Bonshoon: A Tale of the Final Fall of Man (11 page)

Maybe it had just taken that long to hack into the files or to decipher her notes into any sort of useful real-world data. Janya had actually theorised that it had been the
synth
they’d needed. Their synthetic intelligence had been activated a couple of times since Judon, but maybe the specific synth instance on board the
Dark Glory Ascendant
had possessed some more specific information.
They’d
been a bunch of jarhead idiots as well.

Janya realised, with mild disgruntlement, that she was brooding about it instead of reading. Maybe it
was
a grudge, she reflected. She
really
didn’t like it when people stole her work. It was one of the reasons she’d retreated as far as Judon Research Outpost in the first place, to escape the endless academic warzone of lies, damned lies, and popularity contests. Well, that was over, and the
bonefields
was over. She wasn’t about to resume her studies on that topic. Not now that they had seen what they’d seen. And, more importantly, what they
hadn’t
seen.

No, now it was the political history of the Total Human Consciousness Transcription Ban. She’d actually been ordered to research this, as part of her job as Head of Science. It was
work
. She could have been doing it up in one of the dome labs just to make it official, but this was a more conducive environment.

She was just beginning to settle back into the extended, footnote-heavy treatise after her lapse in concentration when the door chime interrupted. Giving a mild
tsk
, she tapped the screen and set the pad down.

Oddly enough, it was Zeegon. Janya could have counted the times he’d come to her quarters on one hand – without even using up her original fingers, for that matter. “Zeegon.”

“Hi,” Zeegon coughed. Janya wondered if he was waiting for her to invite him in, and whether there was a cut-off point after which the conversation should continue in the corridor lest the belated relocation disrupt its flow and become awkward. If there
was
a cut-off, it was probably approaching fast.

“Can I help you?”

“Sorry to bother you at your place,” the helmsman said quickly. “I tried the lab, but you weren’t there.”

“I kn – would you like to come in?” Janya adjusted mid-sentence, and stepped back.

“Uh, right, thanks,” Zeegon stepped inside, and looked around at the book-crowded space. “Man,” he chuckled, “you need to digitise.”

“Books have the benefit of not getting erased when the computer has a bad day,” Janya said, “although I am considering construction of a research archive,” she sat back in her armchair and looked at Zeegon with mild expectation.

“Uh, so – anything new to tell us about Bunzo’s?” he led. “Found anything except the usual myths and fairytales?”

Even Janya, hopeless as she was in the face of silence-filling small-talk and courage-building prevarication, knew Zeegon wasn’t really there to talk about Horatio Bunzo’s Funtime Happy World. But she let him get to the point at his own pace. If he wanted a bit of knowledge while he worked up the nerve, that was something she could provide.

“Well, for a start, it seems like the spectacular failure of Horatio Bunzo wasn’t the only reason they scrapped the Total Human Consciousness Transcription project,” she said. “It doesn’t even look like it was the
main
reason. The main force behind the ban was the Fleet.”

“Didn’t like humans messing around with technology?”

“I have to admit our track record wasn’t great,” Janya conceded, “but there are a lot of different angles. The Molren had faith-based objections to the process – just as a lot of
human
factions did. What happens to the consciousness, the alleged immortal soul, if you digitise it? It’s the conundrum of the perfect printer, in a sense: if you had a printer capable of printing a perfect copy of a person, and configuring a perfect copy of his or her consciousness, then killed and mulched the original, is the person still alive? Arguably a book is the same book even if you lose the feel of the cover, but is a person still the same person when you change the format, or is it just a facsimile? Does that person live on, essentially moving into an artificial afterlife? And that was a whole
separate
issue. Were we about to create a
literal
version of Heaven and Hell? Were the mythological versions still there, taking the
actual
dead souls while these false fabrications lived on in this sphere? Where was the technology of virtual space headed? And of course, the Fleet had their classic reason as well – keeping the galaxy quiet.”

“I suppose a solar-system-sized psychotic computer network might have a hard time keeping its mouth shut,” Zeegon allowed.

“There’s a whole automated system made by the Fleet surrounding the Bunzolabe, apparently,” Janya said, “blocking and dampening out any signals or chatter Bunzo might be making, and warning people away as a last-line-of-defence, point-of-no-return sort of thing. But that scale of operation, essentially needing to be set up and then to run forever – it’s been centuries now, but that could feasibly stretch to millennia, even thousands of millennia … it just takes up too many resources, they couldn’t do it over and over again for every human who wants to digitise. And once a single consciousness has inhabited every computer processor within a volume of space, it seems to be impossible to uproot it, let alone get it to share with another. There was a footnote about assorted attempts to repeat the procedure, in the early days. The actual article is missing from the database, but apparently Bunzo didn’t allow a second transcription instance, within any part of the Bunzolabe.
Violently
didn’t allow it.”

“But he hasn’t tried to spread?” Zeegon asked. “Get a bit of his mind onto a starship, or even build some sort of seeding ship of his own – they have shipyards, right? – and fly out to other systems?”

“He hasn’t seemed to
want
to expand beyond the Bunzolabe,” Janya said, “although the buoys, the Fleet signal-dampening countermeasures, might be helping block
that
as well. But if we’d kept trying to transcribe people … imagine if one got into the Aquilar system.”

“So the Molren have kept the Cancer from hearing him,” Zeegon concluded.

Janya nodded. “If indeed he’s doing much shouting. Then there’s also the aki’Drednanth angle,” she went on. “There’s a strong suggestion that the Molren didn’t want humans aping – quite literally, really – the Drednanth Dreamscape, and approaching aki’Drednanth immortality.”

“You mean, digitising … and then
re-meating
from digital and back into a baby’s brain?” Zeegon grimaced. “Can’t imagine anyone having a problem with that.”

“It’s not really known if there are secret experiments still going on elsewhere,” Janya said, “since it all dissolves into conspiracy theories and myth. Of course, the aforementioned perfect printer seems like the easier place to start, for humans, rather than a baby. Instead of …
re-meating
… into a developing foetus, the human-digital pattern could be printed and configured into a new body, given the right level of detail. There almost certainly
are
experiments still happening, with various levels of undeveloped printed intelligence. Like our own eejits, perhaps.”

“Hardly bears thinking about, does it?” Zeegon said with a forced chuckle. “Automated planet controlled by a guy who might suddenly decide he’s a kitten at any point. I told you about Whiskers, yeah?”

“I heard,” Janya herself had a pair of eejit ‘assistants’, as Head of Science. Westchester and Whitehall, the former an attempted biochemist prone to defaulting to a dock worker configuration if you filled his brain too much; the latter an almost-physicist who … well, suffice it to say, she’d been surprised when it happened.

“Is it really that dangerous?” Zeegon asked. “This place we’re going?”

“Hard to say,” Janya replied. “As I mentioned, there are so many myths and legends and conspiracy theories, all of them might be true or none of them. Almost all the actual
missions
into the place are classified way above anyone on board this modular.”

She sat for a while, as Zeegon struggled to get around to the real reason for his visit. She couldn’t really think of any way to make it easier for him, because she couldn’t be certain
what
the real reason might be. What if she guessed one, and started to talk about it, and he had been about to ask something else? He’d jump at the chance to talk about the topic she’d raised,
his
real topic would be buried, and the fact that she’d assumed he wanted to talk about the topic
she’d
raised would probably tell him things about her. That was how people seemed to work, and she considered it exceedingly unfair.

“It’s about Cratch,” he finally blurted.

“What about him?”

Zeegon took a deep breath. “We – I want you to reconsider letting him out,” he raised his hands. “I know we’ve been through this before, but this thing we’re heading into, this place we’re going…”

“You think it will make things easier to have Glomulus Cratch loose aboard the ship.”

“Yes. No,” Zeegon sighed. “Look, I know what you said earlier, all your points-”

“I wasn’t aware command decisions, let alone legal determinations, were the bailiwick of the Head of Science,” Janya said, although to be honest she couldn’t think of a better candidate, with the possible exception of General Moral Decay (Alcohol). “This is the Captain’s decision. Or the Commander’s,” she added, when Zeegon rolled his eyes. “Or
Sally’s
. I can’t see her just standing back and letting her prisoner go free.”

“Yeah,” Zeegon said, “but whenever we bring it up to Z-Lin, she says it would be insensitive to
you
,” he waved a hand, taking in her scar-striped face, “seeing as how he cut on you and all. She makes it sound like you’re kind of the main one standing in the way here. If even
you
spoke up about letting him out, our position would be that much stronger and Z-Lin wouldn’t have that easy out.”

“You’re using some plurals there,” Janya noted. “Who else is involved?”

“That doesn’t matter. It’s not just me, that’s all. I’m just … nobody wants to say it this way, but look – Cratch is a
doctor
, alright? He’s disgraced and all, sure, but he’s got medical training and right now all we have are…” he waved a hand, “Wingus and Dingus in the medical bay, and Sally and Clue with a bit of battlefield triage, and Decay who I think did an elective course on humans as part of his
veterinary
studies. Like, two hundred years ago,” Janya let him get it all out. “It’s just … okay, maybe if we’d had more than Wingus and Dingus on deck, maybe if Cratch had been out of the brig when we were in the bonefields, we could have saved more people.”

“I can only say to that what I’ve said
every
time,” Janya replied calmly, “so I don’t understand this whole ‘trying your luck again’ thing. Nothing has changed since last time, so I’m not sure what bearing on reality it should have for you to repeat the question.”

“I-”

“I’ve never stated an opinion one way or another as to whether he should be released,” Janya said firmly. “It’s not my call and it’s not my place to sway the decision either way with my
feelings
about it. I’m sorry if the Commander and the Chief Tactical Officer have let my alleged feelings affect their decision-making process, but that doesn’t change the fact that it
is
their decision to make. I can deal only with facts as I see them.”

“And the facts, as you see them, are that Cratch should stay in the brig indefinitely,” Zeegon said, “even though we’re basically adrift out here, and there’s only ten of us left.”

“The
fact
, as I see it,” Janya replied, “is that if you let him out, Glomulus Cratch
will kill us all
. He won’t go on a rampage. He won’t do it immediately. But we will all die before we get him to a secure facility. Do you want me to say something different?” she spread her scar-lined hands. “give me some new information that has some altering effect on reality.”

“We can take precautions,” Zeegon said.

“Precautions?” Janya twitched an eyebrow. “Like a shock-collar?”

“I mean, like, well okay – there are these shaped incendiary explosives, we could mount them on bracelets and anklets for him to wear, and … what?”

Janya realised she was staring. “I’m sorry,” she said, “that’s just very, very stupid. I thought I was ready for it, but apparently I wasn’t.”

“What’s stupid?” Zeegon flared. “Put them on him, and give us all triggers, then any time he looks like causing trouble-” he mimed pressing a thumb down on a grenade-like detonator. “It’d incapacitate him, and the bracelets I was reading about can tighten and seal the wounds, keep him from bleeding too much…”

“You’ve
researched
this.”

“Sorry to step on your toes, but you didn’t seem to be about to offer anything,” Zeegon said in huffy frustration.

“That’s because I didn’t have anything that was better than the ship’s
brig
,” Janya replied. “And neither do you,” Zeegon opened his mouth to protest, but she went on calmly. “You are talking about a human who killed three Molren – three
military-trained Molren
, and almost simultaneously – using a four-inch function-remote peg, and you want to give him explosives.”

“He’d never be able to
tamper
with them,” Zeegon said. “They’re tamper-proof. They’d go off. They can also be set to go off if he moves outside a set area, so we can confine him to quarters.”

“And if he calls your bluff, you’ll end up with a medical staff member with no hands and feet,” Janya said, rather than tackle the huge, crumbling cliff-wall that was the very idea of ‘tamper-proof’ security measures, where Glomulus Cratch was involved. “What then?”

“We can replace hands and feet,” Zeegon said. “Able – eejit stock limbs, refabbed with his genetic profile. Identical to the originals,” she couldn’t help but notice his eyes dip to her hand, with its intentionally-slightly-mismatched finger, then rise back up. “You know. Practically.”