Chapter 4: Millions of Eyes Watch

I'm a porn star?

Not that I'm complaining. Being featured on a round-the-clock video channel all my own isn't unique. Here on Paxlyn Domain all 'children' are under constant surveillance. I just noticed when I stumbled across a feed permitting me to watch the other former crew members of the Futile Gesture in real time, or in different editions. I could even see their vitals: blood pressure, respiration, pulse, hormonal make-up. This appears to be part of the social indoctrination that all societies impose on their citizens, except that it ends when the "child" has earned adult status. The conditioning will remain, however: knowing that millions of eyes are watching every move tends to motivate conformity. I was ignorant of this social control tool until a few days ago and the epiphany left me senseless because every neuron in my brain seemed to be processing this new data point.

Talk about living in a goldfish bowl! There's more. Silvia's people are adding a new dimension to Council's monitoring of Paxlyn Domain's most junior citizens: "mind reading" is too crude a description but works.

"Nolan intellectualizes people and things and his own feelings in order to keep from being overwhelmed," Garma, my mind science teacher and one of Silvia's people, was explaining to Mother Regina at breakfast. We were having something called crepes. I learned about food as a means to bribe my superiors. It was that or sex, and in HoChaRa all sex (including celibacy) is illegal because banning sex is a means of controlling HoChaRa subjects. People need physical intimacy almost as much as they need oxygen, water and food. Governments are necessary evils. "Nolan keeps things at a distance by analyzing everything. He has a very high level of empathy. He can be easily crushed emotionally. If not for the emotional distance he's created, Nolan would be too depressed to live. He would literally curl up and die."

"That's why Council limited corporal punishment for him," Mother Regina concluded. "Come in, serve those delicious things before they get cold, Nolan. It's not polite to eves drop but you need to hear this. You say that it doesn't occur to Nolan to rebel?"

Garma fixed her golden eyes on me and I could feel her concern.

"Silvia selected wisely even though you are a different species," Garma said. We humans tend to regard non-human aliens as inferiors and as humans in 'rubber suits.' In the case of the Vix, I guess that would be a furry suit. Yes, I'm intellectualizing. "You would cherish her, protect her. You didn't even know that you did it, but you projected the right image into the minds of your ship mates so that they accepted Silvia as a stupid animal and a valuable ship's mascot. That saved Silvia's life. Don't look startled, Mother Regina. Nolan uses multiple tools. It's part of his profession. This delicious breakfast was one of his tools. Don't regard the mental arts as something magical. Creating a desired impression—what was that book you read to Silvia while you were on the Futile Gesture?"

"Influence: How to Rule Your World and Make Others Like It," I said. "It is an ancient text that I picked up from a street vendor in Phoenix on the edge of HoChaRa years ago. He wrote it, he said, and he was peddling them from a push cart."

Perhaps 'book' is the wrong word for a multi-media presentation. It wasn't paper—it was a memory stick that I had to purchase a patent reader for.

"Nolan is very humble," Garma continued. "He knows that he is very limited. If it were possible for him to wipe the HoChaRa government of the face of the galaxy, Nolan would look at the pros and cons—even if doing so would result in his own destruction."

"Ancient philosophy," I quoted. "First, do no harm. I have a lot of trouble living up to that. I recommend cream sauce with these crepes. They're filled with a leaf called 'spinach.' Most people don't like that because it wasn't prepared right. I like the stuff raw or sandwiched between wheat bread, myself."

"I can understand Nolan," Garma added strips of crisply-cooked fatback to her plate and poured the yellow cream sauce over her stuffed crepes. "This Council of yours is a machine? Paxlyn is ruled by a machine?"

"Yes," Mother Regina forked a bite of spinach crepe in her mouth and was momentarily distracted by the sensual flavor burst.

"Council is a symbiont of multiple electronic intelligences, souls or people in your terms, Garma," I said.

NOLAN IS CORRECT.

Everybody at the breakfast table was staring at me—even Garma and Silvia.

"The machine TALKS to you?" Fawn had these wide blue eyes that matched the red headed twins—Fawn was my assigned human tutor and nanny. I needed a lot of care—I'm high maintenance, and not by choice.

"Council talks to everybody," I said, astonished that there was doubt. "I was surprised that I was able to speak to Paxlyn Domain citizens upon being released from Regression Therapy without any annoying translator implants. I had been studying your language from broadcasts and could perhaps reserve a hotel room or negotiate a star port as a passenger or order dinner in a restaurant. Your language has more than ten million words and Council acts as an interactive thesaurus, helping find the right phrase to express concepts."

PAXLYN DOMAIN HAS SIX MAJOR LANGUAGES. NOLAN IS MISTAKEN BECAUSE HE HAS MASTERED ALL SIX.

"With help," I said. "I still rely upon Council as a crutch—more like a wheel chair. I see I'm not making sense. HoChaRa has a large population of handicapped humans. They require various means of mobility assistance that are unnecessary here. When a person is maimed or crippled, being regressed to childhood fixes the body."

"How did you learn that?" Mommy Mandy asked.

"He's a spy, Mandy dear," Mother Regina answered for me. "He finds things out. That's what spies do. What I want to know is why HoChaRa let you live."