If I hadn’t met Calliope Jones, I might even think it was a kind of justice.
“It works,” she said. “And no one suffers.”
I had to tune back my rage to keep from spluttering and was not entirely successful. “That’s not even… The clone suffers.”
“The clone is never aware.”
“The clone is aware enough to dream,” I said. “The clone is aware enough to develop speech centers and a working hippocampus. The clone is aware enough that it counts as a person to me.”
* * *
The most important thing in the universe is not, it turns out, a single, objective truth. It’s not a hospital whose ideals you love, that treats all comers. It’s not a lover; it’s not a job. It’s not friends and teammates.
It’s not even a child that rarely writes me back, and to be honest I probably earned that. I could have been there for her. I didn’t know how to be there for anybody, though. Not even for me.
The most important thing in the universe, it turns out, is a complex of subjective and individual approximations. Of tries and fails. Of ideals, and things we do to try to get close to those ideals.
It’s who we are when nobody is looking.
* * *
I sat down on the bench that I knew would be a step behind me, because this was a virtual world. I let Zhiruo loom over me, and folded my hands.
I said, “I didn’t know you were doing this until recently. But nevertheless I was protecting you. Me, and everybody else in the hospital. You were using us and our reputations as your shield, whether you acknowledge it or not. We’re all tarnished by your act. You put every single one of us at risk, do you understand that?”
“You had nothing to do with it.”
“No one on the outside is going to care about that, Zhiruo. And nobody is going to care about your protestations that they were only clones, that they had no awareness. You had to build them to have some awareness in order for them to grow useable brains.”
“They’re not people!”
It is possible to erase and mortify yourself to the point where you actually make more work for the people around you, because they are constantly doing emotional labor to support you. A well-developed martyr complex becomes a means of getting attention without ever having to take the emotional risks of asking for attention. It’s a tendency, along with self-pity, that I use my rightminding to control. So I didn’t unpack the suitcase full of self-recriminations and fury I was feeling. I didn’t castigate myself to show Zhiruo that however much anybody might punish me for being imperfect, for being involved, I would punish myself faster and more.
I bit my tongue on all of that.
I said, “They’re people. Look at Calliope.”
“I can help you,” she said.
“It’s too late,” I said. “The Synarche and the Judiciary now officially know what’s been going on here. It’s out of my hands, Doc.”
“It’s not illegal,” she said.
“Maybe not,” I said. “But it is scandalous. Which is why you’ve kept it secret. Because I guarantee that public opinion will make sure it is illegal. Probably so fast it’ll happen before we manage to get this hospital fully retrofitted for gravity.”
“What about your reputation? About what you just said? About the hospital’s reputation?”
I pressed my virtual hands against my virtual eyes. It did nothing to relieve the very real headache. I was briefly very glad that I was not the rightminding specialist that was going to have to guide Zhiruo into understanding that what she had done was wrong, then guide her through the process of determining and completing the combination of restorative actions and service that might be required to make reparations for everything she had done. It wasn’t illegal—but I bet it would be before the Synarche’s General Council recessed again.
“I guess we both have some work to do,” I said. Zhiruo was somebody else’s problem now, and I didn’t feel bad about that at all. I just wanted to get away from her. Right now, though, I had to go put an ayatana on.
And find out what Helen wanted to borrow my exo for. If she was ready to tell.
CHAPTER 28
I ENTERED STARLIGHT’S PARK THROUGH A door that irised half-open and then stuck. I stepped high like a prancing pony, ducked my head, and jump-climbed through as quickly as possible, without touching the edges. I wanted to keep my torso intact, and all my limbs. I guess we were fortunate that Starlight seemed to be the only physical sentience since the Darboof who was affected by the meme. But then, Starlight was mostly made of wood, which could be interpreted as a construction material. And Starlight was almost completely integrated into the hospital’s physical… er… plant.
At least their brain wasn’t etchable crystal, like the poor Darboof. They could still think, and communicate.
I was rehearsing the conversation to come in my head. I wanted and I did not want to have it, both with equal fervor. Perhaps I should say that I was eager to have it over with.
Starlight was not doing well. Even before I approached the canopy, I could tell. The weight of crystallizing leaves dragged the great tree’s canopy down—or up, from the tree’s perspective, since Starlight grew roots-toward-the-hub in defiance of local standards of direction. Leaves needed light, and light was on the outside. It was irrelevant that weight was on the outside, too.
What concerned me the most were the places where boughs had cracked under the mass of all that silicon. Some big branches had already snapped, and either hung suspended by shreds of bark or lay scattered on the crystal underfoot.
I was wearing an ayatana for Starlight’s species. It was probably the most pleasant one I’ve ever worn, to be honest, although my body felt weird and squishy, respiration was extremely odd, and I was self-conscious of the whorfling noises I kept making with every breath in or out. I also had an overwhelming urge to wave my limbs in time with the breeze. Even though there wasn’t any.
I didn’t need the ayatana to tell me that the administrator was desperately ill.
The outer windows seemed to be holding up so far: no cracks or chips evident. They were durable, but I have lived as long as I have lived in part by never trusting the integrity of a damaged structure too far.
I triggered my hardsuit, except for the helmet, and waited while it grew around me. If the pressure dropped, it would finish the seal on its own. If another limb dropped from the tree and crushed me… well, my problems would be over. I decided to worry about that some other time. And if I died before I got around to worrying, there was already more important unfinished business on that to-do list anyway.
After a few moments, the administrator had not acknowledged me. Maybe it would help if I yelled.
Does it ever help if one yells?
“Starlight,” I said. “Are you there?”
The translated voice in my head, when it came, seemed creaky and slow. [Dr. Jens. How may we assist you?]
“It’s how I can help you,” I said. “I came to tell you that we’ve developed a treatment for afflicted AIs. Dr. Zhiruo was our test case, and she’s responding well. We are treating Afar and Linden next. If all goes well, you should have Linden back very soon.”
[Well done,] the tree chimed. [Please be aware that it is not yet safe to lift the quarantine.…]
Fine dust drifted over my head. I put my hand over my mouth and nose. Silicosis would be a quick way to needing a pair of vat-grown lungs my own self.
I knew that. I couldn’t lift the quarantine while this was going on. So now we had to cure this. But first, there was something I needed to report on.
Better done than danced around. “I know about the clones.”
A great sigh rustled over me. [Have you told anyone?]
“A Judiciary AI. The shipmind of I Rise From Ancestral Night. And put him in touch with Sally and with Dr. Zhiruo. I also told O’Mara. Steps will be taken. I imagine Dr. Zhiruo will be investigated and reassigned.”
And probably have her programming ad
justed after an intensive course with an AI psychologist. I couldn’t imagine the Judiciary just… turning her loose to wreak similar havoc elsewhere.
[Good,] Starlight said. [And the saboteurs?]
“I found them,” I said. “Some of them. Not the entire… Look, I think there’s a pretty large cabal. I interviewed the ones I located. They did not threaten me. Their plans got… a little out of hand.” My gesture took in the cracked branches, the downed limbs.
Starlight found a chuckle somewhere. [We’re glad to hear it wasn’t intentional. The problems will be resolved? There will be consequences?]
“Judiciary is following up on the rest of the conspirators. There will be consequences. I believe they will all be located,” I said. “You guessed that they were trying to draw attention to Zhiruo’s private protocols?”
[The incidents were localized in a suggestive way. Draw attention… no. We assumed they were attacking the protocols.]
“They didn’t realize that you and O’Mara were already—” I stopped. In on it wasn’t exactly correct. “They didn’t realize that you already knew what was going on and couldn’t stop it.”
[Their faith in the system is touching.]
I sighed. “As near as I can reconstruct, when Big Rock Candy Mountain’s crew contracted a pandemic, the captain ordered them all into cold storage. He got… a little strange, all alone. And altered the program on the ship’s AI in order to create a kind of guardian bot that first bullied his incapacitated crew into the pods, and then… guarded them. This worked out as well as mad science usually does. Time passed. That bot came in contact with the virus the saboteurs had set up as a trap for Dr. Zhiruo, to overwrite her protocols and force her to confess her sins—”
[Ambitious.]
“A little too ambitious,” I agreed. “The infection of the machine must have been intentional, because they needed the machine to make sure we took the right cryo casket.”
[It was an overcomplicated plan, and it went horribly wrong.]
“It was. It did. The conspirators that I interviewed have, however, surrendered. They are cooperating with the treatment of the affected AIs.”
[Good. Then we can rest.]
“Don’t you dare.”
A pause. Then, [Excuse me?]
“Don’t you dare give up on me,” I said.
[Llyn,] the tree said gently. [We’re dying.]
“And I’m a fucking doctor,” I said. “Don’t you dare give up on me. I will put this place to rights if it kills me.” I took a deep breath. “Anyway, Helen has been through this before. And Helen and I have a plan.”
* * *
It was a terrible plan, but that’s par for the course around here. We didn’t have a better one, and with the meme eating Core General from the inside out, our options were either to put off acting until we either starved or the hull cracked open or we thought of something less radical… or to take a risk and maybe have time to try something else if it failed and we weren’t dead after.
I sent for Helen. She must have been waiting outside the broken door, because in less than a minute, she was beside me. She plopped herself on the crystal of the hull immediately, as if she sat down on the bodiless depths of space every dia.
Although, come to think of it, she was a space ship. Even if she was a differently embodied space ship for the time being.
I reached into the ayatana—only one ayatana, thank the space goblins—for a better sense of Starlight’s anatomy. I reached out and took Helen’s hand. It still felt weird, but given who I was sharing my brain with, no weirder than my own body.
I looked up at Starlight. “It’s not just you, you know. The whole hospital is in danger.”
A rustle that was not words answered. And then words. [What about… the crew of Afar?]
“The first one to undergo surgery is awake,” I said. “With limited deficits. It’s going to be—”
I couldn’t say it was going to be all right.
“The prognosis is good,” I finished.
Starlight laughed. [Our prognosis is not good, Dr. Jens.]
“I am,” I said definitively, “a rescue specialist. I am also the only person we know of, other than Helen, who has managed to come into direct contact with this thing and find a way out again. We have the skills, Starlight.”
[We do not doubt your capabilities.] They sighed, wind through leaves, with a strange crystal edge to it. [We are tired and in a lot of pain.]
“Sibling,” I said, “I feel you.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Helen said. “We have to take on the meme, and the machine the meme is building, and disentangle it from your cellular structure. And once we learn how to do it here, we can apply that knowledge to getting it out of my own ship.”
[And how do you propose to accomplish that? If we could access its processing pathways—if we could even find them—we think we could fight it. But it’s building its own parallel infrastructure through ours, and in fact disassembling ours to accomplish this.]
Starlight rattled their crystallizing leaves for emphasis. Something cracked, and broken pieces tinkled.
I winced and held up one hand. “Please don’t harm yourself. We have a plan. We’re going to break into the machine with”—I waved—“my exo.”
* * *
What happened next involved a lot of tubes and wiring. Well, to be absolutely precise, what happened next in a rigorous sequence of events was a long walk through corridors with flickering, unsettling lighting, down to Cryo, where we met Carlos and Rilriltok. O’Mara had left: I assumed they were back in their office, coordinating treatment efforts on the other AIs and continuing support for Zhiruo. The fact of the matter was that now that we had the base code to work from, and the antivirus, once we could get the paralyzed AIs back online they were more than capable of handling their own defense. It was a matter of… well, I’m an organics doc. So I’m going to cast this in terms that make sense to me.
It was a matter of giving them a vaccination, so they could build their own antibodies to the problem, and adapt those antibodies as the problem evolved. That, and giving them a little platform of clear space to assemble their formidable resources on, and to sally forth to fight from.
I lay down in the cryo pod—Dwayne Carlos’s cryo pod, for a closer connection to the machine. I remembered how I had used my relationship with my exo to stand firm against the machine before, to weasel myself and Calliope out of its clutches, and reviewed the tactics I had used. It would be better prepared this time, I was sure.
And this time I had Helen.
There you go again, deciding to trust somebody you don’t really know.
Well, if it all went wrong, I could have the comfort of knowing I’d had one foot out the door the whole time. Maybe, before I died, I could mutter a single, ringing I told you so.
I was plastered all over with sticky disks, and Helen, sitting on the edge of the cryo pod, bristled with wires. Rilriltok was making the final, tricky, hair-fine connections directly into my fox and exo.
The door slid open and Goodlaw Cheeirilaq strode in, feathery feet clacking on the tiles, wing undercoverts showing flashes of fiery red and yellow. If I had had to guess, this was the Rashaqin body language for I am extremely pissed off and about to do something about it. I didn’t have to guess, though, because the instant Cheeirilaq entered, Rilriltok ducked itself entirely behind me.
I ought to arrest the lot of you, it said.
I tried to sit straighter in my hedgehog bristle of connective devices. “Probably,” I said. “What would the proximate cause be?”
It fiddled its forelimbs, as upright in posture as it could be, given the height of the ceiling. I wasn’t sure if it was counting up different offenses, or if it was picking out which one outraged it the most.
You concealed evidence leading to the identity of saboteurs!
“I brought that evidence to O’Mara. What else?”
A raptorial forelimb snapped out, so fiercel
y I thought it likely to sever my leads or possibly even me. Cheeirilaq had better control than that, though. It stopped a few centimeters from my chest. You’re about to endanger this entire facility with some… some primate shenanigans and untested protocols.
Rilriltok peered over my shoulder: just the eyes. Begging your pardon, friend Cheeirilaq. But the hospital is already in danger. Or did you have an uneventful trip here? One involving smoothly functioning equipment and reliable lighting?
Cheeirilaq loomed, then settled back slightly. It didn’t exactly have haunches, but the long legs folded to lower its abdomen. I… did not.
“Look,” I said. “We have—”
Carlos stepped between me and Cheeirilaq, interrupting me as if I had not been speaking. “We have to do something now. The equilibrium is punctuating, and if we don’t deal with the machine immediately… we’re all going to die. Ask me how I know.”
That man. Was so damned annoying sometimes.
But Cheeirilaq was listening to him. And to Helen, when she added, “If we can get the machine to de-integrate from the hospital’s structure, to stop disassembling the hospital… Well, the hospital is going to need structural repairs. But I’ve seen what the machine does to a habitat on the premise that it’s making the inhabitants safe forever. And it doesn’t even seem to have those constraints on this station. We cannot allow that to happen here.”
The extra processing power was definitely making a difference.
“I did it once, on a small scale,” I offered. “I think we can do it again.”
The Goodlaw gave one of its enormous highly oxygenated sighs. When we’re all dead and floating in space, I will save my last transmission to remind each and every one of you that I told you this was a terrible idea.
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