The Passenger Ch. 05

The Passenger

Chapter 5

In space, especially in hyperspace, you are completely isolated.

In realspace it's distance, gravity and delta-vee (the term pilots use for differences in velocity) that keeps you physically separated from anyone outside the ship. Yes, communication is still possible, but the high cost of planet-to-ship comms keeps that to a minimum. In hyperspace it's even worse, simply because there is nothing at all outside the ship. Some people can't take the isolation, and they come down with serious cases of cabin fever. Spacers, on the other hand, tend to love the isolation and often find it peaceful and comforting. But nothing is entirely without its drawbacks.

Because nothing inside or outside the ship ever changes, you can easily lose track of day and night. You try to keep a normal rhythm, using ship's time to treat parts of the daily cycle as day and night, but sometimes the body has other ideas and you slip into a cycle based on its own demands. You eat when you feel hungry, you sleep when you feel tired, and you're awake when you don't. No matter what the shipboard clock tells you, it simply ceases to matter.

Maybe I was getting another touch of that now, because I simply couldn't sleep. No matter how I tried, I felt wide awake and sleep stubbornly refused to come. So I used the time to silently wrestle with myself. Myself quickly beat me two out of three. He's a much better wrestler than I am.

Which forced me to face the question that had been increasingly bothering me: how do you tell someone you love that all her memories are a sham; that the life she remembers never happened and in reality she started out as a sex droid with an AI brain installed in it? What would it do to her? It was sure to shake her self-image to a point where she would have serious problems finding herself again. It might very well destroy her identity! I simply couldn't tell her.

But I had to tell her. She had to know. She had the right to know. But I shuddered to think of the consequences.

"How can I do that to her?" I silently asked myself.

Myself wouldn't budge.

"You've got to," he said. "You have no other option."

"I know I must. But I can't."

"Yes, you can. Find a way."

Myself was right. But so was I. Hence our conflict.

Then he dealt me a low blow.

"What would Lisa have wanted you to do?" he said.

"Shut up," I replied.

But the damage was done. Myself was right and I knew it. I had to tell her. Lisa would have told me so in no uncertain terms. Even after all these years, she was still very much a part of me. Certainly her values and opinions were, and they probably always would be.

Which brought me back right were I started. I had to tell her. But how could I?

Then Anne stirred against me.

"Harvey?"

"Hmm?"

"What's wrong?"

"Wrong?" I weaseled. "Why do you ask?"

She turned to face me, giving me a look that tried to be stern but showed concern more than anything else.

"I have never felt you this tense," she said. "And you haven't slept at all."

"Have I been keeping you awake?"

She shook her head.

"I don't sleep much most of the time. Please tell me. What's the problem?"

And I knew the moment had arrived, whether I liked it or not.

She reached out, caressed my face with her fingertips.

"Just tell me," she said. "What's wrong with me?"

"Why do you think there's something wrong with you?" I said lamely.

"Let's cut through the bullshit, Harvey," she said with uncharacteristic heat. "You've been worried about me since we managed to get out of the Vergence complex. And it's not just the fact that they might catch up with us. I can tell. I've seen that same tense look in your eyes every time you looked at me. We've had plenty of things to worry about lately, but this has to do with me. I know it does."

I nodded.

"You're right. It does. But... I don't know how to tell you this, Anne. Because it's going to hurt you. And I don't want to hurt you."

"You're having second thoughts about having me on board? Is that it?"

I shook my head.

"No! Absolutely not. I love you and I want to be with you. Nothing has changed when it comes to that."

She gave me half a smile, half an exasperated frown.

"And I love you. And that means that I trust you. But I need you to do the same, Harvey. Can you do that?"

I nodded.

"I can and I do. I just don't want you to get hurt. Ever. But..."

"But nothing. Pain is part of life. We've come this far together, Harvey. Either this is something you trust me enough to tell me or it isn't. But you have to decide."

She was right, and I knew it. I took another deep breath, let it out in a sigh.

"Okay," I said. "But remember that you asked. Because this will hurt."

She nodded. The look on her face was apprehensive but determined. She was as ready to hear this as she was going to get.

"It's about those fainting spells you had during our flight to Ursa, and then again when those assholes at Vergence held us hostage," I began.

She nodded.

"I'd been wondering about that," she said. "I've never had that happen to me before. It's that what has you so worried?"

"In a manner. The thing is... Those were no ordinary fainting spells. You see..."

I paused. I hesitated. There was no easy way to say this. But she held my hand, quietly giving me the strength to go on. I swallowed a lump that suddenly had materialized in my throat. It wasn't easy, because the block of polycrete in my stomach got in the way.

"It's also about those AI units that Vergence tricked us into shipping for them," I forced myself to say. "That technology was not just in our cargo hold. It's... It's also in you."

She looked at me for a long moment.

"I don't understand," she said finally.

I let go of a sigh that I hadn't realized I was holding in.

"They didn't want you just as a technician, Anne. They..."

"They what?" she said calmly.

Too calmly. Maybe she was beginning to see where I was going. If she did, she sure wasn't having any of it.

"Anne... They wanted you because you are their prototype. Or at least one of their prototypes. There may be more, for all we know."

The look she gave me was complex, to say the least. Her eyes showed concern (probably for my sanity) combined with outright refusal to believe what I was saying and a conviction that the weirdness would soon go away and it all would start to make sense.

"You remember growing up on the research station, and living on Iota, and working for Vergence on Radix," I continued. "But the reality is more than a little different. They programmed you to remember all that. I'm sorry, Anne, but the life you remember never really happened. You're probably no more than a few years old. They implanted one of their AI units into you, and they programmed it with a set of memories to give it a background identity. Then waited to see how well it worked, but what happened then was something they hadn't expected. You emerged. You became the self-aware, independent, conscious being that you are now. The AI unit that is your brain has far exceeded its original parameters, and it still continues to grow."

She looked at me for a moment, speechless.

"Anne, what you need to understand is--"

"I know you've been under a lot of strain lately," she interrupted me.

I shook my head.

"I know it sounds like I've burned out a few processors. But I haven't. It's true."

"Is it? Then tell me this," she said, the tone of her voice challenging. "How can an AI unit be implanted into a human body? It's impossible, Harvey, I know that much. AI hardware and organics are fundamentally incompatible. You can't integrate the interface of an AI unit in an organic nervous system. You're talking nonsense."

"No, Anne. In your case it is possible because... your body is also artificial."

"Artificial. Seriously? Harvey, I'm flesh and blood. I'm not sure how you could fail to notice that!"

"On the outside, yes. But your body is only partially organic. And all of it is artificial."

"You're saying I'm a droid?"

"No. I'm saying you're an AI. But your body is based on droid technology."

"So I'm an AI brain in a droid body? Seriously? I'm sorry, Harvey, but that's insane. If you believe that, then you really do have a few processors burnt out."

I could see that she was getting very upset. Not that I could blame her. But now that I had started this, I had to finish it.

"Anne... Do you remember our first evening together, on the Slowboat? We sat, we ate, we talked. You told me about your trip from Iota on the Excalibur. Do you remember that?"

"Of course," she said curtly.

"Do you remember what you told me?"

"Of course I do. I..." She hesitated.

"Think back," I said, when she didn't continue. "Tell me about that trip on the Excalibur. From start to finish."

"Fine," she snapped. "I told you I needed to get of Iota, right?"

I nodded.

"But I couldn't afford the passage, so I tried to get a job on a ship, to anywhere at all. I got nowhere for a few weeks and then I ran into Leetha Barr. I don't know if that was her real name, but that's what she called herself. She was captain of the Excalibur, and she gave me a job as a scrubber. The work was monotonous but easy, and I did it for a few weeks until the end of the flight, and that's pretty much it."

I nodded.

"So what do you remember about your time on board? The rest of the crew? How you spent your off-duty time?"

She hesitated. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again.

"There's nothing about any of that, is there?" I asked gently. "No memory at all."

She looked at me, swallowed, and terrible things were happening behind those beautiful green eyes. I took her hand. It was clammy with sweat. She shivered.

"I knew. I used to know," she said in a voice that I could barely recognize as hers. "I remember telling you about it. But now... It's all... just... blank."

I nodded.

"During our flight to Ursa you suddenly collapsed, because your implanted memories created a conflict that overloaded your neural matrix," I explained. "Your brain literally crashed. Pete diagnosed the problem and then he removed the conflicting memory segments to stabilize you. But what he didn't do was to remove the memories of those memories. That's why you remember knowing, but you no longer do know."

She shook her head.

"No. No, no, no. That's impossible. Trust me, Harvey, I'm human. I know I am! I breathe. I eat. I go to the bathroom. Hell, I have orgasms! What kind of droid could have...?"

She fell silent for a moment.

"Oh," she said then. "Right."

I just nodded. She had already realized what the answer to that question was.

"Your body is very advanced," I said. "Much of it is organic, including its digestive system. In fact, digestion is part of your power supply. As for the rest..."

"I'm a sex droid," she said, and the pain in her voice cut right into my heart. "I'm a machine."

"Part of you was, maybe, once," I corrected her. "That's the thing, Anne: you may have started out as an AI with a droid body, but that's no longer what you are. You are a fully developed, sentient, intelligent woman now. You can make your own decisions. You have your own likes and hates. You can... You can even love... and be loved."

She turned toward me, tears welling up in her eyes. I held out my hand and she grabbed it like it was a rescue line. I pulled her close and held her while she cried.

She cried for a long time, her body shaking with great, deep sobs as the pain poured out of her. When the torrent of her grief finally began to subside, I pulled her close and continued to hold her, my hand gently caressing her hair.

"I'm sorry," I said softly. "I never wanted to cause you pain."

"I wish you hadn't told me," she whispered. "How long have you known this?"

"Since we arrived at the Vergence complex. Brax told me. Then Pete proved it to me. I didn't know how to tell you, because I didn't want you to be hurt like this."

"So why did you?" she sniffed. "I would have been happier not knowing."

"Because you have to know. Vergence will want you back, so they'll be after us. You need to know that, and you need to know why. You also need to know that I'm not going to let any of that happen. And, of course, you'll fail any medical examination you'll ever have. And, last but not least, your brain is proscribed technology. That may set of any sort of scanners or detectors, and we'll have to take make sure that won't happen." I sighed. "Anne, I wish I could have avoided this. I want you to be happy. I don't want you to get hurt. I'd have given anything not to have to tell you this."

She looked at me, an indecipherable expression on her face.

"How can you love me?" she said. "A sex droid. A machine. Or do you love me? Do you really? Was it all fake? Is it just the sex you wanted?"

I reached out, caressed her face.

"It's not fake, Anne. None of it. I love you. And you're not a machine. Yes, your body and your brain started out as one, originally. But you're no longer what you used to be. You're a person, a real person, a wonderful person. Could a machine cry like you're doing now? Could a machine feel what you are feeling right now? No, my love, you're real. You're wonderful. And I love you."

I held her as she cried. She cried for a long time.

* * *

"You know what I don't understand?" she said the next morning.

I shook my head.

"Why I believe you."

She was standing at the front of the cabin, staring at the luminescent blackness of hyperspace beyond the window.

There is something strange about that view. Sometimes hyperspace seems to want to draw you into that emptiness. But because it's a nothingness that is so intensely nothing that it's not even there at all, looking into it for too long is not a good thing. It's strange, but there seems to be something inside all of us that wants to surrender to that nothingness and become lost in it.

"I shouldn't believe any of it," she went on. "It sounds ridiculous; it feels ridiculous. It is ridiculous. And yet I believe you. And I don't know why."

I stood behind her, put my arms around her. She put her hands on my wrists and pulled them against her. We stood there for a few long moments; her back against my chest, the warmth of her body infusing me.

"I feel..." she started.

I held her, saying nothing, giving her time to gather her thoughts.

"I don't know how to describe it," she finally said. "I feel..."

"Violated?" I suggested.

She nodded.

"Yes. But it's not just that. It's..." She hesitated, then went on: "My whole life is a lie. Whatever I remember isn't even mine. Or at least most of it... Not all of it, I guess, because there must have been a point where it started to become real. But I don't know when that is, so I don't know what's real and what isn't."

She sighed, and the look in her eyes was haunted.

"And that's only about the parts that I still remember," she continued. "I used to remember more than I do now, and even though it never was real to begin with, it still bothers me that it's gone. I don't even know how much of it is gone."

I thought for a moment.

"Maybe that is something I help you with," I said. "A little bit, at least. Let's sit down."

I gently drew her away from the window. If nothing else, it would at least get her eyes off the beckoning non-void of hyperspace. I sat her down at the table, punched two hot, steaming mugs of the good stuff out of Raz' unfamiliar autokitchen, and sat down next to her. I took a sip and thought for a moment about how I was going to phrase this.

"Okay," I said. "You remember a life that you didn't live yourself, at least in part. The older your memories are, the more likely they are to be false. Being born and growing up on the research station at Kappa Ceti; your life on Iota... Those are probably all implanted memories. Brax said it was all heavily edited, so I don't think we'll ever find out where they originally came from. Your trip on the Excalibur... Maybe, maybe not. There's no way to tell. But there is a point, somewhere, at which your memories become your own. We just don't know yet where that point is."

She nodded glumly.

"So," I continued, "The memories that created the conflict resulting in your... fainting spells all had to do with emotion, with love, and with sex. As I understand it, the main reason why things went wrong was that you fell in love with me."

"So why didn't Pete cut that out of me, too, while he was hacking around inside me anyway?" she said bitterly.

"Because he couldn't. It was too much a part of you. Love is a state of being, Anne, not a memory. I can't be edited out of you."

"But memories can. So I'm not just a droid, I'm a broken droid."

I shook my head.

"No, Anne. You're not. And I'll tell you why."

I took another sip and thought for a moment.

"When I was about six years old," I began, "I climbed all the way up to the top of the tree behind our house. It was a beautiful evergreen, fairly easy to climb. It was exciting and a little scary, and the view from up there was absolutely spectacular. Until the branch that I was sitting on broke."

I stared at the bulkhead for a second, remembering.

"It cracked, and then it bent, and suddenly all I could think of was all that empty air around me and below me. To this very day I can still feel that branch giving way under me. I can still hear the sound of the wood breaking. I started to fall, and everything seemed to happen in slow motion. If some of the lower branches hadn't slowed me down and I hadn't landed in the bushes that grew under the tree, I'd have been dead. As it was, I broke a lot of bones that took a long and painful time to heal, because our local village doctor didn't have anything like a subdermal regenerator. Splints and stitches were about the best he could do."

She looked at me, listening, hoping that all this would start to make sense eventually.

"I don't think I told you how much I hate working outside the ship in zero gee. I hate EV work with a passion. You probably noticed when I went out to connect the fuel line."

She nodded.

"You were very stressed."

"Scared shitless is more like it. Anne, every time the gravity drops to zero, I'm falling out of that tree again. Every time I'm out in space in a pressure suit, I'm tumbling down again into that emptiness beneath me. It scares the crap out of me. I've had to see a shrink for a while, because the first time I had to go EV, I just couldn't. The hypnotherapy helped a little, so at least I can do it now when I need to, but I'm going to need a lot more before I can go EV without shitting myself."

"I see where you're going with this. I think. But it's not the same."

"Not quite, no. What was done to you was brutal and invasive, and it was done without any respect for you as a person, not to mention that it was done without your consent. But the principle in itself is not so different. Sometimes our histories, and the things we've been through, create conflicts within us. And while editing your memories, or suppressing mine through hypnosis or something similar, is a radical thing, sometimes it is at least a way to fix a problem."

She took a sip from her mug, stared in the distance.

"If you had a memory suppressed hypnotically," she said after a while, "it would come back if I told you exactly what it was, right?"

"Hm... I'm not sure. Probably."

"But if you told me exactly what it was that Pete cut out of me, I don't think it would come back. Not like it was before. You could tell me what I'm missing now, but that wouldn't bring it back."

"No. It wouldn't. And in that respect it is different."

"Because I'm a machine," she said.