by Andrew Beery
“What type of sacrifice are ya talking about Commodore?” Whiskers was the one asking the question.
I straightened my tunic and looked each of the assembled crew in the eyes. “It means you can never go home,” I said simply.
There was quite a bit of additional muttering… which I had expected. I waited for it to die down.
“The bottom line is this. There are teaching machines near the med bay that can give us the knowledge and skills we need to operate and repair this ship. There are two things you need to know before agreeing to use these teaching machines however.
“You will have access to technology that the human race is probably not in a position to handle responsibly yet. This is why the Galactic Order forbids the dissemination of certain technologies to societies that do not yet have FTL technology. Mitty is violating the law by offering us access to this tech. If he doesn’t, the Galactic Order will probably cease to exist. If he does… well let’s hope the ends justify the means in this particular case.
“The second thing you should be aware of is the process can be painful but will also likely result in a modest increase in your IQ.”
“So, what are we talking about here?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Mitty?”
The Archon otter stepped up on a piece of equipment, so he could see the crowd.
“My species is bi-sentient. What that means is the males and females of my species have very different intelligent quotients. The females are the creators and inventors. The typical unenhanced female would be a borderline genius on your world. The males, on the other hand, hunt and dig holes for our families to live in. As a male, my IQ would normally be something on the order of 75 to 80 as you measure it. After cognitive enhancement treatments I tested at roughly one hundred and ten.”
This was the first time I had heard these numbers. I have to admit I was shocked.
“You’ll forgive me but that’s a pretty average score for around here. You struck me as more intelligent than the average bear… or otter as the case may be.”
Mitty wrinkled his nose again. One day I would learn what that meant. “I am currently running as an emulated being in the ship’s computer core. My effective IQ would be off any meaningful human scale.”
Chapter 4: Let sleeping Dogs lie…
In the end, every last one of the crew agreed to undergo the procedure. Sadly, this is what led to my very first fight with Lori since we had gotten back together.
As the captain, I felt it was my responsibility to vet any risk to the crew. I figured I had already been under the helmet… even if I didn’t remember it… when my consciousness had been cloned from version 1.0 of me.
Lori didn’t see it that way.
“Of all the bone-headed, imbecilic, stupid and just plain dumb things you could do… this has to take the cake,” she screamed.
We were standing in the med bay. Whiskers and Mitty were standing with us. Mitty looked like… well like Mitty. Nothing ever seemed to phase the otter… beyond that nose thing he did.
Whiskers, on the other hand, had a grin that threaten to break his face. It was obvious that he was enjoying the show. I do have to admit… Lori was very attractive when she was passionate… and trust me when I say… she was passionate.
After several minutes questioning the nature of my genetic heritage, she finally stopped to catch her breath.
I started to open my mouth, but she held up a single forefinger. I had learned long ago that when the finger came up the only winning strategy was to shut up and just endure what was coming. Whiskers’ soft chuckle was not helping.
“I am the medical doctor. I will go first for what is essentially a medical procedure and that is the end of it. Period.”
She crossed her arms and dared me to contradict her. Surprisingly, I was saved from a fate worse than death by my good buddy Commander Whiskers McGraw.
“Beggin the lady’s pardon. But as the only doctor on board… it would make more sense if you were not first into the barn. If things go south for the winter… you may be the only one who can operate the snow shovel… if ya get my drift.”
I was always amazed at Whiskers’ ability to create and disseminate the oddest metaphors at a moment’s notice.
“Surely you’re not suggesting that JD goes first!”
“Absolutely not Missy. I’m the logical choice,” Whiskers responded with a smug grin. “Go ahead. Ask me why.”
“OK, why?” Lori and I asked in unison.
“Right now, you need an engineer. Ya ain’t got one. I am about useless other than the simple fact that I can pull and push and turn and twist when Otter-boy tells me too. Anybody can do that. If this fails on me… ya lose nothing but a guy that can beat ya in cards. If it succeeds, ya get a fixed starship.”
Mitty turned to Lori and I. “His logic is impeccable. Although the risk of something bad happening is minimal, the reality is we do not have a lot of experience training your species. Mister Whiskers would be the better choice.”
***
Twenty minutes later the Commander was strapped in the chair with the cranial helmet placed over his head. Mitty began the procedure.
“I must warn you again Mister Whiskers. The procedure has the potential to be mildly uncomfortable. The more neural pathways that get optimized the greater the potential for discomfort.”
I was curious. “Mitty, how does the system determine the need to ‘optimize’ neural pathways? Is it based on what needs to be learned or something else?”
“That is an insightful question, Commodore. There are two aspects of knowledge transfer. The first is a simple implantation of the relevant information. If the subject has a brain that is sufficiently capacious, this is never a problem. The second factor that the training system addresses is the subject’s ability to efficiently utilize the information. The system analyzes the subject’s brain structure and decides how much potential there is for improvement. The more gifted the individual is to begin with the more likely additional improvement will be possible.”
I looked at Whiskers again. He was my friend and I didn’t want to see any harm come to him. I debated overruling the others and taking the seat like I had originally planned. In the end, I did not. At a certain point you had to trust the wisdom of the people around you. In addition, they had to know that they had your trust, or you would never get the best out of them.
Whiskers gave me a thumbs-up. “I’m hungry guys and gals… lets scramble some eggs!”
Mitty brought up a holographic control panel and began to work the controls like a maestro at the Philharmonic Orchestra. Whiskers stiffened in the chair. His fingers extended sharply and then they relaxed, somewhat.
“Wow,” the older man said. “That’s worse than a hangover from Smitty’s moonshine.”
“Please sit still and try not to move. The procedure has a few more minutes to run before it is complete,” the Archon AI said.
About five minutes later the straps on the chair automatically released Whiskers and the helmet retracted.
Whiskers just sat there for a few minutes breathing deeply.
“Well,” he said at last while he stepped out of the chair. “That was certainly interesting. I definitely feel different. There’s still a lot that I don’t understand about how this ship operates but it’s almost as if the core concepts are on the tip of my tongue.”
“It will take several days or weeks before your brain has fully integrated the new engrams. You will slowly be able to access more and more of the information that was imparted to you. To use an expression native to your home world… You appear to have weathered the experience with flying colors.”
Lori stepped forward with a device that looked like the Galactic Order version of a medical tricorder. “You’ll forgive me if I run a few checks myself… Doctor Mitty,” Lori said with just a little irritation in her voice. I don’t think she had forgiven the little grey otter for siding with the engineer in the debate over who should go first
.
I made to sit in the chair, but Lori gave me that patented look that females give to men about to engage in an activity they disapprove of. I knew that I would never hear the end of it, if I did not let her go next. I decided that losing a single battle was better than losing the whole war.
Lori’s experience in the chair was not much different from the Engineer’s. I suspect that she had a higher tolerance for pain… or she was at least better able to mask it. When she stepped out of the chair she had the biggest smile on her face. She looked around the teaching room as well as the small med bay.
“It’s so clear now,” she said. “I know what all of this equipment does. This is amazing!”
“Mitty,” I said turning towards the ship’s AI. “It feels like Lori has a faster and fuller grasp of her new engrams than Commander McGraw. Is the rate of assimilation different between individuals?”
“Affirmative, Commodore. Your spouse had a slightly better capacity for optimization. This has resulted in a faster assimilation of the implanted engrams. You should know that most species take considerably longer in incorporate these lessons then your people are demonstrating. It would appear that humans are especially suited to this type of knowledge enhancement. That bodes well for our prospects of ultimately being successful.”
“OK, my turn,” I said.
Whiskers shook his head. “Begg’n the Commodore’s pardon… but unless you are planning on crawling through the duct work of this beastie... It would be better to run my engineers through first. If this training system breaks down like three quarters of the rest of the systems in this ship… ya going to need them to fix it.”
Two hours later, it was finally my turn. Mitty explained that I would receive complete operational specs on the Gilboa. I would be able to run any station and would even be able to work on the engines if I needed to. He also pointed out that because of the massive amount of data that was going to be dumped inside of my noggin… there was a good chance that it would take me months to fully assimilate it.
My thinking was the sooner we began… the sooner we would be done. I have to admit that Sandy Heinz’s experience with the system had me a little concerned. She experienced more than just a little discomfort. The pain was so great she nearly bit through her tongue. Apparently, the training system had determined she had the potential to receive quite a bit of cognitive enhancement. At the end of the procedure, Mitty estimated her IQ in the one sixty to one seventy range. I had an IQ of one forty-three and was used to being the smartest person in the room. I guess that was no longer going to be true.
As I sat in the chair, its restraints closed over my arms. I have to admit to a certain degree of ‘antsy-ness.’ I was not a fan of being restrained. On the other hand, I was not a fan of having my noggin scrambled like yesterday’s omelet if I moved too much. I decided the restraints, as distasteful as they might be, were probably a good idea.
“Let’r rip,” I said with more bravado than I was feeling. It turns out my words were prophetic.
My entire skull felt warm. As odd as it might sound, I imagined it must be what it felt like to put your head in a microwave. Now to be clear, I did not derive a lot of comfort from that particular thought.
I was just at the point of thinking… this isn’t so bad… when my world exploded. The pain was beyond anything I ever imagined. It was beyond anything I thought possible to imagine. I heard Lori screaming… something about ‘breaking an arm.’ There was an intense bright and all-consuming light behind my eyes. I could hear the sound of a thousand trains thundering in my ears. Every fiber of every nerve in my body was on fire.
All I know is the pain in my head drove me to the brink of madness… and perhaps a little bit beyond. Thankfully, after what seemed like hours of torment, I passed out. I didn’t care if I ever woke up again. The pain was gone.
***
“He’s waking up.”
I have no idea who ‘he’ was but I wished they would be quiet. I had the mother of all hangovers and I needed my beauty sleep.
“His vitals are back into more reasonable ranges. The bone in his arm is knitting nicely. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed a man could do that to himself.”
The voice was familiar. I liked the voice. It was a voice I could enjoy waking up to every day. I decided I wanted to see the owner of that angelic voice. I opened my eyes and was rewarded with a beautiful smile on the face of the loveliest woman I had ever seen.
“You’re a pretty lady,” I said with a throat that felt like it had been on the wrong end of a shouting match with a freight train.
“Water?”
The gorgeous blond held a small sippy cup to my lips. I remembered suddenly that her name was Lori.
“Just a sip. You’ve had a rough time of it,” she cautioned in a gentle voice.
“Ya gave us a bit of a scare there, Commodore,” Whiskers said. I was beginning to fit the pieces of my mind back into place. I knew that Commander ‘Whiskers’ McGraw was my chief engineer.
“The ship? The crew… OK?” I whispered.
Lori smiled. “He’s going to be fine. He’s already more concerned about his command than he is himself.”
I closed my eyes again. It was time to let sleeping Dogs lie.
Chapter 5: Fixing the Dog house…
In hindsight… which is often my best view, I was glad I had not used the Da’Tellen Transfer device first. That was the proper name for the machine we had been using to train the new crew of the Gilboa. If we had, it’s unlikely I would have survived and it’s a certainty that none of the others would have risked using the trainer.
I had successfully integrated the entire “command package” in a little less than a week. Mitty confirmed that this was an accomplishment that was unparalleled in Galactic Order history. I wish I could take credit for it, but I was just lucky to have great genes and apparently an unparalleled ability to flop like a dying fish on the beach.
The ‘discomfort’ of the experience resulted in a broken arm as my muscles literally attempted to tear my body a part. Tissue regenerators, expertly applied by the lovely Doctor Lori Riker, repaired most of the self-inflicted damage before I even woke up. For those who are interested, I was in a coma for two full days.
There were several plus sides to my misadventures. I now knew more about the Gilboa than anybody currently alive. I was fully briefed on the adversary that we would be facing. If anything, Mitty had been sugar-coating the situation with the war. The unknown adversary ignored all pleas for mercy and offers to surrender. When their swarms of ships arrived in a system they established a complete and impenetrable interdiction zone… before beginning strategic bombing of large cities. These were the lucky races. Those like the homeworlds of the Archons or Saulites were simply wiped clean of all sentient life.
The other advantages to my newly tuned brain was an IQ that exceeded 180 and perhaps much more importantly… a final and complete reconciliation with my wife.
It had been a week since we had begun repairs on the ship in earnest. Every day, Whiskers and his engineering team became a little more adept with the systems they were working with and repairing.
I even rolled up my sleeves and pitched in. I could handle a charge-reduced inductive coupler with the best of them. What was even stranger… I knew what I was doing. I had to admit… as if I hadn’t before… Galactic Order tech was amazing.
I was crawling through one of the connecting tubes in engineering that we had nicknamed ‘Jefferies’ tubes after a 1960’s TV show. It was cramped and despite being a trim and fit thirty-two-year-old… I was getting tired squirming thru the duct. The systems had been designed for smaller creatures than the average hairless ape from Earth. In point of fact, the systems had been designed and built by the J’ni.
They were about twice the size of the Archons and looked like a cross between a badger and a raccoon. One evening, when I had showed Lori a holovid of them in action, she had gotten very exc
ited and asked if we could get one for a pet. I explained they were sentient beings and had built the Gilboa. She bit her lower lip and pouted.
“I guess that means no,” she had said.
I spent the rest of the night making it up to her. We didn’t really get much sleep but hey… sometimes a man has to make sacrifices in order to insure domestic tranquility… and trust me on this… Lori was worth the sacrifice!
I bring all of this up because the system I was fixing in that Jefferies tube was going to fix the environmental systems in the last large section of the ship. The end result of which would mean we would finally have unfettered access to the entire interior of the ship.
The hull plating which had been breached in some of the previous fighting had been carefully repaired by Whiskers and his team in EVA suits several days before. We had hoped, at that point, to gain access to those areas of the ship, but the environmental glitch meant we could not replenish the air supply in that section of the ship. No amount of advanced tech in the universe would allow you to breath hard vacuum so we were forced to delay entering this part of the ship until we could replace the missing atmosphere.
To accomplish this, we needed to trip three relays simultaneously. As Whiskers was a bit chunky, the task fell to Daniels, Heinz and myself. Each of us were in a separate Jefferies tube. I hate to admit it, but I was the last to reach my relay… and I had the other two by four decades. I was going to need to work out more.
“You guys ready,” I said over the comms.
“Waiting on you, Sir,” Sandy replied.
“Roger that,’ Daniels answered as well.
“OK, let’s do this thing,” I said. “On my go, flip your relays. Three, two, one… FLIP!”
I have to admit… I was disappointed with what happened next. Nothing. Not a damn thing. No lights flickering. No distant sound of air suddenly rushing in to fill the vacuum in another area of the ship. Nothing. Just one little, completely unsatisfying, click of a relay. I know it’s not much but even a ‘bing’ would have been better. It’s the little things in life that make it worth living.