A Goddess's Elegy to Lt David Corwin
Warning!! This piece was penned while under the influence of mind-blowing psychiatric medication. I'd like to thank my malfunctioning endochrine system for inspiring me with such peculiar thoughts in the first place, and the manufacturers of Chlorpromazine, Buspirone, and Dotheiepin Hydrochloride for rendering me sufficiently sedated to imagine that publishing those thoughts on the Internet was in some way a good idea...
Greetings traveller. I am Techette, the numinous incarnation of C & C. I dwell amongst the circuitry and systems, in the electronic interfaces, and the mysterious hinterlands of the Primary and Secondary targeting consoles. I keep a benevolent watch upon your tracking monitors, shield your docking beacons from harm, hold your comm. systems within my benign embrace, and prevent your doors from sticking. For 20 years I inhabited the Observation Dome of the E.A. space station Babylon 5, guarding it and all who worked there from misfortune - intangible, indispensable, and ignored by all around me. I was not however, completely alone.
I am one of many who hail from a region beyond the fringes of known space, and far outside the scope of human understanding. We are the Technical Deities, custodians of all spacecraft, colonies and stations. The Babylon Project represents one of the less auspicious chapters in our history of guardianship - we were aware of its importance, yet failed to save the first 3 Stations. In our defence I should point out that we cannot bear full responsibility for the error. Blame the First Ones, for it was they who insited on including the Vorlons in our oversight committee.
The Vorlons do not enjoy much popularity amongst the Elder Races. Needlessly arcane and impossibly cryptic, they are also demanding and acquisitive in the extreme, a combination unlikely to promote enjoyable labour relations. Our diligent Order would expend a vast amount of time and effort managing the development of some spacecraft or another, dispatch one our finest Deities to oversee it's running, then discover that the Vorlons had removed it, or transformed it into a religious site in honour of the Great God Boojie. Naturally once the Vorlons had joined, the Shadows demanded membership as well. You can imagine the impact this had on our decision making process. There were food fights in the committe chamber, there was mooning from the gallery, and every proposal the comitte made was met with threats of galactic warfare - as you can appreciate, very little was accomplished for centuries. After 5 millennia spent faxing the Vorlon homeworld for a definition of " The Time of Stuffing", the Committee's Chair Being developed some sort of mental aberration, and began masquerading as a vacuum cleaner called Clive. Our system descended into chaos, and station after station, ship after ship was lost. Driven half to distraction and almost crippled with disgrace, we locked the Shadow and Vorlon delegates in a cupboard, and phoned up Lorien. He wasn't too pleased by the turn of events, but once we had explained our predicament, he agreed to remove the Vorlons and the Shadows elsewhere. They weren't removed quite far enough for anyone's liking, but at least we could begin to refurbish our hopelessly disrupted system. We introduced the method of One Deity One Vote to expedite the process of assigning curators to vessels, and in consequence I managed to reach the 4th Babylon Station in the Earth Year 2254, before disaster struck.
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My stay upon Babylon 4 was a brief one - I was present for less than 24 hours before discovering that my services aboard the station were no longer required. This is the kind of thing that can seriously undermine a Goddess's sense of reality. HQ didn't even extend the courtesy of telling me this themselves - they left that task to Zathras. After 4 hours spent bewailing his "very sad life", he informed me that the edifice was to undergo a temporal relocation, and that another had been selected to oversee the process. To add insult to injury, my replacement was the Goddess Diodea, who Zathras was carrying in one of his electrical screwdrivers. I was horrified! She's a disaster! Incompetent! The Deified equivalent of Windows 95! Allow me to quote you an example. The Mir Space Station - Diodea's last command, endured a litany of disasters, and that incident with the Progress Supply Ship had been the final straw. Diodea was meant to be supervising an intricate manual docking procedure, but was instead more pleasantly engaged in contemplating a very different docking procedure - one which presumably involved herself and Michael Foale. The only reason she'd escaped expulsion from the Union of Technical Deities was her fondness for making regular and very detailed explorations of the Chief Being's immaterial undergarments, and yet she was to be entrusted with the transporting of a station the size of a small island back into the mists of time! I can only assume that the Chief Being was trying to get rid of her before his wife found out. I arrived back at our home domain in a less than gracious frame of mind, and registered a very lengthy complaint upon the matter, but was assured that guardianship of the next Babylon Station would be mine.
It was a further 3 years until the completion of Babylon 5, and although less imposing than its predecessor, it was still magnificent in every respect. I knew my time of arrival had been carefully calculated to show the place to its best advantage - but I couldn't help but be impressed by the scene that confronted me. The station was emerging from eclipse, one portion harshly sillouetted in the punitive glare of undiluted sunlight, the rest submerged in darkness. Drawing nearer, its shape began to emerge - an engagingly bulbous metal cylinder, spinning with slow, hypnotic regularity against the radiant backdrop of space. I was awestricken by its beauty, and for once commended our youthful Relocation Deity, upon his enthusiasm for the visually dramatic. With quiet excitement, I insinuated myself into one of the communications relays, unnoticed by all those present - save for the young electrician who was working on the device at the time. He felt a soft, refreshing breeze waft across his southerly regions, although I assure you that this was entirely accidental - as a serious and professional Deity, games of "Goose the Humanoid" do not feature prominently on my list of passtimes. I greeted the computer, promised faithfully to try and repair her unfortunate voice, toured the operating systems, and listened with contentment to the seductive cadence of innumerable processors firing and responding in perfect union. To the casual observer, this may seem unduly fanciful - but as a Technical Goddess - I'm obliged to do this sort of thing. It's in my contract.
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A year passed. My days were filled with routine tasks, and insubstantial drudgery - averting technical problems, filtering out unintended swear words from communiqués, preventing Ivanova's hair from getting disrupted during a crisis. Usually these diversions inspired me with joy - they were after all, my raison d'etre. But as the months dragged past, I began to feel an increasing sense of loneliness and dejection. Each day I worked without ease or comfort to ensure the safety of this wonderous creation, yet all who worked there treated it with indifference. I rarely heard a single word of affection for the place, and the endless complaints of disgruntled officers punctured my spirit on a daily basis. It may have had something to do with Ivanova's disposition - but to one whose sole purpose was to nurture and care for this vital post, their denigration of it was mortifying. The physical aspect was just as bad. The staff were all so callous and remote - stabbing the consoles with their stony fingers, leaving me a mass of contusions, overloading the relays, a most uncomfortable experience for one in my position, and upsetting the computer who would then require hours of hugging, reassurance and support. I longed for a companion - someone who loved C & C as I did, who regarded it with equal passion, who wouldn't fling themselves heavily into chairs, with a total disregard for whichever bit of my essence happened to be in there at the time. In 2258 he arrived.
His name was David Corwin, and he was rather attractive, in that odd frail way which humans are. He was quiet and attentive, conscientious and thorough, and while in my eyes his form could never match the elegance of an HP3000, it was pleasing nevertheless. Above all, he was charitable. Had it not been impossible, I would have sworn he detected my presence, for he never exerted bruising pressure on any of the keyboards. He never swore gratuitously at the computer, or maliciously prodded at the monitor controls. He didn't heap reproach upon the defence grid, and was never known to eat garlic bread the night before using a microphone. In a life of chaos and casual violence, Corwin became my oasis. In order to escape the unwitting brutality I received at the hands of less considerate Techs, I increasingly sought refuge in whichever console he was assigned to, enjoying the gentle progress of his digits over the keypad, and the current of his breath passing around the headset. This form of behaviour is positively discouraged by the Order, but it was the best substitute for asprin I have ever found. So foolishly I continued, anticipating with growing pleasure those periods late at night, when the Observation Dome was close to empty, and traffic minimal, when freed from distraction, I could lie quietly within the sanctuary of Corwin's workstation and whisper unheard words of encouragement to him.
Such was my gratitude at his benevolent handling, that I used whatever small means were at my disposal to secure his advancement. I ensured that Corwin's messages would never go awry, and that he would never get inaccurate readings from the jump gate. I endeavoured to calm him during his torturous encounter with ISN - silencing his headset and doing my best to divert Ivanova's attention elsewhere. I saw to it that the defence grid would never malfunction while under his command (Ok - that one time! Even a Goddess can't do much about cockroaches in the wiring), and that the docking information he sent to waiting vessels was correct in every detail. It did not require much effort on my part - he so rarely committed errors to begin with. Appreciation for this loyal, unassuming soul, who treated the equipment of C & C with such care and respect, turned to admiration. Admiration rapidly turned to fondness, and fondness finally escalated into outright infatuation. Unfortunately I was an incorporeal entity, and he would never, could never know that I existed, but it mattered not - I was irretrievably lost. He was my perfect human counterpart - a young man who was as neglected and overlooked, and yet as essential to C & C as I was.
For 20 years my heart was pledged to Lt David Corwin. I worshipped the Jump Gate he so patiently monitored, and awaited his transmissions with breathless devotion. I would have gladly traversed the Methane Toilets without a breather unit to obtain just one synthetic rose. For as long as Corwin remained on Babylon 5, he would do so under my protection.
It is the Earth Year 2001, and gone are my dreams of celestial splendour, and cities among the stars. I now live in a small and unremarkable Personal Computer, in an equally small and unremarkable Irish city. When Babylon 5 was finally decommissioned in 2281, I was heartbroken. After I had performed last rites for the computer, and reluctantly poured myself out into the merciless vacuum of space, my beautiful station was blasted into the stars from whence it came. Along with it vanished every trace of my beloved Corwin, save for what few records I managed to salvage before the explosion. I was crushed, and returned home immediately to plead with the Chief Being for news of his whereabouts. I met with a nothing but a barrage of platitudes about client confidentiality. Prostrate with anguish, I tendered my resignation.
This created a few problems for the Union of Technical Deities, who found the notion of a love stricken Goddess, roaming the galaxy in search of a single human male profoundly disturbing. They couldn't oblige me to resume my duties - in any case I was by now far too unstable to safely care for a space installation of any kind, and was spending my days weeping softly inside a locked toolbox. At a loss, the Union decided upon a drastic course of action. I was to be taken through a temporal rip, and deposited on Earth at a time far in advance of Corwin's existence. I was to scrupulously avoid all forms of spacecraft until such times as I had been rehabilitated - then the union would reconsider my position.
My predicament is not as bad as it might first appear to be. I have a warm processor and a friendly modem for companionship, and a scanner, in case I ever feel the need to work on my tan. Besides, here I have the prospect of recreating some small fragment of my memories - a machine I might use to store those records of my treasured Lieutenant, and where I can live surrounded by the comforting illusion of his presence. The woman who owns the machine is quite receptive to the idea, although, as a precaution I have positioned a cup of real coffee in dangerous proximity to her Motherboard…. just in case she begins to think otherwise. As a final word, I have since discovered the basis of the Vorlons' preoccupation with Stuffing. They own a Paxo factory in Limerick. This revelation has not caused the inhabitants of earth much disquiet, as most of them already suspected that Paxo was not of human origin.