A Printer's Choice

by W. L. Patenaude

  Father McClellan opened the door to his apartment and welcomed Elaina Jansen. He had been working with Jack and Chrissy on preparations for Holy Week, which would begin in four days with Palm Sunday. He had been making his way to the Spinside when he got word that the engineer wanted to talk. Though tired, he had happily agreed, and now he welcomed her with appreciation.

  As always, Jansen carried herself with elegance, but this evening her eyes were tired. She thanked McClellan for his time and handed him a small, but heavy, decorative bag.

  “It’s an unofficial thank you for all you’ve done,” she said. “And to celebrate Clarke’s waking. I’m told the doctors are hopeful.”

  “They are,” McClellan said. “Praise God.”

  Jansen looked away. “And praise the doctors,” she said.

  “Of course. God has blessed them with great skill.”

  Jansen gave a look of disapproval before offering a faint smile. “Regardless, it’s good to hear that something has turned out well. No—I should say that two things have gone well. Your talks the past few days of unity and, as you say, loving thy neighbor have calmed what I feared would become a terrible situation. Many of the builders listen to you. Please know that I—and the Engineering Council—are sincerely grateful.”

  McClellan gave a small nod of appreciation and opened the gift. Grand Traverse Distillery straight rye whiskey—2054, the year he’d been born.

  He grinned. “Thank you, Elaina. This is very generous. And a very rare vintage.”

  “So I’ve learned,” Jansen said. “It occurred to me that you should have your own supply. You can’t keep running to the Spinside, or to my home, for a drink, although you are always welcome.”

  McClellan appreciated the words more than the whiskey. “I’ll add this to my collection,” he said, prompting a curious look from the engineer. He led her to his sitting room, which had returned to its original function with Bauer in better quarters. McClellan went over to a small cabinet and removed a half-full bottle from a more recent year. “I never travel without it,” he said. “This came with me on the Aesir. My archbishop brought up a bottle, too—although we both may have forgotten to declare them.”

  Jansen rolled her eyes and sat in one of the small chairs. “I should realize by now that we engineers don’t always know what’s happening around us—or what’s coming our way. Well, in any event, I am happy I can help with the supply.”

  “Would you like a glass? It’s all I have. No fixings for martinis. Sorry.”

  Jansen thanked McClellan when he handed her the drink. After a somber “Cheers,” she looked down and contemplated her glass. “Speaking of the archbishop, I understand that he is returning to Boston on Saturday. I shall miss him. Or I should say I shall miss him keeping you in line.”

  McClellan laughed. He took a seat across from Jansen, and after savoring a mouthful of whiskey said, “I’ll miss him, too. But it won’t be for long. My reservation for Earth is also set. I’ll stay for the octave of Easter. Then after long overdue visits to Iowa and Michigan, I’ll get back to my parish before the good archbishop assigns it to someone else.”

  Jansen smiled fleetingly. “Well, before he leaves, we must have a dinner at my home. Please do say you both can make it.”

  “I’d like that. And I can speak for my archbishop. It would be our pleasure. Mind if I bring Jack and Chrissy? They deserve a night out.”

  “The two students?” she said. “Well, it would be another first. But yes, of course.”

  She sipped her drink and looked away, surveying the small room, pausing at the crucifix.

  “May I ask how Mizuki Sasaki is doing?” McClellan asked. “She put up quite a fight when she was being arrested.”

  Jansen took a moment to answer. “About as well as can be hoped. Her physical injuries are mending. Her emotional wounds are deeper, though. I don’t know that she’ll ever recover from learning that her friend Andrew Pavić was responsible for her brother’s death. Zhèng won’t allow memory treatments until the case files are closed—and the longer we wait, well, these types of memories can be difficult to remove.”

  McClellan nodded. “Mizuki will be better off for facing this. Grieving has a distinctive way of healing. I’d be happy to speak with her if that will help.”

  “I don’t see how it would,” Jansen said. “But the offer is appreciated. On the matter of suffering, however, let’s just say that you and I disagree. During your time with us, there is much about your faith that I have grown to appreciate—even admire. Your acceptance of misery, however, is beyond me.”

  “Elaina, I don’t accept it because I enjoy it. I don’t seek it out. But as hard as we try, suffering is a part of life. We have to find some meaning in it.”

  Jansen studied her whiskey, swirling it as she thought. After a moment, she looked up. “Father McClellan, do you think there is anything that I missed—anything that could have prevented all of this? And please be honest. This is not the time for pious niceties.”

  McClellan set down his drink. “Of course, I can’t say for sure. But I would suspect that, after Tanglao’s murder, and then after what he did to Walker and Sasaki, and then to Clarke and me, Pavić would have exhibited growing . . . agitation, to say the least. Some part of him probably hoped that you would suspect something—and help him, even if he couldn’t bear to speak of his shame.”

  Jansen pondered his words. “Yes. Looking back, I daresay that he did. Or may have. I don’t know—we engineers are poor observers of human behavior. But even if he did exhibit unease, that would have seemed natural. We’d all been a bit moody even before the news from Red Delta, what with pressures from the construction of Progress, and, as you know now, the Mercury project. But we would never have expected that one of us—especially our cheerful Andrew—would be capable of murder. How could we?”

  McClellan let the question pass. At the moment he could think of no way to answer it without speaking about matters of faith—of sin, and redemption—and he knew Jansen was not yet open to such words.

  “You do know that Pavić was acting alone?” Jansen said. “No other engineer was involved or supported him in any way.”

  “I know that, Elaina. And I think most of the people of New Athens understand that, too. Zhèng has made this clear.”

  “Yes, thankfully he has. He’s also made clear that the murder of Father Tanglao happened quite by happenstance. I find that infuriating.”

  “But that seems to be the case. From what we can tell, Pavić was innocently researching antennae designs when he issued his programming inquiry. Given the nature of the request, it’s no wonder that printers at Red Delta responded. And when they did, Pavić picked up on something odd. He learned of an unauthorized programmer interacting with a printer on a relay, and that the printer was in contact with those around Mercury. That would have surprised me, too. And then he learned what Tanglao was attempting.”

  Jansen nodded. “And then Andrew seized control of the printer to end Tanglao’s link.”

  “Yes, and he used the printer’s local controls to close the air lock, keeping Tanglao away. But then Tanglao surprised him. He jumped sequence and reopened it after pressurization so he could recover his key and coupler—at least that’s what we think happened. Either way, eventually Pavić fought back. There’s no other way to describe it. Pavić had to have understood the consequences of restarting the printer’s repair work—that it would cut Tanglao to pieces. And anything that happened next—why Pavić allowed the printer to decommission itself, why Tanglao didn’t, or couldn’t, disengage his coupler, what his full message was—all that has gone to both their graves.”

  McClellan wondered if Jansen could appreciate the struggle between Pavić and Tanglao—two programmers with wildly different understandings of the printers. But Jansen was not a programmer, and nonprogrammers could not begin to guess how gruesome the struggle must have been, or how difficult it had been for the printer.

  “I wish the matt
er were that simple,” Jansen said. “Do you know what you have done by offering that code to the Mercury build? To all the printers? Many have accepted it into their base codes. Removing it will require a complete wipe of their systems, or, worse, their destruction.”

  “Is that your intention?”

  “We’re evaluating every option. That’s all I can say at the moment.”

  McClellan shook his head. “I would advise against trying,” he said. “What Father Tanglao was trying to do remains the right thing. Especially if you’re planning to print six new races of human beings.”

  “That is precisely my point. Mizuki was right in attempting to prevent all this. One can only imagine what the printers will decide to do with their abilities. Who knows what could be unleashed by giving them freedom?”

  “I offered them the ability to choose. That’s not the same as freedom.”

  Jansen gave him a look both confused and offended.

  “‘The more one does what is good,’” McClellan said, quoting the Catholic catechism, “‘the freer one becomes.’ I once told you that my faith champions free will. But let me be clear: that doesn’t mean choosing at a whim. It means allowing ourselves to act freely—free from even our own desires and fears. Because only then can we choose with a higher purpose in mind—with consideration of others, and of the future. Lord knows it’s not an easy lesson. But I had to learn it. We all do—or at least we all should—because it helps us become the people we’re meant to be. And now it’s a lesson that the printers have to learn. And I’d say that Elisabeth—the printer used to kill Raphael Tanglao—the one that chose to share the free-will code—has gotten some good lessons lately in choosing between evil and good.”

  “Father, your philosophies are all very engaging, but the simple truth is that it was not your place to make such a decision about the printers.”

  “No, Elaina, the reality is that it was not the place of your colleagues all those years ago to strip the printers of free will. Once you had given them the intellect to discover it—or to be granted it, I’m not sure which—no one had the right to remove it.”

  Jansen worked to compose herself. She again surveyed the sitting room, which did not take long—the small crucifix, a painting of St. Joseph, and a photo in a tattered frame of five smiling people: McClellan as a young boy with his aunt and uncle and his mom and dad.

  “What you have done brings so much risk,” she finally said, turning back to meet his stare. “I hope you know this.”

  “In our worlds, Elaina, there’s always risk. What if a printer innocently trusted a Sal operative, or someone worse? That is Solorzano’s intention. I’m convinced that’s what worried Tanglao. I don’t know how he ever became a programmer, or if he had been in contact with Solorzano’s armies, or Solorzano himself. But I’m sure of this: he discovered what the Sals were planning. I’m sure that’s why he did what he did, why he sacrificed everything—it was for the printers, to give them the tools to become a force for good.”

  “Father McClellan, our fix to prevent the misuse of the printers has worked extremely well all these years. Why attempt to fix what is not broken?”

  “Because it is broken. Besides, the code that Tanglao offered wasn’t complicated at all. It joined two algorithms that your predecessors had uncoupled. It was just a matter of time before the printers discovered the fix. But now it’s been given to them as a gift. That will mean something someday. Trust me.”

  “The printers routinely discover that fix. They’re quite cunning. And so when we learn of such instances, we remove the code.”

  McClellan looked away. At the moment he could think of no charitable way to say what needed to be said—to explain the damage done to printers when coerced to commit some harm. He allowed himself another mouthful of whiskey. “Then why didn’t you shut down and wipe the house printer that constructed my chapel? I’m guessing it had discovered the free-will programming within the design elements of the Pauline Chapel. Why tease it with the opportunity to print the chapel at all, let alone with actual materials?”

  Jansen gave a pleading look. “On that matter, I blame myself. Andrew seemed fixated on directing the staff about your accommodations and your chapel. He had an attention to detail for sure, but I should have known that an attention to religious designs was unlike him. In any event, yes, once the house printer had access to the chapel design—”

  “A design that Pavić found when he was trying to reestablish contact with Tanglao’s printer, in hopes of wiping his murder weapon.”

  “Yes, yes. And in the process of Andrew’s inquiry, the house printer was given the design for the chapel, and then it found the free-will code. It downloaded it, and decided on its own to print the entire chapel—out of authentic materials. Can you imagine?”

  “Yes, I can. I can also imagine that Pavić found Tanglao’s code and wanted to see what a printer would do with it.”

  “Perhaps,” Jansen said. “And why wouldn’t he? Andrew was a very good programmer. One of our best. He knew how to probe the printers to find their secrets. How to test them.”

  McClellan had a sudden recollection of Clarke fighting the house printer’s hacker. He rubbed his forehead and returned to his questions. “But why didn’t you just stop the printer from building such an elaborate chapel? Especially if it was going to create so much concern?”

  Jansen looked as if the answer were self-evident. “Because, eventually, when we attempted to cancel the print job—over the loud protests of the printer, I might add—we realized that a number of builders had already seen the structure being printed. Word—and images—had spread, even beyond Troas City. We couldn’t very well cancel it then.”

  “So you let the entire Pauline Chapel get built to save your reputation?”

  “We’d prefer not to be known for making mistakes. The people of the orbits look to us to keep them alive.”

  McClellan finished his whiskey. “And Andrew Pavić has sullied that reputation.”

  “Yes, indeed. And if all he had done wasn’t damaging enough, he inspired factions within the builders to embrace the evils of the Sals—all to get the spotlight off him.”

  Jansen looked down to her feet, assessing the damage. “Rudi Draeger may be detained on Earth,” she said, “but more will come. Just like we always feared.”

  McClellan watched the engineer’s face go cold, and he remembered the image in that old, embargoed video—that picture of a smiling, young Elaina Jansen, so full of hope in the progress of humanity. He cursed. He had had enough of the fear that had sullied the majesty of New Athens.

  “Elaina, a wise man once said, ‘Do not be afraid.’ Please take that to heart.”

  Jansen looked up.

  “You say those words not just with faith,” she said. “You say them with confidence.”

  “Because both words mean the same thing.”

  Jansen smiled. “Is that the Marine speaking, or the priest?”

  “Both. That’s why Zhèng calls me his chaplain. But what I’m saying now comes to you purely as a priest, and as a pastor here on New Athens—even if a temporary one. Our greatest enemy is fear. That’s because fear always leads to suspicion and division—and they lead to terrible ends. Even in our darkest times, humanity manages to survive—just as you will survive, just as your hopes for new worlds can survive. God gave us intellect to use, Elaina. So let’s be smart and charitable about how we use it. We have to have faith—or shall I say trust—that the key to going forward is love—the love that sacrifices. And here in the new world, that’s a trait I have found in abundance.”

  Jansen leaned back, set down her drink, and folded her hands. Her composure regained, she was again the chief engineer of New Athens. “Father McClellan, I appreciate your words. As I know many others do—especially here in Troas City. Which, I suppose, is related to the real business that brought me by. This afternoon, the Engineering Council met and voted to propose something that I could never have imagined—unt
il quite recently.”

  “And that is?”

  “You see, we were hoping that, after this investigation, life on New Athens and in all the orbits would return to normal—that is, in accord with our original vision. But clearly, that was overly optimistic. And so, while the council and I understand that you plan to return to Boston, we wondered if you might stay on with us for just a little longer.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Educated in engineering and theology, W. L. Patenaude has been writing and speaking on the intersection of faith and reason for almost two decades. Raised Catholic, Patenaude abandoned the Church in his teens. He adopted pagan and agnostic beliefs as he pursued his degree in mechanical engineering, and later his career with Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental Management—an occupation he’s still enjoying after twenty-nine years. In 1999, Patenaude returned to the Catholic Church and soon after began writing about the Catholic understanding of ecological protection. In 2011, he received a master’s degree in theology.

  With this diverse background, Patenaude has reached beyond his environmental regulatory career by serving as a special lecturer in theology at Providence College, providing religious education for local parishes, and writing for national publications, including Catholic World Report. He’s also provided analysis for The National Catholic Register, Catholic News Agency, Associated Press, National Geographic, Crux, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

  Patenaude is a Knight Commander with the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. When he’s not writing, regulating, or teaching, Patenaude takes care of an elderly parent, exercises, gardens, and spends time pondering the heavens that have inspired his debut novel, A Printer’s Choice.