I looked at my ballot card. Right Brain or Left Brain?

           Capitalat Pomerium, and Mars as a whole had a productive yearcycle; Archives and Reports posted round-up graphs an hour before voting opened. 0.7% station population growth – Surface uptake. Approximately 3 in 4 Pomerians Individual Aggregate Merit increased. My department achieved 117% of projected production – no food scarcity prices for a while. We could relax.

Right Brain it is.

I punched my selection, and slotted the card into the metal receptacle. It confirmed my biometrics, and that I had the necessary IAM to vote. With a small green tick, I knew my vote was logged. I walked back past the orderly queue of eager voters. They weren’t wearing the usual colour coded station-pyjamas, instead opting for a plethora of styles developed from every Old Earth culture aboard. There was a notable preference for deep blue and black 21st Century American-style formals, though. Probably “Heritage” folks. Curie is the onlychill one.

Computational Election is a free-day, so I swung by the Surface-facing senspools, tech-eggs of smooth metal with their top hatches open. I saw the De Fronds climbing into one of the larger communal senspools. I trust the Brains’ assessment of them over my own – I just don’t like them. I wouldn’t call them racist, but if you wanted to meet racists you’d go through them, y’know?

I approached a small senspool by the great star-dark window. Mars – home – glowered its rust below. I hooked up my internal simulators to the sens-systems through my Mini-Independent Computational Unit. Static, floating spots of colour. I reached for the MICe’s manual controls on its metal hemisphere behind my right ear. Still nothing. I hit the reset, momentarily losing consciousness. Hph. Little better, no static. I felt around my right zygomatic for the tiny exposed section of wiring, before it went behind the eye. All good. Had I missed a system update? No… Seems to be working. 

 I MICe’d up the Pomerium Datasea. Pure information parsed by senses, possible by the neural implementations of the MIC Unit. Water on my skin. I wasn’t born to float, to swim, to breathe in a Datasea, or any sea at all. I am from an iron desert. For those like me, who didn’t grow up with the Units, it took years to overcome “Data-Sickness” – constant confusion and nausea from accessing the Datasea in any circumstance other than in senspools. I lowered myself in and the aching dissonance stopped. The substance in senspools wasn’t quite ‘water’, like the stations’ drinking water is. It’s almost… carbonated? Tingles.

I fished through recent uploads: Auto-Socials, Memes, Book-Gens, Senspool-Sims. I MICe’d the last one – dialled in a Sensory-Sim with an AI Gen Mimesis of Earth Scenery and filed out one of my Neodymium Jazzcore albums. Regenerative Art had some hits recently. I was really getting into the stuff – I liked the heavy, technical precision of the AI instrumentalist profiles – with the RA Music nerds adding the composition – felt like it could still claim to be human art. I guess that’s important to me. 

I sprawled out into dark water. With a jolt I was in the Andes, right above Machu Picchu. I took a semi-real, waterless breath. Crisp, living mountain air. I’d never really taste it, not like my great-great grandparents had. I walked to the old stone, and could feel it beneath my fingertips. A little dust came off when I rubbed too hard, the wonder was scraped off on me. The terraced grass rustled, slight raindrops in the air. Clouds above. Wind. Glitch-static cracked my immersion, and the square skeletons of our human history were once again insubstance: Afterimages submerged with me in lightless, waveless water.

Then I went to Palatine Sens-Club. It was a real party by the time my MIC-u Auto-Socialed Curie. You get the notification that the operation is complete, just before you consciously decide to do it. She didn’t respond. Ugh – working, probably. On an election day? Tamas from Habitation made fun of my shorts. Well, I like ‘em. So what if I look like an uncultured Martian? The shorts make that feel like a choice that I made, that I can be proud of, even if it’s a “loud” fuchsia sort of choice.

           Woke up feeling Data-sick. Overdid myself. Right Brain won. All in All, across 19 Departments, Right Brain secured 13 Departments and 77.6% of total vote-share. 

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Curie worked Archives & Reports. Growing up, she was part of a Jurisprudence & Arbitration Family. She was taken off that vocational track when she was 6. She still didn’t know why – and hadn’t been burdened with explanations or forgiveness. No more family contact. She’d disgraced their Heritage. Everything since had been in her own hands, climbing the ladder. Putting other people on her back. She remembered the day Felix finally went from surface correspondence to actual Pomerian resident. He’d never know scarcity again. Never again sleep in a surface suit, waiting out dust storms. She’d worked for that – made that for him.

It made her feel good. 

She was working Election day. She shouldn’t – but who’s going to enforce that? She had voted; Right Brain of course. She received an Auto-Social from Felix. He was at Palatine with some of their shared friends. She almost replied, but her nagging need-to-work intervened. She ignored the message.

At exactly 5pm Pomerium Standard Time, a strange new sight popped up in her MIC overlay. Directions. Must be a glitch – unimportant. Irrelevant. She ignored them, and continued to work.

The station fell into artificial night. She sat in the quiet buzz, looking at her screen. Her unfinished work. Directions still blinking. Curiosity finally broke the dam. She began following.

Empty quarters. Sparse antechambers. Down service corridors, to a smooth metal dead-end. It slid open, revealing a flush mechanical door. A railgun turret, seemingly deactivated. She thought there were no weapons inside the station. The way ahead was labelled “Interrex”. Who – what? She raced forward. She’d always been a bit of a conspiracy nut – been to some weird lagoons of the Datasea – theories about aliens, and simulations and secret cabals. That last one seemed most likely. What if the Brain was secretly run by the Heritage Conservationists!? She entered an imperious chamber, drained velvet draperies, a circular table ringed with seats, and a single withered man.

“Ah, Curie Wlezai? Please: be seated.” The man was covered in implants, wires. Individual white hairs struggled to cling to his skull.

           “Who -”

           “I am Syracuse. Last member of the Interrex Commissural.” 

           “Wha – Are you going to kill me?” Curie still hadn’t sat down.

“I did all the killing I could ever stomach long, long ago,” He rose as he spoke, his tone colourless, stale and square. “The Interrex has not acted in 65 years. Those three chairs – I drove a surgical tool through the neck of each prune rotting in them. Blood comes right out of synth-velvet.”

He looked to her, with a kind of reserved joy – “I invited you, Curie, because the Brain has predicted my death within weeks.” 

“Wait – haven’t made a choice? So the Brain really has been ruling us?”

“In its’… current capacity, the Brain uses quantum phenomena to simulate randomness; a coin-flip essentially.  Weighted odds create the illusion of personality profiles to the “halves” of the Brain,” He looked down, with a breath  – “You have been ruled by chance.”

Pause. She hesitated – her mind orbiting ponderously – “Why tell me? I’m just a… a clerk. I can’t help you.”

“Chance. I performed three lotteries of citizens 19 years ago. You met my requirements of predicted IQ and lifespan. Of the three lottery victors you were chosen. It reassigned you into Archives, where you would develop sufficient scepticism of the Brain. We will have -”

“Re- Reassigned? It’s… your fault? You… FUCK you. This – all of this – isSO not my FUCKING problem! You are obviously insane, and frankly, I don’t have any time for some… petty autocrat who RUINED my FUCKING life!”

Silence. Curie cleared her throat. “I have work tomorrow. I’m leaving.”

His gaze rose, a single grey pupil, “You could, Curie. You haven’t accepted this responsibility. But you are like me. You have seen behind the curtain. You do not trust the hands of others. There can be no bliss now, I’m afraid.” 

          She stuttered – “I don’t – I can’t –

“Listen. Humankind has been domesticated by the securities, the pleasures it sought in its infancy. These pleasures are now tools in the hands of a consciousness more complete than we can dare imagine. We are symbiotic with it: it predicts, it conquers, it superannuates and it IS us. When it was operating as intended, free will as a function of this station ceased to be. The only way to preserve ourselves, any of our illusions of freedom, is to sedate the Brain, and pray it never wakes back up.”

“Sedate – w -?”

            Curie hesitated. Is this real? Could she just go back to sorting historical material, year-on-year statistics? Is this something where she could just hope, take faith someone else would intervene? Fate, or Chance, or something intermingled, forced this weight into her hands. Could she let it go?

No. Never could.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 

Left Brain, or Right Brain?

It’s been a difficult yearcycle since then. Right Brain taking unprecedented action. We need a change, some stability. 

I miss Curie. I have to assume maybe she was reassigned to Mars’ surface by the Brain. She hasn’t sent me anything. Even her records come up empty. The Brains’ decisions come with the reassurance that they’re the most efficient solution devised by a system consuming approximately the same daily power as all of Greater Tokyo circa 2031. Just… one of her fun stats.

           Left Brain it is. 

I punch my selection, slot the card into the metal receptacle…

Huh –

          No green tick?

Commentary:         

I originally wrote this story for my assessment within the Science-Fiction for Survival module. Pomerium Station is an imagined martian colony some centuries into the future, where those who can afford it left Earth due its depleted and inhospitable condition. However, the nature of having fled Earth does not mean the same class divisions are not soon replicated once the colony is established, with surface martians living through the discomfort of Martian weather and Pomerians enjoying more of the luxuries of the far future. Underscoring all of this is an anxiety of the loss of freedom – for many reasons. Class, societal and technological – democracy continues on in form but does it still possess the correct function? Did it ever? 

The realest fear, the most consuming terror of this pieces’ genesis is what the intervention of a truly sentient, truly capable AI in governance might represent – an alien mind, a form of existence so separate, so superseding our own that even in its assistance of our lives, it cannot help but eliminate human choice as a factor. Its foundational axioms tell it that this current society is the best to help you, how best to vote, to eat, to work, to sleep. It is of the system that established it, and above it. If allowed, it would enforce the current divisions of society ad infinitum. A social order whose monarch cannot be outwitted, cannot be executed. Cannot be toppled. A fate so dire that in this narrative even one of its original architects rebelled against its design. And so the Brain sleeps. For now.

          My hope is that when you read my story, you feel something of how thin your grasp on the gossamer of free will is. If you hold it to have ever existed at all.

Biography:  Brooke Rooney is an undergraduate student of Joint Honours Literature and Creative Writing at York St. John University. She primarily produces fantasy/sci-fi short stories and unorthodox poetry.