Session 33 (26 January 2024)

Location: Athune (Halcyon 2424)

Date: 292-5600

Travellers: Torka Jax, Sasha Danlami, Jacobe Kyman, Dr Fomstep, Griff Kodiak, Nogudnyk

"I am an android."

Jarumi's declaration comes as a shock. The plurisecular history of humanity in the Distant Fringe has included more than a few episodes of reckless experimentation with artificial intelligence and synthetic life, contributing to a strongly engrained cultural taboo against both. It is commonly accepted that rogue governments and unscrupulous corporations will, in every generation, find excuses to brush caution aside and break those taboos with secret research programs, but no major interstellar polity or major corporation would publicly condone the development of such technology. And yet here before you is Jarumi, a perfectly normal-seeming human being and a woman you have come to consider a friend, telling you she is an artificial construct.

Jarumi makes a tearful effort to explain; Dipo and Ngoze assist and fill in details as required. She is, for all intents and purposes, biologically human, save for an important detail: her consciousness is undetectable by telepaths. Among the Yimin Jiti, where psionic abilities are accepted and nurtured, such a thing makes one stand out. Though all trained telepaths can mask, or shield, their minds, they are also capable of dropping such a shield at will. The Yimin Jiti insist that all telepathic asylum-seekers do so as a condition of entering Yimin Kiti space. Jarumi is, however, not telepathic — and yet she appears to them as a blank.

Jarumi's brain tissue, magnified.

Dipo and Ngoze explain: over the past several years, the Yimin Jiti have become aware of the existence of increasing numbers of such beings circulating in the Distant Fringe. Almost invariably, they are adults in positions of political, military, or social importance. In some cases, they are individuals whose consciousnesses were previously detectable by the telepathic Yimin Jiti but now are not. It is as if they had been replaced by synthetic dopplegangers. 

In general these beings demonstrated seamless continuity with their earlier selves in terms of identity,  memory, and behavioural patterns. None had done anything alarming, exactly, but the fact of their occupying key positions across humanspace was itself worrying. The Yimin Jiti had no answers for where these beings came from and what their purpose was. A handful who had infiltrated Yimin Jiti space and died there were subjected to exhaustive postmortem investigation. The scientists found them to be perfectly normal, save for the tiniest detail: an area of brain tissue that contained an alphanumeric code visible only under extreme magnification. All the codes discovered to date begin with the four letters CSPF. A serial number of some kind? Hands shaking, Jarumi opens a file on her datapad and shows you a magnified image of a portion of her own brain. You see a strand with raised characters on it. It reads: CSPF 1098832-029AO.  

You query Jarumi about her past and her memories of the months you spent with her on the Dejah Thoris. It seems clear that she remembers everything as well as one might expect. You now attribute more significance to the fact that she remained unaffected by Idowu's and Rajani's occasional psionic leaks. You propose using hypnosis or other techniques to access hidden memories or gaps therein. The discussion prompts Jarumi to recall one strange incident that took place twelve years ago when she was a rising young lieutenant in the Firstworlds Navy. In pursuit of smugglers, her ship had been ambushed and boarded in the Rosamin system (Far Home 1809). During the fighting, she lost consciousness. When she came to many hours later, she was safe in the care of a medical team following a successful operation in which Firstworld marines had counter-boarded the vessel, driving off the attackers. The incident remained mysterious because the precise identity of the alleged smugglers was never determined and the weapons they used to subdue the defenders seemed experimental. It was also unclear why they gave up their prize so quickly when the Firstworld Navy counterattacked. That Jarumi was awarded a medal and promoted to captain following the Rosamin action had perhaps led her to sweep concerns about those unanswered questions aside. But in light of what has been revealed today, this episode now stands out to her.

As shocking as this discovery has been to Jarumi and to you, there is a silver lining: the Yimin Jiti have agreed to allow Jarumi to remain as guardian of her niece and nephew. She will, however, be subject to constant monitoring and her movements, restricted. She will never achieve citizenship, at least not under current laws. But Idowu and Rajani will, and for that, Jarumi is grateful. She is content to remain and care for them for the foreseeable future. 

As for you: will you seek to solve the mystery of Jarumi's past? Some of you are interested in pursuing psionic training among the Yimin Jiti. (Others are most emphatically NOT interested!) You are now the owners of a ship with several months' mortgage payments in arrears. What will you do?

Image credit: Brain tissue image from Anne Trafton, "Imaging method reveals new cells and structures in human brain tissue," MIT News, 31 January 2024, https://news.mit.edu/2024/imaging-method-reveals-new-cells-structures-human-brain-tissue-0131