A fish out of water

Alright, DomePal. Here is the story from my diary. Who is in the right, Leo or Liz? Please ignore my own thoughts in between.

“...you, Leo, need to wear the colorshift glasses, you need to wear that BDSM gear of yours just to walk on the pavement on the exterior of the dome. Which is, uhmm... Oh yeah. It’s at an altitude of zero. The only thing on this planet that is at altitude zero,” Liz said. “You go outside, take a deep breath of freshly recycled air from your oxygen tank, look down on the excitingly dull grayish water from horizon to horizon, and go back inside the dome, in the warm embrace of civilization, to play video games, watch TV series, and lie down on a couch. What a thrilling existence it must be. And you know what? I am willing to bet a noogie that you don’t even know how to swim. And if you did, you could only dive down, like, what? A few dozen meters? 300 meters in a rusty prone-to-mechanical-failures haunted diving suit, the one you have to share with the ghosts of at least three other people? And whose headlamp only illuminates three meters in front of you, because, unlike me, you don’t have even a simplest sonar to see in the water? 300 meters to have an ‘I am an ambassador of humanity to the belligerent depths, the subjugator of the sublime, the valiant knight of the unstoppable march of progress’ ego boost. Riiight. Don't mind me. I'm just the one who, in murky, unlit, opaque waters, can see up to a kilometer away, who can hear who said what up to five kilometers away, who can speak in recognizable words, and who routinely goes down to the depths, sometimes as far as two kilometers down. On my own. No suits. No oxygen tanks. No crutches. And that is, I am only ‘cleared’ for a maximum depth of two kilometers, but I can go at least one kilometer more before it becomes uncomfortable. And you haven’t even seen how gorgeous my shoray wings look unwrapped in the water! Predators check them out all the time. That is, for a millisecond before they recognize the hyperpredator they belong to and scramble - even the really big ones. Haven’t even used my stinhar once. And yes, I will for the billionth time mention my hydroforcer. Because it is cool and you don’t have it. Those ancient, primordial, and all-powerful mathematical forces of yours that have created all the complexity of life. A complexity and efficiency that a human mind supposedly can never hope to replicate. Are they in the same room with us right now?”

I want to ask her out so bad. I have never met a girl so funny, so bright, and with whom I could speak so openly. And who also doesn’t lose all interest after two minutes of talking with me.

“Liz, if you are such a flawless marvel of intentional engineering, what is that pouch you are always carrying, and why does it have so many pills and syringes inside it?” I asked. “Is it, by any means, connected to the monthly hospital visits you are having because of your innumerable health problems? Which, in turn, are linked to the high mortality rate among habituators? I don’t remember when I last saw the doctor. A year ago, perhaps? The mathematical forces operated on the planetary scales of space and on the cosmic scale of time. They are incapable of intent. Of mercy. But vengeance, too. And yet, they have had ample time to build and test humans properly. Our genome has millions of small, imperceptible yet absolutely vital nuances that allow us to survive and thrive, and they act in absurdly illogical ways a mind of a conscious creator cannot conceive of. And we think we understand the important parts, but we don’t - because unimportant parts are not, in fact, unimportant. This unintentional design working through incomprehensible ways is a human superpower. The all-powerful mathematical forces created a human being as it is, and it is only natural that I want to stay this way.”

Fact #1. I am an economist. I do industrial planning for the mineral processing facility. The office is my workplace.

Fact #2. She is a geologist. Her work is to conduct geological reconnaissance. Her assignments are beyond the dome.

“Yes, a year and two months ago, you had food poisoning,” she said. “From accidentally buying a spice which was clearly labeled as not safe for consumption if you, quote, ‘have an algae allergy.’ Which is a politically correct way of saying ‘DO NOT EAT ME IF YOU ARE A HUMAN.’ Or, in your politically correct language, a dehabituator. Which is, by the way, suspiciously hard to spell. Only a conspiracy theorist would say this is on purpose, so that people don’t use it as often. As if interventions by the overreaching state to prevent people against doing tribalism is not something that happens routinely. By the way, I can eat algae just fine. Local fauna, too. Just so you remember. You are the one confined to a strict diet of nutrient puree. And that superpower of yours is confined to a patch of concrete several dozen kilometers across, that can go underwater in three to five minutes, and all your superpowers go ‘plop’. And these mathematical forces of yours also have evolved a human being with a brain and a freedom of will, both of which are unreasonably, incomprehensibly, and wondrously effective. It is only natural that some of us want to use the unreasonably effective brain that works in incomprehensible all-powerful ways to change our unreasonably effective bodies, that also work in incomprehensible ways.”

Oh, you little shit.

Problem: I have a feeling, perhaps brought on by my own insecurity, or perhaps informed by the official statistics published by the DEPODEM, that, uhm, the relationship between a habituator and a dehabituator is highly improbable.

“Which you could eat, but you don’t. You are also dieting on puree,” I said. “Because you eat like a hippopotamus with that maw of yours, and the “hyperpredator” you whose body you now have weighs one and a half metric tons and hunts twelve to sixteen hours every day to stay alive. The only reason it does it is because unlike you, it doesn’t have an apartment with temperature-and-acidity-controlled water tank, high-throughput WiFi and a convenience store under it, which sells meal powder packets, containing 30 thousand kilocalories each, 20 packets per box. What use are all those fragile superpowers if the novoindustrial way of life consists of work, home, and commuting from work to home, and if outside work can be done by robots under remote supervision? The big things happen in big places. Which is right here. Does your pressure resistance, the ability to challenge most of the leviathans heads-on, or the predator-repellence of your wings help you in any way to be efficient in this economy? To do intensive mental work that requires both focus and interaction with other people? The scientists back on Earth might have instead worked on the intelligence and palatability of such an existence, but no, we have a moratorium on any psychological alterations. Most jobs, including the most impactful and respectable ones, require you to fit through the door frames. A requirement that you fit... with a big stretch.” — she did a facepalm. — “You, however, walk on all fours, and even then, your spine hurts when you walk too much. You get all the problems and none of the benefits. Going outside is not a necessity - it is a quirky hobby. Why would anyone who doesn’t fetishize fins choose to habituate? The ‘Right to habituate’ constitution law has a point that mandates, that it is a basic human right for a habituant to dehabituate, if the procedure is not deemed as life-threatening. Why would anyone valuing their own health not choose to dehabituate?”

Why do I think I have a chance of convincing her to dehabituate? Simple. Because she actually never chose to habituate in the first place. Her parents habituated. And she was born like this.

“I beg your pardon, what happened to the sharpness of your arguments? I’m calling the manager,” Liz said. “This is your weakest sophistry thus far. The rebuttal is trivial. If the dome pump fails, you are dead. If the structural integrity of foundation pillars is compromised, the dome will drown. The possibility of such an outcome outweighs the inconvenience of my health problems.”

Someone will have to budge.

It is either me.

“As if something like this is even possible with this level of paranoid obsession with redundancy...” I said.

Or her.

“Do you want me to enumerate all the occasions when foolproof systems failed in the most spectacular ways possible?” She said.

The process of habituation... It is, to put it mildly, a commitment.

“What are you going to do if the dome drowns?” I asked. “At least I will die quickly and without suffering. And you will be living in the Stone Age.”

I know that the risk of sporadic malignization is near zero now, courtesy of the newest MLZ-3 quantum combinatorial solver. But still. The queue. The mandatory examination by the medical board. The procedure itself is invasive. And it requires implanting into you what is, quite literally, a cancerous tissue which DNA that was engineered to adhere to the mathematical solution that solver has converged to from your DNA and the medically approved and tested habituator DNA configuration.

“Mhhm, the loss of so many lives will be a tragedy. Prooooobably,” she said. “But we will lift it with a few floats. Maybe we will even build you a museum. The plaque will say something like ‘We are so sorry you came to a water planet and didn’t learn how to swim.’”

Why do I keep arguing? She is obviously doing this to annoy me.

“You can lift it, alright, but most of the vital equipment will be permanently ruined. And that’s not including the loss of human professionals,” I said.

It looks like she wanted to say something, but chose not to.

I have no idea if she even likes me. If she doesn’t, I will be stuck in a body that I don’t find endearing. But what if I convince her to become human and she doesn’t like it? This is also wrong on so many levels...

But what if we reached a conclusion on the best way to exist through the dispassionate, impartial, fair application of reason, and committed to it, wherever it might lead?

“Haven’t you previously said that reason is a slave of passion, and that there is no such thing as impartial reason?” said Liz suddenly. She was looking at me with mild amusement.

Oh shoot. I said the last phrase out loud.

“Well, yes. But. There is such a thing as emotion grounded in reason,” I said.

“Uhm, right. Must be on the same shelf as Bigfoot. And the Loch Ness monster,” she said.

“True. Any voice of reason is rare, but it is persistent,” I replied.

“Amazing Wise Quotes: Collection of 100 Wise Quotes by Famous People is in print again? How rad,” Liz said.

Should I ask her outright if she likes me?

But what if she doesn’t see me this way? To lose a friend like this... No. Not risking it.

“Oh, unfortunately, no. But if you skip your breakfast, maybe the city will have enough budget to do a limited print run,” I said.

“What a poverty you have engineered, you, economist. Why can't we have both consumer goods and the Space Fountain at the same time in this command economy of yours?” she asked. “Who needs this thing that we are building for a second decade anyway? I would like to inform you that I am morally ready to sell my soul and meaning for a hamburger, Coca-Cola, and a deep-fried rat. I also cannot, in fact, continue to exist without 100 different sausage varieties, vital sectors of economy subjugated by monopolies, duopolies and oligopolical cartels and neoliberal IP laws forcing me to pay rent for using the copyrighted blueprint of the body I was born in.”

“Liz, I know you are joking, but with neoliberalism you would not be here in the first place. You would be on Earth, renting a studio that costs three-quarters of your salary, working in HR helping to raise the profit margin by gaslighting employees into believing that company is in the right, that they have a pattern of problematic behavior, and that there won't be a salary revision. But instead, that worthless ‘space fountain’ is giving both you and me a job. Good jobs. Respectable and impactful jobs. Meaningful jobs. And it does so for many other people. And neosocialism provides welfare. Which means, you can change yourself into a human being, for free, if you choose to,” I said.

Okay, that was not subtle, Leo.

“Mhhm. Why use a mental image of me turning into a human being to advocate for the advantages of neosocialism, Leo?” Liz asked. “That is very specific. You are the more politically correct one of us, so you SHOULD remember that, legally and psychologically, I am a human being. And claiming otherwise publicly can have a criminal case opened against you. What gave you that idea?”

Is there any way I could salvage this disaster?

Please, brain, I need you to come up with a witty response, an extra witty and funny response to save me, please...

...

FATAL ERROR.

...

“Because I am an idiot. Sorry,” I said.

...

“Have you even been to Site Thalmann?” asked Liz, suddenly.

I shook my head.

“Site Davis?” she asked.

“I actually have never left the dome. Haven’t even walked the pavement outside,” I said.

“You... what?” she asked.

“I mean. I have all I need here, right? Books, movies, video games...” I said. “Why bother traveling if you can look at the photographs other people have made? Yes, you can travel and look at fancy-shmancy things, but in the end, you are paying money for what? For a brief moment of happiness? I have all the happiness on my laptop.”

“Leo. You have. No idea. You have no idea,” Liz said.

“Liz, I know you don’t play video games, so you probably don’t know the feeling, but I feel like I really exist only when I’m engrossed in a good game,” I said. “Or in a good book. It simply doesn’t matter where my body is, as long as it is comfortable and fed.”

“Leo, I apologize, but you are, in fact, an ignorant idiot,” she said. “Have you ever considered that there is more to existence than just... this?”

“Does it matter if there is, if I have everything I really need?” I asked.

“Do you, really?” she asked.

“Well... I mean, not everything is sunshine and roses in a kingdom of puppies and rainbows. My job is occasionally unpleasant. Sometimes, when I sleep, I keep arguing with my colleagues. The last time it was because of my recurring problem of chronic optimism, and arguing as to why it was not only my fault. I may or may not have caused a major logistics bottleneck. But insufferable as it is, it gives my existence meaning. I am one of the many builders paving the way to the future, Liz. And so are you, so you must know the feeling that I’m talking about. And I do feel sometimes that video games are a guilty pleasure. However, they do get my revs up, and that allows me to power through the obstacles life throws at me. But it is the books that give me a wide-angle view of life,” I said. “And I don’t believe that staring at wondrous landscapes gives enlightenment even remotely comparable to reading analytical philosophy. A feeling in your mind is caused by a narcotic, which is, in turn, produced by nerve stimulation. The brain is impotent at distinguishing whether a drug is produced by a landscape, or by video on a laptop screen.”

“I am lost for words,” she said. “You actually believe that—you, who have never even explored your own backyard. And you boldly proclaim the...” - she got up from the pillar-mounted H-hammock I bought so that she visits me more often, rose above me, looked me in the eyes, and made air quotes with her unnaturally long fingers, with the web between them retracted. - “IMPOTENCE” - The artistic rigor this word was spoken with captured phenomenally well the character of a brooding S-class flipfreighter horn. There is no way neighbors didn't hear that. At this moment I wish could sink into the ground. - “of the brain to distinguish between the view of Blossoming Shallows and their photograph. And the false dichotomy trick, suggesting that exploring and reading are competing forms of exploration - you thought I wouldn't notice that, didn’t you? I actually read more than you. And you know that.“

“Well. Uhm,” I said.

It’s kinda tricky to find a compelling counter-argument when a white indigo-spotted skyscraper that you, incidentally, have an unrequited crush on, mercilessly stares you into the floor.

“You have already laid down the multitude of arguments as to why I should dehabituate. But wouldn't it be fair if I showed you why, for example, someone like YOU should habituate?” she asked. “I have a trip planned to Site Thalmann in a few weeks. Would you be open to tagging along?”

My heart skipped a beat.

“Uhm. Uhm. Oh well. Uhm. Yes, sure, I am, but, but what is it about? Is it deep? I may. Or I may not. Have. Thalassophobia,” I said.

Heart, please, don’t break my chest. This is too much beating you are doing.

“No, it’s in shallow waters,” she said. “And as for what’s in it, you will have to wait and see for yourself.”