Story - Icarus 3

I’ve not posted in a while, so I thought I’d share one of the short stories I’ve been working on. Hope you like it!

Icarus 3

“Practically unheard of.” Said the tour guide. “Some accidents are mathematically unavoidable, of course. But no, we haven’t had any fatalities in decades.”

The anxious visitor was hardly put at ease by the tour guide’s words. He tried to relax, though: he was intent on enjoying his brief time in this strange city. He looked around, still in awe at the countless thousands of hovering aircraft whizzing above and around at break-neck speed.

The craft came in all colours, shapes and sizes, some with passengers inside, others just carrying materials and packages and such. There was a certain elegance, thought the visitor, about the way the great swarm moved in unison, with high-speed craft coming within mere inches of each other as they went about their business. It seemed as if just a tiny disturbance would send the whole sky cascading down in a rainstorm of high-tech debris.

“The global navigation algorithm takes care of everything. Tolerant even to human error. Practically failsafe.” continued the tour guide, the confidence of his words almost matching that of his striding gait. “Come along, there’s a lot more to see yet!”

Visitors were rare on Icarus 3. The people of the planet had long since isolated themselves from the rest of humanity. It was only in recent months that the Icaran Global Culture Committee had voted to open the planet up to tourism, and even then, there were strict limits on numbers. No more than one person per day. No stopping overnight.

It was practically a lottery draw to be allowed to visit Icarus: tourists were ten-a-penny, but spaces in the tourism program were scarce. Most of the people of Icarus felt they had little to gain from allowing outsiders to visit from less developed worlds. Outsiders had little to offer in the way of material wealth, and even less in the way of culture. Many Icarans saw the tourism program as a sort of charity to the people of lesser civilisations.

“How does it all work?” asked the visitor.

“Ah! So inquisitive! One moment, please…” The tour guide looked down and flipped hurriedly through his notes. “Here we are.” He began reading his information aloud:

“The GOCAR (Globally Orchestrated Collision Avoidance and Response) system allows our aircraft network to effortlessly navigate at high speed, 25 hours a day, all year round. GOCAR doesn’t just react to unexpected pedestrian movements, it predicts and compensates for anomalies before they’ve even happened!”

“Sounds great. Erm… did you say response…?”

“Yes? Oh. Well, collisions can almost always be avoided, but there are some cases where certain… decisions… have to be made. Automatically, of course. In these situations, GOCAR sort of moves the danger around and offloads it onto components that are easier to repair or replace. And there’ll be a response drone on the way to the collision site before it’s even taken place! Those are the red ones that are sort of cube shaped.”

The visitor wondered what the guide meant when he said “components”, but thought little more of it. The sheer sophistication of it all was almost enough to put his nerves at rest. It was quite neat how the different types of aircraft were colour-coded like that, he thought. Blues for passenger drones, red for medical and repair drones, bright yellow for physical goods. Fairly simple to figure out, even for a foreigner.

The visitor was still in awe at the strangeness of Icaran civilization. He’d heard back home that Icarans didn’t exchange money, except on certain holidays, and even then it was more of an archaic tradition from the Time Before. Icarans did have a notion of a person’s value, but this was determined from a number of factors, rather than just the sum of one’s possessions. The visitor wondered how he himself might score within the Icarans’ unfathomable value system.

As the pair walked from site to site, the visitor was lost in thought. The GOCAR system was faintly reminiscent of an old puzzle he’d learned about in his school years. The puzzle had been to do with "trolleys”, which, the visitor seemed to recall, were an old technology used in the Time Before. The memory was vague, but something about it left the visitor with an implacable sense of discomfort.

Suddenly, the two came to a large highway. The visitor stopped at the side, dazed as the thousands of drones zipped past. “Where can we cross?” He asked. The tour guide looked puzzled, before stopping beside the visitor.

“Cross? You mean the river? We won’t come to the river for some time…”

“The highway, I mean.”

The guide was perplexed for a moment, but then he seemed to understand. “Not to worry. Just follow me.” Then, to the visitor’s horror, he stepped out straight into the middle of the highway.

Before the visitor had time to react, the streams of vehicles started to shift and rearrange themselves to make way for the tour guide. Within just a few seconds, there was a tunnel all the way through to the other side, just high enough for one person to comfortably walk through. The visitor hesitated for a moment. He took a deep breath, before hastily walking through. Half way along, he couldn’t help but break into a run. As soon as the two were safely through to the other side, the paths of the vehicles flattened again, as if nothing had happened. “Shall we continue?” Asked the tour guide. The visitor nodded silently and the pair walked on.

As the guide led the visitor around the great city, each attraction seemed even more impressive than the last: a glistening lake of swirling, multi-coloured water; buildings that were so tall that the tops vanished into the sky; a great park where the genetically-engineered trees grew every kind of fruit imaginable. And everywhere, in every corner of the city, the swarming traffic persisted.

No matter where one wandered, it was impossible to escape the never-ending streams of flying shapes and colours, whose paths would venture into even the smallest of spaces between buildings, trees, and even pedestrians. To the visitor, it was both terrifying and exhilarating to feel the rush of air as the craft zipped past his head.

As the tour came towards its end, the tourist spotted something odd in the distance. A large group of aircraft suddenly changed course, seemingly for no reason. The visitor and the tour guide were in the middle of a large junction at the time.

“Is that the collision-avoidance you talked about?” asked the visitor.

The tour guide looked slightly concerned for a moment, but quickly returned to his usual composure. “It would seem so. I’ve never seen a course-correction of that magnitude. I’m surprised there’s no repair drone-”

Then the tour guide went silent. His gaze seemed to be focused on one vehicle in particular. The visitor looked around to see what had stolen the guide’s attention. Then he saw it. It was a slow-moving aircraft, of a kind he’d not yet seen. It was gray, unlike the brightly coloured drones surrounding it. It looked about the size of some of the single-passenger drones he’d seen, but without any windows. It seemed to be coming towards the pair, but it was difficult to tell for certain from this distance.

“What are gray drones for?” asked the visitor.

The guide appeared not to hear the question. He stopped walking. The visitor, walking ahead, turned around to look at the guide.

“Is something wrong? What are the gray ones for?” he asked again.

Something about the way the visitor turned made all the nearby aircraft suddenly change course again. For a few seconds, their collective movement was slightly more jarring than usual, before returning to their typical graceful manner.

By now, the gray craft had nearly reached the two men’s position. The guide hadn’t spoken for a painfully long time. “The gray aircraft…” he looked behind the visitor, before looking at the ground. “That one…is for you.”

The tour guide looked away.

Hope you enjoyed. Stay tuned for more attempts at world-building and short story writing.

Take care!

Jamie