by Greg Chase
Clearly, the animated greeting, strange as it was, didn’t warrant Doc’s participation. The monitor giggled. Sam stared in disbelief. Computers didn’t giggle. And even if they did, Lev’s sense of humor certainly wouldn’t include an outward display of amusement.
Doc smiled. “Told you I knew firsthand of Lev’s sorry sense of humor. Okay, Lev, who’s there?”
“Sam!”
“Sam who?”
“Sam day you’ll recognize me.”
The somewhat suppressed giggle at what must have been a joke changed to full laughter that lasted way too long. Doc shook his head in a forced muffled laugh.
The monitor flashed lights of blue and green. “I was saving that one specifically for when Sam came for a visit. The usual, Doc? And, Sam, try one of Jillian’s margaritas. I think you’ll really like it.”
“Sounds great, Lev, and maybe some light food.” Doc gave Sam an appraising look. “Something synth, protein sticks or carb-bars.”
The light on the monitor flickered off.
Doc lounged back in the large chair. “We’re alone now. Lev’s only present when the light’s on. If she is still here, she won’t intrude or let on she knows what I’m saying. If you call her name, she’ll return. It’s all a little creepy, but you get used to it.”
Sam continued to look at the blank monitor. “She was so animated.”
“She wasn’t when you knew her? Being away from interconnected computers, it’s hard for me to know when they grew to sound more human. There was no one here for so long, I never had a reason to interact with Leviathan’s computer before Xavier did his work. Once the colonists and permanent ship crew came aboard, well, I guess I just assumed they brought Lev’s higher functionality with them.”
That didn’t seem plausible. The military had attempted to modify the onboard computer with disastrous effects. The likelihood that anyone would try anything even remotely similar didn’t sound likely. Plus… something played about the edge of Sam’s memory but never formed into a full thought. He scratched his head. “Pretty posh for a pirate ship.”
Doc looked around the cafe as if for the first time. “Xavier turned the daily operation of Leviathan over to a management company. Transporting colonists from one rock to another is mostly a cover, though. It lets him carry whatever he wants in the cargo pod. And we still have a trip ahead of us before we reach Chariklo, our terraformed centaur planet. Once they drop off our pods, I suspect Leviathan will revert to Xavier’s original plan, whatever that might be, or he’ll sell her off. Pirates aren’t big on sharing details.”
The beautiful barmaid drifted up with drinks in hand. “It’s good to see you again, Doc. It’s been too long. I hope you brought me some of that luscious fruit. My mixed drinks just aren’t the same without it. I made Sam’s margarita with the last of my limes.”
Doc beamed at her. “Not to worry, my dear. We’ve got a full shuttle of produce.”
Sam watched her in wonder. Jess and the other women of the agro pod dressed in a nice but practical way. Makeup, hairstyle, and clothes were about function, not attraction. Jillian glided about the room as if it were a dance floor, her long dress adding to the impression. Her hair trailed out, waving its greeting to each patron, her eyes and smile playfully flirtatious.
Jillian Sara Cage, age 22, formerly of Earth city San Francisco, unmarried but living with boyfriend Jeffery Alex Samuels. Education level: college, four years. Didn’t graduate. Abandoned education when opportunity aboard Leviathan…
“Stop!” Sam shook his head at the creative, though completely pointless, rambling of his brain. Looking around, he was relieved to see no one had noticed his outburst.
The running monologue quieted instantly. But the knowledge of Jillian extended so much farther than her simple résumé. Sexual preferences, wardrobe down to everything she was currently wearing, spiritual beliefs, all the intimate details it would have taken Sam months of dating to find out, flooded his consciousness.
As she left the drink and food containers suctioned to the table, he watched her glide back to her station, feeling he’d just lived a lifetime with her. All that instant knowledge was such a huge invasion of privacy yet also brought such a wonderfully warm feeling of intimacy.
Doc took a long sip of his drink then connected it back to the table. “Would you excuse me for a minute? I need to make sure Jillian gets the supplies she needs. That kitchen has a bad habit of absconding with every piece of fresh fruit that passes its hatch.”
As Doc left, the light on the table monitor lit up, and Lev’s words entered Sam’s head. I’m sorry for that flood of information about Jillian. It’s actually the main reason we decided you should live with Doc and his tribe. You see, most people have to ask questions for me to answer. I have no barriers on where I can find the answers, but you, Sam, have built-in restrictions on what I can tell to whom. The problem is your mind connects directly with me. I’m compelled to answer anything you think, ask, wonder, or just feel. And I have no filter on what to share with you, so you get it all. It must be terrifyingly overwhelming.
Sam figured he was losing his mind. I don’t remember any of that.
I know. Your biological brain is too limited to contain all the information that flowed through it. We condensed a great deal of it. Think of it as file folders in a file cabinet in an office in a warehouse. Right now, all you can see is the warehouse, but trust me, there is a great deal more in your mind than you know. Then we developed Rendition. It contains another huge volume of your knowledge base.
Wait, what? He asked the question silently. Speaking out loud would only prove to the rest of the patrons that he’d gone space crazy.
It doesn’t matter. Just know everything is safe. The important part is all information is instantly available to your mind out here. It was your idea to become a shaman for the tribe in the hope that such study would help you control your thoughts.
But… if I already know everything… Nothing in Sam’s history indicated he knew anything, let alone everything.
You don’t. Don’t worry. What you have to learn has less to do with knowledge data and more to do with how you think. You can’t just pick up how to achieve calm from some computer database. But most of the writings—Buddhist, Zen, Christian, et cetera—are in your memory. It just looks like a warehouse. That’s how you described it to me. The first lesson is focus. It will help you see the information more clearly.
How do I learn focus? he asked.
Don’t know. Stop pretending you do. It’s only when you let go of what you think that you can discover what’s underneath that knowledge. Focus is less about concentration than awareness.
Sam wanted to shout at Lev in frustration. Nothing she had to say sounded the least bit helpful.
Doc returned to save Sam from the dizzying spiral of mental communication. “Sorry about that. You’d be amazed at how possessive the cooks can be regarding fresh produce. Whether it’s a testament to our growing practices or an indictment of the limitations of spaceship synth-food, I’m not sure.”
“No problem.” The words came out Sam’s mouth, but he couldn’t tell who he was answering.
The day passed in a kaleidoscopic nightmare of images, memories, and strangers whom Sam knew intimately. The night, full of all-too-real dreams about his time bonded with Lev, didn’t pass much easier.
The place where his mind ended and Lev’s input began was poorly defined. Each person, computer screen, and technological advance was little more than an extension of Sam’s consciousness. The technological advances were the most vexing. There was no way he should have been able to identify any of the new interfaces, yet he operated every screen as if he’d invented it. His mind drew hypothetical lines in the quicksand of information, hoping Lev would somehow know where to stop.
He didn’t want to know. His was a mediocre brain in a lifetime-limited body, and now he knew he liked it that way. Having all mankind’s information available to him with less than even
a thought or question should have been a gift for a genius, certainly not someone whose prime skill was bluffing his way through life. He longed for the peace of Yoshi’s bamboo and the mindless wanderings inspired by his cannabis. And Jess, whom he didn’t know completely. He was still learning her laugh, her quirky combination of youthful play and mature protection, the mysterious way she put him at ease. Just the memory of that simpler lifestyle brought back the sense of calm that had left him the moment he’d set foot in the life pod.
Doc greeted him at breakfast. “Brother, you look almost as bad as the day I found you tangled in my wisteria. Ready to go home?”
“Doc, don’t ever ask me to make a delivery with you again, and I’ll attempt to be Jesus, Buddha, and Gandhi all wrapped into one. Deal?”
Doc’s disarming laugh coming from the ship of unlimited communication warmed Sam almost as much as what he had to say. “Well, I’m certain Jessie will be glad to hear it.”
9
Back in zero gravity, with the plants, low light, and unfiltered air, Sam eased out of the shuttle. “Thanks for the experience, Doc. It was educational.”
Doc smiled but said nothing as he finished shutting down the small ship.
Sam floated back along the vines in no real hurry. Life in the agro pod didn’t keep to schedules. As he transitioned from wisteria to cantaloupe vines, something hit him hard from the side—so hard he lost his handle on the vegetation that kept him from floating aimlessly in the great open space of the pod. Damn it, Jonathan. But as he grasped behind him, hoping to snag one of the last vines, he encountered only auburn hair. Jess’s hands circled his waist, turning him to look back at the scene behind them: a jungle of leaves, flowers, and vines and, in the distance, the small village in the mile-long, transparent tube.
Jess pushed him away and then flipped him around until they were face to face. A grand pirouette in zero gravity.
He smiled at the enthusiasm of her greeting. “I was only gone a day, Jess.”
“I know. But I was afraid you might not come back. That was closer to the life you knew. No one would have blamed you for staying.” A tear formed in her eye.
He wiped itaway. “I now know my past life will remain in the past.”
She hugged him tight, her hair floating around his face. As they reached the outer wall of the pod, she pushed off him to do a swimmer’s backflip. Kicking hard at the wall, she took him back in her arms. Their movements were what dancing should have been like: graceful, flowing, with no awkward bouncing off each other. She did have to lead, but it wasn’t the humiliation it would have been on Earth. He spread his arms out, enjoying the support of a woman as she held him about the waist.
Her hazel eyes, framed by her free-floating hair, mesmerized him. He’d have been happy to stare into those eyes for the rest of his life. Her lilting voice didn’t break the mood, but the worry that he’d have to put a thought together did threaten it. “I missed you,” she said. “That’s not a feeling I’m familiar with, and I didn’t like it. But I think I understand Jonathan a little better.”
Sam didn’t want to talk. Her body pressed hard against his, her hands caressing his back, which was more than enough for him to focus on. “Would you mind if we didn’t talk about him right now?”
“This isn’t about him. It’s about me. I’m still polyamorous. You will always have to accept that about me. Hopefully, one day you will be too, but even if that never appeals to you, I now know that won’t affect my attraction to you. I don’t want to be separated again.” Her hair swung around his head, capturing him.
“You’ve saved me,” he said. “I wouldn’t know how to survive without you. Hopefully, I’ll outgrow that image you have of me as the helpless new member of your village. Until then, I’m not sure I’m worthy of anything more than sympathy. But I’m looking forward to a time when we can love as equals.”
Sam had never given much thought to what a utopian society would look like. His life on Earth had never gotten past the live for today and look out for yourself stage of existence. Learning to work the vines under Yoshi’s tutelage left him with plenty of time for such contemplations.
“Whose idea was it to form this tribe? Who fit all the pieces together?” Conversations, no matter how casual, helped Sam understand his new family.
“I can’t say there was any one person. The core group—Doc, Mira, Jenifer, and myself—were misfits at best,” Yoshi said. “We’d experiment with any idea or drug that crossed our path. Doc stumbled onto the idea of free love from its popularity with the 1960s hippies and its more than occasional rebirth over the next century. He took to that hard. We had quite the sexual commune there for a while on Earth.” Yoshi looked up as if trying to remember something. “I think we had thirty people living under one roof at its height. But ultimately, people paired up and drifted off. Doc concluded Earth’s norms weren’t something that could be overcome in one generation and certainly not as an island of liberation surrounded by a sea of repression.”
Sam struggled against an obstinate vine to help train a sapling into position. “Was that why you decided to leave—so you wouldn’t be contaminated with the old ideas?”
“Partly. What we were trying to do wasn’t met with enthusiasm by society at large. And teaching our children to live a more liberated and informed lifestyle was considered subversive at best and perverse at worst.”
Sam set the vine aside for a moment. His thoughts followed their own paths out here, far from Earth’s restrictions. But some concepts still ran up against old prejudices. “I’ve wondered about that. You don’t use euphemisms when talking about sex with your young people. No birds and bees, or storks delivering babies. Don’t you find it uncomfortable?”
“I find lying uncomfortable. And I’ve never been a fan of rejecting science in favor of expediency. No question, it’s easier to come up with a pleasant story about where babies come from rather than giving children the dirty details. But that doesn’t do them any favors later in life.” Yoshi worked hard at the sapling Sam had tried to tie off.
Sam remembered his own time growing up. “I guess early on, my parents had some made-up story. But as I got older, they gave me the standard ‘when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much’ line. I didn’t think of that as a lie.”
“But it’s also not the truth,” Yoshi said. “Think of it this way: a computer can’t reach a usable conclusion unless it has the facts. Not sugarcoated, not a pleasant dodge so the programmer doesn’t have to be embarrassed, but just the straight facts. I know you’re going to tell me children aren’t computers. And you’re right. But why should we lie about something as fundamental to our biology as sex?”
A vivid memory of his childhood friend Stephanie—the loner tomboy who’d moved from the country to the city—flashed in Sam’s mind. Even back then, he’d been drawn to the nonconformist type. “When I was a boy, before puberty, I knew this girl who grew up on a farm. Quiet but no-nonsense kid. I remember one day the conversation in our little group rolled around to where babies came from. We were comparing notes on what we’d been told, I guess. She knew the process down to details I didn’t learn firsthand for another decade.”
Yoshi nodded. “Historically, it’s not unusual for children to be told the truth. Though it seems the more advanced the society, the more it wants to bury its collective head in the sand about such topics. Things like age of consent, homosexuality, birth control, masturbation—just to name a few—are all swept under the rug. It doesn’t need to be that way. Your friend may well have seen male sheep getting it on together, cows giving birth, intercourse, you name it. Pretty much any sexual act you can imagine people engaging in can be seen in the animal kingdom.”
“The other kids made fun of her. I hated that. She was a sweet, intelligent girl who couldn’t let the lie of what the rest of us had been told go uncorrected. We got to be friends. She explained her family never hid that stuff but would answer any question she had. I guess they kind of had to w
ith all the barnyard animals going at it.” Sam felt sorry he hadn’t done more for her back then. Or even kept in touch.
Yoshi succeeded in bending the supple young tree into place. “So there was that aspect of society we wanted to change. Mira’s already told you about her studies with the bonobo and a more female-positive approach to human interactions. I’ve never been particularly aggressive when it came to courtship. Mira asked me out and honestly made most of the moves that resulted in our being a couple. So from a personal standpoint, her ideas appealed to me. It took Doc a little longer to come around to her way of thinking. But the free-love commune we established helped a lot. We received something of a crash course in human-mating practices by watching those around us. Can’t say it did anything to endear me to our gender.”
Competing for a woman’s attention had never been one of Sam’s strong points. Ever since Mira’s explanation of women taking an equal part in sexual pursuits, he’d found relief in not having to be the instigator. If a woman wanted to know him better, she simply approached him to start a conversation. And with the absence of that dance of who found whom attractive, he’d noticed, other men in the village displayed less of a need to compete—for the most part. “But sex aside, there must be other aspects of this utopia you were trying to weave together.”
“Sex was a big part. Jenifer, our reproductive specialist, had some ideas about how people form bonds through sex. Instead of letting people pair off into couples, she wanted to see if opening up those relationships could create more of a web. So you take that basic biological component and build the rest of what we’re trying to do on top of it. We’re no longer strangers to one another. Meetings end up sounding more like family gatherings. Of course, there’s still plenty of disagreement, but it’s an open conversation.” Yoshi leaned against his latest creation for a moment. “When people hide their true natures, you end up wondering about their motives. So in a debate, you’re never one-hundred-percent sure what lies under their arguments. What’s their ultimate goal?”
