by Karl Beecher
It must have been stress. She'd been working hard recently. Probably. As ever, the med-implant was there to aid her. She tekapted a mild anxiolytic to take care of the problem. As the calm feeling enveloped her like a blanket, a notification appeared in her vision as a welcome distraction. It was from PanJoin, the Collective's most popular—and controversial—messaging app.
The controversy resulted mainly because PanJoin allowed users to exchange messages anonymously. People in the Collective, older ones especially, decried the influence this egotistical, introverted mode of communication had on people. The condemnations might have carried more weight if everyone in the Collective wasn't addicted to it. Like most people—she suspected, at least—Robbi couldn't usually survive more than twenty minutes without checking the banishing thing to see what people were posting. It was a compulsion. People spoke so differently to each other on PanJoin, saying things they wouldn't normally dare in the real world. It was like looking at a shuttle crash; you knew you shouldn't look, but you couldn't help yourself.
The notification was actually an automatic message informing her of a new trending topic among users she followed. Even though she wasn't certain of their true identities, those particular users were undoubtedly comrades on Cruiser_89 because the topic was Colin Douglass. He'd only been aboard a few hours, and already people were gossiping online about his strange story.
Robbi dismissed the notification. There was nothing to learn. She'd already checked in with Doctor Zeddex and found out all about Colin Douglass. Besides, there was no time for PanJoin now. She'd arrived.
Time to get this over with.
The great double doors crawled apart with a deep grumble. It wasn't often she found herself in the brig. Discipline was tight on Cruiser_89, so there was rarely a need to come here. There were storage closets aboard she'd spent more time inside. Still, brigs weren't unfamiliar, being an ex-jailbird herself. A feeling of shame flared up automatically at the memory.
Along the two opposing walls were a series of cells, three each side. Each had a front-facing wall of clear, unbreakable polyfermite serving as a window to the cell within. Six great fish tanks. Robbi's catch occupied the cell at the far end. Already from this angle, a pair of black boots and a brown jacket were visible piled in the corner.
Typical. This woman did whatever she wanted. No discipline.
Robbi marched past the other cells, all dark and unoccupied, until the last cell's interior was fully on show. There she was, Tyresa Jak, curled up asleep on the plain, grey bed. One arm a makeshift pillow, the other draped over her hip. Mouth open and drooling. She looked just the way she did that morning last year, when Robbi had sneaked out and left her, pausing only to take one last look.
Finally, that feeling in her stomach was recognisable. Robbi had felt it a year ago, the last time she and Tyresa had been together. Excitement. Anticipation. Had she really forgotten so easily? No, more likely she'd repressed the memory.
At the time, she was pretending to feel affection for Tyresa as part of her mission. Pretence and reality had soon become hard to separate, and those unorthodox feelings had threatened to derail everything. She'd persevered, managing to ignore them and succeed in her task, but abandoning Tyresa after using her had hurt like the worst kind of exile.
Could it be that Robbi still wasn't over her? Was that why she felt guilty instead of seeing her own actions as just? If so, getting involved with Tyresa again could be a bad idea. Better to hand the job of interrogating her to someone else, someone who wasn't compromised.
But then Captain Kliez's earlier words came back. She wasn't compromised, she was imperfect like everyone else, and that was just fine. She didn't have to fear performing less than perfectly. This task had been entrusted to her, and she was the best person for the job.
She reached out to the panel beside the cell window and activated the intercom.
"Doctor Jak!" she bellowed.
Tyresa stirred and looked bleary-eyed towards Robbi. With a groan, she sat up and perched on the edge of the bed, shoulders slumped, hair like a bird's nest.
"Well, well, well," rasped Tyresa, rubbing her eyes. "What brings you here? Need to borrow a cup of sugar?"
Probably best to meet Tyresa's hostility with some of her own. She respected strength and straight-talking.
"Still a picture of grace first thing in the morning, I see," Robbi shot back.
Tyresa dugs her nails into her back and scratched. "Trust me, if you'd been through what I've been through in the last twenty-four hours, you'd look a lot worse. Got anything to drink around here?"
Robbi pointed to a small dispenser on the cell wall. "Water is available there."
"Nah," replied Tyresa. "I mean a real drink. Blue moonshine, gamma ale, prosecco…"
"If you mean alcohol, the answer is negative. Transhumanists do not imbibe."
Tyresa gave her a sideways glance. "Not when anyone's watching, sure…"
"I don't know what you mean," said Robbi, who knew exactly what Tyresa meant. Drinking alcohol was another imperfectly observed unorthodoxy.
"Oh, come off it, I know you tightwads always carry a supply aboard."
"Exclusively for visiting foreign dignitaries, should they wish it."
"I'm a foreign dignitary," protested Tyresa.
"Huh! More like a foreign indignity by the looks of—"
Robbi bit her lip in frustration. That last remark was not very Transhumanist of her. It was a cheap insult, a flippant remark that betrayed emotionalism.
Nevertheless, Tyresa chuckled. "Hey, good one! You've still got it, kid. I always said your wit was wasted among this dreary collectivism. All right, Lieutenant, what do—sorry, Commander—what do you want?"
"That should be obvious. I wish to know the precise details of why you entered Collective space unauthorised."
"How many times do I have to tell you people? I was rushing Colin to a hospital. Alcentor was the nearest civilised system…or as civilised as you can find in Transhacker space."
Transhacker. Robbi didn't hear that term often. Few in the Collective approved of it. ‘Hacking' smacked too much of an undisciplined, disorderly approach to cybernetics. Tyresa was just trying to be provocative. It wasn't going to work.
Robbi squeezed her hands together behind her back, ignoring the quip. "But why Alcentor? Why in Collective space at all?"
The prisoner hesitated. "Well, that's a long story. It's not important."
"We'll decide that."
"Really, it doesn't matter."
Robbi leaned forward. "I can tell you're hiding something. Don't forget, Jak, I know you well."
"Yes, you do," said Tyresa. "You used to call me ‘Ty.' Remember that?"
"I don't know what you mean," said Robbi. She knew exactly what Tyresa meant. "If you're honest with us, a possibility exists that you might go free. Anything less than full frankness will land you in prison."
"Okay, okay!" exclaimed Tyresa. "I never could hide anything from you, could I? All right, here's the story. Colin was on Procya getting medical treatment. He only had a few days to live. But a couple of crazy, Abraman extremists kidnapped him and took him to Solo."
"Ah, yes, the Abramans," said Robbi, reminded of a report she'd recently received. "Apparently, one of our patrol craft just discovered three men on the surface of Solo III having dug upwards of thirty holes in the surrounding soil."
Tyresa looked puzzled. "What?"
"They claimed you'd buried a critical component of their ship which meant they couldn't take off. They said you'd promised to tell them where it was after you'd left Solo…but you never did."
Tyresa screwed up her face. "Ah, shit! I knew I forgot something! I got caught up in all the excitement. What happened to them?"
"The patrol ship destroyed their craft, then took them into custody. They haven't been interrogated yet, so we don't know why they were there."
"I can tell you: 'cos they're fucking nuts! They had some whacked out idea that Solo
III was their paradise or something. And so, when I learned they'd kidnapped Colin, I entered Collective space without permission. I didn't think there was any time, and I didn't want to put Colin in danger by panicking your authorities and your trigger-happy patrol ships. So, I followed them to Solo and took him back."
Tyresa raised herself from the bed and strode over to the glass, her bare feet patting the ground. She leaned, almost submissively, and pressed her arms against the glass.
"I'm sorry for that," she implored. "But I did it for Colin. His safety was all I was thinking of." Tyresa shrugged. "And that's the full truth."
"Nothing left out?"
"Nothing."
Conveniently, she'd left out the part about Predecessor artifacts. She always was a wily, cunning one.
"Why go to Alcentor?" asked Robbi. "Why not return to Procya?"
"I knew there was almost no time left for him," replied Tyresa. "I had to get to the nearest hospital fast. And that was Alcentor."
"How very selfless. You must have known how risky that was."
Tyresa nodded and looked sheepishly at the ground. "Yeah, well, you know me. I care about people. Sometimes too much."
"Unless there's a valuable artifact in the vicinity," remarked Robbi.
"Huh?"
"I told you, I know you well. Nothing and nobody can distract you when you have the scent in your nostrils."
"I don't…" said Tyresa vaguely. "I don't know what you mean…"
"We already know about the artifact on Solo IV," explained Robbi. "And we know that it pointed you towards something on Alcentor, which you were tracking when Cruiser Eighty-Nine picked you up."
The prisoner's eyes closed. Her jaw clenched, and her hands screwed up into fists. "Colin," she snarled, baring her teeth in anger. "I knew he couldn't keep his mouth shut. He's really going to need a hospital when I get my hands on him."
She punched the window.
This was more like the Tyresa that Robbi remembered. Impulsive, emotional, tempestuous. The kind of behaviour that Transhumanists were conditioned to control and suppress. Tyresa wielded it like an expert. It was compelling to watch.
"A very caring thing to say," she commented wryly, trying out something called sarcasm that was apparently very popular in other societies. "You truly are a people person. So caring that you haven't even asked me how Colin Douglass is. Since your mind is more focused on your work, would you like to share the details of the Solo artifact with me? Or, maybe, the coordinates on Alcentor you have?"
Tyresa gave her a silent, contemptuous stare then turned her back and leaned against the glass. That was expected. She was too strong to give up immediately. Perhaps a few more hours stewing alone would help.
"I suspected not," continued Robbi. "In the circumstances, I can do no more for you. Not only have you trespassed, you have been dishonest with us. I fear the authorities on Alcentor will not be lenient with you. Their methods for inducing people to talk are rather more…thorough."
She stepped back from the glass.
"Commander, wait," said Tyresa. She spun around and pressed herself against the glass once more. "Whatever happens to me, please promise you'll let me come with Colin to Alcentor. Let me accompany him to the hospital. He's a complete stranger to this galaxy, he has no idea what it's like, he has no idea about you people. He must be terrified. Let me stay with him until he's cured, it would do so much to reassure him."
Either the anxiolytic she'd taken earlier had caused a side-effect, or Robbi had just felt a twinge of sympathy. It was a reasonable enough request. Deep down, she felt the urge to help. But Robbi had learned the hard way how crafty the woman in front of her could be. When Tyresa Jak wanted something, there was little she wouldn't do to get it.
The sense of duty asserted itself. Her responsibility was to her comrades and the Collective. Rationality must trump emotion.
"That's no concern of mine," she said finally. "You will be delivered immediately to the Department of Justice on Alcentor. What happens to you thereafter is none of my concern. Farewell, Doctor Jak."
Robbi turned and headed for the exit, careful to walk neither too fast nor too slow.
She'd done it. She'd interrogated Tyresa while holding her nerve and using what she knew to her own advantage. A few missteps, certainly, and her thoughts weren't always pure, but she'd got the better of the prisoner. Maybe later, after reflecting on the unsavoury future Robbi had just presented, Tyresa would be more forthcoming.
She'd done her duty. That ought to have filled her with satisfaction. So why did she feel so banishing rotten inside?
"Commander!" came Tyresa's voice behind her. "Commander! For fuck's sake, Robbi, how can put on this robotic act with me of all people, after all we've been through?"
Robbi stopped and half-turned her head. "I don't know what you mean," she said.
She tekapted the intercom off, leaving behind the pathetic image of Tyresa mouthing silently against the glass like a muted video.
20
The trouble with being a controlling genius, thought Lowcuzt Null as he sank into his chair, is that every silly bugger is constantly soaking up your time.
Day and night, underlings queued up to bother Lowcuzt, hounding him with their problems and begging for solutions. Even here in his mansion-stroke-compound on Alcentor, the epicentre of his empire where he could carefully filter who had access to him, he still felt besieged by idiots.
"Tell me," he barked across his desk at the latest idiot, "why I shouldn't replace you."
At the other side of Lowcuzt's desk sat Zilli Oz-Ban 768, one of his chief software engineers. Like most of Lowcuzt's senior engineers, Oz-Ban looked nervous and over-worked. No doubt the young man had gone through years of the usual Collectivist schooling which instilled tight emotional control, but Lowcuzt had managed to undo most of that work in just the few weeks Oz-Ban had been chief engineer of PanJoin.
"I…I believe…that…" the young man struggled, "I have performed…as well as can be expected."
"Nonsense!" Lowcuzt snapped. "I could do your job twice as good as you and in half the time. I gave you a simple task, and you couldn't manage even that."
"It…it was hardly a simple task," Oz-Ban protested. "It was a large-scale campaign."
"One which utterly failed under your leadership," Lowcuzt sneered. "The realsex vote ended up with completely the wrong result."
"We could hardly control the result. We can only hope to influence people's thinking. And…" The engineer swallowed. He appeared to have located a scrap of nerve left somewhere in himself. "If…I may say…I feel I could have been given some more support from you, citizen."
"Huh!" said Lowcuzt. "You wanted me to do your job for you more likely."
"That's not fair," replied Oz-Ban. "I tried very hard."
"Not hard enough. You should have tweaked PanJoin's algorithms."
"We did."
"Then you should have tweaked them some more. PanJoin should have relegated all posts arguing against the motion and promoted all those in favour of it."
"We…we thought it better to take a more subtle appro—"
"Subtle?" cried Lowcuzt. "Subtle? This is social media, what use is subtlety? What about bots?"
"We spun up ten million of them."
"Not enough. You should have spun up ten million more. You should have had twenty million bots, algorithms directing them to focus on all the right people, bombarding their associations with posts. You shouldn't have stopped until the people were thinking of nothing but realsex, seeing the taboo against it as a personal affront. Or, even better, seeing as it as a conspiracy!"
"But why?" asked Oz-Ban confusedly. "I still don't understand why you wanted to influence the vote anyway."
"Of course you don't," spat Lowcuzt. "You're merely an engineer, you have no vision. Your role is to worry about the how, not the why."
Lowcuzt knew exactly why he'd wanted to influence the realsex vote. Oz-Ban and all the other ordinari
es in the Collective might not have sensed it yet, but Lowcuzt could. Change was in the air. The days of the old dogmas were numbered. Collectivism, interdependence, altruism—they were spent forces. The age of the individual was coming. No more safety nets. No more propping up talentless wastrels. Individual Transhumanists would sink or swim based on their own talents. The smartest in the Collective would be liberated, allowed to soar to the heights they deserved instead of being held down by the rest who couldn't fly.
The future belonged to the egoists, and Lowcuzt was helping to create that future. His main weapon in the fight was his flagship product, PanJoin, and Lowcuzt used it at every opportunity he could to fracture the collectivist ideology. The promotion of realsex was one such opportunity. Breaking the taboos against lust and monogamy would break one more link in the bonds restraining individualism.
He waved a hand towards the exit. "Go on, get out. I'll find myself another Chief Engineer."
Oz-Ban's gaze dropped to the floor as he stood and shuffled towards the door. Against the backdrop of Lowcuzt's office, a gleaming, featureless example of techno-minimalism where every visible line and corner was rounded off to a smooth curve, the engineer looked small and pathetic.
Might Oz-Ban quit and then go blabbing about his role in the secret tweaking of PanJoin's algorithms? Maybe, but the other Chief Engineer's before him had kept quiet. They'd known better than to get on the wrong side of Lowcuzt. Besides, even if he did, Lowcuzt had PanJoin to defend him. It was just as good at being a defensive weapon as it was on the attack.
He had discovered its potential almost by accident. Several years earlier, Govcentral had declared Lowcuzt's company would no longer be allowed to remain a valid association. The pompous prigs in Govcentral had long been fearful of PanJoin's growing influence, and this had been a smart move on their part. In effect, it would have banished Lowcuzt and his employees in one stroke. In desperation he'd fought back, using PanJoin to campaign against the decision, spreading messages that painted the move as being against the whole Collective, not just him. True, he might have exaggerated things slightly and bent the truth just a teensy-weensy bit, but it had worked. Enough users were moved to force a vote and overturn the decision.
