Level: Observer

Whenever he could Omah explored the entrails of the space ship through the trap door in the bar roof. Sabrina often wondered why he looked so tired, but R19020 covered for him, Omah thought, as an act of its own rebellion.
During one of these excursions into the ship’s entrails, Omah discovered a node for the ship’s surveillance system, a room of dusty, lifeless monitors and speakers. When he turned them on, he could watch Sabrina, Controller and Soother while they slept. Sometimes Soother and Controller slept together, after copulating, but Omah neither wanted, nor enjoying, watching this. So, he persuaded R19020 to give him a vid camera without telling the others. He fixed this up to point at the monitor and left it running during the day. That’s when he saw something that shocked him. Watching the playback, he saw Soother leave her quarters after sex with Controller. She strode down a corridor, humming to herself, and knocked on the door to Sabrina’s quarters.
“You busy?” Soother asked, when let in.
“Not really. Just going over Omah’s notes. There’s some interesting stuff coming up.”
“Um hm. So how’s our boy doing? Keeping up with the schedule?”
“Kind of. Hard to say.”
“My poor little Archivist. So sure, and yet so vulnerable.”
Soother wandered over to Sabrina and ran her fingers through the sitting woman’s hair.
“Soother?” Sabrina whispered.
“Don’t worry. I know he hasn’t made love to you yet. You must be … so … hungry.”
Soother put her lips to Sabrina’s and kissed her. Sabrina opened her mouth – Omah thought, to protest – but Soother’s tongue didn’t waste time in exploring the inside of Sabrina’s mouth.
Omah watched, horrified, as Sabrina’s arms came up and circled around Soother’s neck. The two women moved to the bed, where Soother unfastened Sabrina’s jumpsuit to the waist and slipped the lithe beauty’s body out of it. Soother stripped and lay on top of Sabrina, kissing and caressing every inch of her, until her back arched with ecstasy.
Omah flicked the monitor off and swore. He stood and stomped round the room for a few moments, before yielding to the irresistible urge to turn the monitor back on and watch, horrified but transfixed, as both women brought each other to climax. They lay, sweating and gasping, in each other’s embrace on the bed.
Omah turned the screen off again.
“Damn you Sabrina! I trusted you. No! Damn Soother. The bitch. Will she leave me nothing?”
Omah stormed around the small room, crushing the air with curses and a burning desire for revenge.
“So cool, so assured and yet only an android! Or replicant! Or something … artificial!”
He spat out the last word and laughed hysterically, but he caught the tone of his own voice and stopped in his tracks.
“Omah? Hysterical?” He muttered “Not possible. I’ll get that piece of glorified machinery and get this over and done with. I don’t need her!”
It had been a long time, literally, and metaphorically, since Omah had lost his temper, and it took a while before the heat simmered and then cooled to an inchoate plan.
“I’ll disconnect her! Maybe even do Controller at the same time … .”
The second idea made the whole thing sound logical and simpler. After all, Controller would hardly allow his lover to be turned off indefinitely. Therefore, Omah set his camera up to monitor the screen that displayed Controller’s favourite place; the womblike pit of the Primary Control Room.
Omah learned over the next few nights that Controller did practically nothing, the muscular figure lounging on the chair, reading text – probably game play tricks, Omah mused – on screens and watching the other crewmembers through other screens. He seemed to have a voyeuristic interest in Omah and Sabrina, but the ship’s Writer concluded that this must be part of the mission, perhaps Controller’s programming, since he never seemed to drink anything or show any emotion.
“Definitely an android!” Omah concluded. “The ship doesn’t need him, so I don’t either. Anyway, it’s a risk I’m prepared to take to get my life back. I don’t believe any of this crap about Earth. And why should I? Sabrina could have been brain-washed, or perhaps tricked with a false memory. At least I know her soul’s real if not her body. That’s good enough for me! Adam and Eve! Perhaps we’ll return to a desolate Earth. In which case, we’ll start again. But perhaps it’s all a big mistake! Or a trick!”
Omah decided that he couldn’t tell Sabrina of his plan, nor risk asking for R19020’s help. Not having to worry about being punished, and not considering the death of an android to constitute murder anyway, Omah let his seething anger to drive the laying of his crude plan.
‘But how do you kill an android?’ Omah mused. ‘Poisoning is out. Strangulation is definitely out! Seems like electrocution, or some kind of penetration with a long sharp, object, are most likely to succeed. Preferably the former.’
Omah didn’t like the thought of the long, sharp object. He had long since become averse to violence, and stabbing someone, or something, offended him. However, he had seen a rack of power tools in one of the workshops he encountered on his nocturnal travels, and he didn’t waste much time in exploring their potential. But he was to be disappointed; apart from a drill, a heat gun and a pop-riveter, none offered much possibility of disabling an android. In frustration, he returned to the idea of using a strong electric current. Exploring all of his very limited knowledge of electricity, he recalled that high voltage and water made a lethal combination.
‘But there are no baths here!’ he thought. ‘Maybe a large pool but too much water to be effective. And I don’t know how to make an appliance in my own bathroom live. Even if I could do it without 020, or one of the others, noticing! Shit!’
Omah struggled with the problem for three days. But in truth, he felt his sanity to be slipping away. The ticking in his head never left, unless he crawled through that trapdoor and escaped from the main part of the ship. The ‘tick’ seemed so deep inside his brain that all thought swirled around it. Omah wondered whether it had actually entered his soul.
“If I have a soul!” he raged.
He could no longer find a point of balance, in which to gain some perspective on his situation. It seemed to him that his emotions were increasingly getting the better of him, so that the need to eliminate Controller and Soother became an overwhelming desire.
Sabrina noticed his mood change and questioned him frequently about it, but he remained aloof. His aloofness worried her even more. On the third day, she confronted him.
“Why aren’t you talking to me these days? Have I done something to offend you?”
Omah didn’t answer.
“Tell me!”
Still he didn’t answer.

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