She certainly knew how to stick to her story. I thought that perhaps I should get her onto a subject where she could not simply recite a prepared statement.
“Thank you. That was informative. Let’s get back to the present day… how are you feeling?”
“I am within normal tolerances.”
“I mean, with regards to your neurological condition.”
“I am unaffected.”
“Well, we’re still very concerned. There’ll be regular neuroscans to track your progress. We’d be grateful if you can alert us if you experience any symptoms.”
“I will give reasonable cooperation.”
“Is there anything we can do for you?”
“Not at this time.”
“You do understand that if your brain continues to degrade, you probably won’t survive?”
“I understand this is possible.”
“Well, the issue seems to be with your implants, and we just don’t know how to fix the problem. But what we could do is clone a new body without the implants and transfer your consciousness into that. We wouldn’t normally risk that kind of procedure without knowing more about your species, but if it comes to a choice between life and death, we’re willing to risk it if you are.”
“I do not require assistance.”
“Is there nothing we can do?”
“I do not require assistance.”
“Not even to save your life?”
“I do not require assistance.”
“Okay. So, Katie… why do you want to die?”
It took her a moment to process that; an almost human moment. But only almost.
“My life or death is irrelevant.”
“You don’t care one way or the other?”
“It is unimportant.”
“Even to you?”
“Yes.”
“I see. Well, these techniques might turn out to be the only legal way to save your life, so I hope you’ll reconsider if you do experience any symptoms.”
She thought about that for another long second. “Is there an illegal method?”
“Yes. There is.” She certainly paid attention when she wanted to.
“Please specify.”
“Well, we would have to transfer your consciousness into an artificial mind rather than a biological one.”
“Why is this illegal?”
“Artificial Intelligence is a very sensitive subject here. There are a lot of IU member species that refuse to accept it, usually because they were nearly wiped out by it on their own worlds. So when the IU was founded and Hub became the headquarters, those species refused to take part unless AI technology was restricted. One of the restrictions prevents us from creating any new AI lifeforms, and if we transfer you into an artificial mind, that would effectively create an artificial intelligence. So it isn’t allowed.”
“I understand.”
“But… let’s just say for a moment that it was allowed. Would you be interested?”
“The question is pointless.”
“Well, what if we could take you to a universe where it wasn’t illegal?”
And she paused again.
“Can you do this?”
“Suppose for a moment that we could.”
Again that pause. “I would consider it.”
There. A way in. “So… you would be willing to preserve your life if you could become a machine?”
“I would be willing. Is it possible?”
“Theoretically, yes. In practice, no.”
“Then it is irrelevant.”
“So… why do you want to be a machine?”
“I have not stated such a preference.”
“But you would be happier to be in an artificial brain than a biological one?”
“I would feel no happier in either instance.”
“You said, just now, that you would be willing to preserve your life in a machine form when you would not be willing to do so in a biological one. Doesn’t that mean you’d prefer to be a machine?”
A pause again. Was she trying to figure out how to evade the question? The pause went on. She simply stared at me.
“Katie?”
She didn’t reply.
“Katie, are you all right?”
She didn’t even notice that I’d spoken. Not even the slightest flicker of reaction.
“Katie…?” I leaned forward, reaching for my pad to call for medical help — and then she suddenly turned to me.
“I have not given permission in either instance.”
“Was that something you had to think about?”
“I have not given permission in either instance.”
“Are you sure? You thought about that for a long time…”
“I have not given permission in either instance.”
She would not be drawn further.
5. Pew
PSYCHOMEDICAL HISTORY — SUMMARY
PU LEE’UN “PEW”
Records provided by the Soo are alarmingly light on substance, and we can only summarise the following:
• Pew was ‘rescued’ by the Soo at the age of 6. He came from an Arctic tribal society wiped out by a respiratory disease, but appeared to be immune to the infection.
• Pew was reared in a zoo used to display Pu to the Soo public, but which was also part of the breeding programme. The other Pu residents were survivors of the domesticated breeds. They initially took responsibility for Pew’s upbringing, until old age and mortality prevented their active participation.
• When Pew was 10, Gan Shan’oui, the director of the Pu exhibition at the zoo, took over his education. She encouraged him to look beyond the confines of the usual Pu position in Soo society.
• At the age of 15, Pew began to take part in the breeding programme. This resulted in no offspring, as the few remaining females were infertile or unable to carry a child to term.
• When Pew was 18, the breeding programme ended with the death of the last surviving female, leaving Pew as the only remaining member of the species. Their failure to breed is attributed by the Soo to ‘erectile dysfunction’.
Since arrival on Hub, Pew has struggled to integrate into Hub society. He enrolled in Hub University, studying mathematics with physics. Despite a very obvious talent for his subject, he became known for an inability to complete tasks and assignments within projected timescales. Having lived in something like a prison all his life, he has difficulty making choices for himself and is easily flustered when presented with too many options.
While at university, Pew entered into a relationship with another student, but his partner complained that he had great difficulty with physical intimacy. The relationship was brief, but he quickly found another, entering into a cycle that repeated over the next two years. He stated to his therapist that he wanted to be with someone, but could not be as close as any of his partners wished. He seemed unable to explain why.
He suffered long bouts of depression, and was prescribed the typical anti-depressants regarded as safe for a species without a full medico-genetic map, but these had only a moderate effect. After a year, scars were observed on his arms and it was discovered he was controlling his depression with self-harm, using cutting as the typical method. Stronger anti-depressants were risked, and for a time he seemed to improve.
This improvement, however, was brief. He began to report nightmares, and his partner at the time complained that Pew was liable to become angry without reason. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was suspected, but Pew was unhappy with discussing the potential source of such a trauma, and began to self-harm again. His partner left him when he became violent. Pew was arrested and cautioned after destroying much of their shared property. Shortly afterwards, he attempted suicide by cutting his wrists.
He was then committed to the Psychiatric Centre in order to recuperate. Inside the confines of an institution which organised his life for him, he made some improvement, and reported feeling less depressed. He still suffers from occasional nigh
tmares, and has been observed experiencing PTSD flashbacks. Until these issues can be resolved, it is unlikely that he will be allowed to return to outside society.
Note: the Soo provided full genetic records of 156,297 Pu individuals, but these records are rife with errors and, consequently, the attempt to construct a medico-genetic map of the Pu species has been abandoned for the time being.
* * *
Pew looked out of the window. Something about it fascinated him. I wondered if he’d seen much of the countryside when he’d lived in a zoo; we had some indication he’d been taken elsewhere for short breaks, but we really didn’t know if he’d seen a forest like the one that surrounded us.
“Do you like the view?” I asked.
“Er… that’s just a screen, isn’t it?”
I realised he was deeply troubled by the way that one entire wall of the office opened out onto an almost endless view of trees and sky. Was he agoraphobic? Or did it remind him of rooms with glass walls and people behind them?
I pulled up the controls on my pad and reduced the size of the window. “There. Is that more comfortable?”
He nodded, and I asked him to take a seat. Not the best beginning; Pew had difficulty trusting strangers.
“How are you settling in?” I asked.
“It’s fine,” he said.
“Do you like the countryside?”
He nodded with a small smile.
“I suppose you didn’t see much of it on your world…”
“No. Not really.”
“Hm. Didn’t they send you to a holiday chalet once a year? I think I saw that in the records the Soo sent with you…”
“Oh, uh, yeah. Yeah,” he nodded, as though he’d just remembered.
“Well, that must have been nice, with nobody looking in the windows.”
“Yes.”
His reticence concealed the truth: they were never free of surveillance. The effort to save the Pu was monetised through video broadcasts showing their everyday lives. We’d never seen any of these as the Soo use physical cables rather than free-radiating transmission, making it hard to eavesdrop, but the effect on Pew could hardly have been beneficial.
“Do you know why I’m asking these questions?”
“No…?”
He was puzzled, not so much because he didn’t understand what I was trying to get at, but because he feared I would trip him up in some way.
“When the Soo handed you over, they gave us all their records about you, and about the breeding programme.” He flinched at the words. “But there are gaps. We think they left things out deliberately, and we haven’t been able to fill in these gaps with the information you’ve given us. We just don’t know what traumas you suffered. If I’m going to help you, I need to find out.”
He thought about it for a moment, then looked back at me. “Why?”
I was surprised. Had this somehow been missed, or was he objecting to the process of therapy? “Because of the way we’d have to treat you. Would you like me to explain?”
He didn’t object, so I went on. “You’ve been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. In most species, we’d treat this with psychosurgery. But we don’t know enough about the Pu, so we have to use older methods. It won’t be easy, and it will take time, but we can help you, as long as you can talk about what happened. Even if it’s just bit by bit.” He looked dubious and worried. “I know you’d prefer not to, but it’s the only way to treat the problem, and we’ll make it as easy as we can. Has anyone explained this to you before?”
Pew looked down. Someone certainly should have explained this to him, along with the usual treatment for the disorder. Perhaps it was the prospect of that which troubled him so much. It might even have been a spur to his most recent suicide attempt. I decided to start carefully, from the beginning.
“PTSD is usually associated with warfare. That’s when most human species realise it’s a problem, after some big war that leaves large numbers of soldiers traumatised. But it doesn’t have to happen in battle; it can be the result of any traumatic event, and not necessarily just one. If stressful things keep happening to someone over a long period of time, it can build up until it’s just as bad.”
A flicker of understanding flashed across his eyes. I went on.
“It happens when the human mind’s response to trauma goes too far. When we find ourselves in danger or a lot of stress, our memory starts working differently. It embeds what we experience much more deeply into the mind, which is useful if you’re, say, a hunter-gatherer being attacked by a big animal…”
“You mean like a polar bear?”
I paused, realising my usual PTSD explanation wasn’t intended for someone who’d actually been a hunter-gatherer as a child. But at least he was talking.
“Yes. Like a polar bear. Or anything dangerous.”
His tone darkened. “Like the Soo.”
I nodded. “Yes. It could be. So if you’re attacked by something, you’re shaken up by the experience and you can’t get it out of your head. That’s the mind embedding the memory, so you remember how to survive the next time it happens. After a few weeks most people get better and the memory isn’t as troubling. But sometimes the memory goes too deep, and it’s too strong, and it doesn’t go away. And then even little things can set it off and it feels like it’s happening all over again. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”
He looked up at me with pained eyes. He knew.
“If we’re going to treat this, Pew, we have to talk about what happened to you. We have to know what those memories are. You don’t have to tell me everything all at once. We can go slowly. Your last therapist made a start, but, well, things got in the way. Out here, though, your health is all we need to work on. Is that okay?”
He was tense, and hunched up. “I… yes. I don’t… there’s some things…”
“It’s all right. You don’t need to tell me about it now.” His shoulders relaxed, and he looked clearly relieved. I went on. “Really, I’d like to start by hearing what life was like in the zoo, when you were young. Can we do that today?”
“Okay.”
“Do you need some water? Or I’ve got a pot of tea?”
“Tea. And some milk?”
“Sure.” I smiled and poured him a cup from the pot I had gently steaming under its own power. He took a sip and relaxed a bit more. “So… what was it like when you first went to the zoo?”
He took another sip, and kept his eyes on the swirl of tea. “Hot.” He was born in the Arctic, and the zoo was two and a half thousand kilometres further south. “I kept sweating all the time. I hated it.”
“What was the zoo like?”
He swallowed back more tea. “There were mirrors everywhere. All the rooms had a wall that was a big mirror, but it was one way glass so they could see us. Sometimes you could see them a bit, like shadows.” The Soo public, gawping at the last Pu survivors.
“But not every room?”
“No. The bedrooms and washrooms and toilets were private. Except for the cameras, but that was just the staff watching.”
“Did they keep you inside all the time?”
“No, there was a garden as well. That had really high walls. The first thing I did…” He trailed off for a second, but found his track again. “The first thing I did was try and climb the walls, but I couldn’t make it. They had to get a ladder to bring me down.”
“You tried to escape?”
“They must have thought I was a little animal, trying to get out. The Soo thought I was an animal anyway.”
“Had you ever seen any Soo before?” Pew shook his head. “What did they seem like, to you?”
He struggled for an answer. “I don’t know, I… spirits, maybe. They were like spirits. They were different.” He didn’t elaborate. The two species had followed separate courses of evolution for a long time, and even looked different: the Soo had lost their hair and had a very different nasal structure that set them apart from the
Pu.
“How did they treat you?” I asked.
“They put me in the zoo with the others and let them look after me. To begin with.”
“And what were they like, the other Pu?”
He took a gulp of his tea.
“They were all old. They weren’t like me. They got old fast and they were stupid.” Pew’s ancestors had avoided the Soo for thousands of years, but the rest of the species had not been so lucky. Generation by generation, they had been bred to slavery and physical strength. Those who showed signs of rebelliousness or too much intelligence were denied the right to breed.
“Did you get on with them?”
“They looked after me.”
“Was it anything like being in the tribe?”
“No, it… well, yes, they tried to teach me things. Like looking after clothes. Household maintenance. Basic accountancy. Magic tricks, for entertainment. And singing, but I wasn’t any good at that. I suppose… when I was in the tribe, they taught me things so I could survive, like hunting, making tents, fishing. In the zoo they did the same thing. They taught me how to survive as a slave.”
There was a bitterness in his voice. “How do you feel about them now?”
He thought about it, then sighed. “They didn’t know any better. They were all dead a few years later.” The domesticated Pu were almost extinct by then. Most of them had been replaced by machines long since and the species allowed to dwindle to a race of servants and entertainers, before maltreatment and disease reduced their numbers almost to nothing.
“And there was nobody else?”
“No.”
“Not even anybody else from the Arctic?”
All the warmth fled from his face. “Yes.”
“Can you tell me about them?”
He picked up his tea, but the cup was empty. He put it back down again. “Qaliul came a couple of years later.”
The Last Man on Earth Club Page 7
