Midway: Epilogue

  Dhika agreed to Johannes’ idea.   Something about the symmetry between his proposal and denying her candidacy for the captain’s chair was deeply appealing to her.  She told the old man that she would only do this for him under one condition though, that he came out publicly with everything; about what his father did, the true origins of himself and his son, as well as what happened to Tycho and all the other poor victims.  They also had to be out in the open about her pregnancy if it was to happen at all.  

  Dhika believed in the truth, she believed that keeping big and important truths secret inevitably created more harm than making any truths public ever could.  She believed that truth itself could be a powerful social antiseptic against conflict and that while lying may sometimes delay conflict, it only ever made that conflict worse in the end when it was ultimately exposed.

  It was in that spirit that a month later, the Midway truth and reconciliation process was established.  Once Seth had won the captaincy by default and had been informed about the truth of all that had gone on, it hadn’t been hard to sell him on the idea of such a process.   The hearing was held in the dining hall over a period of a few weeks and everyone was invited to tell their story and their own version of events; everyone was free to tell the truth with impunity.  To encourage everyone telling the truth, no one could be punished for what they said or admitted to during the process.  Everyone was invited to attend the actual hearings themselves, but detailed recordings were made of the entire hearing for those who couldn’t attend, as well as for posterity.  

  Before the process officially began, a full investigation was conducted into the abuse.   It was discovered that in addition to Uzodimma and Tycho, there were four other victims of the murdered rapist.   Once identified, the crew did what they could to help them.  They were provided counseling and in at least two of the cases, they were helped immensely just by no longer having to keep their terrible secret to themselves.   Informally they became a small support group for each other and often found solace in each other’s company.   One of them found it necessary to address in his counseling sessions how elated he was to hear of the fate of his abuser.  He later admitted publicly during the hearing that he had also been pondering developing a similar plan to murder him but that Tycho had beaten him to it.  He often wondered if it was something he could have ever actually done, or if it was just something he talked himself up about.

  Many people spoke at the hearing, but Johannes and Dhika agreed to go last after everything else was out of the way, and then further discussion could be had after them based on what they revealed about their intentions.  When the time came, Johannes took the stand with an obviously heavy heart, and told the story one last time about he and his son both in fact being clones of the man he had believed to be his father, and about the deliberately different upbringing and conditioning with which Markus Bowland had subjected Tycho and himself to.  Kirana was in the crowd as he explained this, and it was the first time she’d heard that her own origins were anything less than perfectly natural.  As perfectly natural that is, as reproduction ever got on the New Horizon.  Since she was a different ethnicity altogether, she wasn’t in any way genetically related to Tycho or Johannes, but she did grow up with them.  This was after all her family he was talking about.

  After making good on his promise to Dhika to reveal all of this, Johannes also explained what he now understood about his wife’s suicide.  He explained the double bind she faced in not being able to live knowing that the man she married and the son she raised were in some unnatural way actually the same man she’d had such dislike for, and yet caring enough about them to not be able to reveal it to them themselves or to anyone else on the ship.   He outlined his opinion that the depression many felt, as well as the emergence of the rapist, his wife’s suicide, and even Markus Bowland himself being allowed on the ship in the first place, were all the fault of those who conceived and launched this mission in the first place.  He described the heresy he now felt in his heart; that it was all the result of the hubris of their founders trying to capture an isolated part of the human condition, and their cruelty in subjecting them the children of the void, to the empty choiceless lives they were now forced to live in the service of other people’s dreams and ambitions.  

  He implored the crowd to understand and believe that there was nothing fundamentally or inherently wrong with Tycho or his father; or himself for that matter.  He argued passionately that in each case it was an extraordinary outward pressure which led them to their own crimes and bad judgments.   He did the best he could to set them up to accept Dhika’s pregnancy.

  He also gave a detailed description of what happened on the bridge that fateful day.  He described how Tycho had begged to be killed and how convincing he’d been.  While Johannes only finally shot Tycho after he lunged at him, he reluctantly admitted that Dhika was right; there were probably other options.  He might have tried to just wound him but in the moment it simply didn’t occur to him.  Trying to be as honest as possible, he explained that partly he was just afraid and reacted before he could think, but also partly that he had come to understand Tycho’s predicament.  He understood what torture it would be for him to be locked into his suite for the rest of his natural life.  He believed that it would be so unbearable that Tycho would only have become more embittered, and would inevitably try again, potentially hurting far more people in the process. 

  He tried to explain that he believed Tycho begging for death was in a tortured sense him trying to pay his life debt to the mission.  After being pressed he admitted that yes, he probably could have avoided killing him even while being attacked and also that yes, if Tycho had never attacked him finally he would probably still be alive.  To many gasps in the crowd though, he admitted that while he probably didn’t have to kill him, part of him had believed it was the right thing to do regardless in the given circumstances.  When asked if he would do it again, he declined to respond and concluded his testimony. 

  It was then Dhika’s turn, and her part was first to explain why she had dropped from the race to be captain.  She then had to reveal that on Johannes’ request she had impregnated herself with yet another clone of Markus Bowland.  The audience was aghast, how could she??  After all that had happened, was this nightmare never to end?  She implored them to understand that she truly believed that this time could be different, that this clone would be good.  She insisted that knowing his history she could as his mother definitively help to steer him on a good path, and that there was obviously no chance of repeating what happened with Tycho since the rapist who created the monster within him was long dead now.

  When Dhika left the stand Maharet returned before anyone else could.  She in no uncertain terms decried all of it, saying that the very idea was a complete abomination.  Many in the crowd were dumbfounded that she would so publicly and so pointedly criticize her own daughter, let alone her fellow and supposedly equal authority figure.  She explained at length the error of Markus, Johannes, and Dhika’s ways with force and conviction. 

  This truth and reconciliation process was not a trial and although some people found it shocking, Maharet publicly denouncing Dhika and Johannes’ actions was the whole point.   There were no facts in dispute; there were no criminal charges to be laid and no defenses to be asserted.  The purpose of this gathering was simply to get the truth out in the open, to let it breathe and see the light of day as much was possible on an interstellar ship.  The point was to get everything out and stated officially for the record.   People could then make their own judgments.  Was it a serious offence for Markus to create Johannes and Tycho the way he did?  Was it right to hide their true origins?   Should Johannes have avoided killing Tycho even if it meant further risk to his own life and to the lives of everyone onboard?  Did Johannes and Dhika now have the right to create yet another clone of Markus Bowland?  Now everyone on the ship had the ability to hear all of the evidence and testimony on these issues, and decide for themselves.

  Two camps emerged as a result, and one side simply condemned all of it.  The cloning program, Johannes’ behaviour in the critical moment, and especially Dhika’s new pregnancy, they emphatically disapproved of all of it.  Even when Johannes would be long dead and gone, and Dhika’s ‘son’ would be a healthy and helpful, well-adjusted young man, there would be some who would continue to shun him and Dhika publicly still, and many more who would shun them privately.  Ironically these were often the same people who believe that Tycho should not have been killed; some believed that he should have been spared so that he could be punished for what he did while others thought that it was simply wrong to kill anyone under any circumstances.  They believed that Johannes should have avoided murder even if it meant further threat to his own life.  This camp firmly and conservatively clung as best as they could to the original mission protocols and parameters laid out for them by the revered founders of their mission, and did the best they could to interpret their intentions.  Despite any flaws they may have betrayed, they were believed to still be their best guides for how to run the ship and live their lives.

  Another view emerged though; one which increasingly saw Markus, Johannes, Tycho, and now Dhika’s son too, all as part of some larger grand experiment exploring the subtleties of the relationship between nature and nurture; between genetics and lived experience.  They found the different incarnations of the same person resulting from different environmental factors fascinating.  At first the whole mess was derisively referred to as the Bowland Experiments but as time went by and many became more comfortable with the idea, the expression came into their common language and over the next several decades, several people conducted biopsychosocial research into the Bowland Experiment as part of their tertiary and quaternary educations.  It was many of these same people who came to sympathize with Johannes in his losing of respect and trust in the mission founders and their dictums. 

  It was usually these same people who found that they could understand Johannes’ thinking in that critical moment on the bridge, and found that maybe he did do the right thing in that moment.  At any rate, they could certainly understand the impossibility of the no-win situation he found himself in.  Many of them found that it was difficult to judge someone based on their actions in such a ridiculously contrived and stressful set of circumstances anyways without having been there themselves.  Many on both sides felt though, that ideally efforts should have been made to help Tycho clinically and psychologically first, before undertaking so final a solution to his problem.

  A few days after the conclusion of the truth and reconciliation commission, Johannes was found dead in the zero gravity bubble.  An autopsy revealed that he’d committed suicide using the same synthetic opioids his wife had used.  The note which he’d written on the medium scroll found floating near him in the bubble, explained simply and briefly, that he did not wish to run the risk of contamination or influencing Dhika’s new baby in any way.  He went on to explain that after a lifetime of believing that the mission founders had his best interests at heart and that their collective purpose on the ship was inviolable and unimpeachable, he didn’t know how to approach living the rest of his life in the absence of that faith.  He felt far too old to learn all over again a new way to live in the absurd condition of a life without meaning or purpose.

  So much information being presented all at once led to a suspicion about a larger conspiracy at play on the ship, especially for the first camp who had a deep and enduring mistrust of the cloning program in general, which in some sense was completely understandable.  They had after all learned all at once about men they had known their whole lives being clones, about Johannes not being completely honest about the circumstances around his killing of Tycho, and of all things about Dhika’s pregnancy and the continuation of the cloning program!  Johannes’ suicide only expanded the material with which ever more elaborate conspiracy theories could be fabricated.  

  Some began to suspect that it had all been part of some larger plan; with some even quietly suggesting that Johannes and Dhika had conspired ahead of time to commit premeditated murder in order to get Tycho out of the way so that together they could replace him with a newer version, one which was possibly enhanced somehow.  At first they feared that he was somehow genetically modified to be uniquely suited to the environment of Haven, now that they were beginning to learn more about it.

  Rumors propagated in the shadows faster than they could be refuted.  Worst of all, the refutations themselves quickly became part of the conspiracy somehow.  Small problems with explanations led some to disregard the authority of perfectly reasonable arguments against broader accusations.  The side of reason lost again and again as the conspiracists became less and less receptive to reason, less and less willing to change their mind, and more and more convinced that anything their opposition said, only served to confirm their preexisting narrative.

  As the decades went on, and as the New Horizon got closer and closer to its arrival at Haven, the rumors subsided.  People involved in the original events died off one by one, and all seemed to be well as final preparations were being made for the big event one hundred and sixty years in the making.  But dissent percolated just under the surface.  The original conspiracy movement had not gone away; it had instead gone quiet and moved underground, where it could fester and thrive like a quietly metastasising cancer on the soul of the mission, and the dream that had been the New Horizon.

  Two camps emerged out of the events known as Midway.  Both were forced to cooperate with each other while still trapped together on the ship, but when those forces would finally be let loose on the surface of Haven, the conflict would finally have a chance to breathe, and play itself out to its inevitable conclusion upon their arrival.