161: SOAP

I have a pen. I have the synthetic paper that the colony uses. I sit down to draft a reply.

It needs to reassure the crew outside that I’m fine, and it needs to not contain anything that Dr Kim would flag as something that’ll get her in trouble. It won’t be delivered, otherwise. But I also need to explain this bionic experiment thing, or at least get across that any DIVRs might be in danger. The details don’t matter at this stage but Captain Klees needs to watch his back. I should mention that I don’t know where Tinera and the Friend are, that their situation is different to mine. And there’s something else I need to explain, too; something that I absolutely can’t let the Hylarans find out about, not yet.

Because ever since Mama told me that the Hylarans have been lying to Antarctica about their population, I’ve been thinking. And I might have a plan. It’s an incredibly stupid plan, one full of risks and complications and impossible steps, that absolutely no one will go along with. But, also, it’s a plan that just might solve all of our problems for everyone forever.

And there’s no way I can explain it in a letter. Not without risking tipping Dr Kim off, and I don’t want to do that just yet. So. Focus on breaking out of here and rescuing the rest of my crew so we can all talk in person. THEN save Hylara.

Which leaves not all that much I need to put in the letter, actually, since I have no idea how to get out of here.

-----------

Adin & Tal,

Glad your foot’s doing well, Captain. I’m doing well with the eye. I can read with just the bionic now! I definitely wouldn’t say I’m too weak for visitors, but hey, doctor’s orders. Speaking of doctors, I haven’t seen the Friend either, or Tinera. Dr Kim says they’re fine.

I think our current situation is a bit more complicated than that Hadrian movie, to be honest. I’ve been watching a lot of movies in here, and to be honest, it’s mostly making me angry. Angry at the Antarcticans. Have you seen what these people have? It’s worse than the computer games, which I’m thinking they made themselves – they have almost no actual movies from Earth. A handful of classics and just… documentaries and training videos on using the various equipment needed for the colony. Most of their dramas and stuff, they made themselves, which you’d expect them to be doing, every culture makes stories and plays and movies and games depending on their tech level, but that shouldn’t be ALL they have. The lack of entertainment sent with them says a lot about the priorities of the people who built their ship, and the lack of modern shows (future shows from our perspective, I guess) that aren’t about new equipment forthem to use says even worse things about Antarctica as it stands today. The ship can transmit digital data over the radio, right? You should get them to send down… I don’t know, every movie and show and song we have. All of it. Computer games and programs too, if Hylara has any compatible systems. There’s no reason for these people to be cut off from the cultural history of our species like this.

I’m kicking myself over missing the introduction of organic materials, and even more for missing the plants. I hope I’ll be out of here in time to see them see the first flowers bloom. And animals! They’re going to lose their minds over touching actual living animals!

Tal, I don’t know anything about your friend Bobby Tables. You’re always telling stories about Earth and I don’t remember them all. There are data ports to plug stuff into the computer systems on this ship so whatever random havoc he would’ve wrought, I’m sure it would’ve been hilarious. Did he play Doom on the side of a bunch of apartment buildings, too?

Tell the ship, good call on pruning the roses. Those things can get out of control if you’re not very careful, and that’s the last thing they want. They’ll be up there a long time yet. How’s the colonist revival going? Do we have a rough timeline for getting more people down here? I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re taking your time out there with that. I don’t think anyone wants to rush that step.

Dr Kim is really concerned about my health, I think she wants to keep me quarantined a while. Which is a pity because I’d love to talk face to face. It is what it is, though; between my eye and your foot, captain, I guess we’ve all got some healing to finish. And your everything, Tal. Just your entire deal.

Love,

Aspen.

--------------------

That was about as much as I dare to say. I read it back; are the code parts obvious enough for the crew and subtle enough to get past Dr Kim? I think so. It looks like casual rambling if you don’t know the code phrases, I think. Most of it is casual rambling. It looks fine. It’ll be fine. Even with the responses to the code phrases, it contains so little information that there’s really not a whole lot for Dr Kim to notice, anyway. I couldn’t find a way to mention my plan at all.

I feel useless in here, waiting for people on the outside to figure something out. Captain Klees’ letter gave the indication of some kind of a plant, but I have no idea what it is, beyond the fact that they’ll need to plug something into the computer to unlock the door. Not massively useful. But enough to tell me to be patient, and not just try to overpower the doctor on my own with no plan.

Dr Kim insists I give the letter to her through the little box thing, even though she immediately opens the door to take me for a scan right after. Everything goes through the box.

“Why?” I ask, as I put it in.

She shrugs. “Protocol.”

“For quarantine? I’m about to walk into the very corridor I just delivered it to.”

“I know.”

“What even happens in there? Some kind of sterilising, I imagine?”

She nods. “Quick carbon dioxide bath, radiation sterilisation – nothing that can penetrate anything too deeply, and completely food safe, I can tell you that for certain. And an electrostatic flash.”

“Like the ship’s shield?”

“Yes.”

That kills synnerves. It occurs to me that if I decide I want to ruin Dr Kim’s project, I could stick my head in the box, let the electrostatic shield fry my synnerves… and suffocate in carbon dioxide while my face got irradiated. Not a fantastic plan.

We do the scan. I go back to the room.

The next day, Dr Kim drops by with another letter, and a small lump of… something pink. She drops them in the box. I set the flaky, waxy pink thing aside and search the letter for an explanation. This one’s in Tal’s wild, loopy scrawl.

----------

Hey Aspen.

I can’t believe I didn’t tell you about Bobby Tables! Bob and I did a job together once, stealing some old preneek media off one of those “collectors” who keep digital data to themselves to maintain its value and uniqueness. You know, arseholes. This guy didn’t have his data online, of course, so we had to physically break into his house and find the vault, but like a moron he did have electronic vault security and it was bad fucking security because he

okay I’m going to try to explain this ‘for normal people’ as Tiny says

basically there’s ways to put info into a computer but make it think it’s a different kind of info and give it commands but only if it was programmed by lazy idiots.

Anyways that was Bobby’s game, he loved that exploit, and this idiot had it, and it was kind of like the airlocks on the Courageous, you know? That kind of game. But the hard part was that he had to take advantage of a safety evacuation protocol that could only be triggered from INSIDE the guy’s safe (which is fucking STUPID, what if you’re incapacitated in there and emergency services need to get in to save you??), so we still had to break in, but when the system tried to lock us in Bobby opened the system’s calendar and fed it a string that made it think there was an emergency and it popped the doors open. I’m not explaining it well but it was fucking legendary. Scored us four episodes of some cartoon about people fighting in giant mech suits that was the most boring thing I’ve ever watched. Getting into the place was the fucking hard part, but once in, the door could be popped open no problem. All the doors, from the room all the way back out of his house. Frankly using the calendar was showing off. Dude could plug-and-play that code onto a device if he wanted.

Anyway. We’ve got some biotanks up and running. Photosynthetic life exists on Hylara. The Hylarans are celebrating not having to ration calories so carefully by ‘wasting’ some oil on hand making soap. It sucks that you can’t be here, so I’ve sent you my first ever piece of soap.

We love you.

Tal.

-----------

Hmm.

Well, that seems pretty straightforward. I don’t know if Bobby Tables is real or just made up for the purposes of bringing me up to speed, but between this letter and the previous one, it’s clear what the situation is – Tal, who has experience in messing about with the emergency protocols of AIs to pop doors open from kes time on the Courageous, thinks ke has a way to do the same thing with Mama. But Mama’s systems are designed in such a way that it has to be done from inside my room to pop my door open; pop all the doors in my way open, if I understand the letter correctly. I agree with Tal; stupid design. But then I guess if something did happen to me, emergency services would be Dr Kim, who can already get the door open, so I suppose the ‘opens from inside only’ thing isn’t as dangerous as it could be.

I don’t have anything electronic on me. I was put in here with nothing but my clothes; I don’t even have Note’s gather-ring, let alone some electronic device with an illegal key on it. I do have a small piece of badly made soap, though.

I head into the little adjoining bathroom and wash up. I’m relatively certain that the bathroom is unmonitored, even by Mama; there are tricks you can use to get AIs to trip up and reveal if they know information they claim not to know, and checking that the bathroom is actually private was one of the first things I did. I can’t ever be certain, of course; AIs aren’t all alike, and Mama is sophisticated enough to raise children without killing them, which is a lot to ask of an AI. But I’m just going to have to be certain enough, because I don’t have anywhere that’s any more private than the bathroom.

I do wash up, because why not, while I’m in here. The soap dissolves quickly under the water, somehow both slimy and grainy in my hands. It’s half gone by the time I’m finished, and once I’m clean I keep going, rubbing it between my hands to dissolve it completely.

The device hidden in the middle is very small. Tal and Captain Klees clearly put great care into getting it to me. It’s the size of the last section of my little finger, small enough to easily hide in the soap without causing any suspicious weight disparities or being visible from the outside. It’s sealed in a tiny waterproof container to survive the journey. And it does indeed look like it would fit in one of the ports under the TV, so they clearly did their research on what sorts of data ports would be available to me. If I go out there and use it, Mama would notice, and it might alert Dr Kim right away or it might not; either way, as soon as I bring this thing out of the bathroom, there’s no hiding what I’m doing. But it’s easy, right? Pop it in, unlock the doors, run for it. Go through my door, hopefully through an unlocked corridor door, find my way out.

Pity it won’t work.

I put the little drive back in its container and stash it under the basin out of sight. I head back into the main room, ask Mama to put on something to watch, and shoot a glare at the little box in the wall that everything goes through to come in and out of this room. The one with the electrostatic field that destroys anything electronic that passes through it.

Nice try, Tal. But unless you can get your toys in here without going through that box, we’re going to need a different plan.