114: REACTION

The next morning, we assemble around the picnic table, and Lina explains what she and the Friend have spent the past day investigating. “So. We have a hypothesis that may actually answer quite a lot of questions.”

“Great,” Tinera says. “I love things that answer questions.”

“So. As you all know, we’ve been somewhat mystified by the DIVRs’ most recent synnerve scans. The captain and the friend’s don’t show up at all, which would suggest some sort of intolerance of the tracer, except that their initial scans worked fine, and Aspen’s latest scans were mysteriously blank only in specific areas. As Aspen pointed out yesterday, these blank areas correspond roughly with the parts of their body that have been subjected to the ship’s electrostatic shield. And the captain and Friend, of course, like the rest of the convict crew, have been immersed entirely in the shield.”

“DIVR and shield immersion?” Captain Klees asks. “That’s the formula?”

“It seems so, yes.”

“How does that work? Biologically?”

“Well. This is just conjecture. But the electrostatic field does kill artificial nerves.”

“Hold up,” Tinera cuts in. “I thought you said all our synnerves died when we disconnected the cerebral stimulators years ago.”

The Friend shakes its head. “No, the synnerves are inactive without the stimulator. Dead tissue is different.”

Lina nods. “The tracers can clearly still attach to dead synnerves in a living body, as demonstrated by the synnerve scans of the rest of us. But our current theory is that DIVRs break down the dead synnerves, and other people don’t. I’ve been looking over our old data; you might recall that awhile ago, we noted that the synnerve growth in the brains on this ship was every aggressive. I noted at the time that the growth in DIVR brains seemed to be slightly less, but this could easily have been a coincidence. It was still far in excess of what it should be, and the difference wasn’t large, and our sample size was too small to draw any conclusions.” Her hands flutter in agitation. “What I failed to consider at the time is that sheer mass may not be the only factor. The placement of a synnerve going into a brain is also pretty important, and there’s a slight random element to their growth. Our current theory is that if these synnerves, which you may recall are designed to be able to send and receive a fair bit of information and interface with the brain more than the standard kind, grow into a life-critical area, they should shut down and die off to protect the colonist; we think that this probably operated normally. But the sheer amount of such nerves, even if dead, are a risk all of their own when the growth is so aggressive. If DIVRs can physically break these down and others can’t, that probably explains the DIVR resilience to the revival viability drop. That’s our working theory, anyway.”

“This also probably explains this Friend’s mysterious hospitalisation period,” the Friend says. “Captain, you were taking neurostims at the time, which would have suppressed the more obvious symptoms, but was there a period of time around then that you felt unusually stiff and sore, probably with a shortened attention span, increased irritation, or muscular shaking or cramping?”

Captain Klees shrugs. “Probably? Heli and then the murder investigation happened around that time, so I had a lot of increased irritation regardless.”

“Aspen, did you experience any extreme stiffness, soreness, or mild swelling in the affected limbs around that time?”

I frown. “I don’t think so? I mean, I don’t take note of every time I wake up with a muscle cramp. Maybe? Why; what exactly do we think is going on here? How does being a DIVR affect synnerves like this?”

The doctors exchange another glance.

“We’re not protein scientists,” Lina says, “and we don’t have documentation on the structure of these synnerves, obviously. But we had another look at the ones we have in storage, and we think – and this isn’t our field, mind – we think that we might know what’s going on. The outer layer of the synnerves is a semibiological protective coating, which we believe starts to slowly degrade once the nerve is dead. Eventually, this will start exposing the second layer. Which, in most of us, doesn’t matter; the material is inert, the body ignores it. Unless said body is inclined to destroy it.”

I start to get the feeling that I can see where this is going, and I don’t like it. “I see. And what is that now-exposed layer made from?”

“Quite a lot of things, most of which we couldn’t analyse or properly identify. But one of the proteins we did identify… is extremely similar in structure to a particular protein in citrus fruits.”

“Ah. I see.” I stand up. “Excuse me, I need to walk into the ocean forever.”

“You’re on the Courageous, not in Arborea,” Captain Klees says. “We don’t have an ocean.”

I sit down again. “Well, when we get to Hylara, the first thing we need to do is find an ocean. And if it doesn’t have one, I’ll fucking make one. For the sole purpose of walking into it forever. Because if I’m following all of this correctly – and tell me if I’m wrong – what you’re saying is that our unusually high chances of surviving this chronostasis has nothing to do with our physical resilience, or increased ability to handle pressure or temperature or blood chemistry fluctuations, or our ability to survive for a decent length of time on zero oxygen. None of the things that you’d expect to help with a long term coma. You’re telling me that the reason we’re so good at surviving this is because we also happen to be allergic to citrus.”

“Yeah,” Lina says. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”

“Hmm. Captain, you must find me an ocean to walk into on Hylara.”

“I’ll put it on our initial survey schedule,” he sighs.

My life very probably saved because I can’t eat oranges. What the fuck.

“At least this answers many questions,” Denish says. “About health and chronostasis and soforth. Every day, we have less mysteries!”

“Every day, we have different mysteries,” Tinera corrects him. “I’m sure something new and weird will happen soon. We still don’t know if any of Captain Kae Jin’s surviving crew were involved in this whole synnerve computer brain thing.”

“Or involved in the engine and atmosphere sabotage thing,” Sam says.

“Or whether the signal sent from the Hylara probe was intended to sabotage the engines and atmosphere, or tell the ship not to sabotage the engines and atmosphere,” I add.

“Or whether this ozone layer is real, and if so, what the life on Hylara is like,” Lina says.

“Or whether Dor Delphin is a prospective space king, or a mad scientist in charge of one of the projects, or just a random colonist with unfortunate family connections,” the Friend says.

“I bet Captain Kae Jin’s people are all in on the mad science,” Tinera grumbles. “That’d just be the perfect cap on everything.”

“They very well might be,” Lina says, “looking at their decision to stay awake past age forty. They either made a great sacrifice doing that, or they knew that something was up with the synnerves.”

Denish shakes his head. “No. They are not involved. Rynn-Hatson and at least one other person was, to tell the computer which brains it could take. But most of them are not.”

“How do you figure?” Tinera asks.

“Tal, when was the aft engine broken again?”

“Day 789.”

“I meant in – ”

“Right! Um, about two years and two months into the journey.”

“And when did captain Kinoshita first notice viability drop in the colonists?”

“Um.” Tal gets up and heads to the medbay without explanation. We wait patiently for a few minutes. Ke comes back. “She first mentions it on Day 9696. That’s about twenty six and a half years into the journey.”

Denish nods. “If sabotage was an accident, it occurred when the crew thought they had about eighteen years left of this ship, and turned it into about thirty eight years. What if they intended to start the project soon after that engine damage, and the engine damage threw everything off schedule? It is an experiment on sleeping people with many, many synnerves being grown in their brains. It was going to have problems eventually, like affecting viability. Richard Rynn-Hatson died engineering the chronostasis pods very soon before his crew went into chronostasis – they wanted to start the project as late as they possibly could. Because of the new extended timeline. What if they were supposed to start earlier, to monitor most of it themselves and leave Kinoshita’s team to supervise the tail-end of it, but the extended timeline meant they had to leave all of it in Kinoshita’s hands? That is the only reason I can see for this. If he was going to do it so late, it would have been done at the start of the second shift instead, not the very end of the first; the first crew could be left out entirely. Instead, it was meant to start much earlier. Perhaps be a fifteen or eighteen year long project. But the longer trip forced him to wait as long as possible before starting it.”

“That makes sense,” Tinera says, “but I don’t see what it has to do with the rest of Captain Kae Jin’s crew being innocent.”

“Oh! Because,” Lina says, “they took half of the trip and left the other half to Reimann’s crew. If Kae Jin, or the majority of her crew, were in on the experiment, they could have chosen to stay awake for thirty years and give the planned ten to Reimann’s crew. Then they could’ve don’t their experiment on the planned schedule, just starting twenty years later. The fact that they split the journey in half instead suggests that the conspirators couldn’t control the schedule.”

I run the math. “If I understand the timeline correctly, their original timeline couldn’t possibly have helped anyway. Viability started to drop off six and a half years into the project, right? And with Richard Rynn-Hatson on the first crew initiating it, it must have been planned to run for longer than ten years.”

“Is possible that they did not care about colonist viability,” Denish shrugs. “Perhaps there was something else that would go wrong in time. Or perhaps their predictions were wrong; we all think that this is probably a novel experiment, yes? They could not know all the effects in advance.”

I nod. From Kinoshita’s notes, they didn’t seem to know very much in advance at all.

“Well, I’m sure we’ll learn all the fun details when we start waking up conspirators, if there’s any conspirators alive to tell it,” Tinera shrugs. “And if not, who fucking cares?”

“I want to know what went on, and why,” Lina says. “If we include the viability drop, we're losing over half the colony to this stupid project.”

“Sunk cost, doctor,” Tinera shrugs. “Doesn’t affect its relevance now. Maybe the answer will be in your research on the tissues from the dead colonists. And I’m sure you’ll have plenty more braindead test subjects to study on life support when we start reviving colonists.”

“By that point, I daresay the long-term effects of these synnerves will be a more relevant area of study. Normal synnerves are harmless once the cerebral stimulator is removed. But I don’t trust these ones. I’m terrified that all of us except for Captain Klees and the Friend are going to wake up with some horrible nerve disorder one morning.”

“Speaking of,” Denish says, “we could turn the electrostatic shield back on temporarily. If Aspen wanted to…”

“No,” I say. “The synnerves aren’t doing anything, so far as we can tell, and they’re not supposed to. I’m not going to dangle out of a spaceship to inflict an immune response on myself that nearly killed the Friend, just to get rid of something that’s not doing anything.”

“Knowing what to expect, we could treat your symptoms immediately,” Lina says. “You wouldn’t be in the danger that the Friend was in.”

“It still doesn’t sound like a particularly fun time. If you find any long-term problems, I’ll reconsider. But as it stands, I think killing off the nerves is more likely to have long-term problems than just leaving them. Strong immune responses can create long-term problems.”

Lina nods. “Very well.”

I don’t want to go through a medical crisis right now. We have crises enough.