Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades (43 page)

Alice was frustrated,
but she recognized that Stephanie was taking some time out to talk to
her even though she was very busy. “Okay, why? What can I do?”

Stephanie and Jake
looked at each other for a moment before she answered. “I was
hoping this would keep until the trip home, but I guess it won’t.
Doctor Messana put a hold on your off-ship missions after seeing your
medical records. I’m taking her word for it.”

“What’s wrong with
me? How could there be anything wrong? I’m a framework,” Alice
said, deeply concerned.

“Don’t worry,”
Jake said. “We’re just trying to figure a few things out.”

“Like what?”

“Doctor Messana’s
just down the hall, let’s go see her,” Jake said. “Thank you,
Stephanie.”

Stephanie Vega nodded
and backed out of the room. “Sir.”

The trip down the
corridor and around a few corners seemed long to Alice. “I’d
explain it all to you, but Doctor Messana has a better grasp of the
details.” Jake said.

“It’s so weird that
you don’t even understand it?” Alice asked.

“I understand it,”
Jake replied. “I just don’t know how I’d start to explain it.”

“She’s not some
kinda secret researcher, is she?” Alice asked.

“No, but she’s an
expert in emerging cybernetics, and she’s experienced in
accelerated regeneration. She’s found a few things about you and me
that are, unexpected.”

“You’re dancing
around this like I have some kind of embarrassing butt plague!”
Alice burst. She was immediately embarrassed as a few startled
crewmembers glanced at her, wide-eyed.

Her father looked
surprised for a moment, then burst into a fit of unguarded laughter.
Alice was insulted at first, but couldn’t suppress a smile at
seeing him in such a state. It had been a long time since she saw him
laugh like that, so long that she’d forgotten what it looked like.
“It’s not funny,” she muttered as he strangled his mirth to
chuckles.

“I know, I know,”
he said, taking a breath. “You’ll be all right, we’re just
writing the manual on the framework system, so there are some
surprises.”

They entered the
Warlord Infirmary, where there were six medical cots, two new
humanoid bio-bots that smiled at Alice as she entered, and Doctor
Messana. “Early visit,” she said. “Okay, come with me.”

Alice’s boots
squeaked against the new self-sterilizing, no-slip flooring as she
and her father followed the doctor into one of four private treatment
rooms. “Hop up,” Doctor Messana said as she activated a
short-range recorder scrambler, a small circular tab the size of her
thumbnail that blinked red.

Alice hopped up on the
exam table and was instantly nervous. “Testing? Am I in for some
jabs and pokes?”

“No,” Doctor
Messana said with a comforting smile. “You stay dressed and I don’t
have to poke or jab. The latest reading from your vacsuit is enough
for me to see you’re healthier than the average human, and much
more capable.”

“Okay, so why did you
pull me off boarding operations?” Alice asked. For some reason,
maybe because of the doctor’s easy bedside manner, she found
herself sounding more frustrated than angry.

“I didn’t pull you
off boarding operations, but I’m sure my medical advisory played a
small part. I’ll get right down to it then,” the doctor said.
“You’re a soldier, so you don’t fall under guardianship
discretion.”

“Um, that means?”

“Your father can’t
tell me what I can and can’t tell you, so I’m going to give you
the whole story,” Doctor Messana said. “In this office, you have
all the rights of an adult soldier.”

“Oh, okay, what’s
wrong with me then?”

“Everything seems to
be working fine, as far as frameworks go. With your father’s
permission, I’ve been studying everything you have on framework
technology and I’ve been investigating the particulars about you
both.”

“I thought I was an
adult, here? Don’t I have a say in getting snooped on?”

“Not in this case,
your superior officers can have me monitor and investigate your
medical status as much as they like. In this case, your father is
captain, so he had me study you both after he vetted me as ship
doctor. What I found is ground-breaking. Mostly, that the framework
system is intelligent when it comes to responding to your needs.”

“Okay, and that’s
bad somehow?” Alice replied.

“It’s almost always
good. Have you wondered why you changed so much when you regenerated
during the battle of Port Rush?”

“I thought the
framework system just hooked into my subconscious or something,”
Alice replied.

“That’s true,”
Doctor Messana said, bringing up a hologram of Jake’s DNA and her
own. “But there’s more to it. There is no way your subconscious
mind could know your father’s exact DNA, and you had no contact
with him before you regenerated as his biological daughter. I had
Kadri perform a forensic analysis of your framework’s communication
systems on the records from the Battle of Port Rush. We discovered
that the framework system accessed your comm unit and downloaded your
father’s DNA before the battle even started. It knew, from your
subconscious mind that you saw yourself as his daughter, and without
your knowledge, it prepared a pattern that used your father’s DNA,
so the next time you took critical damage, you’d regenerate as his
biological daughter. It also determined what age you’d be based on
your mental self-image and subconscious desires. It’s the only
explanation here, but one of the potential problems is that your age
is locked to a certain range. That means that your framework lets
your body age and develop to a certain point, and when that point is
reached, it rolls the clock back. You keep your memories, and the
framework system allows you to retain muscle memory and development,
but everything else gets rebuilt so you are physically sixteen years
old. This kind of system is popular in adults where I come from – I
have a biological graft implanted that keeps my physical age down to
twenty nine – but there are reasons why we don’t allow those
types of implants in teenagers.”

“I’m not gonna grow
up,” Alice said. “Ever.”

“Not unless we can
find a way to communicate with the framework system without
disturbing its normal function,” Doctor Messana said. “Or there
could be a subconscious trigger it’s waiting for. So far, the
system has rolled you back roughly every two months.”

Alice only had to
imagine what being a teenager for the rest of her life would be like
for a moment before she knew, for a fact, that it was the worst thing
she could imagine. “I’m staying on the ship for this mission
because I’m a kid, I’ll always be a kid.”

“No,” Doctor
Messana replied. “Absolutely not. I am holding you back because I
don’t know what will happen during your next regeneration, but your
framework system is indicating that a completely new reconstruction
pattern is ready to go. We can see the file, and that it’s very
different from the last one, but we can’t interpret it, see what
you’ll become if the worst happens. I thought it was critical that
you know before you go on any dangerous missions.”

“So, I know about
this now, can I join the boarding teams?” Alice asked.

“I need to know that
you understand the implications of this. If your heart stops beating,
or you are critically injured, the framework system may take the
opportunity to remake you into a person you don’t even recognize.”

“But I’ll still be
the same person up here,” Alice said, pointing to her head.

“No, not completely.
Do you remember much of your last human life?”

Alice thought a moment
and, as much as she wanted to tell the doctor everything was fine,
that she could recall her life on the Clever Dream with her old
friends, it wasn’t true. “Most of it is really foggy, or missing,
or I remember telling people about those times more than I actually
remember being there,” she conceded.

“Right, and I can see
from passive brain scans that you are actually suppressing a lot of
those memories, and the suppression is driven selectively by a
non-biological system.”

“Framework is doing
it.”

“Yes. That’s just a
start though. If you regenerate with a new combination of DNA, your
genetic predispositions will be changed as well. You could become
someone with a severe temper, or be a more passive person and have no
control over your natural tendencies. For all we know, the last thing
you’ll want is to be a soldier if you change into this person that
the Framework has preloaded for you.”

“What about my dad?
He came back looking different, but he didn’t seem to change,”
Alice asked.

“Funny thing about
that. Can I disclose this, Captain?” Doctor Messana asked.

“Go ahead, but don’t
share this outside of this room, all right, Alice?”

“Okay, what happens
in med-bay stays in med-bay,” Alice agreed.

“Your father may look
similar, but his DNA profile shifted quite a bit. It borrowed from
the unknown female contributor to your DNA and made sure that he
remained your biological father. A little tinkering by the framework
system made sure he’d recognize himself in the mirror because he
had a long history of being that person, looking that way, but the
reason for your father looking roughly the same is just an assumption
on my part. Your father’s new genetic profile indicates that he’s
predisposed to addiction and depression. These are markers from the
body you had the last time you were human, and they’re markers you
share with him right now. There are positive predispositions as well,
including a tendency towards high emotional response and exceptional
memory retention. I’ll make sure you have the whole profile today,
but I need you to take time to think about your career choice before
you go on any other missions, especially since the combination of
genetic predispositions add up to a high likelihood that you and your
father will eventually struggle with post traumatic stress.”

“What? Can’t you
give us some kind of memory control treatment for that? People
haven’t had that problem for ages,” Alice replied. There were so
many new things to consider, she had trouble keeping up.

“Yes, there are
plenty of treatments, but in you and your father’s cases
specifically, no pharmaceutical methods will be effective. The active
ingredients in drinks like Michnickel or Cosuberi are blocked by the
framework system. Direct memory manipulation and drug treatments are
also ineffective because frameworks protect against them. You and
your father are uniquely vulnerable to the lasting effects of your
experiences, and I need you to keep that in mind. You only have to
look at your father’s sleep schedule to see that he’s having
problems processing violent memories and stressful experiences now.”

“So, somehow we both
wanted these problems in our subconscious before the framework system
remade us?” Alice asked.

“The genetic
predispositions you and your father have that can lead to post
traumatic stress are beneficial in near ideal situations. Emotional
sensitivity and high performing situational memory are both highly
desirable traits on their own, and they can benefit almost all parts
of a non-soldier’s life. Individually, they’re highly beneficial
to a soldier as well, but if they are combined along with a few other
genetic and environmental factors, violent experiences and certain
types of stress will always lead to post traumatic stress. I’m
sorry, these are things we know for a fact, and, thanks to the
framework system, I can’t treat you using quick methods. If you
remain a soldier, you’ll have to develop coping mechanisms,
preferably with the help of a therapist.”

“I just want you to
hold back until we figure out the triggers for the framework system,”
Jake said. “When we do, we’ll be able to use the same treatments
as everyone else.”

“You have
nightmares?” Alice said. She couldn’t stop thinking about
something the doctor just said, that some of the markers that they
both had were from her previous body, the one that died aboard the
Triton.

“He vividly relives
traumatic experiences in his sleep,” Doctor Messana said. “He’s
developed coping mechanisms to deal with it over the years, but
there’s reason for concern. There are already warning signs for
paranoia and hyper-vigilance.”

“I don’t want you
to start down the road I’m on without knowing the facts,” Jake
told her. “I’ll support any decision you make, as long as you’ve
thought it through.”

“What, being a
soldier? A ranger?” Alice stared at her father for a moment. She
could see he was sympathetic, but there would be no way around a
waiting period before she could get on with her life, and chances
were she’d be a teenager forever, or years at least. “I can’t
imagine doing anything else, Dad.”

“Just think about
it,” he replied. “Give it some time.”

“Okay, I will.” She
slid off the examination table. “That’s everything, right?”

“There are other
minor details, but that’s all the important information, yes,”
Doctor Messana said. “I’ll send all the details and research to
your comm, you should review the whole file.”

“Okay, I have duty,”
she said, leaving her father and the doctor behind. The whole world
had changed in less than half an hour, and she didn’t know what to
do or think; her mind felt numb.

Alice’s Battle

For the first time
ever, Alice had a station on the bridge of the Warlord. There was a
minor shuffling of departments and personnel in the hours before the
attack on the edge of the Iron Head Nebula as Jacob Valent and
Stephanie Vega refined the plans for their boarding operations. There
would be five teams conducting incursions on the enemy ships, and
that meant the counter-incursion team that remained aboard the
Warlord would be formed late. Some crewmembers would be traded from
one team to another, to balance the experts they were taking with
them and that left them in an interesting position.