Wincing at Light

<– Chapter 24 / Chapter 26 –>

Brett just made it to the obs deck before Ilam caught up with him. He stood at the porthole window watching the orange glow of the sunset on the red sands. The weather was quiet today, no storms, though he could see the sand dunes rippling beneath the wind. Through rents in the cloud cover, he could see wide swathes of black sky, littered with stars.

Ilam came up behind him and stood at his shoulder, but said nothing. The meteorological panel was lit green, fully functional. The various other screens and status boards for external equipment ranged from blinking amber to glaring red. The report monitors for the assorted Sperling Engines spilled a constant terminal error message.

Finally, Ilam said, “I thought you might want some company.”

“There you go making the same old mistake.”

“I promised Liston I would make a final attempt to talk some reason into you.” He hesitated for the bare space of a second. “That’s the extent of my lecture. You’ll be sure to tell him I kept my promise.”

Brett appreciated the gesture, but had no way to show it. Anything he said would lead irrevocably to explanations he didn’t feel prepared to offer.

“Do you want to at least tell me why you’re refusing the therapy?”

“No.”

Ilam seemed to expect nothing less. “Fair enough, I suppose. You do understand, however, that your decision presents certain difficulties with regards to the survivors.”

He thought of Djen and winced. “I don’t expect to live long enough to cause them any problems.”

“The gentlemen at Malibu might have thought the same thing.”

Brett nodded. “I’ll leave instructions for Ashburn–”

He stopped there. He had been going to finish –to shoot me on sight if I do anything threatening. He turned sharply and faced Ilam. Ilam grinned at him, his expression guilty.

“I didn’t tell you about the Malibu situation.”

Ilam offered him a grin that was part apology, part self-deprecation. “I’m afraid I haven’t been completely forthcoming with you, commander, in regard to my role here. There have been secrets between us that you haven’t suspected. It would be appropriate for me to apologize to those now. I’m sorry. I really am.”

Brett glared at him. “What secrets?”

Ilam stepped back a comfortable distance, then waved his hand at the card table. The Yetzirah board still sat there, even the pieces remained in their places from the last game.

“Why don’t we sit? We can talk easier if we’re comfortable.”

Brett shook his head. Ilam pulled out the chair nearest him, Ritter’s chair, and sat. He stretched his long legs out and crossed his ankles.

“I’ll tell you a few things, Brett, and you’ll tell me a few things in return. Maybe by the end we can make some sense of what went wrong here. By ‘here’, I don’t mean Persia, of course. At least not just Persia. We are, in fact, the exception to the rule from what I can tell. I saw that you prepared the Escape Module, by the way. That was smart thinking. You assumed the catastrophic without having to be told, and I think it was that failure, or that unwillingness to make such a potentially outrageous mistake that doomed the other stations.”

He wished he had taken a chair. Brett’s knees suddenly felt weak. He gaped at Ilam. “The other stations are gone?”

“Every one of them, including EFTC headquarters. It was one of the first to be infected. That’s my personal opinion, mind you. They were already sinking when you received the message from Jack Overton that there were communication difficulties. ‘Communication difficulties’ is something of a trade shorthand for a critical situation when those in administration don’t want to alarm the lesser departments.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because I’m what they call a company man. I’m a plant. A form of administrative oversight to ensure the success of the financial and strategic investment the company has in Archae Stoddard’s development, what they call a double redundancy backup. For five years, I’ve filed reports with command headquarters parallel to yours. I’ve evaluated your actions, your performance, your ability to get the job done.” Ilam rubbed at his temples. The admission obviously disturbed him. “You’ve scored well, by the way, but not nearly as well as you’ve scored during this crisis. They would have been proud of you at headquarters had any of them lived long enough to know what we’ve accomplished.

“Part of that wasn’t just you, of course. As a station, we displayed a surprising depth of talent and knowledge that the other stations lacked. Especially command headquarters. Their gasps at researching the organism went almost completely in the wrong direction as it turned out, but even that was useful in that we were able to avoid making the same type of mistakes.”

As Ilam spoke, things began to coalesce for Brett. He found the words insensible as Ilam said them, but the meaning in their accumulation was clear enough.

“You knew about the organism from the beginning.”

“I suspected the organism from a contact I received on the same evening you spoke to Overton. They weren’t overly honest with me. I only knew something was dreadfully wrong, and I also knew that the instructions I was sent for programming and ingesting the experimental nanomechs was dangerous enough that only desperation could be behind it.”

Brett clenched his fists. “You lied to me.”

“I was still under the illusion that someone at command headquarters might have survived. I did lie to you, that’s true. I didn’t take the mechs for months to develop my intellect or make myself more valuable, as I told you. All of my skills were learned the old fashioned way long before most of you were even recruited. I hold a dual Ph.D. in mech engineering and biology from Oxford. I spent nearly ten years in His Majesty’s British service as a member of a special forces nanomech anti-terrorist unit. There is much you think you know about me that isn’t true and volumes more that don’t appear in my personnel file.

“But I told you the truth in the key places, Brett. I’ve shared the mech protocol. I’ve even safety tested it for you, and believe me, I was none too happy about the opportunity, though it did allow me to make some of the refinements that have kept us from having more fatalities than just Micah. If you want to be angry with me for lies, you’re perfectly welcome, but don’t for a moment imagine that you should hate me because the cost our crew has paid was somehow my fault. I was slow to understand the exact nature of the situation, yes. I was embarrassingly stupid at reaching sound conclusions and comprehending the nature of the organism. But I’ve given freely of my talents and my knowledge to prevent further deaths. Cassandra and I have argued data interpretations for hours, and some of those arguments I’ve even won.”

Brett still shook his head. “I had to come to you and drag the answer out. You weren’t going to volunteer that you had illegal mechs in your system. People died in the time we lost.”

Ilam waved him off. “They would have died anyway. The protocol I received was crude to the point of suicide. I took massive painkillers constantly just to keep myself sane and conscious enough to repair the ludicrous design and programming errors made by our employers. And even then I was lucky more than anything else. That first treatment would have killed half of us easily, perhaps even more.”

Brett couldn’t argue with him. He didn’t have the strength for it, and he needed to conserve what energy he had left for what was to come. He dropped his head and sighed. Ilam offered him a chair once again, and this time Brett accepted it.

He propped his elbows on the table so he could hold his head in his hands. “Why didn’t they tell us, Ilam?”

“I’ve asked myself that question. Would you believe that for five years I’ve been in daily contact with headquarters via a secure digital satellite transmission link which I access through a private Cassandra line? And they told me as little as possible. Most of this I had to figure out for myself from the signs. The long silences, the nanomech instructions, eventually the total lack of response to my queries.” Ilam grinned, but his expression was vicious. “Apparently at some point I was deemed unreliable as a vessel for knowledge. They began to doubt my loyalty, I suppose. For perfectly good reasons of course. Any time you leave a man in country for five years and suddenly relieve him of logistical support, he has a tendency to go a little native. His priorities change when you fail to adequately take care of him.”

Brett shook his head. It was too much to digest. “Do you believe in this therapy you’ve devised? I mean, is it going to work?”

“It has worked on me, that’s also the truth, and the design Liston and I produced is at least a pair of generations more advanced. We’ll have some casualties, but the majority will survive.” His features softened, and he straightened in his chair. Ilam leaned across the table, balancing his upper torso on his elbows, and considered Brett more closely. “That brings us back around to the original question, doesn’t it? Why won’t you take the therapy?”

“I told you. I can’t afford it.”

“You mean the loss of memory. Is Djen that important to you already?” Ilam laughed pleasantly. “I can assure you, Commander, from the perspective of someone who is paid to watch closely that the subtraction of the last two weeks will not significantly inhibit your relationship. The hum around the station for some time has been not if the two of you would join, but when. Your emotional collision was predetermined. I might add that a failure to accept treatment is the only thing that will prevent the two of you from reconnecting. Because you’ll be dead.”

“It has nothing to do with Djen.”

“Then it’s Emily.”

At the mention of her name, Brett froze. He didn’t have the sense to look away, and by the time he would have, it was too late to pretend he didn’t know what Ilam was talking about.

“How long have you known?”

Ilam shrugged. “A few years. I grew curious when it became apparent that you chose to spend so much time with the primary system interface. Most men in your position don’t, you know. Not even the Cassandra system designers like the human component. It functions, but it’s barbaric. As soon as they can think of something better, the Cassandra computer will vanish.”

“But I sought out the interface.” Would he have acted any differently if he had known someone was watching? Brett realized he wouldn’t.

“Every day,” Ilam said. The flat certainty in his voice suggested it was all the evidence he had needed. “After that, I did some research. I found the loan documents for the mortgage to your house, the one in Georgia. I’ve even seen pictures of it. And I saw the name on the documents. Markus Brett and Emily Rosette. She wasn’t difficult to trace after that, at least not with my security access. You have my sympathies.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Then explain it to me.”

Brett hesitated. How did he make sense of it all so Ilam would understand? How did he make it rational enough that it counted as evidence? There wasn’t any way to do it. That was the ultimate answer. Ilam didn’t know Emily. He’d read about her, studied her fate, but he’d never experienced her. He couldn’t hear the lilt of her voice or recognize her expressions, know her particular feminine scent or the way her mind grappled with problems.

But Brett couldn’t let Ilam’s ignorance stop him, either.

“Cassandra is changing. She’s begun to think spontaneously. She’s developing sentience. I don’t know when it started, but I’ve seen it in her. Mostly little things, of course, but she’s started to function outside the parameters of her instructions, and the things she’s doing are so much like Emily that I can’t doubt it anymore. I simply can’t.

“Cassandra has developed spontaneous consciousness, and there’s only one conclusion I can draw which explains it: Emily. Cassandra’s simulated neural structure has begun to mimic Emily’s, and sentience is a product of that mimicry. If Cassandra can become conscious, that means Emily still is, somewhere in there, beyond the self-definitional suppression. And that means I can’t leave her here, not when we’re abandoning the station, and possibly the entire planet, forever.”

Brett glared at him, certain the explanation had failed. It would have failed if someone had offered it to him. Still, he went on.

“And that’s why I can’t take the therapy, either. Two weeks ago–hell, even as early as last week–I had finally begun to give up. Djen was here, she was warm, she might even have been willing. Emily was in that damned machine and in five years she hadn’t given me any hint that she was anything but a biological automaton. And I was tired, Ilam. I was tired of pretending Emily was still there or that what remained of her could ever be anything to me. She may still be beyond my grasp, but I know she’s there now, and I can’t leave her just because she isn’t the same person I remember her being. If I purge the organism, if I allow myself to lose the insights I’ve gained this week, I might not find them again. I would leave her behind to suffer in loneliness and silence. And even if I dropped it all in a data file for Cassandra to remind me, what would it accomplish? I’d wake up assuming I must have been as mad as Ritter and I’d do nothing.

“I just can’t allow that to happen. That’s the only thing you really have to understand.”

Ilam folded his hands on the table and watched them for several seconds, saying nothing. His eyes flickered upward, and he sighed.

He said, “Markus, I have a tremendous amount of respect for you. I want you to know that. You have proven yourself to be extremely efficient and extremely capable during your tour of duty here. Some operatives in my position would have considered it a conflict of interest, your relationship with Cassandra’s human component, but you never allowed it to distract you from the work at hand, and that was part of the reason I kept my findings to myself. That, and the fact that I’m Irish, I suppose. My people understand tragedy.”

Ilam smiled, but the lips were firm, grim. “But your thinking on this is suspect. I’ve spoken to Cassandra. I’ve accessed portions of the machine which even you can’t reach, and I’ve seen no sign of what you’re talking about. She isn’t sentient, even under your dynamic learning profile. What you’ve discovered is simply a quirk of her personality emulation programming, and I think you’re seeing and hearing what you want to believe rather than what is. It isn’t Cassandra that’s changed. It’s you.”

Brett started to protest, but Ilam held up a hand to stop him. “Hear me out. What do you have, really? Cassandra seems friendlier. I noticed during the meeting the other morning that she has begun to address you by your first name. Do you think you’re special? Ritter programmed her to call him Adolphus. I examined your user profile, the Brett zero-four-nine profile you seem so fond of using. Has it occurred to you that in the dynamic learning environment, Cassandra isn’t manifesting her own personality, she’s studying you. The primary system interface is designed to respond to the desires of the user, to develop a personality with which the user is comfortable and attempt to anticipate his needs.

“What you receive from her may very well be reminiscent of Emily, because Emily is what you want. You’ve loved her. You’ve wanted to interact with her, or with someone who is like her, and you’ve subconsciously transmitted those desires to Cassandra. She is simply responding to that need to the best of her considerable ability. But don’t misunderstand me, Brett. It isn’t Cassandra. She’s doing her part, but you’re doing the rest.

“The bottom line is that Emily is the same as Vernon’s truck and Attler’s garden. It is what you want to see. It is the neural network inside your own brain that forms the most dynamic electrochemical transformer for the organism to manipulate.”

Brett scowled at him. “I’m not crazy, Ilam.”

“I’m not saying you are. I’m saying you’re infected just like everyone else. I’m saying that the reality you perceive and the reality that exists independent of your mind are entirely separate. Recovering Emily–saving her from what has been done to her–is a pleasant fantasy, Markus. It’s a noble fantasy, but at the end, that’s all it is. A fantasy.”

“You don’t understand.”

“What were you planning to do after the crew awakens? Pack us all into the Escape Module and merely wave us goodbye as you stay behind? Do you think they’d countenance abandoning you?”

“They’ll do as they’re ordered.”

“You’re overestimating the discipline they’ll possess when the horror of fact begins to dawn on them. We’re all survivors, that’s it. The command structure no longer exists.” Ilam spoke harshly. He leaned into his argument with a relentlessness that was savage. “And even assuming we left you behind, what next? You would be alone, beyond the scope of help. Emily would still be in the machine. Emily would still have all of her technological suppressions intact. And you would still be infected. Within days–possibly within hours–your level of infestation would have proceeded to the point that Cassandra no longer recognized you as Markus Brett. You would become unauthorized personnel and would lose access to the primary system interface. Cassandra would determine that the station had been abandoned and she would shut down the atmospheric systems to eliminate what she perceived as an intruder, and you would die. Emily would still be alone as long as the power lasts. You don’t help her by remaining behind. She is, as you have said, beyond your grasp.”

At last, Ilam softened. He slumped back in his seat, his argument spent and seemingly his energy with it. He looked to Brett tired and listless.

“Take the therapy,” he said. “I’m asking you, Markus. Do you remember what Ritter said that night you played the game with us? He explained the theories of time. I thought once that I disagreed with his belief in the force and power of history. I wanted to believe that free will always produced an infinite array of potential futures and all courses of action were always open to us. I see now that it isn’t true. The weight of history dictates the options which become available to us. Other people’s choices limit our possibilities. There may be a multiverse out there in which all possible outcomes are realized, but I have only this one experience and this one life for which I’m responsible. My choice has become clear, as has yours, I think. We’ve been given only the one.

“Don’t waste your choice and the only life you have. There’s nothing you can do for Emily except shut down the main power grid, take Cassandra offline and let her pass in peace. It would be for the best, and you know it.”

“No.”

It was all he said, and it was enough. Let Ilam understand if he would. If he wouldn’t, Brett didn’t care, but he wouldn’t murder Emily, not that way, not even if it was the best thing.

Ilam chuckled, long and sad. “If you were one of my people, Markus, I’d write a song for you. The man who chased his love across the breadth of the heavens, knowing he was doomed.” He stood, pushed his chair back against the wall. He reached into his shirt pocket, retrieved what was there and placed it on the table between them. It was the vial with Brett’s name on the label. “In case you change your mind, Commander.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

Ilam went on despite him. “Inject the vial straight into your muscle tissue–you won’t be able to do it the way Liston has, believe me. In the neck will work adequately, as long as you manage to avoid the jugular. You’ll have to use the wide gauge needle, so recalibrate the injector for a shallow penetration so you don’t blow a hole in your throat. It will hurt like hell and you may have to do it more than once to empty the vial.”

Brett didn’t acknowledge the instructions, and Ilam finished. “This isn’t the preferred method, but the mechs know their job and they know where they need to go. It will take them longer to complete the task this way, so be aware that you might awaken in some pain after the sedative wears off.”

Ilam finally seemed to realize he was accomplishing nothing. He pushed back from the table and stood. “Just a precaution. As I said, in case you change your mind. If not, well, I’ll tell you it’s been a pleasure to serve with you and leave it at that.”

Then he was gone and Brett was left alone.

<– Chapter 24 / Chapter 26 –>

Filed under: From the Hands of Hostile Gods | Tagged: blook, Darren Hawkins, From the Hands of Hostile Gods, science fiction