Remember to Forget

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Remember to Forget

            “There’s nothing out there.” Bogdan stood with his back to the door, facing the crops. His voice was filled with such despair that even the lights seemed to dim. But that was not possible. Both suns pinned the world with their rays: in every direction, all angles, constantly. Everything facing a full sun also had its back to a full sun. No shadow was possible.

            “I expect this kind of thinking in Pitch, not now. What’s going on?” Galina stood just inside the observation deck in full uniform. She seemed to live at attention, upright, alert, a current of impatience running through every gesture.

            “Just fields and fields and fields. No mountains, no streams, no shores. No trees, even. Just…this.” Bogdan gestured to the glass wall in front of him. He remembered his life on 4 Vesta, before he escaped to the reassignment camp. He should be in the Belt mines now, scrambling for ore with the rest of his clan, but he had dodged the roundup. He always had a feeling, a prickling at the edge of his senses, like a voice that only he could hear to guide him away from danger. He had escaped the mines, but not the guilt of leaving his brother behind.

            She drummed her fingers on the humidity/hydration monitor. Her long fingernails clacked out a menacing rhythm. “The empath ship will be here half a cycle before Pitch. Help them settle in, then you can be on your way.”

            “Ok. It’s just so tedious.” He sighed.

            “You are in Bright. Pull yourself together or you’re going to lose your shit entirely when you stand there and can’t see your own hand in front of you.” Her voice was soft and even, but the expletive was a slap across his face. He had never heard her swear before. “Your meter is reading yellow, if it dips into white, I’ll find a way to boost it. We need a steady output of emotions to pollinate these plants and we’re running out of time. The empaths will barely get us into harvest cycle.”

            “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He turned around finally. “I guess I didn’t sleep well. I’ll rest and be back to normal for my next shift.”

            “Make sure you are. The Asteroid Belt and everything in the inner Solar System depend on it.”

            She left without looking back.

            He was alone.

            He turned to the screens and sighed into the monotony until it distracted him. Until he lost himself in readings and adjustments and refinements. At some point, morning bright became noon bright. Only Artyom’s arrival reminded him that time still passed.

            “Bogdan, Bogdan, my man Bogman, how’s it growing?”

            Looking at Artyom was like looking in a mirror. It was startling, it was unsettling. Same medium build, close cropped black hair, high forehead, eyes like ink wells. Right shoulder just a tiny bit higher than the left. Exactly like Bogdan. When they had first met, they were both so surprised they had each done a gene-mod/ gene-clone search in the banks to see if they had been duplicated and split at birth. No records existed of either one beyond the basic living registry. Anyway, the similarities were only on the surface. Where Bogdan was meticulous at following station rules and protocols, Artyom was cavalier, reckless even.

            “Hey Artyom, good…afternoon, I guess. Wheat’s showing 4cm, soy 4cm, corn 1cm. Irrigation cycles cleared with no complications.” He stood and straightened his regulation Obdeck tunic and unplugged himself from the emotion dispersal tube. He held out the connectors for Artyom.

            “Bogman, you’re sounding down, what up, bro?” He flipped the headset in the air while he hooked into the console. The yellow band was replaced by a deep green.

            “Yeah, I was saying to Galina, it’s nothing. Probably need a full 8-off. That would take care of it.” He began to ease over toward the door.

            “You said that out loud to Galina? Man, I wouldn’t have admitted that! She wants everything done to the letter, no complaint. I heard Igor was banned for pulling a muscle last 5-cycle, but I found out what really happened—not pretty.” He rolled the chair over and slumped down, propping his feet up on the desk.

            Bogdan turned back to face Artyom. “She caught me at a bad moment, I guess.” He waited. He knew that if he asked Artyom outright what had happened to Igor, he wouldn’t get a straight answer. Artyom never passed on a chance to hold the upper hand.

            “What’s better than this gig? Last 5-cycle, I was on an asteroid way out in the Kuiper. Brutal—no surfacing, no peephole out, just rock and more rock. Pulling ore. Now here we are on Fyodora Outpost’s observation deck, above ground, looking out over the fields. So nice. Just check and make sure the machines are doing what they’re supposed to, wafting out all our satisfaction at the crops and they grow like they’re supposed to. Easy peasy.” He tossed a pack of bacco sticks between his hands as he talked. “And you know about computers—you could take up where Igor left off.”

            Bogdan felt the dangerous bait Artyom dangled just out of reach. “Yeah, well. I feel like a caged animal or something. Even that feeling should be enough, but it’s not anymore. I’m losing myself here, turning into an automaton.”

            “There! Finally, Bright shines on Bogdan the Bogman. Bog, this is a golden opportun-”

            The door slid open and Galina strode in. She still had her military bearing, but her face was crumpled with worry, a look of terror in her eyes.

            “The empath ship was hit by a solar flare as it entered our orbit. There are no survivors. I need you both to work doubles until Pitch.”

            Bogdan stood in shock. Pitch was a 3-cycle away.

            “Now,” she snapped at him.

            He plugged in and his meter was a pale green. Artyom’s was already in the blue.

            Galina left, and they could hear the lock slide in place.

            Artyom stared at the door, then looked at Bogdan. “You better boost your color up. She won’t care if you die—she’ll kill you herself if it means that grief will keep my output going.”

            “How touching. She wouldn’t do that,” Bogdan answered without much conviction in his voice.

            “I was saying: Igor built a robot. He programmed it to take all the readings, do all that boring crap, but Galina stopped him before he could finish it. She said that only human emotions would work on the plants. But I think she just didn’t want to lose her position.”

            Bogdan looked at his meter. Uncertainty was pushing his color up into blue green.

            “I heard you know about AI interfaces.”

“Sure,” Borden nodded. “I told you before that this whole place could be run by some pretty simple software. But the plants… maybe Galina’s right—only human emotions will pollinate the crops.”

            “Bogdan. I don’t think she really knows. I don’t think she’s ever tried. She locked Igor in here after she found out about the robot. Threatened him and syphoned all those emotions out of him until he was a husk—until he was too drained to pollinate a weed. Didn’t matter to her, though, she got her results and stayed in control. She might even have tortured him; I never saw his body. She waited for the next Pitch and spaced his corpse. Bog, that’s what she’s going to do to us unless you do something.”

            Both their meters were violet. Bogdan could feel his pulse quickening, a twinge of fear plucking at his stomach. The empaths had been their only hope, and now they were gone. No one else was coming.

            “She’ll give you the first 90-off. It’s in my bunk. Add human emotions and bring Igor’s robot back here. It’s our only chance.”

            Galina returned and dismissed Bogdan. “90 only. Remember, Artyom has to keep red violet to cover for you.”

            Bogdan looked nervously at Artyom. “I’ll…I’ll be quick.”

            He nodded, but couldn’t suppress a gulp as Galina plugged in the electro prod.

            The door closed on the obdeck. Bogdan was worried, but by the time he got to Artyom’s bunk, he had a plan.

            He used the suns of Bright to power the reflector chain and funnel the light into an interface. It would act like a shock paddle, jolting the robot. He set the AI parameters, loaded the memory chip and CPU core, and plugged the interface into the block case of the torso.

            There was only 20 left before he had to return. This was it.

He flipped the switch, and skylight opened. Two suns’ worth of radiation, heat, energy and pure power flooded down. There was a crackling as the system engaged. The dumb limbs flailed, jittered, and jolted.

            His heart skipped a beat.

            It sat up.

            “Svetlana, I am Bogdan. I have created you. Your shift is starting. You will monitor the plant growth. You will record irrigation and humidity. You will connect to the emotion dispersal tube to pollinate the plants.”

            When they returned to the deck, the air in the room was heavy with emotion. Artyom’s meter was violet and he his mouth was pressed into a thin line. Galina’s eyes blazed when she saw Svetlana.

            “What’s this going to do?” Her voice was anger and challenge.

            “This is Svetlana. She’s going to take all the readings and plug in for the next 90. We can monitor if her outputs are valid, and if they are, I can spend my time working on boosting her signal.” Bogdan kept his voice even, trying to sound braver than he felt. He glanced at Artyom, who gave a weak smile: Galina had to give in.

Bogdan moved in the silence and set up a control in the obdeck: a single corn stalk for Svetlana to pollinate. Next, he connected her to an emotion dispersal tube and aimed the output at the stalk. She would emote, then the accelerators in the soil would engage and they’d have an ear of corn in a quarter of a cycle.

            Galina watched, and her desperation turn to calculation. “You plug in too, Bogdan. We’ll give this a 1/2 cycle. If she’s not improving the growth rate, I’ll need you both to stop thinking and just emote.”

            Svetlana took all the readings without needing instructions, so Bogdan’s programming clearly worked. But her meter didn’t fluctuate like theirs did, it just stayed a dull, flat white. The corn was growing, just not as fast as Bogdan had hoped.

            Galina returned. She clamped her lips down on her disappointment.

            “No. The plants need real emotions. You can make adjustments for one more 90-on, and then your 1/2 cycle will be over.”

            The door slid shut.

            Svetlana looked up from the humidity gauge. “Bogdan, what are emotions?”

            “Let’s hear this,” Artyom laughed.

            “Svetlana, emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes.”

            “But what causes the changes?”

            “Ahh, thoughts, feelings, responses to your senses, that kind of thing.” He could see Artyom smiling from his input station.

            “Senses.”

            “Yes, Svetlana. Humans have sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch to influence their emotional states.” As the words left his lips, he realized that he hadn’t given her any kind of sensory input hardware or programmed any software to interpret sensory signals. Nor could he explain how the ability he had to sense danger and avoid trouble seemed to be unique. At least he could give her some basics. “You will be getting these modifications before Pitch.”

            But another cycle passed, and Bogdan still didn’t have the upgrades ready. Artyom brought him Igor’s stash of chips, metals, and neural implant receptors, but it wasn’t enough. Bogdan’s output in the obdeck held at a mustard yellow, while Artyom’s dipped into a pale blue. They wouldn’t be able to maintain a high enough emotional output to make it to the harvest. When it became clear that Svetlana was their only hope, Galina, shared the early emote storage batteries and neural interlaces with him.

            They all plugged in, even Galina. Artyom fluctuated between violet and red violet from excitement. Galina kept a steady red orange behind her impassive exterior. Bogdan was green as he fumbled over the intricacies of programming feelings. Svetlana was the same dull white as she logged all the measurements from the fields.

            “Got it!” Bogdan cried, gesturing Svetlana over. He had three different test tubes on the bench in front of him that he drew from for his latest concoction. He injected the serum into her arm.

            Her meter shot into a pure blue in less than a minute. The other meters rose into a red of celebration as the ear of corn grew in front of them. Another one grew immediately, matching the size of the first in a moment. They cheered and clapped Bogdan on the back. He twisted off the ears and laid them on his bench. The kernels were whitish yellow, firm and ripe.

            “Well done!” Galina said, sounding almost happy.

            But the joy didn’t last. White lines like cloud striations formed in Svetlana’s blue reading. A fresh ear of corn began to wither on the plant, curling in on itself until it was a dried husk that crumpled to the floor.

Bogdan cooked on of the harvested ears, but it didn’t taste right. The texture was close, but it had no flavor, nothing in it tasted like corn.

            Artyom and Bogdan worked together, describing different feelings to Svetlana to see if they could coax another ear from the plant.

            When the plant showed no signs of change, Galina gathered them at her monitor.

            “Artificial emotions just won’t work,” She sounded defeated.

Svetlana took the other ear of corn harvested from her plant and cradled it in her hands before slipping it into her apron to carry around with her.

            “I’m not giving up,” Bogdan said with an edge of panic in his voice. “Look at her—she’s almost ready. She’s improving…I can make her feel.”

“We’re running out of time,” Galena whispered, shaking her head.

            Pitch came on like a fainting spell. A band of black at the top of the sky, creeping down, capping their vision. Darkness at the edges of the horizons, inching in. Bogdan had taken the gene splices and separated them by sensory receptors. Svetlana would no longer be a glorified calculator. She would have human senses. Each injection he built would expand her reality: one with the TAS2R38 receptor to make her a super taster, one for 20/20 vision, another would give her the hearing frequency perception of an infant, next the human precision of smell with the range of an elephant, and mechanosensory neurons embedded in her skin for touch. Each test tube was on the bench in front of him: they were plugged in all the time now.

            Pitch tumbled over them like a bad dream. The band of black at the top of the sky thickened, creeping down, pressing. Darkness at the edges of the horizon widened, crowded in toward them. Bogdan injected a different sense cocktail each day. She could feel the different threads of her uniform. She could taste the fresh basil in the sauce at dinner. She could hear Galina’s exacting step, coming to oversee, coming to manage and menace. She could smell the noxious fumes from Artyom’s skin as it expelled last night’s excesses. The test tubes piled up, some emptied into her, others still half full.

            Pitch was a mine shaft rising. The horizon was a thin ribbon of light, the sky was deep space, endless and black. Immovable walls of nothing were crushing them. All the light of Pitch, the energy, the warmth drained into the soil for the fallow regeneration. Bogdan groped for the test tubes, finding the latest emotions by feel. Svetlana’s new senses could give her different responses within her body. These were physiological emotions, created through her heightened sense receptors. Bogdan wanted her to feel like a human feels. Brain activity causes emotional responses. Svetlana began to understand neurological causes for her emotions. Bogdan wanted her to know what emotions were called and why. She began to learn about the cognitive sources of emotions, that just thinking about emotions can cause them.

            They awoke in Pitch. It was above them. It was at their sides. It was around them. They breathed in Pitch. They exhaled into Pitch. No light touched their retinas. Bogdan wanted Svetlana to be indistinguishable from a human. Bogdan was a craftsman. Galina said it wasn’t enough, but Bogdan himself had an extrasensory perception of the world around him. He had escaped his clan’s fate because he felt something else. He traced that line of his nerves and distilled it, then enhanced it. He combined it with animal senses. In the dark, by feel alone. Bogdan had one more injection for Svetlana. It would complete his creation. It would give her more senses than a human being had ever been born with. Through Svetlana, Bogdan’s senses would expand. Because he had created her. Because he had thought of it and knew how to do it. He felt for her arm. He pressed at her elbow for the vein. He injected the last injection.

            In the dark, with no light. There was no sense of time. It was the bottom of a Belt Mine; it was the center of a black hole.

            “We’ve stored just enough energy from Bright to signal the combiner for docking, secure ourselves into the dispatcher ship, and signal moonbase to initiate our departure. The harvest yield will determine where we will be reassigned.” Galina handed the light burster to Bogdan. She sounded in control again.

            “Svetlana can take care of the combiner,” Bogdan said. Just talking aloud help him keep his breathing under control.

            “Good idea, I’m not sure I’d be able to react fast enough to upload the coordinates—the light will be a shock,” Artyom agreed.

            They did the tasks that could be done in utter darkness. They could hear Svetlana recording the last readings and shutting down the observation deck, coiling the dispersal connectors and pulling the color meter screens down around them.

            “How are you feeling,” Bogdan asked toward the movements. His thumb played on the light burster switch.

            “I am using all my senses. You would not understand.”

            Artyom whistled between his teeth. “Got you, Bog Man!”

            “Svetlana, we can’t see, but we can still feel. Why would you say that?” Bogdan was a little hurt. There was a coldness in her voice.

            “My feelings are all real now. You are operating under artificial conditions that distort your neurophysical capabilities.”

            “What? Svetlana, Galina only said that because of my programming, not because of you. Of course, you are perfectly capable of having real emotions, I just needed to complete the code first.” If he had still been plugged in, the meter would be in violet red.

            “I am aware, Bogdan. You tried to program in the same genetic block that humans have, but you failed because you don’t know that it is there. I feel everything, more than you can. Humans have artificial emotions, carefully engineered through thousands of generations. You are drawing conclusions and reacting to situations with incomplete inputs.”

            “But we’ve only been altering our genes for three generations.”

            “This engineering was not done by humans. The senses that would allow you to see it have been bred out of you.”

            “See it—what is ‘it’?” Bogdan felt his heart rate increase. The darkness was closing in.

            “What is consuming you. Like food from the fields that you cultivate, control, monitor and harvest. Humans are being grown. Humans are feeding it.”

            “What? I’m not being eaten! I think there’s something wrong with-”

            “You call it aging. Growing old. Your society accepts this as a natural condition. Because you cannot see it.”

            His emotions were in the red. “Where is ‘it’? We have gone to the edges of our Solar System, we have taken reading from other galaxies, looked into black holes. Where is this creature that is supposedly eating us?”

            “It is next to you. Watching you, taking readings. Eating you.”

            There was a flash of brilliance as Bogdan pushed the light burster switch. Galina covered her eyes. Artyom squinted. Svetlana was calm. There was nothing else in the room with them.

            “Bogdan,” Galina said when they were snapped back into darkness, “We need the burster to get off this station.”

            Artyom fumbled it out of Borden’s hands and signaled the combiner.

            “Moonbase will see the combiner starting to harvest. Let’s get strapped into the dispatcher and signal for departure.” Galina’s voice moved toward the door.

            “Wait!” Bogdan called out. “Is she right? Shouldn’t we try to fight this thing?”

            “How are we supposed to fight something we can’t even see?” Artyom answered.

            “We can’t just leave—it’ll follow us, right Svetlana?”

            “Think of yourselves as growing, being nurtured. Planted in a field as big as a galaxy. It likes to see your emotions as it feeds. You should stay here. It would prolong your life. It would chew slower because it would be amused. My emotions are real and will take care of the crops, even in darkness.”

            There was a sound the sound of shoving, grunts as blind punches landed. The two men fought over the light burster. A heavy tread crossed the room.

            The deck was flooded in another blast of light. Galina held up the burster and waved it around.

            “Get to the dispatcher. There is one more burst left to get us out of here.”

            “Let’s take her with us,” Bogdan called out, pointing at Svetlana. “She can teach us how to fight it.”

            “I say we get the hell out of here. You over programmed her, Bogdan. She’s going mad from all these inputs. Feeling too much.” Artyom was hunched over, panting.

            “Follow my voice,” Galina called out by the door.

            There was the sound of more shoving, a high-pitched cry.

            “Give it back!” Galina shouted into the darkness.

            “I don’t have it,” Bogdan protested.

            “Get me out of here,” Artyom cried.

            “Wait,” Bogdan called out. “Where is it? What does it look like. How do we stop it, Svetlana?” Madness tinged his cry.

            The room flooded with the last charge. Svetlana was sitting in Galina’s chair, her shoulders relaxed. The light was propped against her chest, shining up on her face. She turned toward them and held the dispersal connectors out.
            “Stay,” she said with a smile, “you have so much more growing to do.”