The Beach
Iain M Banks 'Culture' Fan Fiction
I once knew a GCU that had a pet beach that went on forever. Not a virtual environment, I mean an honest-to-goodness physical beach sand, rocks, water, plants, animals - the lot.
Now I know what you are thinking, those GCUs are tiny, barely a megatonne most of them. We all know about the multiple massive environments that the big GSVs maintain, often vast landscapes in a medium or main bay; or in a separate but attached outrigger or a field bubble. I guess this little GCU just wanted to get in on the act too.
To be fair, it didn’t actually go on forever - it occupied the rear compartment which had been given an organic looking extension looking from the outside a bit like an insect’s thorax. Inside a careful arrangement of rocks, screening plants, fields and projection screens provided a pretty convincing impression of a distant horizon and some tricks of forced perspective made it seem like the landscape extended much farther to the sides - at least to those of us viewing the spectrum of visible light. As the GCU noted, most of the aquatic life used echo or electrical field senses in addition to their eyes and knew perfectly well that they were living in a big tank.
When questioned, the ship gave anwers of variable plausibility for why it chose to haul this not inconsiderable mass across interstellar distances. Sometimes it would suggest that this large body of water was a fire-fighting resource (like it didn’t have a hundred better ways to do that) and would offer the questioner a species / civilizational appropriate example as a justification. For it me it was Frank Lloyd-Wright putting Koi ponds in the lobby of the Grand Imperial Hotel in Japan.
Sometimes it would claim that it was an environmental life support back up system. In the event of a total system shutdown, say a nearby nuclear blast causing an EMP (like even the humblest module wouldn’t be bothered by that), or say, having all its processing resources co-opted by a hegemonising swarm then the oxygen-breating crew would be able to survive (or at least respirate) for months based solely on the autonomous eco-system cycles so carefully put into place.
Other times, and more believably perhaps, the ship would just say that it simply enjoyed the challenge of designing a fully functional set of interconnected organic systems that would meld into a stable state with minimal ongoing interventions .A pet vivarium project really. The ship made its challenge somewhat simpler by constructing the vivarium from a single, existing planetary ecology. It had cajoled a nearby super-lifter to bring it a tank of sea water and a selection of sand, rocks and a variety of suspended animation flora and fauna from the tropical zone of an earth-like planet in the Lesser Forghast Cluster. The locals were about to bulldoze the area for a new harbour and hotel complex so it couldn’t even be accused of enivronmental mis-appropriation.
The ship itself, according to some internal artfulness criteria of its own individually placed every plant and rock, judiciously sculpting the landscape like the work of art it was. It also created a semi-chaotic weather system including rare but exciting low hurricane force winds.
It wasn’t truly a closed system of course since it was open to the rest of the ship, the rear crew lounge opened seamlessly into a wooden beach-side bar and thence down to the sand so the atmosphere of the of the ship and its plaything environment did mingle to some extent - not to mention the crew taking regular swims in the “ocean” and shedding all sorts of skin cells and worse that were not native to the original environment.
Moreover, the ship was justifiably proud of its debauched beach parties held whenever it came across another Culture vessel or outpost; and despite needing a small fleet of micro-drones to clean up afterward and recover the remarkable about of detritus that was scattered about - drinking paraphenalia, food scraps, paper streamers, discarded jewellery, carelessly tossed clothing and on regular occasions complete but insensible party-goers drifting in the shallows or draped across rocks.
Of course given the small physical size of the actual beach area party attendance was strictly limited and by invitation of the ship only - something that it used shamelessly to extract favours, promises and juicy gossip from prospective and eager guests.
Most of the time however the beach literally looked after itself, a myriad of creatures large and small locked in eternal combat or symbiotic cooperation depending on their roles, unknowingly working together to maintain the long-term stasis.
Despite that occaisional storm the original climate had been warm, with mild breezes and much bright yellow sunshine so that’s how I mainly experienced the beach. I used to enjoy sitting at a bar stool simultaneously being back somewhere safe and familiar and at the same time knowing that we were actually in deep space with all that black unknown around us. Given the incredible variation in colour and body pattern of terrestrial tropical fish, birds and small mammals the creatures here didn’t really seem all that “alien” to me and I could watch humming bird analogues flitting serenely amongst the extravagant flowers that lined the back of the beach and spilled into the bar area.
I’d never seen the birds in any other part of the vessel, nor indeed crash into the sky projection. On enquiring the ship explained that it had enclosed the vivarium in a mass-sensitive directional treacle field. Anything smaller than, say, a cat, on encountering the field would continue to move its legs, wings or other motile appendages as much as it wanted to without making any actual progress so would soon get bored and turn around. Larger masses, such as the crew were assumed to be sufficiently intelligent to be allowed the free run of both ship proper and the beach environment and could decide on their own cogniszance whether they wanted to throw themselves headlong into the projection screens, and indeed frequently did so during the wilder parties.
For the party held in my honour, shortly after I had first joined the vessel the ship had, very thoughtfully, got in touch with the original contact unit and obtained a detailed catalogue of my home planet’s various liquid intoxicants, not just the chemical composition but the precise shape and labelling of the bottles and typical delivery quantities and mechanisms. Afterwards some of these bottles still adorned the shelvess at the back of the bar and I think that the ship, in the form of its silver-skinned avatar quite enjoyed the idea of making cocktails as it never ceased in trying to find customers to try out its mixology skills upon.
I do sometimes wonder what happened to that GCU after I left it, and where it is now. It has been more than a normal human lifetime since I moved on (yes, I have taken the nano-medical interventions). In theory pretty much any information that the Culture has is freely available to anyone that asks for it. The current location of a System Class GSV is both hard to hide and their itineries are published some years in advance anyway. For the smaller vessels, those with a single controlling mind it can be harder to find out what is going on. It is quite possible that I could send a message to the home GSV (if I could remember its name, it will eventually come to me) and find out almost instantly the current status. It is also possible that the GCU has changed its affiliation, been lost to accident, gone rogue or the mind simply felt that it had sufficiently paid back its creation debt to the culture (even though there isn’t really such an obligation), signed off the roster of active ships and taken itself off into the dark black yonder. What’s more, given the devious and/or playful nature of ship minds it could make the records appear that any of these things has actually happened and in reality be engaged in some clandestine operation for Special Circumstances. So yes, in theory I could ask after it but I also knew I could never really trust any answer I got back.
So I don’t ask, and I just like to think that somewhere out there in the galaxy is a ship with a bulbous butt inside of which is a bar stocked with drink bottles from old Earth on a beach that goes on forever.