Элизабет Бир - Ancestral Night

“I feel like it’s a more pressing question for me,” Singer said. “I’m nothing but those electrical signals.”

“Are you suggesting I’m something more?” I replied. “Did you get us those docking permissions?”

“You have flesh.”

“Sure, and my consciousness seems to be an emergent property of that flesh. It’s shaped by the flesh; it can be modified by modifying the meat. At least I can move you into a new mem and you take up right where you left off. Maybe a little smarter. We can model a human brain, even duplicate one—”

“Well, duplicate might not be the right term,” Connla said. “Duplicate my brain, shove me into a digester, and I’m still dead methane keeping the electricity on. Maybe if you mapped all the meat and then engineered identical meat with identical chemicals you’d get an identical mind, but then you still have the problem of your mind being stuck in meat. Which is what most of the upload guys are trying to avoid.”

“You’re making my point for me, interrupting lad.”

The ship shuddered with a brief burn. The arc of a structure swung across the forward screen—swirling, stately.

“This is wildly antisocial!” I said.

“Sorry,” Connla said.

He didn’t look sorry. He winked.

“It’s like systems of government,” Singer said suddenly as he completed his swing and burned again to arrest the movement.

“Here we go again.”

“It’s why I want us to be very careful what we commit to while we’re dealing with this station. They make bad governmental choices, and by patronizing them, we’re just validating their choices.”

“We still need fuel and supplies. We need new chow,” Connla said reasonably. “And air that doesn’t smell like the garlic in last week’s soup.”

I braced myself. I suppose when you’re functionally immortal, think at the speed of light, and your multitasking ability is only limited by the number of parallel processor arrays you can line up, you need a lot of hobbies.

Singer said, “Government is either imposed with force, or it derives from the will of the governed. But it’s a social contract, right? It exists simply because people say it does. It’s not a thing you can touch.”

“Neither is consciousness,” Connla said.

“You’re encouraging him,” I said. “Fly the tug, so we don’t die.”

“My point exactly!” Singer continued. “It’s like… language. Or an economy. It’s a consensus model, not an objective reality.”

“There’s a whole body of theory and a not-insignificant pile of myth that insists that language actually does have some kind of objective reality,” Connla said. “But we’ll let that slide for now. Are you going someplace interesting with this?”

The superstructure sighed as the AI’s feather touch adjusted our trajectory toward the dock. The great wheel of the station grew, and morphed slowly into an arc, clipped at the edges by the frame of the forward window.

“I’m hurt,” Singer said, “by the implication that I might be going someplace uninteresting .”

“Supernovae and small fishes,” I muttered. “Aren’t we still coming in a little hot?”

“Don’t you trust me?” Singer said. “We work together because we agree to. Because we see that collective bargain, that social contract, as advantageous to all of us. I work with you because the work interests me. Because I enjoy traveling with you. Because the rewards of salvage and exploration are generally intellectually stimulating.”

“Because we put up with your lectures.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that, Haimey.”

“Because the salvage helps pay off your obligation,” Connla offered.

I said, “Aren’t we still coming in a little hot?”

“You work with me because of my skills, and also my companionship. Although your perversity forces you to suggest otherwise.”

“My perversity currently forces me to ask if you shouldn’t be taking this emergency decel upon which all our lives depend a little more seriously.”

“I am capable of multitasking,” Singer scoffed.

We bent on an arc with another burn, moving parallel to the station’s axis of rotation now. The dock was coming up fast, relative motion sharp and quick, and the fuel gauge was on empty and not even flickering when we shifted v . I knew Singer was in contact with the station’s AI because of the ripple of lights across the console that allowed us slowbrains to monitor his resource allocation.

I hoped the station wasn’t screaming at us to slow down. I waited to feel heavy again, but I kept just floating above my couch.

Well, if we got hit for it, I’d take the fine out of Singer’s share. If we plowed into the airlock at velocity… we’d have bigger problems than a speeding ticket.

And so would the station.

“Oh, Void,” I said as we came around the curve. “That’s the pirate ship.”

There she was, big as life, docked and quiescent. We whipped past her so fast she looked like a white blur. I couldn’t see any weapons on her, but we were moving pretty fast and perhaps they retracted into their ports when she was trying to look like she wasn’t a corsair. I started to doubt my pattern recognition just as Singer said, “Confirmed.”

Cold settled into my gut. “How did they track us here? How did they get here ahead of us?”

Connla said, “Maybe they were coming here anyway.”

I sucked my teeth. “Well, that’s rotten luck.”

Singer, calmly, commented, “We have to dock.”

“They fired on us.”

Singer said, “You have a better plan?”

Connla added, “One that doesn’t involve freezing to death in the Big Empty?”

I didn’t. And yeah, my shipmate definitely had his sophipathology pumped right up.

“Maybe they didn’t see us,” Connla added.

Maybe.

We whipped around the station again, and the ship did look quiet. Downthehatch wasn’t a big station—thirty thousand people at most—but that was enough to get lost in.

Maybe it would be okay. And—I looked at the fuel readout again—it wasn’t as if we had a lot of choices.

“Authority derives from the consent of the governed, is what I’m saying,” Singer continued, as if we hadn’t been derailed by the threat of people with guns and a grudge. “And that consent is derived from consensus. Which is never universal.”

“Somebody always feels like they’re getting screwed,” Connla clarified.

“That’s business,” I agreed, picking at my cuticle.

Connla glared at me, and I felt the weight of Singer’s disapproval in the flicker of his status lights. They could be as expressive as a frown.

“What?” I said. “I was agreeing with you. You say consent is never universal, but remember—I grew up in a clade. Where consensus is perfect, and enforced. I ran away. I’m allergic to perfect consensus. It has to be enforced somehow, and once you sign the clade contract, they just tune your neurology until you agree. Boom, no conflict.”

“But government,” Singer said. “Government is a social contract. It has no objective existence. It’s a thing human beings made up. The good ones allow for the allocation of present resources in a manner that meets present needs, including those of the most vulnerable, which requires a certain amount of altruism and also foresight in those who do not currently need assistance that somedia they are likely to. Which is why”—he sighed—“I have to turn myself in and serve my time for the Core, helping to run things.”

“It all takes a lack of denial, too,” I said. “Which is the hard part. We’re still hot. Please acknowledge.”