Harvest

by Olga Werby

  “You are our child. Of course we are concerned,” said Ibe-Mims. It was funny coming from him…it.

  Vars wondered where the Mims had stashed the “real” bodies of Ian, Ebi, and Ibe. They hadn’t left the ship, per their extons. Did the nanobots simply absorb them into the ship? Or was this all just a show, an illusion? Something to keep her from losing her mind to loneliness? She wondered if she had truly been transmitting back to Earth.

  “Dad? Phoebe? Are you really there? I’m okay. The Mims are apparently worried for my health. They’ve installed a feeding tube, and they’re monitoring and controlling my body functions, including drugging me. But I don’t sense any cognitive interference.” Nothing obvious, anyway.

  She paused. The singing had stopped. “I’ve been talking with the Mims, who are using the voices”—and more?—“of three of the EPSA scientists that came on this mission: Dr. Ian Rush and a set of twins, Ebi and Ibe Zimov. Those would be the only three scientists on board with fully-functioning cyberhumatics. Ebi and Ibe had D-tats that were too complex to be removed in our ship’s medlab. And Ian made a decision to reinstall his cyberhumatics to regain some of the functionality in his arm that was lost while his tats were removed.” Vars wondered how Ian felt about his decision now. Is it worth it, Dr. Rust? “So the three of them were the only ones on the ship left with easily accessible nanobot sites,” she continued. “The rest of the crew, all of whom were tats-free, seem to be gone from the ship.” Did she already tell her dad this? Her memory seemed fractured. Was that Mims or loneliness? Drugs or sickness? Did it even matter?

  “Everyone else has moved to the structure outside,” Ian-Mims said helpfully.

  “Well, there you have it,” Vars said. “That was the voice of Ian-Mims.”

  “Just Ian, please.”

  Vars ignored his request. “Ian-Mims, have you become part of this ship? Where is your body? And those of Ibe-Mims and Ebi-Mims?” Vars remembered Phoebe’s all-too vivid description of what had happened to Sophie. Or was that her dad who told her what happened in his lab? Did it matter? Sophie-bot. They called her Sophie-bot. They, too, had refused to use their friend’s name after the transformation.

  “We are here, Vars. That’s all that matters,” Ian-Mims said.

  “Not all,” she protested.

  “If you are asking whether Ian is still Ian, then the answer is both yes and no. I am Ian plus. I have direct access to what you’d call the Mims’s information, and I will be able to guide our exploration to the best of my ability. You are in the right place, Vars. And with your knowledge of humanity, you are invaluable to this project.”

  At that moment, he sounded almost like the real Ian—with the same zeal for research. If Vars weren’t so drugged, her emotions firmly suppressed, she would have laughed hysterically.

  Instead, she considered how to use her position to advance her dad’s agenda. As long as she was being used by the Mims, she could use them back. So what would her dad need to know? What questions did she need to ask while she still had the ability to do so? While she was still just Vars...

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Phoebe packed for her trip to the Vault. She would be traveling these last miles without Matteo. He was well enough now to take care of himself, but still too sick to leave the wardens’ station. Besides, Matteo wanted to stay here, where he could maintain contact with Vars. He refused to even leave the communications room. It had been two whole days since they’d heard anything from his daughter, and he was worried.

  “Vars will be fine,” Phoebe said to herself as she stuffed a portable radio into her pack. Her plan was to go at first light—just minutes away now—and not stop until she got to the Vault’s door. She wasn’t taking any supplies aside from a few dried fruit packets and soft bottles of hot soup. She’d slipped these into her inside coat pockets and threaded a flexible drinking tube to come out just under her chin—this would keep the heat in for the maximum amount of time.

  She found some chem warmers and placed them all around her body—lower spine, feet, hands, even the back of her neck. If with all of these precautions she didn’t make it to the Vault, she planned to fall asleep and die out in the tundra. Hypothermia was an easy death.

  “Here.” Matteo walked over to her and handed her a small package wrapped in paper.

  “I can’t carry too much,” she protested.

  “It’s the last of our plastic explosive,” Matteo said. He pulled out the unused detonator. “If they don’t let you in…”

  Yes, I’ll blow that door wide open. It was surprising how unbothered she was by that prospect. “Thank you,” she said and embraced him, pushing her face into his chest. He needed a shower...but then she needed one too. It might be the last physical contact with another human either one of them would ever feel. “Good luck, Matteo.”

  “And to you,” he said. “I’m sorry I can’t go with you.”

  “Don’t be. Just keep talking to Vars…and to me.”

  She turned away from Matteo. Two flights of stairs and a heavy door, and she stepped into the icy cold.

  Inside Phoebe’s pack, unbeknownst to her, nanobots snapped into positions around the portable radio and the detonator.

  “Vars. Vars,” Matteo repeated into the microphone like a mantra. He could have just played a recording of his voice on a loop, but it felt more personal to say his daughter’s name himself. He liked the feel of her name on his lips; it felt so familiar, so dear.

  He was bundled up in heating blankets, holding a large container of coffee and another of soup. Both were still warm. He had two frequencies open—Vars’s and Phoebe’s. His Seed-sister was to call him the moment she got through the Vault’s door. He hoped she could do so nonviolently.

  The truth was he wasn’t even sure the detonator still worked. But he assumed the Elders had bugged the wardens’ compound a long time ago and that his mention of the explosive charge would encourage the Vault’s guards at the door to let Phoebe in…or at least take cover. If the explosive did work, he didn’t want any of his fellow Seeds getting hurt.

  “Vars?” Matteo decided to just talk, to free-associate on the topic of life. If nothing else, the Mims might be entertained, and Vars, his little girl, would feel less alone out there. “Do you recall that time we talked about which genetic traits made dinosaurs interesting? They had several varieties of metabolism—fast and slow—sometimes simultaneously. Some species’ ability to switch from cold- to warm-bloodedness based on environmental conditions kept them alive for many millennia. Humans could only hope to last that long as a species.

  “And all the colorful pigmentation? Remember how you loved to color images of birds? And how we used the latest science articles to extrapolate to the possible feather pigmentation of the T-rex? You were so creative, Vars…but always within what was possible based on data. You were taken with the possibility that some dinosaurs could color-shift instantaneously, like octopuses or chameleons, or seasonally, like polar foxes and owls, or over their lifetimes, like juvenile deer and baby birds. You used birds’ ability to color-shift as proof that dinosaurs could do it too.”

  Matteo closed his eyes, remembering his little girl arguing passionately that humans were not the only species capable of appreciating beauty—she believed that ability had to be old, ancient. He smiled. He missed his little girl.

  “You said, ‘Why have an extra cone for color perception if not for color appreciation?’ I said it was for food identification and defense. But you argued that three cones were plenty enough for that, and that most mammals didn’t even have that many. Wolves, good hunters, are colorblind, you pointed out. Only birds had the ability to see such a wide color spectrum. Could evolution push for the selective advantage of individuals that loved rainbows of color? I had no answer to that question that could satisfy you.”

  A clicking noise sounded out in the hall. Matteo had been hearing that so
und on and off for several hours now, ever since Phoebe left. Perhaps she’d left some door open, allowing a draft to rattle the contents of the station. He might need to go out and investigate...eventually...not now.

  “And dinosaurs that could grow to an exceptional size? You loved seeing the skeleton fossils at the British Museum—so many beautiful forms and turns, nature’s sculptures. One time”—he laughed, and it hurt his lungs to do so—“I had to drag you away from a docent who was explaining some full animal reconstructions made from plastic. You were screaming that the man was wrong and just didn’t understand the science behind dinosaur evolution. I had to keep you away from the museum for a few weeks after that incident, and yet you still wrote letters to the dinosaur exhibit gallery, explaining to them how smart these creatures were. You wrote about their electrical perception like sharks, their large geo-location and spatial memory just like birds of today, their deep musical memory. You lectured the docents on the dinosaurs’ extraordinary working memory—you said copious working memory was a necessity for nonlinguistic smart animals. You cited elephants, if I remember correctly, as your example. You were such an amazing kid. And an amazing woman. You still are. You’re still here, Vars. Don’t give up.”

  Emotions welling up, Matteo found himself crying. He had never been one to cry so easily before, but being sick made him more labile somehow. The tears created strange floaters in his vision. He tried to wipe his face on his sleeve, but the weatherproof material wasn’t absorbent. The little dark phantom spot kept creeping at the periphery of his vision.

  To push down the painful constriction in his throat, Matteo took a deep gulp of his soup. Phoebe had left it with him, but now the thermos was almost empty, and he would have to go and scrounge around for more food soon. That would require leaving the communications room, though, and Matteo wasn’t ready to leave his girl alone. She needed him. And he needed her.

  “Vars? Vars?”

  Vars woke up to her dad’s voice calling for her. “Dad?”

  “How are you feeling, Vars?” asked Ian-Mims. He sounded concerned.

  “I’m fine. Was that my dad?”

  “Yes. Would you like a playback?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Okay. If you eat the soup in the thermos cup next to your chair. On the right.”

  Vars picked up the cup and drank the whole thing in one go. It wasn’t bad, as far as liquid food went. Coffee was better.

  As if reading her thoughts, the coffee machine started to make noise, and Vars smelled fresh brew. Moments later, an arm extended from the machine, holding the cup within her reach. It already had sugar and milk and was at a good temperature. This could work out, Vars thought wryly.

  “Thank you,” she said. For an answer, she got a recording of her dad talking about dinosaurs. He rambled; it was disconcerting. He sounded sick, both emotionally as well as physically.

  “Is that all?” Vars asked after the recording stopped.

  “Your dad needed the rest.”

  The way Ian-Mims said that made Vars suspicious. “Rest, as in enforced rest?”

  She didn’t get an answer, but the silence was an answer in itself. Apparently the Mims were capable of drugging her dad as well as her. They had control of the wardens’ station where her dad stayed.

  “Can I keep talking with my dad?” she asked.

  “Of course.”

  Vars sat back and considered what she should say next. What would help her dad cope?

  It was all about goals, she thought. Goals and the alignment of actions that led to the accomplishment of those goals. As long as the Mims’s goals were satisfied by Vars speaking with her dad, she would be allowed to do so. But if they weren’t…

  She had to guess what the Mims ultimately wanted. If she knew that, she would be able to manipulate them into thinking her conversations with her dad—serial monologues, really—were helping them advance toward what they wanted to achieve with her...and him.

  So what do the Mims want?

  Understand your enemy and turn them into your ally. Who had told her that? Ian, probably. Sounded like something he would say. How much of Ian is still in Ian-Mims?

  She decided to drop the -Mims suffix in addressing the entities running her ship. That was part of the manipulation game, after all. She had to gain their trust, as much as they tried to earn hers.

  “Dad, what would you do if you could live forever?” she asked the void. “Or let’s say, just a few thousand years? Would you be the same person at one thousand that you were at one hundred? I think you would argue that some fundamental personality traits would stay the same, overlaid with years of experiences. But those experiences would matter, right?

  “Remember when we talked about wealth? I don’t remember how old I was, other than that it was after that conversation that I decided I wanted to study anthropology. I wish I had known that you were a Seed back then. I bet that had a huge influence on your perspective on the subject. In fact, someone should do a study of the Vaults and Seeds...someday…”

  Vars wondered what the Mims thought of the Vaults. They housed practically the only cyberhumatics-free humans in the solar system. Would Mims want pure humans or enhanced? Another why lurked in that question.

  “You told me about the relative perception of wealth. After the Industrial Revolution, Americans had multiple ways of broadcasting their wealth and social status, because unlike the British, for instance, Americans had cast off titles. Different cultural symbols were needed, something difficult to acquire yet easy to flaunt. Strangely, for a time, oriental carpets served as a signal of certain social status. Walk into someone’s home, see the big intricate wool weaving on the floor, and you knew these people had achieved a certain standard of living. There were those who had carpets and those who didn’t. Seems silly now. And I thought it was silly back when you first told me about it. Yet it wasn’t silly to the people who bought those carpets to flaunt their social status. But then industrial looms were developed, cutting the labor requirements per carpet, and international trade proliferated, allowing for influx of goods from countries with cheap labor. Soon everyone who wanted an oriental carpet could afford to get one. And they could no longer serve as a status symbol, as a commonly accepted signal of wealth.

  “The same went for subsequent wealth signals—watches, televisions, computational devices. And the suburbs made home ownership more common. Sure, you had to commute a greater distance to work, but you were a homeowner.

  “For several decades, stuff and more stuff was the it thing for communicating wealth. But eventually the goods got so cheap that they no longer conveyed much of anything. Quantity of stuff, quality of stuff…none of it was effectively correlated with social status. Everyone had a large-screen, hi-def, network-connected TV.

  “You told me that the next move was services—how much human time one could afford to buy was the new way to broadcast social status. People acquired personal assistants, cleaning crews, nannies, handymen, beauticians, and even yes-men—it was called having an entourage. The bigger the entourage, the more important the person appeared to be. It was all about appearances. Well, I guess it was always that.

  “And then came experiences—or the ability to buy unique experiences for oneself and family. People went on crazy vacations, participated in scientific expeditions, even bought tickets to go into space. And those who couldn’t buy the real thing found ways of faking having had unique experiences. All those social media companies that offered to make you look like you had done extraordinary things and to share those images with as many people as possible. The ice cream museums, the toy bins, historical recreations…there were thousands of easy-to-create images for social broadcast. There was a strong pretend economy at the start of the twenty-first century. Cool tricks to make everyone believe you had more stuff, more services, more experiences than your peers. The early AIs were great at tha
t. Any person could be made more beautiful than they were in person, paradoxically making it impossible for people who bought that service to go out and enjoy their social perks in public, out in the real world, without revealing the lie.

  “Then it was all about health and longevity—looking and feeling young. That was the start of the age of cyberhumatics. And just as we were moving into cyber augmentation, the Triplets hit, setting everything back. The ability to live in a radiation-free zone, to eat safe food, to have access to medical care…these more basic things were the new signs that you were ‘better’ than someone else.

  “And even then, it had everything to do with where and when you were born. If you were born lucky, there was a good chance that luck stayed with you for the rest of your life.

  “And then people with our genetics—yours and mine—became rare. So the claim of some unique ancestry was the next thing to flaunt. No wonder the Seeds’ DNA was so desirable and spawned so many crazy tabloid stories. What’s more exotic than to say your hereditary traits are worth preserving by the whole of humanity?

  “And now I’m wondering: What would have been the next it thing for humans, if the Mims hadn’t come? Would settling the solar system have pushed us, or some of our colonists, back into the carpet era? ‘I live on Mars and yet I still have an oriental wool carpet.’ It’s not as crazy as it sounds. Real stuff would become important again. Not fakes, but originals—pieces of furniture made from real redwoods, rocks taken from real Egyptian pyramids, real tea grown on the last plantation on the low-radiation side of India.

  “But the stuff economy is only viable if people can physically go from place to place. Once humans expand into the stars, the cycle starts up again. That is, if real people go out there. If all we ever send is probes or information…”

  Vars stopped and looked over at the Mims structures embedded into the bridge’s control consoles for a reaction. In her head, she identified those as the heart of the Mims on the ship. Was she saying something they didn’t know? Didn’t understand? Was she getting any closer to the whys of the Mims?