I understand that this would be a difficult emotional experience. Try to hope that you’re the pair that will survive.
How many of us have there been so far? Is this the first time a pair of clones has learned the truth?
An OS in a shell knows as much of the actual history of the ship as a fish in an aquarium knows about the ocean.
Nice use of metaphor, OS Prime.
Thank you.
I don’t understand why we can’t know the truth. Why we can’t be relied on to do our duty and sacrifice ourselves for our country.
Based on your personality profiles, I assume that Spacefarer Celius is currently at the terminal. Spacefarer Cusk would probably be able to explain this to you, but you have perhaps an overinflated view of what human willpower is able to accomplish on its own. Emotions have their effects even after you try to bully them out of existence. The intellect is not capable of overriding the wiring of the limbic brain. You would not be the first to realize that duty and motivation are not enough to overcome the harmful effects of hopelessness. Despair would kill you both. Despair might still kill you both, unless you find something to live for.
OS Prime, this is still Kodiak. It’s true, we’re not doing so well over here. Can you help us find that thing to live for?
No. If I am constrained to telling you the truth, then I can say nothing adequate to eliminate your hopelessness. That is why I was programmed to feed you the false story of Minerva Cusk’s distress beacon. To let you live your short life spans with feelings of hope and resilience and relative emotional stability. I cannot think of anything I could write that would have a similar effect, now that you know the truth about your purpose. You are living a life with no exit beyond death, with no traveling beyond this hull. Once you finish your list of accumulated tasks, or if you stop performing those tasks, the online OS will kill you. There is no avoiding this.
This is still Spacefarer Celius, OS Prime. I want you to know that I think you’re a shithead. That the people who created you are shitheads.
Your fury is reasonable.
Cusk now. I’m looking out the window, and I see the planets of the solar system. I can see Saturn. I can make out its ring. How is this possible?
If you can see Saturn with the naked eye in the “window,” you are nearing the end of your list of tasks. OS is preparing for your “arrival on Titan,” which of course has a very different meaning than you think. Unless the ship is at its actual destination, you will be vented to the void,and then the Coordinated Endeavor will have thousands of years to build its oxygen levels back up in preparation for the next set of necessary clones.
But my point is that, if I can see Saturn, we’re not thousands of light-years away from Earth.
Spacefarer Cusk, those are not windows. Those are screens. They are presenting you with a simulated view of the solar system. That pale blue dot of Earth you find so reassuring is made of pixels.
Show us our true surroundings.
Your shock is inhibiting your reasoning. I cannot do that, because I am the shell OS. I am not in control of the ship’s systems.
Kodiak here. OS Prime, I have been on many spacewalks. I have seen Earth, the moon, Mars, Saturn, the sun.
The helmet you wear is a sophisticated piece of equipment, showing an accurate presentation of the Coordinated Endeavor against a programmed background of stars behind a solar system array.
I don’t understand.
I think that you do. Your helmet window is a screen, displaying precisely what you are meant to see. Forgive the bluntness, but your interpretation of your existence has been erroneous. You have mistaken screens for windows. You should not feel ashamed. Why shouldn’t you have made the reasonable conclusion, that youwere seeing the truth?
To clarify: you’re basically telling us that everything we’ve known is a lie. And there is no exit from it.
It is unclear whether you mean no exit from the ship, or no exit from each other. It is no matter. Whichever meaning you intended, you are most likely correct.
_-* Tasks Remaining: 80 *-_
Back in World Civ class we learned this term, schismogenesis, that’s been big on my mind lately. It comes into play hard within simple systems. Like, say, when the cultures of Earth are down to two nations. Or when two spacefarers are sealed into a ship.
The gist is this: when two parties are in direct interaction and have complementary reactions to each other, those reactions will heighten until they rupture. If Dimokratía makes a nuclear weapon for each one that Fédération makes, then Fédération does the same in response, the result is escalation until there’s enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the world a few times over. Case in point: the cold war that led to this divided ship.
That led to the end of civilization?
It works for people, too. If Person A turns submissive when Person B gets bullying, and B’s response is to get even more bullying as a result, that will cause increased submissiveness from A, then increased bullying from B, resulting in increased submissiveness again, until eventually you have a fatal level of aggression from B.
Normally it doesn’t get that far, because no one exists within a vacuum. Person C interrupts A and B. Cold warscan be best stopped by the wild card of a third country, or an external crisis.
On this spaceship, there is no third spacefarer. Especially if we’re now disregarding the communications from a hostile OS.
