Allele: (uh'-leel); 1. Allele Zone Disorder (AZD); One of several aberrational code configurations marked by an speckled patterning of dead pocket zones throughout the chrysalis portion of a Monad. Unlike healthy zones, allele dead zones coexist in addition to pocket zones, but do not except active code for processing. Unpredictably, allele dead zones will activate suddenly and remain functional for the remainder of the individual life cycle. This frequently occurs later in life but is not the rule. This activation is marked by a pronounced change in personality which often includes the shedding of previous psychic disorders. There is no causal evidence with which to predict when or how a monad acquires allele zone disorder. A given monad may function normally for generations before and after suffering AZD.
2. The name given to an individual suffering with AZD.
Harry Horst sat back in his chair, arms raised and folded back in a relaxed position with hands clasped behind his head. Despite his casual air, he was staggered by Ministry's response to Allele's material request. Not only was it all approved but the answer came only moments after he'd submitted the proposal.
He looked up from the reply and said, "I'd been given to believe that Ministry was only allowing an initial exploratory mission, yet they're giving you enough equipment to establish a major archeological research facility on site! I don't get it. I'm delighted for you, but I don't get it."
"Everything?" Lepton blurted, looking at Allele who had her elbows squarely planted on the arms of her chair, fingers interlocked thumbs kissing. She had been focused on the wide lapel of Harry's suit. She wondered why he dressed that way, like an idiot she thought, but that wasn't fair. She had a great respect for Harry and thought him a wizard at bypassing bureaucratic obstacles. That was it, he dressed like a bureaucrat. She could forgive that, he was one after all.
Despite her lack of focus she'd heard his comment on Ministry's confirmation. The news was simply no surprise to her. Developing the materials request had been a major undertaking, While the initial proposal had been an outline of the purpose, results, and possible benefits of their research, the materials request required working out the hard pragmatic details of how they would go about accomplishing those results and the supplies and equipment they would therefore need.
For all the fear and insecurity she'd felt when given the lead of the expedition, Allele floated effortlessly through the planning stages as if they didn't matter. All that mattered was getting there. They would have what they needed to do what was to be done. Her blithe air in these matters had a powerful influence on the team. It didn't inspire, nor was it contagious, but it was quieting. Whenever she weighed in on a question, all involved accepted that it would be resolved as she said, their concerns sated, their confidence shored up. They would go about their work assuming everything would be taken care of. Then another crisis would arise for them to panic over.
In the first few weeks of planning her apprehensions melted away. Eventually she only skimmed the reports delivered to her, and didn't attend very many work meetings. She would simply ask for a brief synopsis of a report of the goings on of meetings afterward. While others poured over statistical projections, she pondered the models of the riff to closely examine a particular knoll or crevasse. She would change angle a few times in deep focus on a spot until a soft smile blossomed at the corner of her mouth, and she turned away to something else. Despite her laxity, whenever approached on a subject she demonstrated full understanding, made decisive and insightful decisions, and gave effective, comprehensive directions.
In short, she directed the project with surety, but a loose and easy baton. It was a talent that surprised everyone, herself most of all. Allele had always been most confident working alone, for long hours, on obscure and arcane matters. Leader, organizer, standard bearer, had never been her forte.
Allele sat triumphant before Harry and Lepton, pondering the former's lapel. After a moment the soft smile that befuddled most colleagues curled the corner of her mouth as her eyes shifted across to meet Lepton's to chastise him for ever doubting her. With that smile Lepton understood the depth of Allele's will. For a moment he felt a certainty that what they were doing was unstoppable and a celebration of this small milestone of little importance.
"What now?" he asked.
"The next thing." She answered.
***
The process for adjusting to Samsaric Disassociation (SD), severance from the array, was long and arduous. Actual severance would not happen until each team member was cleared by a battery of tests and simulations. Most of the initial regimens were conducted on subconscious levels that were designed to predetermine deep rooted incompatibilities in coping with the degenerative affects of SD. The team had much to accomplish before actual severances for even momentary lengths of time would be attempted.
Even Lepton who was already certified and experienced in SD was required to undergo the full regimen as he hadn't maintained his sanction. Only a few members of his team were exempt being active volunteer Rangers. They already trained regularly in SD, and were proficient in the operation and maintenance of equipment.
The first stage of the protocol was psychological verification and clearance, Clearance Protocol Tracks (CPTs). Verification was a mere formality that enabled the system to confirm the identity and track the progress of each subject throughout the training process.
In Allele's case, the system uncovered an unusually large contiguous segment of AZD dead space in her monad. AZD itself wasn't a problem, but this was a very large area comprising nearly a third of the entire chrysalis. What's more, unlike usual AZD areas, it was filled with useless code that Ministry couldn't cipher. She wasn't rejected but merely tagged to undergo a few special clearance tracks to ensure she had the storage capacity needed to actively participate in the surrogate SD routines in the MIBs.
Like most Alleles, Allele the was accustomed to the teasing she received because of her peculiar chrysalis configuration. When the team heard she was an extreme case old jokes were dusted off and given new life at her expense. In truth, being accused of limited capacity all her life had driven Allele on to succeed. No matter how much she proved otherwise, how many accomplishments she made, or awards garnered, nothing sated her inner doubts. This was a major part of the core of her darker nature.
In the end the CPTs proved to be a mere formality for Allele anyway. The commission found nothing to suggest she suffered psychological damage nor a lack of capacity to participate. It was rare that an individual used more than a fifth of the chrysalis in their monads anyway and Allele still had ample room. All but one member of her team cleared these hurdles without event.
"I don't understand it," Jon whined, getting himself out of the simulation chair. Allele put her hand gently on his shoulder and coaxed him back down.
"It's okay, everyone adjusts in their own time," she assured him.
"I understand if you decide to replace me, I don't want to hold up the project. Maybe I can handle the home office work." He lay back staring furtively at the ceiling of the lab. It was two months since they'd begun training and he was still failing the CPTs. He feared that the next stage, Graduated severance therapy, would take forever. The worst part was he didn't even get to have the sensation of severance. The simulator didn't produce a sensory experience.
Conscious discomforts and adjustment was the least of the problems with severance. The simulator wasn't concerned with short term disconnection from the Samsaric Array, but with long term cognitive dissonance. It presented Jon with questions, images, sounds, smells, and fabrications of typical events, then read the litany of affects they had on his psyche.
The simulator didn't simply read his mind. As it tapped areas of his psyche it could detect frequency disturbances consistent with known problems in other subjects. It shared what it culled with Jon to help him find and understand the difficulties he experienced and, hopefully, expel them.
"Relax," said Allele, though she knew it was useless. Something was blocking Jon and he was going to have to find it and deal with it on his own. She tried to get him to seek the help of Severance Therapists but Jon refused. She looked into making it mandatory but the therapists said it would be counterproductive. He had to get there on his own.
They recommended she find a substitute, but Allele refused. Jon was one of the few and the best cultural pathologists on Europa. It was Jon who got Allele interested in the project to begin with. It was Jon who found and organized the evidence suggesting that ruins at the center of the rift may have been a prior Ministry with an intact library. She would not give up on him, not yet.
***
After the day's sessions Jon usually went to a restaurant in an outer circle of the city that catered to maintenance outlaborers. He frequented it to avoid contact with friends or colleagues. He didn't understand how it was possible, lone wolf that he was for the simulator to keep coming back with the same result, fear of abandonment. If anything he resented Ministry and it's intrusion on the individual psyche.
The restaurant went by the simple name "Olfacteria" and offered a limited menu of modest fare. Jon liked to sit at the counter where the owner busied herself with other customers. There was a faint odor of mildew, though he would not identify it as such, there being no mildew on Europa. He sat hunched over a ceramic Olfact cup staring at the remains of the dark liquid it held. He didn't notice the aging outlaborer, or OL, sit at the stool next to his and place a small flat green stone on the counter between them.
Without looking at Jon the OL spoke, "Odd isn't it, how one childhood accident can change your life?"
Jon didn't immediately catch that the OL was talking to him, "Pardon me?" he finally replied, woken from his thoughts.
"Childhood accidents. They change you."
"Yes, yes I guess they can. Did something happen to you?" Jon asked with a polite impatience.
"Me? No, no, normal childhood. Apprenticed to a pump station, made my grades like everyone else in town. What about you? Anything ever happen to you?" The OL asked, casually patting Jon on the shoulder.
Jon was about to say that his was the same, which he'd always thought, but then the phrase 'my grand experiment' came to mind. He wasn't sure what it meant but a memory was beginning to resurface.
"There was one thing," he said after a moment. "I was very young. I remember thinking myself brave."
"Didn't we all back then?" replied the OL.
"Yes, but some of us did stupid things," said Jon.
"Like dive into the Firth," the OL said, finishing the thought Jon couldn't complete himself.
"Like dive into the Firth." Jon repeated, the memory blooming full and powerful as if it happened moments before. "What an idiot I was. I'd been warned not to, but had to see what it would be like."
"That must've been terrible," said the OL, turning around on his stool to look out the windows behind them.
"It was more than terrible," Jon continued trance-like, reliving the horror, "when I hit the surface the cross current was so strong it ripped my arm clean off. The pain was horrific."
"How'd you keep control?"
"I didn't. I was in a total panic. Didn't know what to do. The water swept me under dragging me along the bottom of the outer bank. I think I must've been pulled a third of the way around the city before I had a coherent thought. My clothes were pulled off. Whenever I hit the embankment flesh was torn and then the water would scour the wound stripping any loose skin away. Breathing water that ripped apart my insides." Jon spoke as if in a trance, reliving the horror somewhere deep in memory.
"How long were you down there?" asked the OL, as if delivering the next in a series of prepared questions.
"It was believed to be five hours. As I said I was young and panicked. I never thought to signal for disassembly."
"Is that so?" the OL prodded.
"No. No not really. There was something else."
"What?"
"I was ashamed. I didn't want to be discovered. Didn't want the humiliation of having done such a stupid thing. I feared my parents would never forgive me. I didn't know what to do. I wanted Ministry to leave me down there. Just forget me and let me wash away into silt." Jon stared wide eyed at the wall in front of him as he made his confession.
The two men faced opposite directions, not looking at each other. The OL kept his attention out the windows. Io was skipping across the sky only slightly above the peeks of the curving Scimitar Ridge that blocked the horizon. His gaze followed the tiny moon along its course. After a few moments silence to allow the memory to firmly reestablish itself in Jon's mind, he spoke, "Five hours. That takes fortitude I'll give you that. Holding on, hiding from Ministry until finally knocked unconscious by an outcrop of ice you'd missed the first fourteen full rotations along the Firth's course."
"I didn't hide from Ministry! Ministry knew, it had to know. It left me there, let me tumble and choke. The pain was searing, I lost my mind that day. Ministry stole it from me. I was in rehab for eight months before I could even remember my name. You can't trust it, it will just leave you there to rot." Jon was visibly trembling by the time he finished his rant.
The OL turned on his stool toward Jon, "And, now you rebel against Ministry by pretending to resent what you call its intrusions as a defense against your fear that it will abandon you again."
Jon looked down at the counter. Tried to make sense of the random pattern imprinted on its surface, spoke to the chaos in front of him,"It left me there."
"It isn't allowed to make decisions for you, it leaves control of your actions to you, even when young and foolish. All you had to do was tell it what you wanted," the OL explained. "It didn't abandon you. It obeyed you. This is common knowledge." he finished with a sigh.
"How can I overcome this?" asked Jon.
"You just did," answered the OL, patting him again and adding, "Remember, there's no reason not to explore whatever you come across. You'll be safe. You'll be fine." The old man's eyes were sad but Jon wasn't looking at them. It wouldn't matter if he had. The OL picked up the stone and put it back in his pocket. In a few minutes Jon would forget the conversation.
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