The way the neurologist leered at me with that creepy smile and the look of disdain made me want to turn and leave immediately. I looked down at the handle of the door momentarily. I was in my rights to do so. I already felt uncomfortable just in his presence, but turning around now meant going back out to face Joel, to whom I had just emphatically declared that I was doing my job, not fleeing my job on a hunch.
I closed my eyes and pursed my lips. Fine. Creepy stranger it is then. I could handle this. I made a quick ping out of curiosity to see that unfortunately, this man didn’t have any augmentations. I had zero power over him. Opening my eyes again, I saw that he had lifted his eyebrow and his expression was turning impatient.
I mean, he didn’t look strong. Almost no one on this station felt like they were physically intimidating besides maybe Skygraves, but that was more because of his weird bullshit cyborg repellant aura than his body. I wasn’t under any illusion that I could win a wrestling match with this guy, though.
I spent most of the last month laying as still as possible inside of a sensory deprivation tank. My muscles were atrophied, I was thin as a rail because of all the meals I kept forgetting to eat, and I just didn’t know how to fight in general. This man could overpower me in a heartbeat.
My pride wouldn’t allow me to be scared though.
I let out an audible sigh and approached the man, who looked terribly unamused with me for spending so long obviously analyzing him, and I leaned over the table to look him in the eyes. We were thankfully about the same height, so I at least had that. “Hey. Yeah, Meryll Watkins.” I declared in a stern tone of voice, intentionally avoiding repeating his declaration of me as simply a machine core. “I’m sure my captain has informed you of the conditions of this checkup. And I’m in kind of a foul mood already, so can we just get this over with? What exactly do you need from me?”
This only made him look more annoyed, but I was going to make this man respect me, dammit. “Yes, well…” he started quietly, disdain in his voice as he tried to counter my apparently unexpected assertiveness. “My name is Dr. Godin. Just climb up on the table and we’ll get started.” he demanded.
“That isn’t an answer to my question.” I hissed “Before I do any of that, what, exactly…” I thought about how to phrase it for a moment. What does he want to do to me? No, that gave him too much power. I hoped my hesitation didn’t bolster his confidence “What do you hope to learn today? What’s the procedure?”
“Meryll…” he tried to put on a reassuring voice. It wasn’t. For once, I actually wished that someone would address me by my last name. “Do you really want me to bore you with all of the details? It’s going to take all day to bring you up to speed on my work, but if I must summarize, I wish to map your brain. Find your response to certain stimuli. To see what exactly it is that separates you from a common machine core clone.”
That… didn’t sound unreasonable, actually. In fact, it sounded like useful information. I felt my shoulders relaxing a little bit, releasing a tension I didn’t realize I was holding. Had I judged this man’s creepy vibes wrong? No, something still seemed off.
“And how do you intend to do that?” I asked cautiously, my voice softening a little as the man presented his intentions clearly.
“A battery of tests while I monitor your brain activity with this machine.” he motioned to a box not too dissimilar from the one that Doc had been hooking me up to so that I could gather data on my dreams. “I assure you, it’s harmless. A series of questions, calibration to sensory input, measuring emotional responses, nothing intrusive. Your captain can have you back within a few hours, at most.”
I had to spend a moment to process that. What did Aisling have to do with anything? It took me a moment to realize what was happening. This man thought that I was property. I knew I had to nip that in the bud. “Aisling doesn’t own me. I’m selling you my time on her behalf, okay? I have… a lot of trust for her, but she’s not my master or some weird thing like that. I’m a person, not a thing, got it?”
The man looked unamused. He wasn’t taking me seriously. The iota of trust I had for him a moment ago was gone already. But I still had a job to do, so I rolled my eyes and climbed up onto the table “So now that we’ve got that out of the way, hook me up, I know how this thing works already.”
“Machine empathy?” The man asked, amused interest briefly crossing his features.
“What? No.” I thought about that for a moment, though. Machine empathy. I did seem to have an affinity for manipulating computers and electronics. For feeling like they were a natural part of me. Maybe that wasn’t a bad term for it. I wasn’t about to give him that, though. “I’ve just used one of these before already.”
He furrowed his brow, pausing for a moment with one of the electrodes in his hand already. Eugh, he was going to touch me, and I’d already consented to it. Whatever, it’s just around my head at least. “What would you have needed to use a neural interface like this for?”
“Analyzing dreams.” I admitted. It wasn’t a secret or anything, why not tell him?
He scoffed “Neurotic dream analysis? Pseudoscience.” he shook his head “I must say that it is fascinating that you are capable of dreaming, though.”
“Why’s that?” I pondered.
“Well, it’s just that that’s not a function one would typically see in machine cores. They don’t ordinarily have any brain activity beyond maintenance during rest.” he explained as he swung a wing fixed to the top of the machine over my head. It would have probably been intimidating if Doc hadn’t already done this whole thing for me, except I wasn’t sleeping that time. I did not trust this man to monitor me in my sleep.
“Yeah, well they don’t normally walk around and talk and have personal autonomy either.” I growled. “The fact that I operate as a machine core is secondary to the fact that I’m a person, doctor. I need you to get on board with that or I’m leaving.”
The doctor looked surprised to hear me say that “Well then your captain wouldn’t be getting paid, and I would certainly have something to say to the others about you being so uncooperative.” he started, but then let out a loud sigh that made it obvious that his next words didn’t mean anything “But yes, I understand that you are a person that has achieved psionic resonance, and not a machine core that has attained sentience.”
I kind of hated how that wasn’t correct. Should it have mattered either way? I’d still be a sapient person in both circumstances. But if it got this man to treat me with at least some level of respect, even if just for the sake of diplomacy, then I’d have to take it. “Good. And man, do you really think my captain would give a shit if I walked out on this if you mistreated me? You try anything stupid and she’ll shoot you. We’re not out here running a trade operation, you know? We’re pirates.” I needed to remind him that we were dangerous. Sure, I wasn’t dangerous without Theseus, but I could truthfully say that I surrounded myself with competent people who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot this bastard.
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The man let out an amused chuckle. “Like any of you would just walk in here and actually shoot anyone,” he scoffed. “I assure you, such… back alley diplomacy won’t be necessary. As I said, this will be unobtrusive.”
“Just get on with it.” I groaned.
Dr. Godin spent the next half hour asking me questions. Simple things like my name, and things he could easily know about me from the port registry. Basic information about my crewmates, basic mathematics, recall of common knowledge. All while I stared into the bright light on the ceiling that would have annoyed me if it didn’t remind me a little of the void. I just wish I had core lubricant around my eyes to keep them from feeling so irritated by it. Other than that, it was very boring.
He moved on to showing me pictures. Landscapes, abstract art, people, I couldn’t really figure out what this was supposed to do, but he seemed interested by whatever my brain’s responses were to them, I guess, because I’d stopped talking to him by that point. We’d both settled into a begrudging silence.
At least until the sensory part. “This will be something like a reflex test. Just a gentle knock on certain parts of your body for responses. Also swabs of temperature and a simple pain response. And before you complain, it won’t be anything bad, just a tiny skin prick, and I’ll warn you before hand.”
I couldn’t help but notice that the man had just told me he would be doing these things, and that he did not, in fact, ask me for consent to do these things. The fact that I didn’t want to do them felt less like a legitimate concern for my safety though, and more something I wanted to deny him out of spite, so I allowed it to happen anyway. It wasn’t like I actually really cared about the things he described being done to me, but the fact that he was telling rather than asking annoyed me. I grumbled, just wanting him to get it over with. I’d already been here long enough by now.
Sure enough, he did warn me about everything he did for those parts of the testing before hand. So I had to give him credit where credit was due, I suppose.
“Alright, so are we done here?” I mumbled, just wanting to forget about this asshole already. I didn’t even really care if he shared any revelations he had about all the mental data he was collecting at this point. I just wanted to leave.
“Just one more thing, after seeing the results so far, I actually am, admittedly, very interested in the dream study you were talking about earlier?” He reminded me.
I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t really care about the data. I never learned anything from it, and it had just been sitting in my files doing nothing for some time now. It was apparently too garbled to mean anything. So I closed my eyes and pinged the terminal in his hands that he’d been entering all the data into. I lifted his contact details and immediately sent the files to him via the local messaging service. Then I opened my eyes and motioned to the tablet “All yours. It’s gibberish to me anyway.”
He looked perplexed for a moment until he looked at the new notifications, lifting his eyebrows with an impressed expression. “Oh, no, you misunderstand. That’s anecdotal data, I can’t be sure of all the variables that were in place when this data was gathered. I’d like to gather dream data here and now.”
“S’cuse me?” I mumbled, crossing my arms and preparing to sit up, damn all the wires still attached to my forehead “I didn’t agree to that. I don’t trust you around me while I’m asleep.”
The man frowned, a look of profound annoyance on his face. It gave me all kinds of arrogant ‘how dare you?’ vibes.
I glared at him “We’re done here.” I grumbled as I started to sit up.
I felt his hand on my chest. He pushed me back down, his face scrunched up into an angry glare. He had a facemask in his other hand, the kind you see put on patients in a medical ward. Oh. This was happening, apparently.
I had kind of hoped that this man was all bark, and wouldn’t actually attempt to restrain me, but here we were. He tried to push the mask toward my face, but I managed to grab his arm and shakily hold him back from pressing it hard into my face.
“This won’t take long, just submit to the test and I’ll even ignore your arrogance toward the progression of science in my report.” he growled, trying to push harder.
I was surprised I was holding him back as well as I was, but my grip was failing. With a grunt, I yelled out “Hey! Someone! I need help in here! This guy’s-!”
I didn’t get another word out before the man shoved his hand from my chest into my face to keep me from saying anything else. So I did what any self-respecting person would do. I bit his finger hard enough to draw blood. He shouted and I felt his adrenaline give him the strength he needed to get the mask over my face. I held my breath in defiance, but I figured at that point that he had won, and I felt fear wash over me. What was this man actually going to do to me?
The door flew open and Dr. Godin dropped the mask in surprise. I exhaled deeply to ensure any of whatever he was about to drug me with had exited my airway before I took in a relieved, deep breath and looked to the door to see Joel holding the door open with his foot while he trained the rifle, two-handed on Dr. Godin. The doctor had his hands lifted, surprise plain on his face, as I rolled unceremoniously off of the table, getting to my feet while the electrodes popped off my head and the machine shifted from my movement.
I stumbled a little, perhaps because of some trace amount of whatever sedative he was no doubt about to pump my lungs full of, or perhaps because I’d been laying down, staring up into disorienting light for the past several hours. But in the end, I managed to get myself over to Joel’s side.
“You alright?” Joel asked gently, not moving his line of sight off of the terrified doctor for a moment.
“I almost wanna say no so you’ll shoot him.” I admitted, shaking my head and slapping my cheeks in an effort to reorient myself.
“Yeah, you’re alright.” He nodded, tightening his grip on the gun as if about to shoot “You violated our agreement. Gonna be letting the port authority know you tried to assault a member of our crew.” he slowly lowered the rifle to one hand at his side, but he still kept it trained in Godin’s direction.
“Assault!? I never touched you!” The man shouted, hands slowly coming down to the table where one flinched and he looked down at the pinprick of blood on his finger from my tooth.
“Are you dense? You did a lot more than touch her.” Joel shouted back firmly.
“She’s just a ship core!” He growled.
“Could’ve fooled me.” Joel moved one hand to my shoulder and motioned for me to leave first, and this time I was all too happy to let him direct me to safety. He turned with me, closed the door, and closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, he let out a sigh before he turned to me again. “Seriously, you alright? He touch you anywhere else? We need to bump it to sexual assault?”
“No.” I shook my head “No, I don’t think… I don’t know, maybe? I don’t know what he really wanted there.” I admitted, standing as close as I could to Joel. I needed to feel safe, and he felt safe right now. “I thought you left.”
“If I was gonna not protect the rest of the crew just cause I was mad at them, there’d be a lot less of us alive today.” Joel let the gun drop to his side and hang from its strap before he very purposefully spoke his next sentence. “We don’t leave people behind, Meryll.”
Wait. That was why he was still mad at me? I recalled that I told him during my tantrum the other day that Aisling would leave him behind or something like that. I got that we both said some hurtful things to each other, but that was the thing that had made him storm off. It meant something to him. I had actually hurt him with those words. “Thanks for not leaving me behind.” I grumbled.
“What did I just say?” He mumbled, starting to walk with me back toward the ship.
I really wish I knew what happened to Joel before we met in that moment. Like with Mouse and Doc. What brought him here. But I knew better than to pry now. It didn’t matter.
Joel could be abrasive and rude. He didn’t always understand complex emotional issues. Maybe he just wasn’t that smart. But he definitely had the hallmark loyalty to the crew one seemed to need to be a part of Theseus. He was a good guy, even if he could be a right asshole at times.
“Were you seriously just waiting outside the door the whole time?” I asked, a cautious grin on my face as I looked up at him.
He just rolled his eyes and kept moving. “Wasn’t gonna leave you behind. Didn’t mean I wasn’t gonna let you sweat about it either.”
Jerk.