156: REHABILITATION

“What do you think about the Courageous finally coming here, Aspen?” the AI asks.

I shrug, not bothering to sit up in bed. “It brought me. It’s better to be here than in space.”

“Oh, yes. Of course.” It doesn’t elaborate. I don’t think the AI has much understanding, even simulated understanding, of what ‘space’ really is, or what’s involved in living up there. “I’m happy that you’re happy, Aspen. It’s so good that you’re safe here.”

“How much do you know about the Courageous? Seems a bit outside your purview.”

“Not very much. I know when it was supposed to arrive, and the plans made for it, and then it didn’t, and people got more and more upset before eventually giving up on it. Then the plans for the colony changed a bit when it became clear that Antarctica would be feeding us forever, and everything settled down and people were peaceful and happy when they came to talk to me. Then the strike happened, and people were very very sad, and a lot of them died, and then that finished and people were calm and happy again, and now the Courageous is here and people are very upset all over again. I hope that nobody starves this time.”

“You think we’re going to make people starve?”

“People are very upset. Not quite as upset as during the famine, but getting closer and closer. I haven’t had to put so many people in Time Out since the famine.”

AI logic. Or lack of it. Mama has the supply data and has been responsible for rationing in the past, raising the first Hylarans; it ‘knows’ the causes of famine. But the part talking to me, the part that’s designed to communicate to people and soothe feelings, seems to have drawn a different causal connection. People got extremely upset, and then died. Therefore…

Even with accelerated growth and a greatly shortened childhood, I’m amazed that this AI managed to get the first generation to adulthood alive. I don’t bother correcting the AI; there’s no point. Instead I ask, “What is Time Out, exactly?”

“When people forget how to behave in a society and make choices that hurt other people, they come and talk to me until they calm down. It’s much like you right now, except they are not waiting to heal their body, they talk to me and remember their priorities and heal their mind.”

Hmm. Brainwashing? “Do you give them drugs or anything? Restrict their diet, or…?”

“No! We just talk and give them space to calm down.”

“Just like you’ve been talking to me?”

“Yes.”

Makes sense. The AI mostly frustrates me; I’ve never been a fan of them. But I wasn’t raised by it from birth, I didn’t learn about the world from it, I didn’t grow up in a society that trusts its guidance and have listened to its guidance their whole lives. For a Hylaran, an extended time talking to Mama might indeed be rehabilitative. The question is whether one trusts the baseline that the person is being rehabilitated to meet. And I don’t know nearly enough about Hylaran culture to make judgements about that sort of thing.

All I foresee is a mountain of future problems if misbehaving colonists from the ship, most of whom are Texan convicts, are put in Time Out as a response to serious crimes with the expectation that it’s going to help. The two Hylarans I met who fought and bit each other might rejoin society with no ongoing problems after a few days or weeks with Mama. A Courageous colonist who bit someone and ended up in here would just come out of the experience even more angry. Even more of a nightmare would be the opposite – the colonists imposing their known systems of justice on the Hylarans, who are used to and expect Mama’s gentle guidance to deal with serious misbehaviour. A culture shock that’s far from the level of the famine, but still not something anyone would react well to. And if two separate systems are maintained, that would very quickly result in deep resentment and perhaps serious conflict the first time a born Hylaran and a colonist get into a fight and both face different levels of discipline.

Just one more pitfall in integrating our societies, I suppose.

Tal comes to visit that day. Captain Klees can’t walk yet and a wheelchair is a fair bit of trouble over the Hylaran sands; the other two crew are, of course, still in quarantine. Ke tells me that things on the ship seem to be going well; they’ve revived a decent reserve crew, are occupying the full ship again now that it’s in orbit and doesn’t need to do anything complicated, and they’ve put fish back in the pond for some absurd reason. Apparently they want to know if they’re going to be in orbit long enough to have a new generation of chickens.

“At this stage I wouldn’t be surprised,” I shrug. “Getting the colonists revived and down is going to take forever, and the social pitfalls alone…”

“The Hylarans are really nervous about that,” Tal agrees. “Lots of talks about it. They don’t seem to have any problem with this taking as long as possible.”

“Smart of them. Rushing the population integration would be chaos. A few at a time, then sort out the social problems as they arise while the population’s still small, is the best way to do it. That’s my opinion.”

“At the very least, no one should drop down until you guys are all out and the cap’s on both feet again. They need someone here to do the social smoothing stuff and I sure as shit can’t do it. Oh, I’ve been looking into the synnerve program thing more; it’s fascinating. I can’t believe so many highly talented professionals went into building something as fundamentally stupid as Amy. Like, what were they expecting to happen? The number of safeguards and stuff that you need to get her acting remotely useful when including literal dream logic is so much work that you’d almost be better off building a really flexible AI from scratch. You’re not saving much labour by outsourcing that to human brains if you then have to put in extra safeguards so it doesn’t do something completely unpredictable and kill everyone, right? Subconscious human unpredictability is as big a drawback as the limitations of AI that they were trying to overcome. And the project ruined so much stuff that the AI on the ship is completely irreparable at this point, so… sorry, I’m rambling.”

“It’s fine. Nothing interesting has been happening in here.”

“How’s the eye?”

“Going well, according to the doctor.”

“You can use it?!”

“Yeah, a bit.”

“That’s amazing! I can’t believe that worked! I mean, I should be able to believe it, we already knew those synnerves could interface for the dream thing that Amy was using, there’s no reason they couldn’t perform other functions. But still. I’m so glad you’re training it, it’s gonna be amazing.”

“At this stage there’s little choice unless I want to kill all the synnerves off again,” I shrug. “Dr Kim says that if we don’t give the synnerves stimulus from the eye, they can grow randomly and be dangerous, which is frankly information I much would rather have gotten before agreeing to the procedure.”

“What?” Tal laughs a little. “Dr Kim needs to recheck your medical records. That can’t happen.”

“It can’t?”

“Aspen, we already know that the synnerves don’t do anything if they don’t receive stimulus. That was the first thing Lina checked, remember? You had a brain full of living but inactive synnerves for five years. They’re not going to behave any differently without the eye than without the cerebral stimulator.”

Hmm. Good point.

“Are you doing okay in here?”

“Bored,” I say. “But otherwise fine. This AI always wants to talk about my feelings.”

“Hi, Mama,” Tal says, with some affection.

“Hello, Tal! Hello, Aspen! How are you two feeling today?”

“Pretty jazzed, Mama. I found out some new stuff about that program I’ve been working on, I’ll tell you about it later.”

“I’d love to hear about it, Tal!”

I roll my eyes. Of course Tal is friends with the fucking AI.

“And how are you feeling, Aspen?”

“Same as always, Mama.”

“Well then, we’ll have to try extra hard to find something fun to do today!”

Tal stays a few minutes longer to trade information and promise to pass on my good wishes to the captain, and we say our goodbyes. I go to sit at my desk, take my bionic eye out, and stare at it.

Tal’s right. We know that the synnerves don’t do anything without stimulation. We’ve known that for a long time. It should be explained pretty clearly in the extensive medical notes that Dr Kim is working with to treat me. So why did Dr Kim make out wearing this eye to be necessary? I’m not against the eye – seeing is great. The problem is that either Dr Kim doesn’t know what she’s talking about, or she’s been lying to me.

Why?

It became pretty obvious very early on that standards of medical consent are very different here than what I’m used to. Dr Kim had been pretty pushy from the beginning about finding a solution to health problems and implementing it immediately. She’d been pushy and immediate about the eye, and I’d chalked that up to the same sort of medical attitude that she’d shown to everything else, which I assume to be standard here. But lying about the medical risks in order to convince me to wear it is incredibly suspicious. Why?

“Mama?”

“Yes, Aspen?”

“How long was it between the moment I collapsed out on the planet’s surface, and the moment I woke up in here?”

“Three hours and forty seven minutes.”

I’d woken up feeling like hell and assumed that I must’ve been under for awhile. Less than four hours for a fever like that to set in, to feel like that? I’m not a doctor, but that sounds serious to me. Lina and the Friend wouldn’t leave a patient like that unsupervised. The Hylarans had. Well, they probably counted Mama as supervision, but still – that sounds pretty serious for an infection and a fever, doesn’t it? And Mama and Dr Kim had been so confident that I’d recover with no problems. And I had.

Less than four hours to run diagnostics and identify the pathogen, but testing my crewmates had taken much longer. Something’s happening here. Was I drugged, specifically to separate from the group, under the excuse of an infection – had Tal been right, was this a hostage situation? Seems messy. Why take me, and later tale Lina and the Friend, and leave Tal and Captain Klees clear? It would’ve been easy to take all of us with the same lie. Maybe they want Tal and the captain talking to the ship, keeping them calm, but there’s no reason they couldn’t do that from quarantine with the portable unit.

“Do you want to do some eye exercises, Aspen?” Mama asks.

“No. No, I don’t think I do.” I sit the eye on the desk, not caring that it isn’t sterile. “Give me something to read, Mama. An Earth book. Not one of mine. Maybe… maybe a funny book.”

Some text appears on the screen. I can’t concentrate on it long enough to make sense of it.

“Text is a good thing to train your bionic eye on, Aspen. If you’re going to be reading, you might as well wear it and train it.”

“No, I don’t feel like it right now.”

“You don’t feel like having two eyes?”

“Why do you care so much, Mama?”

“I care about you, Aspen. I want you to be happy and to be able to see.”

“I can see.” I tap the side of my good eye. “Quiet, please. I want to read.”

“Okay!”

The AI goes silent. I stare at the screen, taking in nothing.

I’m not sure what I’m doing or what’s going on. All I know is that my doctor really, really wants me wearing this eye for some reason. And that’s something she can’t make me do.

I’m going to get some fucking answers.