140: CURATION

The next day is an awkward day of inactivity. It’s frustrating, but there’s not all that much we can really do. We consider going for another look around the settlement, but it’s much more productive to wait until we can go out without the suits and properly see things and talk to people (and maybe, if necessary, have a chance to ‘accidentally’ split up and slip out of Max’s observation and see things beyond our carefully curated view) – going out now would just risk creating problems with the people who stare at us like an invading threat with little to gain for it. We consider calling the ship again, but there’s nothing new to say. Max flatly refuses to show us the underground facilities until we’re no longer a biological threat. The cell cultures aren’t ready yet for Captain Klees’ new foot, and the synnerves for my new eye haven’t grown in place overnight, so there’s not even anything medical to get done. (Since that operation, I’ve been preoccupied with a sense of future trouble, hanging over me. In about a year, my body will react to the breaking down synnerves in my brain, much like what had nearly killed the Friend. It’s not a big problem, easily handled by medication – even Captain Klees’ neurostims seemed to work just fine, and we have more advanced medicines like what the Friend used easily available on the ship – but it feels like a dangerous item on the to-do list, a medical issue that we can only wait to address. I’ll be relieved when it’s over.)

We’re used to periods of inactivity, of course. Apart from Tal, who will calm down when people come around to install the computer we ask for that morning, we’re all pretty good at handling long periods with little to do. There were numerous temporary safety lockdowns and soforth on our journey over. But today, we’re on an alien planet! There’s supposed to be stuff to do!

“They’d better have good computer games in this place,” Tal says. “You’re all boring to beat at cards.”

“Hurtful,” Tinera comments, but she just sounds bored.

“It’s a few hundred people with significant leisure time,” I note, pointing at the embroidery on the wall. “I’m sure they have plenty of great computer games.”

“We can do another story collab,” Tinera suggests. “We used to do a lot of those in the mine camps.”

“Your story collabs always either end out as rehashing of the current mysteries we can’t do anything about or extremely graphic pornography,” Captain Klees says.

“Sometimes both,” the Friend adds. “Everyone agreed no more story collabs after you wrote the ending to Captain Sands And The Giant Death Orgy.”

“He was a hot sexy man who needed to die! I was being efficient!”

“Wait,” I cut in, “I don’t remember that one.”

“We were all confined to quarters as murder suspects. Be grateful to be spared the knowledge.”

Tal cuts in. “I can explain the plot of – ”

“No; no thank you, Tal,” I cut kem off. “I can probably guess the main points. Golden Record is a game we can play with the space suit cameras, but means leaving this dome, so probably best to wait.”

“You’ve never mentioned that one.” Captain Klees frowns. “Is it an Arborean game? My mum never told me about it.”

I explain in the Interlingua, because fuck doing this in a language I’m not fluent in. “No, it’s an academic game. It would’ve been pretty hard to play on the Courageous, and also kind of morbid. I mean, I guess it’s still pretty morbid here, but whatever. The premise is that the entire civilisation you’re in is going to be destroyed and the only thing that will survive is twenty pictures of a set size and resolution that you get to take. Your goal is to tell future archaeologists as much as you can, in those twenty pictures. You can’t draw or write anything, and you can’t take pictures from books or anything like that, but you can take pictures of words and pictures in the environment. So like, if there’s a city map displayed on a wall, you can include it in the picture if you want. But you can’t type out a whole lot of information and take a photo of that. Different groups play with or without museums banned – some say that taking photos in a museum is relying on someone else’s curation instead of your own, but others argue that since museums tend to be focused on the past and not the present, their goals are different to yours and it’s fine. I like playing without museums because a lot of works considered important to a culture are put in museums, so it adds extra challenge.”

“What sort of stuff are you trying to tell them?” Tal asks. “Like, city layout and culture, or…?”

“That’s the beauty of the game. It highlights what different people think is the most important information to explain a culture. Some people take photos that are highly informative on the physical layout of cities, or include as much evidence of trade and the state of industry as they can; others focus on fashion and influential works of art. Some say that the most influential works of art in a culture is a distraction, and focus on making sure we don’t lose vital minutiae like how food was spiced or what obscure home tools were used for. It takes some examination of not only your own thoughts on what’s valuable, but also your thoughts on what future cultures will be like, and how accurately they will interpret your images. A decision to give over an entire picture to a closeup analysis of a type of lacework or take a more zoomed-out image of several items of clothing is entirely dependent on whether the curator things that the lacework can be intuited at a distance by a future society, or whether a future society would even want to know it. You tend to get a lot of discussion about whether culture can be determined from industry, or vice versa, or what sorts of art have more archaeological value than others when you have a very limited amount of pictures you can take. As well as image economy, and how much information you can get into one image. It’s always interesting because we know it’s the stuff we’ll never think of that will fall through the cracks. We still haven’t determined the name of the Nameless Country, after all, despite having numerous legal and trade documents from them. The strong taboo against speaking the name of the centre of their empire could very well have erased their name from history altogether, despite them being one of the biggest world powers in the late pre-Neocambrian.”

“Also the movie about talking bees,” Tal adds, in Texan. “Everyone just calls it ‘the bee movie’. We might never know what it was really called.”

“Yes, Tal,” I say, switching back to Texan. “Definitely losses of the same level.”

“Aspen,” Tinera says, “has anyone ever told you that you’re a nerd?”

“Not so much, these days. You’re usually distracted by Tal being a much bigger nerd. Like light pollution.”

We fall into silence for a bit, until I ask, “Do we know how old Max and Hive are?”

“I don’t think we ever asked,” Captain Klees says. “They look maybe mid-20s to me? So far as I can tell on people with their general, you know.” He makes a gesture to indicate his face.

“Yeah, that’s my point. How accurate can we tell their ages? They’re all clearly very engineered, does it affect how they age, do you think? We were told that about two thirds of this colony were under the age of twenty, and we did see some kids on the tour, but…”

“They’re probably being kept away from the big scary foreigners,” Captain Klees says, “although if they’re anything like my daughter was, they’d find a way to sneak out.”

“You think Max and Hive are kids?” Tinera asks.

“No. They wouldn’t give these jobs to kids. Anyway, they look about Dr Kim’s age, and becoming a doctor is a long process. But I do want to know how accurate our ability to guess their ages is. I expect that there’s a good chance we might have a lot of older teens and relatively few actual children. It fits with the lack of elderly.”

“It does?”

“Yeah. Famine. You lose the young, old and sickly. This is an environment where kids can’t scavenge for extra food in the wild; nothing grows here.”

“We can just ask Max about the loss statistics in the famine,” Captain Klees points out. “The Hylarans don’t like sharing information but I’m pretty sure Max would answer a direct question. Any lies would have to be explained when they’re found out after the thousands on the ship land.”

True. But Max isn’t here right now, and I want to figure things out and make progress right now. I’ve analysed everything in our rather sparse tent and I’m out of things to think about, except for the unnerving robot eye in my skull and the synthetic nerves hopefully growing into my brain to use it. Synnerves haven’t meant great things for Courageous colonists so far. Why did I agree to this? I should’ve waited for a proper implant.

It’s about then that a pair of Hylarans, dressed in full body protective suits like Max’s, come in with a computer system. It’s a model like Dr Kim’s, a large stationary machine with a head visor and eye track inputs, frustrating for new users but almost as quick as thought when you get used to it. Very similar, at least judging by the visor, to the kind I used my whole life before getting on the Courageous.

“Oh, sweet,” Tal says, and goes straight for the computer, even before the finish plugging it in, but I pluck the visor out of kes hand and take a good look at it.

“We should’ve asked for two,” Tal says, sounding a little sullen.

“You can have this one in a minute,” I tell kem, checking the visor, the seals, the screen.

“Something wrong with it?” Tinera asks in Texan as the Hylarans leave without even acknowledging Captain Klees’ greeting or thanks. “Spying or sabotage of some kind?”

“I wouldn’t be able to tell.”

“They’re probably logging data inside the unit,” Tals says. “That’d be easy. There’d be no reason to tamper with the visor. And there won’t be anything wrong with it, because if they wanted to kill us there’s a billion way easier ways.” Ke snatched the visor out of my hands; I let kem, and step back.

“Problem?” Tinera asks me again.

“It’s new,” I say, puzzled. “Good seals, unscratched lenses.”

“Good?”

I shake my head and gesture broadly at the habitat. “The whole reason we have old systems on the Courageous is that these ones break easy and are hard to repair without… machines. Everything else is second hand. Why new computer, why this kind, so hard to repair? On a new planet, you don’t make computer making machines before dome canvas making machines.”

“Definitely alien ruins,” Tal says, although ke’s clearly barely listening. “Alien computers that work exactly like ours by sheer coincidence. And that – oh, this is weird software architecture.”

“Weird like ‘alien ruins’ weird?” Captain Klees asks with a slight smile.

“Weird like someone had to rebuild the tech from scratch without building on any legacy programs and just went ‘fuck it’,” Tal says. “Everything makes sense, I’ve just never seen it before. Maybe they also had serious computer trouble coming over and had to rebuild stuff. I hope they got around to making great computer games.”

“Yeah,” Tinera says, “I’m sure that’s the prior – ”

“Max!” The Friend’s voice, near the door, very alarmed. “What are you doing?! Get out of here!”

We all look up. Max is, indeed, coming into the tent. They smile, give us all a little wave, and straighten the belt on their tunic. “Hello, everyone.”

They’re not wearing their quarantine environment suit.