078: DIVIDED

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JOURNAL 2

Day 11823 – Ash Dornae [Renn’s note – senior maintenance officer]

Given the highly distressing nature of the situation, Ash is handling matters fairly well. According to the AI, the situation was caused by Joshua launching a physical attack on the ship itself with an axe, which one would think would make the situation rather more stressful but I actually think helps. Ash, like most of the crew, has been wary of Joshua’s increasing paranoia for some time, despite the refusal of Lien, Krysin, and a few other crew members to see it. So Joshua being the cause of such a disaster isn’t unexpected.

Despite being cut off from the front of the ship and the AI having no idea what’s going on up there, Ash remains as steadfast and dependable as ever. He’s very solutions-oriented, proposing ways to recontact the front of the ship, asking me whether I’m going to eject the broken chronostasis ring, volunteering to go outside in a space suit to travel the gap, or to crawl up into the ventilation shaft area. I’ve humoured him for now, but I already know that we won’t be doing any of that. The advantages of this isolation are obvious; already, I can see how much more freely I can speak in these notes without the risk of them being found by a crewmate I can’t trust. I’m monitoring Ash to see how he’ll react if we bring him aboard the Project. It’s a risk, but given that it’d allow us to work essentially unhindered for the remainder of the trip, it might be worth it.

Day 11823 – Claire Rynn-Hatson

Claire is enthusiastic and proactive about our new circumstances. She sees this not as the potentially quite dangerous disaster that it is, but as an opportunity to make great strides forward in the work and let her brother to not have died in vain. Her enthusiasm is infectious; she even has me optimistic about my new powers as captain (I’m sure that Lien is still alive up front of the ship, there’s no reason for him not to be, but the AI is restricted to our section and can’t sense his ID chip any more, so the role falls to me). I used said status to lock the external airlocks; they’ll auto-unlock if the captain (me) passes through them, so we’re not trapped, but it’ll keep the crew up front from physically re-establishing contact. They have neither the AI access nor the rank to eject Chronostasis Ring 1, so with the doors locked, we shouldn’t have any interference.

Claire is convinced that this is a great boon. The rest of the crew can stay safely in their section for the next seven and a half years, and we can get some serious work done. By the time we arrive at Hylara, we’ll have a very special AI to present to them.

Day 11823 – Mohammed Aziz

Mohammed is stalwart as always in the face of disaster. Upon finding ourselves separated from the rest of the crew he immediately started stocktaking Laboratory Ring 1. He wants to re-establish contact with the front half in order to get guidance from Sandra and Byr [Renn’s note: secondary analyst/comptech], but Claire and I were able to convince him that even with just the three of us we can work far more effectively without having to hide from oversight. The scientists are perfectly capable of working without Sandra, and I can handle the AI without Byr. It’s certainly easier than continuing to pretend to be an expert in humans.

Mohammed accepted our reasoning with little argument and agrees that we should try to bring Ash on board.

Day 11825 – Ash Dornae

Ash took the news about our mission about as well as can be expected. He was very angry at first, blaming us for Joshua’s breakdown, and he’s shut himself in his bedroom. I’ve ordered the others to give him space. The chances that he’ll do something stupid or dangerous are low, but I’m keeping an eye on him. I expect him to come around.

Day 11826 – Ash Dornae

Ash has calmed down and is all smiles this morning. Obviously, it’s an act, but that’s fine. He’s not physically able to re-establish contact with the front of the ship, so whether he’s actually content or interested in the project or just pretending is functionally irrelevant. I don’t believe he has any plans to sabotage anything or hurt anyone, so we’re pretending to believe him.

A more skilled human psychologist might be able to help him through this, but Krysin is up the front, and my background in AI development has thus far proven very inadequate when it comes to treating humans. Nevertheless, I’ve always been good at reading people, and I’m fairly sure he won’t do anything stupid.

Day 12099 – Claire Rynn-Hatson

Claire is in excellent spirits. She and Mohammed believe they’ve solved the DIVR-32 mystery. They want the go-ahead to synthesise [untranslated] in Laboratory Ring 1; I don’t think the DIVR-32 mystery is particularly important but their morale and motivation absolutely is, so I approved it. Claire is the heart and soul of our little research team; if she can keep up this momentum until we reach Hylara, we’ll make great strides here.

Day 12105 – Mohammed Aziz

Despondent, as expected. Blames himself for Claire’s death yesterday. It’s not his fault but he won’t listen to me tell him that.

Day 12105 – Ash Dornae

Handling Claire’s death the worst out of anyone. He’s not bedridden due to chemical exposure unlike Mohammed, so he’s mostly pacing and worrying about his own exposure during the rescue attempt and generally being a looming danger.

I’m worried about what happens if Mohammed dies. Not only will we have no scientists left for the project, but will Ash keep playing nice once he’s not outnumbered? It must have occurred to him that with Mohammed gone, he could kill me, inherit the captaincy, and eject CR1 or unlock the external airlocks.

Day 12121 – Ash Dornae

Ash is now bedridden, too. Mood hasn’t improved.

Day 12121 – Mohammed Aziz

Mohammed keeps making me promise to continue the work “after I die”. I told him not to be so morbid, that he could very well recover, but even I can see that his breathing gets more laboured every day.

I promised him I’d continue the work.

Day 12122 – Ash Dornae

Ash hasn’t reacted noticeably to Mohammed’s death. Might be too worried about himself. I’ve had no difficulties, so I suppose I escaped dangerous exposure, but Ash’s health isn’t improving.

Am I going to be alone?

Day 12127 – Keiko Kinoshita

Ash has passed on. And now I have a choice.

It’s just me and the AI now, and the AI is… incoherent isn’t the correct term, exactly. But it’s inconsistent. We’d hoped that decision-by-committee of a hive of human minds, a true democracy of the subconscious, would produce a consistently thinking result with practical decision-making use, but clearly that was too optimistic. I’m not too bothered by that, in the abstract; this is a pilot test, a first try, and it’s succeeding beyond any realistic expectation. But no matter what this start promises for the future, the fact is that in the here and now, this AI is simply not an adequate replacement for a human operator.

And now it’s just the AI and me.

I could cut my losses and disconnect Chronostasis Ring 1, rejoin the rest of the crew with a fully accessible ship, make up something plausible for the long delay, hand my results over to Lien and Byr and simply continue on our journey. I can have a crew again, instead of being alone. But that would mean giving up on the project, giving up on Claire and Mohammed and Richard and the colonists who have given up their own minds for the hivemind. Hylara won’t be building any more ships like this for a good long while, and we don’t have enough surviving people to ensure we’d be able to continue the project – there won’t be another chance like this within my lifetime, or several lifetimes after. We’ve come way too far to give up now.

I swore to Mohammed on his deathbed that I wouldn’t give up now.

I have to stay. I still have almost seven years to wring as much as I can out of this project. I can’t waste this opportunity.

It cost us far too much to waste.

I finish my coffee. I stare blankly at the screen for a while.

Well. This answers a lot of questions, I suppose. I’m still not sure how the crew up the front died, but this certainly wraps up all kinds of other loose ends.

I finish my coffee and decide to take a little walk through the ship to clear my head. This does not work, because I’ve barely travelled two rings when I hear arguing.

“Lyson projects, though?” Sunset asks as she paces fretfully in front of the picnic table where I’d enjoyed a very peaceful breakfast not too long ago. “Seriously?”

She’s addressing the only other person who seems to be in the ring, one of the Pubic Universal Friends (the non-doctor one), who watches her calmly from its seat at the table.

“It has its uses.”

“No it fucking doesn’t. But then, you made the deliberate, conscious decision to mutilate yourself, so I guess I might as well be talking to a fucking bulkhead here.”

“You don’t approve of the Friends.”

“People can do what they like. What I don’t get is the brain damage part. And what I really don’t get is the part where you apparently think that’s fine to inflict on other people in fucking Lyson projects.”

“Well, to answer your first question, making a logical sacrifice to help – ”

“There is nothing logical about that sacrifice.”

The Friend cocks its head. “If someone saw a loved one in danger, and they could save them but it would cost them, let’s say, an arm or a leg, and they did so and didn’t regret the decision afterward, would you agree that they’d made a logical choice?”

“Yeah, I suppose. But I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“If someone saw a loved one in danger, but saving them would hurt their head and cause permanent damage, and they made that sacrifice to save them and didn’t regret it, would you say that that decision is logical?”

“The Friends aren’t jumping into the path of a bullet to save a kid or something! They’re – ”

“If someone saw that hundreds, thousands of people were in danger, that the world they loved was in danger, and they could help, but not as they were, not as a selfish, normal individual, that the only way to really help was to hurt their head and cause permanent damage, and they did so and didn’t regret it – ”

“That’s an entirely different situation!”

“How? The only difference is the timing of the damage. As for the great potential for Lyson projects to help people who are not Friends – ”

I get out of there before I have to hear another pitch for the wonders of controlled brain damage. We have enough actual violations of the Autonomy Accords happening on this ship, we don’t need more theoretical ones.

I should go and see how Tinera’s doing. She’s probably lonely and frustrated hanging around Habitation Ring 2 all day.

But when I get to Habitation Ring 2, it’s abuzz with activity. Of course; the rest of its inhabitants are packing up their stuff, preparing to move to Habitation Ring 1 on the captain’s orders. I can’t help but notice that they seem to be almost impossibly slow about it, although as soon as I show up a bunch of sheets are shoved into my arms.

“Aspen!” Denish bellows in delight, striding over. “You have come to help!”

“I didn’t, really, I – ”

“Then why are you carrying sheets?”

Well, it’s not like I’m doing anything else. “Sure. I’m here to help.”

“Great! Did you read Kinoshita’s notes?”

“The ones that Renn marked as relevant, yeah. It’s… certainly a lot.”

“Cannot believe I did not notice the names before. Richard Rynn-Hatson, Claire Rynn-Hatson. Is not a common name! Well. Is it? You are sociologist.”

“I don’t know the surname frequencies of every society in the world,” I shrug, dislodging a corner of sheet. Denish picks it up and tucks it back into my arms.

“Oh, you’re doing the sheets?” Lina asks out of nowhere, piling more sheets into my arms and blocking my view of everything except white fabric. I make my way to the Habitation Ring’s laundry area before anyone can add any more.

Of course, I trip on a stray bag on the way. Since I can’t see. Someone grabs my arm to steady me.

“You alright, Aspen?” Tal asks.

“I’m fine,” I tell the wall of white in front of me.

“I haven’t seen this much sheer disorganised chaos since Boarding Day,” Tinera remarks from somewhere out of sight. I move the sheets enough to see who’s actually with me, and… yep, it’s all the convicts. We’re all carrying stuff to the laundry. Okay.

“I am so glad I never have to see the Capricorn Plateau space elevator again,” Adin agrees.

“Once was too much,” Lina nods. “But I guess we all had to get on it once. Except Aspen, technically,” she adds as an aside.

Oh. She knows about the Capricorn Plateau thing too.

“What do you mean?” Tinera asks, and Lina’s eyes widen, her face flushing. She glances at me.

Oh. She assumed everyone knew.

“Oh, nothing,” she says casually. “I misspoke. Wow, we sure let the laundry pile up, didn’t we?”

The others are still looking curiously at me, ignoring the subject change. If I don’t clear this up now, they’re just going to harass Lina for details later on. I heave a sigh.

“I came on the Cancer Plateau space elevator because I’m banned from the Capricorn Plateau. That’s all she meant.”

“Why?” Tal asks.

“I will tell you briefly and directly, on the condition that nobody asks me or Lina any follow-up questions.”

“Well, that’s hardly fair. You could answer without providing any information and – ”

“We do this or you get no answers at all. I don’t interrogate you all on your pasts.”

There’s a general, reluctant chorus of agreement to my terms. I dump my armload of sheets in a pile next to the washing machine.

“I haven’t been allowed on the Capricorn Plateau since I broke into the Javelin Program head offices there and threatened their CEO with a knife.”

“What?!”

“You…”

“How did you…?”

“What the fuck, Aspen?”

“I also told him I hoped that every single one of the colony ships dropped out of the sky. But I think it was probably the knife thing that did it.”

“I went to jail for cybercrimes and you threatened a rich guy with a knife and walked away? How didn’t you come aboard from a prison like the rest of us?”

“Privileges of fame,” Adin shrugs.

“I’m not famous. But it was sort of a complicated situation. Anyway, there’s your explanation.” I leave the ring to a hail of questions.

Frankly, I think we have far more interesting things to be focusing on.

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