Session 1.16 Index Session 1.18
Bingbong has been doing a great deal of research into the anagathic virus while Amanda is at work and so on.
It has become pretty clear by now that most of the virus-related research going on here seems to be directed towards stopping the memory losses associated with it, rather than anything else. Also, it seems that anagathic research is entirely legal in the Imperium. Research on people is considered ethically dubious, but allowable with informed consent. Research on un-informed human subjects is definitely bad, and illegal.
Ozymandias decides that we need to have a meeting. He calls Bingbong by normal means and asks him if he can come to the ship for a chat. He can, and heads for the spaceport.
When everyone is assembled on the 'Fantasy', Ozymandias tells them that he is having doubts about our 'mission'. SuSAG is taking old people without their consent, and wiping their memories, but on the other hand it is also making them young and giving them new lives. So is that so bad?
Others point out that it's a consent issue.
Ozymandias compares the mind-wiping to murder, but then points out that we have killed people too, and helped terrorists, and done other bad things too...
So is what SuSAG has done really a crime?
Ozymandias says that we're new people now, with no vestige of our former lives but the skills we had then, and we are more than just the sum of our skills. Moral values, memories, contacts and so on are all important too.
Bingbong asks how, given that our crimes seem to be worse than theirs, how this moral values thing works.
Scarlett points out that we only did what we did because of SuSAG.
Ak says that in isolation the two sets of acts (ours and theirs) are roughly equivalent.
Ozymandias wonders whether our violence was due to our disturbed mental state after the virus affected us. And that perhaps Szechuan is mad now because he was unconscious and in low berth for longer than us. Or perhaps he is just pre-disposed towards it?
So, continues Ozymandias, are we in a good moral position to expose SuSAG?
Ak thinks yes, but not for revenge.
Bingbong thinks the potential benefits of what SuSAG is doing are too big for us to expose them now.
Scarlett thinks we need to find out more about the old people involved. Were they deceived?
Ozymandias is assuming that they are deceived. He's not sure that people would give up their minds in return for youth.
Bingbong thinks there is a chance SuSAG will get past the side effects, and that if there is a chance of youth many old people would go for it, even with the side effects.
But was consent given? Were they all too senile to know what they were getting involved in?
And what do we want from SuSAG.
Scarlett wants money.
Bingbong wants freedom.
Ak wants to expose the plotters and slink away.
Bingbong would quite like to work here, now he knows what's going on. Everyone else points out that if his identity becomes known then he might become the subject of research, rather than a person carrying out research...
We discuss Bingbong's ditching Amanda and betraying her in favour of someone with a higher security clearance. We also explain the Gorre Town security system and its holes to Bingbong.
Ozymandias wants to carry on with the sort of life we have now. He thinks that we seem to have had more life in the last few months than in the whole of our lives before.
It is pointed out that we do not know that to be so. It is likely that we have had more news items since we woke up than in our previous lives, though...
Ozymandias thinks that our old selves were the victims of a crime. Our new selves are not. And now we all have shares in a valuable ship. So our options would seem to be limited if we expose SuSAG and vanish - we would have to change our identities again, and probably ditch the ship somewhere.
The others think this may not necessarily be the case.
We need to add more data to the package we have set aside for delivery to Inspector Spintle on Rhylanor.
We worry that if we expose SuSAG then they might hunt us down.
Ozymandias asks us whether we want personal retribution against SuSAG? He does not - SuSAG are responsible for his current self existing at all. Do we have a responsibility to the other victims too, though?
Bingbong says he is leaning towards an amoral stance - no moral considerations, just the best life for himself in the future.
Ozymandias disagrees and thinks that the moral things - conscience and so on - are important to him.
A discussion ensues.
Ozymandias thinks we should be deciding how moral we want to be.
Bingbong thinks there is no moral issue; we should just try to get what we can.
Ak thinks that our crimes are ... justifiable ... at worst.
Scarlett thinks we should not have abandoned Captain Nangonya on Dinom during the revolution there.
Ak thinks that we have four alternatives we could take:
Ozymandias points out that there is no money in this last.
Bingbong hassles Ozymandias over this contradiction to his earlier moral stance!
Perhaps we could extend the blackmail to include assistance to our various victims (including Captain Nangonya) and the other experimental subjects.
It is pointed out that if we do this then they will know who we are - we are the only newcomers in system at the moment, and they will know what ship we have and so on.
We also worry about interrogation being able to find and stop our information being released if necessary. Perhaps we could split up and go our separate ways without anyone else knowing where the others have gone, with only one person risking actually talking to SuSAG. Or the others could form a support group hidden from the volunteer in some safe location. Then, if our volunteer is done over by SuSAG, then we definitely release the information.
We should send SuSAG a data package and our demands.
We could do this elsewhere, to avoid the defences here - perhaps in a star system not owned by SuSAG! Perhaps Denotam? New Rome at Joyeuse? Or Rhylanor? There is a small SuSAG office at Caladbolg, the closest point on the X-Boat network.
Ak suggests that we hide some of the information so that they do not know how much we have, and have fewer ways to us their knowledge of what we have to do us harm. Sounds sensible.
We wonder whether SuSAG arranges jobs for the memory loss victims. And what they are doing now generally.
Scarlett thinks we should take a week to decide what to do, then act.
Ozymandias suggests searching for papers relating to the rehabilitation of amnesiacs.
We wonder again if we could steal the computer backups from the genetic engineering labs. Or perhaps just download them, or parts of them. It is agreed that if we do it, this should be the last thing we do here as it rather tips our hand...
It is agreed that Bingbong should stay here; basically, he has to at the moment. The rest of us will go to follow the latest newly-youthful people - subjects 625 to 632.
It will take us roughly five days to get to either Fuchi or Tip (to one of which the Mepron seems to be going). We can beat the Mepron there, and we can follow them with the ship's sensors, so we can take off and still have enough course flexibility to be able to beat them to either possible destination.
Bingbong returns to his and Amanda's apartment. He is to carry out the plan to betray Amanda, attempting to chat up other researchers with higher security clearance while monitoring things in general.
Unfortunately for them, and unbeknownst to the others, Bingbong has actually fallen in love with Amanda and the research work here. He has no intention of doing what the others want, instead now wanting to betray his former colleagues and strike a deal with SuSAG to continue his new life here...
He wants to turn in the others and feed them false information, so that when they reveal it SuSAG can ridicule both it and them.
With this in mind, he arranges a romantic dinner with Amanda. Over the meal he declares his love for her, then his true identity and purpose here, but also that he does love her. He tells her that he wants to continue the research here, that SuSAG are doing good. "Help me to find a way for this life to continue," he asks her.
She is shocked and betrayed by what he says, but also mollified by his declarations of love. She tells him she will do what she can...
Next day, six burly security guards arrive and the Dinnergong residence and take Bingbong off the Security Headquarters. There they interrogate him, both with and without truth drug (there is no violence or damage involved in this, just a very thorough verbal interrogation), and also perform some medical scans on him. He tells them much the same as he told Amanda - that he wants to strike a deal, live with Amanda and do research here; SuSAG can have the rest.
They seem to consider this...
The rest of us board the ship and head off into space, on a course close to that of the Mepron, but not so close it is obvious we a re following her.
After a couple of days it becomes clear that the Mepron is on a course for the asteroid settlement of Tip, so we change course and fly at our highest acceleration to beat it there.
On the way, we discuss what to do with Szechuan. Perhaps we could marry him off too? He wants to join the Scout Service, but he may have problems with that due to his being mad. Perhaps we could get him some proper high-tech therapy at Rhylanor?
We also come up with a new cover story to explain our presence at Tip. This time we are tracing a long-lost relative who has inherited money.
Five days after leaving Gorre, we arrive at Tip. It is an ugly dark rock floating in space. There does not seem to be any space traffic control system, or any access control. There is just a lit up crater in the asteroid's surface, with an airlock in the centre. A few seekers and other ships are 'parked' in the crater. From our library data one cannot jump to escape velocity from Tip's surface, but it is possible to jump into Tip orbit.
We do a low pass overhead and then land. We put on our vacc suits and manoeuvre across to the airlock. It is not locked, and we go in. Gravity slowly switches on inside as the air gushes in.
Inside, a security guard in the same sort of uniform as at Camelot and Gorre Town greets us and check our identification. We ask him about hotels. He recommends the 'Tip Arms'. Apparently there was a 'Tip Inn' here too, but it closed due to a lack of business.
The entire settlement of Tip seems to be carved into the rock of the asteroid. It is well-lit, looks reasonably well-kept, and is quite warm. We use the internet terminal located by the airlock and obtain maps of the place, and other useful information. It seems that Tip is not dissimilar to Camelot in terms of facilities - it has a low-G swimming pool, two parks, a LFM office, bars, clubs (no cinemas), and bands playing tonight.
Using this, we go to the Tip Arms and get rooms. Then we look at the information we have, and check the Tip internet.
There is no explicit amnesiac rehabilitation facility here, we are disappointed to discover. But the Tip hospital does have a larger Psychiatric wing than you might expect in a place the size of Tip (which has a population of 50000 people).
Ak attempts to hack into the hospital system to find out more. He is trying to find out what new patients in the hospital are suffering from, and how they are treated. Unfortunately the system's security seems quite good, and all he can get is a list of admission names, with associated arrival and departure dates. Damn.
He checks the staff lists instead, to see if there is anything interesting there. Particularly the specialisations of consultants, and whether they might be vulnerable to threats and blackmail. There does seem to be a more than expected number of psychiatric and rehabilitation-related staff, but it seems, from their records, that they rotate around the various major settlements of the Caliburn Belt, spending a couple of months in each before moving on.
When he checks, Ak finds that our original names are not on the list of patients at the Tip hospital.
We take the list of patient names and correlate them with the census data we have. Before long, we find that some retirees appear there in an anomalous way. There seem to be about thirty of them here, and it seems they check into and out of the hospital in groups, staying for a month or so. Interesting...
We decide that we need to locate some of these people.
We discover that they are all listed in the Tip communications directory. In that case, we need to find out more about their current lives. Scarlett picks four at random from the list we obtained from the hospital and checks them via the internet. She finds that:
All are young (ranging up to their early thirties). The refinery worker is married and she has two children. The miner is unmarried. The nurse is unmarried, and he works in the gynaecology section of the hospital.
We return to the original list. Of the thirty, only that one person is dead. The others seem to have a range of jobs, from very low-level up to fairly responsible. None seem to be at the very top-most level of responsibility, though.
We wonder whether this sort of thing is going on in other places too, and conclude that is probably is. We also wonder what happens to people's personal effects and money when they are made young again. Is it handed over to the state (that is, to LFM)? We don't know.
Finding out all of this takes roughly a day, at the end of which the Mepron arrives at Tip. It does not dock by the airlock, but instead floats some distance off the rock. Its G-carrier emerges and comes over to the airlock, bringing in eight people who are handed over to nurses from the hospital. From what we can see their escorts are being nice to their charges, so subjects 625 to 632 are showing no signs of rebellion.
We go off to consider this.
Ozymandias wonders whether our rebellion was some type of psychotic paranoia.
Scarlett points out that they have stopped the monsterism and violent psychoses.
We look through the data again. As we look more closely, we notice that the experimental subjects who have been here longer seem to have, on average, more menial jobs. There are still people with menial jobs in the more recent arrivals, but there are more of them in the older groups.
We decide that we need to investigate this further. We pick three people from the oldest group, all of whom have been here roughly ten years and so are, from the records, in their early thirties from. They are:
We split up to track down these three people and find out more about them.
Vilna is eventually found to live in the older, rougher and more run-down part of Tip, in a small apartment-cavern carved from the rock. Scarlett rings the doorbell and, when a hostile voice from inside asks who she is, says she is journalist who wants to interview them for a story. She is reluctantly admitted. Inside, the apartment is a dimly-lit strange-smelling bed-sit. A hugely obese person of no obvious gender is sat in a large chair in front of a TV. They are pointing a gun at Scarlett. As they talk, Vilna seems to be hostile, mad and erratic. Not a successful case of treatment. "They put worms in my brain," Vilna claims. Eventually Vilna gets more and mad-seeming, and makes Scarlett leave, but not before robbing her at gunpoint. "If I see you again, I'll kill you!" Vilna says as Scarlett leaves.
Ozymandias eventually finds that Evu, too, inhabits the rough and run-down area of Tip. He seems to be pimping a couple of women on a tunnel corner. Ozymandias approaches him and claims to be an agent for a legal firm - Evu has come into some money. Evu rants, and starts to lose his temper. The two prostitutes back away. Eventually he starts to draw his gun on Ozymandias, which ends in a stalemate. Ozymandias backs down, and is mugged for all his money. He leaves. Evu says he will kill Ozymandias is he sees him again, too...
Ak quickly finds that Jannes also lives and works in the dodgy part of town. He seems to be much better at moving among low-lives than the other two, and is directed to a night-club. In a booth in one corner is a well-dressed woman, obviously some kind of crime boss. Standing to one side of her is a huge, grotesquely-muscled thug, who looks to be not very intelligent. This is Jannes. Another thug guards the crime boss on the other side. Ak watches for a bit. People come over to talk to the crime boss, then go away again. After a bit two more thugs drag in a beaten-up looking man. They talk to the crime boss, then Jannes and the other thug take the victim out of the club through a back door. He is not seen again. Ak decides he does not need to actually talk to Jannes - he has seen enough. He leaves un-mugged.
We meet back at the hotel to discuss our findings. It seems pretty clear that these early attempts were failures...
We look for the three in the old census data. It seems that:
All three do seem to have kept their original names.
We wonder whether the situation of the three is due to not enough effort being put into rehabilitating the early experimental subjects, or simply that they are too damaged to be rehabilitated...
Scarlett points out a possible problem - these people are from three years after the research team left Rhylanor. What happened in the gap? Were there worse failures?
Ozymandias points out that they could just have been setting up new laboratories in that time. Not that that doesn't do anything other than compound SuSAG's crime...
[For the record, the experimental subjects on Rhylanor were put into government care. SuSAG was fined quite heavily, and people were fired (though all were later re-hired).]
Scarlett says that we should go to SuSAG on our own, without the Imperial authorities, tell them we know that people are being ill-treated, and that they must do something about it or we will go to the authorities. We should point out to them that their being given a chance to fix things this way will save them a great deal of trouble in terms of fines and bad publicity. Fair point...
We decide that although their current research is largely all right, they did not put enough effort into cleaning up their old messes, and this is something which need to be fixed.
Ak disagrees; he is not sure that the current research is desirable, as such, but is not sure we should risk any lives (ours or others) in undoing it.
Scarlett suggests we check out other experimental subjects who have been re-integrated into society, and if they are all like the three we have seen, then we report SuSAG to the authorities right away. And we need to find out more about how the old people are being recruited. However, it will take three days to get to Ricasso, from where old people seem to be being recruited, and from there a week to get back to Gorre. And that will take us past our deadline to leave and stop the message to Inspector Spintle, back to Rhylanor, being released by Lawless and Lynch, our lawyers there. Fair point...
We decide we will head to Caladbolg to deal with that problem; we intend to add what we have found out since to the data pack, and delay its release for another six months. We also hope to dispose of Szechuan there, too.
However, before we go, we compose our blackmail letter to SuSAG. Ozymandias suggests that Ak arranges for it to be sent anonymously from within the LFM/SuSAG network via a program that will send the emails after we are gone. The letter definitely includes some (but not all) incriminating evidence.
While the letter is written, Ak arranges for its delivery, and once it is done, plants it in the system from Tip.
Then we send a coded email to Bingbong telling him that we are about to jump to Caladbolg, and will hopefully be back in two weeks.
And we take the 'Fantasy' out away from Tip, and go into Jumpspace, bound for Caladbolg...