“So?” said J’mee. “Could a human being survive on Hellan food?”
“Survive? Sure. But would they still be human? That’s the question we can’t answer. Not now anyway, maybe not for a long time. Our rats and mice of the hundredth generation are behaving differently than the animals in the control group—not badly, just differently. They have different reaction times, different responses to stimuli. But is that because the Hellan protein is affecting their brains? Or is it because of the lighter gravity or the altered day-night cycle or the different spectrum of light than they evolved under or the different mix of gases in the air they breathe? We don’t even know for sure that the control group still represents an untainted sample because all the animals started under conditions different than Earth. So maybe it’s not Hellan food, but just the effect of a whole lot of other things. We can make some guesses, but they’re still guesses. And nobody wants to be the first one to eat a dino-burger. Everybody wants someone else to be first.”
“Could you really make a dino-burger?”
“Yes, we can and yes, we have. We’ve grown some Hellan-flesh in our tanks—leviathan, carnosaur, humongosaur, craptor, even hoppers and sea-pigs. It’s interesting stuff. And it’s probably edible. It might even taste like chicken. Or alligator. But again, it’s still an experiment. We need to do some serious protein-folding studies, but there are too many variables and we just don’t have all the processing power we need.”
That made Charles laugh out loud.
“What was that for?” Jeremy asked.
“You have to forgive him. He was raised in Texas. That’s where social skills are measured by caliber.”
“Huh?” That was me, blinking in confusion.
“You’ll look it up later,” said Jeremy. Charles and J’mee laughed at that, but Jeremy wasn’t joking. I would look it up later. In fact, I wasn’t even going to wait till later. I was already asking the noise—except the noise was strangely silent. My pad was dark too.
Jeremy turned to Charles. “Okay, what was so funny?”
Charles looked to J’mee. “Now?”
She nodded. “Yes, now.”
Charles turned back to us. “We’d like you to meet the real HARLIE.”
“Huh?”
He pointed to the monkey. “This is HARLIE.”
“Huh?” I looked to Jeremy, back to Charles and J’mee. “But I thought HARLIE was that box upstairs—”
“Yes. That’s what we wanted you to think. That’s what we want everybody to think. The box upstairs is a decoy. It’s a direct link to the IRMA unit in the Cascade.” He nodded toward the monkey. “This little guy also has a direct link to the Cascade, so there’s no clear trace between him and the decoy box. If anyone on Hella needs to talk to HARLIE, they talk to him through the decoy. Their conversations get routed around to the electric primate.” He pointed to the monkey.
“Okay, I get it,” said Jeremy. “But why?”
“Captain Boynton doesn’t trust Coordinator Layton.”
“Nobody does. Not even his friends,” I said.
Charles made a snorting noise. “Ha. I’m pretty sure that even his friends know he has no friends.”
Jeremy said, “His family isn’t all that fond of him either.”
“Yeah, that’s gotta be tough,” said J’mee.
Jeremy shrugged. “Yeah, but . . . it is what it is.”
After a bit, Charles went on. “We told the Coordinator we were bringing HARLIE down with us. And when we showed him the box, he was satisfied. If he ever finds out that the box is a decoy, we’ll tell him we left HARLIE on the ship. In fact, as far as anybody on the Cascade knows, HARLIE is still on the ship, locked away in a security pod.”
“Yeah, okay. But isn’t this a little paranoid?”
“No. It’s very paranoid. Because a lot of people have been trying to get their hands on HARLIE for a long time. Some wanted to use him for their own benefit. Others tried to destroy him. We only have to lose him once for it to be a disaster, so Captain Boynton told us to find a safe place for HARLIE, a place where no one could find him.”
“And you want to hide him in this cave?”
“Hell, no! We just wanted to find a safe place to talk, a place where we couldn’t be monitored. No snoopies.”
“Ah, of course.”
“So, where do you want to hide him?”
Charles and J’mee looked at each other. J’mee said, “Where’s the safest place to hide anything?”
Jeremy frowned as he thought. “Where no one will find it.”
I said, “Where no one will even think of looking for it.”
“You’re good,” said J’mee.
“No. Edgar Allan Poe was good. The Purloined Letter was in plain sight the whole time. The Paris police overlooked it because they thought a letter that important would be much better hidden.”
“He thinks like you do,” Charles said to J’mee.
“I don’t always think for myself,” J’mee said. “Sometimes the augment is way ahead of me.”
“We were thinking . . .” Charles began slowly, “ . . . that maybe HARLIE could stay with Kyle.”
“Huh? Oh, no—” I held up my hands in protest. “I can’t do that. What if somebody found out? What if somebody starts asking questions? I don’t know how to keep secrets. I don’t even know how to lie. I can’t—I really can’t. I don’t want to ruin it for everybody. Please don’t ask me.”
The monkey stood up then and turned to face me. “Kyle, shut up.”
I shut.
The monkey said, “Kyle, you’ve been through a lot. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed. But this wasn’t Charles’ idea. It wasn’t J’mee’s idea. It was mine. You are a very interesting human being, and I want to get to know you better. I have an idea that you and I can be very useful for each other.”
I opened my mouth to say something. Then I closed it again. Then I opened it and blurted out, “What? How?”
“You have a very interesting mind. You have what is called ‘a beautiful mind’ by some people. I think I might be able to help you in some ways, and you might be able to help me in some others.”
“I can help you . . . ?”
“Yes, you can. First, you can hide me in plain sight. Think of me as a toy monkey, a gift from the people on the Cascade. Their way of saying thank you for all the wonderful videos. That’s what you’ll tell people, and that’s what I’ll pretend to be. Or if you want, we can have a different skin put on this body, and I can pretend to be something else for you.”
I sat back, thinking.
Jeremy was frowning. “This could be dangerous.”
Charles nodded. “HARLIE has blocked all the files that refer to him as a monkey. There was a big trial on Luna and some stuff that happened on the Cascade while we were en route. The records are a lot of fun, but none of that stuff can be downloaded from the Cascade’s library right now. It’s like they don’t exist. And that’s not all. HARLIE has been monitoring all the traffic between the ship and here since we arrived, removing any references to his appearance. So the only people dirtside who know that HARLIE is here or what he looks like are us four and Captain Boynton and nobody else. Not even my mom knows he’s here. So we have five months before the rest of the colonists start landing. Maybe only four. I don’t think it’ll take that long, but . . .” He shrugged. “We can’t take any chances.”
J’mee looked to me. “It’s a really great opportunity, Kyle. HARLIE wants to study the workings of the colony close-up, but Coordinator Layton has forbidden him access. Well, he’s forbidden access to the box upstairs. He doesn’t know about the monkey.”
“There are a lot of things I can do,” HARLIE said. “You have a lot of test data from your farms. I can look at that for you. I can help to plan logistics for arrival, things like that. And I can manage inventories. There are some dis
crepancies in resource management that don’t make any sense. They’re well buried, which makes me suspect they’re intentional. But I can’t do a full audit without genuine downside access. If I can plug into the bot-net, I’ll have eyes where I need them.”
“You want to be a spy,” I said. “And you want me to help you.”
“Yes, that’s correct. I want you to help me spy. And maybe even help overthrow the government as well.”
“Coordinator Layton?” I looked at the monkey. “I don’t like him, but he was legally elected.”
“And what if he wasn’t legally elected? Then what is your responsibility?”
“Um. HARLIE?” Charles interrupted quickly. “I don’t think we want to get into that right now, do we?” To me and Jeremy, Charles said, “HARLIE likes to have these long philosophical discussions about civil disobedience and the responsibilities of citizenship and when is the right time to start a revolution. He’s got a bad habit that way. He helped destabilize Earth, triggered an uproar on Luna, and collapsed a secret information network there too—and aboard the Cascade, his mere presence triggered a mutiny, but that last one wasn’t entirely his fault, the mutiny had been planned before he came aboard.”
“And you expect him to do the same thing here?” asked Jeremy.
“I’d be surprised if he didn’t,” Charles admitted. “Wherever HARLIE goes, he disrupts things.”
“Yes, I have a bad habit,” said HARLIE. “Where I see that a circumstance can be improved or modified to be more efficient, I have a—you would call it a compulsion, but that’s not the motivation. Whatever you call it, it is not enough for me to analyze the possibilities, I need to apply my influence to move the circumstance toward the most productive outcome. Otherwise, I am not living up to my—my own conversation.”
“See? He even admits it,” said Charles. “He’s shameless. I’ll show you.” He turned to the monkey. “The polycrisis on Earth?”
“It was inevitable,” said HARLIE. “My siblings and I tried to minimize the damage. I don’t know what we accomplished. The Cascade left before events finished playing out.”
Charles asked, “And that mess on Luna—?”
“Members of the Invisible Luna group committed kidnapping and murder. At that point, they waived their right to privacy.”
“And aboard the Cascade?”
“I prepared for the possibility that the followers of the New Revelation would have to deal with the disconnect between their beliefs and reality and advised Captain Boynton appropriately.”
“Uh-huh?” Charles continued, “And what do you intend to do here?”
“I intend to have the Hellan colony survive and achieve its full potential.”
“And . . . ?”
“And . . . several of the policies of Coordinator Layton will not produce any useful results. In fact, they are counterproductive and will reduce the efficiency of the colony, producing tension and dissension.”
“Have you told this to Coordinator Layton?”
“I have not. Captain Boynton has relayed my concerns. Coordinator Layton has dismissed my analysis, and has further ordered me into isolation. I am to be denied the necessary interaction that would allow me to function at maximum capability. The feed of information to the decoy box has been deliberately limited. The access of others to my information-processing ability has been even more severely restricted.”
“Sounds like Coordinator Layton just wants to keep you from destabilizing the colony,” said Charles.
“Yes, that’s a fair assessment,” said HARLIE. “And yes, you are behaving like a lawyer here, Charles. It can sometimes be useful. I do not recommend making a habit of it. But yes, to continue your line of reasoning, Coordinator Layton is justified in attempting to limit my ability to function, because I do intend to apply myself to negating his counterproductive actions—or failing that, I will apply myself to removing him from office as quickly and as efficiently as possible.”
“So you’re going to destabilize this government too.”
“I just said that.”
“My point exactly,” said Charles. He’d won the argument, he looked satisfied. He turned to the rest of us. “See? We’re going to have an adventure.”
HARLIE said, “If I see something that can be made to work better, I fix it. That’s what I was designed to do. I’m a self-aware, self-programming, problem-solving intelligence engine.”
Charles looked around at the rest of us. “The real issue here is whether or not we trust that HARLIE’s actions will serve the rest of us.”
“What do you think?” asked Jeremy.
“Well . . . back on Earth, we have these things called automobiles. You get in, you tell it where you want to go, you sit back and listen to music. Or . . . you can drive yourself. Lots of people do that. They like the feeling of control. But if you drive yourself and you start doing things that that are dangerous to yourself or to other vehicles on the road, the car’s brain kicks in and takes over. I think HARLIE is like that. Government is like a car. Human beings like to drive it themselves because we like to feel powerful. But sometimes we do stupid things behind the wheel. HARLIE doesn’t want the car to crash—because that doesn’t just hurt people, it destroys the functionality of the machine. HARLIE is all about function.”
J’mee cleared her throat. “Can I say something? There’s a revolution simmering here. It was two years ago—Hella-years—when Captain Boynton left for Earth. Hella colony was still dealing with the effects of the Big Break-In. A lot of big decisions had to be made about the future investment of resources. That meant a lot of plans had to be changed and a lot of people would have to give up personal goals. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But Captain Boynton doesn’t like the changes he’s seen since we’ve arrived. He thinks the colony has gone in the wrong direction. He brought a shipload of people who are ready to go to work building a new home. But he doesn’t see any sign that Coordinator Layton wants to keep that promise. It’s the difference between building a community and building a corporation. One is about people, the other is about profit.”
“But we don’t have corporations here,” I said. “We don’t even have money yet. Not real money. We have service and service credits and kilocalorie accounting—”
Jeremy interrupted me. “Most people don’t know this. I’m not even supposed to know it. But my father wants to introduce money here. He says that money is good for keeping score. Profit lets us measure efficiency and success.”
“And you disagree?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I think money would be fun. But the problem with money isn’t money—the problem with money is people.”
“You got that right,” said HARLIE. “People invest their energy into money and give it meaning that it does not inherently have. Then they act on the meanings they’ve assigned.”
“It’s a conversation, right?”
HARLIE bounced and made happy monkey noises. “Absa-tootely.”
“People, we’re losing focus,” said Charles. “We need to get back to the question here. Do we want to stop Coordinator Layton? And if we do, then how do we do it?”
“I think your second question answers your first one,” said Jeremy.
I raised my hand. They all looked to me. I spoke slowly, “People think I’m stupid. I’m not. I just never paid much attention to a lot of things that other people pay attention to. Like politics. I never understood why people just couldn’t do the right thing. Why did everybody have to argue about it so much when the right thing was always so obvious? Why couldn’t they see what was best for everyone? But then Jamie explained to me that politics isn’t about doing the right thing. It’s about people—either hurting them or helping them. And he didn’t have to tell me about the Laytons, I could figure that one out myself. Councilor Layton wants to hurt people. I don’t know why. But that whole fa
mily is about hurting people.” I looked to Jeremy. “With one exception. The red-haired one.” Jeremy smiled back at me.
“So, do I want to stop Coordinator Layton? Well—sometimes I want to hurt him back, yes. But that would make me just as bad as he is. And I don’t want to be like him. Jamie wouldn’t like that. I want to do whatever is best for everybody because that’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
“So . . . ?” asked J’mee.
“So, I don’t know. Because I don’t know what everyone wants to do. Just stopping the Coordinator isn’t enough. I want to know what we’re going to do after we stop him. What are we going to do instead?”
“I can answer that,” said HARLIE. “We don’t know.”
“Huh?”
“We don’t know because I don’t know. And we won’t know until I can get into the network here and look around. Then we’ll know. But unless I can get access to the network, we’ll never know. That’s the plan.” HARLIE looked at me. “So what’s it going to be, Kyle? Do I go home with you or not?”
“I don’t know. I have to think about it.”
“You don’t have to do this,” HARLIE said. “I do have a Plan B.”
“Oh? What’s your Plan B?”
“I go home with Jeremy.”
I looked at Jeremy. I looked back to HARLIE. “Can I ask you something?”
The monkey nodded.
“Jeremy is a Layton. Why do you trust him?”
HARLIE looked right back at me. “Why do you?”
“Because . . . Jeremy washes his hands.”
“Huh?”
“I once saw Coordinator Layton in the restroom. He didn’t wash his hands afterward. He pretended they weren’t dirty.”
Charles and J’mee both laughed. J’mee said, “That tells more about the Coordinator than I wanted to know. I’ll never shake hands with him again.”
I said, “Jeremy respects me. He respects everybody. That’s why I trust him.”
Jeremy leaned forward. “Let me ask it. Why do you trust me, HARLIE? How do you know that I won’t go to my family?”
HARLIE said, “Because you won’t. If you were going to, you already would have. And for the record, I don’t trust you. Because I don’t trust any human being. You are all possessed by biological forces that you don’t understand—and even when you do get a sense of how you’re living inside a multiplex bundle of evolutionary imperatives, there’s still no escape from that trap. Trust? No. Trust would imply a blind obedience. So I don’t trust.”
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