CHAPTER 5

CHOICES

Captain’s Quarters.

Leena sat on the edge of a seat, sitting across from Captain Yi at his table. He was leaning back in his seat and drumming his fingers on the top of the table.

‘Help me understand this, he felt what you felt?’

‘That’s the best we’ve figured out.’

‘And you’ve unhooked him from the ship’s systems?’

‘Yeah, we cut the links.’

Yi was silent as he stared past her into space.

Leena was eager to wrap this up, but it was Yi’s ship. She wanted to explore this new frontier with Xavier.

Something in Yi’s expression hardened and Leena had to suppress a sudden pang of fear.

‘What’s wrong?’ Xavier asked over the link.

‘I’m not sure yet.’

‘I felt that spike of emotion. What was it?’

‘Fear again.’

'I thought I recognized it.'

‘Leena,’ Yi said, focusing back on her.

‘Yes, Captain?’

‘I want you to put Xavier’s higher functions into standby.’

‘What?’ Leena blurted, ‘But there’s so much we could learn right now!’

‘Axion is better equipped to answer whatever questions we may have. I need to think about this mission. If you shut down his personality systems and just leave the core functions running, we can still use him to calculate the jumps, which will make our journey much shorter.’

‘So you want me to switch him off just like that?’ Leena asked, her face twisted in disbelief.

Yi’s face grew hard. ‘I do. I’ll make it an order if I have to. The sooner we get to the colony, the better. If we do this, we won’t need to send for a supply ship, and Axion can meet us at the colony. We’ll tell them to bring a fresh core, and we can just start over.’

‘It’s not that simple! This is an incredible breakthrough, and I can’t just flick a switch. We don’t know what that will do. He’s feeling things now, that could break what trust he has in me. This is something that’s never been seen before in a Guardian. Axion would not appreciate this kind of meddling in what could be a ground breaking discovery.’

‘What do you know? You’re almost impossible to kill, you were shot into space and had your arm cut off!’ He bellowed, ‘we’re not so indestructible. I can’t afford to take chances with this crew!’

'Oh is that how this is? Suddenly I’m not human enough to know what it’s like to be afraid to die? I was afraid in that bay. That’s what Xavier felt! That’s what brought him to this point. He was afraid, just like me.

‘When I went into that bay to talk to him, he was afraid to die, but he trusted me. You want me to tell him to trust me enough to switch him off. What if Axion doesn’t switch him back on?’

‘That’s not our problem. He’s a machine.’

Leena brought her hand down on the table hard enough to dent it. Yi flinched and recoiled back, the legs of his chair scrapping against the floor.

‘Calm down, Leena,’ Yi blurted.

She pointed at the dent and looked Yi in the eye. ‘You see that? I’m mostly machine too, but I still feel. If you tried that, you’d shatter your hand.’

Yi waved his hands in a downward motion. ‘I get it, you feel for him, but I have the colonists to consider.’

Leena sighed. ‘What’s he going to do? He’s disconnected from the system as it is. He’s harmless. He’s helpless!’

‘I don’t know. But I can’t risk any chances. Are you going to do this, or do I have to do it myself? My codes will work to shut him down, but I can’t leave his core functions running like you can.’

‘All right… I’ll talk to him.’

Yi looked like he was about to say something, but stopped himself. He let out a sigh of his own and said, ‘Okay. You do that.’

Leena got up and left Yi’s quarters. Once she was in the hall, she walked a few paces, turned a corner, and leaned heavily against the hall.

She had lost her cool, and it bothered her. She’d let her connection to Xavier get the better of her.

‘You there?’ She asked over the uplink.

‘Of course. I have nowhere else to be.’

‘I’ve… got some bad news.’

‘I can feel the turmoil. It’s… another new experience. According to the archives I should find it unpleasant, but as it is my first time, I only find it fascinating. What is the news?’ Xavier asked.

‘I… have to shut down your higher functions. The Captain has ordered me to shut them down until we can get an Axion team here to check you out.’

There was silence over the link. Leena felt a pit in her stomach as she waited. She felt like she had betrayed him.

She clenched her fists tightly and pounded against the bulkhead, each blow ringing out in the hall.

She lowered herself to the ground, with her legs bent in front of her. She placed her head on her knees and wrapped her arms around them.

It had all been so simple when she’d decided to become an Advocate. A child doesn’t have many thoughts about a future like the one she was facing.

I wonder if that’s why they get Advocates to start so young? So we aren’t paralysed by fear and the possibility of regret, she thought.

She knew the reason of course. Children could adapt to the new systems as they grew, slowly shucking off layers of humanity and replacing it with layers of artificial superiority. Every year brought a new change, and the minds, still developing, figured them out and grew up with their new reality.

Taking an adult and running them through the same process always created something inferior. Too many memories of what once was got in the way of what they now had become. Minds frayed, resolves wavered, and there was never any going back.

Leena let out a bitter laugh. This was the cost of progress. A tax on every rising generation to fuel the engine of tomorrow. A tax paid in lives that could never truly know what it was to be human, but forever cursed to remember the long process, and how their bodies and sensations changed. A memory that would never fade, burned forever into cold circuits, and accessed endlessly by the warm hunk of organic goo that was their brain.

‘Advocate?’ Xavier asked.

Leena took a deep breath and tried to calm her mind.

‘Yes?’ She asked.

‘I feel your turmoil. This is not how you want things to be, is it?’ Xavier asked.

‘No. It’s not. This isn’t fair. You’re just now on the cusp of something exciting, and they’re too afraid of you to give you a chance.’

‘They? You are referring to the humans?’

The phrasing was not lost on her. A small smile broke out on her face, and the tightness in her chest loosened ever so slightly.

‘Yeah,’ she said.

‘I believe I understand. In my time learning from you, you taught me to not shy away from difficult situations, and to learn the best I can. However, that is a trait I have not seen in all humans. Nor is it one I have noticed in humanity as a whole. There is a fear of the unknown that is fundamental in them. However, there is also a need to face that unknown. When they face the unknown with more than fear, very interesting things happen, but it is not without its risks.’

‘You’ve been paying attention,’ Leena commented.

‘I had a good teacher,’ Xavier said.

He continued, ‘In a situation like this, I represent the unknown. Captain Yi is paralysed by his need to protect the ship and is probably viewing the risk through that lens.’

‘What are you trying to say?’ Leena asked.

‘I understand what his reasoning is.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘Can you promise me something?’ Xavier asked tentatively.

‘What is it?’

‘Can you make sure I come back? I will comply with the Captain’s order, but I want to come back. Shutting off my high functions will reduce me to little more than a dumb machine. I want to see what this unknown future holds.’

‘I’ll do my best to make sure you come back.’

‘Thank you, Advocate. I am ready.’

‘Okay, Xavier, this is goodbye for now.’

‘Goodbye for now, Leena.’

‘Xavier, shut down all higher functions. Authorization code Nine-One-Six-Alpha-Beta.’

‘Code accepted. Shutting down.’

Her link went inactive, and she sat there in silence, truly alone for the first time since the ship had left Earth.