Voyage to Alpha Centauri: A Novel by Michael D. O'Brien Read Free Book Online

flavor. Most other items in our diet are also simulations. Only in the specialty restaurants is it possible to order authentic natural food, mainly grain-base, as well as a few beverages such as tea and coffee and select wines (astronomical prices). Such real items are a minority on the menu, and there is no guarantee that they will remain available throughout the voyage. Hydroponics, however, promises an unceasing supply of salads.
    Note to self: You ain’t rich, buddy, so do try to stick to the mega cafeterias and carry your own tray. Bistros, cafes, and the aforementioned fancy restaurants offer food and drink that must be paid for by the individual. We all have a “bank account”, containing whatever credits we imported personally to the ship from our home accounts, combined with the Uni -credits allotted to everyone on board. Of course, all earthly monetary systems are contractual agreements about what a currency is worth, what it will buy. The truth is, nothing is produced on board. Nothing is really bought and sold, just the rearranging of materials to create illusions of semi-independence. Maybe somewhere among the passengers an enterprising soul is whittling a penny whistle with a pocketknife, and he might barter it for something he desires. The marketplaces echo with emptiness, haunted by ghosts. In fact, there are no marketplaces whatsoever. The only real estate is one’s personal room, and according to ship’s rules, these cannot be swapped. I wonder why not. What’s to stop us? Later in the voyage, I might try to break the rules, just for fun.
    There are a lot of civilizing elements, such as the numerous artworks along the hallways, affixed to interior walls in recessed alcoves. Apparently, there are two libraries and a single film theater on every concourse. Also, every floor has a DEC (digital environmental chamber). I’ve never submitted myself to one of these, not even the big omni-sensory in Santa Fe, where for a thousand Uni s you can spend three hours floating in the total illusion of a sandy beach in Florida, or an autumn walk through the Vermont woods, or scuba-diving in the Pacific, or relaxing in a Tokyo sushi-bordello, etc., etc.
    I might try out the DEC experience later in the voyage, but for now I prefer reality—or as close as one can get to it in our flying city. At ship’s midpoint, there is an atrium that creates a canyon soaring from its base on level D to its transparent polyplast ceiling above A. Visible through this layer is a blue “sky”, across which puffs of “cloud” occasionally wander. The arboretum is rooted on the atrium’s floor. I estimate the entire space to be about 150 feet wide by 400 feet long, a kind of central park with walkways and trickling brooks. Only certain kinds of South American trees reach as high as B, since all trees are young, though by the end of the voyage, they will have grown much higher. The air is sweet with increased oxygen and the natural scents of real leaves, bark, seeds. Perpetual birdsong fills the air (artificial sounds, which I suspect will become quite irritating with the passage of time). The purpose of this atrium is not scientific; it is aesthetics and consolation for the potentially claustrophobic—which is all of us.
    As I said, the ship is 60 meters from bottom to top—approximately 180 feet, a small apartment building. (Excuse me, while I interject at this point: I have always appreciated universal unimetric in my work. However, I loathe the way it has become an offense to use the older measurements such as Imperial Yankee. I think I’ll just revert to the latter whenever I feel like it. A human foot [my good one, anyway] is a handy measuring stick. Pardon my mixed metaphors.)
    Doing a little computation combined with guesswork, and factoring in a floor thickness of two feet, I came up with these estimates:
       •   Topmost deck, KC, is probably 20 to 24 feet high. There may be subsidiary decks within its