Lightspeed: Year One

in governance, I expected to mean that Endria wanted something and they took civics certification courses way more seriously than I’d thought. I went to get a drink while it was trying to connect.

And I came back to a line of text on an encrypted channel, coming from the office of the Prime Governor.

Most of my water ended up on my boots.

[Sorry I’m doing this over text,] she wrote. [I just wanted an official record of our conversation.]

When a governor wants an official record of your conversation, you’re fucked.

[What can I do for you?] I typed back.

[Someone stopped by to talk to you,] she went on, the lines spooling out over the screen in real-time. [About your not being authorized to engage in diplomatic action.]

I had expected that to be defused, not to escalate. Escalating up to the Prime Governor had been right out. [I still believe that I wasn’t engaging in diplomatic—] I started, but she typed right over it.

[How would you like authorization?]

That hadn’t been on the list of possibilities, either.

[I’m sorry?] I typed. What I almost typed, and might have typed if I didn’t value my civil liberties, was I recycle shit for a living. My skillset is not what you’re looking for.

[You may be aware that we’re pioneering a new focus of study into the Vosth,] the Governor typed.

Vosth research. I wondered if Endria had recommended me upward. [Yes, ma’am,] I wrote.

[We now believe that we can reverse the effects of Vosth colonization of a human host.]

I looked at my water. I looked at my boots. After a moment, I typed [Ma’am?] and got up for another glass. I needed it.

I came back to a paragraph explaining [You’ve been in contact with one of the infested colonists. We’d like you to bring him back to the compound for experimentation.]

Okay. So long as I was just being asked to harvest test subjects. [You want to cure Menley?]

[We believe it unlikely that human consciousness would survive anywhere on the order of years,] she typed back, and my stomach twisted like it had talking to Menley. [This would be a proof of concept which could be applied to the more recently infected.]

And Menley wasn’t someone who’d be welcomed back into the colony, I read between the lines. I should’ve asked Endria who had sat on the council that decided Menley’s sentence. Was this particular Prime Governor serving, back then? Why did I never remember these things? Why did I never think to ask?

[So, you would extract the Vosth,] I started, and was going to write leaving a corpse?, maybe hoping that we’d at least get a breathing body. She interrupted me again.

[The Vosth parasite organisms would not be extracted. They would die.]

My mouth was dry, but the idea of drinking water made me nauseous. It was like anyone or anything in Menley’s body was fair game for anyone.

[I want to be clear with you,] she said. Dammit. She could have just lied like they did in every dramatic work I’d ever read. Then, if the truth ever came out, I could be horrified but still secure in the knowledge that there was no way I could have known. No. I just got told to kidnap someone so the scientists could kill him. I wasn’t even saving anyone. Well, maybe in the future, if anyone got infested again.

Anyone the governors felt like curing, anyway.

Then she had to go and make it worse.

[We would not be in violation of any treaties or rules of conduct,] she wrote. [If we can develop a cure for or immunity to Vosth infestation, the de facto arrangement in place between our colony and the Vosth will be rendered null, and the restrictions imposed on our activities on the planet will become obsolete.]

I wished Endria was there. She could interpret this. [Isn’t this an act of war?]

[We’re confident that the Vosth will regard an unwarranted act of aggression as an expression of natural law,] the Governor explained.

That didn’t make me feel better, and I think it translated to yes. [I thought it was understood that things like that wouldn’t happen.]

[It was understood that the dominant species could, at any time, exercise their natural rights,] the Governor explained. [Perhaps it’s time they learned that they aren’t the dominant species any more.]

We believe the ambient temperature to be pleasant for human senses today, Vosth-Menley told me when I got to the Ocean of Starve. I was beginning to wonder whether his reassurances were predation or a mountain of culture skew.

“What is your obsession with me feeling the air?” I asked him. Them. The Vosth.

You would be safe, Vosth-Menley insisted.

I should have asked Endria if the Vosth could lie. I should have kept a running list of things I needed to ask. “Listen,” I said.

We would like to understand, Vosth-Menley said again.

I read a lot of Earth lit. I’d never seen a butterfly, but I knew the metaphor of kids who’d pull off their wings. Looking at Menley, I wondered if the Vosth were like children, oblivious to their own cruelty. “What would you do if someone could take you over?”

Our biology is not comparable to yours, Vosth-Menley said.

Bad hypothetical. “What would you do if someone tried to kill you?”

It is our perception of reality that species attempt to prolong their own existence, he said.

“Yeah.” I was having trouble following my own conversation. “Look, you’re a dominant species, and we’re supposed to have a reciprocal relationship, but you take people over and—look.” I’d gone past talking myself in circles and was talking myself in scatterplots.

The back of my neck itched, and I couldn’t ignore it.

“What if I do want to take off my suit?” I asked, and then scatterplotted, “Do you have any reason to lie to me?”

The Vosth considered. Yes.

Oh. Okay. Great.

Our present actions are concurrent with a different directive, he added. There is reason to establish honesty.

Nothing was stopping him from attacking. He could have torn off my suit or helmet by now. Even if it was a risk, and it was a risk, and even if I had a phobia the size of the meterorite the Vosth had ridden in . . .

I’d seen how many Vosth had swarmed over Menley’s whole body, and how long it had taken him to stop twitching. If it was just a few of them, I might be able to run back to the compound. Then, if the governors really had a cure, they could cure me. And I’d feel fine about tricking the Vosth into being test subjects if they’d tricked me into being a host. That’s what I told myself. I didn’t feel fine about anything.

I brought my gloves to the catch on my helmet.

Two minutes later I was still standing like that, with the catch still sealed, and Vosth-Menley was still staring.

“You could come back to the compound with me,” I said. “The governors would love to see you.”

We are curious as to the conditions of your constructed habitat, Vosth-Menley said.

Yeah, I thought, but are you coming back as a plague bearer or an experiment?

I squeezed my eyes shut, and pried my helmet off.

I’d lost way too many referents.

The outside air closed around my face with too many smells I couldn’t identify or describe, other than “nothing like sterile air” and “nothing like my room or my shower.” Every nerve on my head and neck screamed for broadcast time, registering the temperature of the air, the little breezes through the hairs on my nape, the warmth of direct sunlight. My heart was racing. I was breathing way too fast and even with my eyes shut I was overloaded on stimuli.

I waded my way through. It took time, but amidst the slog of what I was feeling, I eventually noticed