Midway: Chapter 16

  “Anaru… can I talk to you?” came the voice from the intercom panel outside Anaru’s office door.  He glanced at his desk monitor and at his Brainchip’s request the screen showed Neil standing outside his office.  His shoulders were slumped and his head hung down.  A half-hearted smirk came across Anaru’s face; he was happy that Neil appeared to have broken, but he was at the same time saddened and deeply troubled by what they’d had to do to him.  The whole ordeal had been hard on everyone, especially when Neil was dashing about trying to get people like Anaru or anyone else he thought might listen, to themselves break instead.  Anaru was happy that the whole ordeal might now be over, but he drew no satisfaction from seeing the spirit of someone he was responsible for appearing so broken.

  He paused a moment to be sure that it was the right thing to do, then opened the door to his office with a thought.  Only Anaru, Maharet, and Johannes had the authority to speak to Neil if they thought he was ready to come back into the fold.   While it required a consensus among them to initiate a shunning, it only took a majority of two of them to end it.   Anaru didn’t expect any resistance from either of them though, if he felt it was time to end it.  They were both as anxious to resolve the situation as he was, now more than ever with the problem of the missing transmission for them to deal with.

  As Neil walked in, Anaru leaned forward, put his elbows on his desk and made a fist which covered his mouth and held up his head.  Anaru held his eyes on Neil, but Neil’s were on the floor.  There was silence for a few moments, and then Neil softly stated, “I’m sorry.”  

  Neil glanced at his office monitor and sent a text message to Maharet and Johannes’ PANs telling them that Neil was in his office and for them to come right away.  He then leaned back in his chair with his hands in his lap, still only looking at Neil.

  “The missing transmission… it scares me.  No news from Earth, we’re… we’re completely cut off.  We’re all alone… out here…  And I am lonely… within that loneliness…  I’m loneliness squared,” Neil stated flatly, though raising his right eyebrow at the last comment he made as though he hadn’t thought of saying it before he did, or hadn’t fully appreciated his own comment until he heard himself saying it out loud.

  “I miss you Anaru... I miss my mother, my sister… everyone.  Johannes…”  After a few moments of silence he simply begged in a soft and quiet voice, “please talk to me Anaru, I… I don’t know what else I can do…”

  “Okay Neil, okay,” Anaru uttered as he got up to give Neil a hug.  “It’s okay, I believe you.”  He pulled back from the hug and looked him in the eye.  “You’re going to have to work twice as hard as everyone else for a while.   You understand that?”

  Neil was sniveling and sniffling, but he nodded that yes, he understood.  “You don’t just get to come back like nothing’s happened.   You have to earn our acceptance again.   This is just the first step, you understand?”

  “I understand,” the man acknowledged.

  “And I have to warn you, some people will be more reticent to forgive you than others,” his captain warned him.  Some people I’m sure already have… but some will have a problem with you for some times to come.  You’re going to have to be prepared for that.”  He left out that he himself was more in the camp of those who would need more time than most to really forgive him, and to forget what he’d put everyone through.

  “I understand,” he repeated.

  “Then welcome back Neil…  And yes, we’re all worried about the missing transmission, I’m sorry I don’t have any answers for you.”

  At that, his office door chimed and Anaru opened it with a though, allowing Maharet to enter.  Immediately, she was deeply embraced by Neil who was too overwhelmed to speak.  Maharet looked over Neil’s shoulder at Anaru with a quizzical expression, and with equally questioning open palms, but Anaru nodded at her reassuringly and she hugged her son back.  They were still hugging several minutes later when Johannes arrived.

   

  An hour later, Johannes and Anaru had Neil in their makeshift interrogation room.  He didn’t really understand what he was doing there, but he wasn’t in any kind of state to be complaining or asking what they wanted from him.  At this point he was just happy that they were acknowledging his existence again.

  “Alright Neil,” Johannes said once he had him hooked up to all of his apparatus, “these tools are going to measure some of your physiology while I ask you some questions alright?  Your skin conductivity, brain pattern, pulse and breathing rate, that sort of thing.  This camera here,” he pointed to it on the table, “will record your facial expressions for later analysis.  All this is designed to detect if you’re lying.  Do you understand?”

  “I have nothing to lie about,” Neil reported.

  “I believe you Neil, but we have to do this anyway.  Half a dozen others have already gone through this,” Johannes reassured him.

  “Ok.” Neil offered shakily.

  “Now… as you’ve probably heard, there’s been a murder onboard.”  Johannes looked over at the screen to check on his responses as he brought it up.  So far he wasn’t seeing anything more than he’d expect from the regular low level anxiety around being interrogated.

  “I… I know he’s dead.   The possibility of it being a murder is a rumor that’s been going around.”

  “We conducted interviews just like this one for people we believed to have the technical capacity to manipulate the Brainchip logs, and who could not provide a verifiable alibi on the night in question,” Johannes explained.

  “I don’t have any idea how one would go about changing the Brainship records!  I’m an ecologist for god’s sake!!” Neil pleaded nervously.

  Johannes saw a spike in his apparent stress level but it was moderate.   He wrote it off to the stress of realizing he was a murder suspect.   “I know Neil, I know.”

  “That’s why we didn’t include you on our original suspect list,” Anaru reported from his perch behind Johannes.  He was leaning back against the closed door with his arms folded, a position from which he could see both the physiometrics display monitor, as well as Neil and the close up of his face fed from the camera to the second monitor in front of Johannes.

  “However, it is also the case that you have no verifiable alibi for that night,” Johannes continued.  “In light of that combined with your recent anti-social behaviour, we thought it only prudent to subject you to the same scrutiny we subjected to those on our original suspect list.  Do you understand?”

  “Yes…” Neil answered uncomfortably.  His readings had stabilized somewhat; he was better aware of the situation he was in now.

  “The truth is,” Anaru added, “anybody at all on the ship could have taught themselves enough technical expertise to screw with the Brainchip logs, and since our original suspect list was based on that criteria and it didn’t work out… we have to move on to the next phase.”

  Johannes beckoned for Anaru to get close enough for him to whisper something to him.  The captain pushed off of the wall and obliged.  “We really should put him in the fMRI before we go there, if only to follow the same procedure as the others.”

  “Well… are you going to put everyone in the next phase through the MRI?” Anaru whispered back.

  “No…” he answered.  “At least, I hadn’t planned to.”

  “Then why not just consider Neil the first in the new investigation as opposed to the last in the previous?  Besides, I don’t know about you but I’m pretty confident he couldn’t have done this.   I don’t think he’s a murderer… I think he’s just a tool.”

  Johannes quietly chuckled, and then nodded.  Anaru returned to his perch against the door.

  “Ok Neil, we’re going to try something else and then you’ll be free to go, alright?”  Johannes reassured him.

  “Ok…” Neil answered, not sure what to expect.

  “I’m going to show you an image, alright?  And then I’m just going to scrutinize your reactions.  Understand?”

  “I guess so…”

  “Alright then, here we go…”   Johannes picked up the two posts of his large scroll and unfurled it only about a third of the way, revealing only the total area of a fully deployed medium scroll, about thirty centimeter across.  With only the side of the screen which faced him activated (one could mirror the display on the inverse or display something else entirely on the opposite side), he navigated through the files on his personal PAN with a few targeted thoughts.   He decided on what he considered to be one of the most gruesome images of the crime scene, and then pulled the device all the way apart to maximize the screen size as well as the intended effect.   He then set it face down on the table in front of him.

  “Ready?” Johannes asked, as good naturedly as he could manage.

  “I guess so…” Neil meekly offered again.

  Johannes flipped the scroll up again, this time facing Neil.  His eyes widened and then bulged; his skin then went several shades paler than its normally rather dark colour.  After a few moments of apparent horror and deep disgust, he turned to his side and vomited on the floor.

  “Put it away…” he said weakly and feebly.  “Please… put it away…”

  Johannes and Anaru looked at each other.  Anaru raised an eyebrow and cocked his head to the side as if to say to Johannes: ‘Yeah, I don’t think he’s our killer, and uh… maybe we should bring a bucket in, hunh?’