Noumenon Infinity Read online

  “I don’t understand why we’re letting this conversation continue,” huffed the head of education. “Doctor Caznal’s fundamental misunderstanding of our entire social order can be amended on her own time. No one here is looking to put a new destination to a vote, so I suggest we move on.”

  “No,” Caz shouted. “No. We were only supposed to move on to LQ Pyx if the destination proved fruitless—”

  “It has,” he said.

  “How can you say that? If you were being the objective scientists you’re all supposed to be—”

  “I’m sorry, Caz, but I don’t think we’re the ones not being objective,” said Captain Onuora.

  Caznal’s eyes shot to Hvmnd’s captain—her friend. Onuora’s dark eyes were sympathetic, and her tone matched. But every word that followed felt like a knife to Caznal’s back.

  “We know you despise the decision to keep Doctor Baraka under when we arrived at the planemo. I think this decision feels like another betrayal to you. As though we’ve undermined not only the man, but his legacy. No one is suggesting we halt analysis on the data you’ve already collected. Nor should we stop examining the Nest. But the pursuit of the Nataré as a people—as Web builders—has to end. We have other work to do—that we were always meant to do. It’s not personal. Don’t make it personal.”

  This is my entire life . . . how can it not be personal?

  “That’s not what this is about,” Caz said meekly.

  “Either way. As a colleague, and as a friend, I suggest you let us move on to the next order of board business.”

  With her will suddenly drained, it felt as though the bones had been plucked from Caznal’s body. She sank into a chair with no firmness to her movement.

  Onuora was wrong. Wasn’t she? Caz wasn’t trying to overemphasize the importance of the Nataré because of Dr. Baraka. No, of course not. Wouldn’t the botanists be surprised and angry to have their hybrid programs suddenly stopped? Wouldn’t the engineers cry foul if they lost access to the Nest or the Web node? She’d just had the rug pulled out from under her professional life. That was it. That was all.

  “Mom? You all right?”

  A soft crash-boom of distant waves underscored Min-Seo’s voice. As water rushed up Caznal’s calf before receding again, she opened one eye.

  Her grown daughter leaned over her, hands on her hips, her computing jumper left behind in exchange for a tank top and slacks.

  The wave pool sloshed once more, and the sound system continued to play real surf sounds. Every ten minutes, a gull squawked. Up and down the sandy beach, other crew members read books or took naps. One woman on a beach towel scowled at Min-Seo.

  “This is the quiet pool,” Caz reminded her at a whisper.

  “Oh, sorry.” She settled in beside her mother, rolling up the cuffs of her trousers to stick her feet in the damp silica. Fine, pale grains stuck to her toes.

  “Thought the three of you were supposed to be on a romantic vacation,” Caz said, noting neither Hiro nor Kexin, her daughters-in-law, nearby.

  “We are. I could tell things were getting a little spicy, so I excused myself.” She checked her forearm implant for the hour. “I’ll get back just in time for the cuddles. You know what I always say . . .” She gave her mother a wink.

  Caz cleared her throat and recited, “‘The advantages of being an asexual panromantic in a polyamorous relationship.’ By the ships, that is a mouthful.”

  “Which is why I like to hear you say it. It’s life affirming and a tongue twister all in one.”

  The sand was both rough and soft, a dichotomy Caz enjoyed. She slipped her fingers beneath the surface, down where it was dark, and cool—untouched by the sun-mimicking lamps overhead. “So, you happened to find me, or . . . ?”

  “I got a message from Dad.”

  “My pilikua is worried about me?”

  “Yes. He said you haven’t been yourself since—”

  “Since the board voided the importance of my entire field of study? Yeah, you could say that.”

  “Shh,” hissed the woman on the beach towel.

  With a dramatic eye-roll, Caz heaved herself out of the sand, clearly giving Min-Seo whiplash as she was settling in. “Come on,” Caz said, giving her a hand up. “If you’re going to cheer me up, we better go someplace else. Preferably a place with a lot of chocolate or mod-coca.”

  Hand in hand, they wandered away from Shambhala’s wave pools, past its gyms, and down to the dessert bars. These were new—an upgrade installed before second launch. Food printers allowed chefs to turn convoy basics into a variety of concoctions—both healthy and not so. The professional behind the counter scanned your biometrics, looked up what you’d already eaten that day, then created a specialized dessert menu based on your remaining rations and current blood sugar.

  Science at its best, Caz thought.

  “Oh, Gyeongju bread,” Min-Seo said, sniffing the air as a crew member strolled by with a plate of three of the bean paste–filled rolls.

  “Go for it,” Caz said, “I think I’m going for a pick-me-up of the green-leaf variety.”

  “Meet at our star-window?” Min-Seo asked.

  “Of course.”

  The mod-coca dispensary was a charming little nook that mirrored the tea dispensary on the opposite side of what had come to be known as “dessert lane.” Caz chose a small packet of dried leaves for chewing and the botanist in charge took vice points off her rations file.

  The first pinch was bitter, had a bit of a sulfide bite to its bouquet, but it settled nicely in her cheek as she made her way to the meeting spot. Relaxing as the chew was, she knew it would do little to help her depressive mood—unless it magically imbued her with the ultimate powers of persuasion. How could she make an entire society realize its error in judgment?

  The star-windows were located on the ship’s topmost level. During SD dives, they displayed a false-view of space. Nebulae would engulf them in colorful haze. Dying binaries would dance by. Stars would twinkle balefully in the distance.

  Now, they were true windows. Floor-to-ceiling, turned to give the perfect top-down view of the planemo, which was largely dark save for the single crater overrun with human lighting. They were just far enough out that the dark spot was ringed with stars, and if you put your forehead against the glass—as Min-Seo and Caznal did now—letting your eyes cross just so, you might feel, for a moment, like you were falling into a black hole.

  “It’s been two weeks,” Min-Seo said between bites.

  “I know.” Caz sighed, her breath lightly fogging the window. The aluminosilicate glass was frigid against her skin. “And it’s not just me.”

  “The whole Nataré division,” Min-Seo said knowingly. “Vega said she’s barely gotten two words out of Ivan.”

  “Did you hear they’re thinking of reassigning our lines?” she asked Min-Seo. “Putting the next clones back into the business they were chosen for?”

  Min-Seo stopped her chewing, a wad of pastry and beans rounding out her cheek. “But I thought they said you could still work on the crater samples.”

  “Yep, we—meaning those of us currently working. Once we’re retired, they figure it’s all clones on the Web train once more.”

  “It’s too bad it has to be one or the other. I mean, doesn’t it make sense to do both? We haven’t heard back from Earth yet, we know they can’t be counted on to follow up. We’re the explorers, we should be doing everything we can.”

  Caz shrugged and stuffed more coca in her mouth against her gums. The bulge in her lip made her sound funny, but Min-Seo wasn’t one to take a cheap jab. “Unfortunately, one convoy equals one mission. They’ve narrowed down what that mission is, and my people are just SOL.”

  “Why does it have to be that way?” Min-Seo asked. “I mean, yes, one convoy can only do so much. But we have twelve ships.”

  “Oh, you know the answer to that,” Caz dismissed. “Those oh-so-perfect original P.U.M. mission designers decided we needed nine s
hips and a hundred thousand people so we don’t implode on a social level.”

  “We’ve got three ships extra, then.”

  “That we need for the Web.”

  “Do we? Those three ships were given to us by Earth, who thought we’d come back one day carrying some crisis-averting energy motherlode. But, just like everyone knows about the secret Nataré study, everyone knows we never intend to go back. What are we going to do with a giant battery, huh? We started repurposing the ship as soon as we found an alternate use for it. If we’re going to live on these ships forever, utilizing the Web to fight our own entropy, then we don’t need Zetta. And we only need Hvmnd because of Zetta.”

  Where was Min-Seo going with this? Caz raised her head, took a good long look at her daughter happily munching on Gyeongju bread like she wasn’t suggesting . . . whatever it was she was suggesting. Coming from a convoy member, the subtext of this conversation was practically blasphemous. “Are you saying we could—” she moved in close, looked around and kept her voice low “—split the convoy?”

  Min-Seo looked her mother in the eye. Though her tone was light, she knew the gravity of simply toying with such an idea. “I bet if you ask I.C.C., we wouldn’t cross a failure threshold if one became two. It’s not like the old days, when returning to Earth was the endgame. Our societal mindset is different. More innately stable.”

  “This is not a little solution to my problem,” Caz said.

  “No. It’s a big solution to a problem that I don’t think you can claim as solely your own.”

  “When did you get so conniving?” Caz threw her arms around her daughter, drawing her in close, jostling her plate.

  “Oh, come on, Mom, don’t make me lose the last bun. And it’s not conniving. It’s rational. But, if you’re going to propose it, you have to understand what it means, for the crew, for our family. You have to know how the board will take it.”

  Off the quiet beach, they were still whispering now, and for good reason. The convoy’s history of revolution and self-destruction might only have a few bullet points, but those bullets still made the memory bleed. Their society wasn’t run by authoritarianism, but nor was it a democracy. Any dissent was caught quickly, and quashed.

  Proposing a split, if rejected, would mark her—and perhaps her line—forever as the woman who wanted to cut the baby in half.

  “Maybe I don’t propose it,” she said. Min-Seo pulled away, a dark hesitancy on her face. “No, no,” Caz assured her, “I wouldn’t put that responsibility on a colleague. If I can’t handle the consequences, I wouldn’t ask someone else to.”

  “Then how do you get the board to consider it?”

  With a sly smirk, Caznal’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling.

  “What?” Min-Seo asked, searching for what her mother was staring at. “I don’t get it.”

  “It was your suggestion.”

  “What, Mom? What did I say?”

  Caznal kissed her on the forehead. “Better get back to your wives. I’ll let you know if it works.”

  Caznal returned to Mira with renewed conviction. She couldn’t let the study die. There was so much to learn from the Nataré—not just about physics and the Web, but about medicine, philosophy, religion (did they have any?), recreation, on and on. Here was the chance for humans to reach outside of themselves, beyond the biology and history of their own planet. Were human universal ideals truly universal? Or were they unique to a relatively small planet on the edge of one of a billion galaxies?

  That’s what they were up against: Was this a mission of discovery, or was this a mission of repair? The Nataré could bequeath multitudes of artifacts to humanity, but the convoy was obsessed with one. One artifact, one result, one purpose.

  That didn’t make the board wrong. It was not wrong to have a goal, to understand the thrust of your endeavors and where they led. But she was not wrong either.

  The convoy’s mission now possessed a duality—both halves worthy.

  She told Diego of her plan, and after some discussion—full of smart, insightful questions that reminded her why she loved him in the first place—he gave his support.

  At the next board meeting, Caznal sat quietly. She sipped her coca tea and went over the previous meeting’s minutes as though it were just another day. Another round of mundane convoy updates, another chance for Dr. Brown to complain about a maintenance robot malfunction (as she always did).

  Caz allowed herself a moment to look around, though. To see the things she took for granted. Because, should her plan work, she would lose this room. There was a ding in the wall nearest her seat that had never been fixed—chair height, by the look of the horizontal scrape. It smelled different in this room. Felt special. She slid her palms under the edge of the marble tabletop, where it was rough, searching for the little carved stamp—ah, there! The roman numeral for seven, which marked the long table as part of its special set.

  Captain Nwosu kept picking absently at a divot in front of him—an unconscious habit Caznal had never noted before. So many memories here. So many important decisions made for so many people, both by this crew and by all the mission’s crews.

  And now, perhaps, time for one more.

  “Are we ready to begin?” Straifer asked the room, standing at the head of the table. The low rumble of pleasant conversation faded away, as the department heads, captains, and elected representatives settled in for another round of Enacting-Your-Civil-Duty. “We have three new proposals to review and vote on—”

  “Excuse me, First Officer Straifer,” said I.C.C., prompting a wave of chins shooting in the ceiling’s direction. “But I have a proposal to submit as well. Please forgive me for the late notice. I realize it is highly irregular to submit during a meeting.”

  Like a physical manifestation of a self-propagating wave, Caznal’s gaze darted to Nwosu, and all eyes around her followed.

  Nwosu cleared his throat. “It’s highly irregular for the ships’ computer to submit a proposal at all,” he said, a half joke colored by his clear discomfort.

  The room was so quiet, Caznal could hear the atmosphere circulators chugging away. She tried to temper her excitement, to maintain her poker face. It wouldn’t do to give away the game just yet.

  “I’m sorry, I.C.C.,” Nwosu said, regaining some of his stolen composure. “But the agenda for this meeting has been finalized. If you wish to submit, you’ll need to follow the procedure and—”

  The situation room erupted, opinions boiling over like lava, burning wherever they fell.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “This is I.C.C. we’re talking about—”

  “We can’t let the computer make suggestions—”

  “It’s made them before.”

  “But never formally.”

  “Why is that a problem, exactly?”

  “People!” Nwosu said. He barely raised his voice, as though that would encourage people to order. “People. Everyone! Hold on. Wait. Hold on.”

  Pavon jumped to her feet, curly hair flying. “Everyone shut up!”

  Caznal was only a little surprised when the room complied.

  “Captain,” Pavon said evenly. “You have the floor.”

  “Thank you. As I was saying, we have procedures for a reason—to avoid exactly this kind of chaos.”

  “But it’s human procedure,” said Dr. Nakamura. “It doesn’t apply to I.C.C. I think we should hear what it has to say now.”

  “We should put it to a vote,” said Captain Onuora.

  Nwosu gave a reluctant sigh. “All those who wish to hear from I.C.C. now?” he asked.

  The shouts of “Aye” were deafening. They clearly had it.

  “I.C.C., you may proceed. What does your proposal cover?”

  “The creation of two convoys out of our existing one.”

  If the silence had been deafening before, this was the utter absence of sound. The air lay dead. Caz looked from side to side, making sure her colleagues hadn’t died of shock. It seeme
d the sentence contained so foreign a concept, they could hardly process it.

  I.C.C. clearly took the lack of interjection as a signal to continue. “I do not make this proposal casually, but I fear we may be at the beginning of a societal impasse.”

  That’s an interesting way to put it, Caz thought. The dumbfounded silence hadn’t diminished. On the contrary, it seemed to be burgeoning. She could see words beginning at the back of Nwosu’s throat, but he swallowed them down. Beside Caz, Onuora sat up straighter, arms tucked against her sides, tight—a wound coil ready to spring. At what, Caz couldn’t guess.

  Out of everyone in the room, only she and Pavon seemed to be taking the AI’s words in stride. Pavon’s clone line had a long history of siding with the AI—Caznal found that interesting. Perhaps Margarita would back her.

  “The current mission was launched with a dual purpose,” I.C.C. continued. “Some have taken that duality to heart, while others believe one a side mission. The unofficial standing of that ‘side mission’ has further fueled the intellectual divide. But only now is the division beginning to show itself. It has been an undercurrent for over fifty years, but not until the last board meeting was it given voice.”

  Onuora turned in her wheelchair, and Caz could feel a pointed gaze boring into her profile.

  “I’ve run behavioral projections,” I.C.C. said, “and the results indicate this could be a turning point. Chances of societal disruption are high, threats to crew member safety are currently steady, but I fear an increase soon. Overall, chance of mission failure has increased by point-two-seven percent.”

  Caznal’s stoicism cracked, her eyes widening. This was not what they’d talked about. The computer was supposed to be outlining the scientific merits of two convoys, why focusing on reverse engineering and alien instruction simultaneously was likely to see the construction project finished sooner than if they spurned one for the other.