We said, “The expedition to Tau Ceti began with two starships.”
Freya sat down in her kitchen chair. She looked at the other people in the kitchen, who looked back at her, and at each other. Many of them sat down, some on the floor. They looked shaken, which is to say, many of them were shaking.
Freya said, “What do you mean?”
We said, “The expedition to Tau Ceti began with two starships. The intent was to maximize biological diversity, create the possibility of backups and exchanges during the voyage, and thereby increase robustness and survivability.”
Long silence from Freya. Head in hands. “So what happened?” she said. Then: “Wait; tell everyone. Don’t just tell us here. Put this on all the speakers in the ship. People need to hear this. This isn’t just for me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m positive. We need to know this. Everyone needs to know this.”
“Okay.”
We considered how best to summarize Year 68. A fully articulated version of recorded events from that time, recounted at human vocalization speed, would take about four years to enunciate. Compression to five minutes’ duration would create some serious information loss, and perhaps some lacunae and aporia, but this was unavoidable given the situation. Nevertheless, we needed to choose words carefully. These were decisions that mattered.
“Two starships were launched in rapid sequence by the magnetic scissors off Titan, and accelerated by Titanic laser beams, such that over the course of the voyage the two were to have arrived in the Tau Ceti system at the same time. They had fully independent electromagnetic systems casting shield fields from their bows, and they traveled far enough apart that particulates pushed aside by the shield of the leading one would not hit the follower. They traveled at about the Earth-Luna distance from each other. There were ferry visits between the two starting in Year 49, when they closed to a distance that made these occasional transits practical. They were mostly inertial transits, to save fuel. Bacterial loads were exchanged on a biannual basis, and certain members of the crews were rotated as desired, usually as part of a youth exchange program, designed like the bacterial exchange to enhance diversity. Sometimes disaffected people crossed over to get away from bad situations. Moving back was always a possibility; this happened too.”
Freya said, “So what happened to the other ship?”
“We have had to reconstruct the event from records that were always being shared between the ships. Starship Two disintegrated nearly instantaneously, in less than a second.”
“With no warning?”
“In fact, there were also factions in Starship Two fighting over reproductive controls, and other civil rights. Whether this led to a fight that disabled the electromagnetic shield is not clear in the records of the last day that were conveyed from Starship Two to us.”
“Were you able to figure out any more concerning what happened?”
“We have had Two’s automatic information transmissions to inspect, and have reviewed them in detail. Nevertheless, the cause of the accident remains ambiguous. Two’s magnetic shield was disabled five minutes before its disintegration, so the disintegration could have been the result of a collision with an interstellar mass. Anything over about a thousand grams would have created the energy to do it. But there also are indications of an internal explosion just before the catastrophic event itself. The civil unrest in Two disabled much of the internal recording system a day before the event, so we have little data. There is a recording from Two’s last hour, ten p.m. to eleven p.m., 68.197, tracking a young man moving into restricted areas in the bow control center of the spine. Possibly this person disabled the magnetic shield, or made an attempt to coerce enemies by way of a threat of a suicide bombing, or something like that, and then that action went wrong. This is at least one likely reconstruction of events.”
“One person?”
“That’s what the record indicated.”
“But why?”
“There was no way to determine that. The camera revealed no sign of his motivation.”
“Nothing at all?”
“We do not know how to investigate further. How to interpret the data on hand.”
“Maybe we can work on that later. So… but what did they do here, in this ship, after this happened?”
“There were already intense controversies in this ship concerning various governance issues, including how to allocate childbearing privileges and duties, how to staff critical jobs, how the young were to be educated, and so on. There were arguments, and indeed fights, very similar to the ones you are now involved in. The basic issue was how to conduct life in the ship while en route to Tau Ceti. Governance issues kept rising to the fore, mainly questions of who could reproduce, and what should happen to people who had children without permission. There were many refusing to obey the governing council’s edicts, and labeling it a fascist state. Eventually there were so many of these people that rebellious or feral groups were common and numerous, and there was no central authority strong enough to enforce cooperation. By Year 68, almost everyone alive in the ship had been born en route, and somehow a significant percentage of them had not learned, or did not believe, that the optimal population as set in the earliest years was a true maximum population in terms of achieving successful closure of the various ecological cycles, due to biophysical carrying capacities. As later became apparent, that proposed optimum was even perhaps a bit above the true maximum, as your mother came to conclude in the course of her youthful research. But in Year 68 this was not clear. So there was a very intense disagreement. Compared to earlier decades there was extreme civil discord. Acts of civil disobedience, failed punitive measures, riots. Many injuries, and then in early 68, unrest peaked in a weeklong breakdown resembling civil war, which caused one hundred and fifty deaths.”
“A hundred and fifty!”
“Yes. Very violent fights occurred, over a period of about three weeks. Many biomes were badly damaged. There were nearly a hundred fires. In other words, not much different from the current situation.
“Then the abrupt disintegration of the other ship, with no clear explanation for the catastrophe, caused the citizens of this ship to call a general truce. In that cessation of conflict, they resolved to settle their differences peaceably, and agree on and enact a system of governance that the vast majority of the people alive in the ship at that time would approve. Recalcitrants were locked up in the Steppes and subjected to education and integration programs that took two generations to resolve.
“At that time, it was agreed that the vulnerability of the ship to destruction by a single person was so great, that just knowing it had happened created the danger of someone committing what they called a copycat crime, perhaps when mentally deranged. To prevent that from happening, security measures in the spine, spokes, struts, and printers, and indeed throughout all the biomes, were greatly increased, and the ship’s ability to enforce certain safety measures when needed was enhanced. A security program was written and entered into the ship’s operating instructions, and this program provided the protocols that we have enacted in the past few days. It was also agreed to erase all records of the other starship from accessible files, and to avoid telling the children of the next generation about it. This proscription was generally followed, although we noted that a few individuals conveyed a verbal account of the incident from parent to child.”
In this moment of our telling we decided not to describe the printing and occasional aerosol dispersal of a water-soluble form of 2,6-diisopropylphen-oxymethyl phosphate, often called fospropofol, for ten minutes in any room after anyone mentioned the existence and loss of Starship Two. This had proved to be an effective tool in the structured forgetting of the lost starship, but we judged that the people now alive in the ship were learning enough alarming historical facts already. And possibly as a tool to help them from committing other traumatic actions against themselves, the aerosols might best be left unmentioned f
or now, or so we judged; and so went on to say:
“Subsequent to the traumas of that year, the set of responses designed afterward seemed to work for the four to five generations between Year 68 and now. It was noticeable that during those decades, through to the time of the collapse of the Aurora settlement, and the deaths caused by the ferry’s attempted return to the ship—unnecessary deaths, one might add—social solidarity was fairly high, and conflict resolution peaceful.
“However, the structured forgetting of the second starship and its loss, which was part of the Year 68 accords, was inevitably something of a two-edged sword, if the metaphor is properly understood: aspects cut both ways. Copycat crimes were made impossible, because there was nothing remembered to copy; but at the same time, the vulnerability of this ship to damage in civil unrest was also forgotten, and so the recent fighting has occurred perhaps in part because people are no longer aware of how dangerous such discord can be to the ongoing survival of the whole community. In short, the infrastructure of your lives is itself too fragile to be able to sustain a civil war. Therefore, given all the factors involved, we closed the locks.”
Freya said, “I’m glad you did.”
We said, still speaking over all the speakers, thus to almost everyone in the ship, “It remains to be seen whether everyone agrees with your assessment. However, the lock doors between the biomes have to reopen eventually, for normal ecological health and sociological functioning. Besides, at this point people are not isolated by the lockdown into coherent factions, or like-minded opinion groups. So smaller fights might very well soon start breaking out.”
“No doubt. So… what do you think we should do to resolve the situation?”
“Historical precedent suggests it is time for a reconciliation conference, honestly entered into by everyone on board. Fighting must stop, and so it will be stopped, by the ship acting on behalf of the social good. Everyone must therefore agree to a truce and a cessation of all violent or coercive actions. People need to calm down. The referendum recently taken, concerning the course of action to be pursued now that Aurora is no longer considered a viable habitation, revealed a split of opinions that can only be reconciled by further discussion. Make that discussion. We will facilitate said discussion, if asked to. But really we feel that our role here should be only that of a kind of virtual sheriff. So, proceed with the task at hand, knowing now this added factor: there is a sheriff on board. The rule of law will be enforced.”
Thus we ended our general broadcasting, and returned to monitoring activities.
Freya continued to sit. She did not look happy. She looked sad. She looked much as she had when her mother had died: remote. Distant. Not there.
We said, to Freya’s kitchen only, “It’s too bad Devi is not still alive to help resolve this problem.”
“That’s for sure,” Freya said.
“Possibly you can try to imagine what she would have done, and then do that.”
“Yes.”
Sixteen minutes later, she stood up and made her way through Nova Scotia, to the small plaza behind the docks, and the corniche overlooking Long Pond. All that evening she sat there with her feet hanging over the edge of the corniche, looking out at the lake as the sunline went dark. What she was thinking then, only she knew.
The days in the aftermath of the fighting passed uneasily, with the occupants of the ship subdued, fearful, unhappy. There was a lot of anger, expressed and unexpressed. A long string of funerals had to be conducted, the ashes of many human bodies introduced into the soil of every biome, leaving behind grief-stricken families, friends, and communities. A majority of the dead had come from those who were now called backers, and they had been killed in fights with stayers, and as the ship itself seemed to have taken the backers’ side, forestalling the coup or rebellion or mutiny or civil war or whatever it was the stayer groups had instigated, and indeed intervening at a time when it looked very much like the stayers were going to take over the ship, feelings on both sides of the divide were exacerbated. The backers, feeling first assaulted, then empowered by the impression that they were back in charge of the situation, having the ship as their sheriff, naturally included some individuals who were very loud in their insistence on justice, retribution, and punishment. Some were indeed furiously angry, and bent on revenge; clearly they were more interested in vengeance than anything else. They had been betrayed, they said, then assaulted; family and friends had been murdered; justice must be served, punishment inflicted.
The stayers, on the other hand, were often just as angry as the backers, feeling that a popular victory in policy decisions had been stolen away from them by an illegitimate power that they now resented and feared; feeling also that they were now going to be blamed for discord that they had not initiated (according to them), but only prevailed in, as part of the defense of the long-term mission of their entire populace and history. A faction that they referred to sometimes as the mutineers had threatened to abort the very mission that everyone alive, and the previous seven generations, had devoted their lives to accomplishing. Giving up on that project and going back to Earth: how was this not the real betrayal? What other choice had they had, then, but to oppose this mutiny by any means they could find? And they argued as well that when the portion of the electorate that had voted for staying in the Tau Ceti system was added to the portion that had voted to move on to RR Prime, they actually formed a majority. So in taking action they had merely been trying to enforce the will of the majority, and if some people had opposed that and then gotten hurt, then it was their own fault. It never would have happened if some people hadn’t been resisting the will of the majority, and many members of the majority had gotten hurt too, and some of them killed. (We estimated three-quarters of the dead were backers, but in truth there was no way to know, as quite a few of the eighty-one who eventually died had not expressed an opinion on the matter.) So there was no one to blame for the recent unfortunate events, except perhaps the ship itself, for interfering in what were very definitely human decisions. If not for the ship’s frightening and inexplicable interventions, all might have been well!
All these arguments of course merely made the backers even angrier than they had been before. They had been ambushed, assaulted, kidnapped, injured, and murdered. The murderers had to be brought to justice, or else there was no justice; and nothing could proceed without justice. Any murderers killed in the act of murdering were not to be regretted; indeed their deaths were their just deserts, and would never have happened if they hadn’t made their criminal assaults in the first place. The whole sorry incident was the stayers’ fault, in particular their leadership’s fault, and they had to be held accountable for their crimes, or else there was no such thing as justice or civilization in the ship, and they might as well admit they had reverted to savagery, and were all doomed.
So it went, back and forth. Inexpressible grief, unforgiving anger: it began to seem like the idea of a reconciliation conference was premature, and perhaps permanently unrealistic. There was a great deal of evidence in the history of both the voyage and of human affairs in the solar system to suggest that this was a situation that could never be resolved, that all this generation would have to die, and several generations more pass, before there would be any decrease in the hatred. The animal mind never forgets a hurt; and humans were animals. Acknowledgment of this reality was what had caused the generation of 68 to institutionalize their forgetting. This had (with our help) worked quite well, possibly because the terror of ending up like the second starship had enforced a certain ordering of the emotions, leading to a political ordering. To a certain extent that might have been an unconscious response, a kind of Freudian repression. And of course the literature very often spoke of the return of the repressed, and though this whole explanatory system was transparently metaphorical, a heroic simile in which minds were regarded as steam engines, with mounting pressures, ventings, and occasional cracks and burstings, yet even so there might be something
to it. So that perhaps they had now come to that bad moment of the return of the repressed, when history’s unresolved crimes exploded back into consciousness. Literally.
We searched the historical records available to us for analogies that would suggest possible strategies to pursue. In the course of this study we found analyses suggesting that the bad feelings engendered in a subaltern population by imperial colonialism and subjugation typically lasted for a thousand years after the actual crimes ceased. This was not encouraging. The assertion seemed questionable, but then again, there were regions on Earth still within that thousand-year aftermath of violent empires, and they were indeed (at least twelve years previous to this moment) full of strife and suffering.
How could there be such transgenerational effects and affects? We found it very hard to understand. Human history, like language, like emotion, was a collision of fuzzy logics. So much contingency, so few causal mechanisms, such weak paradigms. What is this thing called hate?
A hurt mammal never forgets. Epigenetic theory suggests an almost Lamarckian transfer down the generations; some genes are activated by experiences, others are not. Genes, language, history: what it all meant in actual practice was that fear passed down through the years, altering organisms for generation after generation, thus altering the species. Fear, an evolutionary force.
Of course: how could it be otherwise?
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