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“Honestly,” Dr Kim says, “I have very little frame of reference for what you do and don’t know, so it’s hard to know where to start.”
“Start with the eye. What does it do?”
“It’s a bionic eye. It helps you to see.”
“Don’t fuck around with me.”
“I’m serious. It’s a standard bionic that I pulled from storage, same as any other bionic implant. We’re pretty well-stocked on eyes, because people tend not to lose them too often and when they do, implanting them is a lot riskier than doing a hand or foot because of the delicate optic nerve work in and near the brain, so if they still have one good working eye we generally leave it. But it’s just an eye. It helps you see. That’s all it does.”
“No spy cameras or nasty surprises or anything?”
“Just the normal bionic eye camera. I don’t understand the internals of the bionics perfectly, but so far as I know it doesn’t do anything except send the information to the optic nerve. Same as a flesh eye.”
“You were pretty pushy about getting me to get it.”
“That’s my normal amount of pushy with patients, actually. You would not believe some of the self-destructive healthcare decisions that people make if you don’t keep on top of them. But as you can see,” she says, gesturing to the room through the glass, “I am very invested in this implant going well.”
“Why? What do you expect it to do?”
“If everything goes well – and the scans are very promising, I’m extremely excited – I expect you to be able to see.”
“Out of the goodness of your heart?”
“I’m a doctor. I always want my patients to be as healthy and healed as possible. But in your case, your success isn’t just important to your vision, Aspen. It’s going to help save Hylara.”
“By helping you give robot eyes to people better?”
“Forget the eye! The eye doesn’t matter! I can put an eye in anyone if there’s a nerve to attach it to, but we didn’t do that with you, did we? The eye is boring. What matters, Aspen, is your synnerves.”
I reach up and touch the port in the back of my skull. The skin has, once again, healed over it.
Dr Kim leaps up and starts to pace. “We don’t have a whole lot of modern technology unrelated to doing our jobs here. But we do talk to a lot of people manning the port on the other side, and we have a good idea of what they can and can’t do, and the simple fact is that synnerve technology has been reasonably stagnant since our ships left Earth. And your ship, Aspen, your ship is remarkably free with all kinds of information if I can convince them it’s relevant to your healthcare; they sent down your full medical files before you even landed, of course, and while I don’t know or care about all the details of what went on up there, I do know that you carry in your head some very interesting technology. Technology that I don’t think Earth has. I’m not sure what twisted nonsense people were trying to pull with the Courageous, but whoever set up that little project didn’t share their synnerve tech, because if they had, Earth would have what you have, and they don’t.”
“What I have.”
“Synnerves,” Kim says, turning to face the window again, “that can make you see. Usually, growing synnerves and attaching them to an implant is a finnicky and limited process, as I’m sure your dear captain could tell you. They’re limited in what they can do and have to be implanted carefully, and the reason for that, Aspen, is that nerves that are too aggressive are also incredibly dangerous. Synnerves can be trained, just like natural nerves, and the synnerves that grow wrong and don’t get the right feedback simply die – but make them too aggressive, and all that does is fill a body with dead synnerves, which sport dangers in their own right, as the enormous death toll on your ship shows. Except, of course, for a small group of people who happen to be allergic to a specific protein present in the specific altered synnerves that you brought.”
“DIVRs.”
“An edge case that Antarctica would definitely have found if they were still working with these synnerves, which leads me to believe that we and we alone have them. And we and we alone know about this immunity. Which is why rather than carefully planting a synthetic optic nerve through your brain, we can simply inoculate the port and let normal feedback do its work.” She starts pacing again. “Do you realise what this means? In this test case, it’s replacing an eye. We can probably replace various organs and extremities this way, although now that the ship’s providing us with materials to grow biological replacements, that’s probably not going to be particularly high demand. But brains are flexible; nerves are flexible. The original purpose of this technology wasn’t to replace an eye, but to interface with a computer doing something completely different.”
“You don’t want to run that experiment again,” I say quickly. “That AI didn’t – ”
“Didn’t work out, yes; terrible idea, doomed from the start. I’m not sure what kind of ‘the power of the human mind fixes everything’ storybook logic those designers were working with, but making an AI less stable isn’t going to make it safer. But not everything needs an AI. What about extra limbs. New senses. A radio receiver inside one’s mind. Day-long treks through dangerous terrain in environmental suits worn by trained operatives who can react to things sensed by the suit as if it were sensed by their own skin. Do you see the potential?”
“In a little colony like this with limited materials? I think normal robotics might be more pract – ”
“Not here!” She stops pacing again and flings an arm up, pointing above us. “Out there! Beyond the sky! Antarctica has always had a noose around our neck, do you understand? We have never been safe, and can never be safe, under those conditions. Now the Courageous comes, and we can grow food independently, and loosen that noose a little. But it’s not going away. A massive influx of materials is helpful, but it’s a one-time influx; once the stockpiles are gone, we have only what we can produce and mine on this planet, and no matter how many seeds and machines you bring down, that’s an incredibly unstable position to be in on what’s starting as an essentially dead planet. And this planet can’t produce anything that Antarctica can’t get from its own solar system, meaning we have nothing to trade, no negotiating power. Until now. Technology? Technology, we can trade. And whatever was going on with that AI might be stupid, but the prerequisites for it are valuable. Your synnerves, Aspen, your synnerves and those genes inserted in some of your crewmates… those, we have, and I’m pretty sure Antarctica doesn’t. Those, we can reverse-engineer. Those are a start.”
“Unlike the synnerves in my skull, we don’t have any living samples of those gene-altering bacteria, so…”
“We probably don’t need them. I have copious supplies of your crewmates’ blood. It’s a matter of extracting the right cells and injecting volunteers. The first trials are already underway. I did warn the volunteers that the genes were made for Earth people, not us, and we can’t be sure they’ll affect us the same way, and it might be very dangerous. But the possibility of agelessness is very appealing to a lot of people, so they’re taking the chance. We’ll know within a week or two whether infection was successful.”
“Do the crewmates whose blood you used know about this?”
“Of course not. Why would they need to? It doesn’t involve them.”
“It’s their blood!”
“I was taking blood samples for pathology tests anyway. Why does it matter what else I do with it? They gave it to me for the tests, and got the results. The rest isn’t their problem. But for your experiment, Aspen, we needed a DIVR.”
“And I’m a DIVR who was missing an eye I wanted replaced, and had the port in my skull already, and had already proven my effectiveness at surviving chronostasis.”
“Exactly. The perfect candidate. So. Are you going to put that eye back in?”
I look at the eye. Look back. “The infection in my spine. Fake?”
“Fake. Things were getting very unstable politically. I wanted you isolated where you’d be safe and could focus on your eye training.”
“You drugged me. To make it look like an infection.”
“Yes. If it helps, you weren’t in any danger. The drugs are very unpleasant, but can’t kill you.”
“Does Max know about any of this?”
“No. and now that we’ve had this conversation, I can’t allow you to meet with them. This is a private project.”
“Just you?”
“Me and a few friends who care about the future of Hylara.”
“Celti?”
“Definitely not. He’d never greenlight anything like this.”
“Hive? Elenna?”
“Both no. They all think you’re quarantined with a dangerous infection.”
“You quarantined Tinera and the Friend, too. Why? Tinera’s not a DIVR.”
“Believe it or not, they actually are just receiving normal healthcare for a problem that has nothing to do with this.”
“A different twisted mad science experiment?”
“No. Healthcare. I’ll be a ‘mad scientist’ if I have to, but usually, I’m just a doctor.”
“Tell me what’s wrong with them.”
“Nothing fatal. They’re both recovering well. Once you can see properly, I can release you and you can ask them yourself. So I’d get to training that eye if I were you. Or are you going to be petty, even knowing that the future stability of the colony is at stake?”
I glare at her.
She sighs. “See, this is why I didn’t want to tell you. This whole thing happens so, so much smoother with your cooperation.”
“Maybe if you’d told me up-front I would’ve helped you from the beginning and none of this would’ve been necessary.”
“I couldn’t take that chance.”
“Let me see Tinera and the Friend. I need to know you’re actually telling the truth about them.”
“I can’t do that, because you’ll tell them about this eye thing and then I’ll have to keep them confined or risk them telling the Leadership and the whole thing blows up. You can see them as much as you want and do whatever you want when the project’s a success. I want your cooperation, Aspen, but I don’t need it.”
I cross my arms. “You need me, though. I’ll find some way to screw up the port and – ”
“I don’t, actually. Worst case scenario, I have your DNA; I could grow another Aspen. But that would necessitate going public with the project to explain why I want a DIVR in the next set of children, and going through a whole lot of unstable political turmoil, and then waiting for the time to actually grow the child – no. a simpler way to do things if you don’t cooperate, Aspen, is to run your uncooperative trial alongside another DIVR who will cooperate.” She smiles at me through the window. It’s not a pleasant smile. “Who do you think I should go with? The captain who’s timid and helpful to a fault, or the doctor who brain damaged itself out of the ability to effectively self-advocate? Both are soft targets. I guess it comes down to who’s easier to organise an accident for so they need a prosthetic, isn’t it?”
“Is that a threat?”
“Does it need to become one?”
I glare at her for several more long, tense seconds. Then I snatch up the eye, storm off into the bathroom to rinse it in the sink (that makes it sterile enough, right? For an eye socket?) and pop it back in.
Dr Kim smiles at me much more pleasantly when I come back into sight. “Great! Now, let’s go and take today’s scans, shall we? I’m so excited about the progress you’ve made.”
Derin Edala 
aspen should tell mama about this and ask her to share it
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I don’t know if she would. It’d depend on how her confidentiality is set up. But at the very least Aspen might be able to get a “pls meet me” message to Tal, if they wanted/felt it was worth the risk.
I do think that Kim may find Adin and the Friend less… persuadable… than she thinks, however.
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Again, you always make such fascinatingly nuanced character decisions! It’s never the thing I expect but it’s always something that makes perfect sense in retrospect! I love this story and your writing.
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damn, Dr. Kim is far more ruthless than I first thought. This is what happens with zero ethics training.
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I knew there was a reason to not like Dr. Kim
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I never trusted Kim
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Kim’s plan doesn’t make any sense.
This is a one-time windfall just like the arrival of the Courageous. It solves no long-term problems and causes several short-term ones.
So the question is: is she lying, or is she a fool?
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I don’t think Dr Kim is a fool, she’s just trying to avoid saying something else because a certain AI is always listening down there.
The Hylarians are all sterile, I think Dr Kim wants to use the DIVR and synnerve technology in Hylarians to create a naturally reproducing future for her subspecies so it can grow alongside the Courageous settlers.
I think she doesn’t want to say that out loud in the ship/underground base out of respect for Mother and cultural upbringing, and potentially also because Mother could be programmed with failsafes to shut down this type of radical dissent.
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I believe she is thinking much more long term. I’m guess that Mama didn’t train her to be a doctor based on RNG – she’s probably one of the most intelligent of the Hylarans, and she was raised and trained as a doctor for a people who are essentially enslaved by another planet far, far away, all of them doomed to half the lifespan of their slavemasters, with no hope of ever breaking free or having children of their own. Now that the Courageous landed, I can see her thinking of every possible scenario to try to break that cycle. Not just for their current population, but in the future too.
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My thoughts exactly. Worse, Antarctica does have this technology. Earth literally can’t not have everything that the Courageous has onboard. All Kim could do is explore the potential of a technology that Antarctica has abandoned. They’re trading research papers at best, and once they’re shared Hylara won’t be able to compete with the rate that Earth can do research.
That is… unless Hylara can ignore ethical concerns that would prevent Antarctica from pursuing certain research avenues. Now we’re back to the issues raised by Dr. Renn and the Anatomy Accords. The only reason the AI project happened at all is because its designers onboard wouldn’t have to answer to the Accords.
But that’s the only advantage, and it’s not a great one. I’m reminded of the Hwang scandal, where Dr. Hwang Woo-suk faked creating stem cell lines using somatic cell nuclear transfer, a method for creating stem cells that required donated eggs. That method of creating stem cell lines has a very high failure rate, and he claimed to make far more stem cells lines (it was like 1 if I recall correctly) than he actually did and used far more eggs. most if not all the eggs were obtained unethically with either donors unaware of the risks and/or that their eggs were being used in research. Some were donated from people on his team.
Somatic cell nuclear transfer isn’t a commonly used method for creating stem cell lines anymore. Instead we reprogram cell from adults back into stem cells which skips the need for donated eggs entirely.
That’s the route Dr. Kim is going down. Doing research too unethical by Earth’s standards in a desperate attempt to have something Earth doesn’t which has every chance of being made irrelevant by new more ethical techniques.
And the other stupid thing is doing this whole quarantine in the first place. Aspen is taking physical therapy for their eye, and sure, maybe they’re not keeping up with doing their therapy exercises outside of appointments, but they will get results eventually just with time. Locking them up so they have no choice but to do their therapy exercises is just unbelievably rash and not thought through.
How is Kim supposed to buy Aspen’s silence? Not just to Max, Celti, and Hive, but to their crew, to any visitor. How can Kim justify no one being allowed to visit them? How can Kim justify doing the quarantine for far longer than is reasonable? Will Aspen be quarantined forever? Will she have to kill them? “Things were getting very unstable politically” before the quarantine, so a crewmember quarantined indefinitely or killed is certainly not going to help.
Think about this Kim. Antarctica retaliated to a strike by starving your people. Your only hope of being able to operate more independently of the Vault is the Courageous. Don’t you think they might retaliate if one of their ambassadors dies?
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There is one other major advantage that the Hylarans have over Antarctica in this case; time.
The original timeline for the project to both complete genetic modification and then train an AI to use the extended synnerve network was 20 years, and we have no idea how much was needed at each stage since it had been going for almost that long before Aspen woke at all. The Hylarans may actually be able to experiment on themselves and each other much faster due to their significantly smaller body size and the fact that medical ethics doesn’t seem to exist at all on world.
(They had no concept of a labour strike until Mama told them, and Dr Kim literally does not even know the basics; you tell people what you want to do with their blood before you take it. She’s pushy with her patients because she understands medicine better, and they’re running “modern” medical techniques without the centuries of experimentation and ethical restrictions that grew with them; unless Antarctica or Mama decided they needed an ethics or history expert, Hylara has never had one.)
There is also the bonus that there are several, significantly complicated technologies at play behind the synnerve discoveries. Just the data about DIVRs being better able to survive rogue synnerve growth is very valuable; humanity’s had at least one genetics craze, and you know what’s about to become way more popular for those looking to travel the universe?
Combined with the tech from the bacteria that can do complete, system-wide genetic therapy in an adult, while in cryostasis? People who weren’t DIVRs on Earth could be by the time they reach a new planet. Hell, with the atmospheric pressure resistances that’d be a damn good idea all on its own, which also might be entirely unknown on Earth.
Then there’s the changes to the synnerves themselves, the knowledge of how to kill them off to prevent the problems that will come with growing their own, and, unfortunately, the uniquely exploitable population of Hylarans for future research and development.
Given a Hylaran lifespan and the fact that any data transfer by necessity must be written down on paper, it will always be years or decades faster for Antarctica to “trade” with Hylara for that data and Dr Kim will likely have died of old age before they could even have their first cases up and running, even completely ignoring the ethical issues and Autonomy Accords Earth has to deal with.
The real problem is that any treaty between Earth and Hylara is only worth as much as the latest Antarctican regime change gives a shit, so unless it includes a demand for broadcast capabilities on a wide scale so Hylara can communicate with other cultures and call Antarctica out when the bullshit slides again (which… isn’t gonna be doable at the tech levels given, Antarctica can fake any “proof” through the Vault with no way to check for decades), and that Dr Kim is heavily relying on other Vault sites not to rat out her testing.
The end result deal isn’t likely to be a one-time hand off of any technological advances; it’ll be for continued testing and improvements beyond the reach of Earth’s laws, and Hylara literally does not have the references to know how much worse that will be for them. It’s leverage, alright, and will require a larger sustainable population.
It’s also going to include some really fucked up demands on that population, because once again: Hylaran body mass and shorter lifespan is going to allow for much quicker testing especially around the genetic perfusion, in exactly the same way we began genetic experiments on mayflies.
(Technically even ethical experimentation would be much quicker to do with Hylaran volunteers, but they’re not going to take the initiative to suddenly teach them about ethics for the first time at this stage.)
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Perhaps. Even a one-time trade of the information might be worth enough of a windfall in return trade that it could seriously bolster the colony’s prospects and/or autonomy.The genetics of aging are troublesome, though, and I think they suggest that Dr. Kim should be extremely sympathetic to terraforming and agricultural efforts: if Hylarans develop a secret gene therapy that doubles/triples/whatevers their lifespan, that poses a serious food consumption problem. Within a generation or two, longer lived colonists need more food, eat through the stockpiles, and then Antarctica knows something is up due to increased resource demands. So to commit to experimenting with life elongation as aggressively as Kim did is … risky unless there’s an equivalently aggressive commitment to developing more food infrastructure, which would require a stronger alliance with the Courageous contingent.
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I think Mama forgot to include Ethics 101 in Dr Kim’s medical training ooops!
Also I am seething at Dr Kim. She really chose the most uncollaborative way to go about it. She’d have made an excellent ruthless CEO back on earth. Eurgh.
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Oooooooooooooooooooo. /Jenna Marbles
I never forgave Kim for her shifty fucking behaviour when we met her, so I am unsurprised but infuriated by this shit. Aspen is pretty perfectly embodying how I’d react here, for maximum frustration. lolsob
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Ugh, Dr Kim is making me throw up a little in my mouth. I guessed something like this was happening but… The casual way Dr Kim threatened the other crew members was revolting.
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found this story a couple days ago and i am hooked (fr did you put drugs in it or something). i'm really enjoying it 🙂
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 12:30 AM
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asdfjhsdfgyhdfgj
I LOOOOOVE HER 😍😍😍 characters doing morally-dubious things for heartfelt and sincere reasons are my jaaaaaam 💖💖💖🔥🔥🔥
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