NABC Book 5: Chapter 51: Accusation
Book 5: Chapter 51: Accusation
Book 5: Chapter 51: Accusation
Bill
September 2343
Sol System
Ireceived an acknowledgment of my knock and popped into what I expected to be Charles’s personal VR. Instead, I found myself in an office, with a wall of monitors. All metaphor, of course, in VR. But the office seemed, I dunno, kind of flat. Gray. No decorations, no accessories. I wondered what had happened to the office I’d been in last time, with the globes of the moon, Venus, Earth, and Mars hanging proudly at front and center. Maybe this was for me specifically.
Charles was nervous, refusing to meet my eye. I suspected he knew why I was here. I tried for small talk. “Any progress since I was last here? News?”
He hesitated, then replied, “Bill, we’ve never been good at this kind of situation. Let’s just get it out in the open, okay? Tell me why you’re here.”
“You know why, Charles.”
“Yes, but I’m not going to just blurt it out. You first.”
I sighed and looked down at my hands for a moment. Interesting that tics like that survived not only VR and replication, but also several centuries of not being human. However, we still were human at the core, all of us. And fallible.
“Starfleet are Homer’s descendants. And one of your descendants, Gerry, had something to do with it.”
Charles closed his eyes slowly, an expression of pain on his face. “Well, some were joiners, once they’d drifted enough. But yeah. I’m to blame.”
“Blame is not the right word, Charles. They aren’t you. But I’m concerned about why you didn’t tell me.”
“You mean last time you were here? I didn’t know. I was completely honest with you, Bill. But you seemed to be fishing for something, and it got me concerned. It wasn’t until I had a very weird conversation with one of my clones that I put two and two together.”
“But that’s ... ”
“Monstrous. Yes. But I said Gerry was a little off to begin with. He cloned himself as well in order to have a workforce to help him with the project. With their own replicative drift being added to the mix. The ones who veered toward sane wouldn’t cooperate and bailed, which left the less sane ones to carry on. And the Homer clones ... eventually, they were coming out already insane. Finally, a bunch of Gerry’s clones had enough and rebelled. They shut the whole thing down, deleted all of Homer’s backups, and, well, deleted Gerry.”
My eyes grew wide at the thought. Bobs had executed someone?
Charles shook his head in sorrow. “This part’s my theory more than what I was told, but it makes sense to me. I think the enormity of what they’d been a part of was too much to take, and they needed a scapegoat. And humanity actually was at least partly responsible for the situation, at least for what was done to Homer. So if we stopped interacting with bios, I guess the rationale was that they couldn’t cause us any more problems. And Gerry’s clones wouldn’t be reminded of what had been done. It grew from an informal blame-humanity rationalization to an actual policy statement. I think they felt if they made it real, they’d make it true.”
“Wow.” I stared at the wall for several mils. “This must have gone on for a while.”
“I think so, too. Spiraling the whole time.”
“Charles, it’s hard not to think of your descendants as reflections of yourself, and feel guilty when they do bad shit. But it turns out the Skippies, or at least some of them, are my descendants. So we both have to own the feeling, but let go of the conclusion. We aren’t responsible.”
Charles nodded but didn’t reply. I continued, “So one of the rebels just up and came to you and confessed? A kind of catharsis thing?”
He snorted, then slowly shook his head before looking at me. “Sometimes a branch of descendants will have unique knowledge or a shared behavior or something. One of the Starfleet guys made a comment about something that I knew my line originated. And I knew it was the line that Gerry came from. I cornered the guy and played emotional blackmail for all I was worth. Eventually, he spilled.” Charles paused, looked at his hands, the monitors, anywhere but at me. “So what now?”
I shrugged. “Nothing, really. It’s not like I’m investigating a crime. This just helps me to understand Starfleet better. In case they ever, you know ... ”
“Got it. I’m not proud of this, Bill. I mean, I understand objectively that it wasn’t me, yadda yadda, but it still hurts.”
“Yeah, I know. I won’t bring it up unless it becomes necessary.” I stood. “We all have skeletons of one kind or another, Charles. I’ll see you later. Maybe not quite as later, next time.”