Элизабет Бир - Machine

But if you change the information stored in the machine, every time the patient remembers the memory it’s not reinforced by what really happened, but by the memory they have been provided. This can be used for therapy, for post-trauma repair to give the patient a sense of control back, for helping to reconstruct people who are dangerous to release otherwise. But it’s supposed to be voluntary, and overseen by boards of ethicists.

I was pretty sure involuntary memory replacement was what had been done to Calliope. And that nobody had bothered to ask her permission first. And that the review board had not been informed.

And then they had taken her fox away, and frozen her, and we’d reawakened her and subjected her to more medical trauma. And then some kind of trigger had been applied to bring the response we’d seen—the response that had been trained into her, I was certain—out. And send her haring off to find the craboid, and rip a ragged gash in my hospital.

Oh no.

Somebody would have taken care of it, right? I mean, somebody would have taken care of it. Obviously.

Still, once I thought of it I had to ask.

Sally. Where’s the walker now?

Nonesuch towed it off into space and parked it in a static point with interdict beacons all over it.

“Calliope,” I said.

She looked at me.

“I’ll do what you asked. Promise to be careful and stay safe until I get back?”

Her pupils were dilated. I didn’t know if she was seeing me or something from inside her damaged memories. “The doctors. Please don’t let them send me back.”

I stood, but didn’t turn away. “Send you back where?”

“If they send me back, I’ll never get away,” she said.

“IS THAT TRUE?” CARLOS ASKED, when I finished relaying what Jones had told me. “About the mind control?”

“No.” I twirled spaghetti around my fork. “She’s pretty obviously sick, and somebody curtailed her treatment and manipulated her into a bunch of obsessive, delusional ideations before turning her loose to wreak havoc. No, worse than that—hiding her among your people in order to conceal the source of the havoc.”

My fingers tightened on the fork. I didn’t believe in violence. But for a moment, I would have suspended that belief if I had been able to get my hands on the people who chose to put Jones through so much pain.

“I heard a different rumor,” Carlos said. “I heard that the peripheral—Helen—” He flinched again, but the flinch had a different quality this time: less disgust, more pity.

“Tell me.”

“I heard she caused the disaster. Stopped the rotation.”

“How?”

He shrugged. “The machine?”

I put the food in my mouth. It gave me something to grind my teeth through. I swallowed it through a chill of unease. “It’s still contained. In the walker and in the stasis box. As far as I know. Who told you that?”

“That pilot lady,” he said. “Loese. The… uncomfortably mannish one.”

My mouth tightened. The information was not conclusive, but it fit certain parts of the pattern I was building. I still hated the pattern I was building. “Check your gender biases, caveman.”

I filed the information away to contemplate later. I didn’t want to think about it now. That was another conversation I needed to get to quickly. Curse the physical limitations of my frail, poorly designed anatomy.

Carlos sipped his drink and made a face. “Unfair to cavemen. What about the clones, then? And the kidnapping people for parts?”

I sighed, and looked at him. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Can I trust you to tell me the truth?”

I looked at him over my fork. He frowned back at me. I thought about being angry, but I was too tired, and honestly what reason did he have to trust me? We barely knew each other.

Which was why I could talk to him. All my other relationships were way too old, way too fraught, and way too tangled up in potential medical malfeasance. Well, maybe not Rilriltok. I couldn’t imagine it doing anything unethical. Not unless it got way too excited to ask about the ethics of the situation before jumping in with all… twelve? limbs.

I raised my left little finger off the handle of the fork. “In fact, once I know what’s going on, I’ll show you.”

“Huh,” Carlos said, tilting his head to examine me.

“What?”

“People still pinky swear.”

I had a lot of questions, and I didn’t know the answers. But I knew where to go to find out, maybe. Thanks to Calliope Jones.

And thanks to Jones, I was pretty sure I could get in and out without being stopped.

I told Rilriltok not to let them transfer her, no matter what. “Get O’Mara if you have to. Nobody moves this patient anywhere.”

She obviously wasn’t tracking reality well. She was probably paranoid. Delusional.

Probably.

What if I asked Cheeirilaq for help? I liked the Goodlaw, and it had saved my life. But I realized, if O’Mara and Starshine knew something was wrong in the hospital… then I had no idea who I could trust.

I was going to have to handle it myself.

I couldn’t give myself time to temporize. My courage could not be allowed to fail. I paused just inside the door of the detention ward, feeling Rilriltok’s attention on my back, and nerved myself.

I also shut Sally out of my senso, which hurt me more than anything. But I couldn’t be sure of anybody . You’d think that programmed ethics would be enough to prevent an AI from doing anything really sketchy. It’s not like anybody looks at a constructed superintelligence and says, “What if we made this one a ruthless Utilitarian, just to see what happens?”

… Actually, somebody probably would, but with any luck the review board would catch it in time.

Better safe than sorry, as my allofather used to say.

When I moved into the corridor, I walked like a woman on a mission. There’s a focused, hurried gait that makes other experienced hospital personnel flatten themselves against corridor walls, and I adopted it, heading toward Casualty with all deliberate speed.

It was less of an abattoir than when I’d left it, at least. Gravity—or the simulation of it—helped. There were still cots lined up against two walls, sheets draped over improvised stands between them for some semblance of privacy, but that was far more orderly than the situation during the disaster. Walking wounded had returned to their own quarters to convalesce, and some were probably back on duty.

I noticed open panels in the floor as I passed, and people of various descriptions working inside. I guessed that the artificial gravity retrofit had been stepped up, and that getting it installed in Casualty was now the first priority. Good.

It’s always comforting to see the return of normalcy, and that the system has not completely broken down.

I nodded to an attending physician and a couple of specialists with whom I was acquainted, waved to the triage nurse, and stepped toward the doors to the private ward as if I belonged there.

The door didn’t open to my scan.

Now, that was interesting. But I wouldn’t be much of a heavy rescue specialist if I didn’t know how to override a standard lock panel. I hadn’t done this last time because I was still mostly following the rules. Still mostly being polite. And my exo had been an anchor at the time, come to think of it. Now… using my exo instead of a handheld—and instead of reaching into the senso with my fox—I hacked into the panel’s working memory and flipped the switch.

The door hissed open and I stepped through.