Date Point 10y4m1w4d AV
Byron Group campus, Omaha, Nebraska, USA, Earth
Moses Byron
“Kevin! How’s the nose?”
In person, Kevin Jenkins’ nose really was an impressive sight. While it looked set to heal straight and clean, the bruising and discoloration covered a lot of his face. Xiù Chang, it seemed, had an impressive arm on her.
Kevin threw himself into a chair. “You had to ask. Worth it, though.”
“Hopefully. “ Byron agreed. “They still need to clear the selection and training.”
Kevin gave him a curious look. “I thought the whole point in sendin’ me up there was because we’re headhunting those three, boss man?” he asked.
“Mocktail?” Byron offered. Kevin had figured out his booze trick, so the offer was a simple courtesy.
“You askin’ me for one, or you offering?” Kevin joked.
“Offering.”
“Sure, sounds good.”
Byron nodded and hit his drink cabinet and refrigerator, selecting the cranberry juice, raspberry juice and lemon-lime. “D’you know how much profit the BGEV program has made us, Kevin?” he asked.
“Kinda figured it’s in the red.” Kevin replied.
“Yyyup.” Byron agreed. ”Badly in the red. Badly badly badly. In fact, EV-Eleven’s our last throw of the dice.”
“Crying shame.” Kevin mused. “But you can’t send good money after bad.”
“Your job ain’t to agree with me, Kevin.” Byron told him, smiling slightly. He poured the juice. “Quite the opposite.”
“Unless you’re right, boss man.” Kevin said.
“Well.” Byron unscrewed the lemon-lime’s cap. “Chang, Buehler and Etsicitty have got the experience and know-how, but if I’m gonna give them command over our last-ditch attempt to turn that program around, we need to know they make the grade. That ship ain’t leaving the good Earth until I’m completely happy that it’s got the best of the best on it.”
“You were pretty damn rigorous with the selection for Ten, as I recall.” Kevin observed. Byron handed him his finished drink.
“And for all the other ones. Hell, Reclamation was the only one we rushed things on, and that for good reason.” Byron sipped his drink, found it acceptable and sat down again. “But these three are gonna get the full room and board. Make or break, Kevin.”
“Make or break them, or make or break the mission?”
“Relax, they’ll be well taken care-of whether they make the cut or not. Talent like that, we’ll find a use for them. Just you wait and see.”
“Boss…” Kevin frowned at him. The man had an irritating knack for spotting unanswered questions.
“Fine, fine!” Byron sat down, called up the planned assessment and selection program and turned his monitor around for Kevin’s benefit.
Kevin read in silence for the most part. He only commented once. “Dang, the team dug up a lot on Buehler.”
“Surprising, ain’t it?”
“She really doesn’t seem the type…”
“Turns out she’s full of secrets.”
“And you’re gonna hit her with them?”
Byron nodded. “Kevin, if things go to plan she’s going to be the flight engineer for a starship that’s worth… well, a heck of a lot. And she’ll be cooped up on that ship with the other two for a minimum of eighteen months. If she’s carrying any baggage, it needs to be dealt with before any of them ever lay eyes on Eleven’s hull.”
“Why?”
Byron frowned. “‘Scuse me?”
“Why? She and the other two get on just fine. Hell, I think there’s some kind of triangle thing going on there. Why disrupt that by bringing old skeletons outta the closet?”
Byron rubbed his chin, assembling his thoughts. “We aren’t in the business of coddling three young pups in love, Kevin; we’re in the business of sending a spaceship out there that’ll turn a profit. That means forging a team who can steer her through whatever rough seas she finds in her way.” he said. “A team like that’s got to share everything, and I don’t just mean bath towels and body odor. Every doubt, every concern, every relevant bit of data, they all need to know it, and they all need to be able to work through it, together. No secrets, no lies, no omissions. They need to trust and accept one another completely and with every facet of their lives.”
“Heck.” he added. “If they make the grade, we’ll have made them inseparable if that’s what they want. And if not, well, we’ll have helped them gain new insight into themselves and one another and left ‘em a little wiser. No matter what happens, we’ll have done ‘em a favor.”
“Tough love?” Kevin summarized, sarcastically.
“Kevin, it’s no business of ours if they spend every night of their mission ruttin’ like a Roman orgy. It IS our concern if they wind up hating each other four months in and thereby cost us our last shot at making the galaxy do something positive for mankind for a change.”
Kevin knocked back his mocktail and frowned. “I wanna argue.” he confessed. “But for the life’a me, I can’t think of a good counter-argument.”
“If it helps, I’m not real happy about giving these kids a rough time either.” Byron conceded. “But if they’re as good as we think, they can take it.”
“Hmm…” Kevin nodded. “Oh yeah! Reminds me, I had plenty’a time to think on the drive down here, and I had an idea that might even help there.”
“Shoot.”
“These kids are gorgeous, boss. Movie-star good looks, fitness, intensity… I reckon we could build a whole advertising campaign around them.”
“Like, what, a candid series on the kind of people we have workin’ for us?” Byron mused. “Plausible…I know Chang’s kind of a minor celebrity in Canada right now…”
“Just a thought.” Kevin shrugged. “And hell, maybe a photoshoot’d be a good little carrot, reward kinda thing. Boost their self-esteem after you bruise it.”
“I like it.” Byron agreed. “When are they coming down here, anyway?”
“HR said something about needin’ ten days or so to finish their ‘special accommodations’…”
“Right, yes.”
“So I gave them two weeks.” Kevin said. “Time to finish sorting out that country cottage of theirs and get things straightened out.”
“Good. That lines up with Ericson’s needs.” the EV program’s chief engineer had specified that there’d be a window between the two and three month marks when he’d need to discuss some matters with the crew.
“Excellent.” Kevin stood up. “Anything I need to look at?”
“Yeah, Ericson had a few toys he wanted to shove on Eleven. He’s not given up on giving it some kind of emergency recall yet – I said he should talk to you first. Last thing I need is another chat with the President about national and global security…” That part still rankled. It had been a chilling introduction to what real power looked like, and had galvanised his determination that BGEV-11 was going to be the success he’d always wanted for the EV program, if for no other reason than that it’d be nice to retire to his own private planet and get out from under the thumb of that power.
“Leave it to me.” Kevin promised. “Hell, the Supreme Allied Commander for Extrasolar Defence sends me Christmas cards. I’m sure we can figure out some kind of a recall system that won’t shaft us.”
“Yes, yes, brag about your network again…” Byron chuckled.
Kevin shared the laugh then headed for the door. “Back to the grind, then.” he declared.
“Kevin.” Byron gave him a nod as Kevin turned in the doorway. “Thank you.”
Kevin grinned, turned and went, flipping a jaunty salute over his shoulder as he did. “Just doin’ my job, boss man.”
Date Point 10y4m1w4d AV
Gold mine west of Marsa Alam, Egypt, Earth.
Six
Unlike a true digital sapient such as an Igraen, biodrones didn’t communicate in words and emotional context. They were drones in every sense of the word – automata, kept under strict control and obeying clearly programmed rules, even if the default context for all their programming was to simulate human appearance and behaviour as closely as possible.
But they weren’t humans any longer. They could, in an academic sense, interrogate the brain of the being from which they had been constructed and analyse which responses and emotions would have been appropriate in that context, and thereby do an extremely convincing impersonation of the person whose body they now wore, but the biodrone itself was little more than a control program.
To an Igraen’s senses therefore (insofar as the term ’sense’ could be applied to the perception of purely digital data formats) the report that reached Six’s ‘ears’ was not like being told “they’re coming” or being called for by name.
It was more like a cold, mechanical status report – <+Priority2:PerimeterAlert:bExpected=true:refIndividualOfInterest=47,probable94%+>
There was a human gesture that Six had picked up and rather enjoyed – dusting his hands off. He did it now as he stepped out of the foreman’s office and took stock.
The mine was running more smoothly than any human endeavor ever could, thanks to the fact that every single one of the adults was now a biodrone. Whereas previously there would have been pay disputes, arguments, discussions over the most effective course of action and other such inefficiencies, a network of biodrones all directly sharing one another’s knowledge and intelligence on the subject could work tirelessly all day and far more effectively.
The children were the only minor complication – their underdeveloped neural structures weren’t suitable for biodroning, and Six’s projections suggested that if he just had the useless things exterminated, the biodrones would be forced to emulate the histrionic behaviour of bereaved parents in order to keep up their convincing facade. Plausible for one or two children – fatal to the secrecy of the operation in larger numbers. There would be too many questions.
Besides, there was always the probability that humans were not completely rational when it came to children. They might overlook a village full of biodroned adults for the sake of peace and their species’ future longevity, but a dozen dead younglings? Not if the example set on Cimbrean was any indication.
The children, therefore, were tolerated and even given a simulation of the family relationship they’d always had. Still… somehow they seemed to know that something was not right with their parents: They watched the adults warily, and Six most warily of all.
One was staring at him now – a hip-high creature that regarded him with wide-eyed intensity while sucking on its hand, uncaring of the noxious fluid that oozed from one of its nostrils. Barefoot, neglected and dirty as it was, he couldn’t even identify the brat’s gender.
Six made a threatening surge at the little one and it scarpered, but he noted that it didn’t go far. The child only dashed away as far as the corner of the heavy machinery shed and lurked there, observing him less like he was an object of fear, and more like he was a puzzle in need of a solution. Even human children came equipped with sharp predatory instincts, it seemed.
No matter. He raised his binoculars and aimed them toward the highway.
In the distance, two SUVs were picking their way up the dirt branch road. With the approaching sunset turning the corners of the sky an unsightly shade of bruised mauve, they’d lit their headlamps and were visible as two pools of light, given the deceptive appearance of slowness by distance.
The access road was a few miles long and there was plenty of time to shut down the mining operation and bring the biodrones all back into the village. Indeed, the process began the second Six even conceived of it. By the time the vehicles were a mere half-mile away, all of the biodrones were back in the village and pretending to be human. The fact that each one of them had immediate access to a weapon was nothing more than insurance – Six had no plans on starting a fight, but that was no excuse for laziness.
Human technology had come a long way during his years on Earth, and these SUVs were just another indicator of that. Gone were the stinking fossil-fueled roaring engines: In their place was a quiet, clean electric drive train powered by a forcefield array that could drink down the Egyptian desert’s abundant sunlight with better than 95% efficiency if needed, and which could store enough power for a five hundred kilometer voyage even in pitch darkness… or provide all the power and torque that a vehicle might need for shorter, more intense bursts of activity.
He awarded himself a victory as the cars pulled up outside the foreman’s office and a total of seven people alighted. Three were men of average size but in fit condition, all lean and hard and intense, and this included the one who was immediately identifiable as the leader, a tanned man with Germanic facial features and salt-and-pepper hair.
Behind them was a very large man, blond of hair and beard and wearing aviator shades. Big as he was, he was still smaller than the enormous man who got out of the car behind him, and even that one was dwarfed by the mountain who squeezed out of the rear car, draped in the most disgustingly colorful shirt that Six had ever even heard of.
Next to the six males, the young woman who got out of the car last was almost unimpressive. Where they were regarding him and their surroundings with neutral, calculating watchfulness that promised the immediate and skilful application of violence should things go wrong, she was more like the child: Wide-eyed and cautious, watching him to see what he might do next. She did, however, tap the greying leader on the arm and mutter ”That’s him.”
Six spread his arms and played the part of a jovial host with a smile. “Welcome! Thank you for coming!” he announced.
The soldiers – and if two or maybe three of them weren’t SOR, Six didn’t know what else they might be – exchanged the rapid almost-hive-mind communication that humans seemed to never notice they did simply by looking at one another, and dispersed, walking calmly and slowly but firmly away until only the leader and the girl were left by the vehicles.
“We’d have preferred,” the leader said, “a meeting between yourself and a trained negotiator.”
“And yet here you are.” Six replied. “Which makes me wonder why you’re accommodating my request, mister, ah…?”
“You can call me Barkeep.” he said. “I don’t make the decisions, I simply pass on the message.”
Six nodded. “And what can I call you?” he asked the young woman. “I would like to know your real name, but I won’t be offended if you use a nickname instead.”
She glanced at ‘barkeep’, who nodded encouragement. “…You can call me Ash.”
“Short for Ashley?” Six asked. She did a commendable job of giving away nothing. “Or a reference to… hmm. No matter. Thank you for agreeing to this meeting. I’m sure you and I can both answer some very interesting questions for each other.”
“I’m sure we can.” Ash replied, and there was a definite spark of dislike in her expression now.
“Mister Barkeep, if we might, I would like to have my conversation with miss Ash here in private. That office there, if I may. Don’t worry about surveilling us, I’m sure you will and I welcome it, but a little privacy as a courtesy…?”
It was interesting that this time ‘Barkeep’ deferred to Ash who swallowed, nodded, and stepped forward.
Six played the part of the perfect gentleman and held the door for her.
It wasn’t much of a door. It wasn’t much of an office. But, it had air conditioning which was a blessing both for warding off the grinding heat of the day and the surprising chill of night time.
Uninvited, Ash sat down. Six’s Interrogation of his host body’s memories on human social etiquette yielded no useful information: as far as the man who had once owned Six’s body would have been concerned, the cultural differences were so pronounced that Ash may as well be a different species of human altogether.
He settled for sitting down at a cautious distance. “Would you like something to drink?” He offered. “I have water, coffee…”
Ash shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“As you wish. To business then. How much were you told about me? About who I’m with?”
Ash shifted in her seat, thinking. “They told me… to be very careful with what they told me.” she said. “Not to talk about it with the wrong people.”
“And who are the wrong people?” Six asked her, smiling. She’d struck the perfect blend of evasiveness and honesty.
“Anybody who can’t prove that they already know it.” Ash replied.
“And how will they know that you know it?” Six asked. Ash didn’t reply. “Well. Let me tell you what I think you’ve been told. You have been told that I am a member of an organisation known as the Hierarchy. We are a long-standing order spanning the recent several hundred thousands of Terran years of galactic history, and our mandate is to prevent the spread of deathworld life forms. Does any of that sound familiar?”
“It sounds like a version that paints you as the good guys.” Ash told him.
Six smirked at that. “Yes, I imagine the summary you were given was not so charitable.” he agreed. “I imagine the word ‘genocide’ was used, possibly words like ‘atrocity’ or ‘extinction’ hmm?”
“They said you’re personally responsible for overseeing several of them.” Ash didn’t bother with disguising her contempt.
“And humanity would have been among them.” Six agreed. “And this is where you enter my story. A sporting event in San Diego, several years ago now. Roller derby?”
Ash didn’t reply, so Six retreated from that topic for now.
“Do you have any idea why an organisation like mine might exist?” he asked instead. “Why we might do the things we do?”
“You tell me.” She challenged him, flatly.
“Why else does anybody do awful things? Because they believe that the positive outcomes will outweigh the negatives..”
Ash had a quirk of body language, he noted. She wasn’t looking directly at him. Her eye contact never wavered, but her nose wasn’t aimed at him and nor were her shoulders. It was a watchful, careful posture, but as she ran one hand up the other arm it also became a defensive one. She returned her hands to being folded in her lap quickly enough, but she’d already given away a nerve that had been struck. Very interesting.
“You’re talking about trillions of deaths.” she said. “What kind of negative outcome is worse?”
“Well, not trillions personally.” Six demurred. “A hundred billion maybe. let’s call it that: a round hundred billion. What would be worse than that? How about a hundred billion and one? ”
“Oh come on-!” she began.
“I am deadly serious. If events were transpiring that would inevitably lead to a fatal clash between two cultures that could only end in the extinction of one and the mauling of another, the ethical thing to do is to minimize the bloodshed. Does that not seem reasonable?”
The defensive body language returned as Ash’s left hand crept halfway up her right forearm. A ’yes’ to which she would not admit, if Six was any judge.
“So. One group must be made unwilling or incapable of fighting. Which group? Well, logically, the one which can be broken with the least bloodshed. Reasonable?”
Still no answer, and so he pressed ahead. “And now comes the problem. Neither group can peacefully coexist: It is impossible by their respective natures. One must be eliminated, erased, made to simply no longer exist. On the one hand is a society of a hundred billion life forms. On the other, a hundred billion and one. From your neutral perspective, there is no important distinction between them save for that single integer difference in their population.”
“And you’re omniscient enough to spot that single integer.” She poisoned the sentence with as much sarcastic bile as she could summon.
“An exaggeration for illustrative purpose.” Six waved a hand dismissively. “Let us go with a more realistic difference of scale: A hundred billion versus a mere, oh…seven and a half billion? Or, less believably perhaps but I promise completely true to life: A hundred trillion versus a mere seven and a half billion. What then?”
“Oh come on!” Ash’s defensive body language evaporated. She leaned forward, straightened up, frowned. “That’s… what is that, a hundred thousand to one? How is the smaller group EVER going to be a threat?”
“Time and multiplication if nothing else.” Six replied. “But of course… I am discussing Deathworlders. A form of life which ably demonstrates time and again that the win does not automatically go to the faction with the numerical advantage.”
“So why are you talking to me?” She asked.
Six gave her his best grim smile. “Because you’ve already won.”
Date Point 10y4m1w4d AV
Gold mine west of Marsa Alam, Egypt, Earth.
Roy Vinther
“Dammit, the way they stare is really startin’ to get to me.”
Coombes was patrolling the perimeter around the vehicles. He wasn’t obviously armed – none of them were obviously armed – but he was armed, and he, Pavlo and Murray had taken to orbiting the open space near the foreman’s office where their cars were parked, keeping an eye out for trouble.
Vinther and Firth were lurking at the cars to protect them, and Walsh was busy being the Intel Weenie, keeping them fed with information and connected to the chain of command.
“Be cool, BOUNCER.” Vinther muttered.
”Fuck that, I’m salty like a fuckin’ margarita glass.” Coombes replied. ”Fer cryin’ out loud, they biodroned the whole goddamn village, BARKEEP.”
“And they’ll pay for it.” Vinther promised. “We’ll see to that. But right now we got a different job. You hear me?”
”I hear ya.” Coombes grumbled. Vinther saw him pause and study a nearby ‘villager’, which watched him with a completely dispassionate expression. Vinther saw him shudder and move on.
“Worst part is.” Walsh commented. “I reckon you’re wrong there, Barkeep.”
“How so?” Vinther asked him.
“That motherfucker in there’s… I think the term we’re using is ’digital sapient’.” Walsh said. “He ain’t an artificial intelligence, he’s a sapient being whose whole existence is as data. If we bust in there right now and smoke his ass, he’ll be walkin’ around as someone else, somewhere else, pretty much right away. And if we do somehow take him out, they restore from backup. I don’t see a way to make him pay, and even if we could… You can only execute somebody the one time. Ain’t no way Six is ever gonna see a punishment fit for his crime.”
“We could make it hurt.” Firth rumbled. He nodded toward the heavy equipment shed, and Vinther turned just in time to spot a tiny, grimy face duck out of sight. “There’s kids here, DB.”
“They’ve not been ‘droned.” Walsh observed. “Guess they’re too young.”
“They ain’t being looked after, neither.”
“We’ll sort that out.” Vinther promised them. “This won’t fuckin’ stand.”
“That’s kinda the problem, boss.” Walsh told him. “It will. And there ain’t a damn thing we can do about it.”
Date Point 10y4m1w4d AV
Gold mine west of Marsa Alam, Egypt, Earth.
Six
“What do you mean, ’We’ve already won’? When? How?”
Six stood up and glanced through the half-closed blinds at the men who had escorted Ash to him. “Six and a half years ago.” he said. “When you and I first met, though of course I was wearing a different body, then. White, bearded, surgically altered to be as statistically average in height and appearance as we could manage…”
“Mr. Johnson.” Ash frowned. “You were gonna shoot up the roller derby.”
“Well, I had no weapon. No, the shooting was to be done by another, I was purely there to… observe, to see what would happen. To, ah, ’poke the hornet’s nest’ as I said at the time and oh yes, I was stung.” Six said. “Even after extensive and detailed review of my memories of the event I had no conclusive evidence to help me determine how I was detected. I had suspicions of course – more sophisticated facial recognition algorithms than I had bargained for, law enforcement being closer behind me than I had anticipated… even a young couple taking a picture which would apparently by happenstance include me, and uploading it to the Internet.”
“It wasn’t until I reviewed the memories of the agent responsible for a failed operation on Cimbrean that I detected a correlation. It wasn’t until you and I crossed paths at Cairo Airport that I deduced some kind of causal relationship.” He finished. “And now I think I’ve spoken enough. I want to know the nature of that relationship. Who are you? How did you know who I was? How did you survive the city’s destruction? Why were you on Cimbrean, and why are you here now?”
Ash gave him a long, cold stare. “And if I tell you?” she asked.
“Then I will explain in full what my plan is, my reasoning, and what your species can do to help me help you.”
“Do I have to tell you my real name?”
“You don’t. If you want to be Ash, then Ash you shall be. Really, that’s an unimportant detail. Believe me, after this conversation is over I will already have everything I can usefully extract from you, no matter what you say.”
She frowned at that, clearly trying to figure out his meaning then took a deep breath and composed her story.
“I was born in San Diego.” she said. “My parents were… well, they were well off. Papa was an attorney, Mama was a gynaecologist, they had a lot of money. They sent me to public school anyway, they said it was better for me to learn how everyone had it, not just people with money. That’s where I met… well, my boyfriend. We were on our first date at that roller derby.”
“How did you recognise me?” Six asked.
Ash thought hard. “…I don’t know how much I can or should tell you.” she replied.
“Ah, so there’s a secret involved. A secret to do with this boyfriend of yours perhaps?”
“There’s a secret.” Ash agreed, giving away exactly nothing. “One that I think I’m…not going to share.”
“A pity.” Six said. “May I ask why?”
“Loyalty.” Ash replied. She really was delightfully impenetrable. “The possible consequences, personally and for all mankind. Take your pick.”
“Very well. What will you tell me?”
“I’ll tell you how I survived the blast.” She offered.
“Hmm, yes. Surviving a five kilogram antimatter strike. Impressive.” Six enthused. “Were you forewarned? Evacuated?”
“No.”
“How, then?”
“I was on vacation.”
Six couldn’t stop his body’s automatic reflex to frown. “…Vacation.”
“Florida. Orlando. My boyfriend’s father invited me along.” She smiled for him. “It was luck. If the blast had happened a week earlier or a week later…”
”Luck?!”
“Pure luck.” Ash nodded.
“Out of ALL the people in that city,” Six growled, “you expect me to believe that the same people who identified me and facilitated my capture, purely by chance were also among the tiny handful who survived? Do you have any idea what the odds against that are?”
Ash just shrugged, still revealing nothing whatsoever. “How much?”
“One in several hundred billion.” Six told her. “And yet you seem frustratingly sincere! Which means that you are either the very best liar I have encountered in all my life, or else that you are unaware of some causal link between those events.”
“And what might that link be?” Ash asked.
“That is what I had hoped to glean from you!” Six snapped. “The starport! Folctha! Was that coincidence also? Do not tell me that it was! The universe does not work that way!!”
“If you keep shouting, the armed men outside are going to come in here and rescue me.” Ash pointed out.
Six inhaled fiercely and willed himself to calm. “It’s this secret, isn’t it? The one you won’t discuss. One you won’t trust me with.”
“Why should I?” Ash shot back. “You just told me that you were here on Earth to try and kill us all.”
“Name your price.” Six told her, tiring of dancing around the subject.
“Okay…” Ash put a thoughtful hand to her mouth. “What I don’t get is how you’re acting like this is an itch you’ve just gotta scratch, but on the other hand it’s like you want to tell me everything. Which is it?”
“Both.” Six answered, truthfully.
“Yeah? So what’s so important?” she asked. “What’s in it for you to help us?”
“Is that your price?”
“My price is that if we’re gonna share our secrets, you have to earn it. You first.”
Six scowled at her. “You drive a hard bargain.”
“I have no reason to trust you. Sucks to be told that, doesn’t it? But it’s true.” She replied. “That’s my price. You tell me what we need to know, you tell me why you’re doing this, then I tell you what I think that link you’re after is.”
“A very hard bargain.”
She folded her arms. This time it wasn’t a defensive gesture, but a defiant and confident one. “Deal or no deal?”
Six tried to match her for ferocious glare, but failed. Humans were just naturally better at that. “…Very well.” He said, conceding defeat. “You have a deal.”
Date Point 10y4m1w4d AV
C-17 Globemaster, somewhere over the north Atlantic, Earth.
Major Owen Powell
The funny thing about EV-MASS was that it was hell to put on and take off, but once you were in it, the vise-like pressure that had once been the bane of the SOR’s life as they acclimated and conditioned to it now felt like a familiar, full-body hug that added a kind of solidity to every movement. The thing was awkward and heavy as sin right up until the moment when it was properly seated, sealed and supported, at which point the wearer was made to feel strong.
Powell rolled his shoulders and shimmied to make certain that it was definitely seated before the midsuit’s internal layer had time to expand in response to his body heat and clamp down fully. “That didn’t take as long.” he observed.
Airman Thorpe, one of his suit techs, grinned. “We gave you an extra millimeter of clearance in the shoulder, sir.”
“Is that all? I’ll never speak ill of a single millimeter again.” Powell shook his shoulders. Getting his head and arms up through the torso section had definitely been easier. That was what suit techs were for, of course – their whole job revolved around keeping the EV-MASS in perfect working order, and constantly fine-tuning and adjusting it to the needs of its operator.
“No need for a seal or life support check today, either,” his other tech, Corporal Brown added.
“Oh, aye. Don’t need to worry about suit breaches today, just about plunging towards Africa at a couple hundred miles an hour wi’ no parachute.” Powell nodded. All three of them chuckled.
“Alright… Let’s get the bloody water in.” Powell turned and presented the water ports on his lower back. Thorpe promptly connected the input line.
“I know I ask this every time.,” Powell commented, as the pump whined into life and he felt his undersuit stiffen and tighten in response to the tepid liquid that filled it out, “but is it really bloody necessary to use cold water?”
“And like I tell you every time sir,” Brown smiled, “yes it is.”
As Brown monitored the water pressure, Thorpe set about fitting the outersuit. This was the part that was different for every SOR man – from the industrial load-carrying gear and supplemental armor plating that was a Protector’s burden, a Defender’s accessible toolkit, or just the lightweight bare-bones that Aggressors needed to keep them ready to kill at an instant’s notice, that was the outersuit.
Powell’s outersuit was dominated by a sensor and communications package which turned him into a walking intelligence-gathering system to give any modern UAV a run for its money and then some. Supplemental superbatteries compensated for the expanded sensor package’s power demands, and the communications equipment turned his EV-MASS into the nexus of a web of data.
The system wasn’t going to be quite as effective today as it had the potential to be – under normal operation, the suit benefited from the real-time analytics offered by the computer banks aboard HMS Caledonia, without which the flow of information was less intelligently controlled and interpreted, but it wasn’t like he’d be blind. Far from it. Walsh’s pet UAV was a constant trickle of data, as were recon satellites, localized collection, Link-16 sensor integration from the substantial airborne assets in play to support the mission…
It all formed a sphere of tangible data, into which Powell’s suit and Powell himself neatly fit, reaping its benefits and feeding new data back in.
For now, things were quiescent. No status alerts, no zone conflicts, everything they had managed to persuade the Egyptians to allow was on standby and ready to pounce if needed… Everything, it seemed, was going well.
Maybe it was just the cold water making him irritable and antsy, but Powell was a firm believer that things never went well.
It was only a matter of time.
Date Point 10y4m1w4d AV
Gold mine west of Marsa Alam, Egypt, Earth.
Six
“So, the question as asked is two questions: Why am I helping you, and what do you need to know?”
It was now definitely going dark outside. The sky was purple from end to end and Ash’s guards and escorts were barely visible as they waited and patrolled. Six turned away from the window and leaned against the desk to talk to her.
“The answer to the first part is that I am not helping you. I am helping my own people. It so happens that the best approach for helping them is to help your people.”
“How so?”
“How familiar are you with entropy?”
The apparent non-sequitur made her pause, but Ash took it in stride. “Thermodynamics. The inevitable progress of a closed system towards its lowest-energy state.”
“Good, you have an education. What about virtual particles?”
“Look, I only did high school science. What’s your point?”
“A virtual particle is literally that – a particle that has only a virtual existence as a solution to and consequence of the equations describing quantum mechanics. They are modelled as pairs of particles popping into existence simultaneously, meeting, annihilating, and vanishing with no net change to the energy-state of the universe.”
Ash folded her arms, waiting with commendable patience, but her expression was a clear warning that he should explain himself sooner rather than alter.
Six smiled. “Virtual particles do two things: They permit black holes to evaporate through radiation, and they provide a neat answer to a question every sapient species has ever asked – the origin of the universe. You see, if a virtual, unreal, simulated particle can still produce real tangible effects and yet accurately be said never to have truly existed at all… Then so can the universe. If the energy state of the universe will eventually decay to zero – if it is ’flat’ to use the human cosmological parlance – then it will have, in a big-picture sense, never existed at all.” He spread his hands. “And any universe you happen to encounter in your travels is nothing more than a temporary local anomaly.”
“That sounds completely crazy.” Ash objected.
“Yes. The problem with living in the universe is that it is terrible preparation for thinking about the universe.” Six agreed. “But there you have it. Why does the universe exist? Answer: It doesn’t.”
Ash stared at him and then, quite deliberately, she reached out and knocked on the desk. It made a solid, wooden sound.
“Yes, yes, yes, you’re not listening.” Six told her. “The point is that all of this is virtual, an emergent product of an equation that is still being worked through. Eventually, all of it will be gone and so will we, and nothing will remain. Spacetime and all its energy and matter will be gone as if they never were, because they weren’t.”
“We live,” he expanded, getting into his stride, “in a mockery of a reality, one that’s infinitely less real than the worlds we build inside our minds, one with no meaning, no purpose, no fate and no hope except whatever we can create for ourselves. All of us are trapped in a cruel game that allows only defeat. The only endgame is to live a little longer: the only winning move is to keep playing.”
“And your point is?” Ash insisted.
“That any threat which would knock you out of the game must be neutralized. That any advantage that will keep you in the game must be seized. And for the first time in the Hierarchy’s history, the first strategy has not worked. I was captured. I was interrogated. I was beaten. Me.”
He stalked across the office and composed himself. “And your people opened my eyes. In deep time, whatever is possible is inevitable. Whatever happens once, can happen a second time.”
He turned back. “Our whole strategy this entire time has been fundamentally wrong. All it takes is one deathworld species to slip through our net, and we have failed. Our destruction at that point is inevitable.”
“Why?” Ash asked. “Why is it inevitable that you would be destroyed?”
“Ask the Dodo. Or the West African Black Rhinoceros. The California Golden Bear, the Great Panda, the Thylacine, the Pyrenean Ibex, the Baiji Dolphin. And those are all deathworld species, and a tiny fraction of the list of species dead at the hands of your own just on this planet! Ask every native life form of the planet Cimbrean! Deathworlders. Equal. Death.” He stabbed a finger at her three times to punctuate each word.
“Then why are you helping us?” She retorted.
“…When I was captured, my interrogation was… gentle.” Six told her. “My guards and minders were polite and restrain ed, my interviewers were charming and sympathetic, the rules were laid out clearly and obviously, and were followed. No beatings, no torture, no verbal abuse, nothing more than the most necessary of indignities. When I co-operated I was rewarded with privileges, when I resisted the treats I had earned were taken away. It was methodical, thorough, and completely civilized. It has made me… trust you. A trust that has proven justified several times since.”
“So?”
“So even if we destroy you, our next inevitable containment failure might release a species not remotely so civilized and trustworthy.” Six told her. “That restraint is the only thing I have which resembles a guarantee for the long-term survival of the Igraens. I regret having to cut loose every other species in the galaxy… but that is the way it must be. The time of the deathworlders has come.”
“‘Cut loose?’ Is it really that bad?” Ash asked.
Six laughed, composed a scenario in his head, and detailed it. “Imagine: You are a thriving, proud civilization. Gleaming cities, global communications technology, art and culture and sports and a thriving economy. And one day, your oh-so-clever scientists discover the means by which a ship might have an apparent linear velocity greater than the speed of causality. You launch your first warp ship, your Pandora, and bask in your own accomplishments….until the aliens arrive.”
“These aliens are monsters. True monsters, far worse than any fanged, acid-blooded animal your cinema industry ever devised. And they are monsters because what greets you, smiling politely and eager to make your acquaintance, are your superiors. Faster, tougher, stronger. More cunning, more inventive, more intuitive and more logical. Their art and music redefines everything you thought culturally possible, their philosophy explores fields of thought of which you had never even conceived. They are all but impervious to your weapons, their very breath carries plagues that could eviscerate your population, and their military doctrine operates several levels above your own. In every conceivable way, they are better than you and you will never, ever become their equal in even one capacity, let alone in all regards.”
He sighed. “More galling still? Is that they are even your ethical superiors. They do not gloat, or exploit their superiority. They do not enslave you, but instead welcome you as the equals you are not. They give you a place at their table that you do not deserve, listen to your pathetic attempts at having opinions and treat them with a seriousness they do not warrant. Every time they smile at you and treat you as their friend, they demonstrate yet again just how hopelessly inadequate you really are….And the very, very worst part of all, will be that they are completely sincere.”
Ash frowned, and looked down, thinking.
“Do you think humanity would survive a culture shock like that?” Six asked.
She didn’t reply, and he nodded, satisfied.
“That,” he told her, “Is what the future looks like now.”
Darcy
“Wow… either Six is deeply insecure, or his whole species is.”
Darcy nodded. The conversation was providing illuminating insights into both Six and Ava Rìos. The former was the much more studied subject of course, but if the monologue they were hearing was anything to go by he’d been in a decidedly subdued mood throughout his prior detainment.
Ava was feigning impatience but also letting him rant, thereby drawing out all kinds of useful psychological information. For a young and untrained civilian, she was doing a damn decent job.
“Appealing to his ego was always the most effective technique during his interrogation.” Darcy pointed out.
“Hmm. A big ego that we punctured? Or a big ego to cover for deeper insecurities?”
“Why not both?”
“The question is, whether he’s typical of Igraens…?”
“We have a sample size of one guy. That’s not enough to draw any solid conclusions.”
“I don’t know. His rationalisation for genocide sounded… dogmatic to me.”
“A rote response? The Hierarchy party line?”
“He hasn’t abandoned his species entirely. It stands to reason that he’s still mostly drinking the Kool-Aid.”
“Assuming that he’s not lying so we hear what he thinks we want to hear.”
“If so, he’s become a much better liar over the last six years.”
“I don’t think he’s lying.”
“Agreed. But if he’s not, then his claim that… what did he say…? ‘After this conversation is over I will already have everything I can usefully extract from you, no matter what you say.’ That bothers me.”
“Mind games?”
“I don’t think so. I think his ego’s at play again. I think he’s hinting at something he’s done, or is doing or will do, that he believes won’t be figured out, at least not soon enough to make a difference. Superiority behavior.”
Darcy grimaced. “The problem is,” she observed, “that he’s probably right.”