This is a science fiction short story reflecting my experience advising boards and commissions at the State AG’s Office, where I am currently a Senior Assistant AG. I imagined a three-brained cyborg operating in dangerous situations pursuant to well-defined procedural rules.
“What makes a guy just off both his coworkers out here? Astropsychosis? Or is he just a psycho? Did you analyze that?”
“Des. I’m calculating time to the med unit.” Sarah, always calm, even with Des trying to rattle her. We had stopped. With nothing else to do, I swiveled the main beam and focused the sensors back through the blackness, down the mining shaft. Our footprints stood out in the beam’s harsh light, spaced far apart on the dusty floor.
I inhaled through our duralung while Sarah scanned the mining company schematics, ran through calculations. I couldn’t begin to follow the flying data stream.
“Twenty-seven minutes eight seconds.” She paused. “The medical unit is a cramped space. Sonic blasts are going to be risky.”
I could feel Des’s irritation through a shared nerve tract. “Yeah – I think I can figure that out when we get there. You guys want to just take care of your own business?” I almost commented on the irony. But time was short, and I had other concerns.
“Where are we on EMUs?” Energy. Sarah checked the storage, calculated again. “A little over 345.” Damn. I was hoping we were closer to 500. I didn’t need Sarah’s calculations to know it was going to be close. Again, I saw in my mind’s eye the shards of the supplemental battery, shattered during our rough landing in the moon’s regolith. This was a Strategic Decision, subject to Procedural Rule 7.0.
“I move we proceed to the target.”
A pause. Then Sarah: “Second.” Another pause. Des: “Well, we’re here. Let’s grab this sonofabitch.”
“Motion passes. Vámonos.” I wheeled back around, and once again we loped down the dark tunnel with long strides. Sarah transmitted our status to Orion as we passed a dormant mining bot, its bulky limbs resting awkwardly on the tunnel floor.
____
“The worst threesome ever.”
Des’s favorite joke, made so many times over the last two and a half years that it didn’t really register anymore with Sarah or me. We never saw each other embodied, before Orion put us together. I always picture Sarah as a redhead for some reason. Brad has a monobrow and a dimpled chin. I don’t know if that’s how they looked, and we’ve never talked about it. Seemed as if Orion managed to block certain conversations. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter much now.
Dr. Peters introduced us. After my docking pod exploded, and the blue and white flames ate through my suit and then chewed at my limbs until I passed out. When I woke up, the searing pain was gone, and I looked through the wide visor of the CB-3, in a cavernous room at the Orion Security lab. I didn’t know where I was but, somehow, I knew I wasn’t alone. Like breath on the back of my neck.
