by S. B. Divya
“How—”
“Call ended,” Por Qué interjected.
Welga growled in frustration. Acceleration nudged her into what she thought of as the back of the crate, where the straps could hold her. They had to dock slowly, but in the interval, she didn’t trust the dakini. She slipped into the restraints and locked them down.
* * *
The dakini had boosted them—manually, according to the rocket’s WAI—to one point five kilometers per second. They docked forty minutes later with a minor jolt. If and when she returned to Earth, Welga wanted a ride with a view.
She waited in the crate another hour until they moved it onto the station. This time, there was no bumping or swaying, only the silky-smooth ride of microgravity. She blinked and squinted against the harsh light of the cargo hold, her exit nearly as awkward as her entry.
“You’re moving fast,” the dakini said.
“I’m on zips almost constantly. It’s the only thing that helps my symptoms. It’s also probably what’s killing me.”
The dakini frowned as they pulled Welga’s arms back. They cuffed and bagged Welga’s hands, tied her ankles and knees together, then thrust Welga toward an oval hatch.
Welga floated through it in a slow-motion, headfirst dive. She experienced a few seconds of vertigo as her brain tried to figure out which way was up. The world came into focus as her perspective adjusted. A corridor lined with neatly labeled compartments and handholds stretched ahead of her for two body lengths. A second hatch lay open at the end. Another push, this one against her feet, sent her through.
A welcoming committee of seven people waited in a wide, egg-shaped chamber. The dakini grabbed her arm from behind and yanked her to a stop. They detached Welga’s helmet. Noses wrinkled as the stale odor of her vomit circulated into the room.
Welga gazed at the faces arrayed around her. All looked to be forty to sixty years of age. They wore their hair cut close to the scalp or shaved off. Saffron-colored cloth looped across formfitting orange jumpsuits and drifted at the ends. Monks. In the center stood Ao Tara, the only face Welga recognized.
“Olga Ramírez,” the dakini announced. “She is unenhanced except for a zip.”
Ao Tara spoke. “Is it still active?”
“From what I’ve seen, yes.”
“Flush her.”
“Wait—!” Welga cried.
The dakini’s hand slapped Welga’s neck with a patch before she could say more. Then the warrior opened Welga’s suit pockets and emptied the contents, including her pills.
“Without the zip in my system, I will have epileptic seizures,” Welga said. “Please, if you can make more, let me have them. You approved my residency. I’m unarmed. You can see that!”
“You’ve arrived here unannounced, through subterfuge,” Ao Tara said. “You’re also a trained soldier and government agent. We have watched you capture one of our dakini. We have no proof that you’ve left the JIA, but we will be fair and judge you on your behavior here. You’ll have to earn our trust. Be patient.” Then, to the dakini, “Put her in the empty room on level C.”
The dakini moved forward and towed Welga across the open space by grabbing the neck of her suit frame.
“Make sure she won’t injure herself if she does seize,” Ao Tara said.
“Please, I need Josephine Lee,” Welga called out, craning her neck to watch the woman’s reaction. “She has information that can help me.”
The tiniest flicker of the eyes, then, “We’ll speak again soon.”
A slowly moving doorway aligned with an opening in the central docking hub, and the dakini pulled Welga through, into another tunnel-like corridor. Microdrones swam through invisible currents, and a gentle breeze followed them along the passageway. As they traveled, the sensation of weight returned to Welga’s body, though not as much as on Earth. Blood began to move into her neck and head. They were approaching the outer ring of the station, which rotated to simulate gravity.
Just before another opening, the dakini grabbed a handhold and flipped them both, pushing Welga through feetfirst, then following the same way. They settled onto a tiled passageway, flat like a floor and five meters across. This corridor curved gently upward in both directions. A station resident moved past in a slow, balletic jog and stared at Welga, wary but not fearful. With fewer than five hundred residents, everyone probably knew each other by sight.
Welga chafed at her lack of data—no agent, no network access. The information she’d grabbed while on Earth didn’t include a station map. She’d get lost within minutes if she tried to escape and explore on her own.
Her room was behind an oval gray door, like every other they passed. An open container of metallic fluid sat alone in the center. The default-beige walls and floor made Welga dizzy, their blank surfaces interrupted only by safety handholds. The dakini held Welga still as the fluid began to burble and dance. Within an astonishingly short time, it had transformed into a sling-style cot with restraining straps.
The dakini looked amused at Welga’s reaction. “Microgravity smart-matter. Never seen it before?”
Welga shook her head, speechless.
The dakini laid her on the cot and strapped her down.
“My arms are going to fall asleep,” Welga protested. A tremor shook her left leg and caught the dakini’s attention for a split second.
“Not with your current weight, they won’t.”
“Can I have access to your network at least?”
This time the dakini laughed. “When Ao Tara thinks you’re ready, she’ll give you access. We’ll be watching over you, don’t worry.” They tossed a cloud of microdrones into the air.
Welga still wore her space suit, though it had powered down when the dakini removed the helmet. She sweated inside the suit, but cool air moved across her face. There—the ventilation grille blended with the floor color, too small to fit anything but a bot, not that she had any to deploy. Tremors rattled her legs and arms inside the suit.
“Por Qué,” she subvocalized, then, out loud, “Are my symptoms worse? I feel like they are. Christ, I’m tired of being alone!”
Por Qué answered, “I’m sorry, I do not understand your question.”
Of course not. This version of her agent lacked the context to make sense of Welga’s statement, which she’d made for the benefit of the people watching her. If the real Por Qué existed, she would have pestered Welga for another specialist consult. I miss you, my friend. The room shrank into a pinprick. Stars swirled around it as darkness filled Welga’s vision.
WELGA
26. Intelligence is the ability to sense one’s environment, follow a nonlinear set of rules, and adapt those rules based on the outcome of one’s actions.
27. Intelligence exists on a spectrum of capacity. All forms of intelligence deserve the right to self-determination.
—The Machinehood Manifesto, March 20, 2095
Consciousness returned with a sickening headache. Light glowed behind Welga’s eyelids. She convulsed and threw up all over herself. Warm bile trickled down her neck and soaked her hair. She let her head drop back. Her limbs trembled. How could she fight the Machinehood if she couldn’t stay conscious for more than a few hours at a time?
Suck it up, buttercup. What else are you putting yourself through this for?
One way or another, this would be over soon. She forced her eyes open. The swarm hovered over her. How long had she been out? She couldn’t lift her head enough to see the suit clock, and her basic agent wouldn’t know. The smell of her vomit offended her own senses. Weeks—that was how much time had passed since she’d been a gorgeous, fit, clean shield with a full tip jar and a fabulous partner. Her old life seemed as far away as the Earth.
Chills shook Welga’s body. Another wave of nausea swept through her.
“Do you believe me now?” She directed the question at the swarm over her head. Her voice came out hoarse and shaky. “Are you going to let me die here?”
“Network
access available,” Por Qué said. “Would you like to connect?”
“Hell yes.”
A blink later, her visual came up with an array of station status indicators. She moved them to her lower periphery. A view of Ao Tara, who sat behind a wood-style desk, dominated the center. She couldn’t alter it.
“We would like your permission to examine your body and understand your illness,” Ao Tara said.
Welga let her incredulity show. “You can do whatever you want.”
“We regret the need for restraints, and we would prefer not to commit the additional violence of invading your privacy without your permission.”
“You sound like a lawyer.” Welga kept the words casual.
“Why do you need Josephine Lee?”
“I have information that leads me to believe she can help me.”
“She was a lawyer, not a biologist.”
Welga caught the past tense and the third person. Ao Tara took her new identity and monkhood seriously, leaving behind her old life as if it belonged to someone else.
“She was also a bioethicist,” Welga said. “She discovered evidence that several pill funders, including Synaxel, had released products to the market without sufficient testing. The specifics of that activity might relate to my problems.”
“I don’t know how you found out about that, but what do you think she could do now?”
Use the truth to your advantage. “You have a connection to the Machinehood through the dakini. If you—or she—can corroborate her accusation against the funders, that would help the Machinehood’s cause, and it might let you make a deal with Earth governments to lift the embargo. Information implicating the abuse of regulations by the funders in exchange for lenience for working with the Machinehood.”
“That presumes she regretted her complicity.”
“I’ll refresh your memory.” Welga subvocalized, “Por Qué, display the resignation letter from Josephine Lee.”
“I can’t do that right now,” Por Qué replied. “My display is limited to specific information fed via the station WAI.”
Ao Tara said something that Welga lost in the joy of hearing Por Qué—the real, fully functional one! But how? Had the USA restored its full network in the day or two she’d been away? And how could the station block her agent from her own visual? Maybe the flush patch was something more.
“Good to have you back,” Welga subvocalized, fighting a grin. “Replay the last thing Ao Tara said.”
The image in Welga’s visual jumped and said, “That can wait. You are very ill, and we need to stabilize your health. May we examine you?”
This time Welga replied, “Yes, you have my permission to conduct a full medical examination.” If Ao Tara wondered at her long pause, she didn’t indicate it. “Your medic and bots should know that I have military-grade technology that will require my authorization for access, once they ask for it.”
Christ, she sounded so formal. Ao Tara’s speaking style was rubbing off. Welga had an urge to bow to the woman, who disappeared from her visual.
The door to the room opened to allow in the same dakini from before and a medic-bot. The bot stood to one side as the warrior undid Welga’s straps. To their credit, they didn’t flinch at the odor of fresh vomit.
“Do you have a name or only a title?” Welga said.
“I was born as Clemence, reborn as dakini, and hope one day to receive a dharma name. You can use female pronouns for me, if you wish. This is Dr. Kailo.” She indicated the bot. “They’re agender.”
A name and title for a medic-bot. That’s a first.
“Pleased to meet you both,” Welga said. She could play along with treating machines as people to win the station’s trust, and if she were honest with herself, that was how she thought of Por Qué—as a friend, not an instrument.
Clemence helped Welga stand and strip off the space suit, then stepped back, keeping a neutral gaze the entire time. The medic began their exam.
“What’s it like being a dakini?” Welga asked with genuine curiosity.
“Like touching nirvana with a fingertip. With each new dakini, that connection grows stronger. With each death, weaker.” A shadow grazed Clemence’s expression.
“Your sister, Khandro, implied that the Machinehood wants to turn everyone into dakini in the future.”
“Something like that. We want to erase the boundaries between different intelligences, to let everyone fall on a spectrum rather than distinct categories. We’d never compel someone to become like us, but we believe everyone should have the choice. If humanity can embrace that, they can be so much more. Imagine what you’d be capable of if your agent weren’t separate from you.”
Welga shuddered. Her body held more tech than most, and losing Por Qué had felt like missing a best friend, but the alternative—to have her agent be part of her body and mind, forever unavoidable and inextricable—that sounded too intrusive. Not everyone would share that attitude, though.
Technology was as habit-forming as every escapist, feel-good drug. Take the attitude shift about pills. People had been horrified at first by the idea of tiny machines tinkering with their bodies, but in less than a decade, they’d accepted and even embraced that way of life. Workers clamored for more to improve their circumstances. Rich funders poured money into better designs, faster output, meeting demand. Governments released daily pill designs to prevent illness and improve health.
“If we merge with WAIs and bots,” Welga said, thinking aloud, “isn’t that as bad as the machines killing us… or us destroying them? We wouldn’t be living, organic creatures anymore.”
“Those are meaningless distinctions,” Clemence said. “Human is a state of being, not a form factor. I’m alive. I can die. And half my body is composed of inorganic parts I wasn’t born with. Half my mind belongs to a WAI. Too many people still think of bots and WAIs as things. If you saw them as people, with rights and privileges, you would realize that the physical parts matter less than their interaction with the world. Instead, you fear them. You’re afraid of what they’ll do when they have the freedom to kill us. I’m more worried about a future where the richest people on Earth divide and conquer humanity from machines. They’re playing you all for fools, using your fear to keep you from realizing your full potential.”
Dr. Kailo clamped Welga’s arm and numbed it. “May I have your permission to inject synthetic and biogenetic material?”
Welga nodded. The needle didn’t pinch as it went in. If smart-matter behaved so differently here, what did pills and drugs do? How far had biotech advanced on the stations? Welga didn’t want to admit that Clemence might be right, that the degree of change scared her. Pills provided temporary enhancements. Por Qué functioned as a hyper-competent personal assistant, working only on Welga’s order. Mech-suits, like the one her father had used, existed apart from the body. Permanent modification, however, felt like a transformation to something not entirely human.
The funders did push products that sustained competition between human and machine labor, but that had been the way of life for decades. Centuries, if you counted from the dawn of the industrial age. Why would the alternative lead to a better life? Workers always suffered at the hands of the more powerful. Would a VeeMod population lead to less exploitation? Maybe not, but it might save people like my mother… like me… from destroying our bodies in the service of our work.
None of that had any bearing on the dakini’s methods. Violence against people and property couldn’t be the answer. No matter their politics or philosophy, she would have to stop the dakini before they could cause further harm.
Welga subvocalized, “Por Qué, show me my internal diagnostics.”
A window appeared in Welga’s visual with her vitals and foreign body counts.
“After this, I will bring you some food and drink, if the doctor permits,” Clemence said.
“Thank you.” The words slipped past her lips just in time. The room began to spin and swirl. Her visual
dropped away.
“Preliminary seizure symptoms,” Por Qué warned. Her voice stretched into auditory taffy as Welga lost touch with reality. “You should lie down.”
But Welga couldn’t move. Words blurred. Speech was impossible. The darkness of outer space closed in.
* * *
Christ, she was tired of these epic hangovers. Welga didn’t bother to open her eyes. They’d know when she was awake.
“Por Qué, you there?”
“I’m here, Welga.”
“How long was I out?”
“Your seizure lasted about a minute, and you were unconscious for twenty-seven minutes. Dakini Clemence relocated you after the seizure. You are currently in a medical facility, according to the station information that I can access.”
“My head hurts.”
“The doctor has advised no modifications to your biochemistry. I’m sorry, but they won’t allow pain drugs.”
“Fucking hell.”
“Can you open your eyes?” said a voice from Welga’s left.
“No,” she mumbled. “Too painful.”
A pause. “I overrode the medical advisement. You should experience relief shortly. You also have permission for limited access to our network and to activate your visual again.” Another pause. “Olga Ramírez. We did a background check on you before approving your application for co-residency with Connor Troit. We know of your work for the MARSOC Raiders and ATAI. We reviewed the investigations after Marrakech, and we understand why you left to become a shield. We know that your government recruited you to help them with the Machinehood attacks. We watched you capture Khandro, and we appreciate your understanding of nonviolence during that encounter. But… you’re not a Buddhist. You’re not Indian or Chinese. You stowed away in a cargo capsule. Do you expect us to believe that you’re here to become a resident, alone and without your partner?”
“I’m here because I need help.” Welga forced the words from her reluctant vocal cords. “I quit working for my government because for the second time in my life, they betrayed me. I received an anonymous report, about Synaxel, about my condition, about Josephine Lee. My sister-in-law, a juver designer, thought that Lee would hold the keys to unlocking the full data about my problem.” Pain faded from her head. “Por Qué, enable visual.”
