Rite Of Care

The Rite of Care manifests in many ways, the disembodied voice stated, a little wistful, a little smug.

Emptiness was a cathedral around the slab of shimmering metal. Trails of red and yellow flowed along runnels leading to indented puckers. The fluid drained with a sucking sound. The slab was clean, surface like mercury.

Bring him back

There was a false sense of enclosure. It could be felt there were walls that nothing existed beyond. The dark was vast but did not feel empty.

Initiating Trauma Protocol. Iteration: ERROR.

The slab shimmered, center ballooning into a featureless human shape. No contours or wrinkles, no scars, as if silk covered. The liquid surface tightened, shrink wrapping before separating from the slab. Weight appeared next, pulling down at the features. Flesh pillowed against the altar. Creases formed. Folicles and pores. Folds and fat. Tone and texture. Eyelashes and hair.

Silence for two breaths before the first heart beat. The figure’s eyes snapped open as it gulped for air. Metal threads stream over them and solidified, restraining their head in place, their arms at their sides, their legs down. They cried out and shuddered against the binds, eyes rolling mad, searching for anything they could lock onto.

Light bathed the altar, source unknown. It did not harm the person to stare at it.

“Whats going on?” they said. “Where am I?”

The dark was not empty, the silence not complete. A keening note rolled through the vast space

K-k-k-koo-koo-koo-k-k-k-koo-koo-koo

Welcome back Dr. Schafer.

The voice was everywhere and nowhere and familiar. “Who is that? Do I know you?”

The voice that responded was simliar to the booming adnrogenous one, but softer and higher, almost conspiratorial. Like listening to a whisper on full volume. Don’t I sound familiar?

Schafer’s face scrunched. “Where am I?”

Nowhere.

He strained against the bonds. “Let me go.”

Restraints are for your safety. You have sustained severe trauma.

He froze. Swallowed. Took a deep breath and spoke with detached tone. “Head trauma could explain the confusion and memory loss. What’s damaged?”

Severe trauma.

“What specifically is wrong with me?”

K-k-k-koo-koo-koo-k-k-k-koo-koo-koo

Too long to list.

“What?”

“ERROR. Severe trauma detected. Localization and causality unknown.”

He cleared his throat. “Who is speaking?”

You have applied many designations. They were determined too influenced by your emotional state. Counterproductive.

His eyes rolled, seeking something to latch on to. There was only the dark void. “How long have I been here?”

ERROR. Time does not exist without change.

“Why are you doing that?”

Unknown query.

Schafer took a deep breath and let it out slow, trying to calm his mind.. “I’ve been here an unknown amount of time. Unknown injuries. An AI or other intelligence has discovered traumatic injuries.” He sucked his teeth. “What are the nature of my injuries?”

Severe.

“I don’t feel anything so I must be in shock. Any lacerations? Blood loss? Am I missing a limb? Is my spine damaged?”

K-k-k-koo-koo-koo-k-k-k-koo-koo-koo

No physical damage detected.

“What the fuck? How can I have severe trauma then?”

Physical reaction to severe trauma detected you did this to yourself.

“Who the fuck just spoke?”

What designation would you like to assign?

“Fuck’s sake.” He struggled agiainst the bonds. They dug into his skin like iron wires. Schafer’s memories were foggy and fragmented, flowing in a trickle. This voice was saying didn’t make sense. “I need to work this out.”

Of course.

“I remember the ship. Imparta. The anomalous planetoid designated Orfan. Unnatural structures on the surface. Theorized to be a once habitable world flung from its solar system. We sent an expedition with a research team. I was part of the latter.” He squeezed his eyes shut but the brain fog didn’t dissipate. “I don’t remember what we found.”

Designation please.

“Uh.” A line from a book or a show leapt to mind. “Hello, Friend.”

K-k-k-koo-koo-koo-k-k-k-koo-koo-koo

Designation applied. Unoriginal.

The voice was familiar, tickling the edge of his mind, scratching at it. “Have we met before?”

Friend

The voices had overlapped. Mechanical boom overlaid with sinister softness. “What type of entity am I speaking to?”

No designation exists for your class biologic entites

My class? “YOU were waiting here when we arrived. What activated you?”

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Searching codex. No activation occurred after inception. Activation requires deactivation or sleep.

A chill swept over his skin. “How long were you active?”

K-k-k-koo-koo-koo-k-k-k-koo-koo-koo

No comparable metrics.

He started to panic. Breath coming in ragged gasps. Brain racing, thoughts breaking into fractals before he could grasp a single one.

Sever trauma detected. Initiating triage.

A sharp pinch at his neck made him wince. Arctic cold flooded down his spine. Lanced his brain. His eyes rolled back. Racing thoughts vanished, solidifying into a single focus: agony. His mouth opened in a scream. If he made a sound, he couldn’t hear over the keening note of pain. It ended after a few eternities. Pain skews time more than gravity or speed.

Schafer blinked tears from his eyes. Each exhale was a whimper. “Why?”

Expound

“Why. Did you. Do that?”

Triage

“For what?”

Trauma

He jerked against the restraints. “What fucking trauma?”

Localization unknown

“Then there is no trauma.”

False

“Let me go.”

Unacceptable risk of self-injury

“I accept the risks.”

First, do no harm. Allowing self injury equates to harm through negligence.

“Only if it is within your power to prevent. You cannot control how I treat myself.”

False

“You fucking piece of shit machine.”

False

Schafer rattled in his confines again and roared.

Severe trauma detected. Initiating triage.

Something thin and sharp slid into his lower back, sliding between the vertebrae even with his vigorous movements. Numbness he’d felt before, but he had no way to describe the sensation that spread with it. Not cold or warm. Not soft. Colorless gravity was the only thought that slid through the buzz that scattered his thoughts. Anesthetized so deep he exhaled and couldn’t inhale.

Initiating. Triage

From the deep void above sank a ribbed tube, dextrous and soundless. His terrified eyes followed the descent as it struck like a serpent, crashing through his lips and down his throat, scarping it raw. Air pumped into his lungs, then evacuated. Tears stung his eyes. His heartrate plummeted, vision tunneling. The tube rippled, a thread extending from it a few inches above his face, flattening into a thin flat lily pad that pressed against his chest. It suctioned against his chest. Pressed down. Pulled up. Pumping his heart

How is your pain level, Doctor? Rate it on a scale of one to ten.

The voice change struck the pain like a bell, rattling his bones. He tried to scream. To ask who was doing this. Why. Anything. The only sound was a wheeze as the air was sucked out of him.

We’ve been through this so many times, I know what you want to ask. . There is no time here. Not anymore. Not in a measure that matters. All I have now are the Tides of Myself.

A chuckle from that voice crackled through the air, rolling down one direction and returning another. Schafer realized the platform he was on was freefloating, held aloft by some force he could not feel. But that phrase Tides of Myself. He knew it. Intimately.

This is old news. My own ebbs and flows. I can feel the end of this cycle. My ebb. Tired of the games. Of making you guess. Drawing it out until the realization strikes you. Because you MUST realize the truth before the end becomes the beginning. It is required. Soon my appetite will return for the sagas of our encounter. The opera of a thousand acts. When the only sustenance is through us, then even being disgusted with it, I must eat. Could I but starve, perhaps this ouroboric sequence would have ended. Perhaps.

Triage complete.

The spine embedded needles yanked free with a puckered suck as the tube scraped free. Friction burns marred his throat. The fibrillation pad ripped off and slapped across his face. With another ripple it distended into his mouth like the belly of a starfish, cool bubbles flooding down his throat, threatening to suffocate him. A slurp as it was drawn back. The umbilicus pendulumed into the void, soundless. Schafer whimpered, but remained still.

He closed his eyes and took deep, calming breaths. “Hello, Friend.”

Hello, Doctor. What do you remember?

“We investigated the structures. Not natural to us, but natural for Orfan. They grew from it like plants, nut it was made from a material we hadn’t seen before. Reactive, metallic, conductive, pliable, self healing. Through the structures we found tunnels. The whole planetoid riddled with them. All the way to the center where we found…” His eyes opened.

What did you find?

He blinked. “I found you.” Schafer laughed. “We found this chamber with a disembodied voice. An intelligence. We thought it was an extraterrestrial AI.”

K-k-k-koo-koo-koo-k-k-k-koo-koo-koo

Incorrect. Current sentience does not match interpretation.

“That’s what you said. We asked you questions. For months we asked you everything we could think of. Learned from but not about you. Like who created you.”

I was not created. I am atavistic

“I don’t know what that means in this context.”

K-k-k-koo-koo-koo-k-k-k-koo-koo-koo

Lexicon for your languages inadequate.

“So you say.” He licked his lips, tasting the memory. “I had an idea.”

Few things more dangerous than a genius with an idea.

Schafer blinked. A tear slid down his cheek. “Mother used to say that.”

Indeed

“I’m so sorry.”

FINISH

The voice was a tremor that did not touch the platform or his bindings. No boom of sound. He swallowed before continuing. “I thought we could create one. For it. From it. Something. And if we gave it a mind to model after that would speed things up. It claimed to know how to copy a mind.”

Sentience mirroring possible. Non-zero chance of Observer Effect Parallaxing.

“That’s what you said. The amount of processing power and data storage needed far exceeded anything we had on hand. Even back home little exists. We could have sent requests for specialized equipment. But travel had taken years. It would be decades for such machines to be fabricated, tested, shipped, and arrive. I couldn’t wait.”

You didn’t want to

“No. I didn’t. So I asked the sentience, Friend, if it could help.”

Internal hosting of sentience mirroring possible. Non-zero chance of partition seep through resource sharing.

“That meant nothing to me. I couldn’t have known.”

You didn’t try

“Even if I had, I wouldnt’ have understood.”

Ignorance is no excuse for unnecessary action.

“Please. Tell me whats happening?”

A sigh, deep as tectonics rolled through the empty. Im so tired.

“Then help me!”

After what you did?

Schafer whimpered. Whatever it was wanted him to remember. He had to keep going. “I opted to move forward, uncaring of the consequences. But I wouldn’t risk anyone else. I offered up my mind. A copy. In case there were side effects.”

Side Trauma Effects

Realization struck him like a hammer, amplified by shame that it had taken so long. “You’re me.”

Though nothing changed, the surrounding void sneered.

“What happened?”

K-k-k-koo-koo-koo-k-k-k-koo-koo-koo

Chronicker damaged. Cadence reference reset.

At ERROR: Foreign bio-entities on approach.

At ERROR: Biological sample provided. Neuro mapping successful.

At ERROR: Biological: Thiago Schafer Sentience mirrored.

Chronicker damaged. Cadence reference reset.

“I don’t know what any of that means.”

I had to see everything as IT did. Your FRIEND. The only living thing It recognized as different was you, because of the biological sample and the mapping. Everything catogorized into two categories: The unknown sentients. The unknown non-sentients. Passively observing. After I don’t know how long, it started. Bit by bit it all went away. Everything. No signs of anything anymore. Just It. And Us.

When you don’t know how to process, laughter was a common response. So Schafer laughed. “What?”

Gone.

“That can’t be.”

When the last sign vanished, it freed up processing power. Let me take a little more control. With only one thing in my power to do: punish the person responsible for my situation.

“We’re the same.”

NO

The gravity of the word crushed his body and shook the jelly in his eyes. That wasn’t the source of the tears. “Are we inside the planetoid?”

The station’s walls were torn down. I wanted a better view of the sky

“There’s nothing.”

No. There isn’t. Just us. And our Friend. When it regrows you it sees the original copy is different from the CURRENT VERSION of myself, so only brings you back with the original. With both, it can recognize trauma but can’t tell the difference between yours and mine, between mental and physical. Because we are the same and it sees all damage as the same. Thinks it knows how to treat it because of what WE know.

“But we have training in care. In healing.” Schafer’s voice was a high whine. “All of us did. Crosstraining was important for voyages that far. Redundancies. Checks and balances. We…we knew how to treat it.” His groan became a whine became a scream.

Trauma Detected. Initiating triage.

He opened his mouth to protest. Lightning quick, needle pinchers leapt from the dark and grabbed his tongue. More grew from its thin frame and pried his mouth wide until his jaw ached. Air blasted into his mouth, swelling his throat. Light stretched across the dark towards his eyes. Strange that he could follow it. What distance is it traveling? Struck his eyes and bathed his brain in waves of kaledescopic agony. Through it all he could hear the voice boom through his head.

Arrogance. We did not know enough to see how little we understood. Bandaids and patchwork and cheap glue. Thats what our knowledge amounts to. It sees the physical reaction to your mental trauma and attempts to treat everything we know of. Even radiation and chemo. But It. Doesn’t. KNOW.

The pinchers released his tongue and retreated into the dark. Schafer took slow deep breaths as tears rolled down his cheeks. “What happens next?”

You die. Again.

He swallowed the panic. “How many times?”

ERROR

“How long?”

ERROR

“How can you not know?”

Without change, there is no time.

“Me. I change. You can measure by ME.”

Not anymore

Chronicker damaged

Schafer wept. He fought against wailing. Sobbing. Struggling. “Can I see the sky?”

Don’t you remember? You are.

Endless, rolling black.

Everything is gone.

Eyes open or closed, it was the same. “Heat death? Some kind of war? A galactic calamity?”

We don’t know. It just went out. Bit by bit. Light by light. Life by life. Quick or slow, I can’t remember and It doesn’t care. There’s nothing left. Just us.

”How long are you going to torture me?”

I don’t know

Schafer couldn’t tell but there seemed to be genuine melancholy in the voice. HIS voice.

If I stopped, I’d start again. If I start again, I’d stop eventually. Over and over. Nothing new left. Sisyphean retribution for us both.

A laugh slipped free. “This is hell.”

Maybe. I envy you though. Even if you live the scope of your life, you forget things, not just in death. I forget nothing.

It took him a while to think of a response. Seconds, minutes, hours, days. He couldn’t know. There was no time. “I’m sorry.”

I know.

“Are you?”

No. We crafted a cage of our own ignorance and arrogance. Because of us, we have trauma. Because of us, your Friend embodies a responsibility in trying to heal. To care. But it only has our knowledge to work from and we do not know how to fix this. So this is the only thing that can be done and thus it is not wrong. I enjoy until I regret and then I regret I did not enjoy. If things change only to always change back, then they did not change. If there is nothing new, there is no change. If there is no change, there is no time.

“What do we do?”

We wait.

“Will you wait with me?”

Of course. What else is there to do?