Kyla's Diary - Chapter 10: Magsail
“We crossed more than ten light-years for possibilities.”
There should have been time to mourn Darius. There wasn’t. The harsh realities of space did not give it to us.
Completing the magsail deployment was now the ship’s highest priority. The future of Helios and everyone aboard depended on it.
When I was a kid, we were told that we were the generation that would arrive at Ross 128.
Back then, I imagined descending through beautiful skies onto a new world, just like in the old fiction stories, but space is harsher than fiction.
Now I know that if everything goes well, Helios should enter a stable orbit around Ross 128 in the year 2837. I will be almost eighty by then.
If we are lucky, maybe my children, or my grandchildren, will be the first to set foot on a new world.
Ross 128 b is believed to be more massive than Earth, but after more than five centuries of travel, we still know little about the planet that has shaped every decision made aboard Helios.
We do not know if it has oceans. We do not know if it has moons.
We crossed more than ten light-years for possibilities. I hope we learn more the closer we get.
“Sweetie, I need your opinion on something. Do you have a few minutes?” Julian asked.
He was pacing back and forth near the entrance to the cabin.
Kyla had been so absorbed in her diary entry that she had not heard him approach.
“Sure,” she said.
Then she whispered, “Logminter, save this to my diary.”
LOG ENTRY
Action type: Log archival.
Integrity check: Validated. Data saved by authorized user.
Authorized user: Anwar Cloutier Soria, Kyla. Created at: 2786.105.2209.
###
“The Data and Information Office has been working on a software upgrade for the Space Drone units,” Julian said as he approached the desk.
Kyla frowned. “What kind of upgrade?”
“They want to give the SD units a restricted instance of Logminter.”
Kyla looked up. “Wouldn’t that give an archival system autonomy?”
Julian shook his head. “No, not really. The proposal is limited to Logminter providing feedback to the SD computer systems. No agency. No regulatory violation.”
“But it would set a precedent,” Kyla said. “It would be the first autonomous units operating with Logminter.”
“That’s what worries me,” Julian admitted. “But it still wouldn’t have direct control. Think of it as another point of view. Like the voice in your head.”
Neither of them spoke for a few seconds.
“Do you think it would have saved Darius?” Kyla finally asked.
Julian looked down at the desk.
“It is hard to know,” he said quietly. “Probably not. But the investigation concluded that exterior missions are going to become more complex as arrival approaches. Engineering believes additional cognitive support could reduce the risks.”
“People aren’t going to like this,” Kyla said.
“No,” Julian said. “Some people think we’re getting too close to violating the regulatory accord. Others think we should have done this decades ago.”
“And what do you think?”
Julian remained silent for a moment.
“I think we’re asking people to work outside the ship and risk their lives,” he answered. “If we can make those missions safer, we should.”
“When does the Council hear the proposal?”
“Tomorrow,” Julian said. “Right after the briefing on the magsail.”
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The Council chamber had not changed since the last session, but the silence was different.
Ten days ago, they had gathered to hear how Darius died. Today, they had gathered to decide what to do about it.
Kyla took the seat beside Council Member Silva. Julian sat next to Director Prescott. Taro was there too, on the operations side.
The President opened the session without ceremony.
“This is a planning session,” she said. “We will hear the operational requirements for the next deployment, and a proposal attached to it. We will vote on the proposal before we adjourn.”
She looked toward command.
“First Officer.”
The First Officer rose. On the chamber panels, the mission summary appeared. Launch. Cruise. The long band of deceleration that had not yet begun.
“The magnetic sail is deployed, but one of its anchor cables was damaged,” the First Officer said. “To reach a stable configuration before deceleration, we require another exterior deployment to repair it. We have scheduled it in two weeks.”
The room was silent.
“The operation will use three Space Drone units and two EVA riggers. SD-3, SD-4, and SD-5. The riggers are Taro Ishida and Liam Rook.”
Kyla looked at Taro.
He did not look back. He kept his eyes on the table.
Ten days after the cable took Darius off the ship, Taro had asked to go back outside.
Liam Rook sat farther down the operations side. Kyla knew him. Everyone her age did. He was the curfew monitor who sent the unwelcome notices, an outspoken Destinarian, ambitious and courageous.
Of course he had volunteered.
He listened to the First Officer with a small nod, the way a man confirms a thing he has already decided is reasonable.
“There is one condition attached to this operation,” the First Officer said. “It is not mine to present.”
The officer sat. Kyla noticed the small thing. The First Officer had made the call on Darius’s mission. The call not to send the second unit. And now the First Officer had handed the next part to someone else.
The President turned to the data side.
“Director Prescott.”
Director Prescott got to his feet and faced the chamber.
“The Data and Information Office, with the EVA Division, proposes a software upgrade to the Space Drone fleet,” he said. “A restricted instance of Logminter, installed in each unit before the next deployment.”
The panels changed. Specifications now, where the voyage map had been.
“The instance is bounded,” Prescott said. “It records. It learns the task. It provides feedback to the unit’s onboard systems. It does not take control of the unit.”
He paused.
“Exterior work will grow more complex as we approach arrival. The investigation into the recent loss concluded as much. This proposal is one answer to that. It is not the only possible answer, but it is the one before you today.”
He sat.
“The floor is open,” the President said. “Before the vote.”
Council Member Silva did not wait long.
“We all know why the archival systems are not given agency. They are built on trust. Logminter holds our most private thoughts. Our diaries. Our last words,” she said.
“We let it hold those things because it only records. It does not act on what it knows. That is the entire reason a person can trust it with a life. The moment it begins to act, we have changed what it is. And we have changed it for everyone who ever whispered something into it.”
The chamber was very still.
Kyla watched her, and she was proud. This was the woman she had chosen to work beside. Two years at her side, and this was why. Silva had said the thing the room needed someone to say, and she had said it better than anyone else could have.
“I want the Regulation Bureau on the record,” Silva said. “Is this within the statutes, or is it not?”
The President nodded toward the Bureau bench.
The Bureau representative spoke carefully, the way people from the Bureau always did, as though every sentence might be read back to him later.
“As drafted, the proposal remains within the statutes,” he said. “Logminter advises. The onboard system acts, and a human authorizes. No agency is transferred. The regulatory boundary is not crossed.”
He let that settle. Then he added the rest.
“But the software is outside the Bureau’s control. I would ask the Council to hear the Data Integrity Unit before it votes. They are the ones who answer for what Logminter can do and for protecting our privacy.”
Julian had been assigned to present the Data Integrity Unit’s assessment. Heads turned toward him.
He stood. Kyla watched him search for the words, but she already knew them. She had heard him say them before, when it was only the two of them in their cabin.
“I have spent the night on the integrity question,” Julian said. “I will not pretend I have settled it. The representative is right that this changes what Logminter is.”
He looked across the chamber, not at Kyla, but at the empty middle of it.
“But I keep coming back to the same thing. We are asking people to go outside the ship and risk their lives for all of us. If there is a tool that could help bring them back safely, I don’t know how I stand here and argue against it on principle.”
He sat down.
No one spoke for a moment.
“We will vote,” the President said.
The first director voted against the proposal.
The second vote came.
“No,” said the director representing the elders.
The President voted in favor. Director Prescott voted in favor.
Four votes cast. Two against. Two for the proposal.
Then it came to Council Member Silva.
Kyla was watching her face, so she saw the pause. A breath held a beat too long. Silva’s hands were folded on the table, and she looked at them instead of at the President.
“Abstain,” she said.
The word landed flat in the quiet room.
Kyla did not know how she would have voted herself. She turned it over and found no clean answer in either direction.
That was not the thing.
The thing was that Silva had made the whole case and then declined to be counted behind it.
Kyla said nothing. She had no standing to say anything. She was an assistant in a room of principals, and her face was the only vote she had.
To Kyla, an abstention was not a position. It was a place to stand where no one could find you later.
Her pride in Silva became disappointment, and she did not hide it.
“Two in favor,” the President said. “Two against. One abstention.” She looked toward the command chair. “Under protocol, a tie falls to the Captain.”
Kyla had almost forgotten the Captain was there. The Captain had not spoken the entire session.
The Captain did not stand.
“In favor,” the Captain said.
That was all.
The panels held the specifications, glowing, unchanged. The proposal had passed.
Before the next deployment, the Space Drones would carry an instance of Logminter. Its limits had been carefully defined. No one yet knew whether reality would respect them.
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