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The four of us storm up the hill, Tinera in the lead. The Hylarans picking through the scene are mostly strangers, but we recognise Elenna and Celti; Elenna inspecting a piece of wreckage, expression neutral, and Celti standing with arms folded, grim, eyes flicking from person to person. His eyes alight on us as we approach and he gives us a stiff, courteous nod.
“Captain. Crew. I don’t suppose you have any explanation for this?”
“We’ve been in our quarters,” Tinera says. “What’s going on? Are we suspects?”
“No more than anyone else. The most logical reason to do something like this would be to cut off communication with the ship, and if you didn’t want to talk to the ship, you just wouldn’t. Besides, the only criminals we’ve had running about so far, you didn’t seem aware of.”
Most of us leave the obvious conclusion unsaid, but Tinera’s not one for caution. The says, “If I understand the politics correctly, the people who wouldn’t want us contacting the ship about what we saw yesterday are your people.”
Celti tilts his head. “Do you really want to do this right now?”
“I can’t think of a better – ”
“We’re only interested in the truth, sir,” Captain Klees says, stepping forward. “I’m sure you all have a… procedure for this sort of thing. Is there anything we can do to help?”
“Frankly, you can best help by staying out of the way. Someone locked Elenna in the supervisor booth last night and started dismantling the tower on top of kem. By the time ke’d run through the underground to get help, they’d done rather a lot of damage.” He gestures at the wreckage around us. “A lot of which isn’t going to be easy to replace, and we’d like to know who and why as soon as possible. So unless you have anything useful to add to the investigation, I’d recommend just letting us sort it out.” Kes eyes narrow and ke stares angrily into the middle distance. “Someone is going into Time Out for a long time over this. There might even be a Dunce Cap involved.”
“Are you okay?” the Friend asks Elenna.
“Mm?” Elenna looks up from the fragment of metal in kes hands. “They took this one down after the first, and the ones over there down before the fire. Horribly disorganised. I’m starting to think the fire was an accident.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“What? No. They just barred the door. I was right in the middle of sorting out the schedule for a supply drop, too. I hope the ship keeps to the schedule. They’re sending us sunflower seeds! And algal cultures.”
“Well then, whatever happens,” I say, “you’ll always have sunflowers and algal cultures.”
Elenna nods, and frowns up at the tower. “This is going to take some finesse to repair.”
“It’s doable,” Celti says. “The engineers say they can reuse most of the materials; we don’t need to tip off Antarctica by asking for replacements. But the big dish is too big for our metal printers. We’ll need to start up the forge.”
“How long?” I ask.
Celti shrugs. “We haven’t needed anyone on the forge since before the famine. Mama needs to train someone new for it. The engineers have sent someone and they think maybe seven or eight days at the worst, three at the best, go get everything made. Seven or eight assumes slow training and some mistakes, so hopefully they can do it faster. Getting it rigged up is another big job, they say, if they don’t want to risk dropping it. Maybe a day to get everything hooked up? But most of the small stuff can be remade and hooked up while working on the big one, if making it takes a long time.”
“So probably between four and eight days to get everything back in proper working order.”
“Probably, yeah.”
“The crew on the ship are going to freak out if we go dark for that long,” Tinera points out.
“Can we expect any trouble?”
“Trouble? What? No! How would they even – ”
“If they think we’ve hurt you, they could drop explosives on the camp and kill everyone. Plenty of things on a ship that can explode.”
“They’re absolutely not going to do that,” Captain Klees says firmly, loud enough for the various shocked eavesdroppers around us to hear. “They’ll just assume radio trouble and wait, the same as we did approaching the planet. They’re astronauts, not an army! Nobody wants to cause any trouble with anyone here.”
I’m running the numbers, trying to figure out what’s going on. So far as I can tell, there are three potential groups of Hylarans in the disagreement over the ship – Max and Hive’s group, who are pro-terraformation and want to work with the ship despite the fears a foreign onslought brings; Celti’s group, who want a return to the status quo that’s no longer possible; and Confused and Terrified Civilians, who are, in the nature of confused and terrified civilians, unpredictable. Hive has shown a tendency to making big, illegal moves with the seed scattering stunt, but there’s simply no reason for the pro-terraformation group to do this. It might be panicked random civilian action, but pulling this off without getting caught would need some pretty coordinated activity, especially with Alenna mid-broadcast and alerted as soon as something goes wrong. The only likely suspects are Celti’s group.
But Celti looks genuinely upset, and so far as I know, has a lot of respect for law and proper procedure. Celti himself might be innocent – I remember how shocked and surprised Max had been when Hive pulled the stunt with the seeds. There are players here we haven’t met and don’t know much about, and frankly, I’m not sure how influential the players we do know are within their little groups. Max has a certain amount of clout with Celti’s side, being somebody who suffered the worst in the very famine that stands as their worst fear, and was able to become our liaison with that influence – I have no idea what Max’s standing in their own group is. Similarly, Celti is a Leader, with the respect of and influence over the community as a whole under regular conditions – I have no idea if he has respect and influence among his anti-Courageous compatriots specifically.
And there are three hundred and eighty eight players in this that we know nothing about. Some of them are children, and presumably uninvolved, but. Still.
Max and Hive come striding up the hill. Hive has a sort of vacant look about them, gazing at the tower like they’re looking at something else. Max looks thoughtful a moment.
“Well,” Max says in a light tone, “at least the timing of this isn’t too bad.” The glance at us, the ground crew. “Are you all alright? Nobody went for you, did they? Where’s Tal?”
“At the computer,” Captain Klees says. “It’s Tal’s natural habitat. No, nobody approached us. We didn’t know anything was happening until we saw the tower.”
“Good. Sorry I haven’t touched base with you today. There was…” they gesture at the tower. “And then I had to sign Hive and the others out of Time Out.”
“Are you okay?” the Friend asks Hive, who blinks blearily at it.
“They’ll be fine in a day or two,” Max says dismissively. They eye the tower again. “The excitement just doesn’t stop, huh? What’s the repair time?”
“You’re awfully chipper about this development,” Celti notes.
“Well, it’s not that big a problem, is it? We have the next handful of drops queued up already, right? They can go ahead without further communication of they need to. I can’t imagine that replacing the communication dish can take that long, so if we’re lucky we might be back on track with no delays at all. Even if there are delays, we’ve got time. And if this kind of thing is going to happen, it’s better that it happens early rather than when they start dropping people.”
“It could very well happen again when they start dropping people.”
“Oh, no, we’ll have caught the perpetrators by then. Anything good in the next drop, Elenna?”
“Sunflower seeds,” Elenna says, not looking up from the wreckage.
“Sunflowers? Real, actual sunflowers?!”
“Once we grow the seeds, yeah.”
“What else does this tower do?” I ask. “Aside from talk to the ship?”
“Weather monitoring, mostly,” Elenna says. “And materials port monitoring. The Vault.”
“We’ve got the backup Vault systems up and guarded,” Celti says, directing a glare at Hive. “So if this is some plan to sabotage the – ”
“We were in Time Out!” Hive snaps, seeming to properly clock the situation for the first time. “Your people have a lot more to gain from this than us!”
“My supporters have shown respect for the law! The only ones running about like this have been – ”
“Hey, hey!” Max cuts in. “I think we can all agree that nobody standing here right now is likely to have done anything, so why don’t we all take this as an opportunity for discussion instead of yelling at each other? I feel like a coffee. Anyone want to come and grab a coffee?”
“I have work to do he – ”
“I know you, Celti; you’ve been standing around looking important for hours. Either haul scrap metal or come have a coffee. You too, Elenna.”
“Why?”
“You were on duty when it happened, right?”
So the eight of us, four Courageous crew and four Hylarans, trudge our way back down the hill and for the central meeting area. The clouds clear a little high above us, letting straight sunshine through for the first time since we’ve landed. I squint up to the sky, trying to see if I can spot the Courageous up there somewhere. I can’t.
“That’s good,” Elenna notes, pointing up.
“Sunshine is nice,” I agree.
Elenna makes a little sound of disagreement in kes throat. “The ship will be able to see the ground. They’ll see the radio tower and know why we’re not talking.”
Also a good point. Hard to know whether the information will make them feel better or worse about the situation. I hope they’re looking right now, seeing us walk across the sands, completely fine and unharmed.
We don’t get much done in the central meeting area. We sip coffee, go over what we already know for a couple of minutes, learn nothing. The conversation quickly turns to light pleasantries and gossip about people I don’t know, thick enough with local slang that I barely understand it. But it’s immediately obvious, glancing about the room, that making any progress on the tower mystery isn’t the point of this meeting. The point is to be here. The point is to have the anti-contact community leader and the pro-contact famine martyr and the terraforming radical and the mutually agreed upon neutral contact and the strangers from space sitting at a table together, drinking coffee, making pleasant conversation. Not to learn anything, but to tell others.
We can get along in this and move forward like reasonable people. If you attacked the tower in any of our names, we’re not with you. We’re going to find you, we’re going to handle this properly.
And when we do, none of us will stand up for you.
Derin Edala 
Is immediately suspicious of ‘time out’ and Hive’s mental state as a result.
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ABSOLUTELY AGREED, I’m wondering if he was drugged or something
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yeah, I thought it was just jail (and that “time out” and “dunce cap” were literal names), but now I’m a bit worried to find out what punitive “justice” looks like on hylara!
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Very interested in the seemingly childish names for “Time Out” and “Dunce Cap.” Time Out seems to be a euphemism for something like prison, and I have no idea what Dunce Cap is. Maybe something like the pillory in medieval times?
Also Max is very optimistic. Pretty sure that’s just their personality but in this context it’s kinda suspicious. Motive isn’t clear tho
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Tbh, I think Max is incredibly smart and politically savvy, and very good at looking Bright And Cheerful whenever it’s necessary. We’ve seen them paper over distress in order to reassure strangers, demonstrate real fear and anger when those strangers’ actions warranted it, and openly express respect for someone who they were definitely at political odds with, because trash-talking Celti to the strangers would only increase the odds that something would go wrong.
I also really, really, really want to know what is going on with Tal and that computer. Yeah, Tal’s super into computers, but isn’t this the weird dream project ke was supposed to look into? The fact that ke hasn’t noticed anything is worrying me.
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curious if timeout or duncecap has to do with the brain eating AI
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is that last couple of lines the first time we’ve had a direct address like this???? Is it revealing a frame around this narrative????!!!?
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hm, being pessimistic, maybe time out is literal- some kind of short term stasis. And dunce cap…. Lobotomy? But I should be nicer to them, no untold horrors just yet!
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Chronostasis is a once-in-a-lifetime thing because the revival chances drop drastically the second go around, so it wouldn’t really work as a punishment for repeat offenders (and why do a punishment the offender isn’t even awake to experience).
While the Autonomy Accords are harder to enforce out here (Renn foreshadowing?), I don’t think that works if Mama told them about the Accords. Mama told them about labor action, so it would be weird if info about labor action was available but not the accords.
These names are for punishments you would give a child. Their society didn’t have any adults to start out with, just an AI programmed to raise children, so the only punishments they were exposed to were ones appropriate for children. To me, it makes sense these are the adult versions of the child punishments of the same name, so Dunce Cap sounds like some form of public humiliation.
If the Dunce Cap is a lobotomy, that would be VERY BAD both for ethical reasons and because it would offend the sensibilities of the sleeping colonists and awake crew. That’s not great for integrating the two cultures. Depending on how the lobotomy works, I feel like the Friend would have very strong opinions about it.
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I was thinking about this last night. My current theory is that Time Out is exactly what it sounds like – you sit, alone, in the corner with nothing to distraction you from thinking about what you’ve done.
So probably mild sensory deprivation and/or social isolation. Could pair it with some basic head-fuckery like lack of sleep and/or Mama popping in every hour or so to remind you that you’re a terrible person and ask whether you’re sorry yet.
But I don’t think a Dunce Cap would be a lobotomy. There’s no reason to develop those here I don’t think. Even the damage done to the Friends is done very carefully and in ways that aren’t really consistent with what we’re seeing from the Hylaran population.
I figure if Antarctica wanted to go for mass brain damage as a form of control they’d just get the whole population from birth – less messy. Meanwhile, they’re raising kids by robot so I am really surprised we don’t have a mild little cult of worship going on – “Thank you, Antarctica, for the Bread we eat …” and all that. But maybe it didn’t outlast the genocidal famine.
I reckon the Dunce Cap is probably just adding some good, old-fashion ritualised public humiliation to the isolation/deprivation of the Time Out.
I don’t know the exact form. Maybe public video broadcast to all households reminding them what a bad person you are, so that there’s no avoiding judgement when you come out? Or a livestream into your cell of carefully curated judgy comments the public are encouraged to submit (you get two desserts if your comment is picked!) so that you spend that time constantly reminded how much everyone hates you for being a meanie?
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I agree with Michelle taht I think Tien Out is literal, but I was thinking Dunce Cap is fairly literal too; one would have to wear a cap/some kind of signifier indicating criminal activity for some period of time; on the crueler side, it could be permanent/semi-permanent, like a brand or tattoo marking that person as a criminal.
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“Chronostasis is a once-in-a-lifetime thing because the revival chances drop drastically the second go around, so it wouldn’t really work as a punishment for repeat offenders…”
Sure you can. It’s a “one time only” thing because the synnerves need to be grown each time to stimulate the brain and the nervous system. But that’s only needed for long-term chronostasis.
Presumably short-term chronostasis wouldn’t need synnerve growth, so it would not be very dangerous, no more dangerous than laying in a medical coma for a few days or weeks. Giving someone a literal ‘time out’ for a few days shouldn’t be hazardous at all, and in fact would be more humane than solitary confinement for the same length of time.
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That was my first thought as well, especially with the mention of the engineers sending somebody to Mama to become an expert metalworker in a few days. I’d bet some sort of brain altering technology is involved.
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Which would also put an interesting spin on Aspen’s confident statement that of course nobody will have any objections to the proposed fate of the criminal.
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but I like how the chapter ends. It’s a nice step in the right direction. Maybe they can work together?
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I’m wondering if someone hijacked the tower and sent the ship a self-destruct command, and then broke things to cut off communication without alerting people that something was wrong with the ship.
Hopefully the crew fixed (broke) all the self-destruct systems as well as they thought they did!
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dunce cap – let’s evolve that concept
a dunce cap has been a punishment for school children including Public humiliation and a cap and Isolation. Themen child sits in a Corner with a big pointy hat in front of the class on a uncomfortable high chair. Information dragged across centuries and cultures and adapted by an AI who raises children with that info. Play a few hundred years silent mail. How would adults raised by adults develope that concept to fit as a punishment for adults? They have progressive synnerves and an AI I think the training that mama uses is retraining someone’s brain via synnerves. To fit behavioral that is expected and remove unwanted behaviors. This fits the already present problem previous presented with brain damage/ lobotomies to change people. I’m guessing that’s part of hives punishment for the seed stunt. And why he’s barely reacting.
Tales computer problem
Tal’s been very unusually fascinated by the computer architecture. If the tech is based or programmed by mama or based on her programming. It would give an opening to explain kinoshiyas notes saying “we’re gonna have a very special AI to present to them..” giving us multiple informations:
maybe that’s what’s Tal recognizing, but hasn’t shared kes suspicions yet, because every time kem did so he got ignored without proof or talked over. So tal’s trying to prove it.
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Just wanna throw this out there because I see a lot of discussion about the punishments and Time Out and Dunce Cap being social isolation and public humiliation respectively;
We don’t really know much about how the Hylarans actively solve problems between themselves (except that what’s being done around the ship and supplies is shocking and definitely not the appropriate message, but they are a small, interdependent community with a tight focus on family sets and the good of the many
Too much public shaming is only going to breed resentment and make it harder for whoever’s being punished to rejoin the community as a whole, which gives them more reasons to lash out again
It’s what we’d expect from a punitive justice system, because it’s an unpleasant experience specifically about being punished, not trying to actually resolve the issue
We don’t know many Hylarans yet, so it might just be Max and how the others interact with him, but the way these kinds of issues are framed so far makes me think Hylara is more likely to have a restorative justice system; they don’t have spare people to lose immediately after the famine, and even when they disagree we haven’t really seen any violence or indications that anyone considers actual violence a realistic outcome of the political upheaval; the Hylarans are scared of the Courageous crew, but not really of each other
(this puts them at MUCH greater risk from the physically much larger and known to be largely criminal Courageous crew; especially if they have Sands’ opinions on criminals and violence)
The big, shocking, drastic action that shook everything up was spreading seeds, all involved were taken alive and well (as far as we know) and we’re already seeing them reintroduced
There’s plenty of space to get real fucked up in and around these punishments, especially with Hive’s state right after being signed out of Time Out, but they was just reintroduced to a shocking and far more drastic kind of sabotage – which still involved absolutely no violence, and the victim at the time (Elenna) was surprised when the Friend suggested even the possibility that she might have been physically harmed
Whatever the Dunce Cap is, I doubt it’s a method to turn the Hylarans against each other like encouraging people to tell the perpetrator how bad they are. They just plain don’t have the numbers or resources to survive any actual physical infighting, so restorative justice is practically a survival skill
My money’s going to be on it being some kind of visible badge of shame they have to wear once out of Time Out, but the greater community is more likely to be sympathetic and sharing their own feelings and possibly the ways they’ve been let down or hurt by this behaviour, without the accompanying “and that makes you a bad person”
Which is also much more effective at making people actually regret extreme actions than ostracising them anyway. It’s harder to ignore your actions having negative consequences for other people than just for yourself (hence people often deciding in the moment “fuck it I don’t care if I’m punished, this will be worth it”), and harder still when you know that even the people you have hurt or upset still care for you as a member of the community, and genuinely want you to feel better and not have a reason to act out again
Mama’s got big “I’m not mad, just disappointed” vibes and she did basically invent the justice system on Hylara 👀
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I mean, definitely true, but on the other hand I hear Salem was a reasonably small, close knit community before the witch hunts too…
And via Antarctica we can definitely see that whoever programmed mother is willing to go as far as the death penalty/indiscriminate murder so it’s not impossible that their justice system is almost as messed up as ours.
I hope for a reasonable and restorative solution, but people coming out of a few days of restorative justice don’t look as messed up as Hive seems to, you know?
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If Hive hadn’t told Celti to go to hell within minutes of their return I’d be more inclined to agree, but they’re clearly not scared of talking shit to power literally right after coming out of Time Out… and they came out to something pretty shocking
This is a community that forbade Max to put himself up to die because the rest of his set were dead and still give him considerable political sway just for being the last alive, when it’d be just as logical to throw him under the bus so no other set had to lose another member
There’s going to be something fucked up down the line somewhere, I just don’t think they’re particularly used to the idea of shunning each other or public shaming and ridicule
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im so glad folks are more optimistic than I am! I don’t really intend to propose this as a serious theory, but I adore hearing y’all’s thoughts, thank you 🙂
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I wonder if they’ll think to write on the ground somehow, like scratch with a tool or arrange scrap metal into words. I know they couldn’t do a long message, but “we’re fine, fixing radio” might be the move if they’re worried about the ship getting antsy in the silence
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I just caught up to the newest chapter releases. Good story! I’m emotionally invested.
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We still haven’t figured out the point of the ai brain hijacking. Was Tal one of the people with the increased synnerves? Because maybe thats what the computer is doing, maybe Mama expected a new batch of brains to work on and control. Timeout definitely sounds like programming.
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Do I misremember them having another radio in the original drop?
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“Someone is going into Time Out for a long time over this. There might even be a Dunce Cap involved.”
wow, they really have the legal system of seven-year-olds. well, there are worse things!
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