Morality in Question Chapter 3
Story by: The HamsterofDeath
What should she do?
The ceiling Meryl was staring at did not give her an answer. She turned in her bed and thought again. What would happen if she refused to go along with his plan? Wouldn't that simply send them all back to square one? He would remain their prisoner and they would all spend their lives making sure he doesn't escape or go on a rampage. Milly and her would grow old and die before the plant got any wrinkle. That would be insanity. She refused!
Of course, there was always the option of killing him. But she couldn't do that. Not anymore. She was stuck.
Should she agree?
If she went along with his plan, everybody would disappear, her included. Generations of humans would have simply never existed. But in exchange, the great fall would be avoided! A terra-formed planet, a responsible government, no over-used plants, wasn't that good? Why did Vash refuse Knives' plan? What was the catch?
She didn't know.
She continued to think about the problem until she drifted off to sleep.
The next day, Meryl stepped into Knives' room, who surprisingly could already sit without any sign of pain.
"I hate you."
"Perfect. Would you be so kind and get a map? We will have to check a few wrecks. If we are just a bit lucky, we can collect enough spare parts to get a small shuttle flying."
"Here." She already had one and handed it over to him.
Knives accepted the gift.
Meryl hoped that she made the right decision. She was betting everything on him having changed his mind about her species, or at least starting to question his views. If everybody refused to listen to a perfectly valid plan, then he might revert to his old self and she couldn't have that. She wanted to prove to him that she, a human, could be logical, efficient and reasonable. If the plan worked, then humanity and plants alike would have a fresh start, and if it failed, Knives would still be saved from his preconceptions. He had been treating her nicely so far, having conversations with her as an equal and not an inferior being.
She watched as Knives unfolded the map and started analyzing it. A moment later, he looked at her and smiled.
"You see, Meryl, right now, you are like a pet to me. Like a loyal dog. If you feed a dog and give it commands, you will become its master. In your case, I needed to give you knowledge and wisdom."
Meryl gaped at him. Is is too late to kill him now? "Once I find a flaw in what you told me, I will abandon you!"
"I wouldn't accept you if you would follow an idiot. I have standards."
"Ok." Meryl took a deep breath and tried to forget who she was talking to. Insufferable jerk.
"Let's assume we find enough spare parts. Will that even be enough? The hulls are all heavily damaged, without exception."
"I know how difficult it must look to you, but it actually is not. We basically only need three things. The first is the engine. There are many lying around. I doubt we will find one that is intact, but the damage shouldn't be critical. If a human can survive, so can an engine that is much harder. Parts might get loose, but I can stitch them back together; I know how they work. The second part is the navigation system. We will skip that. Manual controls are enough; we do not need high precision, we just need to get into space, approach another ship, then go outside and board the ship. I still know the door codes, so that isn't a problem."
And then we breathe the vacuum. Easy.
"Of course we will need a space suit, but that is not an issue. The ships will have some, and even if not, we just need something that can resist an atmospheric pressure of, well, one atmosphere and a layer on top that shields us from radiation."
"Isn't it cold in space?"
Knives sighed.
"No."
"What do you mean, no?"
"If I have to... if you touch cold water, it will absorb your heat. That is how you get cold. If there is no water, you touch air, which absorbs less heat because it is less dense. Now if you take away the air..."
So the heat is stuck?
"Are you telling me that things do not instantly freeze in space?"
"Exactly. All we need to protect our bodies from is radiation and our own pressure."
"Ok. But how are you going to build the hull?"
"Can you imagine building a submarine?"
"Given the manpower we have, I would use a balloon and put a heavy stone into it, then close it."
"It's no different from a spaceship, apart from the engine."
I can't really imagine going into space in a huge balloon with an engine attached to it.
"You're right, we do not have the resources to build a real, fully functional spaceship. But that isn't what is necessary. Even a simple suit with a jet-pack made out of an old spaceship engine would be fine."
Now this sounds much more realistic.
Three weeks later.
"You did an excellent job convincing the others."
They were both in a spaceship wreck. Knives had opened the control panel and bent over to have a look inside. Soon, part of his body disappeared into the machinery.
"I didn't imagine it being so easy. You were right, they listen to me for no reason."
"This, my dear, is called understanding the rules of the game. By taking into consideration everything, you can predict the outcome given a certain input."
"How come you and Vash don't agree? I mean, you should be able to understand each other."
"You are asking good questions today. We can understand each other, but we disagree. We chose different goals. It's like playing chess but one player tries to get the king while the other only cares about getting all his pieces into a nice looking pattern."
"Vash is the one trying to get his pieces into a heart?"
"You could say that. Pass me the memory module."
Meryl handed a small flat circuit board over to Knives who plugged it into a broken computer.
"Do you know how these things work?"
"With electricity?"
"So you don't. We are lucky this cpu here is built like it is. Space is full of gamma rays. Each gamma ray that hits the cpu can mess up its calculations."
"Like someone shouting numbers at you while you count?"
"I suppose from your nonscientific viewpoint, that is an acceptable metaphor."
His upper body came back out of the console he just fixed. Some lights lit up, and a beep confirmed that the console was indeed... capable of beeping.
"You need special shielding. You need error checking built into the cpu in case a stray ray makes it through the shield. Strong magnetic fields can redirect radiation, but we don't have the means to generate one that would reach far enough."
Meryl looked up. The ship in which they were had a gaping hole at its ceiling.
"Why isn't the radiation reaching us?"
Knives turned his head to his pet.
"Excellent question. It's because of this planet's magnetic field. It reaches about 30.000 km into space and redirects most of the radiation. This is why you all didn't die of cancer yet. And the atmosphere is the reason you don't get an instant sunburn after a few seconds."
"A few seconds?"
"We have two suns. Each sun emits a large amount of ultraviolet light. If enough hits your skin, you get a sunburn."
"This radiation, how do we protect ourselves when we go outside?"
"Anything."
"Anything?"
"Anything will do, as long as it is dense enough. Ideally we'd use a suit made out of ultra-dense lead – then a few micrometers thick layer would be enough. Like the suit that I used to wear."
"You said it takes a few meters to be sure."
"That was normal lead. It depends on how the atoms are arranged, remember?"
"Right. Atoms."
Knives pressed some buttons on the console, being satisfied afterwards.
"It's working?"
"The basic operating system is built into the cpu itself and is almost intact. We are lucky. Only non-critical parts are damaged. It was a good idea to include up to 17 copies of the most important data."
"Why so many?"
"So that even if all of them are damaged, you can still reconstruct the complete program."
"Ok."
She stared.
"Wait. If every single program is damaged, how do you..."
He obviously was prepared for this exact question. "Because if they are damaged at different parts, I can combine the parts of each copy that are not damaged. Just like your cells have a spare copy of dna to replace broken parts."
"They really wanted to make sure this works..."
"They had to. If it fails, you die. Just like you die when your dna gets damaged and you get cancer."
Meryl said nothing. But Knives expected a reply which meant that she missed something. Opening her mouth right now would only disappoint him as she had no idea about what to say. It was embarrassing when she failed to meet his high expectations.
Knives shook his head slightly. "And we can know which part of two has been damaged by using a check-sum."
"Uh.. ok."
"Anyway, let's eat," he said, finally taking pity on her.
They sat at a table outside, just the two of them under the perfect blue sky, and started eating their delicious soup. They had spent quite a lot of time together and Meryl had to admit that she had never had as many meaningful conversations with anybody else in her entire life. His company was strangely addictive. The guy was a living, walking, context sensitive encyclopedia, albeit a very condescending one.
"What do you think is the mental difference between you and me, dear Meryl? What is it that makes me superior? My knowledge about the world, about science, physics, biology? Raw processing speed? Intelligence?"
"I suppose it would be intelligence."
"What is intelligence?"
"The ability to solve problems?"
"So intelligence is the collection of problems you can solve?"
"Yes?"
"So the more people you have, the more intelligent the group becomes? Have you ever been in a so called meeting?"
"So I am wrong?"
"Let's go back. How complex, do you think, is the processing of optical or auditory input?"
"Tell me."
"Very. The processing of visual input is one of the most complex tasks your brain is capable of. This is no different for me. The difference between you and me is actually infinitely small compared to what is required just for us to talk, hear and see."
"I am almost as smart as you?"
"In a sense, you are. In your case, to use a metaphor, the glass is full. In my case, a few more drops were enough to surpass the border. I am on a different level because I have reached the critical mass. To be more precise, I know how to be intelligent, while you don't. You use the tools your brain gives you, but you do not organize your thoughts. You are never thinking on a higher level, you just go left and right instead of changing the depth. I have the key, you don't. Intelligence doesn't happen, you have to embrace it. Of course, there is also a maximum limit that everybody has. There is a maximum that you can never surpass. But if I were to limit myself to the strategies you use, I would only be a shadow of myself. Then, the only difference to you would be the speed, not the intelligence."
"Are you saying that I am not using my full potential?"
"Exactly. Almost no one even tries. They don't really think, they just live from one day to the next. I tried to uplift some humans, but the results were disappointing. However, there are a few exceptions. Out of the entire population, there should be around 150 that are like me. And out of the entire population, there is a large chunk that is more stupid than necessary. I want to kill them just for that."
"Didn't you say you would stop being evil?"
"But it is more efficient and morally better to change their history..."
"Now that sounds a lot better to me."
It took a week to fill in the holes of the program. The secondary programs turned out to be quite important and Knives had to master what he called a "programming language."
Meryl was assisting by pressing some buttons, but even if Knives told her she was making things a bit easier, she felt useless and out of place.
"Milly should be back soon with the tools."
She looked at her watch. Knives heard her, but was mumbling something about a stack overflow error.
"Still, why does Vash go along with this? I mean, Milly said she just decided to trust my decision because she isn't the brightest. But Vash?"
"Easy," Knives spoke with a screwdriver in his mouth, which Meryl found highly distracting. "He believes you will change your mind at the last moment because you will see my mistake. He also believes that as long as I am working on the plan, I am easy to control."
He changed the screwdrivers.
"Except that there is no mistake."
"And he is controlling you now?"
"Yes. You cannot tell, but he is actively slowing me down by slowing Milly down. He is trying to drag it out, which will give you more time, and prevent me from following a different plan. I will only do so if this one fails. In his little world, the ideal solution is to slow me down forever. In the end, at the last second, he will try to stop me. And I am already preparing for that. This also forces me to slow down. It's part of the game, if you will."
So there was something going on.
"In the end, the better planner will succeed. We are done for today. It's getting dark."
"Yes, I am getting hungry. It's really strange that we have a 24 hours day and 14 hours of daylight regularly despite two suns." Meryl wanted to ask a few times how this was possible, but refrained each time.
I will figure that out by myself.
They both left the not yet fully functional ship, closed the door, locked it and walked into their temporal home, which was nothing more then a few small tents with a lot of garbage, tools and a bit of food around them.
I wonder what his full plan is. He and Vash must have both planned a lot ahead.
Half an hour later, Knives and Meryl ate together.
No sign from Vash. Was there a problem, or was he purposefully delaying it? Even after an hour nobody came. Two hours, nothing. At midnight, Vash opened the tent of Meryl who was caught in a state between dreams and reality.
"Vash? Why did you..."
Then she noticed his facial expression.
"Milly is dead. I failed to protect her."