Luciana, Doctor, “Not good. Let us give it another few minutes and try again. Do you remember where you are?”
I thought for a while, then answered, “I am on the Columbia at Thule Station, but I do not remember how I got here or where I was before. We came to meet Alexander Pantocrator who is supposed to heal me so my parts are properly integrated. I do not remember what those words mean, or why this was important. Almost everything you have said has been puzzling and confusing, but I expect that will improve when you restore my memories.”
She looked up at the monitor again. “You should be in a hospital surrounded by specialists. You need someone better than me. The monitor almost ran out of all its important meds, twice this week. When I threw you into acute stress, it tried to compensate by mixing combinations of the others. It nearly killed you. I would file a report detailing just how bad that code is, except I cannot identify the patient, the doctor or our location. It would have to be completely anonymous. It would be easy enough to write the report, but I have no idea how to file it so that it would not be discarded as coming from an imposter. Do you know how to do that, Alexander?”
He shook his head. “Not from here, and I do weapons and operating systems, not medicine. I would have no authority to submit such a report, even if I knew how. Can it wait until we get to the Moon?”
She scowled. “I will write the report, but the flaw is so bad it needs to be fixed urgently. Even on the Moon, I will not be able to submit it since I am nominally dead. Sergei, do we know anyone who is officially still alive and could pass the report to a competent physician?”
Sergei had been watching us silently, but replied, “Of course. Begum is the captain of this ship and in command of the ship’s surgeons, knows the complete crews of the Hammerhead and Mao and has contacts in ACC. Plus many others from her earlier career. Surely there would be someone in that lot willing to do a little subterfuge, especially if you are willing to forego credit for the idea.”
She smiled, the first happy expression I had seen in days. “Sergei, you are a romantic genius. Credit is worthless when you are undead. I will start writing as soon as Brian is moving again.”
I tried wiggling my feet, which were fine. I tried flexing my knee, which did not move far because I was clipped into the bed but did not bother my stomach. I tried rubbing the skin of my stomach, which was fine. Pressing on my stomach was not. It felt quite full, even if I did not have proper sensation.
“Doctor, my guts are full and so is my bladder, I think, but I cannot feel them properly.”
“Brian, your brain and body are not working properly right now and I am making adjustments on the fly. It is probably a good thing that you have reduced sensation, because otherwise you might be in agony from the abuse your body has suffered. Nothing irreparable, but it will take a while to get you back to some approximation of normal. Let me make another adjustment. And if you need to go, then go. You are in a long term medical bed, all hooked up even if you cannot feel it. Let me make a small adjustment – this should return some additional sensation and may restore the missing muscle control.”
Suddenly, I could feel my guts again, and everything started to move uncontrollably. I sure hoped that things were hooked up... but there was no horrible stench, so I guess they were. After a minute, I was confident I was no longer spewing. I tried once more to flex at the waist and felt much better, until something inside started to hurt and I straightened out again.
As I lay there, sensation slowly returned to places I had not been aware were numb. There was a catheter attached to my penis, and a thick tail emerging from my rectum which I had not noticed when I first tried to move. There was also a definite sore where my stomach was located. I mentioned that to Luciana, who told me that my stomach had tried to digest itself and was in need of a few days of healing. She promised to give me something soothing to eat in an hour when my liver and kidneys had stabilized properly. She also assured me that I could not have puked because there was nothing inside to eject, but it was good that I had desisted because dry heaves would have been bad for the rest of my system.
I knew for sure that I was on heavy meds because I took all that in with complete equanimity. It was an odd sensation. I cared, but had no reason to be upset, so I accepted things passively that I could recognize as very bad news.
Luciana asked again, “No bending at the waist, but do you think you can move otherwise? We will be bringing the septic system with us to physiotherapy, which we have set up in the theatre on the other side of the preparation room.
“Alexander, now that you have met Brian, I do not think there is anything more you can safely do for him. Would you prefer to eat, sleep, or work? Your choice, but I can escort you back to our two-room palace after we move Brian into physiotherapy. I need to go and check on Leilani.”
Alexander replied, “I need to see how his body reacts to exercise with two med monitors interacting. That will be important to understand before I make changes in the way the units work. I am surprised he is not dead already. Those kinds of interactions can be very unstable if they are not tuned properly. I take it you will be back to help him sleep after the exercise?”
She nodded yes but added, “And I want to monitor his sleep to ensure he does not suffer any more nightmares.”
Sergei rejected that idea. “Luciana, you have been awake and on stims for almost a day and a half already. After we put Brian to bed, get some sleep yourself. We cannot afford to have you getting loopy on stims. I will watch Brian and wake you if he is in distress.”
She clearly wanted to object, but finally nodded and allowed herself to yawn. Focussing on myself, I thought if I could lie in bed, I could drift through the prep room without twisting. Zero-G had some virtues. I remembered exercise and it sounded fun, so long as I did not jostle my stomach. I waited while Luciana and Sergei unclipped my hips and ankles, then moved the hoses from the ship’s septic system to a portable unit. They lifted me off the bed and we drifted carefully across to another theatre filled with a miniature exercise machine. I was clipped in gently with bands around my shoulders, chest, hips, and knees.
I could rotate my head, swing my arms, and flex my legs and feet below the knees, but not much more. It was better than lying still, so I asked Sergei what I should do. He started me on some slow, gentle head rolls as Luciana vanished out the door. There was a pause of several minutes before I heard the airlock to the prep room cycle, and I thought idly that we must have guards and the guards had to clear the hall before we could use it if what she had said about not being seen was true.
It was over half an hour before she arrived back and I was feeling tired. When I was fit, I would be out of breath and invigorated by two hours of exercise. Today we had never even done anything hard, just head rolls, arm flexing, and leg swinging, yet I felt exhausted. I had sharp tingles all over my abdomen as though my muscles were tearing in little tiny rips, but they did not last long. I mentioned it to Luciana, who adjusted my meds so that they went away.
Sergei and Luciana lifted me back into the infirmary bed and clipped me in carefully. She gave me a small bulb of food, very bland but good because I was becoming hungry again. She told me that I could go to sleep all by myself. I remembered so little there should be no bad dreams, and if there were Sergei would be watching and she would be sleeping just next door. I thanked her and heard her rearranging the physio equipment into a bed as I drifted off to sleep.
2357-03-11 12:00
Bookends
I woke feeling much better. I looked over and recognized Raul, who had taken Sergei’s place. He said, “Good morning. Do you remember what your name is?”
I could, but they would not let me say it. Then I realized that this was one of those trick questions they asked on tests to see if you were paying attention. There was something complicated about my name. I remembered we were on the Columbia, at Thule Station. We had rescued Alexander. Somehow Leilani had become hurt and Doctor Toyami (Luciana?) had go
ne to take care of her for a while last night, then come back.
Leilani, that was an important name. I liked Leilani – a lot – but she had been hurt. She was scared of me and hurt. I remembered that much, but it was like a dream. A very bad dream of Leilani getting hurt.
Raul called, “Luciana, he is awake and getting worried.”
She replied, “Coming.”
My name; what name did Leilani call me? Brian. An arbitrary name, but it was special because that was what she called me. I looked up at Raul. “My name is Brian. How is Leilani?”
Luciana came back into my little room. “Leilani is very scared and badly hurt, like you, but is getting better. She is very angry with me. Do you remember the question I asked you yesterday?”
I had to think about that. She had asked a lot of questions, but most of them had been answered. I thought for a while. “You asked if I would let you become a Banshee. I do not know how to answer that question.”
“Good,” she said, “We did not do too much damage. Do you remember Diego and Pedro?”
Those were familiar names! “Yes, are they alright?”
“No,” she said gently, “I am sorry. They died a long time ago, and you are missing most of the memories still. It is good that you remember them, but we suppressed everything that came afterwards. We are hoping to open up that part of your memory later today.”
Diego and Pedro dead? I had been playing football with them just a few days ago. I looked down at myself. I was in a grownup body and I was in a ship called the Columbia docked at Thule Station. That did not make sense. And Leilani was hurt. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
“Relax, Brian. We will restore those memories soon. You are probably worried about your friends. They are in trouble, but we have lots of friends who will help us. You will see.”
The voice was different, so I looked around and saw the man called Alexander. I wondered which friends he meant, because Luciana had just told me that Diego and Pedro were dead. His words were reassuring, but his voice sounded flat, as though he was reading a script. He was looking at me and back to a monitor I could barely see behind my bed. His expression suggested I was a failed biology experiment or a piece of badly written code. At some level I could not express, I had the uncomfortable sensation that both analogies might be true. I did not like Mister Alexander.
To himself, it seemed, he said, “What a mess.” But he was using the comm. Why bother with the comm if you are talking to yourself?
To me he addressed a question that failed to answer itself. “I can clean up this amateur code. Do you really want to allow multiple personae to be active at once? I would have expected one at a time would be sufficient. Oh, but you probably do not understand what the question means yet. Remember it. I will ask again when you remember more.
“I have to say that yesterday you were my kind of man, except for being ignorant of your own past. Cool, calm, rational. I hope you manage to keep that.”
Luciana was not pleased with that comment. “Careful, Alexander. You are creating memories that can have unpredictable consequences once they start to interact with his own wealth of experience. He has not lived your kind of life, and you might not like the man he was when he met your ideal. I know that I like and respect the man I have seen in action, even though he was sometimes erratic. The more I know about what his motives have been, the better I like him. But I have heard tales that suggest his past record was quite chequered.”
Alexander sneered back, “Pots and kettles, Luciana?”
Luciana gasped, “Oh, I am sorry Brian. That was supposed to have been a private message.”
Alexander replied, “I do not make that kind of error. If I send a message to someone, it is because I wanted them to receive that message.”
I lay there, silent. So, Luciana knew that I had been bad. Maybe even very bad. Was I the one who had hurt Leilani? But why would Leilani be angry at Luciana for something I had done? I needed to learn the truth, to approach the problem rationally. Then I could decide what to do. Alexander was right about that part.
He had just told me my code and maybe even my life was a mess, and he had said it deliberately. I agreed, but I did not remember why I had written bad code for multiple personae, nor really what any of those words meant. I thought I understood personae, which I was pretty sure was not part of being a Kid. Did I want multiple personae to be active? Wanting my personae to be integrated sounded like I wanted all of them to be active at once. Maybe, but what if I needed just one of them, or maybe two at once, to solve a difficult problem? I needed my memories, but I wanted to control how I used them, not to be controlled by them. By the time I got them all, I might remember something that forced a single, bad choice on a critical issue, or prevented me from deciding at all. And it sounded like my former self had left open that option. Luciana had liked that version of me, had thought I made good choices. I had botched the programming, but if I trusted Alexander he might be able to fix that.
To Alexander, “About the multiple personae. I do not remember what I was like, or why things went wrong, but I assume they went very wrong or I would not be here. I want the option of multiple personae. I may change my mind later, but I may need to be able to choose a specific selection of personae.”
Alexander, “Rational and reasonable. I thought you were supposed to be eleven or twelve years old in this persona.”
To Alexander, “I am, but I also remember yesterday, and where I am right now. And I am good at thinking things through. Or I was then. I am confused right now.”
I had been bad, but was it bad for a bad reason or bad for a good reason? It made a difference. And I knew I could hurt people without being bad to them personally. Which was it?
I remembered beating Ramirez into a pulp. Was that a year ago? My little sister Lucille had a friend called Zoe in her class. Everybody hated Ramirez, who was a mean and sneaky brat. Ramirez had stolen Zoe’s lunch money every day for a week and had threatened to strip her baby brother Javier and leave him naked on the roadway if she refused to give him her panties. He threatened to take the panties from every girl in her class if she told anyone. Zoe was crying in the back of the girl’s washroom after recess and would not come out, so Lucille had gone in, coaxed the story out of her, and brought her back to class. They both got detentions for being late, but at lunch Lucille came to me. She trusted her big brother with all her secrets and was sure I could make it right. After school, while Zoe and Lucille were serving their detentions, I escorted Ramirez into an abandoned house nearby and beat him to a pulp. The school never learned who had done the beating but asked the city for an on-site police officer. The city refused to pay for the extra officer and in the ensuing argument both sides forgot what had motivated the request. I never told anyone why I had done it, but for a few days Ramirez told everyone I was a thug and a gangster. Then he shut up and I learned a few weeks later that Pedro had introduced him to some real thugs and discussed what extorting little girl’s panties could earn him amongst real men. I never asked how he had found out what Ramirez had done, but I was grateful for the back-up.
My Sensei was smarter than the school administration; almost everyone realized I had beaten up Ramirez as soon as he started his campaign of slander. My Sensei was very angry with me and almost threw me out of the dojo. I had to promise never to do anything like it again and abase myself every time I entered the dojo. My Dad was hurt that I had brought such shame on the family. Mom made me do confession every day for a week. I had hurt all of them without raising a finger against them.
Not everyone was angry. Lucille never told anyone why I had done it, not even Mom and Dad, but in her eyes, I was more of a hero than ever. Pedro said it was a good job well done and his capo tried even harder to recruit me. For myself, I knew what I had done was bad, but I did not regret doing it for even a minute. I wondered if my grown-up-self did.
Alexander said he would patch the code to make the selection of my persona more conscious and r
eliable, and we could discuss whether to keep it at all when I knew what it was for.
Alexander, “What are you two discussing?”
Alexander, “Just the philosophy of fixing a broken monitor when you do not know the purpose it was supposed to serve in its broken state.”
Alexander, “Alexander, do not play foolish games with this. You do not know how dangerous our situation is.”
Alexander, “He shows good judgement. I think we are going to get along. He is convinced that something went horribly wrong. What was it?”
Alexander, “Do not ask. Worse than anything you can imagine.”
Alexander, “Oh, come now. Worse than a Martian invasion that will kill half the population of the Earth as they search for a non-existent Ghost?”
Alexander, “Do not be foolish. The two most important people on the team have been disabled, and I very nearly succumbed as well. I do not need the third most important person turning himself into a swatted bug right now.”
Alexander, “Third? Now you see here...”
Alexander, “Shut up, Alexander. Third! You have no idea what you are dealing with.”
To Alexander, “I am hearing both sides of your conversation, and both are coming from you. What are you doing?”
Alexander, “Provoking a fight. You need to understand some of the more dangerous properties of these comm units. Even private conversations can be made public if you echo every message. You can choose to mask the original ID, to include it in the echoed message, or to distinguish each source without echoing the ID. You can also choose who you are echoing it to. If the echo does not come back to you, you may never know it is happening. The Martian enthusiasts in MI wrote much of that code. They were popping heads on security, and their motives were confused at best. Beware.
Lord Banshee- Fugitive Page 30