F-473 - Objectivity

Objectivity


Natalie tries very hard to keep her professional and personal lives separate.  This is difficult when she is called upon in a professional capacity while she is on reserve.

The rest of her shift is using the chance to stretch out, to unwind, to remember what it is like to see sunlight and sit in brightly lit rooms.

Instead of joining Clint and the gang, Natalie is sitting at a training station while a foul-mouthed little woman hovers over her shoulder.  The Programmer’s language has been tame today, but Natalie has learned to switch her censoring software on anyway.

“—and this funny-shaped lasso is a fluid loop,” she finishes, gesturing to the projection.  “If it solidifies, it’ll turn into a neat little oval.”

“Huh,” says Five, tilting her head.  “Awesome.”

Normally, Natalie does not ask questions when she is presented with the proper paperwork from a senior member of the Network, but this is all very irregular and very annoying.  So she turns and slips off the vize.  “Can I ask what brought this on, ma’am?  Is there something about the TMS you’re planning to improve?”

Five glances at Natalie sidelong, menus from the vize throwing whitish reflections on her dark eyes.  “Nah.  I just like learnin’ ~~.  Nobody ever showed me what the shapes meant, and I couldn’t get clearance to bother Tom or Pietro.  ‘Sides, Pietro’s a ~~ing ~~-head bastard and Tom doesn’t have the patience to teach anybody jack ~~ing ~~.”

“You just…like learning.”

Five sticks her hands into the sim and starts manipulating the training data like a pro.  “Yepyep.  Gal’s gotta have a hobby, right?  I’m over six hundred years old, kid.  I’m old enough I stopped countin’.  I mark the passage of time by what new cool ~~ I’ve learned and by how ~~ing monkey~~ retarded the Underprogrammers are.  I’m not a Head Prog.  Know what that means?  Means I get to sit ~~in’ neck-deep in Six’s ~~-side-up projects as compiled by his ~~ing dumb~~ button-mashing ~~-for-brains Underprogrammer team.  And when I’m not doing that, I overhaul all the ~~-ass technical documentation and give Three another set of eyes checking over the Underprogrammer curriculum at the Academy.”

It sounds like a lot of work to Natalie; she does not see why someone would want to add to that by learning technical things instead of doing something relaxing like gardening or painting (her own hobby of choice is watercolor).

Finally, Five taps a button on the console to kill the datafeed to her glasses.  She steps back and crosses her arms.  Then she looks at Natalie.  “They make it sound like a sweet-ass deal.  ‘Wow, you’re qualified for full Programmer status!  Here, have these cool toys and these mandatory life extensions.’”  She taps her temple.  “But it’s the learning curve.  When something’s new, it’s challenging and exciting, and I ~~ing devour it.  Then I hit my plateau and it turns into busy-work.  The most exciting part of my day is finding some little misplaced tidbit that one of Six’s ~~head Underprogrammers stuck in the wrong place.  If I’m really lucky, something pretty epic goes wrong and I get to sit down and figure out what it is.  The only thing that keeps me from hacking into Medical and faking up records so I can skip my life extensions is learning something new.  Twenty years ago, that meant talking to Maria’s husband and learning all about everything from a resonance relay to a pulse core.  This year, I decided to talk to an Analyst about the TMS.”

“I think I see,” Natalie offers diplomatically.  “Did you draw my name out of a hat?  Or was I the first one on your list who didn’t turn you down in favor of enjoying vacation time?”

The Programmer snorts at her.  “I asked Six who his favorite Analyst was, aside from his tight-ass bitch of a fiancée.”

“Steph’s not so bad.”

“Kid, I’m too god~~ old to put up with some piece of ~~-~~ing ~~-sucking little girl wagging her finger at me and telling me I need to stop ~~ing swearing.  What the ~~’s next?  She gonna ~~in’ tell me to god~~ stop eating red meat, stop listening to loud music, stop spending recreational time at the firing range?  The Network is gonna milk me for every year they can get, which means I got another couple thousand years ahead of me, and no ~~ing way in ~~-~~ing hell am I gonna waste the energy trying to jack off some ~~y piece of ~~ little know-it-all girl scout bitch who’s gonna fade right back outta my life in another twenty or thirty.”

Natalie busies herself with turning off the training sim and calling the lights back up.

Five squints in the brightness.  “You’re thinking soppy ~~ like ‘oh, what a lonely way to look at it.’  But I tried it at first, the whole ‘make nice’ thing.  I got frustrated and stressed out, and whoever-it-was had no say over my life anyway.  They just annoyed me, made me waste energy, and died.  If I’m gonna spend my ~~in’ energy on somebody, it’s gonna be somebody I like.  I can be diplomatic as ~~ when it comes to hanging out with Neena’s latest boyfriend-girlfriend-what-~~ing-ever.  I can lay off the swearing for Luke and Jess.  I can even eat vegetarian for Doreen, since she’s on that fruity god~~ health-kick.  But I shovel way too much of Six’s ~~ already to be nice to his pushy fiancée whom I loathe.”

“The Cartographer’s older than you, and he manages just fine with the long-term ‘make nice’ thing,” Natalie points out.

For a moment, Five makes a face like she is ready for a fight.

Natalie hates confrontation.  Her palms start to sweat.

Then Five rolls her eyes and starts walking for the door.  “His ~~ing default setting is ‘be nice because everybody likes you anyway.’  I will ~~ing bet you a god~~ mother-~~ing sugar-frosted chocolate ~~ he can’t even ~~ing remember the ~~ing names of ~~ing ninety percent of the god~~ people he ~~ing works with on a ~~ing regular god~~ basis.  His energy goes to Programmers, his team of Engineers, and people named Tony Stark.  He can expend the ~~ing energy to be ~~ing nice because he ~~ing damn well doesn’t ~~ing acknowledge the hopeless ~~ing transience of life.  People are a huge, faceless, ~~ing interchangeable mass for him.  The blithe ~~ing asshole doesn’t ~~ing mourn the poor ~~ers because they’re something slightly ~~ing less than real to him.  Landscape.  Furniture.”  She pauses at the door and eyes Natalie over her shoulder.  “True objectivity.  Is that really better than my way?”

“That’s not true,” Natalie disagrees.  “He’s not objective.  He’d risk his life for Tony’s.”

“For any god~~ Tony,” Five insists.  “Even the ~~ing bad ones.  Because the ~~ing ~~ little pieces of suicidal ~~ing ~~ are all the ~~ing same to him, and he’s got a lot of bull~~-ass ~~ing sentimental ~~head emotional baggage about his ~~ing dead best friend.  If he treats them like they’re all the same god~~ person, then his friend’s still alive.  Don’t even ~~ing try to pass that ~~ed-up ~~ off as ~~ing healthy.  It’s down to resonance receptivity, so-called ~~ing soul-polarity, the likelihood of a given subject to gravitate toward a specific second subject.  ~~ing soulmates and ~~ing destined best friends and ~~ like that.”

“That’s what you think?  Seriously?”

Huffing a sigh, Five points aggressively toward the floor.  “~~, yes.  That’s why Steves aren’t suitable for the kind of morally ambiguous dirty work we shove on Wades.  The Savant will shoot one of your kind if he has to.  Maybe he’ll feel bad about it.  Maybe he’ll shake his head and sigh about having to kill yet another Nate, because God knows he’s had to off quite a lot of you ~~ing egomaniacal asshats.  But he’ll do it.  A Steve that will kill a Tony?  One in a million, and they all lose their ~~ing minds afterward, which is pretty god~~ useless.  The Cartographer’s whole purpose is making nice, and that’s the only reason we still have a use for him, because the guy’s ~~ing borderline deranged.  Him and his ~~ing objectivity.”

Awkwardly, Natalie shifts on her feet.  Five knows almost all of Natalie’s closest friends, but Natalie barely knows Five except as an authority figure.  She wants to argue, but she is almost afraid to.

She really hates confrontation.

“Impaired grief response, they call it,” Five goes on.  “A flattening of the empathy curve as can be observed in ~~ing murderous sociopaths.”

Natalie clears her throat.  “Thank you for clearing that up, ma’am,” she says quietly.  “Clint and the others are expecting me for brunch.”

Five rolls her eyes again.  “Whatever.  I’ve gotta bitch somebody out about how lousy the TMS docs are, and then I’ve got a psych appointment.”

The trip from the training room to the gang’s favorite pub passes in a haze for Natalie.  Over the noise of the patrons, Peter whistles to get her attention.

She sits down with them all, but her mind is still turning over that one word:  objectivity.

“Hey, pretty,” says Neena, elbowing her gently.  “You’re a million miles away.  What’s up with that?”

Natalie chews her lip for a moment.  “You’ve worked with the Cartographer, right?  You and Peter both?”

“Yeah.  Tons of times.”

“Has he ever called you by name?”

Neena blinks and looks at the ceiling in thought.  “I…y’know I don’t think he has.”

Peter takes a sip of his soda.  “Calls me ‘Pete’ all the time.”  He shrugs.  “Well, when he’s not laying on all the old-guy talk.  The ‘son’ and ‘sport’ and ‘in my day’ stuff.  Come to think of it…he called me ‘Pete’ before we were ever introduced, and I was a last-minute assist on that job.”

“Seems sexist,” grunts Neena.  “I was properly introduced, and he’s still only ever called me ‘Agent’ or ‘Miss.’  What a sweet way to talk down to somebody…~~ing misogynist.”

Peter shakes his head.  “Huh-uh.  I don’t think it’s a sexist thing, ‘cause he calls Four ‘Hope’ all the time, and he calls Five ‘Miss Oshima.’  With them, I guess he’s just known them a lot longer, and with me I think he’s known a lot of Petes.  He must have, because he knows my favorite breakfast cereal, and ~~ like that.”

Natalie holds up a hand, halting Neena just before she can speak.  “Hold on, guys, I’m sorry…  I left my censor on, and it’s incredibly distracting to hear that soothing tone in the middle of a normal conversation.  Auditory censor:  turn off.”

“Hah!” says Clint.  “And you said you’d never stoop to supporting censorship brainware…”

“That was before I had to spend more than ninety seconds in close proximity with Five.  Her swearing can get so dense and creative that it’s almost nonsensical.  It’s just easier to hear a tranquil stretch of meaningless noise that doesn’t conjure up some disgusting mental images.  She uses the c-word so much you’d think she was a chicken farmer.”

Jessica grins.  “You always said I must be exaggerating.  I consider it downright Herculean that I’ve got her using embarrassingly kid-safe words like ‘bootie’ now.  Just gotta look past that—Mimi’s a sweetie, no matter how crotchety she pretends to be.”

“Five, sweet?” Peter scoffs.  “What part of her’s sweet?  The way she glares death-lasers at Steph?”

“I kinda like that part,” says Emma.  “Steph can be a domineering bitch sometimes.”

Natalie sighs and orders a glass of juice from the table’s synth.  “Back to the subject.  Doesn’t it strike you as a little weird that the Cartographer could work with somebody for years, see her dozens of times, and not bother to learn her name?”

Carol wrinkles her nose and shakes her head.  “Mm.  Uh-uh.  The man’s like two thousand years old, he’s got a lot of clutter in his head.  It’ll take more than five years of seeing somebody once a month to learn her name.  Everybody on life extension deals with the survivor’s guilt thing in a different way, and he seems to deal with it by not really getting close to anybody new.  So he knows the names of people he met before, and he knows the names of people he’s seen almost every day for hundreds of years.  Kind of…enforced objectivity.”

The word makes Natalie flinch.

“Exactly,” agrees Emma.  “Whereas Five sorts people into two categories depending on whether she gets along with them straight away.  If she doesn’t, she ignores them.  If she does, she makes friends.”

“She doesn’t ignore Tony very well,” Natalie snorts.

Jessica laughs.  “You don’t really think she doesn’t like Tony, do you?  Oh, Nat, she adores him.  If it weren’t for Tony, Mimi’s life would be boring as hell.  She’s the one who first started sorting through all the random stuff he wrote down and finding all the most useful parts, back when he was still an Underprogrammer.”

“She said the Cartographer doesn’t acknowledge the transience of life.”

They all stop and stare at her for a moment.

“Of course he doesn’t,” Carol dismisses.  “He’s the second most well-traveled Keeper in the entire Network.  If he stopped to think about how many of the people he meets he’ll never see again, he’d go completely bonkers.  I’m not saying that closing your eyes and pretending it’s all a bad dream is any way to live a life, but it’s worked for him.  He finds comfort in knowing that there’s something like a hundred thousand iterations of Tony Stark in greb.  He sees that as pretty good odds that wherever he gets sent, his best friend will be there.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Natalie protests weakly.  “People aren’t interchangeable.  I’m not the same person as the Auditor’s father, or the Beta in charge of Edenworld, or LV’s Askani’son.”

Emma shrugs.  “Would you like to tell him that?  I’m sure he’d stop making pathetic faces sometime in the next decade.”

“Can we talk about something marginally less depressing than the state of the Cartographer’s mental health?” Clint interjects.  “Like endangered species, or beached whales, or terminally ill children?”


.End.