The Journal of Loose Ends

In this installment, we bring you a previously published study from the Anthropological and Ethnographic Center of Excellence. Though of recent vintage, this study promises to remain a landmark work in ethnography, especially in the setting of post-scientific investigation. Is the wolf on the inside of a justifying system, or is the sheep?.

The Journal of Loose Ends

Research in the post-scientific era

Volume 1, no.3

Abstract: The following abstract is amended to provide additional background information. Though the archive exists to serve the species, we respect subscribers outside of the primary user group as well as scholars within the primary user group who work and live in remote regions with limited exposure to popular culture. The word “Kronker” is the place to begin, because it needs some disambiguation. The Kronker was, first of all, a person. He was a crewman on a long-range transport vessel, which situates him in the depths of subculture. The long-range transport system is the singular response of delicate and diminutive creatures with desperate needs to the unforeseen and grossly inequitable scale of their condition. In our current circumstances, those able to survive passage through the dendritic event radiation may step between worlds in separate galaxies with apparent ease. Bearing witness to such miracles gives us a false sense of comfort. The sight of a relaxed, confident calculator stepping out of a fold in space time obscures the enormity of duplicated and sequestered information held and recalculated within its projections to allow those bite-sized wonders.

Cargo containers cannot pass through a fold. Only a handful of stable Einstein-Rosen bridges left over from the early universe grant exceptional passage for trade goods and their transports. The species engineers managed to move a few of the anomalies to convenient positions, but only a few, and those at significant cost and terrible risk. In all but a few, isolated cases, trade between worlds must somehow make peace with general relativity on its own terms. Though it was not at all flashy, clever, or inspiring, the species came up with the answer to interstellar trade in the face of the overwhelming difference in scale between the intervening territories and the tiny creatures seeking to cross them.

They took the castaway’s strategy employing notes and bottles and moved it from the ocean to the interstellar void. They mapped a course most likely to encounter inhabited worlds without committing to multi generational time frames. They built simple, sturdy transport ships, loaded them with goods and sent them on their way. The first vessels had no biological crew.

Consulting economists gave the project lead an estimate for uptake of the practice among the new contacts. They woefully underestimated its popularity. Joining the partnership was daunting even for the civilizations that did not contribute trade vessels of their own to the endeavor. Though compliance with the exchange model has grown lax in recent times, the original idea was to avoid any stoppage or even slowing during the trip. That meant operating at “relativistic speeds” to transfer goods from ship to ship. The process automatically weeded out the dilettantes. Though there were discrepancies between valuations among the trade partners the system got up and running with no intentional losses. As the program’s administrators came to understand over the subsequent millennia, the psychological benefits of a vessel sailing out of the interstellar void bearing goods and an invitation to participate in a benign and familiar activity, surpassed the value of the goods exchanged, however precious the wares. It reduces the scale of our collective home to something manageable again.

Though it proved to be a spectacular success, the program still had its shortfalls. Once the euphoria waned, trading partners registered their complaints. They needed more help with maneuvers at relativistic speeds than computers could manage. None of them felt comfortable allowing unsupervised nachinaks to perform the tasks. Besides, they needed evaluators from the species partners ‘ culture to advise them on the best sorts of goods to add to their shipment.

To the marketing consultant’s delight and leadership’s consternation, recruiters fanned out to find crews for the transport ships. The reader should not mistake leadership’s opposition to manning the trade vessels for humanitarianism.

The ships required an expensive refit to accommodate squishy, radio-sensitive, psychologically fragile adjuncts. Technicians would have to complete the refit at speed and within retrieval parameters for the refit teams. Worst of all, they would face the historical certainty of complaints from the crew.

They expected a difficult recruitment process. They got straight up weirdness. If they had mustered a smidgen of insight, they could have spotted the problem coming before its bearers walked into the recruiting office with it.

Though there are a handful of species in the universe that are intelligent and solitary, they are by far the exception, not least because they tend to get exterminated by the social animals. A long-range trader crewman’s life entailed profound isolation. As they picked up speed, time effectively slowed down for them. Most routes permitted relativistic speeds by taking a close pass by one or more black holes, which accelerated the time differential. The people they knew and loved would leave them with no goodbyes. All the trappings of their present culture and society, whose gradual transformation oriented them in time and validated their membership in those groups, would change in arbitrary jolts, leaving the crewman alienated by the change. They were not merely alone; they were excluded, not by unjust human whimsy, but by the laws of nature.

Had leadership taken the time to wonder what sort of person, what bundle of psychological characteristics and associated social circumstances would gravitate to such an existence, they could have spared everyone months of wasted time and unnecessary disappointment.

They were doomed to draw from a shallow pool of archetypal personalities. Their best catches were the people who met the diagnostic criteria for Asperger syndrome. Members of marginalized religions, displaced ethnic groups, and those with countercultural attitudes also made decent crew members.

Due to time constraints and the limited pool of applicants overall, recruitment also extended to an unsavory fringe. Mostly, these were psychopaths who either disregarded human fellowship or sought an unregulated venue where they could pursue their criminal careers or both. Sprinkled amongst the criminals were misanthropes and control freaks, the latter of whom caused havoc in the early history of manned long-range transport. They came with spouses and children in tow. They took up hours of interview time negotiating the necessary amenities for their families. Most of the partners brought on board with crewmen ended up being separated from those crewmen, several after hostage situations. The same was true of children, especially those brought on board before the age of five.*

As the manned ships rotated into the transport chain, local populations became interested in the odd mix of persons performing the job. Among the public those who had never experienced isolation, romanticized it. Soon, crewmen received interview requests, marriage proposals, and albums of ballads devoted to their lifestyle. It all came across as a little shallow and patronizing, but the crewmen did not seem to mind. For them, it was only a sign that someone out there was thinking about them.

Into this scene, walked the Kronker. Based on our ethnographer’s description, he was a member of the counterculture on his home world. He had a long history of drug use and, in retrospect, mental illness. By all accounts, however, he was a competent crew member. He stayed with the ship he originally signed onto for the whole of his career.
He seems not to have been socially impaired as he frequently chatted with fellow astronauts and members of trade delegations that came on board. Though he appeared well-adjusted, he suffered the same problems as his peers. Unlike most of them, he spoke freely about his difficulty enduring isolation and his intention to try to find a treatment for the symptoms it caused.

Ethnographers credit him with the name for the most common array of symptoms encountered among crew members of long-range trade vessels: the “slow bleed”. It refers to the gradual onset of melancholic inertia that progresses over time, sometimes leading to the more severe psychiatric manifestations of isolation encountered among long-range trader crews.

Now, with sufficient background for understanding Kronker’s subsequent actions, including his decision to try Kronker’s (a large yellow tablet he bought from a local trade mission delegate) on himself, a troublesome colleague, and finally on an entire species his vessel encountered during an unanticipated full stop.

*Please see Proceedings of the Anthropological and Ethnographic Center of Excellence, volume 4, number one supplemental; Recipe For A Serial Killer, the Effect of Social Isolation during the Critical Period of Psychosocial Development.

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The Kronker’s Transcript

Kronker’s: Okay, before you start, I may be needing your help for some things. So, if you notice my left cheek start to twitch, please hit the button on the right that’s pinned to my shirt right there next to the collarbone. If my eyes start to do something funny or I have a full-blown seizure, hit the button in the middle of my chest. Well with that out of the way what you want to know?

Ethnographer: I’d like to establish a timeline if you don’t mind.

Kronker: No problem, man, by all means

Ethnographer: When did you first obtain the tablets from your associate in the trade delegation? And how long was it before you tried one yourself, and how long after that did you slip the tablet to Barney. There’s some question in the previous records about whether you gave him the pill first or whether you took it yourself before giving it to him.

Kronker: We’re going to have to stop this if you keep accusing me of that stuff. I’ve said it before a million times; I would never give somebody something I hadn’t taken myself first. Don’t get me wrong, I hated that freaking guy. He was evil and he deserved everything that happened to him. Still, I wouldn’t give him poison and tell him it was a medicine on purpose.

No, I took it first, and it helped – a lot! That was when I figured I’d try and get Barney to take it. I did have to lie a little bit. There’s no way he would take it if he thought it was only going to make him less abusive. I mean he liked being abusive. It was one of his principal joys in life. He got high on the power. There isn’t even an excuse in his past, you know, an abusive father, a family that abandoned him, even school bullies. He was the school bully!

Ethnographer: Okay, I think we have the sequence of events down. Starting from the beginning, what happened with the trade delegate? Did he approach you because he knew you were having problems and he thought he had a medicine that would help you, or did you approach him, or just mention it in passing? Can you describe the effect of the tablet on you?

Kronker: Yeah, what you said! That’s just about right, and you got it first time. We’d been having a couple drinks and playing some cards with the guys from planet side. I’ve been telling him about the slow bleed and how it was getting to the point where I thought I would have to quit. So when he came back the next day, he had this pill with him. He told me it was something that he got on a trading mission to a world near the turnaround point. He couldn’t recall the name of the place, but he remembered how calm and peaceful everyone was. It made a big impression on him, so much that he took a chance on asking the locals about it. They told him they all took this pill and it helped with their problems.

He bought up a bunch of it right then and there. Ever since, he’s had deliveries sporadically and he has remained on the pill along with a half-dozen of his friends. It’d only been a year and 1/2 since we were at turnaround, I mean ship time that is. That’s when it came to me that we could be sitting on a huge stash of the stuff. The pills from the last delivery never got to the trade delegate. Accounted for on the docks, but missing in transit. The same thing happened to the next scheduled order; that’s one reason why the delegate was up in our ship in the first place. You asked what it did? It took away the symptoms. I mean it was weird, it took away all the symptoms, whatever they were, from everything.

Ethnographer: that sounds impressive. Was that when you decided to give a dose to Barney?

Kronker: Oh no, I’d made up my mind on that the next day, after what it did for me. Our most recent member had just come on board within the week, a female, and honestly, she should have known better. But there’s nothing we could do. The authority investment corps will sign anybody as long as they think a recruit is not going to crash a ship. We had 2 female recruits before the last one and Barney assaulted both of them in the end. There was an investigation but nobody said anything. He made it clear that he would track down anybody who squealed on him. I figured it was tomorrow or maybe the next day before it happened to this one. The delegate gave me 10 tablets, and I was at work that same day, trying to get one into Barney. After chow, I bought him a drink.

Once he was tipsy, I offered him one of the pills. I told him it was a good high and took one with him. I tried to follow him when he left, but I couldn’t manage it without him noticing. I thought about going home and waiting to see what happened in the morning. I didn’t feel right about it, though, so I just headed over to the newbies’ quarters. From the way he was talking and acting, I figured Barney would show up there soon enough.

I had no idea what I would do if that happened. Something. Probably get myself shot. I’m just not good at fighting, because I feel bad when I see somebody get hurt. Of course, it was just the opposite with Barney, so things were going to turn out in his favor if I jumped him.

I picked up a 1 m length of pipe on my way over. I moved as quietly as I could through the corridor to her quarters. I could not hear anything else stir, and I did not see anyone there when I arrived at her door. I moved back around to the inside corner of the adjacent room and waited. And waited. And waited. He never showed up.

I knocked on her door and told her that she needed to stay in and keep the door locked until I knocked again tomorrow morning. She looked scared, but not surprised. I think she knew what was fixing to happen. I went back home and had a nap before my shift started. On the way over to work, I stopped by again. She opened the door when I knocked and said that she had not seen anybody or heard anybody around her quarters for the rest of the night.

I was just about to go when I saw him. Barney was seated in the middle of a room, kitty corner and two doors down from the newbies’ quarters. He was just sitting there. At first, I thought he might be dead, but then he looked up at me and started crying. That’s something I thought I would never see.

He said, “I can’t do anything.” He showed no sign that he was going to get up, so I went and lifted him to his feet. I had to lead him by the hand to the office. It was time for my shift, so I left him with our Robo security unit and the crew member assigned to office duty that day, including the brig. It wasn’t like they had anything else to do, and still, they lost track of him, or maybe they just looked the other way. But whatever, about halfway through my shift, he went out and climbed one of the antennas, then took a high dive from the ionosphere. It was probably the right decision for him. Once you took the mean out of him, there wasn’t much left. I think he figured it wasn’t enough to make continuing worthwhile.

Ethnographer: Is this where the tensions between the planet’s two sets of inhabitants snapped? Do you think that Barney’s jump precipitated subsequent events, or was it purely coincidental?

Kronker: It was because of him, I’m quite sure of it. There wasn’t much left when he hit the ground, but something did hit. People saw something on fire falling toward them. Look, they had gotten to the point where it was easier to imagine waking up to a war than it was to imagine waking up to one more day of soul-destroying tension. Barney’s high dive wasn’t much, but it was enough to tip over something so precariously balanced. Plus it makes more sense knowing who Barney was. He couldn’t even take that dive without hurting somebody else in the process.

Ethnographer: I’m assuming you’re aware of the various turns the folklore takes from here. I’ve studied the whole affair from every angle that I could find, so I’ve heard what your thoughts were at the time and going forward. Here’s one more opportunity for the record. What was your role in the whole conflict, and what exactly did you do with the stash of pills you found?

Kronker: I appreciate that. You gotta remember, I lived in a collective for years before I took to space work. And I didn’t go into space to get away from my former life. I went into the long-range transport business in particular because I wanted to test the truth of my convictions. I’ve stayed with the long-range transport business in general because I haven’t got a complete answer yet, but I’m close.

The remaining mysteries cluster around human nature, the first one being, is there such a thing? If there is such thing, is it something vital to us, or is it an incidental that we can jettison if need be. And there are the related questions, I call them hybrid questions; half metaphysical and half nomological. Things like What the hell do we do with guys like Barney? One person can’t answer the first of those questions on their own, unless of course, they have the help of general relativity. It’s a costly way to see the future, but it’s the only way to see the future.

I got more from the trade delegate over that 24 hour break than the yellow pills. I think he recognized that I was on his side from the beginning. He was talking a humility ethic all along. You may never have heard of that. Nobody calls it that but me to be honest. But I think that’s the name that fits best. It’s a way of doing the right thing in the only way that right things get done right. Little actions in the moment cautiously and big actions decisively through to the end. And it has one important footnote for the whole thing: you still won’t get it right.

The delegate told me he was not after some grand plan for Utopia, the way the calculators were. He was resisting the infirmity ethic’s spread among his people. The infirmity ethic is the belief that people are fundamentally sick. If left to their own devices, they descend into barbarism and destroy themselves just like Barney did. A devotional object was the only thing that could save them. That was always a man, and if the man was not the speaker, then it was someone conveniently nearby.

His people’s Savior wore a ridiculous satin cape and white gloves, mirrored glasses, and a choker with an emerald the size of a quail’s egg in the middle of it. All I really did for the delegate was find the stash of pills. I knew every corner and cubby of that ship. I advised him on methods that he might use to dose the population, but anyone could’ve done that, and he would have figured it out himself eventually. We had to leave before it was all over. I didn’t see him again for more than three years of ship time.

Ethnographer: Yes, he was wearing that emerald by then, and 1/3 of the population wandered the streets as beggars and scavengers due to the effects of the yellow pills.

Kronker: Nobody got out of that day with anything that they deserved. Maybe that is the final lesson. I’ll never know. I will not be traveling into the future any longer.

Ethnographer: Do you have any regrets?

Kronker: Yes

Ethnographer: About the yellow pills, I suppose?

Kronker: Of course not! That is, I don’t regret the yellow pills more than the rest of it. I didn’t get it right any more than anyone else does or could have. You know what those yellow pills do, don’t you?

Ethnographer: I do. They cause focal neurologic injury through excitotoxicity. The more active the neuron is the greater the drug’s affinity for it. Once the drug binds to receptors in the membrane, it magnifies the cell’s metabolic burden when the cell’s relative activity surpasses a certain threshold percentage of the total.

Kronker: Right. We use medications like them all the time. If you’re having hallucinations, an antipsychotic puts the brakes on them. If you’re having a panic attack, you take a benzodiazepine and it tamps down the overactive nerve cells that are causing the problem. The other strategy that we use is really just a corollary. If some nerve cells are causing a problem because they are underactive, we stimulate them with drugs or simulate them with drugs. But either way, we focus on the outside going in. We have an idea already in place about what we want to see and what we expect to see from the treatment. The yellow pills give us what we need out of a treatment.

Ethnographer: I don’t see how the yellow pill’s mechanism is any different from that of any other pharmaceutical. That’s why I wonder why you don’t feel regret about dosing an entire population with this toxic medication.

Kronker: Oh man, you don’t get this at all! When we give other drugs, we give them because we already know what we want them to do and we know that they will probably do it. The yellow pills are judge, jury, and executioner.

They don’t wait for us to give them for things that have already happened. The chemical goes to where the neurons are most active. Because of its shape, it effectively knows when a neuron goes from a partner in a dynamic equilibrium to a rogue actor.

And don’t all our problems start in the neurons? Why not treat them there and keep them there? It’s everybody else who is doing the really crazy stuff. Do you think that the calculators know what paradise looks like? If you walked up to one of them right now and asked, could they give you a description, even a sketch? No! They’re waiting for their machine to tell them what paradise looks like, after it delivers paradise to them. Do you think the person who takes an antidepressant knows just what to expect? They have to try the medicine and see what it does for them. Only then will they really know why they have taken it. Of course, I have regrets. But regrets don’t mean nothing.

Ethnographer: Do you think this is something we should still be doing, even after what happened the first time? I get your drift, but can’t you also characterize a person taking a yellow pill as neurons setting booby-traps for neurons? There must be something missing, because I can’t see a way that this turns out well.

Kronker: Well, it’s a moot point anyway, and maybe you’re right, just look at me.

Ethnographer: Yes. This is a good spot to wrap things up. What are your plans? Is your company going to keep you on? Are you able to go on?

Kronker: They’re able to accommodate my disability, and I do think that I can make one more trip around the Horn. I have some trades to complete and a delivery or two that the partners are expecting. After that, I don’t think you will be seeing the Kronker again.