrived. Glancing to the side,

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I noticed Twenty's mouth hanging wide open,

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and I realised mine was as well, and closed it.

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"Ring zero secret.

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You know," she said,

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and we both nodded.

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"Hear now. It same secret.

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This ring zero. We given.

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End protocol change.

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Important things gone.

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We decide. What do now?"

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This was the the first of two parts of

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“You Are Our Lifeboat”

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by Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen,

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read for you by Khaki,

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your faithful fireside companion.

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Tune in next time to find out what our space-faring rat friends discover of their own lives,

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and what their collective future holds.

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As always, you can find more stories on the web at thevoice.dog,

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or find the show wherever you get your podcasts.

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And if this is a difficult time of your for you,

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when you’d want to be as busy and cozy and snug as these space-rats’ nests,

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and now feel as if you might as well be on Proxima B,

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please know that you’re not alone.

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You’re great, and I am your faithful fireside companion.

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Thank you for listening

Please enjoy: 00:17:33

to The Voice of Dog.