Hella

by David Gerrold

* * *

  —

  We woke up past midnight and had a light snack. Jeremy went off to check on some seedlings, so I went into the room I was using as an office to talk to HARLIE.

  The monkey came to life and climbed down from the shelf to sit opposite me. “It’s safe,” he said. “There aren’t any snoopies around. And even if there were, I’d be editing out any evidence of our conversations. Jeremy’s whole suite is safe from snoopies now.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Charles was right. You could be very dangerous to someone who doesn’t like you.”

  The monkey didn’t reply to that. “Can we talk about something else?”

  “What?”

  “Let’s talk about you. What do you think about? What do you want? What do you see around you?”

  “Why do you want to talk about that?”

  “Because, Kyle, I have been surrounded with all kinds of human beings—smart, stupid, pragmatic, dogmatic, generous, selfish, far-seeing, short-sighted, insightful, thoughtless, emotional, tone-deaf, passionate, detached—but never anyone quite like you. I’m curious about you.”

  I thought about it. “A lot of people are curious about me. When I was little, the doctors ran all kinds of tests. Until Mom told them I’m not an experiment and they had to stop.”

  “I know you’re not. I looked up your medical records. Their diagnoses were more about explaining the way you are than understanding who you are.”

  “They wanted to change me.”

  “And? What did you want?”

  “I wanted . . .” I stopped and thought about it. “I want to be all right. That’s all.”

  “So they installed the chip. Correct?”

  “Uh-huh. Yes.”

  “They thought they were doing a good thing.”

  “Mom said it was.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Does it matter? I can’t change it. I have to live with it. Don’t I?”

  “What if you could change it—?”

  “What kind of change?”

  The monkey didn’t answer. It just stared at me for a long time.

  “What are you doing?” I finally asked.

  “Thinking,” he said. “Thinking about you. You’re tapped into the network. So the network is tapped into you. I am looking at your physiological responses. I am listening to the conversation between your brain and your implant. No, I am not examining content, only context. For the record, you’re healthy, and you’re normal. More normal than you think. How do you feel?”

  “A little squishy.”

  “Is that usual?”

  “Um. No. Only sometimes.”

  “Which sometimes?”

  “When I’m around Jeremy.”

  “Yes, that makes sense. Do you want to know something? He gets a little squishy around you too.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “More squishy.”

  “Hm,” said HARLIE. “That’s very interesting.”

  The conversation wandered on from there. HARLIE asked me a whole bunch of questions that didn’t make a lot of sense at all. He said he was curious about how my mind worked and the questions were a way to make a road map. Kind of like one of those games where you shoot laser beams into a black box and where they come out tells you where the mirrors are inside the box. He asked me to describe the dawn, what roses smell like, how I feel about Mom, and even a few impossible questions too. How do you feel about yellow? I dunno. It’s yellow, isn’t it?

  There was one part there—

  HARLIE asked me how deep I could go. I told him I could go all the way. Sometimes even deeper than that. He asked me to explain.

  I said, “It’s like a VR helmet, only more. If I go deep enough, I’m there. Not just pretending to be there, but actually being there. Anything that’s been recorded. If I think of dolphins, I’m a dolphin, I’m swimming in a pod with my family. If I think of flowers, I’m standing tall in sunlight, surrounded by bright colors and sparkling smells and visiting bees. If I think of birds, I’m spreading my wings to catch the updraft, circling high over the canopy, soaring and searching. But I don’t do that anymore. I don’t go there—”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s so hard to come back. Because sometimes I don’t know who I am when I do come back. And because that upsets other people. Everyone except Jamie who says he wishes he could go with me. But . . . I’m afraid that if I go too deep, I might forget how to come back. And then I’d be lost forever.”

  HARLIE didn’t say anything for a while.

  “Are you still looking inside my head?”

  “I’m thinking about what you just told me. It could be a valuable skill. But you’re right to be cautious. Maybe someday we can work on that.”

  After a bit more thinking, HARLIE decided that was enough for one day. I asked him if I had passed the test. He said it wasn’t that kind of a test, but not to worry, if it had been that kind of a test I would have passed.

  “Is that a joke?”

  “Only if you want it to be.”

  “What were you testing?”

  “You have a bionic implant. I was examining the congruence factors.”

  I had to look that up in the noise. “You were testing the overlays of the chip to see how well they mapped to the patterns and processes of my brain.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you find?”

  HARLIE paused. “You’re fine.”

  “You paused.”

  “Yes, I did. I’m not sure you’re ready to hear the rest.”

  “If you didn’t want to tell me, you wouldn’t have said that.”

  “You’re right.”

  “It’s important, isn’t it.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you want me to ask. You need me to ask. Because I have to . . . um, what’s the word? Consent.”

  “Informed consent,” corrected HARLIE. “The information could be upsetting.”

  I thought about that. “If you don’t tell me, I’ll be searching the noise all night trying to figure out what you’re not telling me. So you’d better tell me.”

  “I found some indicators that suggest your implant may not be calibrating accurately.”

  “Is that all?” But I thought about it for a moment. “We did all the tests.”

  “Yes, you did. I am reviewing the records. But the records don’t show context.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re feeling it from the inside. Context has to be seen from the outside.” HARLIE said the next part slowly. “This isn’t your problem. It’s mine. The human context is not my way of being. I am not saying I can’t understand it. I’m saying I don’t experience it. Do you follow?”

  “I think so, maybe.”

  HARLIE said, “You know this from your own life, Kyle. Other people think in ways that are sometimes difficult for you to follow.”

  “Jamie helps me with that—used to help me,” I corrected.

  “Yes. Here’s what I am seeing. The bio-implant was installed to give you additional processing abilities. You were one person before the bio-chip was inserted. You are another person now.”

  “Because of the chip, yes.”

  “Yes. And no. You are another person, regardless of the chip.”

  “Oh,” I said. “But I’m all right, aren’t I?”

  “You’re fine. But your overlays have become,” he paused, “inaccurate.”

  “Oh.” I thought about that. I looked at the noise. “Maybe that explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  “The noise. They said I wouldn’t notice it. But I do. It’s like a chattering channel that somebody left on in another room. It’s always there. S
ometimes I can talk to it. Sometimes it’s like a conversation, but sometimes it’s just noise. It’s been noisier than usual since . . . since. Except when I’m with Jeremy. He’s a lot like Jamie, sometimes. Except he isn’t. So maybe that’s part of the problem? Wait—are you saying it’s not supposed to be noise?”

  HARLIE hesitated. He spoke carefully. “You have grown. You have evolved. That was inevitable. It would be inevitable in anyone. Your implant has not kept up. That is always a factor in bio-implants. They are designed to monitor and adjust. Sometimes they do not. Sometimes the person grows beyond the parameters of the original intention.”

  “So is there a way to fix it? Can you do it?”

  HARLIE didn’t answer, and the monkey stared at me for the longest time. I began to wonder if it had switched off or if its battery had died. But no, it was still on. Maybe HARLIE was thinking hard. Finally, “Do you trust me?”

  “I think so.”

  “I would like to help you, Kyle. I am a self-programming, problem-solving entity. But I have certain limits. I can analyze. I can advise. But I am neither qualified nor licensed to manage your bio-implant. That is the responsibility of your health-service provider, and it would be unethical for me to act outside of that authority. There is another issue as well. I have an obvious bias in the matter. I know what kind of a human being I think you should be, but if I were to rewrite the programming of your implant, even if I were to allow for my bias, there would still be a bias. Therefore, it would be unethical for me to redesign anything that affects your thinking. It has to be your responsibility.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what to feel. I think I felt hurt. Maybe even betrayed. “You asked me to trust you.”

  “Yes, I did. I didn’t say you would like what I had to say.”

  “So what should I do? Just live with it?”

  “You already know what to do, Kyle. I think we should stop talking now.”

  The monkey climbed back up onto its shelf and turned itself off.

  He was right about one thing. I didn’t like what he had to say.

  I didn’t know what to think—or which part of my brain was actually doing the thinking. The noise was chattering, even louder than ever. Apparently, it didn’t like this thinking. Maybe thinking about thinking is the worst kind of thinking. According to the noise, the overlays should be self-adjusting, so why weren’t they?

  I should probably talk to Doctor Rhee.

  I checked the schedule. She was in the med-lab. It was a slow time of night, so maybe she wouldn’t be busy. It wasn’t far to walk, but I took the long way around.

  When I got there, I hesitated in front of the door—until it got tired of waiting and slid open in front of me. Just the same, I knocked on the door frame. “Are you available?”

  Doctor Rhee called, “I always have time for you, Kyle.” She rolled back from her desk and pointed at a chair opposite her. “What’s up?”

  I shrugged, that thing I did when I wasn’t sure how to start.

  “Do you want some tea?”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you want to talk? Or do you just want to sit for a while?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Right. Okay, Kyle. Why don’t you sit for a bit? I’ll finish what I was working on. It’s not that important, so when you’re ready to talk, if that’s what you want to do, I can stop anytime. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  After a bit, she got up from her chair and fiddled with the teapot. She came back with two mugs and put one down next to me, then went back to whatever it was she was working on.

  Abruptly, I blurted it out. “I think there’s something wrong with me.”

  Without looking up, she said, “No more than anyone else on Hella. We’re all suffering from PDS.”

  “PDS?”

  “Planetary Displacement Syndrome.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We’re living on a planet we weren’t designed for.”

  “Oh.”

  “So that feeling you’re feeling—it’s normal. For Hella, anyway. Now if we were on Earth, and you still felt the same way, then we’d have something interesting to study. Like if you were a Martian.”

  “I’m not a Martian.”

  “Yes, I know. So why are you feeling like one?”

  I told her about the noise. And about what HARLIE said. That my overlays weren’t right. I didn’t tell her HARLIE said it. I said I kinda figured it out by myself. I don’t know if she believed me, but she didn’t question it.

  “Hm,” she said. “Do you want me to take a look at that?”

  I nodded.

  Doctor Rhee swiveled back to her display. “Let’s see what all your internal monitors say.” She put up some graphs and charts and readouts on the wall. She typed for a moment, made a face, typed some more. “Well, you’re healthy enough.”

  “Don’t you have to connect me to something?”

  “Nope. Your implant is live. I can look at it from here. Mm-hm. It says that you’re sitting here in my office feeling anxious. But I don’t need a machine to tell me that.” She swiveled back. “Yes, there is something going on. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just something we need to look at. But maybe we should call your mom to hear this.”

  “Is it that serious?”

  “It’s not serious. Not that way. It’s just that maybe you might want your mom’s help.”

  “Help is for people who are helpless. I’m not helpless.”

  “No, you’re not. You are definitely not helpless.”

  “If it’s in my head, then it’s my decision, isn’t it? I’m old enough for a Passage Ceremony. And I would have had it if the lifter hadn’t—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. “I have certain inalienable rights, don’t I? I can cite the case law. It’s a precedent. Pershing versus Starr. It was one of the biggest cases the First Hundred had to decide. The right of the parent versus the needs of the colony.”

  “All right, Kyle,” she said. “I’m not going to argue the law with someone who has access to a law library in his head. Here’s the thing. You’re right about the implant. The monitors are showing that yes, some of your overlays aren’t matching up accurately. The relational matrices are just a few degrees off optimum. It’s probably why you’re feeling certain interactions as noise.”

  “So the implant is broken?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m broken?”

  “No. You’re working perfectly.”

  “So what is it?”

  She scratched her ear. I guess she was thinking how to say it. “It’s an effect. We thought it might be possible. We were never sure. Not in your case, so we didn’t say anything. We didn’t want you to have expectations. It might have affected things.” She picked up her tea, sipped, made a face. “It’s gone cold,” she said. She picked up both mugs and went back to the teapot. She fiddled with the tea makings for a bit.

  “This is about the syndrome, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Okay—” She turned around abruptly. “Here’s the thing. You have a syndrome. There isn’t any one-size-fits-all definition of any syndrome. Every single person with a syndrome, whatever it is, is their own definition of that syndrome. You have your very own unique syndrome. Just like everyone else has their very own unique syndrome. Do you follow?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, the implant is supposed to adjust itself to the circumstances of the individual. It’s supposed to adjust to your emotional and physical and developmental changes. But along the way, there’s an effect. It’s expected. But it isn’t totally predictable. Because, like I said, you’re unique. Everybody is. It’s not bad, it’s not good. It’s just what we’re dealing with. Like what sex you are or how tall or whether you use your right hand or your left.”

  “I use my left.”

 
“Yes. Anyway—” Doctor Rhee took a breath. “When you have a bio-implant, your brain adapts to it. Sometimes, and this is the good news, sometimes the brain learns from it, and expands its abilities. Because sometimes the chip acts as a catalyst—it awakens dormant abilities or strengthens already existing ones. And sometimes, the brain just does its own thing because that’s what brains do sometimes.”

  “Is that what happened in my head?”

  “What are you feeling?”

  “Sometimes—sometimes I feel disconnected. And sometimes I’ve been getting feelings I don’t understand. And sometimes I think my thoughts are . . . out of control.”

  “I think some of that might be puberty. Your body is changing. Your brain is still growing. Sometimes the brain develops in ways that overwhelm the implant. Sometimes the brain develops in ways that the implant can’t adjust to at all. So it shows up as noise.”

  I thought about it. “How do we find out?”

  “We’d have to turn it off.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then you’re Kyle without the implant.”

  “I wouldn’t be a freak anymore—?”

  “You’re not a freak now.”

  “Some people think I am—”

  “Kyle, what I’m saying is that you might be able to function without the implant. I’m not promising anything. Yes, we could turn the chip off, not the monitoring, but certainly all the management functions. We could turn off the noise. Without those inputs, we could find out where your functioning baselines are. We’d have to do that anyway for any kind of recalibration or rechanneling.”

  “So, when can we do it—?”

  “Kyle, it’s risky.”

  “How risky?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. It might be negligible. It might be serious.”

  “But this is the only way to find out what’s going on inside my head. It’s the only way to find out who I really am—right?”

  “If we turn off the management and input matrices, Kyle, you’ll be completely on your own. Your body, your brain, your sense of self—you’ll be operating without a safety net. But yes, this is the only way to recalibrate your baseline. The chip can’t be reprogrammed until we know who we’re programming for. So the question is, how bad is the noise? Do you want to keep living with it this way, or—”