The Future They Made Us Forget, chapter 10

Chapter Ten: ethics_board_etc

[Start of part 2.] [As curious as I was about the airships, We quickly established with Ontoh that no immediate action had to be taken in relation to Nochli;

ONTOH: shoo! go secure the building, stupid! Nochli aren’t going to destroy you all for another few months yet, the important thing is to secure your resources!]

[Our immediate concerns were closing the time loop, getting back to Aster before they woke up, and dealing with the remaining scientists.] [We closed the time loop by hacking the cameras, as planned. Note programming practicalities: they have to be able to debug it if it doesn’t work, so they watch the time machine room and make sure K+M receive the right text/video; maybe they get like 5 texts from alternate future selves telling them how to not mess up, prompting Marvin to have a bit of angst about how many of him got deleted, but he is basically getting desensitized to it now] [We watched on the cameras as ourselves left the chem lab with Aster still unconscious, just as we had done.] [As soon as they were out of earshot, we reentered the room. It wasn’t long before Aster started to stir, struggling to sit up in the seat] [Aster Aster can you hear us?] [[Not actually absorbing the words, gravelly voice]: Where am I? Who are you?]

Marvin: “we are in the chem lab, right where we left – where we all used the antidote –”

Kayla: “wait. I think this is Reggie. Not Aster.”

[Kayla had an advantage in recognizing him – I had never met Reginald, but Kayla had, a few times, years ago, before the research had suppressed his consciousness.] [reg being different than Aster - deeper, gravelly voice, look of fear - in all the time we’d known Aster, we’d never seen them afraid, not even when the gun was being pointed at them. but Reginald was deeply afraid]

“I’m dissociating, you need to take me back to my office –”

It was only then that I realized what position we were in – Reginald had no idea what was going on, and had suddenly woken up in a strange place with strange people

“I’m sorry. You can’t leave yet –” I began.

[That was a mistake. Reginald quickly glanced between me and Kayla with the gun; I had given him a much different impression of what we were about than I wanted to. “I don’t know what you want with me, but I will not be intimidated”

“No no no I didn’t mean it like a threat!” I said frantically. “It’s just –” the time travel? Was I going to try to tell him that time travel existed?? “There’s stuff going on, you have to let me explain –”

“If you are not a kidnapper,” said Reginald severely, “then you will return me to my office, and explain it to me there!” He started pushing himself to his feet

[I held up my hands to tell him to stay seated, which just made him more determined to get on his own feet; I was clearly losing control of the conversation. I scrambled for words] “we can’t leave the building yet – none of us can –”

“We’ve met Aster,” said Kayla suddenly. “We’ve been working with Aster for the last [number] days.”

[Complex emotions caused Reginald’s face, I can only imagine what must’ve been going through his head at the time. Embarrassment at his secret being known, fear of what could have kept him out of commission for days,. He sank back into the recliner, face pale. Whispered: “what has happened?”] [Kayla efficiently told him what had happened, bluntly stating the facts with no attempt to spare his feelings or ease him into the idea of time travel being real. To his credit, Reginald just sit there and absorb the information, nodding at the important parts [Reginald feeling utterly betrayed by Aster; as a grave whisper, “God damn it, Aster, what have you done?”]

[“For the sixty years since the Monster Study and the Nuremberg Code, the field of neuroscience has been trying to earn back some semblance of not being morally bankrupt, and this has set that back enormously”] [K+M offer excuses for Aster and Reginald argues against them – “they were planning to get rid of Fuller” " – “they thought Fuller might kill them” “well isn’t that convenient for them! A convenient excuse to go on and do exactly what they would have wanted to get away with anyway! They should have risked our life” – “They could have walked away” “if they’d walked away then I’d be dead because they didn’t do time travel” “the fact that they could undo the deaths is why Fuller felt comfortable escalating the experiments in the first place! This is why you [bangs fist on table] never compromise with evil!” – “They just wanted to be able to talk to you! They care about you a lot!” “If they cared about me, then they should have cared about my values! If I’d known what they were doing, I would’ve never accepted it. If you can’t satisfy your desires without harming other human beings, you must take those unfulfilled desires to your grave. There is no other acceptable outcome!” – At some point, “‘Reggie’ is only a name for my intimates, I can’t believe Aster gave it out to everyone”] [With deeply aggrieved conviction] “If I get any say in this at all, we are going to have some god damn ethics around here.” [Chapter break, “the ethics board”] [At some point : “what in God’s name has Aster done with our back?? After all the work I did to try to learn good posture”; maybe we have him get out of the becoming or hear and feel it; maybe they are going to a better room for discussion, rather than a chem lab] [Reginald saying how everything up to this point has been an utter mess ethics wise, including some harsh words for Marvin’s choices (“profoundly amoral act”/I hung my head/“at least you have the decency to be ashamed”) and saying Kayla was “excused but not justified” (there is a difference between a justification and an excuse! We can excuse Kayla’s [brutal murder of a man who had already surrendered] because [of her natural, extreme feelings about the situation he had put her in], but I will not sit here and allow you to justify it. More specifics, not sure of relative order:]

“[Marvin spied on innocent people.] Some of whom were children, I might add –”

[Need to fit in around here: discussion of Marvin delaying several days before doing anything about it even once he knew about the children,. “I was going to report it,” I said, but I knew I wasn’t sure if I really would have.] [Kayla defensive of Marvin’s spying because it led to her rescue]

“Did he know that?” Reginald demanded. ????? “[Did he know they were evil when he started]”

[Kayla defensive some more – “of course he knew they were evil! They put surveillance cameras all over the place, they turned this building into the goddamn Panopticon! Even if they hadn’t [done nonconsensual experiments] they would still be evil –” (“to surveil is to be evil, so Marvin knowing about the surveillance is the same thing as Marvin knowing about the evil”)]

But I knew that Reginald was right. [I hadn’t thought about it at all – I was just lucky] I hung my head.

“At least you have the decency to be ashamed,” said Reginald brusquely.

[“Panopticon” – discussion of that and the company name, explanation of what it is: Kayla: “Jeremy Bentham described such a prison, claiming it would be good because it would stop the prisoners from doing bad stuff. But it would only make the prisoners do what the guard wants, and the guard would obviously be evil.” Marvin: “how do we know the guard is evil?” [Maybe “anyone who wants to control people is evil” but hang on, what would Kayla actually think about an incorruptible good being watching people? “Also I thought even normal people know prison guards aren’t paragons of virtue! Don’t you know the Stanford prison experiment?”]]

Reginald: “I do not wish to defend surveillance, but as an educator, I must point out that the Stanford prison experiment has been discredited. [Details from the Thibault Le Texier paper]”

[About the company name, these surveillance companies aren’t very creative and]

“Are you vegan?” Kayla cut in.

“I happen to enjoy a good steak on occasion,” said Reginald [physicality: “Reginald sniffed”, haughty-ish, sarcastic excuse-me tone].

Kayla [settled a little, not trying to press the issue but not feeling like Reginald’s judgment was as much of a threat]

Reginald [understood the implication; implicitly, he recognized it as a threat to him being taken seriously]. “Are you going to [say I’m evil because I’m not vegan?]” [With a incredulous tone – a couple degrees less severe than “voice dripping with skepticism”]

Kayla shrugged. “Your lifestyle requires the murder of sapient beings,” she said. Her tone wasn’t accusatory – it was the tone of someone who is discussing the plain facts. “Why should I trust your judgment on anything to do with ethics?”

Reginald [got back on top of things]. “Even if I take that to be true, it only illustrates my point. If none of us are morally pure, then that is why we cannot simply defer to any one person’s judgment, but must actively [work together to be rigorously protected against our individual flaws]”

[We need to get more, responsible, people, to have a proper ethics board. Wait a minute, we can’t ethically bring in anyone because they can’t give informed consent!] [but they were all in on the evil!] [were _all_ of them?]