Wincing at Light

<– Chapter 26 / Chapter 28 –>

It would have to be done very carefully, this last step. Brett knew this. In his office, on a shelf where it was readily available, he had a book that ran to better than a thousand pages of schematics, diagrams, logical arguments, all aimed at not only showing him how to do this unthinkable thing, but why it had to be done in this precise order without any omissions. The major point which the writers of the book were trying to impress upon him and anyone else authorized to read it was simply that the things the book had to say should never be put into practice. Never.

Except station commanders were trained to contend with all the various and sundry catastrophes that could override that never condition. That had been part of his training for this job. He’d had to memorize more or less the entire contents of the manual. He had to be able to perform the unthinkable without hesitation or error should the need arise.

Brett had no doubt that ‘need’ was the correct word. He’d never required anything as deeply or strongly in his entire life.

He stood in the familiar darkness, shivered at the chill he knew from so much experience. Varicolored lights danced and flickered along Cassandra’s smooth, matte skin. She knew he was present. She’d forced him to log himself into the system as soon as he entered the door.

Cassandra could do many things. She could analyze binary-converted sensory data. She could tabulate infinite series of calculations without tedium. She could identify the crew by brain wave or heartbeat or voice recognition. She had possibly developed the capacity of limited consciousness.

But she couldn’t see into the human heart, the human soul, and though she had been a party to the investigation into the organism, though she had undoubtedly monitored the things that had gone on, the things Brett had said and done in the last few hours, she had no idea what he was thinking now. There were some things she was not yet equipped to understand, and the native treachery of her human creators was, he both suspected and hoped, one of them.

She didn’t know she had blithely, obediently left out the latchkey for a murderer.

In full sight of her, Brett finished his preparations. At his back were a pair of wide-reflector, five hundred watt halogen lamps mounted on extendable tripods. He’d dragged a small folding table in from the nearest storage room, and a reasonably comfortable canvas and metal fram camp chair to go with it. Onto its surface, he’d begun to empty his pockets. The laser scalpel on the left side, where its flat edge wouldn’t allow it to roll off the table. Beside that, the four test tubes from the bio lab. Next to them was the mech vial Ilam had given him, the one which bore his name. There were other items. A pair of syringes. A pair of auto-injectors, though he expected to need just one. A portable bio scanner. Other things of more or less importance. Brett hoped he had planned for all possible contingencies.

He had been as careful as he could, even in those minutes during which he had enlisted Cassandra’s assistance. He didn’t know if she could suspect him, and then like now, though he had accessed his usual user profile, he had verbally disabled the dynamic learning environment, just to assure himself that she couldn’t make the necessary intuitive leaps.

Brett skirted the edge of his workstation and faced her. In the space of a breath, he reviewed the series of commands he would have to give. At the last, he smiled, tried to twist his face into an expression that was reassuring. It was just as well that Cassandra didn’t have the hardware that would have enabled her to read it. “Cassandra,” he said.

“Yes, Markus.”

“Perform a diagnostic on all autonomic station essential systems.”

She checked them off for him as she ran the tests. Backup life support on-line. Backup electricity and lighting systems on-line. Backup atmospheric controls on-line. The list went on, all of the emergency, hardwired coding in the event of massive computer system failure.

As she performed her instructions, it occurred to Brett that Emily looked distant today. Her eyes seemed clouded; her normally erect figure slumped; her flesh, gray. As though she knows, Brett thought. She knows, but Cassandra doesn’t. He, in turn, didn’t know if that was good news. Was she helping him, anticipating salvation, or trying desperately to transmit a warning message Cassandra had no mechanism to hear.

Because he couldn’t know what she was thinking, he wished the process was not so drawn out, so precise. He wished he could just tell her, shut yourself down, and have that be the end of it. But it had been made much more difficult than that, no doubt intentionally.

“Initiate transfer of autonomic systems to secondary monitor and command devices. Signify each component transfer with audible signal and code description.”

Outside the dynamic learning environment, Cassandra didn’t question his order. She simply did as she was told.

“Atmospheric control transferred to secondary remote system. Diagnostic of remote system completed. Equipment function normal. Stored parameters recalibrated. Remote system atmospheric monitor and command protocol activated.”

It took time, time he didn’t think he had. This all had to be scheduled so delicately. Each step done in the proper time, neither too early, nor too late, but this first one–shutting Cassandra off–had to be done first. Everything else depended upon it. Brett tried to be patient, failed miserably, but resisted the urge to pace. He gave his verbal assent to each step when prompted, followed by his passcode as a security measure. Cassandra didn’t like releasing control of essential systems to the devices she usually managed. She made the process as difficult as possible, ostensibly to keep a nonattentive station commander from accidentally shutting down all life support systems without transferring those functions to other units.

When she had completed the process with all twenty-five modules, she told him she was done and settled into a silence that struck Brett as something like sulking, though he knew she felt no such thing–did not, in fact, have the capacity to even emulate it.

He was just projecting, and he knew it. The truth was that he didn’t have to worry about Cassandra’s obedience, or Cassandra’s timetable. The two of them had performed this transition test hundreds of times. Once a week relative station time for the last five years, in fact, because it was procedure to do so. It wasn’t Cassandra that concerned him.

It was him.

Because he had noticed in the scant hours since the incident with Ritter that he was losing himself, as if the exchange between Ritter’s mind and his own had energized the latent efforts of his own infestation. Left alone, his attention wandered. In the mech engineering lab, he’d spent better than fifteen minutes recalling in vivid detail the first argument he and Emily had ever had, the one that followed his half-joking, callous comment about her new pair of shoes. He had looked up from the workstation and found tears on his cheeks, and found, as well, subsequent to that first time that there were more memories beckoning to him. Their voices called to him in whispers, pleasant murmurs, a precious rebirth of experience. It took all of his concentration to keep them away, and the effort filled him with pain.

Focus, he reminded himself. Focus.

He proceeded with the checklist. “Cassandra, shut down remote sensing devices on all levels.”

“Sensor devices terminated.”

“Shutdown external communications ports.”

“External communication ports terminated.”

“Cancel satellite relay commands.”

So he continued, disconnecting all of the remote devices with their own internal smartchips. Each one of those pieces of equipment would raise an annoying, warbling whine if they detected a lost signal from Cassandra.

Finally, “Test local power supply.”

This was her own emergency battery package, continually juiced in the event of a power failure, able to sustain her primary operations for up to eighteen hours. This was also the step at which she would begin her objections, though currently, she only confirmed the batteries were functional.

Brett paused for a bare second, rehearsed the checklist in his mind to be certain he hadn’t omitted any of the critical steps. He could think of nothing he had missed.

He said, “Disconnect from main power grid.”

“Cassandra System detects no failure in main power grid. Please advise on disconnection command.”

“There is no failure. Comply with the order as instructed.”

“Please present current administrative level passcode.”

Brett gave it to her. She clicked for several seconds over, he assumed, the insensibility of the command.

She said, “Disconnection from main power grid complete. Local power supply performing within normal limits.”

He cleared his throat. So far, there had been no problems, not even the expected ones. He wondered if she had always been this compliant, if he had made her more difficult by activating the dynamic learning environment and filtering all of her processes through it. He couldn’t remember a time when she had simply done as she was told, when she wasn’t cantankerous as a rule.

“Prepare for complete system refresh and shutdown procedure.”

“Warning: system refresh and shutdown procedure is not recommended at this time. Please present user identification and passcode to proceed.”

He supplied his credentials again. “Ignore standard warning set. Initiate refresh and shutdown procedure.”

“Commander Brett, Markus Jasper, please confirm order to initiate refresh and shutdown procedure for addition to event log.”

That was a not so discreet threat that Cassandra, either right before terminating her operations or immediately upon regaining power, would beam a message to EFTC headquarters, Palimpset Industries and any other managing organization who might be concerned stating that some idiot with his name and passcodes had just shut down the single most vital piece of equipment in a multi-trillion dollar deep space station. Under the circumstances, Brett wasn’t concerned about her tantrums or her reports.

He said it for the third time. “Initiate system refresh and shutdown procedure.”

Cassandra clattered at him. The left bank of lights spat a frenetic amber and red pattern. In the tight enclosure of the room, Cassandra’s ambient rumble became an arthritic crackle and hum.

“Please specify component termination sequence.”

This also had to be done in a precise and unforgiving order. If he neglected one step, Cassandra would wrest control and make him start all over again. It was the last safeguard against unauthorized shutdown of the unit. The correct sequence was designed to both protect the station and Cassandra’s sensitive hardware components against damage, and it wasn’t published in any of the manuals, not even the thousand page exhaustive reference paperweight in his office. In theory, only the station commander was given the sequence. Only he could shut down the Cassandra system, and for the sake of both his job and a prosecution free future, he’d better have a damned good reason.

It occurred to him that Ilam probably knew the sequence, too. That would have been nice to know on the many evenings he’d lain in bed waiting to fall asleep and rehearsed the list in his mind, just so he wouldn’t forget, and at the same time both hoping and anticipating that he would never need to use it.

He used it now.

“Begin component termination sequence on my mark.” Brett tried not to think about what he was doing, about the vast and variable potential for disaster. If something went wrong, it could take thirty minutes or more to get her reconnected and processing again. “Mark. Shutdown memory cell bank one through seven. Shutdown memory cell bank eight through fourteen. Shutdown reserve memory cell bank fifteen through twenty eight.”

He went on for several minutes, slowly but methodically dismantling the Cassandra system. Indicator lights flicked from green to amber to flat and glaring red, then winked dark. Sometimes one, sometimes an entire row, depending upon the importance of the component. After the memory cells had been powered down and secured against damage, the major peripherals went: the last set of sensors, the analysis ports, the power to the external sensor array. Near the end of this list, Brett approached the front of the machine and released the latch beneath the monitor on her right side. He removed a touchpad on a sliding drawer, then terminated the last of the peripherals, the verbal command recognition port.

The next part was easier, but more critical. It involved all the major processing components, and he double-, then triple-checked each entry as he typed it before transmitting his command. His hands were steady; he didn’t make any mistakes.

Basic computational board.

Diagnostic segment.

Analysis board.

Central Logic Comprehension Block.

He dismantled Cassandra until there was nothing left of her. With the last command, the termination of the Master Processing Board and Emergency Parallel Processor, Cassandra seemed to stutter. All of the boards, all of the indicators, every light she possessed glowed a bright and vibrant crimson, held it like a shriek of outrage or a dying breath, then faded. The monitor in front of Brett went blank.

He stood alone in the silence, the thunderous, aching silence after the fans had stopped and the blowers ceased. He could hear his own breathing. He could smell the machine, her fragrance an odor of ozone and burnt electrons. In the absence of Cassandra’s internal lighting, the capsule containing Emily had gone dark. Emily herself was a shadow behind glass, as featureless and pale as a ghoul.

Brett had never been so completely alone in his entire life.

He walked to the back of the room and flipped the switches on the halogen lamps. The glare was fierce and immediate, and the buzz of their electricity drove away the silence. That seemed to make it better. He felt less isolated, and he could see Emily clearly, though the lights did not make her appear any less pale. He checked his watch, realized it could still be early yet. He had to wait for the next stage, and then he would have to be quick from start to finish.

Brett settled into the canvas seat of the camp chair. He propped his feet on the table, careful no to knock over any of the fine instruments he’d brought with him. Careful especially of the four test tubes. He’d noticed in the faint light just after shutting Cassandra down that the tubes had begun to shine with a faint opalescence. He knew what that meant–the organisms in the samples had found reasonable food in their nutrient bath. They’d begun to reproduce. He was sure that if he put his hand against the glass, if he held the test tubes in his fist, he’d feel them vibrating. It would be a hot and snapping vibration, the tongue against teeth feeling of stabbing your finger into a light socket.

Because he knew it, he didn’t check. He didn’t want it to distract him.

Brett reached into the breast pocket of his shipsuit, the opposite pocket from the one he’d carried the tubes in, and removed a pair of sandwiches he’d thrown together in the commissary as the last of his day’s errands. He ate slowly, but greedily, savoring the food for the energy it would provide him later, when he was sure to need it most.

#

In the hospital, he had been allowed to see Emily only once. There might have been more visits, but her parents, even unnotified until after the first tandem of major surgeries, arrived too quickly, her parents who were the only actual family. He was relegated to the role of friend and had no rights. Four years had earned him nothing, not to people who bore blame in their hearts. Not to a hospital staff who could only tell him privately that they understood, who passed by him in the waiting rooms and lunch line and would sometimes pat him on the shoulder, sometimes whisper the secret language of medicine in his ear. They had regulations which must be obeyed.

But there had been that one time, in the immediate hours after the accident while her parents sailed the upper atmosphere toward Atlanta, and the doctors needed someone to speak to, someone to explain what had been done to this precious, fragile creature.

They had wrapped her head in linen gauze. They had plugged her body into monitors and intravenous machines, squawkboxes and readouts. A whole collection of medical marvels running on a meter that demanded something like a thousand dollars an hour. Men came in to check, wrote down numbers, applied them to the billing statement; their charge for supplying the spark of life.

Her face was bruised and swollen. The entire left side looked as though she was already dead, cold and blue with the blood settling against the flesh. The track of stitches wound down from the hairline obscured by her bandages, across her right temple, down to the curve of her jaw. She had been fortunate, he was told, that she didn’t lose the ear. He had thought about that at the time, as the doctor said it to him, and he was standing beside her bed looking at the flat and empty space where her legs should have been. The expanse of sheet and fluffy white blanket was as flat and clean as an Indiana hayfield under six inches of new snow. He stared at that space, that not-legs emptiness for an hour, puzzling at its complete and utter wrongness. Trying to wrap his mind around the sense it did not make.

And he had asked himself the usual questions, the ones that shamed him, the ones he ultimately refused to answer. Can I love a woman in this condition? If she is saved, if she is all well except for the leglessness, can I still love her? Can I love her without legs and without memory? Can I love her without legs, memory, or the ability to control her bladder?

Each question was a small step up the massive slope, a tacked-on burden. He could not encompass the totality of the devastation, so he purchased it in bits and pieces, pretending he was finding the line beyond which it would be too much for him. He told himself that there was no line. If she remained just this way forever, he would still love her, he would still remain. He did not know then if he said those things to keep his pride or because he truly meant them. They were questions impossible to answer, because he still had hope. He believed in the miracle of medicine, properly applied. Churches and news programs and the magazines in the waiting areas were full of the wonderful, awful tragedies made right. They told him that the miraculous was commonplace.

In those first hours, he had promised himself that he would remain here, by her bedside, fighting the good fight with her for as long as it took. He believed enough for both of them. He believed because his entire life had been shattered in the course of seconds, its ruin written repeatedly over the space of four hours. He could not imagine that it would take longer to repair. In the back of his mind was the image of a bright dawning tomorrow when Emily would open her eyes and smile and she would be well. They would be well. Life would proceed along the trajectory it had used yesterday and the day before. This was a bad day, a terrible, tragic, stupid day, but it was just one. It couldn’t change the course of a lifetime. He didn’t possess the faculties to imagine such a thing.

He didn’t know then that he was wasting his time. Not in terms of planning a fruitless future, though that was no less true. Actually wasting time, those precious few minutes, the last minutes he would be able to touch her freely, without mitigation. He was afraid to touch her because of her wounds, though the IV drip contained medication potent enough that she never woke. She couldn’t feel her pain, let alone what would have been his gentleness.

Instead, he stared at her, then pulled up a chair beside her bed, then read a magazine while he waited for a doctor to appear with news. Eventually he watched television and fell asleep until the evening nurse rousted him out to the waiting area. He still hadn’t understood. He’d accepted it all as though they still had eternity before them.

Later, during the interminable stretch when he was bathing in the second floor bathroom sink, buying cheap clothes off the rack at the closest department store, ravaging their savings account to keep up on the mortgage since they both had in effect lost their jobs–doing anything he could do to physically occupy a space close to her–he had no contact. Nothing but whispers and after hour chats with nurses who pitied him. No, he couldn’t see her, but he would like to know that the scans had turned up no significant brain damage, which was good news given the original assessment. I’m sorry, the surgery wasn’t successful. The doctor doesn’t think she’ll ever come out of the coma, but that’s just in the chart. He hasn’t even told her parents yet.

The last one. . .the doctor has been contacted by some men, government men, who have taken an interest in this case and one or two other immedicable coma victims up on the floor. I don’t know what it means, but it might be important.

He tried to speak to her parents. Twice. The first was shouting and jabbing fingers and red, stretched faced. The second was flat, unemotional, three hours too late. She’s been moved. They’ve done all they could do for her. The decision has been made. Their hate had cooled, but the blame was still there, as cool and hard as iron. Then they were gone, back to upstate New York and genteel retirement, and he didn’t know what to do. Didn’t even know what to believe.

Go home, the security guard said to him later that night. Go home. There’s nothing left for you here. It wasn’t cruelty, though he had taken it that way. Two days later the man called him, risking his own job and his own future. The security guard who was also an Atlanta cop who liked to ask questions, who liked to dig around, who felt sorry for him and handed over the keys to the kingdom. Palimpset Industries.

The last thing he did before making the jump with Emily to Archae Stoddard was to catch a shuttle to Atlanta. He found the security guard cum police officer and bought him a drink in a cheap Irish bar near the neighborhood where he and Emily had once lived.

Bought him several, in fact.

<– Chapter 26 / Chapter 28 –>