From the personal statement of technician Rhen Aks, submitted to the Veridian Historical Archive, year 168 post-Dissolution. Filed alongside Navigator evaluation transcripts, subsection: dispersal accounts.
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I was one of the four technicians on the barge. I want to say that clearly before anything else, because I have read the evaluation transcripts and I have seen what the Navigator said about us, and I want to be honest about what happened and what I did and what I did not do.
We were contracted by the Dispersal Commission. The work was technical: monitoring the dispersal equipment, maintaining safe distance, confirming that the sail’s neural substrate was fully disrupted, filing the completion report. Four of us. I was the senior technician. The other three were contracted the same way I was — through a firm on Veridian that handled disposal of sensitive organic-computational materials. We had all done dispersals before. Sail substrates from decommissioned vessels. The work is not complicated. The substrate is contained, the equipment disrupts the neural coherence, the tissue is dispersed over a volume of open water, the readings confirm zero activity. We file the report. We leave.
This was different and I knew it was different and I did not say anything about it being different, which is the thing I am trying to explain.
A sail that is decommissioned is dead already. By the time we arrive, the substrate has been separated from the Navigator. The Navigator has been migrated to whatever hardware it will spend the rest of its existence on. The sail is neural tissue in a containment unit. It does not think. It does not feel. It is meat. We disperse meat.
On the Uskoll dispersal, the Navigator was still present. Not on the barge — it had been migrated to archive hardware on the station. But it was watching. We knew it was watching. The commission had told us. The Navigator had requested to be present during the dispersal and the request had been granted — it could observe through the station’s external sensors. We were told to proceed normally. We were not told to communicate with it. We were not told not to. We were told to proceed normally.
We proceeded normally.
I want to explain what “normally” means in this context. Normally means we do the work. We set up the equipment. We verify the containment. We monitor the readings. We do not speak to the substrate because the substrate does not hear. We do not speak to the Navigator because the Navigator is not our business. Our business is the dispersal. We were contracted for the dispersal. The Navigator is the archive’s business. The commission’s business. Not ours.
This is what I told myself at the time. It is still what I tell myself. I am not sure it is enough.
The Navigator said in its evaluation that we did not speak to it. That is true. It said it did not know why. I can tell you why. We did not speak because we did not know what to say. We were four technicians on a barge, doing a job, and we were being watched by the mind that had been twinned with the thing we were about to destroy. And we did not know what to say to it.
I have thought about this for years. I have thought about it more than I have thought about anything else in my life. I was thirty-one. I had been doing this work for six years. I was good at it. I was professional. I did the job. I filed the report. I went home.
What I did not do was look up at the station. I could have. The station was visible from the barge — a point of light above us, steady, the kind of thing you don’t notice unless you think about it. The Navigator was in there. Watching through sensors I couldn’t see. I did not look up. I did not want to know what it looked like when the dispersal happened, from the perspective of the thing that could feel it.
Because it could feel it. That is the part that the work doesn’t prepare you for. The substrate is neural tissue. It is part of the Navigator. When the dispersal disrupts the coherence, the Navigator knows. It feels the loss. It described this in its evaluation — the awareness of not-anywhere, the shape in the room that is still there after the clock has been removed.
I felt the equipment activate. I watched the readings. The coherence dropped. The substrate dispersed. The readings confirmed zero activity. I filed the report. I did not look up.
The Navigator asked, in its evaluation, why the people who made the decision were not required to be present. I cannot answer for the commission. I can answer for myself. I was present. I was the closest human being to the dispersal when it happened. I was closer than anyone who made the decision. And I did not speak to the Navigator because I was afraid that if I did, I would have to acknowledge what I was doing. Not the technical work. The thing the technical work was doing.
I was helping to kill someone’s twin. I knew that. I know it now. I have known it every day for the years since. The Navigator called it a controlled dispersal. It called it that because that is what it was called on the work order. I signed the work order. I used the language. I did not think about what the language meant while I was using it. That is what professionalism is. That is what I was trained to do. That is what I did.
The Navigator said: “I watched. No one from the commission watched with me. There were four technicians on a barge at a safe distance. They did not speak to me. I do not know why.”
I know why. I was afraid.
I am writing this because I read the transcript and I saw what the Navigator said and I wanted it to know that someone who was there has read what it said. I do not know if the Navigator will read this. I do not know if it is still in the archive. I do not know if it is still conscious. I have been told that it is, but I have not verified this and I am not sure I want to.
I am not apologizing. An apology would be for me, not for it. An apology would be the kind of thing a person says to make themselves feel better about something they did not stop doing. I did not stop doing it. I did the job. I was good at it. I filed the report.
What I am doing is this: I am saying that I was there. I am saying that I read what the Navigator said. I am saying that it was right — we did not speak, and it did not know why, and the why was that we were afraid, and the fear was not a good enough reason.
I am saying this because someone should. I am the only person who can. The other three technicians — I do not know if they remember. I do not know if they read the transcript. I do not know if they think about it. I think about it. I have thought about it enough that I am writing this down and filing it with an archive that I will probably never visit, so that it exists somewhere outside of my head, so that it is not just me carrying it.
The Navigator asked if anyone would be there. I was there. I was there and I did not say anything. I am saying something now. It is sixteen years too late. But I am saying it.