Unnaturals

by Merrill, Lynna

  She'd only ever cringed or wanted to use that voice at the Academy. Intuition, Eryn called this. You built a subconscious system of who you were, how you should act—what they could do to you—and then you fell into it, and there was no rescuestat to get you out or medstat to heal you.

  "But Doctors of Computers can build systems consciously. They know what they are doing." Mel whispered under her breath. "At least, I do."

  "I need to see Doctor Eryn," Meliora said, firmly.

  "She has no time for the likes of you outside of classes!" the man at the door snapped. "Off you go."

  Meliora kicked the door. Metal clanged, wood splintered. Inside, Eryn jumped from her chair. It fell back, and a computer toppled to the floor. An indistinguishable voice cracked over an ancient speech interface.

  "I demand that I be a Doctor of People in addition to a Doctor of Computers!" Meliora shouted at Eryn's widened eyes. "I demand that you teach me everything, everything that this damn place can teach a person! Especially, I demand to know how a person who once chose to stay young can still live as long as you."

  Eryn took a deep breath. Now, it would come. It would be the dark room for days, weeks, perhaps months.

  Time enough to get to that ceiling and to the breath of strange air Mel sometimes sensed when she climbed the wall. There must be a door there. There must be something—otherwise, what was the point? "They are teaching us," Adelaide had said, and Meliora needed to be taught. Whatever the price.

  Slowly, Eryn smiled. "Fine," she said. "We will teach you, and no need to gape at me like this. I said fine—for the first part of your request. For the second part, we shall see."

  "You...you shall teach me the second part, too."

  The smile grew more crooked. "If you deserve it. Now, leave my office. Report to Doctor Jerome out there tomorrow after your lessons with Doctor Theodore."

  Meliora walked away to her room.

  She lay on the bed. She sent messages to Mom and even to Adi, about little things, things you could risk sending over the hummie.

  Otherwise, she couldn't have messaged. Her hands—her whole body—were suddenly trembling so much that she could not use the needle method.

  ***

  "And now, my students," Theo beamed at Meliora and Ivan, "we are off to start our real work. Come with me."

  They passed several locked doors that Mel hadn't known existed, since they blended so well with the walls, and ended up in a big room with many screens. Two people were there. Their eyes jumped between screens but slowly, not like the eyes of naturals.

  "Mel and Ivan, these are Doctor Olaf and Doctor Veronica. Veronica and Olaf, these are our newest recruits. They have passed basic training with flying colors and are now here to help with programming the new hummie interfaces for train stations."

  The screens on three of the four walls showed train stations and trains, as well as a dynamic map of the trains in motion.

  The screens on the fourth wall showed the faces of people and their locations on the train map—right down to the exact seat.

  Doctor Veronica noticed Mel's look and smiled. She was almost as young as Meliora herself.

  "These are not all the people in trains or train stations. We don't need to monitor everyone at all times. The other people are on other virtual screens, and you can switch." She beckoned Meliora closer and looked at her face. "You're Meliora with the forty tickets, aren't you? I remember you. Very atypical behavior. You gave us a few hours of monitoring fun on that day."

  "Thank you." Mel didn't know what else to say. The doctor laughed.

  "What do they know about the project, Theo?" Olaf asked.

  "Nothing yet." Theo laughed himself. "I've kept it a surprise. Olaf and Ver, unfortunately for you folks, you came to us when nothing big and new was due. You had to rewrite what had already been written to pass your Doctor tests—but these two, I thought, could do some real work."

  Veronica smiled.

  "So, kids." Olaf waved at two chairs. "You've been training to write demo versions of the old emotion interfaces—of the hummie interfaces, that is. So, you're familiar with how those work. They will be slowly phased out in the next few years. The newer thoughtmotion interfaces—thoughtmotion comes from thought and emotion, by the way—will become prevalent. We've long had the hummie interfaces for interpersonal communication. Yet, all that time, people've had to press buttons in order to buy train tickets. We, and by that I mean all of us, the Doctors of Computers in all four cities, were given the task to start work on updating the train ticket interfaces to hummies. You two have come just in time to help."

  "Given?" Mel said. "Who gave you the task?"

  "To us in Lucasta, Doctor Eryn. She gives the big tasks. We have to figure out the resulting smaller ones ourselves."

  "But," Mel said again, "shouldn't Doctors of Computers decide what is to be done with computers and interfaces?"

  "Mel," Veronica laughed. "Of course, this is how it is. We decide what is to be done with the computers. Only Doctors of Computers have enough knowledge to program everything."

  "Yes, but, the big task..." Mel stopped trying to get her answer. She asked another question, "Why hummie interfaces?" just as Ivan said, "So what exactly do we have to do?"

  Olaf shrugged. "I've no idea why." Veronica started pointing at Ivan's monitor, and a moment later Ivan was programming.

  "But how is this supposed to work!? The hummie interfaces are imprecise! They might do the job in interpersonal communication, but buying the tickets is communication between a person and a machine!"

  Why was everyone except for the madly typing Ivan looking at her strangely?

  "You can't rely on emotion for something like this! A person might need to go to work, or visit their mother, and yet they might want, or think they want, to go to the wonderful experiences instead. They might very well get a ticket to the wonderful experiences with a hummie interface, but never with a button to the work station or mother's place."

  Theo just sighed. He'd had months to learn that his explanations were never enough and his arguments useless.

  Olaf smiled in the way one might smile at a child.

  "If the person gets the ticket to wonderful experiences, Mel, it only means that this is where the person should indeed go. It will make the person happy. And it will make us happy to know that we have improved the ticketing system."

  Mel bit her tongue and started typing like Ivan.

  The person would be happy, of course. They would also be happy if the system gave them a ticket to the moon.

  People were always happy because the system always knew best.

  ***

  At least Jerome didn't look happy. She thought she might smack the next smile she saw.

  He scowled at Mel. "Let's go, girl."

  She followed, for once not asking questions.

  Jerome walked slowly. He wasn't as old as Great-Granddad Nicolas, but he wasn't a young man, either, and it showed. He was very thin, and not fashionably so. His limbs looked as if they could snap at any moment.

  "Gods damn it," he muttered when one of his legs quivered and he had to stop.

  "Gods?" Mel hadn't heard someone mention them since Great-Granddad Nicolas.

  Someone must stand above those who do this to us.

  "Do gods exist, Doctor Jerome?"

  The old man laughed. He wheezed as he did, and the laughter itself came out as screeching.

  "You tell me, girl. You tell me this after our little tour today."

  They passed many locked doors and corridors before they reached an enormous, brightly-lit room. The Academy was bigger than it looked. Good. There must be an answer behind one of those doors.

  "So, girl." Jerome pointed at the rows of tables lining the room's floor and at the glass cubes on the tables. There was liquid inside the cubes, as well as something moving. "Do you know what these are?"

  Mel shook her head.

  "Do you know where babies come from?"

 
; "From cells," Mel said. "Non-embryonic stem cells from the parents." She felt stupid saying it. Even Mom knew as much. Everyone, or at least everyone wanting or having a child, did. When the time came, both mates went to the office of BabiesAsYouDream, Inc., where a special medstat cut a lock of hair from each and gently scraped cells from their tongues. Months later, the mates were messaged to go to BabiesAsYouDream, Inc. to receive their new baby and a special medstat to care for it in its first two years.

  Or, that was the process for most people. Mel's dad had done work that the corporation usually did for you.

  "The parents can choose which genes from the cells to use," Mel said, "though most people don't. I am sorry, Doctor. Doctor Eryn wouldn't tell me more than that. She said it was no business of a Doctor of Computers. She said I only needed to know how to care for existing people, if there ever was a need for my inadequate services."

  "Heh, yes." He screeched with laughter again. "We wouldn't want to fill the heads of our Computer doctors with additional stuff that would only take space needed for their programs, would we? Worry not, even Doctors of People don't learn much of this. They don't need it, either."

  "I am not worrying," Mel almost said. Why would she want the Doctors of People to know less?

  She didn't say it. She was worrying. Why keep people, doctors or not, ignorant?

  "Of course, girl, all that information is out there in the interweb."

  "Is it? I didn't know that. What I do know"—Mel met his eyes, suddenly angry—"is that the information on the interweb is much, way too much, and always contradictory! I've read about pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and selection, about pluripotent stem cells, extrauterine fetus incubation. I've even read that the giving birth wonderful experience in the mall was once upon a time a real thing! But you asked me what I know, Doctor, not what I can find on the interweb! The interweb is words, words, words—so many that, as some of those very articles on the interweb say, you can drown in them. But what exactly is drown, doctor? Do you even know? They say that it is water killing you, but water does not harm people, it quenches thirst and gives health..."

  One of the old man's feet shot in her direction. It kicked her in the knee and she fell, suddenly in great pain. A medstat was wheeling towards her, but the doctor shouted "No!" He gripped Mel by the collar and forced her head back, then grabbed a bottle from his pocket and poured water hard into her nose.

  It was just like a wonderful experience in the mall—but much, much stronger.

  It lasted no longer than a few moments. Then the medstat caught her with its metal hands, turned her on her belly, hit her back, made her cough despite the pain in her chest, lifted her head, and then hit her again, and again, until all the water had gone out through her mouth and nose. Mel coughed again. It hurt. She was weak and dizzy, and she could not get up.

  "Say again that water can't harm people. No? You won't say any such stupidity? Good. Fix her up, medstat."

  She got up. Then she had to sit again, on the floor, because there were no chairs in this large room full of tables and bright white glass boxes.

  "Enough, medstat," Doctor Jerome said. "The hurt is in your mind now, Meliora" he added gently. "I am not denying you needed medical care. I am just not letting it give you relaxation pills. I am sorry, but you need your mind with you. No relaxation pills while you're my student."

  "In Lucasta, water does not harm people," Mel whispered, "only because of these machines. Is it so, Doc? Otherwise..."

  "Otherwise more fools would be drowning than now, true. It happens very rarely now; people are rarely out of the range of a medstat. But, Meliora, now you seem to think that, if not for the medstats, we would all be dead. Not exactly so. But we depend on our machines, true. We depend on them a lot. And this is a good thing. Without them, life would be a theater of wonderful experiences."

  He took her to the next room. It was much smaller, but its walls were covered by screens. The screens showed a room with vials—small glass containers, perhaps no bigger than Mel's fists. Medstats walked among them, sometimes touching them, inserting tiny, precise metal fingers into the liquid inside.

  Doctor Eryn's eyes sometimes looked like the bare, cold stone of an intercity underground. Doctor Jerome's, on the other hand, glowed like brightlights while he watched those screens.

  "This, Meliora, is the creation of life."

  Life started with cells from both parents, the doctor said, combined inside the vials. A child could have just one parent, or more than two, but time and experience had shown that two parents gave the optimal results most often.

  "Unless, girl, a minor correction is needed for a minor genetic defect, or if two women want to have a boy. Then, we reach into the bank of stored genes—of perfect genes that we've gathered and keep gathering. There are no major defects any more, and even minor defects are very, very rare—because, of course, after every correction the new person doesn't carry the defect and can't propagate it further."

  "I thought everyone had two parents."

  "Almost everyone, as I said. Indeed, once upon a time, before Lucasta even existed, two parents was the only way and besides, one of them had to be female and the other one male."

  "Why?" Mel asked.

  "Because people didn't yet know how to make life, and had to rely on the only method, a clumsy and fallible one, that nature had provided for them," Jerome replied.

  "Nature?" She could guess about nature. It had something to do with sheep, farms, and grass. Perhaps it also had to do with famine, sickness, and war. But she could only guess. She didn't know.

  "You'll be a Doctor of Nature in addition to your other titles."

  "No one told me such a Doctor existed!"

  He shrugged. "Few people are Doctors of Nature, and all are doctors of something else first. But the pressure of being a Doctor of People or Computers is enough for most."

  "So will I learn to select genes for people?"

  "Among other things. It's the baby corporation's job. Some of our doctors work there, though these days the breeding medstats are mostly good enough to do this by themselves. The corporation is obliged to tell the parents that they can make their own choices, too, within certain limits. Propagating a disease that has somehow sneaked into the parents themselves, or sociopathy, greed or another such detrimental divergence, is not to be tolerated—but who wants their child to carry anything like this, anyway? Of course, these days what we call disease is so minor that a person can live a whole life and never notice, but still, disease must be eradicated."

  "I thought it was eradicated, more than eighty years ago."

  He inclined his head, watching her. "Mostly. Not entirely. Not yet. But no one dies from disease any more."

  "No, only from the cure." She intuitively cringed, but the doctor didn't hit her, didn't tell her that she was due her hours in a dark room with a hard floor.

  "Of course they die from the cure!" he said. "This is how it should be—and that, too, is people's own choice."

  Own choice?

  "Doctor Jerome, who programs the medstats that work the vials and do gene selection?" Meliora asked. "Theodore doesn't even know about them, does he?"

  "He doesn't. He doesn't need to—he could have been shown that they exist, but he hasn't demonstrated a desire for it. Lucasta's needs, and teaching our new recruits, occupy Doctor Theodore enough. Those medstats are programmed by Doctors of Nature who are also Doctors of Computers, like you will be. Like I am."

  "So, are we going to program them today?"

  "Not today. Today, we are on a tour. You'll get your turn to work on immaculate conception, don't you worry about that."

  He wouldn't even let her into the room with the vials.

  "And I won't let you in there later, either. Or anyone. We program the medstats, girl. They touch the cells. We are too clumsy and too dirty for that—and for tens, hundreds, thousands of years, humans, just like animals, have consistently been making a mess out of having babies. Immacu
late conception, I said."

  She watched the screens and the medstats' work for some time more. She saw vials and liquid and color—but no semblance of babies.

  Later, when Doctor Jerome took her to see the sheep, and the process of a male sheep climbing over a female sheep to make a baby sheep in the old way, she saw no semblance of a baby sheep in this, either.

  "But that's similar to what people do with their mates! This doesn't make babies when people do it, Doctor, does it?"

  "Of course not. Of course not. Imagine what world we would live in if it did."

  He brought her back to the room with the glass boxes—extrauterine fetus incubation units, also called artificial wombs. Each box apparently held a baby in that liquid.

  "This is where they come when they are about to outgrow the vial."

  She walked closer to them. Some looked more like babies than others. None looked like babies entirely. Some were just...vague shapes of what might be a baby one day, attached to a feeding tube—monsters, Mel thought, creatures from fairytales. Others had limbs but not full limbs. She suddenly thought of a misshapen baby from the wonderful experiences.

  "No," the doctor said as if reading her mind. "They will all be proper in the end. This is the process they must all go through, they are just at different stages of it. A baby spends nine months here."

  Meliora took a deep breath. She'd spend hours at a time in Eryn's prison, in darkness and disconnection from everything else—hours. It had been too much. The babies spent months here. The babies had light, at least, and the food that Jerome explained they were getting through that tube that extended from their bellies. Yet...

  Without thinking about it, Mel stepped towards the closest box, which held a baby that looked almost real, and put her hand on the box.

  "No use." Jerome shook his head. "This box is a computerized life support system, you can't touch inside without opening it, and you can't open it..."

  Eyes narrowed, she pressed her hand harder. The computer felt warm. Then, for just a moment, the baby reached out, too, and touched its tiny, almost formed hand to the glass.

  Mel felt warm, too. Doctor Jerome inclined his head at her and started wheezing with laughter.