“Who defines mental illness?” Her bosom heaved a little less with breathless interest. Or maybe I was getting used to it.
“That is the subject of some controversy, as it happens. But social health and hygiene do tend to reinforce themselves. As they did once our ancestors developed the technology to fiddle with their own neurochemistry. They built a more egalitarian government based on service rather than authority, salvaged the remains of technological society, and within a couple of generations had invented the Alcubierre-White drive.”
“That sounds very tidy.”
I found myself frowning at her. That sounded very skeptical, for the vacant service personality we’d first encountered. Was she becoming… more astute?
Sally, are you loaning Helen processing space?
Sally was bad at not sounding shifty. Maybe a little.
You might have mentioned it.
I am the responsible physician.
She was, indeed. The responsible physician.
I said, “In the process of exploring the galaxy they eventually met up with the Synarche, which used a more refined and advanced but grossly similar governmental model, and we became galactic Synizens.”
“That’s brainwashing,” Helen said dubiously.
“That’s what acculturation is,” I answered cheerily. “Tell me about your historians?”
After a long pause, Helen settled into herself, shimmering faintly, and admitted, “I have gaps.”
“I won’t judge.” I’d made it through the conversation on eugenics without tossing her into space. What was the worst that could happen?
“It’s not considered an essential primary.”
I rubbed the back of my hand, feeling dry skin and the slick rise of my exo over it. I needed to exercise better self-care. And moisturize.
With that same supreme effort of my masterful will, I managed not to make any comments about history and the repeating thereof. I waited, and Helen seemed to be thinking hard, so I didn’t interrupt her.
Finally, she said, “There’s Specialist First Rank Calliope Jones. She’s a systems architect, and she secondaries as a historian. She’s very bright. I think you will like her.”
I might never get to meet her, but I didn’t say that. Filtering my speech for Helen was becoming second nature. Even if Specialist Jones survived rewarming, the odds were not in favor of my finding myself on her treatment team. I’d be back out in space again, zooming around the Core with Sally and the rescue rangers.
I didn’t think Helen needed the reminder that the continuity of our relationship was not assured. So I asked, “Is she with us?”
“She is,” Helen said. “Chamber 8186-A. I could show you!”
“Maybe later. Why don’t you tell me about the rest of the crew we’ve rescued? That will give me a much better idea of who they are than I can get from looking at the outside of a cryo unit. But first let me get some more tea. No, you stay there. I can handle it.”
Helen’s account of the life of Specialist Jones was more than a little garbled, but since I was mostly trying to get her to talk, stay oriented, and begin processing her new environment, it didn’t matter. I got her to tell me the life stories of all our corpsicles, and tried not to let myself get attached to any of them.
She told me about Patrika Thomas, who was a systems engineer trainee; and about Joseph Meadows, a manufacturer; and Lyndsay Bohacz, in biosystems; and Call Reznik, a medic. She told me about their families, and their hobbies, and their aspirations—as much as she recalled.
I did notice that Helen’s memory gaps seemed to have patterns to them. It reminded me of organic brain damage, except instead of seeming like she had damage to certain aspects of processing speech, or parts of her visual field, the damage asserted itself in recall about a particular crew member’s service record, say, or their love life.
But I kept her talking. This was all fine. Well, not fine. But part of the job. What was a lot harder to deal with was the awkward family dinner that followed. Tsosie and Hhayazh had gone over to Afar while we were out of white space, changing vector, and they needed to rewarm and rest; Camphvis would be heading over to take a turn monitoring our remote patients after we ate. Rhym, who found communal meals incomprehensible, was on rest shift, and we were all sitting around staring at each other while the printer/cooker did its thing.
I wasn’t physically tired, but an entire shift of drawing somebody out of their shell is exhausting. But no matter how much emotional labor I’d done, I wasn’t going to make Tsosie pry his still faintly blue-tinged fingers from his hot chocolate mug. I stood up when the cooker dinged.
“Oh no, Doctor,” Helen said, appearing through the doorway. “Please allow me.”
She bustled to the cooker, interposing herself between me and the device so that I would have had to body check her if I wanted to serve myself, Loese, and Tsosie. She unloaded the cooker and turned, balancing the plates gracefully overhead on fingers grown long and stemlike to support them.
“Doctors,” she said cheerfully, doling the plates out. “Pilot. Would anyone like something to drink?”
Whiskey, I thought, but kept my mouth shut.
Camphvis’s eyestalks twined in amusement. Hhayazh already had its food and was crunching green and orange stalks between its mandibles, an operation I did my best not to observe closely. The busy gnawing hid its own arachnoid amusement.
“Thank you,” I said to Helen. “You should go check on your crew now.”
She made a little curtsey and scuttled back out.
Tsosie gave me a sidelong glance and shook his head sadly, the hint of a smirk deforming his mouth.
“Don’t you even,” I said.
“She likes you, though,” Loese said. Helen had gotten our plates reversed. Loese had my steak, and I had her salad. I like salad, but I grew up on the ground and expect real plants with the texture of real cell walls and water and sucrose inside. Printed plants are horrible. Printed steak is fine.
“Give me my damn food.” I swapped the offending plates and picked up a strip of steak with my chopsticks. The juices, soaking into the polenta underneath, smelled delicious. I stuffed the steak into my mouth. Not as good as vat-cloned, but still spicy and salty and rich enough to take my mind off how irritated I was.
“It wouldn’t be the first time a human has fallen for an AI,” Tsosie said.
I swallowed and drank water. The systers were keeping out of the human banter for once. Thank the Interventionist Bodhisattvas for that one small kindness from the universe.
“They designed her as a sexbot,” I answered, keeping my voice low. “It’s horrible.”
Tsosie, realizing I was really unsettled, raised a hand. “Sorry,” he said. “I know it’s not your fault.”
“Sally,” I asked, “is there anything we can do to tune down the flirtatiousness?”
Sally cleared her throat. “I’m a shipmind, not a psychologist.”
“I’m going to throw this steak in your air vents, computer. Technically, you are a psychologist. Or an AI doc, anyway.”
“I am an AI doc,” she agreed. “And you’re a human doctor. How comfortable would you be trying to rightmind a Neanderthal, even if you had a language in common?”
“Oh,” I said. “I’d be really concerned with breaking them.”
“And if they were already broken?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I see.”