“Good God,” grumbled Valentin in response and thought to himself, “It was smart of me to disconnect my cabin from the general support system and make it autonomous. Otherwise, I would have been lying passed out somewhere with others, and who knows if I would have woken up in three years.”
“Well then, you better serve breakfast for two here in the bedroom. But next time before you do anything like that, let me know in advance. OK?”
“Yes, my master!” replied GAS joyfully and hung up.
The service board robots showed up a half-hour later, rolling food into the flight director’s sealed module chamber and passed his meal to him on a serving tray.
Valentin hungrily began eating and, mouth full of food, asked his girlfriend.
“And you, Elya, why aren’t you eating?”
“For some reason, I’m not hungry, sweetie. You eat,” she replied, stroking him on his slowly balding head.
Valentin Valentinovich was quite an ugly little man – short, fat, balding, with large, protruding, moist lips and bulging watery eyes. He always walked bowlegged, hunched over, and smacking his lips all the time, licking off saliva – in fact he resembled a toad. But despite his repulsive looks, Elya agreed to live with him right after she had got a job on the ship, because of his wealth and status, but also because she was two months pregnant by her last lover – a handsome, but very poor boyfriend. Elya tricked the medical board when applying for a job on this flight, not thinking that she would be away that long. She wanted to live with Valentin, provide him with sexual favors for as much money as possible, and come back to her beloved toy boy as a rich girlfriend. That the flight would take several years, not weeks, as she had originally thought, Elya learned only after blastoff from Valik. So she decided to announce that her unborn baby’s father was “the little toad” – the name she called him in private – just waiting for the right opportunity to do that. And any premature labor in the future could be blamed on the unbearable space conditions. This ploy would allow her to solidify her position on the ship as a chief hostess and let her do nothing for the whole duration of the flight, and then see what the future would hold. Elina’s morning sickness had started early: she was nauseous and craved something salty all the time, but she did her best to hide from “the little toad” for at least a couple of weeks. The fact that GAS had put the crew into sleep was to Elya’s advantage. The only problem was to being forced to tolerate the constant company of the slobbery “little toad”. Before, she was able to escape every day to the guards, but now they were gone too, and she felt nauseous, nauseous, and nauseous incessantly.
The following four months Valentin and Elina had done nothing except for eating, sleeping, and getting fat. GAS occasionally tried to talk to them and educate them about their current location and the stars they were flying by, but it found them to be quite poor students and stopped its lectures. On the sixth month of the journey GAS noticed Elina’s quickly growing belly and mentioned it to her.
“Well, Elya, it appears that your belly is growing much faster than that of my master’s.”
“It’s ’cause I’m pregnant, Gassy, and soon will give birth, I think.”
“And what does that mean?” GAS became concerned as it was not prepared for medical emergencies of that kind on its ship.
“Valik and I will be having a baby due to our shacking up together.”
“Wait a minute, I am not prepared to such transformations, what am I supposed to do in this strange case?”
“You’ll need to prepare a special delivery room, for starters,” Valentin joined the conversation; Elya had already broken the news to him regarding his impending fatherhood.
“Acknowledged, I will make the necessary preparations for this unexpected development,” said GAS, as he began searching in every block of his memory bank for any information related to childbirth.
A couple of weeks later with the help of its android assistants, GAS was able to put together a decent makeshift birthing chamber and readied itself, in theory. And in a month’s time, Elina – attended to by GAS and its robotic assistants – successfully gave birth to a healthy boy, weighing at almost five kilograms. Surprisingly, the happiest out of everyone was GAS itself, as the new arrival brought much entertainment to the supercomputer as well as the pleasant responsibilities of babysitting which it had assigned to itself. Day in and out, GAS was primarily monitoring the baby and instructing his mother about the proper methods of parenting, according to the archival data it regurgitated from the depths of its massive brain. The baby was growing up like in a fairy tale – growing not by days, but by the hour – and was gaining weight quickly. Elya, after discussions with Valentin, decided to name the boy Angel, after all being a child born in the cosmos, but the board computer rejected it and bestowed him with the name Arcad, after one of the names of the mythological hunting dogs – the ones the ancients used for Canes Venatici constellation, where their ship was en route to. As for Valentin, he excused himself from parenting the baby and kept living his days leisurely – spending the whole trip watching sitcoms, eating, sleeping, and growing fat. The child was being raised solely by GAS, who found the task to be an interesting experiment.
Two years of the voyage across the endless galaxy had passed. Arcad began walking and talking quite early, much to GAS’ joy, who was now constantly telling the toddler funny stories about Earth and space complete with pictures which it projected on the wall in the nursery. GAS, having gotten carried away with raising the child, entirely neglected to monitor the ship’s flight path – when it did happen to check the ship’s coordinates, it was surprised to discover that the ship had deviated far from its planned route. It was flying in a huge, inconceivable arc in space, caught in the intergalactic curvature of space-time that GAS had failed to take into account. After having corrected the course and factored in the drift, GAS re-calculated the ETA to the planet Hop and became slightly sad at his conclusions – it would take almost twice as long to get there. GAS reported this unfortunate news to Valentin.
“My master, the curvature of the galactic space has slightly altered our ship’s course and we shall arrive to the star Asteroin somewhat later than planned.”
“And when should we expect to arrive at this goddamn planet, my dear?” asked Valentin lazily.
“According to my calculations, it will take as long as we already have flown, if not longer.”
“That’s unbearable!” the expedition’s director exclaimed in indignation. “Can anything be done in this situation?”
“No, nothing, my master. I have already attempted every possible solution I could, and have brought the ship’s course back to the correct direction. The universe is cruel and unpredictable,” GAS philosophized.
“The space curvature can permanently alter the physical appearance of any crew members who are awake, so for that reason I suggest that you and Elya go into stasis for the remainder of the flight to Hop. This way your bodies will remain intact, and time will pass much faster for you.”
“Really? And what about the kid?”
“I will take care of Arcad. As he is a growing child, his body is not in danger of being affected by the curve. However, he also can’t be put into hibernation while he is maturing, so during your sleep my assistants and I will raise him in lieu.”
“But how will I be able to manage the flight?”
“When an emergency occurs, I’ll wake you up, my master.”
‘Oh all right, go ahead, ‘cause I’m sick and tired of