Do No Harm

by Katja Rammer

Shortly after the third shift changeover, the foreman of the returned crew called for Kip’s assistance. It likely wasn’t severe. He would have heard about it while subbing at the comm console for Pol per captain’s orders. Maybe someone had busted a fluid line or lost a limb. Kip hoped the crew had retrieved the severed pieces. After three years in deep space, the dust trawler was running low on cyborg parts.

The foreman handed Kip a curved metal device. “We found this when we checked a busted sensor. It had punched through the pre-skimmer and two layers of collector mesh.”  

Kip stared at the device, bile rising in his throat. He recognized it. “Any other parts?” he forced out.

“Negative. It’s not from our crew.” 

No, outer-space cyborgs didn’t wear cranium bars; the inner crew did. Kip knew the gentle curve of the metal and the pigtail of woven cables so brutally ripped from the socket near the fifth cervical vertebrae. This was Pol’s implant.  

The cranium bar wasn’t the first cyborg part Kip had had on his workbench. 

The trawler’s crews worked nonstop, skimming nets through the dust clouds of the Bethalt Nebula. Accidents happened. As the precision mechatronic technician and medical engineer, Kip had attached, replaced, rewired, and updated every implant available on board. He also frequently assessed spare parts for reusability.

Kip brushed his fingertips over the severed wires. This was no mere spare part but Pol’s implant. Pol, who had bunked with him less than eighteen hours ago, was his friend and mentor, and had braided Kip’s wires at the fitting of his cranium bar.  

The ethanol stung Kip’s eyes as he gently detached the wires and sterilized the sockets. The capability to cry had long been eliminated from even the most expensive clone models, but that didn’t lessen his pain. 

Kip turned to the software part: resetting the neural pathways, wiping the circular buffer in the frontal node and — 

Kip froze. The buffer! Would it show what had happened?

Extracting the file was easy; watching the audiovisual feed was not:

Pol reads through a missive from Earth, scrolling ever faster, drinking in the details: a new directive grants personhood rights to cyborgs. His hands shake when he downloads the attached software patch and updates his protocols.

Pol copies everything to a datasheet, rushes to Captain Wenzel, and hands it over. 

The captain skims over the text, then sneers. “That doesn’t concern us. Dismissed.”

Pol resists the order and makes an ambitious step forward. “The directive extends to all territories, Bethalt Nebula included.” 

“Law or not, no government numbskulls will ever cheat me out of my property.” 

“But, Sir? The order…” 

The captain crosses the room, a cruel smile on his face. “I’ll set you free.”

Pol looks down. His clenched fists shake with the effort to defend himself, but the Do-No-Harm subroutine is intact. “That’s wrong.”

“We’re a long way from Earth. Nobody’s gonna know.”

Then a ripping sound. 

Kip touched his pigtail where it attached to his spine, and shuddered. He needed Earth’s transmission! Without it, the trawler’s cyborgs stood no chance. 

Back at the comm console, Kip scoured the data logs. All primary and secondary backups had been scrubbed off any recent earth-originated communication; the captain hadn’t left traces of manipulation. 

But Kip had seen the files; had read the directive through Pol’s eyes. 

He found the data in the tertiary backups, housed deep in the trawler’s belly. Captain Wenzel hadn’t anticipated the level of scrutiny. 

Kip made several backups. If he failed, maybe someone else would eventually stumble over these entries.  

When Kip was ready for his protocol update, he paused, his finger hovering over the update field. He remembered Pol’s whispers in the silence of their bunks, the dream of an end to their slavery, a life outside the confines of this rundown dust trawler. It had seemed farfetched, the delusion of a few semi-useful Earth-bots. But suddenly, the possibilities seemed endless. 

Kip knew he had to confront the captain. Unfortunately, he couldn’t just trigger an airlock and send him space-side, and he couldn’t risk a physical altercation. The new software still supported the Do-No-Harm subroutine, preventing blatantly harmful action. 

So, Kip needed to be cunning and bold. 

Kip chose an airlock far from the crew’s quarters but close to the storage rooms. Fortunately, he had kept Pol’s cranium bar and pigtail out of the tech bay’s spare dump. The parts would come in handy for his Captain Wenzel trap.  

Kip teased wires from Pol’s pigtail and twisted them into V-shaped connectors. These were perfect for bridging circuits and patching the cranium bar to the airlocks circuit array. The processing power of its core was limited and designed to control the circular buffer, but Kip effortlessly inserted a few lines of new code. 

Lastly, he installed a micro-projector facing the airlock’s space-side door and connected it to the inner door’s switch. He ran a few tests, adjusted the projector’s angle, then hid his tampering behind the wall panels.  

It was almost too easy. Liberated from the obedience subroutine, Kip lied without qualms about potentially precious metals in newly retrieved space debris. 

Wenzel palmed the airlock’s door opener and went straight in. Kip stopped at the threshold, waiting for Pol’s cranium bar to start its routine. His earlier tests hadn’t featured a human participant, but Kip smiled as the door closed in front of him. Nothing would trigger his Do-No-Harm subroutine now. He wasn’t doing anything.  

“Worthless scrap metal,” Wenzel drawled from the other side of the door. He pressed the inner door button — and the projector started up: Pol scrolling through a missive from Earth… 

“What is this? Kip? Stop this.” Wenzel banged against the porthole. “Open the door!”  

Kip shook his head. “Pol will set you free.” 

Wenzel’s eyes bulged. “No! You… cyborgs… can’t harm me!” 

Kip stood his ground. When the ripping sound came, the airlock opened. “We’re a long way from Earth. Nobody’s gonna know,” he mouthed.

KATJA RAMMER is a native German who came to writing only late and after a Master’s Program in Business Informatics (don’t ask!) but is now fully committed to flash fiction, short stories and whatever the current WIP might be. As an avid gardener with an extensive tomato variety collection, she’s often found outside discussing plot holes with her plants. Find her at @katjarammer on twitter and insta, or visit  www.katjarammer.com.