Captain’s Away! Robo Kun is a long form, weekly serial — and Volume Two of the ongoing space opera Captain’s Away!
The adventure began when Marie-Josée Doucette and her family were forced to flee after their space station Evangeline was destroyed in the opening volley of an interstellar war. Robo Kun tells the story of Alain Doucette, who was separated from his family after the destruction of another space station, Northumberland.
New chapters come out every week (more or less). Comments and suggestions welcome as we go along.
You can find the master index of all the chapters by clicking the orange Captain’s Away! index button below:
Previously in Captain’s Away!
Adrift on a raft in the middle of one of Earth’s vast oceans with limited supplies and no hope of rescue, Sebastian informs Alain and Navi that it is about to break down, and extracts from them a promise not to throw it overboard if that happens. They agree.
“The Quietest Place”
Apart from staring at the sky and the sea and crying a little there isn’t a whole lot to do on a raft in the middle of the ocean. It was, just then, the quietest place Navi thought she’d ever been. Only the soft, rhythmic splash of Sebastian’s paddle dipping into the water broke the silence. Around the raft, the sea spread out flat and round like an enormous blue coin. Occasionally, diamond flashes of bright light lit up the surface.
Soon she saw that they were not alone. Many different creatures appeared within the first hour. Sebastian helpfully identified them: whales, dolphins, sharks, tuna, flying fish, and more. The hours passed. For a while Navi amused herself helping Alain and the robot catalogue all the mysterious objects they spotted floating past the raft. Storage drums, buoys, cans, planks, beams, tree trunks and more, all out in the middle of the ocean, having floated from God only knew where. When they got bored of that, Alain taught Navi some of his favourite songs from Akkadia. Navi liked them all. She taught Alain the only song she knew from her home world Pandura, a patriotic song that her father had made her learn and that Alain obviously didn’t like at all, though he didn’t come right out and say it.
Navi helped Alain use a length of wire from the emergency supplies to create a pendant out of Sebastian’s eye, which he placed around his neck, beneath his chiton. After that she found a tarpaulin amongst the emergency supplies. Experimenting, she discovered that it was designed to attach to one end of the raft. She fashioned a rain catcher out of it. The following morning, after another uncomfortable night’s sleep, she was rewarded with dew on the tarpaulin.
“We will drink that first to preserve our water supply,” she instructed Alain.
“How?”
There wasn’t enough moisture on the cloth to drink it properly. Navi took a couple of licks, then turned to Alain. “Now you go.”
He made a face. “After you’ve been licking it? No thank you.”
“Suit yourself.”
Navi caught him licking it later when he thought she wasn’t looking. She smiled but said nothing.
That day they played chess together until Alain grew tired after losing several games in a row. When Sebastian suggested they try to keep the raft clean and free of water, Navi refused. That was not the sort of thing that Maharanis did. When Alain did so without argument, Navi was surprised but pleased to see the boy knew his place.
She tried to make the time go by faster by sleeping but soon discovered you can only sleep so much before you are relentlessly awake whether you like it or not. She settled for watching Sebastian paddle, the mechanical being’s every motion as precise as the one that preceded it. How terrible to be made of material other than flesh, she had once thought. Never to experience physical sensations like taste or touch, or to savour the sweetness of a strawberry, or a mother’s touch. But now, as the sun bore relentlessly down on Navi’s brow and her leg ached where it was attached to her artificial limb, the idea of steel skin, devoid of all sensation, seemed awfully appealing. She unfastened her prosthesis, took it off, and laid it down in the middle of the raft.
“I am soooo bored,” Alain complained for the umpteenth time. “This is even worse than that prison you guys had me in. Can I have some more water?”
“You have had your share for the day,” Navi told him. “And then some.”
“Who made you boss?” Alain said peevishly.
“I am the Maharani.”
“By all means drink more than your fair share and doom the two of you to an excruciating death by thirst,” Sebastian said.
Alain rolled his eyes. “All right, all right.”
Sebastian paddled. The raft moved incrementally forward. A cool caress on Navi’s skin announced the arrival of a refreshing breeze. Via some inscrutable function of brain chemistry, this triggered a memory. “Why don’t you deserve to be called a robot?” Navi asked.
Alain perked up.
Sebastian did not hesitate. “Because I broke a rule.”
“What rule?” Navi asked.
“A robot rule.”
“Robots have rules?” Alain asked.
“Everyone has rules, whether they realize it or not, whether they follow them or not.”
“What’s the big deal?” Alain said. “I break rules all the time.”
“You’re young,” Sebastian said. “That’s your job. Test boundaries. Challenge assumptions. See what makes sense, and what doesn’t. Break old orders, create new ones. I have been around long enough to know which rules are important. Which ones ought to be respected, if only by me. I broke a rule that was important to me and to many robots. Because of that I no longer deserve to be called a robot. So please don’t call me one.”
Trying to sound casual about it, Navi asked, “What rule did you break?”
“That is none of your business, Maharani.” Sebastian looked away, never having stopped paddling.
Navi glanced at Alain, who raised his eyebrows, and it was understood: they would get it out of the robot eventually.
Seventeen minutes and thirty-four seconds later Navi posed a question to Alain. “What’s your favourite colour?”
Alain squinted into Navi’s green eyes with his own brown ones. “Green. Yours?”
“Blue.”
Alain looked disappointed.
“Just kidding. Brown.”
Sebastian noted Alain’s resultant smile, and Navi’s response in kind.
The robot that did not want to be called a robot listened to the two kids prattle on with just under two percent of its fractal brain. With most of the rest it calculated complex theorems, as it often did to pass the time. With the percentage that remained it made minute adjustments to the sophisticated internal paraphernalia responsible for orchestrating its paddling, accommodating constantly for oceanic and atmospheric conditions.
All at once Sebastian felt as though it was trying to paddle through concrete. Its circuitry told it that it was still rowing, but its sensory input, including its one remaining eye, proclaimed that it was not. It attempted a self-diagnosis, but that system was no longer working. A simpler test, a smile, failed, before Sebastian remembered that even in the best of health its current face could not smile. Pretty sure that it could usually lift its arms, it found doing so impossible now. Concluding correctly that it was shutting down, it funnelled all remaining power to its emergency beacon. Six seconds later that was the only part of Sebastian that remained functional.
This has an installment of Volume Two of the ongoing serial Captain’s Away! Robo Kun: A Strange Dimensions book.
Also by Joe Mahoney: A Time and a Place
An unlikely hero travels to other worlds and times to save a boy who does not want to be saved in this unique and imaginative adventure, by turns comic and tragic.
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Unnerving turn of events!!