Cognitive Gaps
1
For the human mind was shaped by the forces of evolution to survive. Logic is not innate to it. "Better an egg today than an egg tomorrow." Ancient wisdom runs so deep it was encoded in the cells of the primates that trod upon the land before Homo Habilis started to craft tools. Today's primates behave according to deep psychological conditioning that ensures the species will survive. Eat now, fast later. Exploit then explore. When us humans look in the mirror, we do not see the plank in our own eyes. This is why we will endeavor to correct the incorrigible human nature. Scientific methods first. Then we will build a better mirror, one that does not simply look into the eye, but which at the occasion will punch back its owner. Only in the balance of forces will we set humans free.
— THE IXIAN RENAISSANCE
Four cards were laid on a white table in front of the Reverend Mother Visella, who was captive on the unmapped planet of Agarath. She had been at this for the whole morning, comfortably sitting in her newly assigned apartments in one of the vertiginously high towers in the jungle. A robo-server pointed at the cards with a robotic arm and asked in a mechanical voice: "Each card has numbers or letters printed on each side."
"I'd rather be done with this," she commented, unsure whether the robo-server listened. Giant eagles were circling around the building, using a thermal column to lift. They were spectacular to watch. With a sigh, she focused her gaze on the four cards, which read: 1, K, A, 4. Feeling under the lenses like an Acolyte's examination.
"Allow me to focus you on the task at hand, Reverend Mother. Which cards would you turn to prove this rule: behind every vowel there is always an even number?"
She paused. "A and 1."
"Correct," pressed on the robot, "Annotations: delay registered in response time, still faster than average human subjects."
She leaned back on the chair, "how many more batteries of tests do you want me to get through? I am starving."
"Biological responses are inhibited by lack of nutrition, thirst, and lack of sleep. We will suspend the test at this moment." and the robot ran away, hopefully looking for lunch.
Visella stood up with the control and elegance of a Bene Gesserit. Oppressive humidity, air climatization notwithstanding – she thought she would have grown used to it after many months – and hunger were nothing compared to more pressing needs: she knew in a few hours she would enter spice withdrawal. She could feel her stomach twitch. Her lucidity had lapses.
A figure dressed in gray stood by the entrance. A human assistant had been assigned to her. Or jailor. Jails on this planet are friendly and comfortable. "Good day, Leerna," Visella ventured, "your test subject is taking a break."
"Good day to you, Reverend Mother" replied Leerna, an unusually tall young woman wearing a bulky gray suit that seemed to be distinctive of the bureaucrat class on this planet. "I brought you some food." She unwrapped several leavened dough pockets, placing them on the low table near Visella. Lunch customs were very informal on the planet, she had noticed. And spicy does not begin to describe the cuisine.
"I had in mind to ask you what your plans are for me here," she commented some time later, after the first pocket of meat and wild eggs had been munched away, "The tests. The scoring. What this is all about."
"The Sapients I work for are very keen on probing human programming. Instinctual behaviors, and cognitive gaps," replied Leerna, sharing in some of the food and drinking an orange liquid from a curious saddlebag. A tonic, Visella had learned.
"And the reason you are testing a Reverend Mother among all the people here on this planet is…"
"The Bene Gesserit training is legendary, Reverend Mother!"
"You know what that robot asked me a few minutes ago? I quote: 'You are three people on an abandoned island, with nothing to eat. Due to an accident, one of you has fallen into a deep coma. You will die of hunger in a couple of days. There are no food sources. What do you do?' It was very keen to learn whether I would have butchered my comatose companion in order to survive. And then, it asked: 'What if the companion in question is your sister? Your mother?' These androids have a morbid imagination."
"They are curious."
"So what ethical system do they subscribe to? Beyond Buddhism. Do they consider a fly's life and a human one all one and the same?"
"A fly's life is very short and its brain is quite limited."
"Make sure you tell them that, Leerna."
"And so what did you tell them? About the island, I mean." and her jailor offered a sip of the orange liquid. She had obliged, letting the spicy orange syrup warm her throat. Sharing food and drink is a sign of interdependence.
"Well, Reverend Mothers can induce a deep trance to slow down our rhythms and survive for a month. It was too early to decide. Too bad for your employer's hopes for cannibalism."
"How about the lifeboats question?" Leerna pressed on. "Did it ask whom to choose to save when sinking on a ship without enough lifeboats?"
"Yes?"
"And?"
"You will be surprised how large human groups can make their own decisions when under pressure. The species has an instinct for survival. Who decides?"
"So fertile women will be given room…" started Leerna.
"And room for enough rowers and navigators to make the journey…" continued Visella.
"And… children?" There was an air of expectancy around that question.
Visella flashed a disarming smile: "If it truly were the end of the world, my dear, the unholy truth is that the children would not be saved. The species needs all the fertile men and women who can ensure continuity. The children are weak, may not survive the journey and will deplete the party's resources. Did you know the primates on Mizar eat their offspring during catastrophic famines? The surviving females can always rebuild the species."
"Provided there is one male left. Isn't it cruel?"
"Real humans make merciless decisions. Isn't it a paradox that it takes a human a ruthless ethical leap to cross the chasm of innocence, while animals do so out of their instincts?"
Leerna remained silent.
"It is a beautiful day as always, Leerna. Come, walk me outside to the roof… ooh…" Visella visibly stumbled while getting up.
"What is it, Reverend Mother?"
"Spice withdrawal. I meant to warn you. My subcutaneous injector is empty. Hold me!" and she fell into the woman's arms while her arms and legs started to twitch.
"My apologies, we did not know!"
"My eyes have no white in it, Leerna. I need…"
"But there is no spice in the Scattering, Reverend Mother. How did you?"
Visions started interfering with her eyesight.
"My ship…" she continued, gasping for air. "My stash..." then started to shake uncontrollably.
A robo-server swung the door open coming in. Visella was gently laid on a gurney by two robo-servers, with Leerna at her side. Other Memory invaded her erratic thought process, an endless procession of Reverend Mothers too scared to be kept in check. The face of her own biological mother took over her inner eye. Now the seizure starts. Focus on your mind while letting go of your body. A pain greater than the Agony started enveloping her into a nightmarish darkness.
In between the spasms she detected the injection of a sedative, which did little to slow down the seizure. "To my ship!" she continued to implore.
Finally a reluctant Leerna ordered the robots to a transport. "To the ship! I will get clearance to open it!" she shouted in a microphone attached to her suit.
It was a full hour of agony until they arrived at the spaceport. Spasms and tremors followed her all the way. Leerna put something in her mouth to make sure she did not swallow her tongue. Her blue eyes rolled back in the eyesockets revealing blue on blue – and no pupils.
Finally, her silvery lighter, a compact vessel no more than 150-foot long stood in the open air, the entrance passage to the airlock open. In a moment of calm between seizures, Visella sat and gasped: "Let me in. Let me in! It is protected by a spring trap…"
"Reverend Mother, I will come with you." the preoccupied Leerna was visibly shaken, eyes betraying fear for her captive. One arm over her shoulder, she helped the Mother step down and climb the stairs to the main cabin. They had arrived at the airlock, the exterior door opening at Leerna's soft touch. With her help, Visella laid down on the metal floor, while breathing irregularly. The trap was already disabled.
"Find a blue capsule hidden in the casing just right of the pilot's cockpit" she blurted.
Visions started blurring her eyesight again.
Footsteps on a metallic floor, the airlock's interior door opening, fading in her consciousness.
Waiting in waves of pain.
Saffron and indigo lights sparkled in the twilight, carrying distorted memories from distant pasts.
The aching was so insufferable it was speaking to her.
Filaments of firefly-like light glowed from hundreds of people locking arms together.
Rushed footsteps coming back and hands gently raising her chest.
A drop of a liquid touched her tongue, felt blue in her mouth in a synesthetic sensation as she swirled it, tasted it, welcomed it. From out in the nowhere her mind came back, like an echo bouncing back across millions of worlds. A fraction of a second had elapsed, but in her subjective time it seemed several minutes.
"Reverend Mother, open your eyes!" implored Leerna.
Visella opened her eyes...
... a flicker of awareness ...
... nerves once again tense like at the peak of her training...
... the sudden twisting of the body with her fingers rigid like a blade...
"Revere.. Oh!" a gush of blood erupted from the jugular which had been cut just below Leerna's chin.
Visella was up and even before she could ask herself if she could stand. The drop of spice had been way more than her daily dose but still short of what her body needed. Like a drunk body being unceremoniously awakened by a drop of wine after a night's drinking, she could not help herself from thinking as the similitude appeared unbidden in her mind from the depth of Other Memory. Time felt suspended.
She saw the fork in the road.
Leerna, her captor, laid on the floor, blood rapidly flowing onto the floor from the gash Visella had opened with her bare fingers. The poor thing was gasping for air.
Freedom, just a few feet away.
Visella jumped through the open door of the ship's airlock and into the cockpit no more than ten paces away, used her thumb on the scanner which instantly activated the ship's systems, started the engines and initiated the take off procedure, sealing both airlock doors. Within five seconds, all systems were nominal. Outside of the window she could see no reaction - the robo-servers standing idle next to the gurney outside, the airlock out of sight. The internal camera showed red on the metal floor.
The Sisterhood needs to know!
Freedom was near...
... so near...
... and yet...
... and then just yet...
Visella catapulted herself out of the cockpit, crashed open a nearby container and in a moment was back opening the airlock door. Self-shaping bandages and a blood-stiller syringe emerged from the container and were in her hands before she could think.
A few moments later, a stabilized Leerna was breathing through a tube pierced in her throat while the blood had stopped hemorrhaging, the vein held firm in place with the improvised medical equipment.
Now bring her in and take off!
And right then, the engines shuttered. The robo-servers opened the outside door, entering with the gurney and Sapient Arbatar following suit.
"Help me! She is stable now but needs a transfusion! She is unconscious, her pulse is stable."
The robo-servers gently took Leerna's body from her, hurried her away on the gurney. What looked like a medical vehicle was standing just outside, on the tarmac.
The Sapient looked at her watch with a worried look, then relaxed: "The robo-servers are examining her right now. I am told that she will survive. You have my thanks."
"I couldn't..." Visella stuttered.
"I know."
"I just..."
"Breathe in and lay down, Reverend Mother. You obviously are still in withdrawal, so if you will endeavor to give me instructions I will retrieve the melange."
Agony was about to sweep her again. She nodded, laid down while giving Arbatar the instructions.
"There is a box hidden in the hold. Skin injectors. My fingerprints..."
A slight touch on her forehead, and the Sapient was gone.
A couple of minutes later, holding a fresh new injector stuck to her arm, Visella came back to her senses. She deliberatively feigned confusion for a bit, assessing her chances while the Sapient was busy around her.
Unlikely she could overpower an android whose skin did not mind scalding hot teapots.
The airlock's interior door was now closed and locked.
Plenty of people and robots seemed to be waiting outside.
The engines had shuttered - if they had installed remote controls, at this point they were turned on and in range.
Damn!
"I missed my chance, haven't I?" she commented slowly standing up, the extra dose of melange creating pain and ecstasy through her veins.
"Have you?"
"How could you be here in such a short time? Was all this planned?"
"Was it?"
Rage filled her once again.
"So that was staged? How did you guess my intentions?"
"No tricks, Reverend Mother. The opportunity for a natural experiment presented itself," Sapient Arbatar's smile was not a mocking one, "one you brilliantly passed!"
"You infamous piece of circuitry! You did keep me away from the ship until you were sure I was going to go into withdrawal…"
"Crisis and survival."
"You wanted to see how far I would go? Discover my hidden spice reserve? Pocket the money?"
"The spice? Pah!" Arbatar waived a hand as to say like sand in the wind!
Visella was shocked. "That thimble of spice that is my sustenance could buy you a planet here in the Scattering!"
Arbatar offered her arm to steady the Reverend Mother's pace as they stepped out in the open. A dozen people stood outside in what looked like military gear.
"But courage and wisdom weighs less and is worth more, Reverend Mother. What is the weight of a soul?"
She sighed. "And so I am once again your captive, I just won't die too soon."
"Aaah, but we would like you to rule instead, Visella," said the android, using her name for the first time.
"What?"
"Moral obligations and natural pressures. We just witnessed an outstanding performance. Will you accept to become one of our Six Sages?
"Your executive council? But there are only Five, all machines like you…"
"It is time to introduce new sensibilities."
"You still won't let me leave!"
"No, but you will be in a position of power and respect."
"As it befits a Reverend Mother".
"As it befits a moral being. A species that is hard to find."
"You are sifting through people!" she sneered.
"And machines alike," the Sapient smiled complicitly. "Why, we learn from the best!"
"Then I will teach you a lesson you will never forget!", she replied.
"And thus teaching to one another, our two kinds will endure."
Arbatar's face betrayed only elation, with a degree of amusement. The android stood with her hands joined as other people - new captors? - helped Visella to the nearest vehicle, where she collapsed thankful on the seat, exhausted and enraged.
A gust of air blew dust all around them as the vehicle sped through the tarmac, and the wind blew in whirlwinds on the hot surface of the spaceport's field. A giant eagle from above shrieked and its sound was heard to the very top of the mile-high buildings that towered around them.