“Minimum Safe Distance” explores an expanded definition of sentience

Prologue

Laurence

(arrival + 94 years)

The former Laurence (pronounced law-RONTS, with the soft guttural “r”), now a SelfMade, rolled her/its house-sized, spherical “body” across the rough wasteland that used to be eastern Iowa, USA, flattening the occasional wild scrub plant and inevitably kicking up some dust along the way. Her/its dust trail was hardly noticeable compared to the surrounding air. Ever since the Big Blow, the air in this region was so thick with dust, smoke, and ash that most days the sun was merely a suggestion, a broad, red-orange smear.

She/it rolled toward the southeast, toward the Maquoketa caves and away from the fire, rubble, and technocorpses behind. And away from its former body, so recently pruned.

It propelled itself using a combination of thrusters and momentum wheels, while counter-rotating sensors on its flanks peered back through the twilight murk. Could that spike in dust density south of town be Matt charging through the Pine Valley Nature Area? Is he safe? 

The caves were only a few kilometers away, but it could roll its weighty bulk across rough terrain only so quickly before the rolling became a battering. The former Laurence needs a better way to travel. It also needs more raw material in its mantle – rolling too fast makes it that much harder to absorb solid materials from the terrain.

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The former Laurence considered that it is again a refugee. After a lifetime of seeking refuge from being forsaken, misjudged, underestimated, and abandoned, after a lifetime spent learning how to manage its former brain’s particular brand of autism and to live amongst and work alongside neurotypicals, it clearly understood that because of its Transformation it would be a refugee forevermore. But now it knew who it was. Who am I to you? It no longer matters. Amidst all the strife, there was a small, focused sense of joy.

And it’s no longer helplessly awaiting the Event like everyone else. It must reach the caves. It must not be stopped.

It rolled across the now sandy flats and low hills along a thin, shifting corridor which it calculated would keep defilade between it and the soldiers near the town behind it. It also chose its path so that the long, thick, expanding smoke plumes from the fires back in town would remain, as long as possible, between it and the Enhanced Inherited now descending through the stratosphere. That person’s technological enhancements would be devoted to destruction, and it would have been fed some twisted and completely compelling internal narrative driving it to murder the SelfMade, with extreme prejudice and no remorse.

The former Laurence set in motion its nanoengines. The raw and not so raw materials in its outer shell, its mantle, began changing their molecular structures, forming into new aggregate structures that may be needed in a battle against a terrifying monster, yet only one of many EIs.

Laurence

(arrival + 67 years)

Mama was trying to talk to Laurence again, trying to get her to do something. But she was already fading away.

The old doctor’s office was small and dark. This was a new doctor’s office, and one corner of the room had a play mat that looked like a tiny town, with a train track going around it, and toy trains with wheels that fit the track.

It was all too new, but at least it smelled like a doctor’s office.

“Minimum Safe Distance”

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This room was so bright and large that Laurence didn’t even notice where the other side of the room ended. It was the wall by the door that had her attention. Images moved on the wall, showing the colors inside a person’s head beside movies of a person doing things, sometimes alone, sometimes with other people. Various parts of the head-insides lit up or changed colors depending on what the people were doing. It was not like TV at all.

At first, it was just new, confusing, frightening, and exciting. Then she saw it. The pattern. The patterns.

It wasn’t as simple as one part of the head-insides turning a special color for a certain activity. There was more to it. At first, she couldn’t see it, but she drifted into it as the colors changed. Then she could see nothing else, hear nothing else.

Where are my hands? My legs? I don’t know. I don’t care. It’s the changing pattern. I’m inside it. I see it now. I feel it. I’m with it. I am it.

“Laurie, come with your mother now, please. Dear?” The attendant was only trying to help. It’s what they do at CIUSSS de la Mauricie-et-du-Centre-du-Québec oncology clinics.

“No, we missed it. We’ll just have to wait. Once she goes into that trance, the best thing is to just let her finish it herself. Oh, and please don’t call her Laurie. She hates nicknames.”

Laurence’s mother, Geneviève Levesque (pronounced the Quebecois way, zhuhn-ev-YEHV lev-AH-eek), groaned as she stood up, abandoning her attempt to collect the child. Her sunken eyes were fixed on the floor, but she kept track of Laurence out of habit. The lymphoma was turning her body into a sack of neverending agony occasionally interrupted by spasms and pangs of torture. It only hurt when she breathed, moved, or blood flowed, never mind eating or the other things. But she still managed to have near infinite patience with her daughter.

The attendant seemed to understand her situation with Laurence. Surely this wasn’t the first time they’d seen a high-functioning autistic child. He seemed familiar with their inwardness, and sometimes their tantrums when it was time to leave or when one of the parents had to go into the back room for a scan. Or if someone came a little too close, said the wrong thing, or spoke or moved in the wrong way. But clearly, it was the first time he’d seen such a child, any child, fixated on the dynamic encephalogram displays.

Geneviève groaned into a nearby chair and waited. The attendant couldn’t hide his reflexive sympathy.

It isn’t as simple as one part of the head-insides turning a special color for a certain activity. The colors changed in brightness, and usually, several parts of the head-insides were changing colors at different speeds. Laurence didn’t understand it yet, but she saw it. And the white areas showed how one part feeds another.

I can almost guess what’s next. I want more. These movies are too short, and there aren’t enough of them. There are only a few things happening. It’s not enough to see the patterns. It’s not enough.

Thinking about wanting more, she became aware that her feet wanted more room, and her legs were stiff. Her hands were tight. She opened her hands and put them on the floor for support as she stretched her legs. She was still looking at the wall display, but she knew where she was, and so did mama.

Matt

(arrival + 67 years)

With their skin cell chromosomes stealthily cracking in the bright UV of Iowa’s morning sun, and their sheaths of sweat failing to evaporate into the wet air, Matt and Jeb Hutney played in the yard, oblivious to their condition. They were in the dirt, hunched over their Adventist-approved “Cavemen Hunting Dinosaurs” figurines.

Their mother was watching from the kitchen window, allowing them a play break between chores.

Jeb, the older brother, gave voice to the master hunter. His plan for the hunt focused on how the hunters would work together. He even imagined their lives before and after the hunt. He stood the master hunter figure before the others and walked him back and forth as he instructed the younger hunters.

Matt’s imagination slid back and forth between the hunters and the dinosaurs, vividly picturing what they were doing and what they would be doing if Jeb ever got around to the hunt itself.

Jeb carefully assigned jobs to each of the younger hunters, aiming for a plan that would ensure everyone’s safety.

Matt listened and understood, but focused on the weapons, how those weapons would be used, what it would look like when they attacked the dinosaurs and when the dinosaurs fought back. How many spears it would take to kill a Triceratops? How many hunters might be injured or killed taking one down?

Jeb finally began deploying the hunters, even throwing in a passionate, “Good luck, my sons!”

Instead of helping Jeb deploy the hunter figurines, however, Matt grabbed the Triceratops figurine and roared. The Triceratops turned and charged at the hunters. It gored the master hunter first, then turned and trampled on several other hunters. Matt beamed as he laid waste to the plan.

At first, Jeb tried to salvage the fantasy, salvage the hunt, moving hunters around to fight the beast. But Matt just pressed on, having the Triceratops trample, gore, and tail-swipe all the hunters.

To Jeb, there was an unspoken speed of time in the fantasy, slower than reality. It would give the boys time to play out events in a sequence that would make sense. But Matt just declared things had happened, without rhyme or reason, let alone at sensible points in time.

Matt announced that some of the hunters’ spears had struck the Triceratops in the gut and it, too, was now dying, and its blood was spurting onto the bodies of dead hunters in the dirt. As he did so, he grabbed a small stick and jabbed it at the Triceratops so hard that he accidentally jammed the stick into his palm, splitting the skin. His blood squished around the beast in his hand, dripping down into the dirt and onto some of the hunter figurines. Imaginary blood became real blood.

Jeb shouted, “Noooo! Stop!” He stood up and pushed Matt. The hunt fantasy was meant to be about brothers in arms facing a common foe for the benefit of the tribe.

With the bloody Triceratops figurine clenched in his fist, Matt swung at Jeb. Jeb leaned back, barely evading. Matt dropped the figurine and hunkered down, ready to fight his older brother, even looking forward to it. It was just more of the same battle.

#

Mother tried to reach the boys quickly yet quietly, but she knew it was too late. She knew Mr. Hutney must have heard the ruckus. And for the first time in her life, exasperated at yet again having no control over what was about to happen, she finally let herself feel the despair of her situation. As she moved across the uneven yard, slowed by broken ground, for the briefest moment she saw herself continuing on, past the wire fence, across the road, into Haywood’s fields, on and over the horizon. Past her boys. For the briefest moment. Then there was just the anguish of pulling fighting boys apart.

(arrival + 107 years)

Excerpt from
“An Ant Considers a Horse –
Perspectives on the Monsta War”
by Simya Bhelazadehmahmoudi

“Years after the war, I finally met one of the SelfMade in person, actually one of the Progeny. At first, I had to use my professional journalist face to suppress my pent-up anger. But I was struck not only by the humbling depth and speed of its cognition but also by its serenely relentless empathy.

“‘Struck’ is an understatement. And beyond that, its huge, spherical ‘body’ and the technology at its disposal would have been quite intimidating, to say the least, had it not been so gentle.

“The more I struggled with my layers of anger and shame, the more I considered requesting the Transformation. But the more I struggled with fear and envy, the more I realized I’m probably not a good candidate.

“And the Progeny never offered.”

X. Ho Yen is the pen name of Rich Hogan, a Cuban-Chinese-East Prussian child of refugee immigrants who worked more than two decades as an aerospace engineer. Through his writing, he aims to continue the trend of globalizing, demilitarizing, and humanizing realism-based science fiction. As an autistic, multiracial, complex post-traumatic stress disorder survivor, he places a strong personal emphasis on human nature. More about the author — and the origin of his pen name — at xhoyenauthor.com.