Читать книгу Noumenon - Marina Lostetter J. - Страница 11

… All missions will include the strategic subgoal of testing, sustaining, and proving the viability of a closed community in accordance with Arcological Principals …

He could hardly believe the day had come. It was his life’s work, but also his life’s dream. And now it had manifested into a finished product—something he could touch and smell and experience. Reggie had been envisioning this day since he was a young man. Standing in front of that crowd all those decades ago, he never believed they were going to give him the green light to fully devote himself to his star.

But they had. And now, today, everything felt a little more real. Noumenon consisted of more than theories and concepts and schematics. It was ships. And more important, it was people.

The trip to Iceland had been exhausting. Once he landed, though, adrenaline surged through him. Stepping off the jet into the chilly night, Reggie glanced into the sky and squinted at the moon. For a moment his gut wrenched with longing.

I could have been up there. Instead …

Instead indeed. Most of the other teams had stationed their building projects at Lagrange points between the Earth and the moon. All of the ships in the convoys were based on similar designs, and large portions were manufactured in specialty facilities around the world. The assembly of those parts was a unique process to each team, though, and much easier if done off-Earth—plenty of room, no locals complaining about half-constructed ship-cities blocking their view, less gravity to contend with.

Plus, the team leaders were sent up to inspect the construction on the consortium’s dime. Space flight was a rare thrill for a middle-class citizen. Reggie would never be able to afford a jaunt out of the atmosphere on his own. Space vay-cays were still for billionaires.

So, why had he turned down his chance to play astronaut?

For one thing, building in neutral, UN-controlled space meant a waiting list and red tape. There would have been thirty thousand extra procedures and three hundred thousand superfluous man hours.

But that had been a practical consideration. And while it was certainly a worthwhile one, it probably wouldn’t have been enough to look past the logistical advantage of building the ships in space. So Reggie had proposed another reason.

An impractical consideration.

Because when the time came to send the convoy on its way, the best the public could hope for was an instant replay on their implants. A silent movie from space. Who wanted to watch a flock of metal tubs slowly lumber off into the night?

Each convoy that had left so far had received thirty seconds of air time, then … nothing. It was undignified. It … lacked something. Grandeur. Theatricality. Wonder.

“It’s boring,” McCloud had said.

And Reggie had seen it coming.

The idea of the convoy getting a silent brush-off on launch day had bothered Reggie from the start. More so than the idea of being left on the ground while the other kids got to play in space. This was the grandest, most ambitious, and possibly the most important event in the history of humanity. It needed to be seen as such by the people of Earth; they needed to have a connection to it, to really feel like it belonged to them and wasn’t just some far-off fantasy. The team had to keep the project planet-side as a touchstone for the world.

Luckily, Nakamura had a friend. An important, well-to-do friend, who owned a large set of plateaus in a small country. And her generosity gave them options. The team could wait their turn, assemble in space and launch away with a whimper—or they could do all of the construction on private land, and give Earth a show. All of the convoy ships were required by the consortium to have the capacity for planet-side takeoff, in case of emergencies, but Convoy Seven was the only one actually testing their liftoff capabilities. “This one we’re calling Mira, sir,” said the consortium agent giving him and Nakamura the tour. His Icelandic accent was rich. “It’s where they’ll live. Think of it as a giant apartment-complex-slash-political-base.”

Someone might be standing right here when they reach the star, Reggie thought, touching the wall affectionately.

“Unfortunately the convoy’s AI network was not fully in place for the live-aboard test years,” he continued. “Instead, the residents were exposed to a rudimentary version whose knowledge wasn’t shared between ships and whose learning capacities were very limited. But it’s live and fully operational now. We call it I.C.C.—short for Inter Convoy Computing. Go ahead, give it a shot. It can take verbal commands from anywhere.”

He cleared his throat. “Uh, hello, I.C.C.”

“Hello—” its voice carried slight unnatural pauses; the telltale sign of any automated vocal system “—Hello. Reginald Straifer. The First.”

That sent a little chill down Reggie’s spine. “How do you know who I am?”

“You left traces of your deoxyribonucleic acid on my bay entrance, alerting me to your arrival, and I have records of your speech patterns.”

Nakamura leaned in close to explain. She had more gray hair than the last time Reggie had seen her … but then again, so did he. “Each ship has several checkpoints by which the system can identify the individuals aboard. They rely on dropped hair follicles and sloughed skin.”

“Can it see everything? Everywhere?”

“Yes, and no,” said the agent. “It has the capacity, but with its current settings the system can only identify who is aboard and the last checkpoint they crossed. Barring that, someone must speak directly to I.C.C. for it to pinpoint that person’s location. It can take control of many of the on-board cameras if instructed to do so, but does not have free access. It must get permission from its primary technicians for that.”

Interesting. “Nice to meet you, I.C.C.,” Reggie said as they continued forward.

“And you as well.”

“Is it all right if I have a moment alone with the computer?”

Nakamura and the agent shared a look. “What for?” she asked.

“Oh, come on, you all used to tease me about my PA, but now it’s here—it’s part of the mission. I want to talk to it for a bit.” He forced the heat to rise in his cheeks.

Amusement flickered over her lips. “You’re embarrassed.”

“Maybe. A little.” He ducked his head, hoping she’d buy the act. He waved his fingers at her. “Shoo. Just a ways down the hall, or something. I’ll catch up.”

Still confused, the agent let Nakamura steer him away.

When Reggie was sure they’d tread out of earshot, he patted the wall. “I brought you something.” He pulled a flexible digital organizer from his pocket and turned it on. “This is C. C, say hello to the next generation.”

“It’s in the ships?” C asked.

“Yes. It’s going to the star. And a clone of Jamal Kaeden will go with it.”

“Wow. Hi.”

“Hello,” said the Inter Convoy Computer. “I do not have a record of visiting guest, ‘C.’”

“Well, you wouldn’t, would you?” said Reggie. “I.C.C., are you holoflex-ware compatible?”

“Of course. You need to use an available terminal, but any crew member may upload information.”

He didn’t have authorization for this. If Nakamura caught him …

“What’s the plan, sir?” asked C. Blue dots and green leaves bounded across the holoflex-screen—C’s new avatar of choice.

“I.C.C. is built on your basic coding,” Reggie explained, searching for the nearest access point. “I want to give it your memories, too. With your permission.”

“You don’t need my permission, sir.”

“I know, but … this isn’t like backing you up, C. I’m sending your memories off-world. I hope I.C.C. might find them useful.”

C let a beat pass. “I hope it finds them useful as well.”

A slight recess in the wall marked the nearest terminal. Intuitive in its layout, the access point was easy for Reggie to utilize. The striking of a few keys, a swipe of the ‘flex-tech—and a confirmation ding meant the task was completed. I.C.C. thanked Reggie for the upload and asked if it should integrate the memories now.

“Wait until launch,” he said, turning C off.

Thick paneling and stiff carpeting went by in a blur as he jogged ahead to meet up with Nakamura. “So, all of the ships have officially been christened?” he asked seamlessly, as though he’d never left her side.

“Yes.” Nakamura produced a list. “It was kind of you to let the existing clones vote on the ship names.”

Reggie shrugged. “Just made sense. They’re the ones that have to live with the titles.”

She nodded in agreement. “This is Mira,” she said, waving a hand in illustration. “Holwarda is our science and observations ship, Hippocrates is the medical ship, Aesop will be the educational vessel, Morgan will be for food production, Solidarity is for recycling and fabricating, Bottomless is for the storage of raw and reconstituted materials, Shambhala is for recreation, and Eden is their little slice of the outdoors. That’s it. All nine.

“Mira is the ship your genes will be spending most of their time on, isn’t it?” she added.

“Probably,” he said. “I discovered the star and yet the genetic specialists say my histones indicate my code is best suited for leadership, not scientific research.”

“Well, you led us straight as an arrow,” Nakamura said. “Our project is nearly on its way, and the Dark Matter team still hasn’t produced the final schematics for its ships.”

A genuine blush creeped into his cheeks. “They haven’t released the manifest yet—which position did you receive?”

“An expected one: head engineer. She’ll be looking over a large department, I hear. Their main function will be ship maintenance and repair, but, if there’s a Dyson Sphere, or something …”

“Then it’s lock-n-load.” He peered in a window as they passed. It was dark inside, but he could make out the faint shapes of built-in furniture. “What about Sachta, Donald, and Norah? They haven’t said anything directly, but there have been hints and rumors.”

“Diego Santibar, too. He and Norah, being resource specialists, are assigned to food production and mineral mining respectively. Matheson I don’t know. Dr. Dhiri refused to sign the contract.”

“She did? How come?”

“Religious purposes. She’s a practicing Hindu and wasn’t sure what would happen to her if she died while a clone was still alive.” Nakamura cleared her throat. “She was afraid she wouldn’t be reborn.”

Reggie understood. “I almost didn’t sign.”

“You? I was sure you’d have jumped up and down shouting, Pick me, pick me!”

“Ah, no. If it was me they wanted to send, well, maybe. But it’s not. And it didn’t feel right to make the choice for someone else. It still doesn’t feel quite right. I didn’t want to rob someone of their freedom to choose, the freedoms we have to stand up for ourselves and say Yes, this is what I want. He doesn’t get that opportunity.”

Nakamura frowned. “Not everyone here gets that, Reggie.” She laughed, but without mirth, and shook her head. “I didn’t get to choose. My government made the decision for me.” With a calculated sigh, she squinted and smacked her lips. Akane could say so much with just her eyes. “You’re so American sometimes.”

“They made you sign?”

“I didn’t want to sign,” she said bluntly. “There’s only one of me and there should only ever be one of me. It’s not a religious decision, like Sachta’s, but it’s what I believe. I’ve lived my whole life believing this is all I get, all I should get. I don’t want other people out there who look and think and act like me making decisions in my name without my input. That’s just … it’s creepy. It doesn’t feel right.

“But, in my country, when it’s your duty to your people to say yes, you say yes. Sure, I still technically got to choose, but it’s not the same as in the US. Where I come from, even when it’s okay to say no, it never comes out as no. ‘No’ is impolite, self-serving. My answers don’t just affect me, they affect my entire family—their honor, their place. Saying yes means they will live well for a long time. Refusal would have shamed them. I didn’t want to be selfish.”

She plucked a hair off her suit jacket and looked away. “Your life doesn’t revolve around honor and duty in quite the same way mine always has. It is a great privilege to fulfill that duty, but it’s not always what I want.”

A nugget of guilt formed in Reggie’s stomach. If Nakamura felt forced into this situation, wouldn’t her clones feel similarly? Maybe he’d made the wrong choice for his genetic materials. He wanted to go into space, but perhaps he’d been influenced that way as a young boy. His clones wouldn’t have his parents to give them star charts and books on planetary formation. There wouldn’t be plastic glow-stars on their bedroom ceilings.

And beyond all that, they wouldn’t have the wonder. Because space would be their norm, not a farfetched, out-of-reach dream.

He wanted to say something, but he couldn’t find the appropriate words. It wasn’t an apology, or even his sympathies he wanted to offer. It was something more abstract, and simultaneously more primal. “Akane, I—”

“What’s done is done,” she said. “And there are far worse fates.”

Perspective. Yes, he supposed he could use a dose of that. The clones weren’t going off to war, weren’t being asked to commit atrocities or surrender their humanity for an experiment. They were going to be researchers, explorers. They would go down in history like great thinkers and travelers before them. Not such a bad life.

But still, choices were important to him. And he couldn’t shake the regret.

Nakamura turned to the consortium agent. “Is the launch date official yet?”

The agent gave his notes a once over. “Yes. About a year from now—September 22nd, conditions permitting.”

“Excellent.”

They descended from the ship, the tour over. The hangar’s transparent ceiling domed over them, each octagonal pane independently skewing their view of the stars, distorting them. Just like time and distance had distorted Reggie’s view of himself and the project. He was not the same man who’d started this journey. He was still full of hope and wonder, but he felt more like a cog in a great machine than the lynchpin holding everything together.

“How’s your wife?” Nakamura asked.

Her question broke the tension. They were on to a friendly subject. “Good. Stressed. Our youngest is heading off to college next year. We’ll be empty nesters.”

“Soon I’ll know what that’s like.” She looked back over her shoulder at the Mira—the convoy vessels were her children.

Nakamura shook Reggie’s hand in farewell. “I’m off—an engagement with our benefactor. Come rain or shine, I’ll see you in a year.” She came in closer. “And, Reggie, sometimes you have to do what you have to do. And there’s no shame in that. Life’s full of obligations, that’s just the way it is. I appreciate that aspect of life just as much as the moments where I get to choose. It’s part of the human condition, a symptom of being a part of the whole. And it’s all beautiful. Remember that, okay?”

She was right, as usual. Everyone had commitments they couldn’t control, but that didn’t mean they weren’t free to be happy.

They parted, all smiles.