178: SOLUTION

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The Hypati launcher grows. New shuttle parts are constructed. I spend far more time than I want to loading and unloading tiny battery-operated trucks with huge chunks of metal and plastic to be bolted to other parts of metal and plastic up at the base of the launcher. A construction building – well, more of a giant construction tent – is built at the base of the launcher so that we can assemble things up there without having to worry about rain, and every bolt, every join, every seal is triple checked but different groups, put on a checklist, and triple checked again. Every part of this pod is supposed to go through a bunch of checks and stress tests, but we don’t have the facilities to perform most of them. The shuttle’s design is limited by the materials we can manufacture in the colony or that can be sent through the Vault without any loss in integrity, meaning it’s a lot heavier and bulkier than whatever counts as a modern shuttle in the Earth system these days, which means more fuel. Sometimes parts of the design change, and the Denish and his team of freshly awoken trainee engineers up aboard the Courageous analyse every change and keep a very close eye on the things that don’t change. Something here is designed to destroy the ship. It’s the only reason that Antarctica would be helping us build this, and would be in such a rush to do so.

Up on the Courageous, they’re also turning one of the drop pods into its own little retrieval craft. The pod we’re sending is designed to attach to the ship, but there’s no way we’re letting this thing anywhere near the Courageous. For the safety of the ship, they have to make a smaller vehicle to meet it in space and retrieve the goods well out of the destructive radius of any sort of weapon that Antarctica could sneak aboard.

“Our relationship with Antarctica is going to become very, very difficult after they try to kill everyone,” Captain Klees points out one day as he, Tinera and I bolt seats into the launch pod. “They’ll probably play the whole thing off as some engineering accident, but us playing dumb has limits. We need to get a new AI before this launches.”

“How?” Tinera asks, shouldering a seat into position so I can crawl under and bolt it in place. “They have no incentive to send one. We could make out like it’s urgent, like the ship’s in danger if we don’t get a new AI immediately, but that just incentivises them to send something that won’t work on purpose and hope the ship dies before this shuttle launches.”

“Well, unless we want to hook up a bunch of sleeping colonists to the AI they currently have up there, which is of course completely off the table, we have to think of something. Because that ship can’t head off into space without a working AI.”

I tighten the last bolt under the chair. My cybernetic eye adjusts to high or low light better than a biological one, making me the prime choice for doing fiddly tasks in shadowy little spaces. We do need a new AI, or at least a way to get the current one working properly again, preferably without killing everyone due to misguided dream logic. Hooking a bunch of sleeping colonists into a supercomputer is of course off the table, but…

“Is there a problem down there, Aspen?”

“Huh? No. I’m coming.” I crawl out. Captain Klees and Tinera go to grab another chair.

“When we’re back up there, we can threaten them,” Tinera suggests. “Threaten Antarctica, I mean.”

“With what?” Captain Klees asks.

“Seeds. We take offense at the whole ‘tried to kill us’ thing and say we’re staying aboard the ship and if they don’t send us another AI then we’ll send crops to the Hylarans.”

“I really doubts that that would work. If they let us extort them for another AI, they’ll think, we’ll be able to extort them for all kinds of things, and in the end the Hylarans will end up with everything and Antarctica would have lost a whole bunch of time and resources trying to pay us off. They’d just send us an AI designed to integrate with the ship and then kill us.”

“I’m not seeing too many options for an AI that won’t try to kill us.”

I get up and brush the sand off my knees; a wasted effort, since the other two are already hauling another chair in place for me to crawl back under. But just then, Tal and Dandelion come in with a bag of lunchboxes, and they put the chair back down for lunch.

I take my lunchbox. “Hey, Tal?”

“Yeah?”

“You said you can control synnerve growth, right? For the chronostasis synnerves, I mean.”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not an exact science, but we can do what Dr Kim did with your eye, no problem.” Ke grins. “Changed your mind about controlling a robot body?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“We could – what?”

“The ship. The AI up there currently isn’t working because it’s designed to be connected to sleeping colonists, right? And after they were all ejected, it can’t do its job any more because critical parts of the non-brain-powered version were destroyed as they were replaced.”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“Do the brains in question have to be asleep? Does it have to be their dreams?”

Everyone stares at me.

“No,” Captain Klees says. “No fucking way. We’re not doing that.”

“Why not?” I ask. “We need a working AI. We can do that by hooking our current one up to human brains. I know it was using lots of brains originally, running a bunch of them in parallel to make use of group consensus, but could one conscious brain do it?”

“Have you thought through what you’re suggesting?” Dandelion asks.

“Yes. I have. A lot of people have died on this journey. We’re all very lucky to have made it this far. And we already know I can use synnerves in these sorts of ways.” I indicate my cybernetic eye. “Can one brain do it, Tal?”

Tal bites kes lip. “I’m not sure. I think Amy only used a whole bunch of brains because, like you said, they were dreaming, and she needed aggregates for reliability. But there’s a lot of stuff going on in a ship, it’d be… hmm. I mean, the AI itself still does basically all of the work. I think the main issue would be focus; a brain can’t work at one task indefinitely. You’d need to sleep and stuff. But… well, they’re doing everything manual up there already, so a couple of hours per day of active AI control would probably be enough, honestly. Anyway. We can always add more brains. But you’d have to be permanently connected; you know that, right? You’d be using the chronostasis synnerve system to do this, meaning that both your synnerves and the AI would learn to communicate together and form a unique connection. As soon as you take the cerebral stimulator out, that connection’s gone unless you start all over again.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

“This is the most outrageous thing you’ve every suggested,” Captain Klees tells me.

I frown at him. “No, this is the most normal thing I’ve every suggested. It’s a very direct answer to a very direct problem. Normally my suggestions are way weirder than this.”

He nods. “Fine. I’ll do it, then.”

“What? No, you can’t!”

“Why not? I’m a DIVR, too. And I’ve been genetically engineered for long life; you haven’t. Surely we want whoever’s hooked up tot he computer to have the longest lifespan possible?”

“That genetic engineering is via infection. I can get that alteration before hooking up to the computer, no problem. And I have experience processing new information with these types of synnerves.” I indicate my eye.

“Which is why I’m a better choice,” Captain Klees says. “Your brain’s had more synnerves put through it, and you’d have to kill the eye ones to do this. That has to be causing cumulative damage. The less times synnerves have been put through someone’s brain, the better.”

“Visual processing is at the back of the brain. I think experience outweighs – ”

“Neither of you should do it,” Dandelion cuts in. “Obviously, I’m the one to do this. If anyone has experience with drastic brain alterations it’s me.”

“This argument is stupid,” Tal says, opening kes lunch box and picking through a light salad. “You’re arguing over nothing.”

“I’d say it’s a pretty significant something,” I say.

“No, it isn’t. Obviously, if we do this, we’ll be a couple of years into it and then realise that one brain hooked up to the AI is really unstable. What if something happens when they’re asleep? And AIs are really, really useful, and the ship would be stabler and safer if there were more brains manning the AI, to monitor more stuff for longer periods of time, and then someone else will volunteer, and you guys will argue about this again. Until eventually all three of you, and probably most other DIVRs on the ship, will get to control a cool interstellar spaceship.” Ke crunches a piece of lettuce. “All you’re doing is arguing over who gets to go first.”

“First is pretty dangerous,” I point out.

“Which is why it’s a captain’s job!” Captain Klees says.

“Ni, it’s my job,” Dandelion insists. “I may not be a Friend any more, but I – ”

“Everyone shut up,” Tinera practically yells.

We all immediately shut up.

In a calmer tone, she continues, “All three of you are determined to be the test subject for this ridiculous idea?”

“I think it’s a good idea,” I mumble, but I nod along with the others.

“Then arguing is stupid. You’re all viable candidates.” She gets up and starts digging in a box of wire offcuts. “There’s only one way to determine who’s the best candidate.”

“A pros and cons list,” Tal suggests.

“No, of course not. That’s just this same argument but more organised.” She holds up three short lengths of wire; two coated in red, one in green. “Random chance! This sort of bullshit happens in the mines all the time, and no choice of actual candidate is more dangerous than the bickering and resentment involved in choosing one.” She takes a pair of snips and cuts the three pieces of wire to the exact same length, then drops them in a small bag. “Green wire hooks up to the computer, no arguing, no take-backsies, no redraws, unless they themselves decide not to do it. Fair?”

Captain Klees, Dandelion and I all exchange a look.

“There’s a chance that the crew in orbit will veto this whole plan anyway,” Dandelion says.

“Yeah, well, I challenge them to come up with a better one.” I nod. “I’m in.”

“Me too,” Captain Klees says.

Dandelion nods. “I still think I’m the logical choice, but if this is the only way we’ll actually agree on someone, sure.”

The bag is handed to Captain Klees. It occurs to me that whoever pulls the green wire is, at least, free of the complex decision of whether to stay on Hylara or go into space. I should worry about that. I should want to stay here and study this almost completely independent, evolving culture, to oversee its integration with the colonists that we send down. A sociologist’s dream job, a sociologist’s duty. They’ll need me, won’t they?

Captain Klees pulls a red wire. He hands the bag to me.

Fifty-fifty chance.

Of course, the culture developing on a multi-generational spaceship would be an equally fascinating thing to witness, with more familiar cultural touchstones. And I miss my greenhouse rings. I miss movie nights; they’re not the same down here. Still, if I pull red, if I have to choose, then surely I’d be more useful to the Hylarans. Surely, I’d have to…

I pull the wire out. Green. Somehow, I’m surprised to see it in my hand. Emotion chokes me up, but I have no idea what emotion it actually is.

I look at Dandelion, who sets her jaw. “I was the clear choice,” she says.

“You have more options in life than continually sacrificing yourself for the benefit of others,” I tell her.

She’s standing right next to me, and as she turns away to go back to work, I’m certain that nobody else can hear what I think she’s muttering under her breath. Maybe. It’s so quiet, I might very well be imagining it.

But I think she says, “You have more options in life than continually finding new ways to run away.”

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