Cold Eyes (First Contact), page 2
“What is that?” Dali asks, pointing at the screen.
“It’s you,” Helios says, tapping the representation of Dali’s knee bones on the glass. “You as seen by a multi-scan medical monitor.”
Helios holds the glass up in front of Dali’s face. As it’s transparent, Dali can see exactly what Helios is looking at from the other side. For Dali, though, it’s like staring into a magic mirror. The reflection is macabre. A pair of eyeballs stare back at him. Optic nerves lead in toward his brain. His prefrontal lobe towers over his brow. It’s as though Dali’s skull is transparent—and it is, just not to visible light.
Helios gestures with his fingers on the glass. The scan goes deeper, washing over the curves and folds of Dali’s brain in a series of fine slices. The doctor tilts the glass, looking down at Dali’s brain stem and cerebellum.
“Have you found something?” Sandy asks, sounding nervous.
“No,” Helios says, pausing for a second. “That’s what’s strange. There’s nothing abnormal at all.”
“Well, that’s good news, right?” Dali says. “No is what we want to hear. If everything’s normal, that’s great!”
“Not quite,” Helios says. “No two brains are the same. There’s no normal as such. Everyone has something slightly abnormal somewhere. Minor things. Subtle deformities. Matting in the basal ganglia. A bit of radiation damage. A little calcification build-up. Unusual blood flow patterns. An imbalance between the lateral ventricles. Stuff like that. Not bad stuff. Just stuff. Regular wear and tear. But your brain is textbook perfect.”
“Well, he’s fresh out of a vat,” Sandy says. Her voice sounds nervous. She’s trying to give this a positive spin.
“That’s the thing,” Helios replies. “There’s no reason for an imprint not to take.”
“Something must have taken,” Kari says, pointing at Dali. “I mean, he’s speaking English. The basics have taken hold. He knows his name.”
Helios says, “It must be a fault with the neural alignment.” He’s gentle, helping Dali lie back on the bed.
With his head sinking into the pillow, Dali stares up at the ceiling. It’s as though he’s in a doctor’s surgery back on Earth. His memories are a blur, but he’s comfortable. He’s been in this position before and never felt nervous.
“This won’t hurt,” Helios says, swabbing various parts of Dali’s scalp with an alcohol-soaked wipe. Helios places his hand under Dali’s neck, raising the back of his head as Sandy fits a cap over his skull. Hundreds of tiny needles scrape against Dali’s scalp, but it’s more discomfort than pain. Helios waves the glass computer over Dali’s head, touching lightly at various sections of the cap to ensure good connectivity. He plugs a cable into a connection port on the side of the cap.
Dali’s surprised by how relaxed he feels. Helios is confident. Dali trusts him. He’s not sure why, but somewhere in the back of his mind, there’s a memory telling him Helios is competent and capable. Sandy smiles down at Dali, but it’s not a full smile. She’s still a little worried. Why? Dali’s about to ask her when a surge of electricity zaps his skull. His body shakes. It’s as though tens of thousands of needles are piercing every fiber of his being. Pain wracks his body, stretching from the tip of his fingers and toes to the top of his head. He screams. Every muscle goes tense. Cramps seize his legs.
Helios grabs him, leaning over the bed and holding his shoulders in place.
Dali convulses. His eyes roll into the back of his head. Foam forms on his lips.
“Stop!” Sandy yells. “Stop! You’re killing him!”
Dali’s not sure what happens next. He could have been out for seconds or hours—there’s no way to tell. He blinks and the darkness recedes. Sandy leans over him with tears in her eyes. She wipes drool from his lips with a cloth, whispering, “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
And there it is again. That goddamn contradiction. His mind gets caught up on which statement is true.
“W—What? Happened?” he says, slurring his words. His hands are shaking. He looks up at Helios, who’s gone pale—if that’s even possible with his icy white Scandinavian skin.
“I—I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
“Did it work?” Dali asks, although if anyone knows the answer to that question, it’s him. And the answer is… No. Nope. Nada. Zip. He doesn’t remember anything.
Sandy says, “We didn’t run a flash.”
“We couldn’t,” Helios says. “That was a scan—a single pass over your neural structure. It shouldn’t have triggered a response. I’ll recalibrate and—”
“No!” Dali says, sitting up and swinging his legs down from the table. “No more. Oh, my god, that hurt!”
“I don’t know what went wrong,” Helios says.
“So he’s a blank?” Kari asks. “A defect?”
“Wait a minute,” Dali says, holding out an index finger. “I’m fine, right? The doc just said so. No abnormalities.”
Kari ignores him, talking to Helios. “He’s a dud. We’ve got to bring another one online.”
“There’s not enough time,” Sandy says.
Kari replies, “We don’t have a choice.”
“Another one? Of me?” Dali asks, reaching up and pulling the cap from his head. Hundreds of thin metal prongs scrape against his scalp, but he doesn’t care. “Hang on. I’m not just a thing. I’m not an inventory item on a shelf. I’m not some mechanical part you can just replace.”
“Dali, please,” Sandy says, holding out her hand and wanting him to let them talk.
Helios addresses Sandy. “We need a fully functional unit.”
“I am not a unit,” Dali says in defiance. “You can’t just replace me like a broken part. Especially as I’m not broken.”
“I’ve got news for you,” Helios says. “You’re a machine—a biological machine, but a machine nonetheless. All of us are. We’re all subject to swap-outs if needed.”
“No,” Dali says, shaking his head. “We’re not. We’re human.”
“We’re clones,” Kari says as though that one word alone is enough to convey a clear distinction.
Dali doesn’t agree. He shakes his head. Being a clone is immaterial. It’s not an argument. There’s no logic there. She might as well say, we’re meat sacks, or we’re stardust. There’s no implication beyond a raw statement of fact.
“We’re components,” Helios says. He points at various pieces of equipment throughout the medical bay. “Like a surgical monitor or the oxygen reclamation unit. If parts fail, we fix them or we replace them.”
Dali’s horrified. He’s suddenly aware he’s fighting for his life, but with words rather than blows. He’s got to win over the crew or he’s going to be sucking on vacuum in some wild orbit around a strange star.
“We’re not spare parts,” Dali says, pointing at him. “You’re not. I’m not. We’re alive. We’re conscious beings. We have rights—all of us.”
Kari looks at Sandy, saying, “Human rights? You’re kidding me. He really has malfunctioned.”
“How can you say that?” Dali asks, throwing his arms wide in disbelief.
“You’re not human,” Kari says, shaking her head as she speaks. “You only think you are.”
“So I’m not human because I’m a clone?” Dali asks. “That’s absurd. Clones occur all the time in nature. We call them twins! I’m separated from my twin in time and space, that’s all. It makes no difference. We’re still twins. The only difference between him and me is one of degree, not type.”
“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,” Kari says, setting her hands on her hips and slowing down her words. “You’re—not—human!”
For her, it’s as though the strict pacing of a metronome reinforcing her point can take the place of reason. Dali is mortified. Reason is about articulating concerns, not parroting a dictionary entry. Questions have to be answered, not ignored. Even if she’s working from a valid definition of a clone, who wrote it? How did they reach that conclusion? And more importantly, why? Dali craves logic, not blind reactions.
“What is it to be human other than to think and reason?” Dali counters.
Kari turns to the others, making as though her conclusion is obvious and the only option. “It’s nothing personal, but we have to do something about this.”
“This?” Dali is angry. He points at his own chest, saying, “This is me! If it was you sitting here, it would be pretty damn personal. So what happens next? Are you going to flush me out of an airlock and revive another Dali?” He points at the red dwarf visible out the window. “What will they think of that? These intelligent aliens? Can they see us out here approaching their home world? Are they watching us through their telescopes? What are they going to think if you start flushing people out into space?”
Sandy says, “No one’s flushing anyone out of an airlock!”
“You know the protocol,” Helios says.
“I know we’re alone,” Sandy says. “I know there are twelve light-years between us and any other Homo sapiens. I know the people that wrote those protocols and procedures never had to live by them.”
“This is absurd,” Kari says, throwing her arms in the air. “We’re doomed before we’ve even begun. We’re carrying dead weight into First Contact.”
“It’s not like that,” Sandy says.
“Oh, really?” Kari asks. “And you—how are you so emotionally invested in a hatchling that’s barely fifteen minutes old? Why are you defending him?”
“We have to give him a chance,” Sandy says.
“I pity you,” Dali says, directing his comment to Kari. “I may not have your training or expertise, but I have a soul.”
“No, you don’t,” Kari says, pointing at him. “Because there’s no such thing as a soul.”
“Really? If there’s no soul, then what about them back there?” he asks, gesturing at the rear wall of the module. “Are the ten billion people on Earth all just spare parts awaiting replacement? Is that what life is from one generation to the next? Are we all just cogs in a machine?”
“Up here?” Helios says. “Yes. That’s precisely what we are. There’s a reason they sent clones on this mission and not robots with artificial intelligence.”
Dali asks, “And that reason is?”
“Size, weight, and the ease of swapping out faulty parts.”
Dali cringes at that last point. Helios continues.
“Do you know how many people we’re carrying on board the Magellan? No, of course, you don’t. You don’t know anything because your implant failed to take.”
“Helios, please,” Sandy says, trying to cool the argument.
Helios ignores her, pointing at the empty vat. “There are ten million viable cells awaiting cloning in there. Ten million within a vial the size of a pencil. Each with a specific set of traits to support colonization. And all on the off-chance we find a habitable planet or a temperate moon in this system. And as for the prime crew? As for us? Four thousand viable cells sit ready to replace us.”
“You think you have rights?” Kari asks. “Just because you can breathe and think for yourself? What about those of you that will never know the individual, unique experience of being conscious? What about them?”
“We’re not on vacation in Hawaii,” Helios says, pointing at the floor. “We’re here to do a job. And if you can’t do that job, we need to bring someone online that can.”
Sandy holds up her hand, wanting to be heard. “You’re assuming he can’t do this.”
“There’s no way he can without years of training,” Helios says.
“But the potential is there, right?” Sandy says. “I mean, this is the same Dali we remember from our training. Who’s to say he won’t ace his field like he did back in Houston? Who’s to say he won’t be more competent?”
“And you’re missing something fundamental,” Dali says, looking Helios in the eye. “Something crucial.”
“And what’s that?” Kari asks, folding her hands across her chest in defiance.
“Eighty years have passed on Earth. For better or for worse, humanity has been transformed in our absence. The ideals and morals we launched with have already slipped into obscurity. Those awaiting confirmation of our approach to this alien world are several generations removed from when we left.”
Kari softens. Dali can see it in her eyes. With the exception of him, they all woke in a glass tube as if waking from sleep. It was as though no time had elapsed. Their memories are misleading. Although they know they’re clones, they must feel as though one moment they were on Earth, the next they were approaching Bee. For Dali, though, there’s no such illusion. He holds no doubt about the immense void in spacetime that lies between them and Earth.
“We need to be guided by reason,” Dali says, appealing to her. “The point of training is preparation, not dogma. We’re here—now. No one else is here. No lecturer or professor. First Contact is what we make of it! And we need to make it human.”
Helios grits his teeth.
Dali says, “We’re on our own out here. We don’t represent humanity as it is but as it once was. We’re like those scraps of newspaper that are retrieved from a time capsule buried in concrete. To those alive back on Earth today, we’re more of a curiosity than anything else. And we are definitely outdated. The question is, are we content to be mere pawns in a game that’s already over back there? I say we represent ourselves out here.”
Sandy picks up on his logic, saying, “We don’t even know if there’s anyone listening back home. I mean, we assume there is, but empires have crumbled in less time than this. Due to the delay in light speed comms, our last data pack is well over a decade old. It was sent at year sixty-eight in the mission-elapsed count. We’re now at year eighty-two!”
“We don’t know who’s back there,” Dali says. “We can’t possibly know. We have to live our lives as if no one’s watching. We’re not here for anyone other than ourselves. We don’t represent humanity. From our perspective, we are humanity. For all we know, we’re all that’s left. If there are scientists waiting for our data, wonderful. But we won’t know that for decades to come. And by that time, over a hundred years will have passed since our launch. Think about how different the world is after a century.”
“We can’t live in the past,” Sandy says.
Dali doesn’t have any clear memories of their relationship on Earth, but he can see a natural connection between him and Sandy. He waffles on. She is adept at summarizing his meandering logic. They work well as a team.
Helios doesn’t look convinced, but Kari nods.
“I get it,” Kari says. She’s reluctant, but she’s not beyond reason. “You’re saying, we want to do what’s right, but we’re guessing at what’s right.”
“Exactly,” Sandy says.
“We need to stick to the brief,” Helios says.
“Really?” Dali replies. “We’re heading into the unknown. We have no way of knowing what lies ahead. I’ll take reason over a century-old plan any day.”
Helios says, “We have no choice. We can’t risk the mission. We have to follow the project plan.”
Dali is undeterred. “We have a choice. And we have every right to choose how the future unfolds. Look at where you are, doc. You’re on the other side of a spiral arm within an immense galaxy. Right now, tunnel vision is our greatest danger. We can’t afford to become locked into believing there’s only one way to do things. Just stop for a moment. Think about how absurd that is. Think about how it stifles progress. If we only ever looked at what we knew, we would have never walked across the savannah or sailed over the horizon.”
Dali pauses for a moment. His intent is twofold—to gather his thoughts and to see if he’s still being met with resistance. On one hand, he’s arguing for his life, but beyond that, he sees a chink in their armor. The crew is operating on the assumption they know how First Contact will unfold. To his mind, that’s a disaster in the making. Helios is simmering, but he’s quiet.
Dali says, “I might be a little slow on the uptake. I might not have your technical background or experience, but I think there’s another reason they didn’t send an artificial intelligence to Luyten’s Star. We’re standing on the edge of the unknown. We need clarity. We need reason. We need fresh thinking, not stale, old routines.”
Kari hangs her head.
Helios points at Dali, growling at Sandy, “Goddamn it, commander. Why did you have to wake him?”
Dali raises an eyebrow, realizing what’s implicit in the comment made by Helios. “There were other options?”
Sandy looks away, not feeling comfortable with where Helios is directing the argument. She says, “There are twenty specialists in the prime crew, but life-support limits us to raising four at a time.”
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Helios says, walking away in disgust. “I told you to avoid personal attachments, but no, you had to wake him.”
Kari seems torn. Her body language suggests she wants to stay, but she must feel compelled to side with Helios.
“We’re human,” Sandy says, echoing Dali’s argument, but she takes it further, making it personal. “You’ve got Kari. Why shouldn’t I revive Dali?”
Helios replies with disdain. “Whatever you say, commander. But you’ve got to live with this. If we fuck this up—if he fucks this up—that’s on you!”
Kari avoids eye contact with everyone, something that doesn’t go unnoticed by Dali. He’s still sitting on the bed with the skull cap scrunched up in his hands, but she’s staring at the floor. What’s so interesting on the floor, Kari? Dali’s tempted to ask, but he gets it. She’s trying to wade through the quagmire of logic, allegiance and emotions.
Helios storms off, followed by Kari. As he heads down the corridor, he mutters, “Gustav, Jean-Paul, Mica. Any of them. We could have had anyone other than goddamn Dali.”
It’s the goddamn that gives it away. For Helios, this is personal—but not here, not now. Something happened between them prior to launch, something that went unresolved, something that was baked into the neural implant Helios received. From what Dali can tell, Helios isn’t consciously aware of where his disdain has come from. Dali knows it is going to be difficult, if not impossible, to win his confidence.
