Hella

by David Gerrold

  “I want it turned off. I need to know.”

  “I hear you, Kyle. But you also need to make an informed decision. If it doesn’t work, we can try to reboot the implant. But I can’t guarantee that it’ll be the same. You’ve changed. Without the influence of the chip, you’ll probably shift some more. The chip will recalibrate itself, but if you go so far off-base that it can’t create new overlays, you could end up worse off than before. If we have to reboot, and it doesn’t take, you could lose all of the benefits of the implant permanently.”

  “I could be permanently stupid?”

  “Not stupid, no. But—” Doctor Rhee looked at me. “You already knew all this, didn’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The noise?”

  “Uh-huh. It told me everything.”

  “But you wanted me to say it too?”

  “I trust you.”

  “Thank you. I’ll try to be worthy of your trust. All right. Before we commit to anything, do you want to talk this over with your mom?”

  “I have to do this myself,” I said. “I know you’re thinking about what’s best. Everybody thinks. That’s the problem. Sometimes everybody thinks too much. They think about how other people should think. And then everybody has noise in their head. And that’s why—” I stopped. I didn’t think I should finish the sentence. The rest of it was obvious anyway. I pointed at her monitor. “Just look up the parental consent notes. Please.”

  Doctor Rhee turned to her work station. “Oh—”

  “I didn’t want the chip. I was afraid of it. So Mom and I made an agreement. She asked me to try it for a week, a month, long enough to see if it helped. If it didn’t work, if it didn’t help me be a real person, then I could have it turned off. I wouldn’t have to ask her permission. I could just come in and tell you. She said it would be my decision alone, nobody else could make it for me. And I said she had to put it in writing. And she did.”

  Doctor Rhee was already studying her display. “Hm. Yes. I see that now. Your mom is quite a woman. She trusts you a lot.”

  “I think she trusted the implant too. She said it more than once—maybe she wasn’t supposed to say it, but she thought the implant might re-channel my brain, that maybe one day I wouldn’t need it—that maybe I would learn how to be a person who could function without the chip. Emotions and empathy and nuance—even nuance. All of it. Turning it off will be a chance to find out.”

  Doctor Rhee turned back to me. “All right. You win, Kyle. Legally, you have the authority. You’re old enough. And your mom signed off. Do I have concerns? Yes? But the whole of medicine is about the client having the right to an informed consent to any treatment or procedure—”

  “I know that.”

  “Of course you do. I’m just stating it for the record. Do you want to do this now?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Do you want your mom here?”

  “No,” I said. “This has to be me.”

  Doctor Rhee wasn’t happy, I could tell that much, but she was done arguing. “You’ll need to sign a consent form.” She passed me her tablet, and I scrawled a signature. She added her own and said, “All right. Here’s how this is going to work. You’re going to lie down on that couch. I’m going to give you a mild sedative. Then you’re going to close your eyes and listen. Just listen, nothing else. First there will be music. Then after a while you’ll hear a voice—not in your head. In your ears. The voice will suggest things for you to visualize. Imagine the taste of this. Remember the color of that. Pretend you’re feeling something—”

  “I know how to do a visualization exercise—”

  “Be quiet, Kyle, and listen to the instructions. Don’t think about them, just listen. You might fall asleep for a bit, you might not, but you will be drifting. The important thing is focusing your attention on your physical experience. We want you in your body, listening only to your own feelings, nothing else. When it’s time, the implant will turn itself off. Not all at once, just a bit at a time. You won’t notice it, you won’t feel it. You’ll come awake gradually. You won’t be aware of the silence, not at first. Or maybe you will. You won’t be sleepy, but you’ll be mellow. It’ll be a nice feeling. The active parts of the implant will have to be off for a while—long enough to compute a new baseline. If you start feeling uncomfortable, come see me immediately, okay? Promise you’ll do that? Kyle?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I guess she didn’t believe me. “Kyle, I want you to promise me. If you have any trouble—”

  “I promise.”

  “Stinky promise?”

  I held out my hand. “Stinky promise.”

  “Good. Thank you. Let me know when you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready now.”

  “All right, lie down on the couch. I’ll lower the lights.”

  * * *

  —

  I like Doctor Rhee. She argues well. As Jamie used to say, she touches all the bases. I wasn’t sure what that meant, touching all the bases. I had to look it up. We don’t play baseball on Hella. The lighter gravity messes everything up. Too many home runs. The diamond has to be larger too. And you can’t run in Hella gravity the same way you do on Earth. Some people have been trying to adjust the game for Hella, but so far nobody has touched all the bases. I think that’s a joke.

  I woke up to music. I didn’t know what it was and the noise wasn’t there to tell me. It was slow music. Classical. Familiar. It was the largo movement from something—something about going home. It was good music, but it annoyed me that I couldn’t recognize it immediately.

  Is this what it’s like for people without implants?

  What an odd feeling. But I recognized the feeling. Annoyance. Almost frustration. I must have laughed. Doctor Rhee came over. “You’re awake? Good. What’s so funny?”

  “I’m irritable,” I said. “And I know I’m irritable. That’s what’s so funny.”

  Doctor Rhee smiled, even laughed a little too. “Yes, that’s good. That’s very good. Why don’t you rest a while. Just listen to the music. The implant is monitoring and reporting, but the active functions are muted. You’re on your own now.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. This was all very new. When I was finally feeling ready, I went up to the caf. It was a little early for second breakfast, no one else was there, but I could get some fruit and some juice.

  Being on my own—

  I was both excited and scared. And I could actually recognize both emotions.

  See, the thing is—the more you know about anything, the harder the decisions get. And even though the implant was no longer chattering, all the stuff I had learned from it was still in my head.

  But there’s some stuff that no matter how much you know, there’s still no way to know what’s right except by finding out first what’s wrong.

  Like me and Jeremy.

  Even though Jeremy and I had agreed that we were sort of boy friends, we hadn’t really talked about what that actually meant. Figuring it out one day at a time meant we were always figuring it out. Nothing was settled. We would have to talk about it. Maybe every day? That didn’t make sense to me. But is that what boy friends do? Talk about how to be boy friends? That seemed like a very strange way to be boy friends. I didn’t understand it at all.

  And while I was sitting alone with my head in my hands, staring at a half-finished bowl of berries and cream, thinking about what it would be like to have to sit down to pee—well, I could practice that already—abruptly, I was falling, banging into the floor, and my berries and cream and fruit juice were all over me. And Marley Layton was looming above, with an ugly grin, “What’s the matter, little retard-boy? Too clumsy to sit on a real chair yet?”

  My backside was already starting to tell me that I’d hit wrong and that this was going to hurt. I s
tarted to pull myself up, but she pushed me back down. She leaned into me and said, “You stay away from my brother or next time I’ll really hurt you!” And then she punched me hard, right in the center of my chest. Her fist felt like a little battering ram, and I went sprawling back across the floor, skidding in juice and cream. Marley leaned in over me and said, “And don’t bother whining to my dad, crybaby, because he won’t do anything. He told me to tell you to stay the hell away.” Then she kicked me in the ribs. Hard. She turned as if to go, then came back and said, “You and your stupid friends are going to get it now.” And kicked me again, this time in the head.

  She strode off then, and I collapsed in pain, all alone on the floor of the empty cafeteria, hurting so much I couldn’t move. I was wet with juice and berries, my back was scraped from where I’d been dumped out of my chair, and every part of me was screaming at once. I couldn’t help myself, I started crying. Everything was so wrong. Captain Skyler and Jamie were gone and Coordinator Layton was telling Jeremy not to see me anymore and now this. I just gasped and sobbed—even the cleaning-bots were afraid to approach.

  “Kyle?”

  A voice. Lilla-Jack.

  “Are you all right?”

  “No,” I couldn’t even look up. I kept crying.

  “What happened?” She knelt down next to me.

  “Nothing,” I said, trying to wave her away.

  “This isn’t nothing,” she said. “Let’s go see the doctor. Come on, I’ll help you up.”

  “No! Leave me alone! I want everybody to leave me alone!”

  “Kyle, did somebody hurt you? Who did this to you?”

  “Nobody—”

  “Kyle, I can look at the video—” She pulled her pad off her hip and flicked it to life. Tap tap tap.

  “It was Marley,” I said. “Marley Layton. She dumped me out of my chair, and she punched me and yelled at me, and she kicked me.”

  “All right. Yes, I see.” She turned her pad to show me the video. Marley had walked right up behind me and tipped me out of my chair, yanking it out from under me. Lilla-Jack pulled the pad away. “Are you hurt? Can you get up?”

  “My elbow hurts.” I hadn’t even realized I’d hit my elbow when I fell backward, but now my whole arm was in pain.

  “Okay, stay down.” She touched her com-set. “Med-team to the caf, please. Bring a stretcher.” She listened for a moment. “No, it doesn’t look life-threatening. But let’s not take chances. It’s Kyle Martin. He took a bad fall.” She listened a moment more, looked at her pad, then spoke to me closely. “Kyle, listen to me. You’re fine. Your monitors look good. But you might have fractured your elbow and cracked a rib. We want to look at your hip as well. We’re going to take you to Med-Bay for a scan, okay? Just stay still, I’m going to call your mom.”

  “No! Call Jeremy.”

  “I’ll call them both—”

  “Marley did it,” I said. “I wasn’t doing anything. I was just sitting and thinking—”

  “It’s all right, Kyle. It’s all in the video. Just stay still. Practice your breathing with me, okay. I don’t want you hyperventilating. I’ll count real slow. Take a slow breath, one . . . two . . . three. . . . Attaboy. Let it out. Just keep doing that.” She touched her com-set and began quietly talking. “Yes, yes, he’s all right, just a little shaken up. I’m getting him to Med-Bay. Gotta go, the team is here—”

  They slid me onto a board and rolled me to the Med-Bay, despite my protests that I could walk.

  “Shut up, Kyle,” Lilla-Jack said. “It’s protocol. You might be fine, but they need the practice.”

  Before the med-scan was finished, both Mom and Jeremy had come rushing in. Mom looked like she’d crawled out of bed, and I apologized for waking her up. Jeremy just looked angry. “I heard what happened. She won’t get away with it, Kyle—”

  By then, Doctor Rhee had given me a shpritz of something for the pain, and I was feeling very relaxed and even a little sleepy. I watched while she sprayed a cast around my elbow. “No bending until the repairs harden.”

  Mom and Jeremy walked me back to Mom’s suite—it was closer—and tucked me into bed. I started to tell Jeremy about something, but I fell asleep in the middle of a sentence.

  * * *

  —

  I awoke mid-morning, feeling strange to be in my own bed again. My side hurt where Marley had kicked me, and my head hurt too. I looked at my arm. Doctor Rhee had put an angled aluminum bar along the inside of the cast. Now, for sure, I wasn’t going to bend my arm.

  It took me a minute to figure out how, but I was finally able to pull on a clean longshirt. I smelled ham and eggs and coffee, so I padded barefoot into the kitchen. Jeremy and Mom and Lilla-Jack were sitting at the table. And Captain Boynton too. He had his back to me and didn’t see me come in.

  “—well, of course it was intimidation. But I think he’s also sending a larger message that anyone who gets in his way is going to get hurt.”

  Mom said, “But why pick on Kyle? He knows I’ll come after him—”

  “And that’ll give him the excuse he needs to—”

  “Dora—” Lilla-Jack pointed to me and they all turned around.

  “Oh, Kyle.” Mom stood up. “How are you feeling? Did you sleep okay?”

  “My ribs hurt.” I rubbed my nose and my cheek. “My whole face hurts too.”

  “I can give you something for that.” She already had the pill bottle in her hand. “Are you hungry?” She didn’t wait for my answer. She went to get me a plate.

  Captain Boynton stood up then and held out his hand to shake, then looked at my arm in the cast. “Uh, maybe we’d better not. But I’m happy to meet you, Kyle” We bowed to each other instead.

  Jeremy took me in his arms. “Are you all right, sweetheart?” That got a raised eyebrow from Mom.

  I nodded and sat down in the closest chair. I was still feeling groggy from whatever was in that shpritz that Doctor Rhee gave me. The leftover pain in my side and in my head was an unpleasant overlay. Jeremy sat down next to me, like he was protecting me.

  Lilla-Jack said, “You don’t have to worry, Kyle. We’re going to do something about Marley.”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t even know she was here at Winterland.”

  “According to the manifest, she’s been here for three days.”

  “Really? Somebody sent a lifter? In this weather?”

  “She came in by truck,” said Lilla-Jack.

  Mom put a full plate in front of me, but I didn’t touch it. I was trying to figure something out. I shook my head. There was no noise in it. But—“No. She couldn’t have. A truck would take a week to get there and another week back. But Coordinator Layton only pardoned her the day after the crash—”

  Jeremy grabbed his pad and started tapping. Mom frowned and looked at Lilla-Jack. Lilla-Jack matched her frown and looked at Captain Boynton. Captain Boynton said to Lilla-Jack, “Reach out to the driver. And whoever you trust at Bitch Station. Who signed off on the trip? And let’s look at the timeline.”

  Jeremy held up his pad for the Captain to see. “Here it is. The Rollagon left a week before Coordinator Layton publicly pardoned his daughter. It was an unscheduled resupply. The round trip took seventeen days. They had a layover at High Peak for a day and a half, but they made up time on the downside.” He handed the pad to Boynton.

  “Awfully convenient,” Boynton said. He studied the screen of the pad, tapping at the display, scrolling through the timelines. “Yeah, here it is. The Coordinator told the truck to delay its departure from Bitch Canyon. No reason given.” His expression changed. “That was before Madam Coordinator’s lifter left Summerland.” He tapped the display for more information. “And then three hours later, after the lifter’s crash was confirmed, he told them to load Marley and return.”

  Lilla-Jack started to say something, th
en stopped herself. “Oh, crap.”

  Mom’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh, no—”

  Jeremy said quietly, “Well, there it is. You wanted evidence—?”

  “He can’t really be that stupid—” Lilla-Jack said.

  “Arrogance is always stupid,” said Mom.

  “No,” said Jeremy. “It’s not him.”

  They all looked at him, waiting for an explanation.

  Jeremy said, “I mean, yeah he did it. But it didn’t come from him. It came from Bruinhilda. She’s the one who tells him what to do. She’s the real monster—”

  Suddenly, they were all talking at once. I had to shout. “Stop, stop! Everybody stop! What are you talking about? You’re going too fast.”

  There was a moment of silence while they all looked at each other, one of those silences that I had learned meant they were uncomfortable with what they had to say next. Finally, Captain Boynton turned to me. “The lifter crash, Kyle. It wasn’t an accident.”

  “I knew that,” I said. “I figured it out because Jake Brickman was aboard. He knew how to write assembly code, so he could hack any software on Hella in ways that would be almost impossible for anyone else to detect. I think maybe he was working for Coordinator Layton, writing hacks for him, and the Coordinator was afraid he’d tell someone.” They all looked at me, so I explained how I’d figured it out. “It was the word ‘convenient.’ People kept saying the crash was convenient. The more convenient it looked, the less it looked like an accident. But I didn’t know who to tell.”

  “You’re very sharp, Kyle,” said Lilla-Jack. “But you’ve got one point backward. Layton didn’t like Brickman because Brickman worked with us. Layton didn’t know it, at least we think he didn’t, but Brickman was diverting certain necessary resources to . . . um . . .”

  “Kyle knows about the X-Station,” Jeremy said to her. “I told him. He would have figured it out anyway.”

  “Well, things are getting too dangerous around here,” Mom said. “And I’m not going to lose another son. I think we should do what we discussed earlier. Send the boys away. Just for a little while anyway.”