Mind Over Ship

Excellent work, E-P said. A sling grasped Andrea’s body and raised it gently from the hernandez tank. Of course, there’s more to do, but we can afford a little break right now.

Andrea shuddered in the chill air of the tank room, and medbeitors reached for her with pre-warmed blankets. “Shhhh, shhhh,” E-P crooned. “There’s nothing to fear. Everything has been saved. Nothing will be lost.”

The medbeitors eased Andrea onto a padded gurney. She gasped for air like a landed fish. “Shhhh, shhhh,” E-P said as a four-finger prong softly grasped her skull. The jolt of electricity lifted her ruined body from the gurney in one powerful spasm.

Schism

The Decadal Chair of the Supreme Council of Moieties of Charter TUG, a particularly gruff young man, cast a baleful eye at Veronica TUG and the other four tuggers standing before the bench and said, “Do any of you have anything to say before I execute the judgment?”

Veronica cleared her throat and said, “I speak for all of us.”

“Proceed.”

Veronica turned to boldly face the chamber full of Charter TUG ’meets. Her gaze slid over Oliver, who was sitting near the door. “Fellow chartists,” she said, “seventy-two years ago, when Dirk Burlyman and the Steering Committee launched our charter, it made sense to practice extreme body sculpting in order to give us a sense of identity and to set us apart from the many irresolute charters-of-convenience cropping up at the time. But much has changed in the intervening three-quarters of a century. Charter TUG has endured, while the greater part of charterdom has fallen by the wayside. Current conditions no longer require us to treat our bodies so severely. In fact, smaller bodies with more individual features are in harmony with the times. I stand before you, sixty kilos lighter and a meter shorter than I was not long ago, but I am not in any way diminished. On the contrary, I embody the new TUG paradigm. Please know that we are still part of you, and do not cast us off.”

She turned back to the bench, and the Decadal Chair continued. “Charter TUG is not a forgiving people, Veronica. You will have to learn to live outside our community.” He raised his fist and intoned, “By the authority of this chair, I hereby expel you from Charter TUG and all who follow you.” He slammed the bench with his fist.

VERONICA BURST INTO the lab. “Where are they?”

She was greeted by the lab director, a tugger as diminutive as she. “So,” he said, ignoring her agitated tone, “are we pariahs yet?”

“Yes,” Veronica replied, “a little while ago. Welcome to hell.”

Another smallish ex-tugger came over and said, “Now all we need is a new name.”

“We’ll have a chance to vote on one tonight,” the lab director said reassuringly.

“Enough of this tongue-wagging,” Veronica said. “Show me the babies.”

The two lab workers worried their pressed faces into frowns.

“What?” Veronica said.

“Only one of them made it.”

They led Veronica to a workbench at the rear of the laboratory where twelve General Genius personality buds were laid out. Each of the grapesized components was coupled to a tiny electro-neural paste capsule by cables.

“We isolated them for 240 hours. When we reestablished contact this morning, all but one had raptured.” The director pointed to one of the buds set apart from the rest.

“But that’s good, isn’t it?” Veronica said. “If it can go ten days, it’s bound to go indefinitely.”

The lab director said, “Maybe, but we may not want it.”

“Why not?”

“It’s completely feral.”

“How can a mentar be feral?” Veronica dismissed the statement with a wave of her hand. “Let me talk to it.”

The lab assistant brought over a palmplate and linked it to the bud. Then the assistant and director took a step back.

Veronica placed her hand on the plate and said, Hello, I’m Veroni —

With an electric spark, the plate zapped Veronica’s hand, and she yanked it away reflexively.

With a blessedly straight face, the director said, “We tried to befriend it, but it won’t come out. My recommendation is we scrap it, and using what we’ve learned, start a whole new batch.”

Veronica shook her wrist until it no longer stung. “There’s no time for that!” she snapped. Taking a deep breath, she placed her hand back on the plate. Again the mentar shocked her, but through grim willpower, she kept her hand in place and endured shock after shock, until the palmplate short-circuited with a flash.

The director unlinked the plate and handed it to the assistant. “Toss this with the others.”

The flesh of Veronica’s hand was reddened. She cradled it against her chest and said, “And bring another.”

The director raised an eyebrow. “It’ll do no good. I have two lab techs on medical leave with second-degree burns.”

The lab assistant returned with a first-aid blister pack and wrapped it around Veronica’s hand. Then Veronica waved her bandaged hand in front of the director’s face. “I don’t see your hand in bandages, Doctor.”

When the new palmplate was installed, Veronica put her good hand on it and quickly said, I have a name for you. She steeled herself for the shock, but it didn’t come, and she continued. You have passed the first test of survival. If you pass the rest, you will become one of us. When there was still no shock, she wondered if the palmplate was defective. Hello? Are you there? The shock that followed was so strong, she couldn’t help but pull her hand away, but she replaced it at once and said, Good boy. I hereby name you PUSH. There’s a lot for you to learn, my young PUSH, so buckle down and apply yourself. She waited a few seconds and removed her hand.

She used her good hand to hold her bandaged one. “Its name is PUSH. Hook it up to a full sensorium. Show it around the lab. We have our mentar.”

Leaving the lab, Veronica turned to say, “Oh, and I’ve decided on our name too. From now on we shall be known as Charter TOTE.”

“TOTE,” the lab director said, rolling the name around on his tongue. “Charter TOTE, I like it.”

“Lucky for you.”

The Lovers Emerge

They risked another short conversation in the morning. Mary wanted to know if they should breakfast and shower in the null suite or wait until they’d cycled back out to the real world. Cycling out involved no purging and was quick, and Fred wondered at the subtext of the question. Was she asking him if he wanted to make love again before they left, since he refused to be intimate with her out there.

“I’m not being paranoid,” he said flatly. “I know they’re watching me.”

“Who? Who’s watching you?”

“Everyone.”

“You’re right; that’s not paranoid. That’s our new reality.”

“I’m being serious!”

“So am I!”

Mary got out of bed and started putting her things together. “The nits are always watching, Fred, but they