REAP 23

by J J Perry

  “That is almost unbelievable,” Maricia said. “Can you prove this?”

  “I knew you and others would have reason to suspect that I came up with this for some self-serving reason. So every step is documented in Jekyll, who did all the work and backed it up in the system. I did none of the work myself.”

  “It could make sense,” Savanna said.

  Unnoticed by the others, Maricia activated her communicator and summoned the closest med-bot to come to Science. The emotional stress seemed like it was high, ready to make someone else break. She wanted one of the experts there to assess.

  “We will recheck the log and the security features of Jekyll,” said Cyrus. “You’re positing that all this is unintended sabotage.”

  “We don’t know about any larger intent. The twist is that he is the smartest of all of us,” Savanna said, “and still thinks with his gonads.”

  “If this is true,” said Maricia.

  “It’s true, Maricia,” said Lucinda with tears brimming in both eyes. “Take a couple of sniffs and see how you feel. I never would have done this to you. I don’t act out like this. You have read my profile and know this. We work together every day. We’re close like sisters. I swear to God this is the truth.”

  Maricia put her head under the hood and her nose into a bag and inhaled twice and stood up. “How long does it take?”

  “Not too long.”

  Maricia smiled. “Not long at all. Oooooh.”

  Stillness of anticipation was broken when Maricia looked back at Lucinda, the hostility starting slowly to erode in a sea of tears. She stepped forward and opened her arms. They embraced. “I’m starting to believe you, Luc.”

  Savanna stepped in and put her arms around both of them. “Group hug.”

  As the scrum of weeping women healed and rebounded, Raul pulled Cyrus aside. “Does this change how we handle Parambi?” he asked.

  “Should it?”

  Lola walked in from the stairwell, looking bronze and beautiful, saying nothing.

  “Cyrus, he’s a danger to the crew and the mission!”

  “We should all discuss it later.” He looked at the door. His jaw and fists clenched.

  “I could understand the first mistake, or at least forgive it. The second time, he overcame our security and almost killed me. He should be chemically restrained until we sort this out.”

  “I don’t know, Raul. But this could be good news for you. You might get lucky tonight.”

  “I never thought I would say this, but that sounds so painful. But, yeah, I feel slightly less evil.”

  “Redemption comes in many forms,” Cyrus said as if to himself.

  “I felt just like this in Rec after the crisis. I thought I had gone bonkers,” Maricia said as her pupils pushed her blue irises into a rim, and pink glowed on her neck, disappearing down below her shirt.

  “What does it feel like?” Savanna asked.

  “It’s so compelling. It’s hard not to touch my—. Oh, baby. I need to be excused,” Maricia said. She disappeared into the stairwell.

  “Proof,” Lucinda said. “Proof.”

  Cyrus bumped and pushed his way to the hood and took several whiffs from deep inside. He glowered for several seconds with all eyes upon him. “Nothing there,” he said and then stomped out of the room. Lola wafted some of the fumes with her hand into her nose. Raul was left with Savanna and Lucinda. “Well, aren’t you going to follow Mar?” Lucinda asked Raul, gesturing for him to leave.

  “I’m bothered by his attitude,” he said, nodding at the disappearing commander.

  “You’re not alone,” Lucinda agreed.

  “This is the same chemical present in Recreation at the time of the assault on Mr. Trujillo,” Lola announced.

  “I don’t get why he seems more concerned with Parambi than with our safety,” Raul said. “It’s like he has taken sides with him against the rest of us. It’s really buggin’ me.”

  “Every now and then, he makes these loony statements,” Lucinda noted.

  “A few weeks ago, after Chen and Leila died, there was a notice that those two were at risk of a breakdown.”

  “That was a classified document,” Lola said. “How did you access it?”

  “It showed up on my monitor for a few seconds before it disappeared. Why are you here, Lola?”

  “Maricia sent for me.”

  “Savanna, you spend a lot of time with Cy,” Raul said. “What’s up?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t really gotten along well since liftoff. He doesn’t open up to me.”

  “Lola?” Lucinda said.

  “Our projection, based on data acquired to that point on the mission, was that he, as well as Dr. Parambi, was likely to experience psychological decompensation. We detect growing dissonance in the commander manifest by his statements, a change in pattern and distribution of delta wave sleep, an altered selection of entertainment type, as well as some other equivocal physiologic changes.”

  “We should do something,” Raul said. “I think the rules are if three of the five competent remaining vote to change leaders, we can do it. Isn’t that right?”

  “Technically correct,” Lola said. “It would add another stressor and exacerbate the severity of the problem.”

  “It’s going to get worse regardless of what we do,” Savanna predicted. “There’s something about him, perhaps about his past, that he keeps hidden. Can you help, Lola?”

  “There is nothing in his recorded life history of major concern. I could probe his memory but only with his cooperation. Given his current state, it is improbable he would consent.”

  “As acting commander, did he receive the information about Suresh’s unbalanced state?” Raul asked.

  “Affirmative.”

  “He said nothing to me,” Savanna said. “To any of you?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “Is he violent with you, Sav?” Lucinda asked.

  “Not yet,” she said with growing presentiment.

  4.6

  Late that same night, Lucinda sat in the five-sense booth with a program running that helped her recall and relive how they met. Chen said he left the California Institute of Technology campus on a bus headed south to San Diego on a Thursday afternoon. He had no classes on Friday and had arranged to meet some buddies in La Jolla. He had golf times Friday and Saturday at Torrey Pines. When not golfing, they were going to be hanging out on or hang gliding above Black’s Beach.

  Lucinda jogged the shoreline, navigable only in the afternoon when the tide followed the setting sun. Friday’s small clouds scuttled across the azure façade of heaven. A cool breeze coerced the inactives into jackets and sweaters, all except a group of naked men that Lucinda jogged past, who paid her no attention. She ran alone, seeing few others. Ahead, she saw larger numbers of people on the beech but few in the water. Those that played in the surf were wet only to their knees. There were maybe half a dozen wet-suited surfers, several of whom were climbing cold out of the sea. She was looking out at a hardy young man on a wave when Chen’s friend, a name she had long forgotten, tossed an easy drifter that headed into the surf. Chen ran to catch it, colliding with her, putting them both in the frigid shallow froth left over from a receding wave.

  “I’m sorry,” Chen said.

  “You might try going where you are looking,” said the young woman as she picked herself up from the surf and started brushing wet sand off her T-shirt and shorts.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “You thumped me pretty hard on the chest. Are you hurt?”

  He examined himself. “I lost a little skin. Can I help you?”

  They looked each other over with growing interest. The sun was low over the horizon behind some clouds with rays coming down onto the Pacific in the distance.

  “What’s your nam
e?”

  “Chen. What’s yours?

  “Lucinda.”

  “How far are you going to run?”

  “It’s about another mile back to my car. That will be about six miles or so for me today.”

  “I should run with you to make sure you are going to be OK, Lucinda.”

  She started running. She looked back and yelled, “You should buy me dinner.”

  “You’re right. I should,” Chen sputtered as he sprinted to catch up.

  As they ran back to the lot near the beach, they talked. “Where are you from?” Lucinda asked.

  “I go to Caltech.”

  “What do you study?”

  “I’m in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a master’s program.”

  “That explains a lot,” she said with a big smile.

  “Oh?”

  “I was hit by a space cadet.”

  “Funny. I’m more of an engineer.”

  “Chen, the engineer space cadet.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a medic, a physician assistant.”

  “You work with robots, then. That’s a lot of engineering.”

  “It is.”

  “So, Lucinda, how much medicine do you need to know?”

  “I probably don’t have to know much. The med-bots and multi-bots know everything. I mean, I know a lot. It’s a four-year school after college followed by a couple of years of practical work. It’s about what medical school used to be before physicians were all robotic.”

  “I didn’t know there was that much school involved. When were physicians not robots?”

  “History lesson.” She smiled at him, and he smiled back. “Around the latter half of the twenty-first century, they were becoming robotic. It took almost a hundred years to transition from computer assistance to full robotics at that point. So about fifty to eighty years ago, to answer your question.”

  She stopped talking to catch her breath. They matched well stride for stride.

  “So, Chen of Caltech, do you have a last name?”

  “Wong. What’s yours?”

  “Fischer. When do you finish, and what do you plan to do then?”

  “I’m military, command track, the Air and Space Corps. They are paying the bill. When I graduate in eight months, I’ll go where they want me. I think that will be here in California. My dad has pull.”

  “Who is your dad?”

  “Kim Yerk Wong.”

  “The senator?”

  “Yeah. He wants me near the capital.”

  Within a few minutes, they arrived at the parking lot. They found a sushi bar nearby.

  Lucinda remembered their first dinner and that day they met with clarity. One year later, they became engaged on Black’s Beach at sunset in a rare rainstorm.

  He, the lover of space, flight, and travel, is gone. She, who could be working at a nice comfortable clinic and jogging on a beach somewhere, is headed to a planet to be a single mom. Was it fate, purpose, or accident, she pondered as her reverie faded in the feather between wakefulness and slumber.

  5.0

  LAUNCH + 164

  Lucinda arose early to work on her presentation about Suresh, which was scheduled for first thing in the morning. She enjoyed breakfast with Savanna and the inane chatter from the cook-bot, who renamed himself Durgon Kushman. She fussed with her data and wording as she drank coffee, waiting for the rest of the crew to show up. At the appointed hour, she presented her report about Dr. Parambi in the mess hall.

  “It has been over three weeks since his neuroablation, and he has been getting one low-dose medication,” Lucinda continued. “He has persistent thought and behavioral abnormalities.” The other four crew members were paying close attention. This was the fourth meeting dealing with Dr. Parambi in two weeks. All of the previous had ended in conflict. “We have had to terminate his activities on three occasions since our last meeting. Our bots are examining some additional work he has done because it is not clear yet what his intent is. It does not appear to work in line with our mission. He is getting better, if not psychiatrically, at hiding his activities.”

  “Without the editorials, please, Lucinda,” Cyrus interrupted.

  Lucinda continued without a pause. “On seven occasions, he has approached me, as you can see here,”—pointing at locator entries—“with vague or overt sexual references. On one of these interactions, he had a sample of his aphrodisiac, despite our efforts to prevent him from making more. Our testing indicates while his potential for violence is much less since the procedure, his anomalous thought processes have not been affected much.” Cyrus fidgeted and was about to interject. “Before you interrupt, I acknowledge his IQ precludes absolute comparisons with norms. However, in a thorough review of decades of data, it is reasonable to conclude his pattern is abnormal as demonstrated in this series of scattergrams we finished yesterday. Regardless of this comparison to the expected and typical, his behavior, according to objective analysis, is categorized as nonproductive and potentially harmful to the mission. It is the consensus of medics and med-bots that further action needs to be taken.”

  “We have agreed on this opinion,” Maricia confirmed for the formal record.

  “Since our last meeting,” Cyrus began, “Suresh has approached me daily with objections to the process, the uncertainty of the findings, the impact on the mission, and, mostly, the infringement on his rights. He filed a grievance with Houston and Paris about the abuse of his rights when we did the neuroablation without his permission. Hours ago, we learned that Command upheld my decision but not without significant dissent and with a great deal of exhortation, so to speak, to preserve his rights as much as possible. Just so all of you are aware, and for the record, one of his terminated activities was directed at me with harmful intent. We have restricted his access to most of the computer. Despite this, he was able to introduce programming into the system. I believe we isolated and deleted the routine. Raul placed additional protections into security.”

  “Did you send the programming back to base?” Lucinda asked.

  “Yes, but we have not received a response. As you know, each day, the time to get messages back and forth grows longer.”

  “I had the computer look for programming changes by Parambi,” Raul commented. “It found nothing more than the one subroutine.

  “Have you changed your position, Commander?” Lucinda questioned.

  “No. I think he is still manageable with our current level of vigilance. Just to repeat, the two fatalities were unintentional, and the attack on Raul was done prior to the ablation. You said his potential for physical violence is low.”

  “We said less, not low,” Lucinda corrected. “His potential for sabotage is high.”

  “Manageable, as I said.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause. “It is disturbing,” Lucinda challenged, “that you choose to ignore a strong recommendation by experts qualified to deal with psychiatric pathology.”

  “That is my position.”

  Savanna interrupted the two-way dialogue. “This is a replay of the meeting last weekend. Let me try a different tack. Does anyone here think that Dr. Parambi is a healthy and productive member of this crew?” No hands were raised, no voices in the affirmative. “That is a no. Does anyone believe that Dr. Parambi is a potential threat to individuals or the mission?”

  There were hands raised and murmurs of affirmation. “Raise your hand if you think he is not a potential threat.” No hand was raised. “The point here, Cyrus, is that everyone, including you, views him as a threat. It creates a burden on the crew as well as robotic resources to keep an eye on him. We have had one failure that we know of in keeping him out of the computer. For all we know, there may have been others not detected. Your position is that we can be successful in containment. My point is that one mistake, one missed opp
ortunity or observation could cost another life or the mission. I continue to be uncomfortable with this approach. I think it is irresponsible.”

  “He has rights,” Cyrus argued.

  “Lucinda has a right to be free from harassment. We all have a right to complete this mission, for which we have all sacrificed virtually everything. We have an obligation to do our work without also being prison guards or psych wardens. How many dead and wounded will it take, Cyrus? How many?”

  “I doubt I could get approval from Control for another procedure. I don’t want to ask.”

  “They are not here. They answer to the attorneys, the press, the bureaucracy, and, what, seven or eight governments. If this mission fails, they console each other, say they did their best, then go dissolve the dissonance of infamy and integrity in vodka. The consequence of failure for us is death. The consequence for the world is no exit from certain destruction. I no longer understand you, Cyrus.”

  “I thought you were on my side, Savanna.”

  “I am. You just haven’t realized it yet.”

  “You are not helping me.”

  “Cyrus, if you were flying on the wrong heading, would I be on your side if I told you nothing? I propose that we vote again.”

  “Second that,” Lucinda added quickly.

  “We tied last weekend, three to three,” Cyrus offered. “And I still maintain this is not an issue for democracy.”

  “You claim to have the proxy for Parambi,” Raul argued. “The commander has two votes anyway for issues subject to democracy. The previous actual vote count was 3–2 in favor of more work on Parambi. You and I voted against it. By your count, it was 3–4 against. I have changed my mind. Let’s vote again.”

  “It is not subject to a democratic process,” Cyrus insisted.

  “I anticipated your objection, Cyrus,” Savanna said, “so I looked it up. The rules and regulations say Command decisions about the mission and operation of the vessel are not subject to vote. Issues dealing with internal affairs of the crew including disputes and rights are appropriately addressed through a democratic process with appeal, the commander having two votes. I think that a vote is in order.”