ACF: The ABCs

[illirica]

"When I was younger than you I had a friend."

Laine's voice was not loud. It never was. It did not need to be. Miss Votticelli-Smith was supposed to hear it, and so she would. The others would hear it as well, which was less important but also practical. Some of them were security personnel, and it was important that they be aware of the situation in case it became a problem. Sometimes these situations could be like that.

"Her name was Alex." Agent Cotta was probably very concerned at this point, which was an expected result of this discussion. "She had different ideas than many people at the time. She had ideas about anomalies and people working together. She researched how that might work, and if it could work, and what it might mean for the Foundation if it did. She was my researcher, and she studied me, and she was my friend.."

That was important. It had always been important. "Five years ago we lost her." This was also very quiet. It was quiet, but it was not silent. It had been silent for a very long time already. Laine paused, and let it be silent again, just for a little while this time, because sometimes silence was important.

"I think you are a little bit like her." Laine was not sure how much. No one would ever be exactly like Alex, because people did not do that, and if they did do that, they would be anomalies.

"I know that you are thinking right now that you don't belong here. That is understandable." Laine knew this because she was an anomaly. She also knew that normal people did not know these things. Normal people also did not know that Venus Votticelli-Smith did belong here, but Laine understood that it was not polite just to say that, and also she was not supposed to say that sort of thing without authorization.

"But you don't always belong where you want to be. Sometimes you belong where you are needed most."

 

[Katpride]

There’s an educational poster on the wall right outside the room. ‘Anomalies are not toys!* Except when they are - report anomalous objects today!’ Venus doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Her anger always tends to get soggy before too long, as righteous as it may feel.

She stays where she is for a long moment, taking a breath that lifts her shoulders before turning to face Mr. Cotta again. Doubt creeps into her for a moment - is he calling her back just to embarrass her? It would’ve been a safe bet at the orphanage, but somehow, despite everything, she doesn’t think that lowly of him.

Her gaze drifts past him, settling on Laine as she starts her story. At some point her feet turn more, pointing back towards the conference room. Her expression softens with sympathy as the story goes on, and though some doubt remains it’s easy to treat the woman’s simple faith as fact.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she offers, with the intimate knowledge that ‘sorry’ is never enough to compensate for the absence and the equal knowing that it’s all there is to say, sometimes. It’s the polite thing to say, at least, and she gets the feeling that ‘polite’ might go a long way with Laine.

Venus takes a step forward, conscious of the eyes on her. Her nails scratch lightly at her palm, and she doesn’t quite look anyone in the eye for too long. “Well, I don’t quite know what the Foundation could need from me.” A pause, gathering her nerves. “But I know I can’t just stand by and watch people suffer, and I’m not killing anyone for a science experiment. I don’t see why anyone would be here if ‘putting things in boxes’ is all the Foundation is after, especially if it has such a high mortality rate. Lives aren’t disposable.”

Her eyes flicker towards Mr. Cotta, still sore on that point. “And for the record, I don’t agree with the idea that you can classify a sentient being out of being ‘people’ and having rights just because they might be dangerous.”

Once the words are out there she can’t take them back. When she takes a moment to breathe, Venus glances around again and feels embarrassed heat rush to her face. Still, she stays steady on her feet and doesn’t rescind any of it.

 

[Containment]

Isaac let Venus breathe, when she was done. He remained where he was as well, eyes on her, still with the strange spark behind them. The silence fit him much better than the memorized lecture had, but there was only so long that it could remain quiet before the tension broke. And he hadn’t yet gotten to the important part.

He turned toward the rest of the class. He gave Laine a small nod of approval. She’d chosen to address — ABC, and had done so without self-containing. That was excellent progress. It was important to reaffirm progress, not with anohumans and personnel, but with people. He glanced at the others present as well, his face an unreadable mask, but clearly maintaining the silence. He was making sure everyone had heard that, and gauging reactions. He even looked at the ERCC, with a degree of poignance that was nowhere near brazen defiance. Just measurement.

When he was done, he turned halfway back to Venus, and pointed with a firm and deliberate hand, still not looking at her.

“This is what Leviathan is looking for.” His voice kept the same solid clarity that carried in the classroom, and a little farther. “Their first purpose is not security, but safety. Their first emphasis is on the people of their Foundation, not the boxes they fill up.”

He did not state his agreement or otherwise. That wasn’t his department, today. Today he was the neutral party making a point for SV-1, nothing more. He turned back to Venus and gave her a little nod, and then paced back toward the front of the room. He cultivated the silence until he’d leaned back against the desk again, and folded his arms.

“Okay. Counterarguments. I know some of you have them. Let’s hear them.”

 

[Katpride]

As the silence following her statement drags on, Venus feels some of her confidence fading. It’s so tricky to keep hold of, these days. She isn’t the child she once was, bold and brash and convinced of her own ability to change the world. She held onto it for as long as she could, but at some point that became less important than fitting in and not making a fuss.

This is a fuss. Venus folds her hands together in front of her and tries to keep her chin up if not her gaze, ready for Mr. Cotta to kick her out of the Foundation if that’s what it comes to.

Suffice to say his declaration surprises her. Her shoulders stiffen, and she looks at him with wide eyes. He still isn’t looking at her, so she looks at the few people she’d spoken to - is she hearing things?

That… that shouldn’t have worked. Pointing out the injustices of the world doesn’t just fix them. She returns the nod in a sort of daze, drifting back into the room and taking the nearest empty seat at the back of the room. She doesn’t have enough nerve to go all the way back to her own seat, not after making such a scene.

And getting away with it. The old Venus would be giddy, but the Venus-that-is is just lost. If this works like this, then why-

Oh, if Mrs. Harlfas could see her now. Venus folds her hand across her mouth, her elbow propped on the desk. She doesn’t have any counterarguments to her own argument, so she just shakes her head slightly.

 

[Fang]

Harold had maintained his silence, absently rearranging his pens and turning his notebook by infinitesimal degrees until it was perfectly in line with a specific line in the wood on his desk. As Venus walked out he seemed to study something scratched into the edge of the wood, a snarky interpretation of the Foundation’s acronym written by some past student: A.nomalies C.an F.vck you up. It seemed oddly fitting with the young woman’s words.

Silence filled the room as Cotta asked after any counterpoints. Venus took a seat, a different seat than she had originally chosen to put distance between the girl she had been mere moments ago and the one she was now, illusions of heroic deeds dashed by the reality of the moral and ethical quandaries this lecture was clearly intended to poke at. This was how the world worked, small disenchantments until you were left with the realities you may not want to face.

”Society puts dangerous people into boxes all of the time. They terminate killers with the swing of a gavel. Even after sentences have been passed and cases closed, there is always a sliver of a doubt; a chance that the person sentenced was innocent all along.” He paused, and turned to young Venus in his chair, gaze lingering for a moment on the desk that Seven had occupied. ”At least the Foundation confirms the danger of their Anomalies, beyond a shadow of a doubt. And the containment units are generally quite posh compared to the bare destitution of a prison cell..”

”Left to the world without our intervention there would be more senseless death, more people put into worse boxes, more people sentenced to death that might have been innocent.” Her issue was a valid one, but she seemed to have missed an important factor. ”SV-1, and many other Agents and Researchers aside, seem to share your concern. Terminations are being limited and mostly eliminated, and cooperation between Anomalies, Agents, and Researchers is being encouraged to levels we haven’t seen before.” Harold’s tone softened, consoling toward the girl he did not know. ”I think what Agent Cotta is trying to say is that your concerns are what is needed to continue pushing the Foundation toward the moral institute you have envisioned, and away from the structure of our past mistakes.”

 

[illirica]

"Concrete boxes are very tidy." Laine did not think that she would mind a concrete box. It sounded very secure. She was aware that this feeling was, however, generally anomalous, even among anomalies. A concrete box would also be detrimental to interpersonal relationships. Laine was already not good with people.

Venus was polite. Laine did not think that interaction had gone badly, or if it had, no one had pointed that out yet. She'd sat back down, because she belonged here. Laine watched her, somewhat anomalously, but sometimes there were human things in there too, and humans could be polite. Or kind. "Anomalies can be dangerous, even when they don't mean to be." That was very relevant to the discussion at hand. "Anomalies are not human. They do not think like humans. Human concepts like morality, ethics - they cannot be applied to anomalies in the same way. It was asked earlier if it was ethical to have ACF-404 and ACF-666 continually at odds as a containment method. It was not asked if the actions of ACF-404 or ACF-666 were ethical. They are accepted as anomalous."

Laine shifted in her seat, turning sideways enough that she could look to the back of the room, where Miss Votticelli-Smith had chosen to sit. "After you learn a little more, you will ask yourself if I said what I did because I knew it would make you stay - because even if I did not stop you like I did the pen earlier, I said something that affected your decision. Did I say what I did because I wanted to, or because that statement fit into the reality where you stayed where you belonged? This is a research question. You can ask me, but I do not know the answer. You can ask Dr. Redd, but he does not know the answer either, even if he is thinking about it."

She gave a nod to Agent Cotta, because he was in security, and he understood that why was sometimes a question that needed to be someone else's department. "If I were not in the Foundation, if I were out in the world - what if I decided which politician belonged in the position that was being voted on? What if I decided which army should stay in contested land and which did not belong there? Or what if I decided that the particles of the nucleus of an atom did not belong together? This is not safe. This is not secure. This is not, by human standards, ethical. I do not know if I can do these things, but the Foundation is here because it is important that someone is here to tell me that I should not. The first goal of the ACF must be security. Cooperation - synergy - cannot exist without security."

 

[Containment]

“Okay everyone, eyes back on me.”

The senior personnel had made their points, and Isaac did not voice agreement or disagreement with anything.. Venus looked like she wanted to crawl in a hole, but she no longer looked like she wanted to haul tail to the amnestics wing, so he was going to count the situation as ending well. He scanned the room, then too a deep breath. He was only halfway done with his prepared material, after all, and the lull was enough of a segway for him to step back into it.

“So we’ve done awful things in the name of greater good. And – as I said – we will continue to do awful things, because we have to. Because it’s better than the alternative, because that is what the Foundation is here for. But you interns, you have this spark, this willingness to speak up, this understanding of the world that a lot of us have forgotten about in the name of our greater good. You can only do so many awful things before you start to become less human than the stuff in the boxes. That’s why we encourage humor, fun, things like betting pools and recreation and hobbies and creativity and vacation time. Stuff that reminds you you’re human even when you’re asked to stop acting like it.

“And if that’s the case for normal personnel, how much more for the rest of them, right?

“That’s why Leviathan has initiated this change of boundaries. What we can and can’t do to other people in the name of research. What we can and can’t do to ourselves in the name of security. As with everything, the Foundation has a reason. Rather than explain it, I’ll give you an example.”

He started to pace again. He felt Cody watching him. He didn’t watch Cody in return.

“Two and a half weeks ago, Agent Evan Griffith of FCRT-14-3 ‘Wisdom Teeth’ – Agent Phillips’ FCRT – was killed in the line of duty during a routine collections mission. I won’t go into detail, but I can give you the highlights. The FCRT went into the field with bad intel, and were attacked by what was supposed to be a Household-class object. One asset on the team is tied to a High-Grade Risky anomaly, which he caused to breach containment against orders from his team lead, in an attempt to save the team. The U- entity retreated, and then the anomaly turned on the team. Griffith, being the team’s front line security member, held the anomaly off until containment measures could be reinstated and died in the process.

“So, here’s our ethical problem: by causing the breach of containment, Evan’s teammate kills him, but also saves the lives of the rest of the team by opposing the U-class entity.

“Don’t worry. This isn’t on the quiz, I’ll give you the answer.

“We can try to measure this situation with rights and wrongs. Dying is bad, dying to protect someone is good. Breaches in containment bad. Acting to protect the team good. Ignoring orders bad. Acting over hesitation good. I could pick this situation apart for hours. I have. But right, wrong, bad, good, aren’t what we have to look for. I’m not even looking for secure versus dangerous. With all the context, I can tell you Agent Griffith did not need to die, but he died in the line of duty and saved lives by doing so.

“Like I said, I had hours to review the ethics of the situation and determine an outcome. On the field, and in the lab, you’ll have seconds or less to do so. Some of you will never see field work and won’t have to worry about that situation, just containment breaches. Some of you would have observed alternative measures for handling the U- entity. Some of you would not have died because your fellow agent decided to be a [EXPLETIVE]ing idiot. There isn’t any shame in that, it’s just facts. Some of you would have seen inconsistencies in the information and noted them before even going to the field. Some of you would have gone out exactly the same way Griffith did.

“Some of you this, some of you that, you weren’t there, and every situation is different. And that’s the point of an overarching code. This is what my rambling prelude leads to. No, I’m not going to lay out the specifics of the ethics code to you here and now. First, we’d be here for six hours while I covered every department. You’ll find copies of it in your department heads’ office. There will be severe consequences for breaching the updated ethics code. Not reading it is not an excuse for not following it.”

Deep breath, heavy pause. Relaxing from agent and manager to fellow-agent, experienced and seasoned, but also the right person to give this speech.

“What I was – and am – here to do is to make a point. The point of protecting and doing right by each other is, I think, abundantly clear. But all of this? Also applies to the anomalies and personnel in containment. The things I prefaced all of this with. The things that breach and when they do can and will kill your fellow personnel because that’s what they are, or because of what we’ve done to them in the name of the greater good. I’m not asking you to like them. I’m not asking you to like this. Maybe you think it’s about being better than them, but it’s not. Don’t lie to yourself. As you can see we’ll be doing enough of that for you. Maybe it will just be about following orders. That’s a valid way of handling this. Maybe you’re trying to be better. That’s a good way to approach it, too.”He stopped moving in front of the desk, and leaned back against it with the slightest hint of a smile as a few people muttered and grumbled. “For those senior agents glaring at me, I know. I just made you all sit here for an hour and lied to you about the reason why. Welcome to the Foundation, where we do unethical things in the name of a greater good.”

And then another, emptier pause. Space for people to process, to interject, to come to conclusions, to discuss. To let some of the tension drain away. Not quite finished, but drawing to a close.

 

[Fang]

In that moment of silence Harold Stines looked at first blush bored, and upon second glance puzzled. He had been with the Foundation for some five years or so, but he had no reason to glare, though his puzzlement likely came from the same source. Unlike those mentioned scowlers, however, Harold was quick to speak his mind, even if it might have been to his detriment. His own research papers and notes as well as the observations of several senior researchers were evidence to his loose tongue that took hold of him here.

”So, basically nothing is changing? At least on a fundamental level. Our goals were always altruistic, or so I’ve been lead to believe. It just sounds like we are acknowledging the gritty side of the work and maybe taking a baby step toward finding more humane solutions, but in the end we are still bagging and tagging as necessary. Maybe the wrist slaps might become a little rougher, but the courses taken aren’t going to deviate to any considerable degree.” Harold paused for a moment, absently placing the tip of a blue pen to his lip and making the slightest mark.

”Unless of course the call for change is being placed on the new recruits as a sort of grassroots policy. More freedom for them could inspire change to the top; it’s the opposite way most organizations would do it but it could be an effective strategy, especially if the new volunteers have enough passion for the work.” Harold’s other habit began to show as his words grew steadily quieter and more unintelligible until they faded into mumbled words and scribbles on his reopened notepad. Hunched over the paper, shielding it as if someone might copy his work, it seemed that Harold’s musing had reached the point where he forgot the question, the answer, or anything around him. It was unlikely he would come out of his scribbling, mumbling pattern for some hours if the past were any indication.

 

[Katpride]

Oh god, people are looking at her. Venus glances between the first man that looks at her and Mr. Cotta, eyes wide. Why is he addressing his argument to her? She doesn’t make the rules! Does she? No, no, she would remember if there was a clause somewhere with ‘Oh by the way, interns can change the structure of the entire organization by pointing out when something is wrong’.

And yet that seems to be exactly what the man is saying. Venus’ head is spinning, and for a moment she wonders if maybe this has all been a vivid dream. As surreptitiously as she can manage, she drags the nails of her left hand down the palm of her right. The scratches are light and quickly fading, but still tingly. Probably not dreaming.

Laine also turns to look at her. Venus does her best not to sink further into her seat, but it’s hard. It’s hard, and she kind of wishes she had left if only to avoid the awkwardness.

Mr. Cotta draws the attention away again and Venus finally takes a deep breath. She’s… not in trouble. It still takes a few moments for words to sound like words again, rather than buzzing static.

There’s a rather long speech to say that sometimes things go wrong and reading the rules is important, and Venus nods along. Then something registers as strange, and she half-raises her hand. Is she supposed to raise her hand? Is she not supposed to? It’s too late, and the question is already out of her mouth before she can think to not voice it. “Um, what are we supposed to do if something like that happens? Something dangerous, or unethical, or ‘not for the greater good’. I mean, does it depend on clearance? Or how bad it is?”

Are interns even really supposed to be involved in this? It sounds a lot like trying to teach old dogs new tricks by teaching puppies the tricks and setting them loose in the herd.

 

[Containment]

Alongside the complaints came the questions. Isaac listened to and observed both of the askers, then gave the rest of the floor enough space to speak up if they wanted to add anything. When nothing further was added, he looked at Venus again first.

“Right. The exact procedures are mentioned in the ethics handbook. However, all methods used in an experiment or on a field mission should be thoroughly documented, and reviewed by senior personnel afterward. Should you observe manipulation of the record, or observe something that bothers you or seems to violate the ethics code as you know it, then you need to report that to their superiors. If you don’t know who that is, or are worried about backlash from them, come to me or DR. Redd. New intern, seasoned staff, it doesn’t matter. Our doors are open to you. And if I find out anyone was prevented from that by intimidation or outright threat, there will be consequences.”

The faded green eyes turned to Dr. Stines, rolling over from one question to the other. Even if Harold didn’t look back at him, his were issues that needed to be addressed.

“Individual departments and situations will determine those consequences. This updated code might not have much effect on object containment, and some of you in anohuman and bioanomaly departments won’t have anything to worry about. Nor will people taking the safety aspect of the security job seriously, or those of you in the field focusing on secrecy. But just because we’re treating Class-A personnel better doesn’t mean that sort of demotion will be a slap on the wrist. It will still have more weight and meaning, and without the personnel shortage of the past five years, it’ll be implemented more often, as before, in serious circumstances. Because we’re acknowledging the grittier side of the work, we’re going to be keeping a closer eye on how far people are taking what ‘needs’ to be done.”

From anyone but Isaac, that may have been a threat. There were other agents with far more forceful personalities than his. Hope probably could’ve made it more threatening, and she was several inches shorter than him. But the cool calm in his voice, the open sweep of his gaze, made it very clear that this was a warning, or a promise. Not a threat. For some people here, it was their only warning.

“Doing what needs to be done doesn’t excuse brutality or incompetence. We’re professionals, people, and I expect every one of you to act like it. Be human, sure. But remember staff aren’t the only humans here, the only people. I can’t promise nobody will get hurt if everybody abides by the rules. That’s why rules change so much. Sacrifices are made for the greater good, but unnecessary harm is not the prerogative of the Foundation or of any of its personnel. We live and we learn and we keep it from happening again if we can. We can’t be either fluid or inflexible, but someplace in between.”

He looked up at the clock just as it hit 10 o’clock. The timing was perfect, because he was running out of words, and he could see a couple of the glassy-eyed stares of people who’d started to tune him out anyway. He pushed himself up off the desk.

“That’s all the time we have for this part. Class-Cs, get back to work. Newbies, I’ll see you after the break. Bring any further questions back with you, we should have a little extra time then. You’re all dismissed.”