159: LETTER

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We do the scan. Dr Kim doesn’t pretend it’s about anything except my brain this time. I go back to my room. I eat a resentful breakfast.

Would I have gone along with this if Dr Kim had been honest about her research project from the start? No, probably not. I’ve been too many people’s science experiment already. I’m sick of being a science experiment. But that doesn’t bother me overmuch – I mean, it would, under normal circumstances, but right now I’m a little distracted by other matters. Notably, why are Tinera and the Friend in quarantine?

I don’t buy for one second that they actually have a contagious health issue. The timing is too suspicious. But it can’t be more synnerve research, because Tinera’s not a DIVR. And it can’t be the age thing, because the Friend doesn’t have that geneset. One of those experiments, with a control? No; that’s a pointless and complicated risk for Dr Kim to take in order to acquire knowledge she already has from our medical records.

She said she’d locked me up to protect her experiment from dangerous political instability, and after the various and obviously quite out-of-character acts of desperation we’d seen from the population, I’m inclined to believe that, but I don’t think it’s the whole story. This isn’t just a safety thing. I get the impression that Dr Kim is interested in speed here. She wants results as quickly as possible, and if that means stashing me somewhere where I have little to focus on but eye training and where she can take as many scans as she wants, so be it. If time wasn’t a factor, she probably would’ve strung me along without revealing her plans until I eventually caved with her fully pretending that her investment in my bionic was all about my health. But she’d explained as soon as I confronted her, and threatened my crew to get my cooperation – a risky move that upped the stakes, that meant she couldn’t allow Tal and Captain Klees to visit me which would mean more tension and suspicion for her to deal with on the outside, so that I’d put the eye back in right away. She’s acting like she’s on a time limit.

Why? Trying to get the data before the Courageous starts dropping more people? Maybe. But none of this tech helps the Hylarans against the Courageous. The ship already has this stuff, or can very easily develop it the same way that Dr Kim is doing. It only works as leverage to trade with the Antarcticans. Trade with the Antarcticans for weapons to protect themselves against the colonists if conflict breaks out? Maybe. Complicated. Risky.

She might just be trying to get results before the Hylarans realise what’s going on and make her stop. That’s a possibility. But she’s taking a lot of risks and showing her hand even more to do that. It would’ve been safer, in terms of secrecy, to not confine me in the first place and just take the risk that I’d be killed in a riot or something and she’d have to start again. It’s not all that dangerous out there at the moment – nobody’s tried to kill anyone. Nobody’s given any indication of being willing to hurt the ground team, on any side of the political issues, except for Dr Kim and her experiment itself.

And why Tinera and the Friend?

I might cooperate with this if I were alone, but I simply cannot countenance them being in unknown danger. I have to try to escape. Dr Kim has left me with no other option.

I have no way of doing that.

I lie in bed and stare blankly at the TV for awhile. I’m watching something to do with the Hypati launcher and angling it in its construction so that it can launch slugs at the ice caps. It’s very light on the science of how the launcher works; a how-to for builders, not researchers or engineers. Which is good, because I wouldn’t understand the science anyway.

My eyes drift to a patch on the wall next to the TV, where there’s an ID chip reader of the same design as the ones on the Courageous, just a flat metal panel. I assume it’s for access to secure files or something. To the Hylarans use implanted ID chips? I never thought to ask. On the surface, they don’t appear to use electronic security at all, but maybe the ones who work down here, with the children and near the Vault, do? I saw no such readers when we went to see the Vault, and it’s unlikely (although possible, I suppose) that Mama’s senses have been extended into the tunnels to read them. Maybe they do use them for something, so they have this reader to update or download info as necessary. Or maybe it’s old tech that the ship was built with in case it was needed, and maybe it was early on, but the colony doesn’t use it any more.

“Mama, what’s that chip reader for?”

“Oh, this ship was built with many security features that it doesn’t use. I’m not sure why I was given things like that – perhaps the Antarcticans expected the children to be extra naughty!”

“The Courageous colonists have chips for readers like that,” I say. “Maybe it was for us.”

“Maybe!”

I go up and hold my chip up to the reader.

“Ooh! Hello, Senior Psychologist Doctor Aspen Greaves!”

Yep. A system to let Mama recognise and categorise five thousand colonists with a minimum of fuss and no deception. Probably considered important when dealing with a large influx of convicts.

Well, there’s a problem that didn’t need solving.

I try to pay attention to the Hypati launcher thing. I try. But I really, really do not care.

Dr Kim comes by the next day, and we do the scan again. I don’t think there’s going to be any real difference day-to-day, but I’ve seen Lina get like this, too, on an exciting project, taking far more measurements than necessary in the hope that that’ll make the science better. Better to have too much data than too little, I suppose, but even I know that the case-to-case variability between people undergoing this procedure means that all these specific images of my brain are basically useless. The hoped-for constant across anyone getting this done is that it works. The patterns of synnerves themselves are not going to be constant.

I don’t say any of that. It’s a way to get out of the room, into a short corridor and another small room. A change of pace in the day. Might as well do it. I do check the corridor we go into and try to calculate my chances of success if I overpower Dr Kim and bolt for the door – I could find my way out of the ship, I think; the AI might even help with directions – but she demonstrates early on that that door, too, is locked.

I do all the recommended sight exercises. My vision improves dramatically. I worry, not just about the other DIVRs who came down with me, but the ones still on the ship. The fact that Dr Kim had to do this in secret suggests that they’re probably not in a huge amount of danger, but still, I wish there was a way to contact the ship and tell them not to send any DIVRs in their early drops.

“It’s quite lucky that you were colourblind,” Dr Kim remarks one day as she leads me back to my room. “It confirms that your brain can make use of new data through the eye that it’s not previously had to deal with before; new colour information. Which I expected, of course, brains can learn, but it’s nice to have confirmation. It’s very promising for the future uses of this technology, giving people access to new senses.”

“I’m so happy for you.”

“The next stage is a little more complicated. We’ve shown that you can receive information from the bionic quite well, through a sense that your brain is already specialised to process – sight – even if the colour range is new. You can focus the eye lenses and soforth, which is good. But if this tech is going to be tradeable, we need more than just eyes. Our two main questions are, how well can we train a brain and these synnerves to process types of data that the human brain isn’t already specialised for processing? And, can we get reliable and detailed motor control? Under normal circumstances I’d set up multiple experiments in parallel with different subjects, but my supply of DIVRs is limited and involving more people is too big a risk. So it’s going to have to be you. We’ll kill off those eye synnerves once we have all the data we need and implant something else instead.”

“Implant what?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m interested in any ideas you might have. It’s your body, after all.”

I walk back into my room, deep in thought. I suppose it’s good that Captain Klees’ prosthetic foot was working fine when we landed, or she’d probably have talked him into this kind of replacement like she did for my eye, and be running that experiment already. With a flesh foot (and I trust Tal’s report that he does indeed have a normal flesh foot now, it’d be hard to hide a prosthetic one), that avenue’s closed to her – she must be kicking herself over that. But that comment about a lack of test subjects still doesn’t completely make sense, because she has the Friend in quarantine, doesn’t she? The Friend is a DIVR. Why can’t she make use of it?

Unless she doesn’t have Tinera and the Friend. Maybe they really were in for their health, and they got cured and released and Dr Kim didn’t inform me? Possible. Argh, I need more information.

I need to get out of here, and I need to do it fast. Before Dr Kim starts fucking with my synnerves more, and more importantly, before she loses patience or the political landscape changes again or some new unexpected thing happens and my crew end up in more danger that they’re unaware of, because they don’t know what she’s up to. I need to escape, or at the very least, I need to warn them.

I couple of days later, I demonstrate an ability to read using my bionic eye only. The day after that, Dr Kim shows up with a letter for me. She drops it in the little sterilising airlock box while I’m zoning out to a slightly-less-boring-than-normal video about oxygen generation and atmospheric maintenance. Hylara has amazing tech in that area, decades ahead of the Courageous, given to them by Antarctica back before they stated oxygenating the atmosphere, but of course now that they’re oxygenating the atmosphere they barely need it. So that’s fun.

At the sight of an actual, physical letter, I immediately forget where I’m going with that train of thought.

“Your captain has written to you,” Dr Kim announces, and leaves before I can ask any questions.

I turn off the TV and grab the letter. Paper; proper pulp paper, the kind on the ship, not plastic. The ship’s dropped them some paper, that’s nice. Captain Klees’ handwriting. Written in the Interlingua, not Texan, which is interesting. I would’ve written in Texan, in his position – but then, I’d have tried to visit, or asked Mama to deliver an audio message, or something. A physical written message suggests that this was the only avenue of communication allowed, and I can’t imagine what’s going on out there or what leverage he had to use to get it. The Interlingua suggests that not only does he expect the message to be read by other people (a given, that’s the only reason to make somebody write it down), but that he knows that if they can’t read it and verify its contents as safe then it probably wouldn’t have reached me, which suggests some level of open and acknowledged hostility between the crew and the doctor. It’s definitely his handwriting; he knows I’m alive and has to be suspicious about this as the only allowed means of communication and the fact that it’s gotten to this point means that Dr Kim probably isn’t pretending this is just a quarantine any more, but she herself admitted that she needs to keep this secret from the majority of Hylarans, so do the crew know more than the rest of Hylara about this, and if so, why not tell?

What’s going on out there?

I open the letter. And I begin to read.

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