Bellona Colony, Eridani
2 years 7 months 4 days
Ben grimaced and looked at the harried doctor.
“Why the hell did you use them?”
Dr. Cerny frowned, “I used them because we were out of the Martian one’s and she was going to die without the nano-machines! The entire compartment exploded and she’s the only one who wasn’t turned to jelly, even so she had third degree burns over half her body and a fractured spinal column, she’s missing her right arm and an eye! I had to use the nano-machines! Without them she was going to die. With them, with them I at least have time!”
Ben muttered several curses under his breath, “We’re still ironing out the kinks in manufacturing, this batch wasn’t intended for anything but superficial wounds!”
Dr. Cerny ground her teeth together, “You’ve said that, and I understand that. I had to make a call, and I did. She’s alive, the burns are repairing and she dulled to the pain of everything else. All I need you to do is shut the damn thing’s down! I can sustain her on traditional life support now.”
Ben waved his Link in front of the Doctor, “I can’t! These are combat model nano-machines not surgical ones! They have self-replication protocols and are hardened against EMP’s!”
She put her head in her hands and groaned, “I remember reading the report. The Ark didn’t have a surgical nano-machine fabricator.”
“The combat one’s are more plentiful it’s all we could get ahold of for the Ark, Megan and the rest of my engineering crew have been working to improve its resolution. We have the programs for surgical nano-machines, but we can’t manufacture them.”
Dr. Cerny moved her fingers away from her eyes, “can you do anything to shut them down? They’re replicating out of control, they’re moving up her body and spinal column as we speak. I have no confidence they’ll return to programming now and not pass into the brain.”
Ben shook his head, “Combat nano-machines are tough. We leave even one and in another day she’ll be infested again. If they’re not responding to the deactivation signal…” he trailed off shrugging.
Dr. Cerny swore.
“I’m going to have to break her legs.”
Ben raised an eyebrow.
“The nano-machines need something to fix,” elaborated Dr. Cerny.
“They’ll just replicate again.”
“I’m aware. She’s got two days at most. I can’t keep breaking limbs.”
Ben sighed and glanced over the technical data the nano-machines were transmitting. It was a mess, he was amazed they were operating in any way. The machines were looping through the replication protocols and had clashed with themselves, triggering the intense combat readiness. Which only further locked down any attempts to order them to stop.
“Why did you call me here Doctor? All we’ve done is agree.”
Dr. Cerny leaned back in her chair and growled out several words Ben ignored.
“I can’t let her die.”
Ben slowly nodded his head, “How old is she?”
“Four or five. She’s got some genetic manipulation in her family history though, smart as a whip.”
Ben smiled, “I know something about that.”
Dr. Cerny grinned, “Yes Diana’s genetic profile is, interesting to say the least. If the degradation is truly solved, then she’s perfect.”
“Don’t ever tell her that. The ego her Mother gave her, is an ego.”
The two smiled for a moment.
“She lost her parents in the Ark’s flight. Someone shoved her into a bag of supplies as it was being loaded into one of the escaping ships.”
“So, no records.”
Dr. Cerny shook her head, “and we never downloaded the genealogical records to ships. No one ever thought they would be that important.”
The evacuation had been like that in places, as parents were in some cases throwing their children onto the vessels as they had left the Station, or even sneaking them into supplies like the girl apparently had been. The captains of the ships had during the evacuation, ignored the stowaways.
Ben leaned back in his chair.
“The only option I see is the Full Brain Computer Interface program.”
“I was thinking of that as well.”
The engineer and the doctor looked at one another across the desk, “and, you know just to say it aloud we’re both ignoring the fact that it was illegal enough that not even the Martian criminal syndicates messed around with it?”
Dr. Cerny pursed her lips, “the experiments sixty years ago, were unethical. It was a knee jerk reaction like with genetic engineering to ban the technology. Used in a situation like this, how could it do more harm?”
“I’m not disagreeing, but, ugh.”
“I asked you here because you and your wife are known for, well for insubordination. The Yamato in general was something of a loose cannon, after the two of you installed that antimatter drive on it and helped build the Ark?” Dr. Cerny chuckled, “The only reason your both not in prison is because you’re just that good. We can’t afford to have our best engineers in cells rotting away. Just as much as we can’t let this girl rot away in a bed, she’s a fighter.”
“We hope the Council still sees us as useful? Even if we screw this up?”
“Exactly. If we want to get technical, the ban was only ever written for the Sol system. It doesn’t apply out here.”
Ben rolled his eyes and stood, “Yes we’re going to get off on a technicality if we kill this girl.”
Dr. Cerny’s eyes hardened and she stood as well.
“I’m doing this to save her, don’t you dare question that!”
Ben held up his hands, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t.”
Dr. Cerny groaned and put a hand to her own eyes. “No, I, I’ve been up for nearly three days straight trying to figure this out. I still need to do more research on the procedure. If we are going to do it.”
Ben spun his Link around in his hand silent for a moment, “I’m going to talk to her, and sort out the technical aspect. If we are going to do this.”
Dr. Cerny collapsed back into her chair, “Right, I’m going to get more research done. Kick the nurses out if you have to, the girls stable.”
The doctor blearily picked up her Link and began to page through it, Ben had no doubt her head was going to hit the desk soon.
Walking down the hallway Ben glanced at the window display showing the moon below. Bellona had just passed into the shadow of Big Blue and the lights were visible from space. The entirety of Humanity looked like only a small town from orbit. A pinprick of light.
Tearing his eyes away Ben walked along the corridor, the slight curve of the floor and the spin of the outer ring of the station something he was accustomed to.
The small girl was awake, her eyes wide and staring at Ben as he stepped into the room. She cocked her head to the side and croaked something.
Ben frowned, “You’re going to have to speak up.”
The one eyes that was covered in a bandage flared open wider and she glared at Ben.
“Who, are you?”
“I’m the one who Dr. Cerny called, she’s desperate.”
“I’m dying.”
The four-year-old stated it as a fact, and the weight behind her words was clear. She understood what death was. Ben shuddered slightly, the children of Bellona and Humanity weren’t ever going to be children.
“You are.” Agreed Ben.
“I want to live.”
“Why?”
She blinked her one eye, “Why?”
“Why are you fighting to live, right now you’re recovering from a blast that would have killed most, and you’ve got small machines in your blood that are eventually going to eat your brain away. Why haven’t you given up?”
“I don’t want to be dead.”
Perhaps they were still children in some way.
Grinning Ben leaned against her bed, “Out of the mouth of Babe. Good enough, Dr. Cerny called me here because I’m the head engineer. I built the station, the colony.”
“I’m not a machine.”
“No, but if you want to live that’s what I’m going to turn you into.”
The girl’s one eye widened slightly, “A machine?”
“It’s called a FBCI. You know how artificial limbs work, right?”
The girl closed her eye for a moment, “It’s robotic, and controlled with a computer implanted in a person.”
“Yes, that’s right. We can’t do that with you though,”
“Because of the nano-machines that Dr. Cerny had to use to save me after the explosion.”
Ben pulled out his Link and flipped the girl’s full body scan up onto the wall, “You would have died without them. Now they are killing you, replicating out of control. The only place they haven’t infested is your brain and upper spinal column. A FBCI means we’re going to cut that part of you out, and put it in a computer.”
The girl was silent for several moments looking at the display.
“I’ll be alive?”
“You’ll be alive.”
“Why does the Doctor need you? Why don’t they use this all of the time to save people?”
Ben smiled, “You’re smart. This procedure is illegal and has been for the past sixty years, it was the military of both Earth and Mars who investigated it. Both sides banned it after failures, that drove the brains, the people they put into the machines mad. The stress of moving the brain, and trying to integrate it with a computer were too much.”
Ben flicked his Link again, showing the images of the earlier projects and several videos of the failures. The girl looked them over for several minutes, watching the explanation of the procedure in a propaganda video.
“So if it didn’t work then, why do you want to do it now?”
“We have better technology, and your far younger than any of the test subject back then. The human brain is more adaptable, the younger you are.”
“What about my genetics? My brain has been developing faster.”
“Shouldn’t be to much of an effect.”
The girl looked at the display for several longer moments.
“So I have to choose between certainly dying, or maybe dying.”
“That’s about it.”
“I want to live.”
“The FBCI program,” Megan scowled, “It’s just a way of killing the girl and saying we tried.”
“It had some signs of success, but testing was stopped before it could be made conclusive,” said ben from across the small metal table.
“The brains went unresponsive Ben! It’s not like they slowly degraded, as soon as they were plugged in they went insane!” said Megan as she slammed her Link down.
“We need to try something.”
Megan picked up the coffee mug and deftly threw it at his head, Ben caught the projectile without looking up and set it back down on the table refilling it with the Martian synthetic coffee, which was somehow worse than the normal Martian drink.
“We have all of the schematics, and the research from both Earth and Mars to draw on. That’s all the hard work, hell even the interface programs are built. The governments of both Earth and Mars continued to funnel money to it, and they’ve improved everything. The only thing that was stopping both by the time of the attack were the ethics.”
Megan picked up her refilled mug and sipped at the drink, “The ethics don’t apply here?”
“On Earth, or Mars you can afford to keep someone in a bed their entire life. We don’t have the resources to do that. In any case, what will the Council do? imprison us? We’re the main driving force behind the Country Class Ships. Not to mention the Fort, and everything else in development.”
“So we piss them off, break all semblance of ethics, and then crack open a girl’s brain and shove it into a box,” Megan paused, “Unless you’ve been hiding it from me and you’re not a surgeon.”
“Dr. Cerny. She contacted me, desperate.”
“You did tell her she was an idiot for using the nano-machines right? We specified that right?”
“We did. If she hadn’t used them, the little girl would be dead.”
Megan muttered several things under her breath, “Still, that warning was given for a reason. The manufacturing isn’t up to snuff yet.”
Megan picked up her link and scrolled through all of the data on the girl, focusing more on what little history was present. “It’s a good thing she’s so young.”
“It’s the only reason I’m considering this,” grunted Ben. The two engineers were far from experts on anything biological, but in the more theoretical fields the lines between technological and biological could merge. Cases like cybernetic limbs were the best documented.
The younger a person had the control chips for a cybernetic limb implanted, the better they could control and manipulate the limb, some even able to outperform normal humans. The advancements in technology and newer implants had very little to do with the performance, but rather the Human brain.
The younger it was, the better able the Human brain could adapt.
“We’re going to have to put off on the Canada construction too. We need to get our teams on the manufacturing of the nano-machines. I know the council wants construction to start as soon as possible, but if we’re running low on nano-machines…” he trailed off.
Megan groaned, “Meaning we have to rotate engineering assignments again. Push all of the schedules back a month?”
“Two months I think.” Said Ben.
The two engineers sighed.
“We’re not going to get to start the Canada next year are we?” asked Ben.
“Nope.”
Bellona Colony, Eridani
2 years 7 months 7 days
Dr. Cerny glanced down at the small black box and then back up at Megan and Ben.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” said Megan.
Dr. Cerny slowly picked up the small box and carefully peered inside, a multitude of wires and small chips were hanging inside the device inert for the moment.
“I’ve been reading up on the procedure. It’s barbaric.”
Ben and Megan remained silent giving the Doctor a moment to gather herself.
“The procedure requires inserting neural chips into nearly 40% of her brain, cutting out portions of her autonomic systems so that they don’t interfere with the electronics. Then we’re going to have to periodically kill off small segments of her brain tissue and force carbon nanotubes into the regrowing neurons to ensure she has full access to all of the hypothetical functions. All of this done at a time in her life while her brain is going through the most growth.”
Megan set her own tablet down on the desk, “Cold feet Doctor?”
Dr. Cerny looked at the tablet Megan had set down, distracting herself.
The images on the tablet quickly spread themselves across the desk and part of the wall, showing the details of the complete procedure. Including the modifications that the two engineers had made to it.
Dr. Cerny frowned, “You want me to increase the number of implants, to 76% of her brain? She’ll be more machine than Human.”
“So below 50% is fine? The only reason the number of implants in the previous procedures was limited was due to the size. The whole theory relies on a perfect computer brain interface, the more implants we can insert, the more easily she’ll be able to interface.” Said Ben.
Dr. Cerny scowled, “I’m aware of that! We’re still talking about shoving hunks of metal into a little girl’s brain!”
“Are you going to do it or not?” repeated Megan growing impatient now.
The doctor glared at her and then at Ben, hanging her head she nodded, “Yes.”
Ben slowly picked up the box, “We’ve got to do this before the nano-machines replicate into her brain.”
Standing Dr. Cerny picked up her Link from the table.
“I’m going to need assistance with the procedure. I’m not dragging any more of my staff into this either. If the council does actually decide to punish us in some way I’m not leaving the colony without medical staff.”
Megan winced, “What kind of assistance?”
“Nothing medical. I am assuming you will be in the room though to ensure the technological aspect of the operation goes correctly.”
“I will be,” said Ben glancing at his wife.
Her ability to handle anything close to gore, was lacking in normal circumstances. During a crisis, she was fine dealing with trauma. Aboard the Yamato she had dealt with a fair share of the puncture wounds in engineering. During a battle shrapnel was traveling at relative velocities in excess of one hundred kilometers per second, and that was sometimes survivable, the material punching straight through a suit and out the other side of a person barely slowing down as it did so.
Some of the worse injuries with more massive objects at slower speeds were the more gruesome, particularly as blood would cover the entirety of a compartment when something more traumatic occurred given that in zero-g it did not fall to the floor.
Megan was fine with blood then, but after combat the sight of something as mundane as a small flesh wound was enough to make her queasy.
“Let’s start before I lose my nerve then.”
Dr. Cerny strode out of her office and the two engineers followed, “now?” asked Ben.
“You are the one saying we have no time. Now, scrub up we’re moving her into the zero-g operation room.”
Walking into the small room of the station where the girl was laying the small child looked up as the three adults entered.
Megan paused, Ben had mentioned the look in the girls eye. It was reminiscent of Diana’s gaze. Not in the cold like the small adoptive child sometimes was, but determined. It was a gaze that toed the line of arrogance.
The children on Bellona were like her for the most part. They were Human, and they were all on the brink of extinction. Childhood was something to move through, and move past. They weren’t being raised in idealism where war was a far off unseen affair. Everyone had lost someone, war was once again the sole reason Humanity was working together.
Megan stared back at the girl.
“Is it time?” she asked her voice low.
“We need to discuss this with you again,”
“I’m ready.” Said the girl interrupting.
The girl’s eye flicked to the small panel display on the other side of the wall. It tracked with her eyes for a moment as she moved them over the screen.
“I’ve been researching it on my own.”
Dr. Cerny audibly swallowed.
“Alright. I, I feel the need to apologize. It’s my fault your in this situation in the first place.”
The girls eye snapped to the Doctor nothing else able to move.
“I was in an accident. You made sure I lived. That’s fine.”
The Doctor slowly nodded, “If you’re sure. We can start.”
The girl drew in a breath. “Let’s start.”
Light.
Dark.
Light.
Light.
Dark.
Pain. The girl tried to jerk away from the pain, but it wasn’t physical. It was in every direction, and every type. The intense pain of being burned alive, of being crushed, cut, and stabbed. The pain of losing a pet, a mother, a father, the pain of losing Earth, the pain of losing everything.
It was a pain that stretched time, with no reference, no way to hide, no way to even scream out in terror the girl floated in the void sure she was going insane.
She drifted, bodiless and voiceless screaming out into the nothingness.
Unable to resist or ignore the pain, the torture around her she slowly opened herself to it. the pain was the only thing in the darkness, the only hint that she was alive perhaps.
She was alive.
Clinging to that thought and fighting the confusion she wracked her memories. She had asked for this. This was what Engineer Ben had proposed, what he had warned her about.
She was conscious in the void, her brain inside a small black cube with wires and computers attached to it. For all she knew she was sitting on the desk of the engineer, or perhaps more worryingly on the desk of the Council as they debated her fate.
No one else had ever survived, managed to speak from within the case she was in now. After months of trying the only thing’s that the few brains before her had managed to choke out were incoherent cries of pain shown only on EKG readouts.
If she did not speak, did not react to the outside world they would kill her out of a sense of mercy.
Unless she was dead, and this was what death really was.
Shaking that thought the girl tried to focus on something, anything other than the pain. It was an anchor, a starting point for the rest of what she had to do.
She had seen light before, right now it was dark. She had to make light.
Focusing she picked a small spot in the darkness, not even sure if she had eyes with which to look at it with. Light. Light.
Light.
There was light. A small star burning unnaturally white in the void.
It was something though, reaching out she focused growing the small ball of light until the darkness was replaced by light in every direction.
Disoriented without a frame she slowly focused on making something other than light.
Pain once again lanced through her mind and the light snapped away in an instant. Shocked, and unable to scream in pain the girl once again endured. Not fighting the pain, but accepting it as a part of what she was. It was natural after all; the human brain being crammed into a jar was hardly expected to be painless.
Expectation.
Freezing the girl thought that over for a moment. She had formed light, out of nothing but a will. Like some old god in its domain she had control. She was in control, why would the pain she was feeling be any different?
It was an odd thought, one half of her mind thinking the pain was realistically what she should feel. Another part of her, a part that seemed to be far more verbose than it had ever been focused on the few medical facts she could recall from her research into the procedure.
She had been looking it up ever since the Engineer had mentioned it.
The brain did not have the ability to feel pain, and her brain was no doubt flooded with pain killers and other chemicals to prevent any stray nerves that were crossed from physically causing pain.
Anything she was feeling was like the light, a manifestation of her own will conscious or not did not matter. Looping into that logic the pain like the light before it snapped away.
“Ah!”
A voice!
“Hello?” asked the girl to the void.
Their was no response, but she could hear her voice. It was like sounding out a sentence in her head, but more substantial. Again a section of her brain seemed to be enhancing the feeling, making it more solid.
“Dr. Cerny?”
Nothing.
Stumped the girl brought the light back. A disembodied voice was hardly appropriate, and needing something to focus on the girl though of a small plush animal she had. A small rough shape like the toy appeared in the white void. It was the only thing that remained her unknown parents.
She paused, the neural connection made the small section of her brain that was providing answered produced an image of their faces. For the first time, it was without the fog of memory. A solid image in the void.
The girl felt tears on her cheek’s like she had a hundred times before. For a moment, she did not even question them and stared at her Mother and Father. They were gone, she hardly remembered them, but now, now she could recall entire days with them in almost perfect clarity. Words were indistinct, but the emotions, the tone, it was all their in her mind.
For several moments, the girl cried in the void.
Reaching out a hand that had not been present a moment ago, the girl slowly picked up the small stuffed animal. The only real thing in the void.
Brining it close she clutched at the toy and slowly opened her eyes, unaware that she even had eyes that had been closed.
Looking at the toy the girl’s view moved over her arms, they were arms but lacked any actual human characteristics. Muscles, veins, hair. The arms were simply appendages.
Her view moved away and the arms remained where they were. Turning the view back the girl looked at the body they were attached to, and at the same time inhabited the body. It was a duality, that although odd did not make her feel disembodied.
Looking at her body for several longer moments detail slowly bled into the vaguely humanoid from. Now it looked like she was standing in front of a mirror. Looking at herself the girl frowned, an action that now felt like it had the appropriate muscles in her face moving with them.
Everything was expectation here, everything something she had to will and control.
The reflection duplicated and a crowd of identical faces looked up and around the girl noted that none of them were breathing, she did not feel the need.
Curious the girl looked around at the void, and with only a twitch of that new segment of her brain filled it with the dark red expanse that had apparently been her home. Looking around the surface of the red planet she noted that it was far more detailed than the crude image she had made of herself.
The new segment of her brain had been the origin of the image, with some amusement the girl noted her own blasé towards the ability to trace where her thoughts were coming from.
The new segment, was not like the rest of her brain. More organized, more expedient.
Curious the girl thought of several books, a film she had seen some time ago, and the designs of the Bellona colony. Each thought not in sequence but at the same time, the requests again hosted in that new part of herself.
The book, the film, the designs. It felt like she had known about them, studied them, poured over them for days. She understood them.
Disoriented the girl jerked away from the new segment of herself understanding dawning. It was the interface, the connection to the outside world and the computer systems of the Fort through which she was getting everything.
She could tell them she was alive!
Bellona Colony, Eridani
2 years 7 months 24 days
Bleary eyes Megan took another sip of her coffee and glanced over at the guard.
“You want to get me a refill Henry?”
The guard looked up from his Link and rolled his eyes, “That’s your fifth, are you planning on getting any sleep tonight?”
“Not until she wakes up.”
The man groaned but stood up and ambled out of the room to retrieve the coffee.
Once again Megan ran a diagnostic on the small box, hoping that it would work. It was nearing the one month time limit the council had given the three of them before more drastic punitive measures were taken.
Megan had no doubt they would be nothing more than token punishments, given that despite being under investigation the Council had done nothing to prevent them from working.
Dr. Cerny was still treating patients, Ben was working on perfecting the nano-machines, and Megan was still working on the designs for the Canada. Each of them were trading off at regular intervals to watch over the girl.
“Is that supposed to be blinking?” asked Henry.
Megan glanced up and froze, the small light on the outside of the case was slowly blinking on and off, in a regular pattern!
Scrambling Megan picked up her link, and turned on the audio. It had to be silenced as the girl had at first screamed for days on end. That had been more than difficult to hear.
“Hello?”
The tentative voice came from the cube.
Megan laughed, “Hello!”
The voice from the cube laughed with relief as well.
“welcome back Arik.”
The room was silent, “I am alive?” asked Arik.
“You’re alive.”
“I’m alive!” shouted Arik and the lights in the room and across the entirety of Bellona winked out.
Megan’s eyes widened, “Arik?”
“Woops.”