The Colony Ships were designed to sustain a large community for decades, centuries, millennia. They were designed to allow a society to grow and flourish within their hulls, so that the people they carried would be adequately prepared for the struggle once the ship reached its destination. There was room for the population to grow, although birth rates were strictly controlled - all couples who wanted to have children needed to go through a rigorous process of vetting and suitability tests. Whilst many things on board were automated and droids did much of the maintenance related to the ship’s safe functioning, the colonists had initially been hand picked and trained in the various skills that would be required in order to forge a new civilisation. There were scientists and technicians, chefs and lawyers. There were even sportspeople and salesmen. In theory there should also have been actors, artists and craftsmen. In theory.

When you take a cross-section of a population as a whole, there will inevitably be quirks and anomalies. It’s why small villages should be passed through. It’s why sample surveys are largely pointless and all marketing is guesswork. It’s why sociology, for the most part, is a waste of time and effort. It’s also why, on the Colony V, within a generation there unfortunately existed such a minuscule pool of creative talent that most colonists would rather eat their own livers with a spoon than listen to/watch/plug into anything produced on board. There used to be a theatre company on the ship, but once the first generation had retired the amusement value of watching well intentioned descendants massacre masterpieces became tired after the first decade or so. The chief robotic engineer at the time, Davey Squatthrust, became an instant folk here the day he petitioned the ship to re-wire a group of service droids to become model actors. The ‘Robot Players’ became so wildly popular that they were very soon playing several shows a night, with the added advantages that they never got tired, sick, or demanded outrageous riders. Most popular of all was their biennial foray into Shakespeare, where the bard’s greatest masterpieces benefited from their light touch and confident delivery.

On-board sociologists have been know to comment that, given the misfortune of the creative DNA deficit on the ship and the absolute necessity of some form of escapism for the colonists, without the robot players society on board could run the risk of breaking down completely.

“What do sociologists know anyway!” muttered Sean Oliveson, as he whacked an immobile Robot Player with his spanner.

He was a second class maintenance engineer on the robotics team, which although not a glamorous role was very necessary. Which is why he did it. That’s how things work on Colony V. That said, it was Sean who requested the job at the theatre, working with old Davey on the Robot Players. It wasn’t so much the robots that fascinated him. For Sean it was about the industry, it was about the ART. He still watched footage on his entertainment screen of the days when people had been good actors, back on Earth. Before The Emergency, before Martial Law. Before this.... he glanced around him at the cool composite floor of his maintenance shop at the side of the theatre, and the at the cool (albeit wonderfully expressive) eyes of the Robot Player to which he was attending.

He knew, of course, why people no longer ‘trod the boards’ (as theatre luvvies like himself called it). Whenever he asked older members of the crew just how bad the human actors could have been, and why they couldn’t return one day, he met with raised eyebrows and sympathetic patronising smiles, as if the answer should have been obvious. The answer wasn’t obvious to Sean. His secret ambition was to act, to rise above convention and tread the boards, just as the great Jason Donovan once did. He would watch the Robots at work, learn what he could from them, and grow with them, so that he could appreciate the subtle nuances of language and diction in the way they did.

There was just one problem. The Robots didn’t work any more.

Sean had got away with this for a week now, claiming ad hoc that the robots urgently required ‘scheduled maintenance’. It wasn’t totally his fault. OK so maybe he had stored all of the robots in the maintenance pit contrary to proper regulations. And perhaps the reason for storing them there was an informal gathering of his closest buddies, in lieu of a stag night ahead of his wedding. And perhaps, yes, he should have observed guidelines concerning such gatherings in the workplace and the consumption of alcohol. After the event it’s easy to say he should have removed the robots from the pit once his little brother, Danny, had somehow managed to release a can of hydraulic fluid into it. Most damningly, perhaps Sean could be viewed as entirely culpable for what happened the next morning. He woke up sprawled on the maintenance shop floor, suffering from an evil bootleg turnip wine hangover (turnips being one of the few vegetables suitable for hydrophonic production). As he painfully dragged himself feetwards, he blearily knocked a precariously balanced and unfortunately live drill into the pit full of fluid and priceless robots. The electric current swiss-cheesed each and every one of all their memory circuits, in a way that would have been difficult for even the most determined saboteur to wilfully re-produce.

Of course, in Sean’s mind he was entirely a victim of circumstance. But most people on the ship probably WOULD blame him. If they knew. Now there were a lot of things Sean didn’t know, but he knew enough to know the following things. He knew that the robots would repair themselves eventually. They were clever like that. Their circuit memory function could nano-repair within….. well he guessed six weeks. He also knew that six weeks or similar without a performance could not be credibly attributed to ‘scheduled maintenance’. Inevitably the media would come knocking on the theatre manager’s door. Eventually they would find out the truth. He would be busted down to toilet tech and become a pariah, destined to be prodded with all manner of pointy things and glowered at by children in between unblocking toilets. Well, he couldn’t have that – he had ambitions, and a family. A further thing that Sean knew didn’t really count for much, given the circumstances. Sean knew that old Davey would have known what to do, if he had been there. He wasn’t there though. He was dead in fact, and had been for 6 months.

“Oh dear” thought Sean. And went home.

Sean’s brother Danny knew. He was a master spy, eavesdropper and mischief-maker, and he often followed Sean because Sean offered terrific entertainment value. And he didn’t mind, because he could see the future through the eyes of a blind optimist; he saw only opportunity and excitement in the face of the impossible odds and near certain disaster. In the way that only 16 year olds do.