066: PROGRESS

“Okay.” Captain Sands claps his hands together and surveys the crew. “Let’s talk about progress. Anything to report?”

It’s the morning after I found the bacteria. We’re all in Network and Engineering Ring 1 for this meeting, abandoning the usual Recreation and Medical Ring 1 in favour of computer terminal access. I look up from my terminal.

“We’ve solved the Rynn-Hatson mystery,” I say. “Mostly.”

Most of the crew look at me, startled.

“Oh?” Captain Sands asks.

I nod. “The chronostasis pods – or at least the one you sampled for me, captain – are full of a genetically engineered bacterium that’s breeding in there. I think Rynn-Hatson’s little boxes are microbial incubators that would’ve infected all the pods from a location they’d almost certainly never be found. I mean, we’d never have found them if he’d completed his task. I ran their DNA last night but I don’t have the knowledge to analyse the results.”

“Anyone here know anything about bacterial DNA?” Sands asks. The crew all shake their heads as one. “Alright, reviving a scientist is going on our revival priority list. Do we have any clue as to what these bacteria are doing?”

Lina clears her throat. “At this stage, I can say that it’s extremely likely that it’s a vector for genetically engineering the inhabitants of those rings.”

The group reaction is one of immediate outrage.

“What do you mean, genetically engineering them?” Celi asks.

“Without their knowledge? Just doing stuff to them while they sleep?” Sunset adds.

“You can’t be serious!” Sam exclaims.

“Unfortunately, I am. I’ve run samples from everyone here and all inhabitants of Chronostasis Rings 1 and 5 that are present have two specific genesets that are different to their DNA on file, persistent through all the tissues I sampled, and not present in residents from other rings.”

“What do the genesets do?” Celi asks.

Lina glances at the crew from Rings 1 and 5, who give her tiny nods. She takes a deep breath. “One is a change to a DNA repair system. It’s very similar to, but not identical to, a marker that we see pop up in quite a lot of cancers.”

There is a brief beat of silence.

“What does this say about the health of such colonists?” Sands asks. “Are they at risk of cancer?”

“I don’t know. The scans on our colonists show no more anomalies than in anyone else, but in the future? We just don’t have data.”

“Okay,” Sands says quietly. “So we definitely need a scientist.”

“A microbiologist or a human genome specialist?” I ask. “Because those are really different jobs.”

“Whatever we can get, at this point. What’s the other geneset do?”

“Honestly, I couldn’t even begin to guess. It’s inserted in a part of the genome that’s mostly related to the immune system. That’s all I know.”

“It affects their immune system?” I ask.

Lina shrugs. “Probably. But maybe not. The genome isn’t… neat. The fact that it’s in the exact same place in every sample suggests that the placement was specified and therefore important, but that doesn’t necessarily confirm it’s directly related to the genes around it. My best guess would be, yes, it’s an immune geneset, but that’s only a guess.”

Captain Sands nods. “Alright, I’ll have a look at what geneticists we’ve got on board. This whole colony is a terraforming project so we probably have a lot. Aspen, what are your bacteria eating?”

I shrug. “Probably dead skin and soforth would be my guess. Their feeding clearly isn’t doing the pod occupants any harm; if there was damage, we’d have noticed in the post-revival scans.”

“Let’s see if we can do better than a guess,” Sands says, typing away at his terminal. After a moment, he huffs in irritation. “This AI is useless.”

“We did throw most of her brains into deep space last year,” Tal reminds him.

“Nah.” I shake my head. “It was useless before then, too.”

“You said last week that all AIs are useless. I think you just don’t know how to talk to AIs.”

“I shouldn’t have to know how to talk to them! Their entire job is to know how to talk to us!”

“Well, whether AI technology is a marvel of computer science or a useless waste of time, this particular AI is incapable of answering simple questions,” Captain Sands cuts in. “Sunset, can you go to each of the chronostasis rings and manually check the food reserves, water cycling rates, and oxygen cycling rates, please.”

“On it, Captain.” Sunset rushes off.

“They’re not going to be eating the food reserves,” I say. “No matter how benign these bacteria are, if they’ve foiled the protections on the feeding tubes and they’re breeding in there in significant numbers, that’s going to cause problems for patients.”

“Not necessarily,” Celi shrugs. “Humans ingest large numbers of benign bacteria all the time. The bacteria themselves might be a perfectly viable food source for all we know.”

“Gross,” Tinera says, wrinkling her nose.

“We’ll have our answers soon enough,” Sands says. “Does anyone else have anything to report?”

Tal stops typing just long enough to raise a hand for attention. “Still no luck on Reimann’s password and no luck on getting access to the colonists’ raw biodata, but I’ve been able to pull up an old ship manifest so we can get specific details on some past stuff that Amy otherwise doesn’t want to tell me about, like the people in Chronostasis Ring 1. With the names, I can ask direct questions about individual people’s histories and Amy doesn’t give me the runaround, so I’m very slowly building up profiles of colonists to see if there’s any commonalities between people assigned to rings 1 and 5 that separates them from the others. Like, if people with certain histories or genetics or whatever were selected for those rings.”

“Anything?” Sands asks.

“So far, no. But I just started. And gathering information like this takes a really, really long time. I did learn that Dor Delphin is in Chronostasis Ring 3, by the way.”

“I vote that we eject CR 3 into space immediately,” Tinera says quickly.

“Tiny, no! There’s so many innocent people!” Lina chastises her. “We should get an axe, sever the fluid lines to his chronostasis pod to trigger an emergency revival, and cut his head off.”

“How about we don’t murder colonists?” Sands suggests, frowning.

“Who is Dor Delphin?” Celi asks. “Are we supposed to know anything about him?”

“No, it’s not important,” Sands says. (I make a mental note; apparently he hasn’t told the new crew that they’re on a convict ship yet.) “Good work, Tal; keep us updated. Anyone else?”

“Captain,” Renn says, “I’ve made a small amount of progress on translating the previous psychologist’s journals. The language is indeed Japanese, but Dr Kinoshita uses a significant amount of shorthand of a style not in the computer databases.”

“Untranslateable?”

“Directly, yes, but much of it can probably be inferred from context once I’ve translated the other parts. It’s impossible to tell at this stage.”

“Alright. Keep going. Anyone else?”

Nobody else speaks up.

“Okay then,” Captain Sands says. “Doctors, let’s talk about the life support patients in your medbay.”

“Zale Hemmorin and Clover Dais,” Lina says. “What about them?”

“What are their chances of ever waking up?”

The three doctors look at each other.

“Negligible,” the Friend admits. “Usually, a patient waking up from their condition is considered a small miracle. But even on the level of miracles, this one would be particularly unlikely.”

Celi nods. “Zale’s brain tissue has been compromised with overgrown synnerves to the point where what remains would be completely incapable of sustaining life even if it were healthy. Both patients are functionally braindead.”

“Then why are they taking up valuable medbay beds and resources?”

“Because we’re sick of losing people,” I snap. “You don’t get it, you haven’t lost anyone except these two. But our freezers are filling up with fellow colonists who died in our arms.”

Captain Sands ignores me and continues to address the doctors. “If the patients are dead, there’s no reason to keep their bodies alive. It’s best to free up the beds and your time. In less than two weeks, we’ll be overrun with a new set of revivals, and I want all beds free for them, if possible.”

“I disagree,” Lina says. “The two life support patients are hugely valuable in sorting out what happened with the CR1 and 5 colonists. We have living samples of someone from a compromised ring and someone from an uncompromised ring. I’ve been able to gather tissue samples from them for study that it would be too dangerous to gather from crewmates, and it’s been very useful. We have an actual living example of someone whose brain was taken over by the AI; think of how valuable Zale’s going to be in answering future questions. We can afford a couple of spare beds for them.”

I shift uncomfortably in my chair. Talking about the dead like this is discomfiting. I know that Lina’s right, on a practical level, but still. Those were people.

“We need those beds for new crew,” Captain Sands points out.

“No, we don’t. We’re rousing too many people at once as it is. One or two extra revive cycles won’t make much of a difference compared to the potential value of those two in diagnosing the kinds of revival problems we very much expect to see going forward. Three of our crew are carrying new unknown genesets related to basic cellular functions, and that’s going to be true of all the new crew you intend to revive from CR5. There could be future problems, and we could need those bodies to fix them.”

“… Fine,” Captain Sands says. “You can keep those two for now, on the understanding that if there’s a future emergency where we need those beds, we might have to get rid of them. But if there are more failures in the next revive cycle, I don’t want to clutter up any more beds with people who are dead and who are going to stay dead.”

“I want one more,” Lina says. “From your next revive cycle.”

“Why?”

“We have a ‘control’ from an unaffected chronostasis ring, and an affected individual from CR5 with a compromised cranial port. What we don’t have on life support is someone from CR5, with these genetic changes, whose brain hasn’t been hijacked. It’s reasonable to assume, given what we know, that these genetic changes were probably done in preparation for the AI taking their brains, putting our crewmates and a decent number of the colonists still in chronostasis in a middle ground. The people you’re going to try to revive are in that same middle ground. If any of them don’t make it, they could be incredibly valuable in helping diagnose and find solutions to problems our engineered crew and colonists might face, problems that might not show up with Zale.”

Captain Sands purses his lips. “You’re asking for three of our eight medbay beds and a significant amount of doctor time to maintain these dead people.”

Lina shakes her head. “The second medbay ring is supposed to be a backup. The intended function of the ship is to have one ring of four beds, with two doctors, for a crew of twenty one. We’re not even at full crew yet and even with these patients the crew’s still going to have five medbay beds and two and a half doctors, more if you intend to revive more doctors. Technically, we’re overstaffed. We’re only hitting medical bottlenecks because we’re reviving a lot of people; that’s going to pass. And if it becomes too burdensome, we can always take them off life support later.”

“Alright. You can have three on life support for now. Aspen, when you pick the revive crew, make sure you include someone who can use the life support equipment. And the crew will also take advice from the doctors on how to best freeze the other bodies, if we have more than one failure, to best preserve the integrity of the tissues for analysis.”

I nod uncomfortably. I know this is research that needs to be done, but talking about our dead peers in this way makes me uncomfortable. Renn, I realise, is watching me closely. I try to ignore him.

Just then, Sunset comes back, a sheet of paper clutched in her hand.

“That was fast,” Captain Sands remarks.

“I’m only halfway done, but I thought you’d want this for the meeting,” she explains. She hands Captain Sands the paper. “CR 4 is showing expected nutrient consumption; reserves are just above eighty per cent. Oxygen and water cycling is within expected parameters.”

I nod to myself. The chronostasis rings are ridiculously overstocked for obvious reasons of safety, carrying ten times the nutrient powders that they’re projected to need in the journey. That way, there’s plenty of reserve if something goes wrong, and in an emergency the nutrient powder can be used to supplement the diets of a burgeoning colony if other food sources become dangerously depleted. They should have a bit over ninety per cent left at this point in the journey, but the journey’s taken twice as long, so.

“But CR 5 is showing reserves of fifteen per cent nutrient stores,” she continues, “with both water and oxygen cycling at twenty five times the expected rates.”

“Fifteen per cent?!” one of the Friends asks. “Will they make it to the planet on so little food?”

“Can cycling machines handle twenty five times the rate?” Denish asks.

“That can’t possibly be right,” I say. “No matter how benign the bacteria are, if they’re in the food system and eating that much of it – ”

“It’s certainly puzzling,” Sands agrees, frowning at the paper. “The colonists won’t starve; if need be, we can top their nutrient powder up from the other chronostasis rings, and if the cycling machines overload they can be repaired. But you’re certain that the water and the oxygen cycling are both showing this increased rate? Both of them?”

“Um. Yes. Shouldn’t they be?”

Captain Sands shakes his head. “Aspen, do these bacteria use oxygen?”

“I… haven’t checked their DNA for that, but my guess would be that they’re facultative anaerobes.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“They um, they can survive with or without oxygen, I think. The chronostasis fluid is anaerobic, but they didn’t die on the microscope slide, so it doesn’t kill them. That usually means a facultative anaerobe. Usually.”

“Okay. How many colonists in Chronostasis Ring 5 are flagged by the AI as having a ten per cent survival rate?”

“244,” Tal volunteers.

“Sunset, do you have a pen? Thank you.” Captain sands does some math on the edge of Sunset’s paper, nods to himself, and starts tapping at his computer terminal. We all exchange silent, tense looks until he stops and nods decisively.

“Alright,” he says, getting to his feet and dusting his hands together, “Engineers, meet me in Chronostasis Ring 5 in ten minutes. Tal, I want a list of chronostasis pod numbers that contain the ten per cent revival victims. Aspen, you can find these bacteria in a contaminated sample fairly easily?”

“Uh, sure, in the lab. They glow. Anyone can do it.”

“Brilliant. You should meet us in ten minutes, too. Bring a lot of sample containers and syringes.”

“How many is a lot?”

“Whatever you can comfortably carry. At least twenty or thirty. One hundred would be better.”

“Um. Yes, captain.”

“What are we doing, exactly?” Sunset asks.

“We,” Captain Sands says, “are getting to the bottom of this mess.”