“Her body, as you know, is with the Melded. Most of her consciousness is there. But there are parts left behind and possible damage.”
Carmen looked at the historian. “You hurt her.”
The historian clicked before formulating his reply. “She insisted on departing. My spore brother overstates the danger and harm. Whenever she wishes she can complete the process of consciousness retrieval.”
Her stomach hurt. Whether this was a phantom pain or a real manifestation of what her body was feeling, she didn’t know. She needed to see her mother, the one who had her body and was on board the Melded vessel. Talk to her. Let her know that she wasn’t well and had to come back. But then a thought occurred to her.
“Part of her is here? Is it just data?”
The two Cordice looked at one another. The others in the audience remained silent.
The historian spoke like a doctor informing her of something less than pleasant. “What’s left here might be summed up as her deeper memories, anything beyond recent events and surface thoughts, even well-ingrained skills and functions, along with knowledge learned during her stay with us. Her simulated time here was extensive as she exercised her options to dial back her temporal perception. What remains of her can be likened to a fully functioning shadow of the person she is, augmented by the simulation. Usually this remnant would be suspended until the individual can be made whole, but if you believe it could be useful, I can summon it here.”
It, not she. The last thing Carmen wanted was to meet a shadow of her mother in this place. She felt sick. Wanted to breathe real air in her physical lungs. What would stop them from trapping her there?
But they still hadn’t concluded the matter.
She fought to control her voice to sound as calm as possible. “I don’t understand why I’m here. If you can dial time as needed, you could spend months in your debate and reach a conclusion in minutes, right?”
“We’ve spent longer on this than you can imagine, Carmen Vincent,” the engineer said with a hint of embarrassment. “We are now a people divided. When matters like this have occurred in our distant past, we’ve declared an impasse. Like any pubescent entity, we would split and form new communities, be it in a new cave, a new mountain, a new continent. Mutual need and shared experiences have always brought us back together. We, like so many others, have learned the futility of collective destruction. But in our current state, a separation is no longer possible.”
The engineer gestured at the historian.
The historian picked up the narrative as if the two were co-lecturers. “My spore brother’s school of thought encompasses a bare majority who believe we need to depart our galaxy to preserve what we have left. Our lives, our memories inhabit the servers on board our home ship. We have many others with us, including races eliminated long before your kind even dreamed of venturing beyond your world. His faction is correct in their desire to uphold our responsibilities to all who live on in our simulation.”
“We’ve given them immortality,” the engineer added. “We have a responsibility.”
“We do,” the historian agreed. “But our ship is in a poor state. With the caretaker malfunctioning, we face imminent breakdown. Throwing ourselves across the chasm of space between galaxies without even knowing if our enemy or a new one waits on the other side is irresponsible. Our bodies have died from irreversible soil blights. We haven’t saved ourselves by running. We must aid those who might still save themselves. The harvester must go to the Melded.”
“Which would doom those who live here,” the engineer said. “The majority voted and we decided to depart the Framework out of concern that the enemy would return to finish his destruction. Our repairs can wait. My colleague’s conspiracy to allow Sylvia Vincent to steal the harvester could have cost us everything.”
The historian and the engineer faced off with each other.
“You’re both crazy,” Carmen said. “I mean that with all due respect. Your run-down spaceship looks like it’s falling apart. Your caretaker isn’t just malfunctioning, it’s broken. It tried to kill us. Why haven’t you fixed it or anything else here while you had the harvester? And if you think these Melded are trustworthy, you’re mistaken. The Primary Executive shot my sister. Maybe a human life isn’t worth anything to you people. But he also blew up She Who Waits. I get that you’re pacifists here. But your translator works for all of you, doesn’t she?”
The historian let out a sharp click. “An unfortunate accident. The junior translator is but a minor functionary and we see she still lives. The Melded have the temperament of ones committed to a short life span. But they also possess the resolve to carry through with what we are incapable of doing: taking the fight to the enemy.”
“Being bullies doesn’t make them strong. If you brought me here to get me to side with you, I can’t do that. I won’t give them the harvester.”
The engineer turned his head and addressed the assembly. “There, you’ve heard it. The matter rests. Carmen Vincent won’t side with those of us who would attempt to war with the enemy. The harvester will be returned to us for the purpose of rebuilding. We repair what we have to. We continue with our intention to leave this system.”
“So we vote,” the historian said with a sigh.
A jolt ran across Carmen’s field of vision. At first she thought someone on board the Cordice home ship had flashed a light across her eyes where she reclined in the medical bay. But each of the Cordice council members shifted ever so slightly. The effect was most noticeable with the engineer, who had been coiled with his head high. He moved in an instant, his
