Final Exit Through the Gift Shop

by theidiotmachine

[Author's Note: This is Part Two of a multi-parter, which I hope to conclude in Ring Worlds. The first part's in Flat Earth.]

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The door irised open. Beyond, the darkness yawned away to nothing. Detective Inspector Alessandra Cheng swore to herself.

'I hate this place,' she said to herself.

Sue's drones buzzed past her, the whine of their rotors loud in the silence, their spotlights shrinking to dots in the lightless expanse.

'What's the matter?' asked Sue into Alessandra's earpiece. 'By the way, I've interfaced with the on-board computer, which was quite something. I've never talked to something a hundred years old before. Want me to turn the sun on?'

Sue was an AI that Alessandra had befriended a few weeks ago. Because of an accident, Sue had found herself with no job or home, and Alessandra had agreed to take her in and employ her as a contractor in the Santipurṇa police force. And now they were both here, first responders to a call from this huge, orbiting metal relic.

'Turn the sun on? I'm not sure that you're allowed to,' said Alessandra. 'Won't that break some rule of museums?'

They were here because a shuttle called Lea had come up here three hours ago with two passengers. The passengers had thanked her, gone in, shut down communications, and then simply not come back and the shuttle was getting worried. She wasn't really supposed to be here, because the place was closed; but one of her two passengers was a member of staff, so she'd come up anyway.

Alessandra clambered through the doorway, hauling herself hand over hand on the ladder. Her suit light threw out shadows on the bare metal, lighting up ancient signs, warnings and directions. Away from the door, the space opened around her, an empty metal cylinder two kilometres in length and half a kilometre wide. She clung onto the hand holds, methodically crossing the space, careful not to eject herself up, away from the metal floor.

With no gravity it was hard to decide whether she was climbing along a floor, or clinging onto a great round wall, and the experience made her feel somewhat queasy which was why she hated being here. Talking to Sue was the best way she could think of to keep her mind off it.

'No, it's fine,' replied the AI. 'We're OK to turn the lights on. I checked with the people on the ground. Hang on...'

And then, one by one, far above her, panels on a vast column flickered into life. It ran along the axis of the cylinder, and the great metal space was filled with light; and, bathed in the harsh artificial glare, Alessandra could see a floating body.

'Well, Sue, I think the light makes my vertigo worse,' she said. 'But at least I can see what happened to one of our missing persons.'

'I think he's dead, I'm afraid. I'll get over there, in case he's not, though.'

Humans had come to the Chara system a hundred years ago, in the colony ship Renewal, asleep in their hibernation pods. Back then no one had known what kind of world they were going to, and so the Renewal had been equipped with a section big enough to rotate to generate artificial gravity. The idea was that, if need be, an entire farming community could be set up within this tiny hollow world and live here while they terraformed the planet.

Instead, on the planet Santipurṇa they'd found single-celled life in the oceans, an oxygen-rich atmosphere, rivers and rain, and not much else; and so humanity had landed, and planted the first trees in the rich soil. The Renewal had been left in orbit, a monument to those first thousand settlers, its rotating section never spun up, the farms never started; and with the discovery of true artificial gravity two decades later, it was obsolete before it had ever been used.

And now Alessandra and Sue had found a body, it was a crime scene.

Sue's drones had reached it. It was floating a dozen metres from the gently curved metal wall. No, that's the floor, thought Alessandra, trying to fight away more vertigo. The corpse, like Alessandra, was in a pressurised suit, because no one trusted the hull integrity of a hundred-year-old relic. But, unlike Alessandra, it was attached to the floor by a cable which went through its chest and back out the other side. Blood was everywhere, spattered across the dull metal and floating in the air, black sticky spheres which were drifting away in the air currents created by Sue's drones.

The man had been killed by his own safety harpoon. The device was supposed to be fired towards a wall so that if you ever found yourself floating away you could attach yourself to something and then reel yourself back in. It was standard issue on the suit that he'd been wearing. Wasn't very safe for him, thought Alessandra.

'This is Albert Choque, one of the two shuttle passengers. He's been dead a little over two hours,' Sue said. 'Which ties in with what we know. There's a trauma team and an enforcement team on their way, by the way. They should both be here pretty soon.'

Alessandra pulled herself to within about two metres of where the harpoon had buried itself into the hull. She unspooled her own cable, and clipped it to a hand hold. Then she gently pushed up, and floated into the air. The dampeners on her cable reel slowed and stopped her as she drew near the body.

The grisly scene in front of her was almost a relief, taking her mind off the disorientation. The floor is just down there, that's the ceiling, she told herself. For the hundredth time.

'How did this happen, Sue?'

'He was shot when he was close to, or on the floor. The harpoon went straight through him, and caught on the metal. He was pushed by the impact, bounced off the floor, and slid upwards along the wire. You can tell from the pattern of blood, and the amount of, um, biological material on the cable itself. He flailed quite a lot as he died, and eventually settled here.'

'Not a nice death,' Alessandra observed.

'No,' agreed Sue. 'I imagine he bled out fairly quickly, if it's any consolation.'

'Was it suicide?'

'I don't think so, no. I think the harpoon gun was fired from some distance away. That's the only way to explain the pattern of blood that I can see. That rules out him holding it himself, and I don't see how he could have fired it accurately from a distance. Of course it could have been an accident. I've found the gun, by the way; look up.'

Alessandra did so, and above her, near the axial sun column, a drone flashed its lights at her. It was too far to make out any details. I'm on the floor, she thought. That's up. Not across. Or down.

'It was caught in the water system,' Sue continued. 'This ship was designed to spray rain from the central column, to make it feel more like a planet. Isn't that interesting?'

Despite it all, Alessandra smiled at the AI's enthusiasm. 'It is, but I'm more interested in our dead friend. So their shuttle's still here, and thoroughly freaked out. Which means, in theory, the other passenger's still here, too. Are there any cameras on this heap of junk?'

'Well, they're all ancient and probably don't work any more, and they certainly weren't recording anything today.'

'What about in the gift shop? Anything modern to catch kids from pocketing things?'

'All switched off. It was closed for refurbishment.'

'Let's keep going. Fan out the drones. I don't want to miss anything.'

'Please,' said Sue. 'I never miss anything.'

#

Albert Choque had been one of the museum's curators. From what Alessandra had found from speaking to his coworkers, he'd been a quiet man who loved his job, loved the history of Santipurṇa and the rest of the Chara system. It seemed a terrible waste of a life, and, beyond that, he didn't seem to have an enemy in the world. He'd come up here with one Euan Moretti, the young adult child of a friend.

'You know, two hundred years ago, humanity was talking about robots taking away people's jobs,' said Sue, chattering away in her ear piece. 'You seem pretty employed to me.'

'So long as people kill each other, there'll be work for coppers,' said Alessandra. 'Any sign of our suspect?'

'None, although this ship isn't small.'

Alessandra had given up on the climbing ladder, and was floating along using a pair of rotors on her back. Sue had printed this contraption on the shuttle ride up. It had taken a bit of experimentation to get used to it, and she was still nervous of losing control and slamming into the walls, but the AI's work was good; so now she skimmed over the bare metal surface, the dirty sheen curving up and away to either side, and rolling flat like a highway before her. It actually felt more like the metal below her feet was 'down', for reasons that she couldn't explain but didn't object to.

'Look,' said Sue. 'That was going to be a farmhouse. They assembled it when they got here. It's made from local iron, mined from an asteroid. It's called New Homestead.'

The hut was just crude plates of metal bolted into the floor. It looked much more ramshackle than the smooth curved metal it was constructed on. Because it was a hundred metres to her right, the ground was at an appreciably different angle and its roof was facing towards her, as if it had been built carelessly on a hillside. It was surrounded by metal trays, laid out to accept seedlings, never used.

'Sue, I know. I studied this place in primary school. Everyone on Santipurṇa does. I remember buying a soft toy which I lost on the way back...'

'There's someone in there,' said Sue, cutting her off.

Alessandra pulsed her rotors to slow herself. Then with as much care as she could, she landed outside the metal hut. She engaged the magnets in her boots, and they clanged onto the metal floor, the great cylinder ringing like a bell. This would be no good for a chase, but she didn't want to be shouting instructions on her knees or floating.

Sue's drones buzzed towards her. There were two with her already; another two detached from the axial sun column, and floated down. Three came from far ahead.

She unclipped her pulse pistol and trained it on the door.

'Euan, right? I just want to talk to you,' she said, her suit's speaker loud in the silence.

'I didn't mean to kill him.' His voice came over the radio, ragged, broken.

'That's a good place to start.'

She switched to the radio.

'Sue, has he got any weapons?'

'Well, those suits come with a harpoon gun and a knife,' said Sue. She flashed up the camera feeds from the drones onto Alessandra's HUD. 'Other than that, no, I can't see anything.'

Indeed, Euan seemed to have nothing in his hands or, from what she could tell from the various camera angles, nothing on his suit beyond the tools it came with. Although, admittedly, most of them could be used to kill her.

'Euan, I want you to throw your harpoon gun and knife out of the window, away from me. Then I want you to come out. I've got a gun, but if you're sensible, I'm not going to use it.'

The harpoon gun sailed out from the shack, bouncing with a clang on the metal ground, before floating upwards and across, followed by the knife. Sue's drones reached out and grabbed them both.

'Good. Come on then. Nice and slow. Why don't you tell me why you didn't call this in straight away, why you're hiding in here?'

The suited man did as we was told, fumbling out the door in the zero gravity.

'It was an accident. But the cameras will make it look like I did it on purpose.'

'Just stay there, please,' said Alessandra. 'Lock your boots like I have. What cameras do you mean? Are you talking about these drones, here? We just arrived.'

'No. You know what I mean, but you can't say. Or maybe you don't know. I bet they keep you in the dark, just like us.'

Alessandra couldn't see his face, but judging from the tone of his voice, she imagined that he'd been crying.

'I've been accessing this man's socials,' said Sue. 'He's got some quite extreme views. I'm not sure how well he is.'

'I'm going to put away this gun,' Alessandra said. 'I'm going to put it away, because you said it was an accident, and I believe you. And then, we're going to go down to the planet. And you can tell me all about what happened, OK?'

She held up the pistol so that it was obvious what she was doing, and slowly put it back into its holster, and clipped it closed.

'There. You wanna tell me some more?'

'The enforcement team's shuttle is nearly here,' said Sue.

'He wanted to show me,' said Euan. 'He said that we came here, to our world, on this ship. That this was really what he said it was. I thought he was a liar, that he was one of them. Because he's wrong, he's been lied to... and he wouldn't listen. I didn't mean to shoot him with the harpoon, I just wanted to show him that this was fake, it didn't really come from somewhere else, that it's all a conspiracy... But the cameras...'

He couldn't sink to his knees because there was no gravity. But he buckled and swayed, his arms loosely flailing around him.

'It's OK,' said Alessandra. 'It's OK. We're going to get you down and safe. My friend is controlling these drones. She's going to bring them down, and they're going to pick you up, and we're going to take you to the shuttle bay and we're all going to go home. Will you let us do that?'

'OK,' he said. 'OK. I'm lost. We're all lost. They've won again. But, OK. Just... don't tell my mum.'

'I think we're rather past that, Euan,' said Alessandra.

Sue swooped down, and grabbed Euan's suit; then they lifted off, and headed back to the exit.

#

'Are there many people who believe that?' Sue asked, as the Renewal fell away above them. 'That humans didn't come from Earth? That this is all a lie? Because I can tell you, there's nothing fake about that amazing ship. Although, I personally wouldn't want to travel between the stars on it.'

Alessandra was silent for a moment. She enjoyed the feel of the shuttle's seat around her, the knowledge that they'd soon be back on Santipurṇa. Most of all, though, she enjoyed no longer feeling like a fly in a jar.

'I don't know, Sue. People think all sorts of strange things. I read that, back on Earth, they used to believe that the world was flat or hollow. Do they now? We're basically the same things now as we were then. So, yeah. Maybe. Maybe a lot do. I don't know.'

'Landing in ten minutes, folks,' the shuttle said. 'Make sure your seatbelts are done up.'

'Thanks, Eric,' said Sue. 'Alessandra, what will happen to Euan?'

'Psyche assessment. Detention. Then it depends on what he says. I think he's ill, not evil. He'll probably get treatment. He's going to have that on his conscience for the rest of his life, though. In my experience that doesn't end well.'

It was Sue's turn to fall silent.

'I wish someone could have caught him before it happened,' she said eventually.

'You can't stop everything, Sue. Albert Choque wasn't supposed to be up here with just the kid, but it's his museum, so no one stopped him. So you have to let humans do stupid stuff, and sometimes they die.'

'Do you really think that badly of everyone?'

'All humans? Nah, most of them are great. But I want to talk about something much more fun: that weird helicopter backpack thing you made for me. Could we make a version that worked on the planet? I actually enjoyed using that. Can we make it work?'

'Not like that, because it would need to support your mass in gravity. You're essentially asking for a helicopter in a backpack. But I think we could try something based on a glide pod...'

And as Eric the shuttle landed they talked and laughed, and ten minutes later, they were back on the planet's surface.