SingMa Manish Sing, or SingMa - to friends and himself, a coder and AI specialist, straightened in his chair. It had been a long day. Or night. Or both. It was hard to tell: the small, cool, air-conditioned room in Si-Carb Clinic was lit only by the screens of the two computers and medical monitoring equipment. The whole day/night issue was a matter of social convention: all light in the Rebels' Republic's Segedunum Station was artificial anyway, since it floated too far away from the Sun, orbiting Neptune.
He glanced to his left. Dr. Nicky De Vries, one of the best neuroscientists in the clinic and SingMa’s new colleague stared at her screen. Her shoulders tense. She sighed.
SingMa jerked his head to the right.
Yep, the little window with the feed from one of Nicky's monitors flashed with an update. SingMa tapped on the pulsating dot.
A row of indicators scrolled across the center of his screen. All values were in red–a clear signal there something was going on with the monitored patient. But since SingMa wasn't a doctor, he couldn’t tell what the readout meant. He needed a visual feed.
SingMa tapped again, activating the video from the camera installed in one of the medical bays behind the wall.
His heart skipped a beat, filled with warmth and then, a second later, froze again.
The beautiful face of his friend, Julie Tremblay, was pale with big beads of sweat forming on her forehead, her mouth wide open, her eyes squeezed tight.
On Nicky's request, SingMa had performed a down-dump from Julie's implants about an hour earlier. Nicky ran some checks. Was Julie in pain as a result?
SingMa tapped on the screen again, bringing back the feed from the medical monitors.
Increased blood pressure. Heart rate regular but edging toward 120 beats per minute. Breathing fast and shallow. He gritted his teeth. Julie was alive but in excruciating pain. Could it be of Nicky de Vries' making?
He pushed the window aside ready to get up.
A chair squeaked beside him.
"SingMa," Nicky said, her voice tense. "Can you come and check something for me, please?"
Thank goodness, she'd noticed.
SingMa walked up to Nicky’s workstation.
Nicky's screen shone brightly with multiple windows opened. None of them displayed the video feeds from Julia's bed.
"How can I help?" he said as calmly as possible.
Nicky shifted in her chair to make room for him.
"I'm running a few tests on the implants of one of my patients-"
"You mean, Julie?" SingMa cut in.
"Yes. Julie. She's your friend, isn't she?" This time Nicky glanced at him. The bluish light from the screen highlighted the dark circles under her eyes and the net of wrinkles around them.
"Yes. I've seen she's waking up. Is she in pain?"
"You've been watching … Oh, never mind," Nicky shrugged. "No. She can't feel any pain. Not from the usual sources. I've just lowered the level of coma to see if she'd regain consciousness."
"And she did. It means, they can be saved, right?" His voice came out a little squeaky. He hated when it happened.
"I don't know if all the Vindolanda scientists can be saved, but it's possible to wake Julie up," Nicky replied patiently. Nicky had been the doctor in charge of the treatment of the sick scientists from the Vindolanda research station ever since their return in a virus-infested shuttle. Particles of the same viral swarm reached the Segedunum months later, arriving on a TNUSSA spaceship bringing wealthy Earthians with malfunctioning brain implants. All the people currently lay in Si-Carb Clinic, in a coma, waiting for a cure to their strange conditions.
A few days earlier, after the total shutdown and reboot of the Segedunum network, Nicky and her team began to suspect that the virus that had infected the communication networks had also infected her patients. This was why SingMa was now sitting in Nicky's lab, helping her figure out what was really going on.
SingMa waited a moment longer than it was comfortable. He didn't want to appear overly involved.
"Is she in distress?" he asked.
"No, hers is a fight-or-flight response."
"But why? Is it a leftover from the situation in Vindolanda, or the flight back home?"
According to the limited communications prior to the lucky escape and video evidence recovered from the shuttle, it transpired that Julie, as the least sick person and the only with a pilot license, had transferred her colleagues into the shuttle and programed the autopilot to take them all back to Segedunum. The communication quickly had broken up, and Julie must have lost consciousness underway. When the retrieval team had arrived at the close-range port, they found the whole crew unconscious.
"I don't think so," Nicky replied, gesturing at him to come closer and sit beside her. SingMa pulled his chair closer and sat. "Has she ever had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?" Nicky asked.
"Not that I know of. But even if she did have PTSD, it would have been dealt with before they let her join the expedition, right?" he replied.
"I would have thought so. Has she ever witnessed a family member die or anything like that?"
SingMa thought for a moment. He had spent a few months living with Julie and two other candidates, while preparing for Rebels' Republic citizenship test. They each talked a lot about themselves and their background, as part of the preparation.
"Never heard anything to suggest she’d had any such trauma."
"Then, what is this?' Nicky reshuffled a couple of windows on her screen and tapped on one of the files.
A few-seconds of video showing a rocking sea water played out.
"What's that?" he asked. "Some sort of a beach shot?"
"Not really. Listen." She turned the volume on and set the video on repeat.
His chest brimmed with emotions, mostly worry about Julie's state, but since Nicky wasn't worried, maybe there was no reason for him to worry either. He tried to push his negative thoughts aside and focus on the video.
Why was Nicky showing him this thing at all?
"Did you hear it?" she asked, once the sequence ended again.
He shook his head.
"Here. Listen carefully," she made some adjustments in the settings and ran the sequence once more, but slower, with the volume up. "Here," she said, pausing the video. "Someone says: "…is dead …" I can't hear who is dead, but this plays when Julie wakes with that shocked reaction."
"Is this a memory?" SingMa asked, pointing at the paused frame.
Nicky pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Her blue-grey eyes might have looked tired but they seemed to be piercing right through SingMa's skull.
"That's my questions for you," she said. "Could it be her memory?"
SingMa shifted his gaze back to the video, but the sensation of being scrutinized persisted. He busied himself, shuffling through the settings on the video player.
"Where did you find the video?" he asked, watching the sequence again, but with the sounds turned off.
"In her implants," Nicky replied, her voice clipped.
"It's a very short fragment. There should be more nearby."
"I've searched but can't find anything. That's why I want you to double check some stuff for me."
SingMa glanced over his shoulder at Nicky. Of course, Nicky wouldn't care about SingMa's friend. She cared about her patients, but spared them no personal favor. How naive of him to think she would!
It had been a great idea for SingMa to volunteer to work with Nicky on Julie's case. Without that, he wouldn't have known what was happening to Julie.
"What do you want me to check?"
Nicky moved some of the opened files around, revealing a dashboard at the center.
"Search the whole content, and pay particular attention to search for hidden or encrypted files, anything deleted, or otherwise corrupted. Time period between the whole of August and September last year. That'd should be a very busy period on Vindolanda," she said.
SingMa stiffened.
"Why would she hide or delete any files?" he asked. "That's not allowed."
"It's allowed," Nicky corrected. "You just need to have a good enough reason for doing so, and you need to register it with the correct authorities as soon as possible."
"Did she-"
"Just check it, please."
SingMa had more questions. They were all crowding his head now, churning his stomach and filling his mouth. But the best thing he could do now was to follow Nicky's request.
"I need to move the archive to my workstation. I've got the right software running anyway," he said.
He didn't wait for Nicky's approval, but pushed himself away from her desk. The chair wheels rolled smoothly, without a single squeak. Unlike his voice.
He shook off the growing sensation of embarrassment and made himself busy.
Nicky didn't speak until he finished and looked at her. By then, his mouth was dry.
"What did you find?" Nicky asked.
"This… this virus must have wiped her files. Otherwise-"
"Did you find anything else, apart from the video sequence?"
"Just some rubbish… I mean corrupted pieces of code. Meaningless. There was stuff registered earlier though-" "I'm not interested in earlier. I'm interested in the days leading to what must have been the incident. I want to see what happened."
Her eyes hardened.
"Of course," he said eagerly. "That's the whole point. But as I said, the virus must have wiped-"
"Can you see any trace of the virus?"
"No. Unless the corrupted pieces are part of the virus itself, but so far…" SingMa cleared his throat and glanced at the side of his screen. "That's not looking like what our team has found so far."
"But you're checking the material secured in the system, right?"
"Yes. A couple of local node servers managed to sandbox some pieces of code, preventing them from entering the wider circulation-"
"What about the computer memory disc and the piece of rock brought in from Vindolanda? Has Lulu found anything there?"
Lulu Zhou, an AI-expert-turned entomologist and a citizen of New Chinese Empire (or to give it its official name, The Asia-Africa-Pacific Confederation), had also been co-opted to help identify the mysterious virus.
"They've found some stuff, but nothing like what you're seeing here. This appears to be a personal file."
And you shouldn't be looking at it, he thought but didn't dare adding. Nicky's job was to save the lives of six scientists, or rather five scientist and one technician, Julie, all of whom came from Vindolanda. All very valuable lives. Ah, yes, and the seven sick Earthians with faulty implants brought by Jax on board her ship, TNUSSA.
Privacy was a tiny price to pay for saving so many important lives.
Nicky expanded the frozen frame. Now, her screen filled with the shades of blue: from the darkening sky in the upper part, to the still shimmering water in the lower part. Once his eyes adjusted a little, SingMa realized there was a silver semi-disc of the moon in the sky and something which looked like a beach or a piece of land with dark, tall, perpendicular shapes on it.
"This is taken on a tropical island somewhere." Nicky poked a finger at the strip of sandy land and trees. "Palm trees, golden sand, blue waters. Where did she grow up?"
"Julie?" SingMa didn't have to think long. Talking about the country of origin and their past was a requirement. There was actually a book with recommended conversation topics in the kitchen. "Auvergne," he spoke slowly to make sure he rendered the sounds correctly, "a French region of New European Union."
Nicky nodded.
"There is an overseas area under French influence, or not any more…." She looked away, no doubt making the library enquiry using her implants. "French Polynesia. Has she ever gone there?"
"No idea. Why?"
Nicky pursed her lips.
"I'm trying to establish a few facts before I jump to any conclusions. If this is one of her memories-"
"But we can't yet record memories as videos," SingMa cut in. A vague idea swirled in his mind. "This would have to be something she watched and saved in her implants, right?"
"Yes. That's what I mean," Nicky dismissed him. "But-"
"Hang on." He shifted the settings on the video player and let the sequence run frame-by-frame. Blood buzzed in his head. "This is an old video. It can't be hers. She must have downloaded it from somewhere."
Nicky sighed.
"I've checked it against all available databases. It doesn't exist."
"Maybe it's an old family video."
"How old is this?"
SingMa checked the parameters displayed by the software. "No time stamp on this segment, but judging by the technology used to record it, it's real old. Like early 21st century."
"See… "Nicky said, a tense note creeping into her voice again. "Can you check where it was taken?"
"There is no information on the video. Probably too old."
"You can use the position of the moon and the stars in the sky, the color of water, vegetation… this sort of thing." SingMa opened his mouth.
"Yes, that's possible," Nicky snapped.
"I would have never thought any different," he snapped back. The woman was getting on his nerves. Why was she focusing on stupid little irrelevant things and not on the really important ones, like Julie's wellbeing? He huffed but started setting up the search.
He heard Nicky standing up and walking toward him. "It's important," she said quietly.
"I really don't see who and why," he murmured. "Can you explain, please?"
"Not now. Sorry. Need more evidence."
"Fine," he said, tapping the 'go' button as loud as he could. Doing it all manually on the big screens of the excellent, super-fast computers in the Si-Carb lab gave them a small, but noticeable advantage over using their implants to connect. At least, he would have noticed the difference. And so probably would Nicky. Even though not a computer technology expert, Nicky was surprisingly good with machine computers, and even better with biological computers - human brains. He had to credit her with that much. But if they were going to work together, they really had to work together. She shouldn't be withholding any information from him.
"So tell me something else instead," he said. "Is she alright?"
"Julie? Yes. I've put her back into the coma until we know more about what's going on."
SingMa relaxed his shoulders and took a deeper breath.
"No more nasty waking up from a nightmare?" He looked at her.
"She's fine. It's a nightmare, alright, but it's just a reaction of her body. It'll pass. It happens to a lot of people, even those who haven't suffered any unpleasant experiences. Our brains are full of junk."
"Why bother with this massive search then?" He pointed at the screen, where the clever piece of software was milling through oceans of data in all the available libraries. Nicky folded her arms on her chest.
"Do we have any matches on the video?" she asked glancing over his shoulder.
This was annoying, but clearly, they were not equal partners in this job. He suppressed a huff and checked the search results.
"Yes. It's definitely southern hemisphere sky, not too far from the equator. It would have been faster if I had the date, or time of year or something."
Behind his back, Nicky exhaled loudly.
"Any help?" SingMa turned back to look at her again. Her face was tense.
"It confirms my suspicions that the video was taken somewhere in the South Pacific, one of the islands there."
"Paradise islands? Lovely place for vacation, I suppose?"
"Indeed, " Nicky looked away again. "But only if you have the right passport. As far as I know, almost all the pacific islands belong to the Asia-Africa-Pacific Confederation."
"So what?"
"You don't really get it, do you?"
SingMa just stared at her. What the heck was going on here?
"It's an old video. Made over a hundred years ago. You're not saying that it's got anything to do with Julie, are you?"
Nicky shifted her gaze back to SingMa. Her eyebrows were furrowed.
"You are, aren't you?" His heart accelerated, pumping more blood into his brain. Now, he was beginning to see it clearer. "That's what you're doing here, right? You found this stupid piece of broken video and you're convinced that this is proof of contact with the enemy. You're throwing accusations at an innocent person without checking it at all."
Nicky jerked her chin, pointing at the screen behind him.
"On the contrary, I'm collecting evidence before I make my conclusions," she said.
"No. You've missed an important step in your thinking process, Dr de Vries. You're assuming Julie has done something wrong, illegal. You know very well that all contact with any external entity, particularly those considered hostile or unfriendly to the Republic need to be registered with the appropriate authorities for potential conflict of interest. She wouldn't have done anything that's not logged. The stupid virus must had added it to her implants. Julie is a good person." His voice jumped an octave again. He swallowed, but his throat remained tight. "She is a friend. I know her. She's a sweet, good-hearted person, and a good citizen. We were all vetted, for years, remember?" he paused to moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue.
Nicky watched him for a while. Something in her eyes made him feel as though he was back in school again, in the headmaster's office.
"I'd say you were naive, but then I can't really," she said eventually. The words coming quiet but heavy from her mouth. "Julie's sure clever. But how did she hide it, I've no idea." Nicky paused, glanced at her screen. "Come here, and I'll show you something," she added and returned to her station.
SingMa rolled towards her in his chair.
Nicky tapped on the interface and brought up what looked like a medical image of a brain.
"This is a human brain with a set of 1.3 generation implants," she said and swiped another image onto the screen. "And this is your friend's brain. Now, find the difference." She zoomed in onto the implant placement area and enlarged the image.
SingMa pulled himself closer to the screen, but this was not necessary. The difference was obvious.
"There's something here," he said, pointing to an area on Julia's brain.
"That's the infiltration zone with inflammation response. Her brain's response to whatever has attempted to affect her implants."
"That's what causing the issues?"
"Likely so, but that's not what I wanted you to see. It's this." She put her finger near the edge of the implant on the example image.
"Look here," she said, sliding around the shape of the device. "These silvery lines, here and here. These are tissue connection points. And now, check your friend's brain."
He enlarged the indicated area on the image of Julia's implants, but there was nothing like what Nicky had just showed him.
"There aren't any on Julia's brain. What does it mean?" he asked, feeling his throat tightening again.
"Correct. No connection points. It means that these implants have not integrated."
"But that's not possible. She would have known they were not integrated." SingMa stared at Nicky. His head felt like a big, gray, growing storm cloud.
"Precisely my point."
"That can't be right."
"You're looking at it."
He stared at the image again.
"Have you double-checked it from another angle or with a different machine?"
"Triple checked. But that's only the hardware proof. Then, there is the software proof."
His heart hammered.
"You said there is an infiltration, inflammation in the zone around the implants. What if the virus damaged the connections?"
"Theoretically possible. We do it sometimes here in the clinic, but then-" she paused. "It looks different."
His neck suddenly felt ice cold and soaked in sweat.
"The virus could be of alien source. It, whatever it is, may have a completely different biology or technology."
"Sure. So how do you explain your findings? You've checked the data of her implants, the use history?"
"Of course, you asked me to."
"And you found almost nothing from her time on Vindolanda, and not much from what happened before. Just as if the user had used them as an external interface. Making enquiries, bookings, but not using it for everyday work or life."
"But she wouldn't survive in Segedunum without integrated implants."
"But she has."
"Her job-"
"Probably interacted mainly with equipment. Machines always have external interfaces, as a failsafe mechanism, or for convenience. Just like we're using our hands and eyes to interact with these screens."
"But- but... How could she? It's not possible."
"Obviously, it is possible. We've got the means to do that, so I guess others do as well. But we only do it when there is risk to life, because there is always risk of a loss of brain function as a result of de-integration. But since your friend had no brain damage, I'm assuming she had those implants not-integrated at the early stage."
He tried protesting. "But the procedure-"
"I know the procedure. I was subject to it, and I impose it on those who receive implants in my clinic." Nicky looked at him in silence for a moment. "SingMa," she said eventually. "I realize this is hard for you to believe. She's your friend. But I've checked her records. She was granted leave on compassionate grounds within a few weeks of receiving the implantation. Right in time to dissolve the first connection without too much damage."
SingMa's heart skipped a beat. His head swirled. He let his head drop onto the back of his chair. He drew in a breath, and it burned his throat.
Shit… This couldn't be true. If Nicky had proof. But she must have been wrong.
But Nicky de Vries… Fucking Nicky de Vries, the head neuroscientist of Si-Carb clinic and the whole Rebels Republic. She could be wrong, couldn't she? If not… Julie… his Julie was in deep shit.
"Do you want…. A glass of… water?" Nicky's voice was coming through a layer of insulation wool. He blinked and looked at her.
Nicky's mouth was moving, but his ears weren't registering much.
He had to pull himself together. He'd already showed too much of an attitude that wasn't encouraged in their little community. Whatever was going to happen to Julie could not take precedence over his job here: saving the lives of other infected people.
He faked a cough. It came out like a barking of a mechanical dog from old cartoons.
"Sorry, what are you saying?" he said.
Nicky put a hand on his shoulder. This was a very unusual display of emotions for her, or overall in the Republic. "I realize you're shocked and maybe even feel cheated and betrayed, but I need your help with that segment of video. Some more info has just come in."