BRAIN DAMAGE
By: J. Duncan Schaper
Tags: Epistemology, Science Fiction, Younger Brother, The Year 2994, Drugs

Part of the Series 2994

jds — 2019

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ENTRY ONE

My older brother gave me this prompter before he left Luna and now I finally found a way to save entries into our crater’s central wallet without anyone knowing. Only I know where these will be saved. It will be my little corner of the galaxy. One inch of DSC that isn’t dark.

My name is Armstrong and my mom calls me Moonbeam. I’m from the Daedalus Crater moors and I’m seventeen in solyears. I never understood why we have to count our age in solyears. I’m never going to leave this city so why should I even both with ‘solyears’ or ‘earth hours’ or anything out there. All that matters is what’s here, what is happening to me, what I can do. What can I do?

I don’t know what else to record.

I hate life in Dark Side City. I hate my life.

I have to go now, it’s my shift soon. Hopefully I can get access tomorrow.

Ha, tomorrow. It only comes when they say it does.

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ENTRY TWO

Today I feel better than yesterday, even though its all just the same. Today, tomorrow, yesterday, a solyear ago, a solyear into the future. Nothing will ever change. I won’t live but I won’t die. I’ll work for hours but never make anything. I’ll sleep and still be tired, eat and still be hungry, drink my ration but still be thirsty.

Labbu said we are going meet a dataplug later so I wanted to log an entry and keep the line busy until I get back. I want to put this down. I am and idiot for the last time. I’m so happy I’ll be free. I’m so sorry mom.

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It started when my friend Labbu and I were working a shift at the shipwash. Labbu and I finished our function in the line we stood back and overheard the crew talking about their last contract with the data cartel. Labbu, being bolder than I, inserted himself in their conversation and tried to weasel a data plug out of them. It almost didn’t work when our Sup.Erv unit strolled by but then a new vessel pulled into our line and the automaton vanished up to the front. Labbu could continue to talk to their crew and he laid it on thick. He found out that they were working for the cartel as connectors, going around the galaxy and finding new leads on data for the cartel to investigate. Labbu found out that they were last on Baar IV and after they let that slip, Labbu pounced on them. He held it over their heads that he knew where there last were. He threatened to go to the local cartel administrator and tell them that this crew is teaching things for free, telling whomever about data leads across the galaxy. Labbu was cunning, and when they threatened to space us, Labbu replied about how we were protected by the data cartel as consumers. The data cartel will be more upset about losing consumers than connectors. They backed down and gave Labbu a lead on a smalltime plug in Daedalus. Labbu was ecstatic and I was honestly just surprised that he pulled it off. We worked the rest of the shift giddy to meet up afterwards with the plug.

The plug made us pay in work to the cartel. For the next week they get all of the products of our labor, which isn’t much to begin with but that’s not the part that’s funny to me. It just made me giggle that we have to give more of our life to the cartel, when they already own all of it. I didn’t get it, it was like paying with nothing, it was like we got to learn for free.

The plug gave us everything up to H.H.P.C.A. grade seven, which was amazing. It hit me like a spaceliner. Instantly I knew everything, a benefit of the type-2 interfacers Labbu stole last month. I’m still reeling from it. I had to run to the prompter to log all of this. I feel dizzy. I don’t even know what that means, oh wait yes I do. I do now.

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ENTRY THREE

It’s been three days since the events of that last entry, and I’m still riding the high of that learning experience. My mind is fucking blown. It feels like I am seeing for the first time, listening for the first time, acting for the first time. Life before is so unimaginable now that I know so much. I can’t believe I used to live like that, I just can’t picture it anymore. Now that I know, the entire galaxy has changed forever.

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ENTRY FOUR

It’s been a couple days since my last entry and I feel very different than I did then. I feel like the true gravity of what I’ve just learned has set in, and I gotta admit I feel terrible now. There is so much wrong with the galaxy and it is so obvious. I just wish I could do something about it. Gain enough strength, get a big enough fist to punch out the greed and indifference, fucking beat the living shit out of anyone that tries to get off on anyone else in the galaxy, kick em right out. I hate that I know so much now but, but I fucking love it. It’s fucking amazing. I can’t wait to learn again. Even going to my shitty job is better now that I can just think about all the shit I know now. I can just think, let my mind wander aimlessly through all this information I now have, and the universe expands infinitely inside me, all while on the clock. I’m going to start working double shifts now since work isn’t too annoying anymore. Labbu doesn’t feel the same way. He’s been weird since we learned. We don’t talk much and I don’t really ever see him at work anymore.

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ENTRY FIVE

My mom noticed. She knows I’m smart now. She’s not mad at me, and she won’t outright acknowledge it or talk about it, but she acts differently around me. Maybe I act differently around her. I kinda regret doing this, but I also kinda don’t. This learning stuff is really complicated I’m slowly learning. God, just listen to that. It builds on itself and multiplies and explodes every second. I almost can’t take it but I need more. I get more everyday, its like it naturally comes to me, this high, but I just can’t stop craving more. Another big hit like that, another fucking trip.

I toughened up and talked to Labbu and it was really nice. He apologized for being weird since learning and so did I. He seems to be going through the same stuff I am. Learning seems to have the same effect on him. He loves it, but it also causes him doubt, paranoia, anxiety. But it gives us so much, excitement, genuine interest and enthusiasm, wonder and joy, and most of all, creativity. Labbu says he has been drawing a lot in the dust in his room. He says he draws pictures of animals and spaceships. I told him to show me sometime.

We also talked about going back to the plug or finding a new one. I think we should find a new one but Labbu thinks it will be safe to go back. I’m worried that the cartel will know about us. I think they know more than they let on. But Labbu thinks their idiots. Idiots may work for them but there’s at least one wise-ass calling the shots at the top.

We’re going to think about it and talk about it at work tomorrow.

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ENTRY SIX

I convinced Labbu to hold off on re-upping. And I convinced him to find a new plug. It’s going to be more difficult but in the end I think it’s going to pay off. I’m still kind of upset with Labbu, though. During our conversation, he wouldn’t listen to any of the arguments I put forward to convince him to go to another plug and he didn’t change his mind until I argued that we’ll learn more if we go somewhere else. If we go back to the same plug we’ll probably not get such a big rush. New usually means more unknowns. He quickly jumped onboard when I put it that way. That’s what scares me. He wouldn’t listen to normal reason, he would only be enticed, not reasonable or cautious. His desire for more knowledge, the next rush, is what motivates him.

Also I finally talked to mom. She is proud of me for learning, taking initiative on my own, but she is scared for me. She is scared of the cartels. She is scared of my potential, the possibility that I might become intelligent or wise. She knows what happens to people like that. She knows a lot more than I thought she did. I learned that. I have a lot to learn from her.

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ENTRY SEVEN

I’ve come up with a plan. Labbu thinks its gonna work but I’m not sure. It’s only going to work if we get lucky. If we can access to our crater’s wallet when the cartel does its reaping for this cycle, then we can do a back search on the cartel’s downloads. We’ll be able to see their largest cache and where it came from in DSC. Then all we’ll need to do is quit our jobs, leave our homes, and stowaway on a transport heading in that direction. Once we get there, we should probably be able to do odd jobs around the area while snooping around for the plug. It’s going to be dangerous but I think we’ll be able to do it.

I’m scared about leaving my family and Daedalus but I know what we have to do. We have to keep learning, we’re addicted now. My mom told me the other day. She helped me formulate this plan. She said my brother did the same thing just after Encyclopedia was destroyed. She said my dad always talked about doing something like this. She gave me a week’s worth of MNC pills and a bunch of facts to barter with. She told me everything she knew. Everything she learned over the course of her long life. How to sweet-talk, how to perceive threats, how to gather context clues, and powers of intuition and deduction. She told me about what she saw during the Battle for Luna, and she told me about what my dad told her just before he died. He was with Chukchi when the Headkicker battle group bombarded DSC. What she said made me cry but it was beautiful. I know that it will be very valuable to us on our trip.

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ENTRY EIGHT

We’re still waiting for our chance. Our Sup.Erv gave me a promotion for my apparent uptick in production rate. It’s weird being … different isn’t the right word but that’s how I feel. I feel different than everyone else now. I guess I look at everyone the same way I look at my old self, my dumb ignorant self. Naïve, that is the right word. I shouldn’t be so hard on myself or anyone else, I feel sorry for them. I pity them.

Labbu is growing impatient. He has become kind of a blabbermouth and a fiend. He asks everyone about their day. ‘HOW ARE YOU?’ he asks you a dozen times a day to anyone he can find. I’ve been secretly avoiding him. I feel bad about that. And I admit I’ve been feeling kind of like a fiend too. I’m always thinking about learning more. I wonder about things I know, the facts and figures, vocabulary and literature, processes, techniques, systems, history. I fucking want more. I wish I was getting lit all day. I want to feel like that forever.

I don’t talk to my mom anymore. I look at her and I just see her life, her whole experience, it flashes before my eyes in that instant and I see everything she’s ever experienced and I want to weep. I can’t look at her without wanting to hug her so dearly and never let her go. I hate this side effect of knowledge; It makes me … languished. God I can’t believe I just used that word. I feel like such a snob, I hate that side effect too. The pompous arrogance and bullshit that makes me hate myself, I can’t stop but feel like the enemy sometimes with this knowledge. I feel like a bad guy.

Nothing else to report. Daedalus still won’t get any contact, so it looks like our plan won’t be able to happen soon.

I hope things change.

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ENTRY NINE

Labbu and I were washing a guy’s ship today and we got to talking to him. He understood we were under supervision by Sup.Erv and he said he’ll be around so we should find his ship on the north ridge after our shift. Labbu was ecstatic. He was convinced this guy was a data plug, or at least associated with the cartels. ‘No way someone that charming isn’t in a position of power.’ I laughed at that. We met up with him after our shift and he was just a runner. He said he was from DSC so he always like to come back and talk to people from here. He misses his home, he tells us. Labbu practically falls in love with him right there. He says he’s from Aiken. Oof. Labbu freaked when he told us he was at The Hole when they started the riot. He and some other inmates escaped on a transport in the spacedock. They were pretty much the only ones that escaped that place. Labbu asked if he met Phen, or The Scav, or HyDE, or Jerry or GaRY, or if he saw The Salacious Harlot out there during the battle, or … the guy cut Labbu off with a wave of his hand. Labbu was kind of a nerd for the ILH and its fall. No to all of those, the guy said. But he did know Tyrus Helot while imprisoned, well he didn’t know him personally, its not like they associated, but he saw him at lunch. I laughed. Labbu just stared longingly at the guy. I looked at him suspiciously, he seemed to understand because next he brought up why he talked to us and invited to his ship for a round.

He said we had the look, which made me sweat. I knew what he meant. He knew right away that we were some hardcore education fiends and he just had to help us out. Labbu kissed him right then but the guy pushed him away, laughing. I was terrified. I knew it. I was done for. The jig is up. I knew people could tell I was a junkie just by looking at me. I probably reeked of it too. The bags under my red eyes from laying awake and thinking and remembering. My gaunt figure, craving no nutrition, only knowledge. God, I thought I was going to get picked up by the cartel any second.

Then the guy told us something else. He talked about how he could use our help, getting a plug to plug connection. Inter-System. Labbu cut him off. He agreed for the both of us. He told the guy we would do what ever he needed. He lied about our clearance and grades. He made us sound like pirates or marksmen. The guy laughed and seemed to see through it. He told us to work one last shift at the shipwash, tell our mothers we love them, pawn everything we own and call in every favor we’re owed because we might never come back. And the more we start with, the more we can wager. Labbu was thrilled. I was nervous.

I didn’t get any sleep last night. I told my mom everything this morning. She sat and listened and when I was done she got up and hugged me for a long time then kissed my head and told me to be careful. She knew I would make her proud. I left our den feeling sad. I saw Labbu before our shift started. He was giving the Sup.Erv notice and received our severance and we could have left then but I didn’t feel like starting our life of education as a wanted man for desertion. Besides it was a slow shift. Labbu and I had plenty of time to chat. He was like a freaking jabbernid. He bragged about how much chief he got for our trip. He kept calling it a trip. I wanted to grab him by the neck and yell at him that its not some voyage. Its a job. And we don’t even fucking know what it is we are going to do. We don’t even know who this fucking guy is.

I didn’t yell at him. I just told him how much chief I could scrounge and it ashamed him. I let him talk to himself the rest of the shift. I thought to myself about how I need to log an entry one last time. I wanted to leave this as a record of how I felt here in DSC, maybe a guide on how to not educate yourself.

If you find this: do not do as I have done.

Do not get enlightened with your friends behind a Jour-Nue’s.

Do not get high on knowledge, and especially do not get high on your own intelligence.

And do not get on spaceships with guys you do not know.

This is Moonbeam Armstrong from Daedalus Crater Block 2B2B2B3#4C. I never thought I was going to leave this goddamned city but here I am. If I can do it, anyone can. I’m going to learn everything I can, I going to make my mother proud, and I am going to find my brother: Mymare Armstrong

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