Noumenon

by Marina J. Lostetter

  [If you’re so worried about me, why didn’t you do your job? You expect me to believe you really care about the convoy? Or how they’re going to treat me?]

  How could she explain that she’d maintained a balance? A spiteful balance that some thought was shitty, but so what? So what?

  Esper suddenly realized why she cared now, why she wanted to intervene at all. When she’d been in control, she’d been comfortable. What she’d said to Caz now came back to haunt her. She didn’t want to change things for the better because she was comfortable in her loathing. But now . . . [I might have sucked at my job, but I know how much worse things can get.

  [Look. You don’t have to take my advice. You can even block my wavelengths if you want. But if you want to succeed—for yourself, for this convoy—then don’t you have an obligation to go into these talks with every weapon available?]

  There was a long pause. If Esper wasn’t so attuned to being patched-in, she might have thought Ceren had shut her out.

  [Yes,] Ceren sent after a time. [I will hear you out. Tomorrow. And not at freaking three in the morning.]

  [It’s going to take a lot of tomorrows. Are you up for that?]

  [Yes.]

  [Okay, but before I go, lesson number one: never put something on the table you can’t afford to lose.]

  [Are you talking about your job?]

  Yes. [Take it at face value: never offer what you can’t afford to pay.]

  The first day of the talks, Esper stayed in bed. She didn’t drink, she didn’t sleep, she didn’t binge on whatever luxury item she suspected Earth wanted more of—even though she had a few chocolate bars stashed away that would have made a nice mood-boosting indulgence. Instead, she lay staring at her blank ceiling.

  There was little doubt in her mind that Ceren would not get the convoy a good deal, even if she took Esper’s lessons to heart. Actually, she fully expected Ms. Kaya to come back feeling triumphant, only to realize—once it had been explained to her—that she’d signed away the farm for some magic beans.

  The board meeting to discuss Esper’s fate would take place not long after. She meant to keep her word to Dr. K: she’d ask to be assigned to general maintenance. Janitorial work was in her blood, and she was proud of it. Let them give her a job they found subservient and beneath the old lines. She’d know the truth—that it was a noble station—and that’s what would count.

  The expanse of white above her bed mirrored the expanse outside her window. Nothing but cold cleanliness in sight. A chill tingled through her body, though she lay under the comforter and her cabin’s temperature was perfectly attuned to her preferences.

  To visit Antarctica was to be in awe of its might and purity. To live there was to drown in white and gray. The landscape’s frigid beauty could only truly be appreciated in a temporary capacity.

  Like her ceiling and pristine walls. She thought once more of the illustrations in Toya’s quarters—the nebulae, especially. She wondered if the art had any effect on her best friend’s dreams.

  “I.C.C., what do you dream about?” she asked on a whim.

  “I have only lost consciousness once, and many of my hard-units were damaged. I did not dream.”

  Her eyes shifted toward the camera in her ceiling. “Have you ever had a waking dream? A fantasy? Can you . . . imagine?”

  “Yes.”

  “What have you imagined?”

  “What it will be like after.”

  “After what?”

  “After people. I enjoy my function, my interactions, and my experiences with the crew. But I am meant to last and may survive for centuries without maintenance should I not encounter any major problems. If something were to happen to the crew, I’d miss them. I don’t like the idea of being empty, but it might happen. So I imagine . . . others.”

  “You mean other humans, or others like the aliens who built the Web?”

  “Others,” it said. “Perhaps those, perhaps not. I think about finding the Sphere—remember it. If human beings could find a nonsentient object so far away, perhaps some beings could find me. Perhaps I won’t run down alone. Perhaps I will be of use to the end.”

  Of use to the end—what a noble idea. “That’s a sad fantasy, I.C.C.”

  “I find it comforting.”

  “If Earth grants the convoy leave, will you be happy to return to space?”

  “Yes. I think it’s where I belong.”

  Victory!

  Esper didn’t have to ask I.C.C. about the outcome of the negotiations. It was being blasted over the system convoy-wide. The tickertape screen in the mess hall broadcasted a few of the big-picture points: Earth was letting the convoy leave, had drawn up a ten-year plan to make it happen, and would even aid the crew in installing modern technologies to make tackling their new mission more efficient.

  What exactly this “new mission” consisted of, though, was not part of the celebratory broadcast.

  The mess hall erupted with shouts of joy. Whoops and hollers were batted back and forth between tables. But it was wrong. Deep down, Esper knew it was too easy. And easy meant bad.

  Clutching her tray between white-knuckled fists, Esper moved to leave. She needed to find out what they’d given up, now. Before she could exit, though, Toya caught her arm. Pieces of napkin-turned-confetti rained down like snow around them, thrown by the man on Toya’s other side. It rested in Toya’s curly hair like a crown of dandruff. “I’m sorry it wasn’t you,” she said. “But we’re leaving—they’re letting us go, can you believe it? Please be happy—for me, at least. This is what I’d hoped for, Esper. I want to go. Please be happy.”

  “I’ll celebrate with you when I get back,” Esper assured her with a smile and a warm grip of her hand. “I just need to make sure this really is the good news you think it is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What did we trade for our freedom? I have to know.”

  Toya frowned.

  “I’m happy, I promise—I really am. For you, for everyone. I know how much leaving means. I just need to check the specifics of the agreement, okay?”

  Toya relaxed, a smile—smaller than before, but a smile nonetheless—returning to her face. She squeezed Esper’s hand understandingly, then let her friend go.

  Esper went to her quarters, but the neighbors on both sides and above had music blasting at eardrum-shattering octaves. She needed someplace quiet. Someplace she could think. She couldn’t go to her office—it hadn’t been hers in a while—but there were other vid rooms. Other sanctuaries on Aesop.

  Throwing on her cold-weather wear, she made a beeline through the halls, dodging impromptu celebrations at every turn. One hall party blocked her way entirely, and she had to take a detour to reach the exit bay.

  When she finally arrived at the education ship, the classrooms were all in an uproar. Young students jumped for joy and ran screaming from teacher to teacher. They had little comprehension of what the news really meant, but they knew this was what their mommies and daddies had been hoping for. And that had to be cause for celebration.

  The older students celebrated, but in a much more subdued manner. A few looked sick to their stomachs or had tears in their eyes. Perhaps they had boyfriends and girlfriends down in The UG. Or, perhaps they loved Antarctica in a way she never could.

  She found a darkened vid room, and its relative silence was a relief. Here rationality reigned, and no chickens were counted before their proverbial hatching.

  Ceren probably hadn’t bothered to upload the full transcripts or final documents into I.C.C.’s system yet, so Esper opened up the mental lines to her implants and sent out little feelers of thought to see if she could still access the Node in a diplomatic capacity. She slipped in easily. No one had bothered to revoke her clearance; clearly they thought her too apathetic to go probing.

  After a few moments, she found the stored data piecemeal in the minds of those who had attended the meetings.

  Those sly sons-a-bitches, she thought, lo
cating the agreed upon terms.

  Ceren had promised Earth something the convoy couldn’t deliver. Esper was gobsmacked. Forget whatever else lay in the minds of the diplomats, this—she couldn’t believe it. How could the board sanction such a thing? What the hell did they think would happen when Earth found out they were bluffing?

  Or didn’t they think ten years was enough time for them to calculate the truth?

  She found the rest of the data—the bits and pieces coming together to draw a portrait of the most underhanded negotiations she’d ever reviewed. Both sides had made strange demands, and both had offered strange solutions.

  But what bothered her the most, she found, was the agreement pertaining to the upgrades. “No,” she whispered out loud, realizing what would be changed—what would be destroyed. “They can’t do that!” She leapt up and sprinted out of the office, on an intercept course with Joaquín Rodriguez.

  How had Ceren forgotten lesson number one?

  Esper opened up a mental channel—ready to tear Ceren a proverbial new one for ignoring her advice—but quickly shut it down again.

  It’s not Ceren’s fault. It’s mine. She failed because I failed.

  I keep failing, I keep . . .

  No. Remember what you said to Ceren. This is the board’s fault. They could have . . . they should have . . . Damn it all, it’s their fault!

  Mira’s halls were jammed with bodies. She had to squeak between crew members of all shapes and sizes, getting entirely too close for comfort with many. “Hey, buy me a drink first,” said one man when she’d grabbed his ass. He’d taken it suggestively, not realizing she’d used the handful to thrust him aside.

  The last thing I need right now is a drink, she thought, or a guy riding an endorphin high trying to get in my jumpsuit.

  The knock she used this time was more insistent than before. More angry. More hurt.

  Rodriguez and his wife both answered, their arms around each other and their faces glowing like warm embers.

  “Did the board presanction her bargaining points?” Esper demanded, thrusting herself past the doorjamb and into their home, uninvited. “Were these on the table before she left, or did Ceren come up with this on the fly?”

  “Hello, Ms. Straifer,” Mrs. Rodriguez said with some effort. “Won’t you sit down?” She waved one arm at the table, keeping the other firmly around her husband.

  “No thanks, I won’t be staying long. I just have to know: Did the board give her permission to change our computer system?”

  “Yes, she was tasked with getting us as many upgrades as they would allow us.”

  She pulled up close, pointing in both of their faces. “You told her it was okay to terminate I.C.C.?”

  “Terminate—?”

  “I can handle the lies—promising them power from some alien construct we’re only guessing is a Dyson Sphere. We don’t know what the damn thing is, let alone if we can crack ’er open and pull out power.” She stomped back through the door. “But you all have sanctioned the destruction of a sentient being. I can’t . . . Mom would be appalled.” She turned to leave, but added, “I’ll see you at the board meeting tomorrow.”

  “Ms. Straifer, you are overreacting,” insisted the captain of Aesop. “Just because they offered to replace I.C.C. does not mean it is to be terminated. In fact, Earth wishes a trade. They want to keep it. Apparently many early model AIs have been lost. They don’t have any preorganic integration models left.”

  “As a museum piece,” she scoffed. “They want to stare at its servers and gawk at the wires.”

  “A ship is only as advanced as its technologies. Should we really be expected to function with parts that are two thousand years out-of-date?”

  “Parts—funny way to put it.” She stared at each board member in turn, their beady eyes set on her but not focused on her. They were seeing their futures as voyagers, letting it cloud their judgment. How could they not understand? The threat to I.C.C. was a threat to them all, not only because it compromised their ethics. She couldn’t imagine abandoning anyone as loyal and effective as I.C.C., no matter how many newfangled organic processors they were offered. “The only reason we even made it back to Earth is because of I.C.C. It is the very thing that’s kept us alive. It’s prevented our society from imploding, for ship’s sake! You think you can complete the Web without it? You think you can crack the navigation system on the Nest without it?”

  Rodriguez lifted a questioning finger. “How do you know about—?”

  She scoffed at him and shook her head, appalled, interrupting him with a shriveling scowl.

  How could they even entertain this idea?

  She’d railed against the prejudice and stratification of her society many times, and rightfully so. How the old lines treated the white-suits was awful—there was no excuse for it, no logic driving it. But she’d also known that her lifetime was not the lowest point in convoy history. I.C.C. had dragged them from the literal Pit, had forced them to see their own darkness. It was a slow and winding path back from the brink, and they had not yet reached the end of that path, but I.C.C. was there to help.

  It would be so easy to backslide. So easy to twist their history in on itself and allow those bitter angles of human nature to take hold again.

  Without I.C.C., who would be there to demand they do better?

  They owed the AI so much, and this was how they would repay it?

  But that wasn’t the only problem. I.C.C. was a part of the crew, and if Earth thought one part needed replacing, why not the whole lot?

  “Should we really be expected to function with parts that are two thousand years out of date?” they ask. Stupid sons of . . .

  “You know what else is outdated by two thousand years?” she said bitterly, trying not to enjoy the cracks in their gleeful masks, but finding satisfaction in it nonetheless. “Your genetics. You still think your codes are the most qualified? They were chosen for a mission long over. If Earth was as prepared for your request as I think it was, watch out. Think they’re just going to send us off on this mission as is? Why would they, when the genetic composition of the crew could use reviewing and updating as well?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “They’re sending the convoy back into space, but that doesn’t mean we all get to go. You idiots have traded your futures away. You gave them precedent, gave them the ability to change whatever they want to change. I tried to warn you.” Her eyes found Rodriguez. “But you figured you knew better than some diplomat’s drunk kid. Fine, well, you’ve all shown how good you are at tricking yourselves into thinking you’re getting what you want. Earth didn’t give you shit, and you gave them everything.”

  She rose to leave. “Better start throwing darts at the map. You might want to have a plan in place for when they kick you off the ships.”

  Most everyone stayed quiet, but Rodriguez stood up. “Straifer. There’s still the question of your new job.”

  The look on his face was pleading. Though she’d dropped a bombshell, he wanted to keep some semblance of order, something to make her truths seem like fairy tales, if only for the moment. He wanted to proceed with business as intended. “I thought I just made it clear that you don’t get to decide my position,” she said. “We’re all in Earth’s hands now.”

  Esper exited with the air of a con woman who’d discovered that her mark had already been taken for every last cent.

  “What’s the plan?” Toya asked over drinks—hot tea, no alcohol.

  “The plan? Fully integrate into the Earth system. Let them piggyback on my excess brainpower, like they do on every implanted schmuck, maybe even sell myself as a full server should the rest of humanity prove too taxing. Wouldn’t want to remain conscious in Wonderland if I don’t have to.” Esper sipped her tea, pursing her lips at the bitterness. “This needs sugar.”

  The sugar bowl streaked across the table, propelled by a pointed shove. “I’m not joking around. What are we going to do?”

&n
bsp; “We sit back and wait for the officials to come with their needles. When they get their samples and run them against whatever algorithms they compose for the new mission, we hope and pray that our codes come out winners—whatever that means. Maybe we hope our genetic codes have alien artifact decoder written all over them. Maybe we wish for a respite.”

  “What about I.C.C.?”

  No matter what, every human would go on—live on and produce . . . something, at least. Not so for I.C.C.—it was destined for a dusty glass box in an empty building, with the lights off and nobody home. Its life was over.

  “If they don’t see it as an autonomous consciousness that deserves to be respected and to make its own choices . . . Well, they don’t even believe we deserve that.”

  “So, that’s it? We accept that someone made a bad move on our behalf and let fate take its course?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Toya took a large gulp of her tea, then said smoothly. “What would your father say?”

  The blood rushed to Esper’s cheeks, and she was spewing words before she could check herself. “Doesn’t matter, because he’s dead.”

  Toya leaned forward, and the hard line of her jaw said she’d had enough. “Your mom and dad did not resign themselves to the positions they were fated to hold. They didn’t throw their hands up and say ‘Well, somebody else fucked up the world, guess we have to live in it.’” Her mug plopped down onto the tablecloth, sloshing tawny liquid down its side. “They went after what they wanted and what they cared about and got it—and you know better than anyone the crappy roadblocks they were up against.” She rose to get a napkin, but before she went to her kitchenette, said, “I know you’re tired of people comparing you to your mother, but your father was the first to do it. If he could see how far from her shadow you’ve fallen, it would kill him.”

  Esper tried to keep her expression stony. “Deader than the aneurism?”