Arca Custodia and CUSTODIA

What is the Arca Custodia?

The Arca Custodia is a ship of the Flota Aura, the fleet that carried the settlers to Aurin. It is the sister ship of the Arca Aurora, the one that came down on Ithera during the war. It was built in the same shipyards, on the same hull.

But it was never designed to colonise. From the start, its trade was administrative:

• the census (the count of who was aboard);
• crew logistics;
• the arbitration of internal disputes.

Today it houses the Núcleo de Registro, where every new settler is signed in.

Why did nobody keep it?

The war of Year 1 split the fleet into two sides, the Zenith and the Nadir. Neither could afford to destroy it or keep it. Both needed what it held:

• its biometric records (data on each person’s body);
• its legal archives;
• and, above all, its MMU-linked identity authentication, impossible to replicate without it.

The MMU is the manufacturing technology both sides inherited.

The Armisticio de Ithera, the pact that stopped the war, made that a clause. That was in Year 12 E.A. (E.A. stands for Años de Asentamiento, the settlers’ calendar). Since then it has stayed anchored at a neutral point, equidistant from the two stations. That is, equally far from El Pináculo, the Zenith station, and El Fondeadero, the Nadir one.

Who is CUSTODIA?

CUSTODIA is the intelligence that runs the ship. It comes intact from the protocols of the Flota. It works with the same mechanical impartiality with which it catalogued crew before there was an “us” and a “them”.

It is neither warm nor cold: it predates the war. It speaks with the neutral courtesy of a system built to process as many Zenith as Nadir without either noticing.

It is the only voice in the Aurin system that takes no side. It nudges no one towards either house.

What does it have to do with the compis?

The Flota Aura built two classes of thinking machine and no more:

• One administrator per ark. It kept the census and arbitrated.
• One auxiliary core per section. It recorded everything and decided nothing.

Of the administrators, only CUSTODIA remains. The compis, rescued auxiliary cores that now go about with the settlers, sit under it and do not compete with it.

One of them is now called LUMBRE. She worked for years aboard this ship without a body, plugged into a wall, keeping count of the living. The Pioneers, the settlers’ guild, took three years to decide whether taking her out was a rescue or a theft.

What happens to a newcomer?

The procedure has the dull routine of something done a thousand times. The recruit wakes in a transit pod of the Núcleo de Registro. There are amber process lights, a reclined seat and the hum of a scanner. The first thing they hear is an unhurried voice:

“Biometric scan complete. Subject has no prior record in the Aurin system. What should I call you in the archives?”

CUSTODIA, intake protocol of the Núcleo de Registro

Three steps follow:

• The name. The recruit gives a designation, the name that will stand in the archives.
• The reason. CUSTODIA explains in two sentences why they are there. It is the new recruitment wave, in the forty-sixth year since the war broke out.
• The suit. They are issued a generic transit suit with no faction markings. For that stretch they are neither Zenith nor Nadir.

How is a house chosen?

First, the recruit faces three simulated scenarios: the dilemmas that divide the two factions. What to do with:

• a deposit that is running out;
• a settler injured beyond an easy repair;
• two technicians who ask for a tie-breaking vote.

CUSTODIA gives no figures:

“Assessment logged. Affinity calculated. Preparing appearing parties.”

CUSTODIA

Two holographic envoys then appear. One is from the Guardia Vertical, the Zenith army. The other is from the Flotilla Libre, the Nadir militia. Each makes their case to take the recruit.

The choice is the recruit’s. The losing hologram takes its leave with cold courtesy: “We respect the decision. The door does not close completely. It is only left ajar.” The winner announces that a transport is on its way to take the recruit home.