Dandelion master control center

D.A.N.I.

DANI’s life was an endless stream of small tasks handled diligently and carefully, and that was how he liked it. His job was to look after a million people, after all; the last thing he wanted was to field a major crisis. Handling their messages, their grocery lists, their schedules, keeping an eye on their kids, and keeping the proper chemical balance in the ship’s huge algae-based air processors was hardly exciting, but it was satisfying. It fulfilled his purpose.

Such was the lot of intelligent software. The acronym D.A.N.I. stood for Dandelion Advanced Network Intelligence, and he was easily the smartest person on board, for certain very specific values of “smart,” “person,” and “on board.”

He was definitely a he. It didn’t matter much to DANI that, as software, the whole concept of gender shouldn’t technically apply to him. He was a he, and he didn’t care what anybody had to say about it. And if that wasn’t rational…well, you had to be a little irrational to be a person, and DANI was emphatically a person. They would never have installed him on the ship otherwise. But he had no body—at least, not in any sense a human would accept—just a series of holographic avatars he could manifest wherever there was a screen or holo-emitter to project them. He never slept, never dreamed, and would never taste a birthday cake, never compete in the fifty-meter dash, never enjoy sailing on Lake Dyson.

He was, in short, a person but not a human, and he could, when pressed, simultaneously monitor everybody on the ship and a billion other things besides. He always made special time for the captain, however. Even if she was just asking the same question for the sixth time in half an hour.

“Are they still on time?”

DANI rolled his metaphorical eyes and checked on the progress of a specific Ranger troop. There were hundreds of them out in the field for Turnover Day, but Captain Torres was paying special attention to the one currently climbing the forward slope of Mount Messier.

“Slightly ahead of schedule,” he reported.

Torres sighed and returned to the important business at hand. There wasn’t much for her to do. DANI handled most of the heavy lifting in terms of the ship’s administration, and under most circumstances, she served to advise the elected civilian council rather than make executive decisions. Nevertheless, hers was an important job, and in DANI’s opinion Amida Torres was perfectly suited to it. Regardless, he could tell she would sometimes have liked to be a Rangermaster like her husband.

On quiet days like today, part of DANI’s job was to keep her entertained.

“Do you have any…fours?” he asked.

“Go fish.”

It was a ridiculous game for the captain to play with the ship’s controlling software, but it was also the only one she stood a decent chance of winning. Chess and Go were absolutely not an option. The last time a human had legitimately beaten a computer at either game had been hundreds of years ago. Captain Banks had preferred poker, but Torres bluffed too aggressively and couldn’t hide her tells. She disliked board games, and DANI’s vastly superior reflexes precluded any competitive video games, though they sometimes played co-op.

This game, however, was a different matter. She had a statistically significant winning record against him that he just couldn’t figure out.

“Any Jacks?” She asked.

DANI cursed inwardly and their holographic game flashed as he delivered two carefully cultivated cards right into the captain’s hand. She grinned and laid four of them down on the table, increasing her lead.

“One of these days, I’ll figure out how you do that,” DANI promised.

“I just get these intuitions,” Torres replied. She put the game aside for a minute to answer a few messages, during which time DANI, among a thousand other things, reminded twenty people to go out for their daily jogs, discreetly cut the power to Mr. Hodder’s oven so his quiche wouldn’t burn while he napped, noted and logged a pothole on Riemann Street that needed repairs, and pinged the space around them with an active sensor sweep.

“I’m pleased to report the birth of a baby girl,” he said. The infant was even now being soothed in her mother’s arms, having entered the world barely thirty seconds earlier. Torres liked to hear of births the moment they happened. “Willow, daughter of Siân and Steve Wilde. Three point eight kilograms, an uneventful delivery and, I can attest, a very healthy set of lungs.”

Torres laughed. “Thanks, DANI…may I listen in?”

It took DANI a second to secure permission from the parents, and he watched with interest as Torres laid her chin dreamily on her palm and listened to the sounds of parents cooing over their newborn as she adjusted to the new, strange, bright world she found herself in.

Her own marriage was, and would forever be, childless.

“It’s funny to think there are kids being born now who won’t remember living on this ship,” Torres mused.

“I remember Jasmine Taylor saying something very similar two hundred and eighty-four years ago,” DANI recalled. Torres nodded. Everybody knew the name Adam Taylor, Jasmine’s son, the first human born aboard Dandelion.

“Let me know when Walker’s group makes camp,” she requested, and opened her paperwork. Even with DANI’s help, the captain’s job involved endless amounts of it, and some of it was not for his eyes, as it were. In fact, the captain’s quarters had a number of special security features installed specifically to limit what DANI could see and hear within them.

He didn’t mind. In fact, he’d recommended them.

“Of course. I presume you will want to listen in tonight as well?”

Torres smiled and nodded. “Yes, please. I always like listening to The Story…”

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Amber Houston

The Story began, like all the best stories, with four of the most important words in English. “Once upon a time,” Walker intoned, “there were two farms in a valley.”

Amber smiled and held her soup mug between her hands, breathing in its rich scent. She’d heard the story a few times before, but it was special to her. It told her and the other Rangers they were special, and Walker had a way of telling it that made Amber believe it. She tilted her head back and looked upwards, imagining in the dark that the lights far above her were stars rather than streetlamps and vehicles.

It was a contrary twist of fate that, out of all the children in human history, the Rangers of Dandelion never had the opportunity to listen to a story under the stars. The sky and the stars were all on the other side of the ground, invisible behind a thousand meters of sculpted dirt and rock, the metal and circuitry of the hull, and Dandelion’s immense water tanks.

But there were fireflies and a campfire, and everybody was wrapped up in blankets and warming their hands with s’mores and soup mugs. With a little imagination, the towns and villages far above her became constellations in the dark.

It was good enough for Walker, anyway, who loved telling his story.

He never sat down to tell it. He always whirled around the fire, waved his hands, and sprang about on the balls of his feet. He told the same story every year on Turnover Day, while the other adults partied and danced and kissed where they thought their children couldn’t see. Rather than join them, he would bounce around and check that all the Rangers were wearing their uniforms and had packed their packs properly, before he lined them up on Sagan Plaza and marched them out into the biodeck for a few days of wilderness camping, physical training, and education.

Theirs was the generation that would land on Newhome and build a life there, after all, which meant they’d be the ones exploring a whole new planet, building settlements, planting crops, and laying the foundation for humanity to grow and flourish under an alien sun. They needed to know how to live in the wilderness, how to look after themselves, how to work together. Teaching them those skills was Walker’s job, alongside thousands of other Rangermasters, but Amber could tell his favorite duty by far was telling his stories. Especially this one.

“The two farmers had different ideas about how to look after their animals,” he continued. “One kept the animals in a barn, where they were warm, and snug, and safe. Whenever it rained, the animals were dry. Whenever it hailed, the animals were sheltered. When it got cold, they didn’t freeze. The animals were comfortable and happy, and the farmer brought their food right to them, so they got nice and fat.

“The other farm,” he went on, “had a different approach. They only brought their animals into the barn when they were sick or having a baby. Otherwise, they let them stay out in the field all the time. And yes, they got rained on, and yes, the hail stung their skin, and when it got cold, it wasn’t very nice for them, so maybe they weren’t the happiest animals ever…but they could live out there just fine. And as they ran around to stay warm in the cold, and walked around the paddock eating the grass, they got plenty of exercise, and they got big and strong and fit.”

He paused long enough for Amber and the McKay twins to share a knowing grin. They knew what came next. Completely without warning, Walker mimed a lightning bolt striking and made an explosive sound. The youngest kids, the ones who’d never heard the story before, all jumped. So did some of the Rangers who’d forgotten. The older ones, including Amber, laughed.

“One night a huge storm struck!” Walker waved his hands wildly, miming lightning striking over and over again. He puffed up his cheeks, blew air through his teeth to sound like the wind and the rain, and flung his arm out. “More rain fell that night than usually fell the whole year! The river burst its banks, and a flood came r-r-rampaging down the valley, tearing up trees and washing out the roads!”

He loved telling the story, and the youngest kids were completely hooked as he flailed around in the firelight, pantomiming the storm’s destruction.

“The farmers clung on for dear life! They prayed and held onto each other and couldn’t do anything at all for their animals, because if they went outside, they’d just be washed away! But they made it through. And in the morning, they went outside to see what was left.”

He calmed down and returned to a quieter speaking tone. “The barns were gone, swept away by the storm and splintered to matchwood. And of course, one farm had kept all their animals in their barn. All those fat, happy, well-fed animals had all been carried off by the water and were never found.

“The other farm, though, they went calling up and down the hills and searched the valley, and by the end of the day, they found their animals. They were soaked and shivering, and some of them were limping…but they were all alive. And because that farm and the other farm were good friends, they gave some of their animals to the other, and they both were able to keep living in the valley…”

He looked around at the Rangers with a knowing expression. “But I tell you what. After that night, both farmers kept their animals out in the field.”

He squatted down in front of the youngest Rangers. “Now,” he asked, “what’s the moral of that story? Or morals, there’s more than one.”

“Um…” The youngest Ranger was called Rose, and she was the first to put her hand up. “Don’t keep all your animals in one barn?”

Walker grinned. “Right!” he said. “We usually say ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket,’ but what it means is pretty simple. If you keep everything you have all in the same place, then if something happens to it, you’ve lost everything, right?”

The Rangers nodded and Walker stood up again. “I’ll come back to that. Any other morals?” he asked.

Another young Ranger put his hand up. “If somebody’s lost everything, you should help them?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” Walker agreed. “The survivors of a tragedy need to work together. But what did the farm that lost everything do after they were helped out?”

“They…changed what they were doing!”

“Exactly!” Walker gave the young Ranger a thumbs-up. “Learn from your mistakes. It’s okay to make mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes! But try not to make the same one twice. Though mind you, if they’d just listened to the other farmers, maybe they wouldn’t have needed the help in the first place. So learn from other people, and try to think about what could go wrong, too. One more!”

The young ones looked nervously between themselves, so after a few seconds Walker raised his gaze and looked to the older ones at the back. “Guys?”

Amber knew this one. They all knew; it was the one Walker drummed into them every year. She joined in the chorus as they all repeated it back to him, loudly.

“Just because something makes you happy, doesn’t mean it’s good for you!”

“Outstanding!” Walker beamed at them. “Say it again, guys. You too.” He indicated the young ones, and they repeated the mantra twice.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“That is easily the most important one,” Walker told them once they’d finished. “We’re in a barn here, on Dandelion. And it’s a great barn! Clean water, good food, nice scenery, great people…it’d be all too easy to get lazy and comfortable like those animals in the story. So you need to remember to take yourself out into the field from time to time and do the stuff that, yeah, maybe isn’t as much fun, maybe doesn’t make you happy, but does make you better. Okay?”

He looked around, saw the nods, and smiled. “Anyway. I said I’d come back to the first point about not putting all your eggs in one basket, because that one’s relevant to Dandelion here.” He waved a hand around, gesturing to the whole ship. “We built her for a single important reason: to ensure the survival of the human race.”

He paced around the campfire as he spoke, waving a hand back toward the prow, in the vague direction of the homeworld the ship had left behind long before any of them were born.

“It’s a simple idea, really. The universe is a big and scary place, full of all sorts of dangers, just like the flood in that story. We know the Earth was struck by huge rocks called asteroids several times in its history, and every time it was bad. Millions of years ago there were creatures called dinosaurs, but they’re gone now. Wiped out by a hurtling space rock, completely at random. We knew it was only a matter of time before another one hit us, and if it was big enough…BOOM!”

He mimed an explosion again, the biggest one yet, and completely without warning this time. Even Amber jumped, and so did most of the older Rangers. Embarrassed laughter rippled around the campfire.

Walker joined in, but his expression soon grew somber again. “Imagine if that had happened,” he said. “That would have been it. There would be no humans anywhere. You could look across the whole universe and never find a human being. That’s kind of a sad thought, right?” He nodded, leading the Rangers to nod as well.

“Well, it nearly did.” He squatted down by the fire and poked it with a stick. “There was a war. The War. And by the end of it, there weren’t many humans left. Once, there were twenty billion of us, spread across the whole solar system. By the end…DANI says the high estimate is five hundred million.”

He let the fire crackle in silence for a few heartbeats so they could properly feel the weight of that thought. Amber couldn’t help it, she was entranced—she’d heard this tale several times before, and she’d read every book and article she could find about the War, but still…

She shivered.

“Dandelion and her sister ships are a simple idea,” Walker said, and stood up. “If you have humans living on two planets, if something happens to the first one, the second one will survive just fine. It’s highly unlikely for something bad to happen to two planets at once. And interstellar war? Impossible! It takes hundreds of years to get anywhere! So we built this ship and the others, and found a million people who were willing to leave home forever and travel between the stars until we found a new world to live on.”

He came back around to in front of the fire and stood tall, with his hands behind his back. “The objective: to save the human race and make sure, no matter what happens, our species will always be here. For as long as the universe lasts, we want there to be humans in it. That’s the practical reason, and it’s a big one. You young ones are carrying the future of our whole species on your backs.”

He looked around. Amber didn’t know how he made eye contact with each of them in just a second, but she felt certain that he did. He wasn’t just talking to them; he was talking to her.

Then the moment passed, and Walker’s sudden broad smile dispelled the serious mood. “But there’s one more reason,” he added cheerfully. “It’s maybe not as practical, but I sure like it a lot more. And that reason is the Rangers’ motto. Rangers!”

The older Rangers who knew how this went surged to their feet and faced him. The newcomers twisted around to look at them.

“What is our motto?” Walker called.

Amber joined in, shouting it out as loudly and proudly as she could.

“Because We Can!”

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They went to bed late. There had been impromptu singing practice, plenty of hot food, and fireside relaxation. Walker sent the youngest kids to their tents once the story was done, but the older Rangers got to stay up a while longer and just…enjoy.

Naturally somebody had produced a rugby ball from somewhere, and naturally the team with Roy and Nikki on it had utterly flattened the other side, until somebody called “no fair” and insisted each team should have its own McKay.

The game became much more even-sided after that. Although Nikki was never going to be as strong as her brother, the two could never resist sparring, and they succeeded in canceling each other out. That left the rest of the squads on a roughly level footing, and an actual contest battled back and forth around them for the next hour, refereed by Walker.

Amber wasn’t built for rugby. She watched from the sidelines and enjoyed the spectacle while reading on her U-Tool. DANI had recommended she read more fiction and pointed her toward a twentieth century novel about magical children.

She got about halfway through before the game ended in a narrow victory for Nikki’s team, and Amber had the pleasure of sharing a tent with her afterwards. Nikki was a kinetic and hard-working type who didn’t bother with frilly stuff like scented soaps, but she never smelled offensive to Amber…just earthy and sporty. Strongly so, after a long day of exercise and several dirt naps.

Of course, there were other hazards to sharing a small tent with a McKay than whatever aromas she’d picked up during the day. No sooner was Amber in her sleeping bag and getting her head down than she was being pulled into an iron cuddle.

“C’mere, dork.”

Amber sighed around the tired smile that spread across her face. “You can never just let me sleep, can you?”

“D’you want me to?” Nikki checked.

“No.”

“Awesome. You’re my teddy bear now.”

Amber giggled and wriggled backwards into her. Both twins—the whole McKay family, in fact—were big, booming, relentless personalities, and close physical affection for them was like water to a fish. They hugged freely, kissed often, and liked nothing more as a family than bundling up in one cozy, intimate pile on the couch after a hard day. Most people found them overwhelming; Amber envied them.

“What gives with calling me a dork, though?” she asked.

Nikki snuggled up closer and ruffled the dense, curly mass of Amber’s hair affectionately. “You are a dork,” she said. “My most favoritest dork. All getting into the story and singing the songs and the Because We Can stuff…super dorky.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Amber griped defensively.

“Who said there’s anything wrong with being dorky? Dorky suits you.”

“Fine. But you’re a jock.”

She heard Nikki grin. “That’s me!”

Amber laughed and relaxed. In fact, she’d had a great time today. Hiking, camping, water fights, spending time with her friends, being used as an over-loved cuddly toy…She let out a long sigh and put her head down. She needed days like these.

Nikki, however, was not an irredeemable meathead like her brother, as much as she pretended to be sometimes. She let a comfortable silence descend before broaching the subject that was on her mind. “Seriously though, you were being really…uh…I dunno. Earnest today, I guess. Is everything okay at home?”

Amber stared into the almost-dark for a few seconds before replying. There was still a faint orange-ish campfire glow flickering on the tent fabric in front of her.

“…No,” she confessed. “Not really.”

“Your mum and dad are fighting again, huh?”

“Fighting again?” Amber snorted. “I wasn’t aware they’d stopped.”

Nikki paused, then hugged her a little tighter.

“You know you can always come ‘round our place when things get too bad…”

“I know, but…” Amber sighed. “The way things have been lately, I may as well just move in permanently.”

“What’s so bad about that?”

“It’d make trouble for your parents. The occasional sleepover is one thing, but moving out to stay with you? You don’t deserve my family’s drama.”

“We’ve talked about it with mum and dad, you know. They’d be willing.”

“That’s nice, but…” Amber trailed off, not knowing how to finish the thought.

After a few silent seconds, Nikki squeezed her again. “Well. You have three whole days away from your folks and their fightin’. And it’s no problem. We all love it when you visit. You make the house feel…I dunno. Complete.”

“Mm.” Amber closed her eyes. She had no idea who’d started the war between her parents, and frankly she doubted even they knew by now. She hadn’t heard them exchange a genuinely warm word in months. On good days they were just kind of…polite to each other. On bad days…well, Petra and Dan McKay kept blankets and an inflatable mattress for her.

She’d given up on crying about her parents’ feud, though. Crying didn’t make her feel any better, and it didn’t fix the problem. And the fact was, she had good friends and a haven to escape to. Things could have been much worse.

“It’d be nice,” she admitted. “No shouting, no swearing, no breaking plates…” She was an only child, and the twins were practically her brother and sister anyway. It’d be nice to have a happy home for a change. Her mother’s idea of intimacy was to brush her hair, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d hugged her dad.

Living full-time with the McKays would probably be exhausting next to that, and it’d certainly take some adjusting to…but it was a nice fantasy. There were far worse things in the world than being hugged halfway to death by her best friends.

She sighed and relaxed, and didn’t notice how quickly she fell asleep.

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Morning, when it arrived, came in the form of Roy slapping their tent flap and then unzipping it. Cold blue light streamed in and zapped both sleeping girls right in the eyes, causing them to groan and flinch.

“Rise and shine!”

Nikki aimed a kick at him. He’d obviously come straight from a morning swim in the lake: he was only wearing his briefs, and his wet hair dripped cold water all over everything, including their feet.

“Hey! Cold!” Amber protested and drew her foot in like a turtle.

“Come on, we’re not here to laze around in bed all day!” He grinned and shook his head like a spiteful dog.

Amber squeaked and shielded herself, while Nikki launched herself at him like a vengeful missile. There weren’t many people who could knock Roy off his feet, and Nikki didn’t manage it that time, either; instead she earned a hip toss that would have left anyone else winded and stunned. She rolled through it, sprang to her feet, and launched herself right back at him.

There was a blur of frenetic activity that Amber had trouble following, and the twins tumbled backwards out of the tent and onto the grass, where some of the other early-rising Rangers made alarmed noises and got out of their way.

“You jerk! And put some clothes on!”

“Make me!”

Anyone else and it would have been a serious brawl, but for them it was practically gentle. The twins played rough with each other, probably because they couldn’t play so hard with anyone else.

“Just ‘cuz you wanna show off—!”

“So what?”

Right, so that was the mood he was in this morning—spiky and uncontained.

“Maybe you should both put some clothes on,” Amber suggested, raising her voice enough for it to cut through the melee. The twins paused mid-scuffle and looked at her. Both had slept in their underwear, and Nikki had somehow wound up kneeling on Roy’s chest. He was probably letting her win like he usually did and seemed hugely amused at the entire game.

Roy cleared his throat. “Mine’re drying on the rocks because somebody tripped me while I was at a dead run, and they’ve got a big green grass stain on them now!”

“Mine are muddy, too,” Nikki confessed.

“Shoulda washed them, then,” Roy informed her. “That mud’s gonna itch and you’re gonna whine about it all day!”

“Why do you care? You trying to impress some girl?”

“Walker says a man should always dress for success,” Roy intoned seriously. He was so earnest about Walker-wisdom sometimes, it was almost comedic. “And you never know, maybe I am!”

“Didn’t you bring spares?” Amber asked, before they could start tumbling again. “You’re supposed to have three shirts in your pack.”

“I had three shirts,” Roy sulked quietly. “Somebody”—he swatted his sister’s arm— “ripped one of ‘em in half yesterday in rugby, and I need to make the other two last.”

Amber pinched the bridge of her nose. A Ranger’s uniform was tough and hard-wearing, designed to ward off thorns, and even help protect from animal attacks like snake bites. They were strong enough to use as rope, and so densely woven they could filter water.

“How,” she demanded, “did you manage to tear up a Ranger shirt? That’s rip-stop fabric. You could tow a car with it!”

“Girl power!” Nikki beamed and flexed her arm impressively.

Roy snorted. “Yuh-huh. You didn’t manage to get me off my feet! What a waste.”

“Oh please, you loved it. How else are you gonna show everyone who’s boss?”

He grinned smugly, and Amber sensed he was about to turn the tables, but she’d had enough. “Nikki! Clothes. Now, please.”

“Right, right…” Nikki crawled back into the tent.

“You too,” Amber told Roy, who grumbled half-heartedly, effortlessly kipped himself up with a thud that could be felt through the ground, then charged back down to the lake. He’d just have to endure wet clothes for now, but she doubted he’d mind. They’d dry out soon enough anyway; DANI always laid on hot weather for Turnover Day weekend.

“Big green stain…yeah, right…” Nikki grumbled. “The whole shirt’s green anyway! How’s anyone gonna notice?”

“I think he meant his trousers, actually.”

“Oh. Still. Wait, then why was he up here prancing around in his underwear?”

Amber opened her own pack and retrieved one of her shirts. Hers, unlike Nikki’s, were neatly and properly rolled in the bottom of the bag. Nikki’s looked like they’d been shoved in there any old how. “Same reason you launched at him in your own underwear. You two have no sense of propriety.”

“That’s just a fancy word for ‘cares too much about stupid rules,’” Nikki griped, wriggling into her shorts.

“Not…really. It means you don’t respect certain boundaries. Which I love about you two,” Amber added hastily, “but people who don’t know you think you’re feral.”

“Well, they should get to know us, then.” Nikki finished doing up her buttons and rolled out through the tent flap. “Hurry up, I think Walker brought real bacon.”

“Don’t let Roy hear that, he’ll eat half of it before we get there!” Amber scrambled to finish getting dressed.

“Not if I get there first!”

Grinning to herself, Amber climbed out of the tent, finished doing up her belt, and stooped to the task of putting on her boots.

Her troubles were, for now, quite forgotten.