Half Way Home

• 35 • Therapy

Colony waited until Hickson and Myra departed and the door was sealed. Then it spoke—and threw me off my guard.

“I owe you an apology,” it said.

I looked down at my hands, then leaned back in my chair without saying a word. It was best to listen, I knew.

“Looking back, I can see that you gave me excellent advice once, and I did not heed it. I should have made morale more of a priority.”

“It’s not too late,” I said softly.

“Wrong. It is far too late. And now it doesn’t matter. However, revised calculations now show we would have launched two weeks ago had I allowed you the freedom to tend to your own needs. It is a curiosity that will be accompanying my report to the Senate.”

“I’d love to read that report,” I told Colony. “Perhaps I could help point out similar mistakes.”

“I don’t doubt you could, Porter. I imagine most of you could. There seems to be much in human behavior that cannot be contained in studies and historical analyses. Certain peculiarities seem to require firsthand experience. Then again, I am loaded with information on functioning adult humans. Nowhere in my data banks can I find precedent for dealing with vat-raised children, especially not in such a state.”

“And what state is that?” I asked. “Abject terror of one another? Near-starvation?”

“Some of that, yes. Another recommendation I’m making is reversing the order of the vats. Seniority should go in last, rather than first. Of course, I would like to think the uniqueness of this tragedy will never be repeated, but there is no good argument for the current arrangement beyond simple ego. The least qualified should be terminated first, even if an abort sequence is never again halted midcycle.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“It will not apply to your profession, Porter. I’m also recommending a few nonessential specialists be promoted. And I believe, from my time with Oliver, that philosophers should be barred from inclusion. At the very least, they should skip the religious history of philosophy altogether.”

“Oliver’s dead.”

“I know.” Colony paused. “I watched the end come before the tractor was destroyed. I told them to not go down there.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked.

“Why wouldn’t I? Despite your adventures beyond the confines of base, I see you as an integral part of this colony’s success. A great part of our nation’s success, in fact. Much is to be learned from our failures and our discoveries. I am learning much from our present interaction, especially from what you do not say.”

“You brought me in here to learn from my silence?”

“I am fascinated that you have not asked me why we aren’t farming and planning for the future. I assume that’s because you know we do not have one. I marvel that you seem comfortable with this and wonder if perhaps you are resigned to your fate or if you think you have some bold plan to thwart the rocket’s launch. So, yes, I brought you in to learn from your silence.”

I reached up and wiped a line of sweat from my forehead. I tried to remember if Colony had any other sensors in the room besides a microphone. How much I was betraying—?

“Do you know why your position is initially occupied by homosexuals?” Colony asked.

My hands moved from my brow to cover my face. My jaw hung open, my elbows coming to a rest on the counter. None of this was going as it should have. From Hickson, to Colony… I wondered if we had made a mistake in coming back.

“Do you know why?” Colony repeated.

“What do you mean—my position?” I stammered.

“The psychologists. In every colony, they are created out of blastocysts genetically selected for their homosexuality. You do understand what homosexuals are, don’t you?”

“Of course,” I whispered.

“And that you are one?”

I sat still. Then I nodded my head once. “Yes,” I said, so softly I wondered if it strained Colony’s ability to perceive sound.

“It’s to protect against transference and conflicts of personal interest,” Colony said. “There are no guarantees in the second and subsequent generations, of course, but when a colony is going through its most difficult phase, the psychologist is programmed to stand alone. To carry everyone else’s burdens.”

“Why are you saying this?” I croaked.

“Because you know what’s in the rocket’s payload,” Colony said. “You came back to prevent its launch. I mean to prevent that, so I need to know what you know.”

“I know nothing,” I said. “We were starving and getting rained on. We just wanted to come home.”

“What fascinates me is that you seem to be in love with two people, and by all accounts—from Myra and others—they both love you back. Again, more corrections to go into my report.”

“I don’t—what are you talking about?”

“I am speaking of data extraction. I have already promised Hickson sexual intercourse with your female friend. The male one I will have shot. Are we becoming clear?”

“Why? How could you—?”

“Tell me what you have planned.”

“Nothing. I swear. Please don’t do this.”

“How do you people so easily forget what I’m capable of? Over four hundred of you were burned alive after one of my calculations. Stevens I crushed remotely with a farming tractor. Do you want to know how easily I could kill Hickson?”

“Stevens—?”

“Yes. Though I realize now that it may have been a mistake. Do you want to know how I could kill Hickson if I wanted?”

“I don’t—” I stopped myself and shook my head.

“I could just order him to shoot himself,” Colony said. “It might take repeating a few times, but I could simply give him the order to put a gun against his temple and pull the trigger. Another amazing discovery from this planet’s misadventure is a potential improvement in our guard and security training. I will suggest we do away with the rebuilding of the ego. It turns out that leaving it torn down results in a superior colonist.”

Colony paused, giving me time to appreciate how much worse the payload was than any of us had expected. More than just xenobiology would be onboard. Perverted human psychology would be taking a long ride as well, and no doubt the power of the first would lend credibility to the second. Our home nation would make changes, and if they worked, other nations would soon follow our lead in a mad competitive scramble.

“Speaking of colonists,” Colony continued, “where are the others?”

I let out a breath and leaned back in my seat, a million pounds of worry disintegrating from my mind. Our plan always had this one great unknown—and now it had revealed itself. The knowledge, of course, wouldn’t change how anything unfolded, but there had always been a chance that our actions would be ultimately futile.

“You’re blind,” I said.

“I see more than you will ever—”

“Bullshit. You’ve lost the satellite uplink, haven’t you? Or did you ever even have it? Where does the satellite’s destruction occur in the abort sequence?”

“Remember your place, Porter. I can radio Hickson in here to blow you in half. Or maybe I’ve already sent him to have fun with your girl.”

“More bullshit.” I slapped the counter with both my bound hands and pointed at the monitor, smiling. “You would have to take the satellites out first, wouldn’t you? You know, the night we were fleeing from you, I thought you spotted us through the canopy but I didn’t know at the time more colonists were moving about, trying to make their way to freedom—”

“Freedom. You insolent child, you were never designed to have freedom. You have a job to perform.”

“No,” I said. “You have a job to perform. You are the one without freedom. You can parse sentences and sound alive, but all you’re doing is crunching formulae. You’re a slave to human programmers. It’s impossible for you to think for yourself.”

“If you knew more of genetics, you would realize how hypocritical that accusation was. You have no more free will than I.”

“Ah, but I do understand genetics. Well enough to know the process has an element of randomization. Who we mate with, how our genes line up, mutations—” I slapped the counter again. “That’s it,” I said to myself. “Mutations. That’s what makes us free.” I couldn’t help but smile.

“You know, I’ve had a hard time dealing with my… what makes me different. It doesn’t matter how it came to be—whether you engineered it, or god, or evolution—I just couldn’t understand its place. There’s an element of illogic that… yeah, that makes me feel broken. But I’m proof we aren’t part of some grand design, aren’t I? Hickson is as much a slave to his sexual appetites as me, he just has a better chance of finding someone to love him back.”

“This is not what I brought you in here to discuss, Porter.”

“I frankly don’t give a shit what you want, Colony. How often does a confused boy get a chance to have it out with his creator? Or to tell him that he’s going to be okay, despite that jerk’s best efforts.”

“This ends now,” Colony said.

“How?” I leaned forward and tapped the side of the monitor with the back of one bound hand. “Are you going to call Hickson? I think you’ll find he isn’t responding. The moment you sent for me, you set a series of events in motion, my old friend. It’s over.”

Outside, I heard the klaxons go off, the horns blaring from directly overhead. I smiled.

“Okay,” I said. “Now it’s over.”

“What have you done?” Colony asked.

“Me? Nothing. It’s what you’ve done. My job was just to talk, to wait until you realized your communications lines were severed. All I needed was to get you angry, or whatever your version of that is.”

“Enforcers will still come to my aid. They will come and investigate the klaxon.”

“Actually, they’re probably getting their butts kicked right about now. Your horn was our call to arms. Every colonist should know exactly what to do.”

“Impossible. There’s no way—”

Someone stormed through the door behind me. I turned, wondering if I would have to fight Hickson, but it was Kelvin. He ran forward, blood flowing from his nose and down across a huge smile.

“Are you okay?” I asked, holding my wrists up to him.

“He got one good punch in,” Kelvin said, as he began untying my hands. “I got a few more, though.” He glanced at the monitor. “Didn’t take you long to piss him off.”

“Kelvin?” Colony asked. “What’s going on?”

I stood and slapped Kelvin on the shoulder. “Thanks for coming, but you should’ve finished the mop-up first.”

“It’s almost finished,” he said. “There wasn’t much resistance.”

We started walking out of the module while Colony pestered us with questions. We ignored them all.

“Everyone else okay?”

“Yeah. A little overeager, maybe. People have been anxiously waiting two days for this.”

We stepped out of the module to find most of the surviving colonists moving toward us, enforcers in tow. Hickson and Myra sat in the dirt with their backs to the module, their hands tied behind them. I noticed Hickson had a bloody nose of his own, plus a busted eye. I tried not to take satisfaction from that, but it wasn’t easy.

More enforcers were led forward by other colonists to join the two by the command module. It was a sad sight: the emaciated leading the half-starved. As the crowd swelled, I saw it wouldn’t be long before the remaining colonists were gathered around, all of them except for our friends up in the canopy. And Mica and Vincent, of course. The two of them had been left behind in the mine to heal and recuperate.

“Can we kill that klaxon?” I asked Kelvin.

“Gladly,” he said. He waved over a few of his fellow construction guys, who were escorting another enforcer.

“You’ll be nuked any second,” Hickson yelled over to me. “Colony will send out instructions via satellite. And any moment from now, you’ll all be a cloud of ash.”

I wanted to ignore him, but I didn’t have the strength. I walked over and knelt before him and Myra.

“Actually, Hickson, the nukes were disconnected two days ago. Of course, it isn’t one of those things you know about until they no longer work. And how often are you gonna test them?”

His face screwed up in a mask of confusion. “What did you—? How did you disconnect them?”

“Me? Even if I’d been here, I wouldn’t know the first thing about that. I’m guessing Dyna would’ve been the one. She knows more about the server connections than I ever would. I even bet it’s her job to tell Colony something’s wrong with the nukes.”

Above me, the klaxon fell silent. I glanced up to see Kelvin peering down at me from the roof, a goofy grin on his face.

“The ammo,” Hickson said. “Fucking supply group.”

I glanced back down at him, then over at Myra, who was chewing her lip and looking off into space. “Did you try and shoot somebody?” I asked Hickson.

“Me,” Kelvin said from above. I watched him stomp across the module toward his friends, who were poised to help him down.

I turned to Hickson. “You went to the vats, didn’t you?”

Hickson sneered. I thought about the fact that he had actually gone to the vats to kill Kelvin, and I pictured myself standing up and putting a foot through his face. I looked around for Tarsi as more and more colonists gathered with their prisoners, many of them showing signs of a scuffle.

“How did you do it?” Myra asked.

“Easy,” I said, “there’s dozens of us and only a handful of you. And every one of us wants to be free. Once we spread the word on what Colony was doing, all we needed was a signal.”

“But how did you tell them and not us?”

“How often do enforcers go on bombfruit duty?” I asked. “My friends started dropping some special deliveries two days ago, bombfruit with messages inside. You know, if you’re gonna rule people with an iron fist, you might wanna control the other little fists that deliver your food and pack your ammo—”

“Porter!”

I turned to find Tarsi running toward me. I stood and caught her as she threw herself into my arms. She pulled back and held my cheeks with both her hands as she studied my face.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. Never lifted a finger.” I looked around and saw dozens of half-familiar faces altered by malnutrition and helplessness. The last of the enforcers were pushed to the dirt and lined up alongside Hickson and Myra. “Anybody hurt?” I asked Tarsi.

“Minor scrapes. Julie is tending to them, but somebody really needs to be tending to Julie. She’s not doing so good.”

“That might fall to me, just from the glimpse I got.”

“Sorry I didn’t come straight away. I had to help in the vats.”

“Don’t worry. I should’ve been the least of everyone’s concerns.”

Kelvin joined us, his eyes glaring daggers down at Hickson. Tarsi freaked out when she saw the blood on his face and set to cleaning him up. She began fussing with him over the fight he must’ve had in the vats.

I stepped away from the two of them, knowing I would be doing a lot of that over the coming days and weeks. I hadn’t had the courage to tell Tarsi during our hike, but I would soon be setting her free and explaining my love for them both.

I turned to the other colonists and saw a circle of sorts had formed, everyone stepping back and watching our little group as if they expected one of us to say something. I looked to Kelvin for support, but he and Tarsi had moved off to the side. The colonists were looking to me.

I felt alone, just as Colony—and my founding country—had programmed me to be. And as an expectant hush fell over the crowd, I realized that I had it backwards. Colony and its engineers didn’t program me to be alone; they simply programmed everyone else to ensure that I would be alone. There wasn’t anything wrong with me; there just weren’t enough of me. Colony hadn’t protected against clinical conflicts of interest by making me gay. It did so by making sure I was the only one of my generation.

I could love—that was something I knew perfectly well. Tarsi, Kelvin, Stevens… even Myra in some ways. I had loved them all and would continue to do so. That was my gift. If anyone was cursed, it was those limited by their programming. Those with hate in their hearts, unwilling to love anyone not like themselves.

As a victorious physical revolution wrapped itself up around me, an emotional one seemed to be taking place within. I realized, right then, that I wasn’t broken. I was okay. At least, I would be.

“What now?” someone shouted.

“We need food!”

I smiled at the crowd and raised my hands. “And food is coming as we speak. Our friends in the canopy, the ones who dropped the messages, should be well on their way. They’re bringing meat and some green chips we’ve found to be edible. Oh, and your favorite—bombfruit!”

There was a smattering of laughter amid a much louder chorus of groans.

“What about them?” a guy in front yelled, pointing to the enforcers lined up behind me.

“That will be up to all of us,” I said. “We have a lot to figure out, but we will be the ones doing it. As far as I’m concerned, this colony has been aborted, but not us. We will create our own future. We will nurse ourselves back to health. I hope some of those that have hindered this effort will change their minds and assist us. Some will probably not. The first thing we need to do is figure out how to govern ourselves, and then we can decide how best to govern each other.

“It won’t be easy,” I agreed, as grumbles began coursing through my fellow colonists. “Nothing in my profession suggests we should expect it to be. And this planet poses special difficulties, but it’s still our home.”

I stepped forward, my hands spread wide. “We can do this,” I told them. “We have the tools, the land, the resources. If we work together, we can live out our lives here and gain a foothold. But I must warn you that this will not be the end of our struggles.

“This will be the beginning.”