Starvation Diet

By Asi Hart

Jonas wakes up on a huge spaceship with 7 billion other people.
An alien AI informs him that he is the captain of the ship, and it is his job to get them all to their destination alive.
The catch is, there's only enough food on board to feed them all for half the trip.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asi Hart
• Release date: Jun 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201721633

Asi Hart

Asi Hart is the best Sci-Fi author south of the North Pole.

Book preview

Day one

JONAS WOKE UP IN A small, unfamiliar room.  It was well lit, but featureless and grey, containing just a simple bed, beside which was a small desk with a chair in front.  Jonas rose up and looked around.  There was a closed off lavatory there.  That was good, he needed that.  Turned out there was a shower also, which was a surprize.

Once Jonas had used the lavatory, he went back into the main room.  He found that a small plate with what looked like oatmeal had been deposited on his desk, along with a glass of water and a small plate on which was some cube that he guessed was food.  It turned out to be compressed meat.  At least, that's what it tasted most like.

When he'd dined on this, an unfamiliar voice spoke to him from somewhere: I see you're up.  How would you like to lose some weight?  The voice spoke in some unfamilar accent; it was kind of flat like it was computer generated.  It continued: "you don't deed to answer.  You are onboard a starship, headed to a planet where there is no sapient life.  You and whoever survives the trip will be occupying it. 

Whoever survives?

The voice ignored his question and continued: it is like paradise, you will love it.  It will take fifty years, but only in outside time.  Onboard you will only experience a thousand days.

That's nice, Jonas said sarcastically.

We are glad that you feel that way.  But you are not alone.  With you are all humans.  We picked them all up, almost every human on Earth.  Seven billion of them. 

Wait... seven billion?  How did you come to that number?  I mean, human's aren't exactly that many, are they?

No.  Perceptive of you.  Most people don't realize how many people are on the planet.  Anyway, to answer your question, we just skipped all children under the age of 5.  Also, no more will be born on the way.  We have technology to take care of that.  There are contraceptives in the food.  It is unavoidable.  All of you have been placed in rooms like this one, one room per person.

Who are you?

I'm the ship's AI.

So everybody is getting this little speech from you?

No.  Just you.

Jonas frowned.  He asked: why me?

You've been assigned to be captain of this ship.

But...

No but, interrupted the alien voice: this ship is on autopilot.

Yet I'm the captain?  The captain of what then, if I don't get control of where we're going?

Look around.  You are already familiar with the bed.  There's the comfy chair, there you have a TV, where you can watch every movie we bothered to download.  There are months of them.  And probably a decade's worth of TV series.  And there is music and a computer library, text and audio.  You can go outside if you want, there are things you can do outside, like look at the stars, talk to the other passengers, play chess with one another, or cards, or whatever.  You'll probably need to take turns mopping the floor as time goes by.  And there is the food dispenser.

Jonas looked at a little slot on the wall.  It opened and the empty dish disappeared into it.  You didn't answer my question, he said.

The AI continued, ignoring his input: "food will only appear on that desk after you have decided how large the portions are to be, and once the door to the room has been closed with only one person inside.  Twice a day this happens.  The door cannot be opened from either side while food is in the room.  We figure that if all the food on board the ship is dispensed equally to all passengers, all of you will die from malnutrition before you reach your destination. 

This is why we are talking to you.  That's what you're the captain of.  You will be controlling the food supply.  From here.  Right now there are 1.750.000.000 tons of food onboard.  That's enough for everybody to survive on full rations for five hundred days."

Full rations?

Full rations are 500 grams of solid food.  Everybody can have up to two liters of water daily.  The water is recycled, and will never run out, but with the current population there will be shortages if everyone tries to drink more than two liters at the same time.

Good to know.

"This trip is expected to take at least one thousand days, or nearly three years.  You will decide who starves on the way.  Starving at the destination is optional.  You can pick out individuals or races or age groups, any parametre that you can think of.  Manage the food right, and as much as 50% of humanity might reach the destination.

I know what you're thinking: you think you can get out of this, get someone else to choose for you.  But no, the ship's systems have been hardwired to accept only your input.  Kill yourself, and the system receives no orders and everybody starves.

We suggest you keep this information to yourself.  You don't want everybody in the world begging at your door."

The voice went silent.

Jonas sat down and took a few deep breaths.  This had to be some kind of a joke.  He looked at the door.  He would go outside, and someone would be there and yell I pranked you! at him.  He stood up and slid open the door and exited.

The view that greeted him was both strange and imposing.  He was on a sort of balcony or a walkway, he could see another one similar to it further out and up, on what looked like a long windowless condominium apartment block.  There was someone there, looking straight back at him.  They waved at each other.  There was another large condo block above and beyond, and another one above that, and so on in the sky above.  He realized that he was in a huge Ferris-wheel made out of these three storey apartment complexes.  There were probably ten or twelve of them completing the circle, all evenly spaced, with each section being at least two-hundred metres long.  The buildings were hanging from thin wires, from a massive looking axis that ran the length of the whole ship.  To one side there was nothing, just a solid wall, overgrown with leaves, and a platform around it, where he could see a number of people defying his perception of gravity as they walked around the circumference.  In the other direction he could see another similar wall further off.  It appeared that he was in a section with three of these apartment-block Ferris-wheels, spaced apart by fifteen metre strips of grassy parks that went around the whole thing.  He could see people there, impossibly standing upside down and on the walls like it was nothing.  Looking down from his balcony he could see space.  Stars, just flowing along below him.  That was definitely the strangest lawn he'd ever seen.

Jonas stood at the balcony and contemplated his situation.  The scenery was bizarre and mind-boggling enough to keep him occupied for a few minutes.  He walked to the park nearer to him, it appeared to be the larger of the two, and walked around the circumference to calm his mind and take in the situation.  That, and he just had to try walking around this thing, it was just so weird.  He always felt like he was walking on an even surface as he walked around the entire circumference, even though he could see the upward cuve