by Karl Beecher
Considering Tyresa Jak's recent arrival, it was a timely reminder of the Collective's attitude to sex. Regularly indulging in realsex led inevitably to monogamy and individualism, everyone knew that. A nation made up of selfish egoists instead of selfless citizens would be doomed. Realsex wasn't technically illegal, but it was unorthodox, which in some ways was worse. Committing a crime might land you in jail, but at least you'd still belong to a community1. Committing a serious unorthodoxy risked banishment, meaning no association would touch you with a ten-metre warp nacelle. Of course, virtusex wasn't quite the substitute it was supposed to be, so lots of citizens occasionally indulged in the real thing. So long as it was a meaningless, shallow one-off, they usually got away with it.
The proposal's defeat showed there were still plenty of principled, publicly-minded citizens in the Collective, able to override their primitive impulses. The usual suspects had voted against advocating realsex: the traditional bodies like the Public Health Syndicate, the Educator's MegaUnion, and the Movie Theatre Worker's Cooperative2. However, it was a narrower defeat than last time. The list of those voting in favour included familiar names like the Association of Prophylactic Manufacturers, but many new organisations had appeared on the list. Perhaps this was actually bad news masquerading as good. Newer associations were usually founded by younger citizens, who seemed increasingly to have less time for the rules and conventions that kept the Collective strong. Robbi was, nominally, a member of that younger generation.
The text vanished from her vision, and she focused on the stars again. Her thoughts drifted automatically back to Tyresa Jak. She should have arrived in the brig by now. What was she doing at this very moment? How did she feel? Might she be thinking about…?
The door buzzer rang out.
She moved away from the viewport and tekapted the door open. It moved aside to reveal Captain Mikka Kliez Four-Six-Four3, her commanding officer. He muttered to himself under his breath as he limped into the room.
"You banishing young ones," he mumbled, looking nowhere in particular. "Younger generation, no respect for rules and conventions…"
He must have heard about the realsex vote too.
In many ways, Captain Kliez was as much a Transhumanist as anyone Robbi knew, a dedicated veteran of the Stellar Forces who'd given forty years and several body parts in service of the Collective. Nevertheless, he had a few strange habits, the cantankerous muttering being one of them. He was also prone to speaking quite frankly on occasion, more so than a Transhumanist probably should. Perhaps it resulted from a few too many knocks on the head or an old neural implant overdue for servicing. He never said anything outrageous, more offbeat than unorthodox. However unconventional, it admittedly proved wise a lot of the time.
As the Captain came closer, the soft light lit up his mature face. Despite his verbal incontinence, he could still keep his expression locked in a blank picture of nothingness like all good Transhumanists.
He ceased his muttering and came directly to the point. "What have you to report on the intruders?"
"Crew of three," replied Robbi. "Including one android. They repeated their protests of being on a mercy mission. One passenger, Colin Douglass, claims to be suffering from a serious disease requiring immediate hospital treatment. He has been taken to the medbay under guard."
"And the other?"
"The android has been placed in secure storage."
"I was referring to the ship's commander, Tyresa Jak."
The faintest rash of goosebumps broke out on Robbi's arm at the mention of Tyresa's name. Thankfully, it was hidden under her uniform. "In the brig. I was about to select someone to question her."
"You believe there's more to her story than she is telling?"
"Likely."
"Hmm." The Captain thought for a moment. "I think it best if you handle her interrogation personally."
"Me?"
"Would you agree?"
Robbi would rather have avoided Tyresa completely, but duty came first. "I'll do as you order, Captain."
"I'm not necessarily ordering you," replied Captain Kliez. Even in the Stellar Forces, which were given special dispensation to organise themselves hierarchically rather than require collective decision-making, officers generally tried to avoid exercising authority. "But I think you would be a wise choice."
"Captain," said Tyresa, "I fear you are unaware of my past dealings with Tyresa Jak."
"Actually, I was already briefed when you were assigned to Cruiser Eighty-Nine. Two years ago, when visiting the Collective, Tyresa Jak seduced you into revealing compromising info. Last year, in return for a pardon, you went to the Alliance and paid her back in kind. Those are the details in brief, correct?"
"Affirmative," nodded Robbi. It was shaming just having the short version recited.
"I fail to see how that presents a problem," replied the Captain. "In fact, that gives you an advantage. You know all about her and her personality already. You can use that info to your benefit when you question her."
"True, Captain, but it goes both ways. Tyresa Jak could use what she knows against me. She is a tricky one, cunning, good at provoking."
There was another reason she hesitated in taking the job. Seeing Tyresa again had reminded Robbi how guilty she felt for what she'd done. By rights, she shouldn't have felt bad at all. She'd settled a score in a game that Tyresa had started. Still, it was probably best to keep that guilty feeling to herself. It wasn't clear what it implied about her attitude towards Tyresa.
"But you are a Transhumanist," Captain Kliez assured her. "Your discipline and emotional control shield you. You may not have been aboard Cruiser Eighty-Nine long, but it is long enough for me to recognise you are a good officer and a good Transhumanist." He paused, as if to form his next words carefully. "If anything, you try too hard."
Try too hard? Such a phrase made no sense. "How do you mean, Captain?" asked Robbi.
"You hold yourself to impossibly high standards. Understandable, not only after the unfortunate incident with Tyresa Jak but also considering your upbringing. It's admirable, but it's an attitude that might cause you problems, not only in your career but in life generally. You strive to be perfect, chasing a level of achievement you cannot attain. Perhaps in facing Tyresa Jak you fear your inner thoughts. My advice? Don't let them paralyse you. We may seek to be governed by rationality, but no Transhumanist is rational to the core. That's impossible, despite what some of us might say."
This sounded like another one of the Captain's frank talks.
"We all experience unorthodox thoughts. We even indulge in unorthodox actions occasionally. A Transhumanist shouldn't think they have to be unerringly rational; they should acknowledge their irrational feelings even as they subordinate them for the good of the Collective. For example…" He glanced over his shoulder towards the door, as though checking it were closed, then turned back to her and continued in a quieter tone. "Have you seen the news about the realsex vote?"
"Affirmative," replied Robbi. "I read it shortly before you arrived."
"Do you like realsex, Commander?"
Robbi's muscles tensed up.
"Don't panic," said the Captain. "I'm not proposing it to you."
She'd never in her life been asked that question, at least not in such a direct way. What was the correct answer? Lying was irrational and immoral, but telling the truth would be to admit a serious unorthodoxy.
"Realsex," she said finally, "is an unorthodoxy, Captain."
"That's not what I asked," replied Kliez.
Robbi swallowed. "Captain, I…I fail to see what—"
He held up a hand. "You don't have to answer. I'm just making a point. I'll answer instead. I enjoy realsex."
Her muscles tensed again. Another formulation of words she hadn't heard outside of a school-age, educational video4.
The Captain went on. "Or, I should say, I enjoyed it. My realsex days are a thing of the past, what with my bionic hip replacement." There was a metal
lic sound as he tapped his hip. "I didn't indulge regularly, but I had my moments. Yet I still think of myself as a good Transhumanist because most of the rest of the time, I maintained my discipline. I never felt any great sense of shame."
"You didn't?" Surprising. How could anyone commit an unorthodoxy without feeling terrible afterwards? "Did you vote against the realsex motion, Captain?"
"Of course I did," he said. "Why did I? A cynic would say that's because votes are public knowledge, and that the day voting in the Collective switches to a secret ballot there'll be orgies in the streets by sundown. Maybe, but I'm certain most Transhumanists feel the same as I do. I happen to believe our rules keep society strong and vigorous, despite our occasional, individual lapses. By the time you get to my age, you've done some bending of the rules, but you still appreciate that's no reason to abandon them."
"Excuse me, Captain, but how does this concern the questioning of Tyresa Jak?"
"Before you can proceed to becoming a senior officer and leading your fellow Transhumanists, you must come to terms with your irrational inner self. That begins by accepting it in the first place and not seeing every little unorthodoxy as an absolute failure. Accept your own irrationality, and you'll be better able to govern it. You won't demand perfection, something neither you nor anyone under your command can realistically deliver. You won't freeze in a crisis, fearful of making a less-than-flawless decision. In short, you'll be a better leader and a better officer.
"Think of the interrogation of Tyresa Jak as the first test of that.”
18
Like most people who suspected they'd ‘entered the Twilight Zone,' Colin had never actually seen The Twilight Zone. It was just a phrase. Despite that, he felt like he was occupying his own personal version of the show.
This week's episode was the one where the producers had decided to go creepy.
He was sitting in a bed in the overly-warm medical bay, staring ahead at grey, metallic walls. At least, he was trying to stare ahead. Every now and then he chanced a quick glance at the doctor examining him.
Doctor Zeddex, the ship's chief medical officer, was in many ways typical. Her mood was crotchety, her bedside manner awful, and she never thought to explain to her patient what the hell she was doing. How much of this behaviour was doctor and how much was Transhacker was difficult to say. She, too, was black-haired and androgynous and sported several visible implants, the sight of which close up made Colin feel nauseous.
But she also had a disconcerting habit of staring into empty space. For the last five minutes, she'd been standing beside the bed and waving a shiny, wand-like device around Colin's cranium. Presumably, it was some kind of scanner, but if so, shouldn't the Doctor be looking at some kind of readout? As far as it was possible to tell, she was staring at a nondescript wall cabinet about twenty feet across the room. And yet, she stared intently as if concentrating, one eye occasionally making the most extraordinary series of twitches.
Several paces behind her stood the security officer who'd brought Colin up from the hangar bay. He, too, stood statuesque, staring blankly into space. Of course, that was part of the job description for a security guard, but he also performed those curious eye twitches.
Maybe I ought to test this, thought Colin.
"So," he ventured. "How are things looking, Doctor?"
Doctor Zeddex, still looking vaguely in no direction, replied, "Which things?"
She seemed rather literal-minded. That had been apparent when Zeddex first introduced herself. "How do you do?" Colin had said. "How do I do what?" the Doctor had replied.
Perhaps better to be specific.
"My disease," said Colin, "How does it look?"
"I am still building up a rendering," the Doctor replied simply. "Please be patient."
"I will," said Colin, "if you be, doctor."
Doctor Zeddex either ignored that lovely little pun or didn't understand it. Probably both.
Colin eyed the security officer again, then turned back to Zeddex. "Is he all right?" he whispered, pointing furtively at the eye-twitching officer.
The Doctor glanced briefly at the man. "I presume so. He has not reported here sick; he is here to guard you."
"I know that," said Colin. "It's just that… he's got a terrible twitch in his eye. I wondered if he had a problem."
"A twitching of the eye is an involuntary side-effect of tekapt," replied Zeddex.
"Tekapt?" echoed Colin. "What's that?"
"Have you never heard of neural implants?"
Colin shook his head.
"Tekapt," Zeddex repeated. "Technical aptitude. It means to use one's neuronic implant to manipulate equipment."
"Neural implant? You mean that man has a…a chip in his head?"
"Of course. Everyone in the Collective has one."
"What is it?"
"A small computer," replied Zeddex, beginning to sound testy. "It interfaces with the brain and allows us to control equipment via thought."
"And you have one too?"
"Affirmative."
"Are you using yours now?"
The Doctor exhaled irritably. "Affirmative. I've tekapted a datalink to the hand scanner, and it relays the output to my ocular implant." She tapped the hand scanner against the monocle-like implant over her eye. "Here."
"Ah," said Colin, it finally making sense. "You mean that's a little screen over your eye?"
"Correct." Zeddex looked at the scanner in her hand and then at Colin's head. She sighed in exasperation. "Now you've made me lose my place. Remain quiet."
Colin apologised as the Doctor resumed scanning, but he couldn't resist more questioning a moment later.
"Doctor," he whispered, as if speaking softly were the same as being quiet. "If that man's using his implant, then what equipment is he using?"
"None. He's probably interfacing with the OmniWeb," explained Zeddex. "Browsing info, checking news, that sort of thing. Although, a young one like him, he's probably accessing PanJoin."
She bared her teeth in disdain.
"PanJoin, what's that?"
"Trash is what it is. Encourages the worst sort of…" She glanced at Colin from the side of her eye. "But then, that's no concern of yours."
Her tone was firm. Maybe he'd hit a sensitive spot.
A couple of moments passed in silence, after which the Doctor began jabbing buttons on her scanner. She made mutterings of "that can't be right" and "what's going on?" She even tried switching to a different scanner, but that didn't seem to satisfy her.
Eventually, something in her vision must have astounded her because she looked down at Colin as one might look at a battleship that had suddenly appeared on top of a mountain in Switzerland.
This probably wasn't good.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I…I'll have to show you on a screen," said Zeddex.
She detached a large flat-screen that was set into the wall behind the bed and swung it round into Colin's view. It showed a cross-section of his brain.
The Doctor pointed to an area near the centre. There, a strange spectral blob flickered and fizzed. "That's the thalamus, where your disease resides. But it's encased in some kind of… energy field."
"That's what Tyresa told me," confirmed Colin. "But what is it?"
"The scanner doesn't know. Its nature is totally unknown to us. It's as though some kind of forcefield has surrounded the diseased cells. And it appears to be…flickering in and out of the spacetime-continuum, like it's not fully in our reality."
"What?" baulked Colin. "You're joking."
"I never joke," she replied.
Looking at her deadpan expression, Colin had never believed anyone more firmly in his life.
"But how is it possible?" he asked.
"I'm a doctor, not a physicist," barked Zeddex. "But it seems to have arrested your disease. It's like…it's like the disease has been put into a mini stasis field."
"Can you still cure it?"
The Doctor looked
at Colin. Her astounded expression morphed into scepticism. "We shouldn't go near it until we've completed a thorough investigation."
She pulled up a chair and parked herself on it.
"You must tell me everything you know about this," Zeddex said, sounding much more like she was giving a command than asking a question. "Where you have been, what you have been doing. Everything."
Colin remembered Tyresa's own command to him shortly before their capture. "Erm…I'm afraid I can't tell you the details. Sorry. They're kind of…secret."
The Doctor's penetrating gaze didn't flicker. She slowly raised a hand towards the security officer and clicked her fingers, as if beckoning him over. The menacing atmosphere was spoiled slightly when the security officer failed to notice this and continued staring blankly ahead in his twitchy-eyed, tekapt trance.
Doctor Zeddex clicked a second time and a third time. When it became clear to her he hadn't noticed, she grimaced at him and clapped her hands loudly together. "Ensign!"
The officer jumped to attention, startled, and stepped over to her side. "Apologies, Doctor."
He regained his composure, mustered up an intimidating face for Colin, and lay one hand on the pistol hanging at his hip.
Doctor Zeddex turned back to Colin and leaned forward. "Now," she said. "Let's hear everything. And leave out no detail. Your life may depend on it.”
19
Robbi Leet stepped out of the elevator. Not far now. The brig was only down the passageway and around the next corner.
Her stomach was fluttering, but she couldn't work out why. It wasn't the guilt, obviously. Guilt always made her shoulders tense up, and her heart feel heavy. This was something else. The nearest situation she could remember was years before, waiting to receive her final grades at the Academy. Was it fear? No, that couldn't be it. The prisoner was no threat. The brig made escape so impossible a microbe would throw up its hands in defeat if it ever tried to get out—assuming it had hands.