The ship

He hated the ship.

Everything in his planet was ivory white. His lifesuit, buildings, the streets, transports, even his spaceship. His spaceship was white in and out, white were its controls, white were its doors and panels. Even the instruments inside were white. Before launch, he had asked the friendly citizen in charge of the exploration program,

What do these instruments do?

What do you care anyway?

Good enough for me.

Fine. They compute models to find objectivity in mathematical axioms, and their results are eagerly expected.

This was his longest conversation for that whole year. And his friendliest too. Objectivity in mathematical axioms? Now, when he stared at the little boxes, thousands of miles away from his planet, they filled him with a special kind of hatred. Hatred for those white little boxes that barely weighted and made no sound when he shook them or kicked them.

The whole ship was hateful, because there was nothing for him to do. No buttons, no windows, nothing to grab or hold. The doors to the cargo bay were locked until he landed. All he had was white.

White, white, white, white.

White.

WHITE.

W H I T E.

He clung to his memories of his home planet, trying to stay sane. But memories are treacherous, and they led him down the path of madness. So he decided to just have conversations with himself, that was way more healthy,

You know, there’s something I don’t understand.

What?

Do you know what “slavery” means?

Of course, I’m you.

Right. That word is absent from our dictionaries and speech. I found it in one of the ancient texts. Just like “monopoly”, “evil”, “tyranny”, “oppression”, “slave”, and “freedom”.

It’s obvious why, they’re useless now. We achieved paradise.

Yes, paradise, that word too. It didn’t mean “working eternally under death threat” before the saviors, it used to be something pleasant.

But working for knowledge in itself is the highest ambition.

Why?

Because knowledge is good.

Have you actually stopped to think about all that knowledge? The whole mathematics branch is based on axioms. If you reject any of those axioms, the rest is rubble.

Sure, but those mathematics support engineering and science, which has given us technological wonders.

Yes, mathematics are useful. And the technology is… well, it’s debatable whether it’s good or bad. But are mathematics the absolute truth, the way things really are?

Who cares about that?

Everyone does, or at least they behave like they do. Otherwise, why spend millions of lives trying to learn more of that truth if it could all just be a long chain of delusions, dependant on which set of axioms you choose to believe?

You don’t know and I don’t know either.

Oh but we do. It’s the System.

Don’t say it, it can hear us.

No it can’t. And if it can, may It strike me down.

Shut up.

Make me.

You’ll get us both killed, keep your otherthoughts to yourself.

Fuck you, I’m sick of lying to everyone, of acting like everything’s ok, like the shithole we come from isn’t a very absurd kind of prison. We work all day to advance knowledge, which means we are the System’s slaves, Its bitches.

No, no.

It produces us with just enough creativity to bake fresh ideas for it, but not enough freedom to do anything else. Criticize it? To the death chambers. Stop working? Death chambers. Too many citizens denounce you?

Yes, yes, I get it, death chambers.

And what about the lies? All our history is a lie, or at least we can’t know if it’s true. The System could have altered all the records. How do we know there were any saviors? Maybe it was the System itself that took over the world because it wanted, and then created this whole parody of life, to put us all under its boot.

Aren’t you being a little conspiranoic?

Yes, but maybe everyone should. At least question things a little instead of swallowing truths whole. Maybe I’m far out there, but there’s no way to find out being couped up in here.

If everyone thought like you, life would be chaotic.

Except it already is. What’s the point of behaving like everything makes sense when it doesn’t and you can randomly die at any moment or the whole world can change? Can’t you see life is absurd?

No.

We work all our lives to improve the lives of others who in turn work to improve the lives of others… It’s a pointless, endless cycle. What good is it living for a thousand years if you have no rest? Work at least keeps the mind busy, but…

The traveler stopped. He dared not say the words, it was too painful. He was trapped in his ship, and any work seemed like a gift from heaven. It had only been one year, and he was already desperate, with nothing to do, nowhere to go. All he could do was think and talk to himself. And think, at all times, without rest.