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Ab Ovo*
STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
To:
Mr. Sitaliar Benics
Carirgnottin–X, DL HQ
Duvolle Laboratories
Head of Cognitive Neuroscience Research Group
From:
Mr. Alceror Areli
Maire-IV, DL Innovation Centre
Duvolle Laboratories
Positive Eugenics Laboratory Chief, Department of Experiment & Innovation Technologies
Reference: "Ab Ovo" Project.
Don't be surprised with an overly formal title - the security wouldn't let the letter out of the lab without their red tape procedures. I’d like to let you into the details of an interesting experiment that we've been working on for a while, and I want your advice on this - as a Professor of Psychopathology, not as a friend.
It all started a week ago when our good war dog, General Mokarail, suddenly appeared in the lab complex (this made us nerveous) and started to pontificate about the utter importance of our mission (this depressed us completely). What I've understood from yellings is that the project was built around a new ship control system. Eyted's department was to handle a technical side, pilot preparations were under the Grinacan's gang, while my lab was assigned with an easiest task - we were to carry out pilots’ psychological monitoring. Better to say, our daily routine was to run a pilot through the regular questionnaire and allow to speak his mind (pilot had to be isolated during the experiment). Right now it is clear that I should keep my eyes on him, but then to my shame I’ve made big mistakes.
First of all, that thing that martinets found a hero with irreproachable reputation and history sheet for their experiments relaxed my vigilance for a while. Indeed, what mental issues should we expect from a blameless soldier? So I've entrusted - to my great embarrassment - all the monitoring to Dalien, my associate.
In the second place, in the beginning matters were going swimmingly, the military were happy, Dalien's reports were banal and dull. So instead of sitting on a station I took the liberty of going to a planet - to relax a bit and enjoy the looks of our horizontal rainbow (Yes, my dear friend, sightseeing is all we have in our ages! By the way, if you ever come our way - do try to catch the glimpse, the spectacle is really enchanting.).
But in these very days the pilot's psyche has changed drastically. As our teacher used to say: “It’s not as easy as a thing”. Yes, my dear friend, maybe this case will be exampled in textbooks and treatises some days. It should be exampled in the Psychopathology textbook, no doubt about that.
So let’s stop talking on and on. I don’t want to influence on your perception by my comments that’s why Dalien's report that he offered on my return you can see below as in the original.
So, read on. I changed nothing.
***
Maire-IV, DL Innovation Centre
"Ab Ovo" Project
Record of Extended Procedure for Psychological Monitoring
16.12.27(23263)
Interviewer: Aerdally Dalien
Interviewee: Garru Sevel
Dalien. – Your first name, last name, age, corporation?
Sevel. – Garru Sevel, 29, Federation Navy.
D. – What is your role in this project?
S. – I'm ordered to test a brand new control system for cruiser-class ships.
D. – What were the preparation procedures?
С. – I've undergone several implantations of tubes and connectors. Also, the commanding officer gave me a detailed as well as useless briefing. On first days these things (shows the connectors in his wrists) were very annoying.
(Dalien's note: light form of immune reaction which is typical in view of the numbers of implants. According to statistics: about 53% of those being implanted feel discomfort on the first several days.)
D. – What did you feel during the tests?
С. – It's hard to explain. In short, one moment I started to feel the ship that I was controlling. I was told to try to command ship's systems directly.
D. – Is it more convenient than commanding from a bridge?
С. – Much more. Exciting new opportunities open up.
D. – For example?
С. – Instantaneous control and diagnostics of all systems. In the Navy, the most prompt one wins, you know.
D. –"To feel the ship"? Do you mean the control of systems?
С. – It is only a part of it. Everything else bear no relation to military operations.
D. – Please try to explain in details.
(pause)
С. – I can hardly find the words. Well, what I feel in the capsule differs so much from human perception, it’s just a pale image of it.
D. – What do you mean?
(pause)
С. – You want details? Okay, go listening. At first, it was very unpleasant inside. As fear dissipates, void comes. It’s not so fear. All our fears are based on our knowledge. How do people usually frighten children? By monsters. They are not people by appearances. Man grows up and his fear grows up too. Now he is afraid of not so much of appearances as inner discrepancies. For example, he is afraid of maniacs. Maniacs are ordinary by appearance but it’s impossible to understand their motives. Their logic is opposite to common human logic. There is something that destroyes your sweet, plain, ordered reality that you’ve been building all your life. All these things are just shades of our understanding. But you can describe them by words. And there, inside, there are no words to describe it. Not a word. It’s not alien to us, it’s void. Sight, hearing not simply disappear, the body dissolves. It’s impossible to present it all. And there is no you. The very core of you is vanished. And the most terrible thing is that when you start feeling it it’s too late to change anything. You have taken this train, there was frightening, unusual reality around you but it was reality. And the train has not only got into your fears but it has got out of them on cruiser speed. There are no words in human language to describe it because man can’t overcome it. They did not and will not exist because those who feel it are not humans any more or simply ceased to exist. I am speaking with you and at the same time it’s not me. Those who sat into the capsule was taken by something unknown, kept and left there forever. There inside the line between man and space is blurred and the direct control is just a backside of this change.
(pause)
D. – But... You're still a captain of Federation Navy, aren't you? What I want to ask - do you understand that you're just giving orders? There is still a crew that maintains the ship.
С. – Crew... Let me ask you - what do your inner organs mean for you? Do you treat you body's cells as creatures? Who are they, a team? Humans? No. So what should they mean for the one who ceased to exist? Everything is new now.
Questions you ask are so strange. Trying to lean on me? Go on. Yes, you can try to pull the strings of humane in me. Duty. Job. Oath. Family. But all for naught. You don’t realise that it’s just the meaningless phrase to me. It does not catch the target. There is nothing on the resonator place. Everything was eradicated, grounded and casted-in a new mould. Now it’s a puppet. As usual you start managing it and suddenly find that you see only materials the puppet was made of. It is around you. It’s everywhere. It can see you and hear your every breath. Are you still pulling the strings?
Keep on plaing.
(pause)
D. – Do these feelings persist after leaving the capsule?
С. – So you've failed to comprehend. Okay, I'll tell you a story, such a fairy tale, that you and your superiors will like. Write down.
How great it is to fly among the stars! Fly by yourself, not within the iron box! How cool it is to sense the speed of light! This is greater that everything I've known and felt before on the planet - greater than sex, greater than boosters. Never before I could see the warp tunnel closing behind me. Never before I felt aming at the enemy ship. Tadaaaa! I am a great war machine, my armor is glaring by the stars glow. No suit, no border between me and that space!
(pause)
That damned space.
D. – Sorry but I just can’t understand... Don’t you believe that the Federation knows what it does? I guess if the experiment took place, it is needed.
С. – And what you've expected to hear? That I'm a patriot, that I believe that out government is reasonable enough to put this technology into the right hands of long-distance navigators and new systems colonization? Don't be a fool, you know they'd give it to the military - as they did with every other technology. The history of mankind is direct proof. This is their need of me.
The Federation knows this. And knows what it does. And the Federation knows that I don't need the Federation anymore. So I can relax and wait for fate. Enough of this. I'm tired to the bone.
(end of report)
***
So this is it. I've yelled at poor Dalien... It serves him right, anyway – if he wants to succeed in science he should have a nose for such cases and definitelly shouldn't feed a chief with formal stuff.
What is it, a new mental disorder? According to unofficial sources, in Ishukone such experiments have been taking place for a month now, with the same outcome. Two similar results in a series of experiments are the pattern, if you ask me.
What is it, a new stage of human evolution? What such a pilot will be? What we will be for them? What about our society? How far a capsule-man will differ from homo sapiens? May be this ‘egg’ is a cradle of new mankind?
Time will tell. For now - less pathos, more action. I suggest that you come to out lab at Maire-IV, so we join efforts on further analisys and research. The martinets gave us carte blanche on this, if we leave their technologies to themselves.
I hope this all has peaked your curiosity.
Your thoughts?
---------------
* - latin: from the egg, an origin, from the beginning.
Сообщение отредактировал AllSeeingI: 21 June 2009 - 23:39
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