rivkat | Fringe ficlet 2

From

yahtzee: Alternate Astrid: the nature of the beast

She remembers the events leading up to her decision to volunteer for the protocol. Her mother had cried. “I’ve already lost one child,” she’d said. Astrid remembers that her heart beat faster, that her skin felt hot and tight, and that she cried as well. “That’s why,” she’d said.

“They say that you’ll be a robot,” her uncle had said.

“Not a robot, Uncle Paul,” she’d said, a tone in her voice that almost, but not quite, matches with the observed measurements for annoyance. “Yes, there are side effects. But the good that I could do—”

“You do good now, baby,” her mother had said.

“My test scores say I’m perfect for it,” a throb of something in her chest that might have been discomfort, as if telling a truth about her capabilities was not appropriate. Astrid is inappropriate much of the time, now, at least if one measures by the reactions of unmodified humans. But she thinks that she was more often appropriate, before. “The Secretary himself called me. I think—I think I have to do it, Momma.”

There had been more tears. Her own, her family’s (except for her brother, gone since Boston; Astrid’s tattoo is on her chest, a few inches above her heart, and now her eyes no longer catch on it when she sees herself naked in a mirror). There had been pain. There still is pain, after a great computational burden like the one required to analyze the incursion at the opera house. But pain is now an input, a message.

Her mother writes letters. Astrid has learned to write back, though there is little that she can say without violating the classification orders. She discusses the weather and the relationships she observes among her co-workers. She does not mention the expressions that most of them wear when interacting with her. Being able to predict whether an instability will collapse of its own weight has decreased the number of quarantines initiated by 46.4%, which translates into approximately 832 fewer deaths yearly.

Her mother always ends the letters with “Love, Momma.” The words are the same as when she was unmodified. This is superior to realtime interaction, which tended to produce distress. Her parameters include the avoidance of unnecessary distress when no other mission is pending.

Colonel Broyles asks her, once, if she is glad she volunteered. Processing the question takes long enough that she answers at conversational speed. “Yes,” she says.

There are more precise answers she might have given, but no other mission is pending.