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The medbay is empty except for me, Tal, and the two of Lina’s comatose science projects who survived the problems of the computer shutdown and subsequent transfer to this ring. Tal sits on the end of the unoccupied bed, looking at kes hands. Not at me.
I have no idea what to do here. I learned as much as I could about psychology in the brief time before this session, but fuck. Not for the first time, I wish our psychologist hadn’t been violently murdered by a cultist.
“How are you feeling?” I try.
Tal shrugs. “Fine.” A lie, obviously. But ke’s not crying, which is… good, right? Ke looks exhausted, probably from being up half the night chasing potentially fatal computer problems. “Things are going pretty well. There’s not much need for attitude adjustment and rotational control now that the ring disengagement is over so I’ve damped down the rate at which those systems are allowed to correct for things. Extreme changes are Sam’s responsibility as our navigator and pilot, and manual. Atmosphere control is entirely on manual, and we scrounged some atmospheric analysing equipment from supplies, the stuff the colonists will use, to independently verify the computer’s readings. I had Denish physically cut all the locks on the airlocks between the rings we’re using – just the locks, not the seals, they still work as airlocks just fine – and put bolts on all external airlocks so they can’t ever be opened without someone manually unlocking them physically with their hands. I’ve put in priority systems for system shutoff order in power or overheat conservation modes, so if there is a problem it’ll start with… just the lights will…” kes voice catches. After a couple of deep breaths, ke continues. “So we’ll have warning by the priority shutdown of non-critical systems. Short of a sudden and unexpected power failure, like the reactor just blowing up or something, there shouldn’t be any threats to our lives that we don’t have time to respond to.”
I nod. “And how are you handling…” oh rootrot, I am so out of my depth, I don’t know anything about how Texans deal with death except that it absolutely nothing like how Arboreans do… “the loss?”
Another shaky breath. “W-well, there’s been so many disasters already. At this stage we’re lucky that any of us are alive.”
Hopelessness? Hopelessness is unacceptable. If we give up, we die. But, no; this is deflection. I know Tal well enough to know the difference. Tal’s distractable and accidentally deflective at the best of times, usually unintentionally, but when ke’s doing it on purpose, I can tell.
“Although maybe we can be a zombie crew. Hey, did you ever see that latest reconstruction of the Dawn of the Dead sequel? Because that whole ‘zombie crew’ scene I think they made up. I don’t think they accurately interpreted the script fragments in regard to – ”
“Tal.”
“I’m fine, okay? What else can I be? I’m fine, and you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to kill off any more crew.”
Ah, right. Tal’s dealing with more than grief. Guilt, too. I know what that’s like.
Don’t know what to do about it, though. What am I supposed to say? ‘I’m sure it wasn’t your fault’? ‘You’re not responsible for the computer deciding to kill a bunch of crew just because you’re the one who stole a former captain’s identity long enough to enable it to’? I don’t blame Tal, really I don’t, but I also don’t think any platitudes from me is going to convince kem of that, especially when I have only the vaguest understanding of what actually happened.
“Tal. Yesterday, at the computer, you said you told the AI to do what it did. What did you mean by that?”
“I… talk to Amy sometimes. Or used to, I guess. About random stuff. It’s just something I’ve always done with AIs. I don’t… it’s a bit weird, I know, but I just like talking, and they can usually respond well enough without me having to actually impose on another person. They let me get to the end of a thought, which real people never do.”
I think, with a sudden stab of not entirely unjustified guilt, of the dozens, hundreds, thousands of conversations involving Tal in the past where I’d cut kem off mid-explanation to move a conversation along or avoid derailing it. I bite my lip and stay silent.
“Of course, with Amy, once I figured out what she was, it became actually important to do so. I’m not sure how much I could actually affect her logic, I don’t know how coherent the data she was putting in those colonist brains was, but I had to try, right? I tried to keep her briefed on the situation, on goings-on on the ship. I also tend to… vent, a lot. That was a big mistake, I think. I shouldn’t have done that once I realised what she was. Shouldn’t have ever let myself be emotional. But it’s, I’m stressed and angry basically all the time here, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
I hadn’t. I could count the number of times I’d seen Tal stressed or angry on Tinera’s one good hand. More lack of perception. It’s probably good that I’m not captain any more.
“I liked Sands more than most of us, I think, but he’d still make some not great decisions and I’d tell Amy, appealing to her for information mostly. I spent a lot of time trying to get her to trust me about the brain hijacked colonists, explaining that Sands was going to charge on ahead and wake people up and we needed her help to make sure it wasn’t her people, and – ”
“That’s absurdly dangerous!” I cut in, forgetting for a moment that I’m supposed to be providing therapy. “Do you remember what it did to your chronostasis ring when it thought we were trying to kill off her colonists in there? And you told it we were aiming for CR5 specifically?”
“I thought I could make her understand! I don’t think I got her to understand anything, in the end. I don’t think she even realised that we were going to wake up CR5 people specifically, or why. But I did have to badmouth Sands quite a lot in the attempt. And then… then there was the coup, and… Aspen, you have to understand, we couldn’t be sure who to trust. Renn and one of the Friends had been murdered and we were suddenly locked up and had no idea what had happened, and this was pretty soon after the Heli thing with Captain Klees, and we were all getting used to the fact that half of us were science experiments and Sands kept playing stupid games where he’d have everyone harassing us and we had no idea how many of them knew what they were doing or were actually trying to help or could’ve done the murders and blamed us or, or anything. And then suddenly I wake up to one of the heart alarms and then you guys – and we had no way of knowing who was involved at this point and who wasn’t – were trying to kill us! The ID chips are implanted in bone, you realise that? And we didn’t have access to a medbay or proper surgical tools? We had to cut them out of bone with what we had, with the tools we could scrounge up in a habitation ring with no advance warning. We nearly died before we could escape. And then we had to confine all of you, and it was obvious at that point that most of you were innocent but we couldn’t, we couldn’t take any chances, and I was so worried that locking you guys in by removing the ID chips wouldn’t work. Leaving them in wasn’t an option, we’d shown how easily that could be bypassed, bur I also knew that Amy can track crew members without the chips because she had no trouble tracking and explaining Reimann’s fate. The security systems should be tied to the ID chip directly, but she’d been able to bypass so many things that she shouldn’t be able to… I had to make sure she understood that the people in that ring had to stay locked in that ring. I had to make sure she understood that you were all a danger to the ship, for now.”
I’m not breathing, I realise. Oh, yeah, that’d do it. This AI had scrapped and altered and jailbroken so many of its systems to kill Reimann when he was a danger. When it had thought we were trying to do his task, it had exploited its own trashed emergency protocols to try to suffocate the perpetrators in CR1. And now Tal had told it that half the crew were a danger to the ship, and Tal gave it back control of the air systems, and those dangerous people didn’t have the ID chips that were supposed to force it to maintain livable conditions so it didn’t even need to exploit any broken emergency protocols. Just pipe in the carbon monoxide until the danger goes away.
“Why does the ship even have carbon monoxide in those quantities?” I ask. “Why is it hooked up into the ventilation system like that? Why is it even an option the AI had available?”
“What?” Tal asks.
“Nothing. Sorry.” This is about Tal, not the ship. But what am I supposed to say to Tal? ‘This wasn’t your fault’? There’s no way I can get kem to believe that. There’s no way I can even get kem to believe that I believe that.
“This wasn’t your fault,” I say anyway.
Ke just looks away.
“Do you remember the dreams?” ke asks, after several seconds of silence.
“Dreams?”
“From chronostasis. From the eight or so months asleep. Do you remember them?”
“Um. Not really? I’ve never been great with dreams, and I kind of had a lot going on when I woke up.”
“So did I. But I’ve always been good with dreams. I can remember some. Just normal dream stuff, so far as I remember. But I have to wonder. The brains Amy took. What did they experience? When she fed them data to get data back, do you think they experienced any part of what was actually going on in any coherent way?”
“I have no idea. That sounds like a question for the doctors.”
“I already asked. They didn’t know. But I can’t stop wondering what it’s like. Like, when Amy took a new brain… was that them, feeling overwhelmed by undefined work they could never get on top of? And reaching for more resources? When Reimann started dragging them out of their chronostasis pods, did they dream of the monster pursuing them, and act in their minds to stop it?” Ke looks up and meets my eyes again. “And those two thousand people that we killed. You and me. Amy was feeding data to so many of them. Do you think they understood, on any level, that they were dying?”
“I don’t… I don’t know, Tal.”
“You know, they say.” Tal give a hysterical little giggle. “They say. That if you die in a dream, you die in real life.” Ke starts giggling properly, giggling until ke’s crying. I pull myself out of my doctor-mandated bed to hug kem tightly, for several minutes, and just let kem cry.
Some time later, Tal pulls back. Wipes kes eyes. Musters a smile.
“Thanks,” ke says. “I feel a lot better.”
Tal’s a very bad liar.
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Derin Edala 
EVERYONE ON THIS SHIP NEEDS A REAL FUCKING THERAPIST SO BADLY
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I know, right? But some kind of engineer and/or computer specialist to unfuck the
even more befuckened than previously thoughter, I mean, completely normal and functional spaceship is probably even more necessary.LikeLiked by 1 person
They need another engineer + computer specialist that know how to work without AI and is not in the leadership group and is also not Tarandran (because they seem to have put spies on the ship). Unfortunately knowing how to do your job without the AI holding your hand is not something the rankings would take into account.
They need another psychologist that doesn’t have incredibly controversial opinions that alienate them from the entire crew. They’d be giving that poor psychologist a trial by fire since everyone’s kind of a mess right now.
And it would be nice to get someone who’s Japanese or knows Japanese shorthand in case Captain Kinoshita’s notes reveal something else they have to watch out for now that the AI’s gone. (If Aspen recovered her chip when they cleaned up her remains, then they might have access to her private files that say more about the project? She did expect to be able to hand her results to her crewmates, so she may have more files detailing those results elsewhere.) If there’s any evidence showing who was involved in the AI project, that will be very useful information when it’s time to revive everyone because then they’ll know who to arrest and interrogate.
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@Tach:
Oh yes, I hadn’t thought of a Captain Kinoshita’s notes! That would be very interesting. I’m not sure Tal wants to do the “let’s insert a dead persons chip in my arm to recover their personal logs” stunt again, though.
Another dangling thread I’d be interested in: has Keldin looked at the “”defective”” engine? Or Denish? I’m suspicious the first crew’s engineer might’ve just straight up sabotaged it to make the journey longer and give the ai time to mature.
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@Enai:
True, though this time there isn’t an AI that will do things on its own that you didn’t ask it to do, and Kinoshita didn’t password protect anything.
Oh, sabotaging the engine makes a lot of sense. The dropoffs only began after the second crew woke up 20 years into the mission, and without the sabotage they would’ve already landed on Hylara by then. Once they started waking people up, the amount of people involved in the project would be outnumbered by people unaware of it, so it would’ve been far harder to justify keeping 2/5 of the colonists in chronostasis after they landed, especially with the viability dropping.
Of course, they’re currently less than 4 years to their destination, so there’s not much of a point in repairing it now.
However, one thing to note was that the unrepairable comment on the ticket was written by Ovlo Astur, who went into chronostasis in CR1. I can’t imagine that people who know the AI was going to eat people would willingly let themselves be eaten (unless they’re REALLY dedicated to the cause). Sabotaging the ship so the AI can take over people’s brains is all fun and games until it’s your brain and your life on the table. Even if it was Rynn-Hatson who sabotaged the engines, the other engineers couldn’t fix it.
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Tal sits on the end of the unoccupied bed, looking at his hands.
I do believe the “his” is a typo, here.
So, the counseling thing is going better than I thought. I mean, not that Aspen really understands Tal, but of all the crew members, Aspen is the only one who also killed / ejected 1000 people. I hope the chronostasis ring is rigged to kill the sleepers quickly and painlessly in case of ejection, imagine waking up in deep space with no supplies, no ship, no anything.
Also, of course Tal talked to the AI. Like to a friend or at least a real person. Of course. And the AI tried its best to do as ke bid. And Amy promptly killed people, being an AI without even the beginning of anything that might give it morals.
Good question, Aspen. Seems like a horribly dangerous design choice that also cost considerable resources (have a whole lot of CO on tap, secure enough so it doesn’t leak out and kill when not needed, with a route to the habitat ring’s hvac that can be remotely opened while not contaminating the air in the other rings). Why does the Javelin even have that option!? What other gases can be pumped into the atmosphere with the stroke of a computer key? Is the CO sourced from the incinerator? If so, why does said incinerator produce so much CO? Efficient burning this is not.
Well, how can ke feel better? Kes best friend just died, and Tal thinks it’s kes fault. Grief takes a lot of time, and grief with guilt is even worse. But at least ke had a good cry, which isn’t nothing.
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Huh, blockquote looks different from what I expected. Apologies for yelling at everyone.
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The only reason I can think of for that to ever be a feature is… if you’re planning a coup.
Between the 2 crews, the 2nd crew has way more confirmed people in on the AI thing than the 1st (5 at least vs 1), which even if you account for the fact we know more about the 2nd crew, it makes sense to put more conspirators in the 2nd crew than the first. That’s when the AI is going to start showing results and the people you want to know to not wake up anyone taken by the AI.
Both 2nd and 3rd command were part of the conspiracy, allowing them the ability to declare the captain unfit for duty whenever they wanted. If the conspiracy couldn’t get someone in the captain’s chair, 2nd and 3rd command are the next best things.
So if you’re designing a ship and you know all along that there’s going to be a coup in the 2nd half of the journey…
…giving the conspirators access to a kill-everyone-in-a-room command sounds very useful.
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Oh, yes that’s a possible scenario. If you want to kill people in your way, an invisible and odorless gas is the way to go. They won’t know that anything is wrong before it’s too late.
I’ve also thought about why one would do that, and arrived at the conclusion that it is in case the destination is devoid of terraformable planets and/or the ship fails. You’d want mass suicide to be an option then, and carbon monoxide is effective and painless enough. But if it came to that, surely doctor!Friend’s favorite anesthetic would be an even better choice, and also abundant.
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@Enai
If there’s no habitable planet to terraform, then would it be possible to go back to Earth? I think it was speculated that crew 1 could’ve decided to turn around and get it repaired on Earth, but they decided not to. They have a huge excess of supply, so a return trip might be possible. (I haven’t reread to see if this was explicitly stated as impossible.) Sure, everyone would be displaced in time by centuries, but they’d be alive.
And yeah, the Friend’s anesthetic would be perfect for a mass suicide. It’s something that would have to be done with intent, so unlike filling a room with CO the way the vents are set up, it can’t happen accidentally if something goes wrong.
Sure, it would be an immense psychological toll on the resident doctors to euthanize a space ship of 5000 people and themselves, but that’s what Friends are for. 🙂
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: )
I keep forgetting it changes my emoticons.
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@Tach
Return trip, you say? Hmm… While they are ridiculously oversupplied and at least half the engines work just fine, that would take at least 20 more years ship-time with the associated wear and tear. If they’re careful and very, very lucky, they might make it. Maybe they can even build something to undo the sabotage of that one aft engine.
Hm. Some chance at survival is definitely better than immediate suicide, so I’d try it if I were them.
But hey! Right now, it’s not a problem yet. Derin would assure us that everything is fine with the normal spaceship. I’m sure it’s smooth sailing from here out 😉
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It’s not Tal’s fault anymore than it is Aspen’s fault or Tinera’s or Adin’s fault. Aspen was the one who argued for leaving Sunset and Celi with Keldin and Hedi for a little while longer so they could talk to all of them at once. Adin was the one who okayed the plan, and Tinera didn’t fight either of them on it.
If Aspen had instead suggested removing the innocent crewmembers immediately, or if Adin had refused to go along with Aspen’s plan to “reason” with Keldin, or if Tinera had insisted against this course of action until they both relented, or if releasing CO into a crew’s air supply wasn’t a thing that could be done, then Celi and Sunset would’ve lived.
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if they wake anyone else up they actually have so much more shit to explain now
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“Why doesn’t the ship have an AI? It makes running it 100 times harder!”
“It’s a long story, involving the death of the entire 2nd crew and a big chunk of the 3rd replacement crew.”
“Jeez, sorry I asked.”
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Hell of a thing to hear just after waking up, yeah. Then again, “Oh the AI is evil now and killed at least 25 people, some on purpose, some not, as well as enslaving the minds/brains of 2000 more but we kept her because why not?” is arguably even worse. Even Tinera’s best engine room brew won’t help with the latter.
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At least they’ve Tinera’s homebrew honey wine thingy stuff to soften the shock. I bet Denish’ll rig up a still if they decide that they want straight up schnapps.
Then again, alcoholism will not improve the odds of their survival…
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TAl MY BELOVED SNSNJDDND this one hurt my feelings ngl but very very good chapter
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I’m a little sad we won’t be able to talk to the AI anymore. I mean, we basically stopped seeing it talk on-screen dozens of chapters ago, but still.
The fact that there is carbon monoxide stored on the ship makes a certain amount of sense, if there are processes that create it and technology to scrub it from the air. What are you going to do with it other that store it… vent it into space? But the question of why the computer has the ability to vent it anywhere but storage tanks is… a hell of a good question.
Aiden seems like a pretty competent captain, but I still wish Aspen was captain again. I wonder if Aspen has the second in command position still?
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no you don’t understand tal is my favourite. This chapter fucking broke me. I love kem so much and this is heartbreaking.
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“I had Denish physically cut all the locks on the airlocks between the rings we’re using – just the locks, not the seals, they still work as airlocks just fine – and put bolts on all external airlocks so they can’t ever be opened without someone manually unlocking them physically with their hands.”
Oh, very smart!
“they can usually respond well enough without me having to actually impose on another person. They let me get to the end of a thought, which real people never do.”
😭
😭😭😭 It was great to learn more about my darling Tal, even sad things
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man. this is bad. this is a bad situation. tal made a bad decision. this is gonna suck for the next few years. no way through it but forward, though. I can’t bring myself to stay mad at kem for doing the best ke could with the information ke had, but jesus it was unwise to run off and mess with the ai and the chips without consulting anyone in the first place. I mourn the missed opportunity to get to know the new crew better, but at least the old crew are okay. and sam!
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the carbon monoxide deaths did seem so sudden, though. I can’t help but wonder what was going on in the behind-the-scenes planning
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