He hesitated. “I can see how you’d find that difficult to understand. But they’re not dead. Only transformed.”
“Okay, but let’s think about how this looks for a moment. How do you think we’d interpret it, given that we have no evidence of these Antecessors?”
He sighed, but at least he was willing to discuss it. “If I were to make your assumptions…”
“Go ahead.”
“Then I might think that an alien force from another universe murdered my species.”
“That’s pretty much it.”
He seemed troubled now. “But that’s wrong.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m certain.”
“But you see why we’re concerned.”
“You think I’m mad,” he said, shaking his head.
“I think something was done to you that changed your perceptions.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“Some totalitarian societies manipulate religious feeling to control their people. It happens.”
“You’re suggesting someone did this to billions of people just to make them kill themselves? Now that’s ridiculous. Why not just kill them, if that’s what they wanted?”
“I don’t know. But something was definitely done to you, and we want to help you get better.”
“So if the whole thing is in my mind, why don’t you just reverse it? If it’s so easy…”
“Well first of all, we have to ask your permission. And even if you gave us your permission, it isn’t easy. Your species is reasonably average but we still wouldn’t want to risk psychosurgery.”
“That seems convenient.”
“It really isn’t. Because what’s likely to happen is going to be a lot harder on you.” There. Let him think about that for a moment, and become curious.
“What exactly do you think’s going to happen to me?”
“Religious revelation fades over time. If you live on a world where religion is normal, then you slowly go back to being an ordinary believer. But in a place like this, where your views will constantly be challenged, you’ll probably find it very difficult to stay certain. And it’s usually worse when the religious experience is artificially stimulated.”
I might as well have told him the sky had turned green for all that he believed me. The pity returned to his voice. “You really think that’s going to happen?”
“Look,” I said, indicating the wall display, “we monitored your brain over a period of about a week. Compare the two images.” I split the screen and showed two pictures of his brain.
“No change,” he said.
“It’s very subtle. Look at the numbers.” I increased the size of the readouts showing the strength of relevant neural impulses. A very slight reduction was clear. “In a single week, the activity reduces in intensity by a tenth of a tenth of a per cent. Not much, but enough, and it’s not a statistical error. Would you like me to scan your brain now and see how much further it’s gone?”
He looked closely at the displays and considered them for a moment before turning back to me. “Well. That seems quite conclusive. May I ask something else?”
“Of course.”
“Has any other part of my mind been interfered with?”
“Not as far as we can tell.”
“So my memories are intact.”
“Probably, yes.”
“So I saw what I saw, and I heard what I heard.”
“That seems likely.”
“So it still happened. And if that’s the case, it won’t matter what happens in here.” He tapped his skull.
“I don’t think it’ll be that easy.”
He smiled at me again. “Well… I suppose I’ll just have to make do with reality.”
He was definitely going to be hard work.
8. Asha
I did not spend all my time at the centre. I commuted back and forth from Hub Metro and the apartment I shared with my partner, Bell. I had long since warned him I would not have much time for him during a major evacuation, when I would be working eighteen hours a day for weeks on end, and he said he understood. But we were between evacuations for now, and I was still having to spend almost all my time at the centre with this new group, so he felt neglected and let down. He also tended to pester me for information about the group. As a linguist, he was curious about worlds full of dead and untranslated languages. There were rumours spreading from the Diplomatic Service about a lone survivor found on a world full of corpses, and he guessed my work had something to do with that. I had to remind him firmly that the group had the strictest confidentiality. To my surprise, this left him grumpy and even more unreasonable. In retrospect, I think he was starting to look for a way out, but at the time, I was hurt and irritated by his response.
At the centre itself, we continued trying to persuade the members of the group to interact outside group therapy sessions. We arranged activities to encourage them to work together to accomplish simple goals, and the first goal we picked was dinner.
I delegated this task to Veofol one evening while I was back in Hub Metro, trying to explain to Bell why he could not interview my patients about their languages. Each morning when I returned, I would have a conference with Veofol and the other overnight staff to catch up on what had happened while I was away, and if there was anything serious, there would be reports to read and issues to address with the patients. The morning after Veofol tried to persuade the group to cook a meal, he simply sighed, shook his head and presented me with his report and the recording of the session.
9. Cooking
REPORT: Group Activity (Cooking)
y276.m4.w2.d7
Dr. Veofol e-leas bron Jerra
At 18:00, I called the group together in the kitchen to begin the evening’s assignment. Everyone but Katie showed up. She has failed to engage in any social contact with the group, and remains in her room virtually all the time.
There were a range of menu options, but they first had to agree which to make and who would do what. The arguments started immediately. Iokan suggested they make one dish they could all share, while Olivia didn’t want to share because she complains everyone else’s food is bland and tasteless. Kwame suggested she have her own meal and stop bothering the rest of them. Iokan proposed a compromise: a meal that could be divided into portions and seasoned one by one. Olivia wanted to know what they could cook, and Iokan suggested a basic stew could be made and separated into different vessels. When asked what might be in the stew, further disagreement resulted. Olivia grew irritated with the argument and deliberately disgusted the group by describing some of her favourite recipes. I have to admit that my own stomach turned when she described ways to cook human (or revenant) flesh. Liss decided she didn’t want any meat in the stew, but Kwame insisted they have it anyway as he did not want to give in to Olivia. Pew stayed very quiet, as he often does when the others argue.
I was on the verge of enforcing a choice when Katie made an appearance. She ignored the group, went to a storage locker, took out one of the individual microwave meals we’re not supposed to use except in emergencies, cooked it (they take about 30 seconds), then left without saying a word.
Olivia declared that Katie had the right idea, took one of the meals for herself (along with copious seasonings to add later), and tried to cook it. Unfortunately, she didn’t know how to use the microwave, and hitting it got her nowhere. Liss declared she used them all the time, but she was unprepared for one not made on her world and mistakenly set it to ‘defrost’. Olivia shouted at her for ‘thinking she was so clever’ — it is clear that Olivia regards Liss with contempt — and Liss fled the kitchen in tears.