Angry Ghosts (20 page)

Given the structure of your society, I understand your frustrations with Thompson, Argo, and Maiella, especially since your experts can find nothing medically wrong with them. In the cadre, something either works or does not. If it does not work and cannot be repaired, it is scrapped. Here, it appears to you and to your officers that these three Operators are beyond your means of recovery and should be reconstituted into drones to recover, at the least, their physical labor potential.

Though you can find no defect in them to fix, I have discovered one, and these three can be salvaged. Despite their uninjured appearance, they are seriously wounded inside, and these wounds will not heal themselves. These injuries are wounds of the mind.

I realize this concept is strange to you, General, and I suspect you are tempted to dismiss it as foolish at best or weakness at its worst. However, I believe Maiella, Argo, and Thompson can be restored to their typical performance without cost to cadre resources or productivity. In the following pages, I will describe the nature of their condition, the reasons for it, and the recommended treatment.

Just like a muscle that is injured and fails to function well, the mind can also suffer an injury that causes it to falter. A wound of this sort is often difficult to detect and diagnose; yet in Team Spectre’s case, the symptoms are plain: reduced productivity, frequent errors, cessation of nutrition and sleep intervals. These symptoms all point to the same disease: guilt.

Guilt is usually defined as a feeling of remorse or shame for one’s wrongdoing, real or imagined. Frequently, guilt can be a powerful motivator for good where the person feeling guilt is compelled to correct the mistake, error, or accident to make things well again. In this case, Maiella, Argo, and Thompson have taken seventeen lives; and those lives cannot be restored. They cannot correct their mistake, and thus, the feeling of guilt remains.

When uncorrectable situations occur, an alternate method for canceling guilt exists, called punishment. Punishment is the cost to the offending person or group for their mistake, error, or accident and can include everything from infliction of bodily pain to loss of freedom to banishment to death and is frequently given in proportion to the crime. For example, in your cadre law, the punishment for killing a human is exile. This outlet was denied to Team Spectre when Captain Keller and I argued to prevent their exile. Again, the guilt remains in their conscious minds every day.

Let’s say that our minds are like a large workbench, and everything we think about and concentrate upon is spread out on the top of it. Now imagine that you have a giant black lump that sits right in the middle of that bench, and everything you want to work on has to be done around that lump. Naturally, the work would suffer, becoming slower, lower quality, and less efficient. Guilt is that black lump tying up all of that space, and these Operators are trying to work around it. So clearly, we have to find a way to remove this guilt from their minds.

With any physical injury, there is the danger of complications or supplemental injuries caused by the initial injury. For example, an untreated bullet wound could lead to infections, poisoning, gangrene, or worse. If we imagine a similar situation where guilt is that bullet wound, Maiella, Argo, and Thompson have been infected with the belief that they are utterly worthless. Because they hold the same values as the cadre, they know that they have committed the worst offense possible. They can’t correct it, nor have they been punished for it. In their own minds, they believe they no longer deserve to be a part of the cadre in any capacity. In fact, they no longer believe they deserve to be
alive
. Their self-perception, which seems entirely based on their value to the cadre, has changed radically. They see themselves not as providers, but as parasites—things that have no place among the honorable men and women of Cadre One. They have instinctively carried out their own kind of exile where they refuse the company of others, any kind of comfort, even their own nutrition intervals. Without knowing why, they are trying to inflict a punishment on themselves, but nothing they have done so far seems sufficient to relieve the guilt. Thus, it remains.

As noted before, the colonists who died cannot be restored to life, so the mistake cannot be corrected. The only alternative for us is to devise a sufficient punishment for them that will—in the minds of Maiella, Argo, and Thompson—equal their transgression. It should not merely be some impossible task merely for the sake of hardship; it should be a task of great importance, great risk, and great reward. It should be something vital to the future of the cadre and the colonists alike. It might be a mission with low survivability, because they could volunteer to sacrifice themselves rather than expose a fellow Operator to death. They will jump at the chance to truly serve again, and the enormity of their task will make them feel worthy again.

Because of the harsh nature of the mission requirements, it is unlikely they will survive; but during that mission, they will have their sharpest edge. Their guilt will become a potent motivator
demanding
they provide results. Their deaths will not be sufficient compensation for having committed what they believe is the most despicable crime. If they succeed in this mission, the cadre will benefit from their sacrifice; and in meaningful, honorable service, Thompson, Maiella, Argo can resume their places among their beloved brothers and sisters long gone.

end

O’Kai leans back in his chair. His swift mind cuts through the counselor’s lengthy descriptions,
plainly seeing the recommendation that the three should be exiled after all. He smirks with the irony.

“I can’t tell you al
l of this makes sense to me,” the general begins, “but you have my attention.” He shifts comfortably in his seat. “It wasn’t long ago you were demanding we keep them here, sparing them this ‘punishment.’ What changed your mind?”

The counselor grimaces. “It isn’t that I’ve changed my mind, General, I simply see Maiella, Argo, and Thompson dying a little more each d
ay; and…I can’t help them. When I heard they might be reconstituted, well… At least this way, they can be remembered for their many successes, not for their one failure. And who knows?” he adds with vigor. “They might come back.”

O’Kai looks into his terminal again, rereading the la
st few lines of the brief. “You have an idea for their mission?”

“I thought you might, General.”

O’Kai looks shrewdly at his guest. “You think I should send them to Earth.”

The counselor crosses a leg atop the other and raises a hand. “You did say it would have to be a manned mission, that no computer could be programmed with enough contingen
cies. We'd need Operators, who can think and act.”

O’Kai nods, recognizing his own words.

The counselor drops his hand, raising the other. “Well, here you have a team already trained with all of the mission requirements. Not only are they performing the most basic duties here, they are performing them
badly
. The work Argo, Maiella, and Thompson are doing here doesn’t require an Operator’s abilities and could be handled by almost anyone. If they were taken out of the manufacturing rotation, would they be missed?”

“I see where you’re going, Counselor,”
O’Kai concedes. “I have considered removing them from their posts; but I don’t have a duty schedule with less responsibility than what they're doing now, and no cadre personnel can remain idle. The very reason I have them performing some of our lowest priority work is because of their failure rate. I can’t trust them with more sensitive tasks because a failure there could jeopardize our survival!”

O’Kai falls silent a moment, reclining in his chair again. “This mission,” the general resumes, “would require the strictest tolerances, the swiftest thinking, the most decisive action… and you suggest I entrust it to a team who can’t remember the basic lubrication schedule of a
metal press
?” O’Kai points to his terminal. “This brief you wrote raises some interesting possibilities in managing this team’s performance, but it's a
long
way from justifying their inclusion in a
critical
mission.”

The counselor lowers his eyes a moment in recognition of the general’s point. “I understand your reservations.” The counselor uncrosses his legs and leans forward in his seat. “But low-responsibility tasks
are part of the problem. There's something I've witnessed in all of you so potent, so perfectly distilled into its purest form:
purpose
. You rise after a brief rest and toil the next twenty hours without fail, without question. Why? Because you have purpose in all of your actions—
everything
you do is designed to ensure your survival. Would you agree?”

O’Kai nods in accordance.

The counselor shifts in his seat. “Maiella, Argo, and Thompson introduced us to that purpose throughout our voyage here. They worked constantly, only taking short rests, repairing and restoring the
Europa
in flight. Since our arrival at Cadre One, I've watched their purpose evaporate. You say any other cadre worker could replace them in their duties? I believe Thompson, Argo, and Maiella are more aware of that than anyone. Here, they're cast out by their brothers and sisters for what they've done, and they can be replaced by the least able-bodied of their brethren. They're
one hundred percent
expendable and
utterly
without purpose.”

“They
do
have purpose,” O’Kai argues, “and most recently, their
purpose
was to produce sixteen tons of bracing. How can they not see that?”

The counselor frowns, looking away a moment, then fixes a serious look at
O’Kai.

“General, do you know what it’s like to kill your own kind?”

O’Kai furrows his brow, disbelieving he has been asked such an absurd question. The counselor looks silently on.

“Are you expecting an answer to that?” O’Kai spits.

“I already know you don’t. I just want you to say it out loud. Do you know what it’s like to kill your own kind?”

“
No
, Counselor,” O’Kai states aggressively, “I
don’t
.”

“They
do
,” the counselor volleys back. “They
know
what it’s like to have killed their own kind, and it has wounded their minds so severely they can't see they still have purpose.”

O'Kai sits in his seat, unmoving. Disdain has left his features, replaced by the beginnings of understanding.
“This guilt you wrote about… is distorting their clarity of thought.”

“Yes, General,” the counselor smiles
as though relieved of a heavy burden, “that’s precisely it. Now I know we use different words for different things. So what do you call that thing that gets you up out of your bunk in the morning, the thing that drives you to serve, to succeed, to be your best in all things?"

O'Kai shakes his head.
“I don't know that we need a word for that. It's fundamental to all of us.”

“
Well you know what I'm talking about, right? That quality that is
so
essential, that to be without it is a kind of death.”

O'Kai nods seriously.

“We call it 'Spirit' or 'Will'. And just like a bone, it
can
be broken. But just like a broken bone, it
can also
be mended. This mission is the way Team Spectre can give back to those they've harmed, a way to purge the guilt they suffer from by truly
serving
again.”

O’Kai considers the new information, mulling it over, trying to stave off his own opinions and keep his mind open. It is a stretch for him to b
elieve an Operator’s mind could become so unfocused. He sneaks a sideways glance at the counselor, studying him as if for the first time. Though the discovery process in their conversations has frequently been frustrating, he has come to greatly appreciate the fresh perspectives and ideas the counselor has presented him. Despite his difficulty in accepting such bizarre assertions, he lays aside the greater share of his skepticism.

“So you believe putting Argo, Thompson, and Maiella into this mission will restore their
purpose
and make them the best Operators for the task…”

“Their
mistake aside, has any team accomplished
half
as much?”

O’Kai nods thoughtfully. “All right, Counselor. I will consider your proposal.”

“Thank y—” The counselor is halfway out of his chair, then with a confused look, he sinks back into it. “Uh, you’ll
consider
it?”

“Colonel Munro and Major Ralla will have the most oversight on any mission we plan, so if your recommendation can withstand their scrutiny, we will proceed.”