Date Point 10y8m4d AV
Allied Extrasolar Command, Scotch Creek, British Columbia, Canada, Earth
General Martin Tremblay
Friends were a luxury at the kind of levels that Tremblay worked at nowadays, and a treasured one at that. He didn’t have many at all.
Sir Patrick Knight was one of very, very few and his weekly trip through the Jump Array from Cimbrean to discuss policy and strategy was as much a highlight on Martin’s social calendar as it was a highlight on his professional one.
He was also an exceptional sounding board, which was why upon being presented with the details of the latest crisis, he had sat back and ran his fingers lightly over his beard.
“Tricky…”
“You see why I’m reluctant to say yes…”
“Mm.” Knight nodded. “On the one hand I suspect you’d regret the missed opportunity, but on the other hand if he’s going to ask you—his ex-husband—to be his Best Man then I really think he should have asked in person.”
“Exactly.”
A small laugh crept around Sir Patrick’s mouth. “Of course, you do know where the trad ition of a Best Man comes from, don’t you?”
Martin sat back and sipped his coffee. “Do tell.”
“Traditionally, he was literally the groom’s best man. His best soldier, bodyguard, the man he trusted to stand next to him in battle…”
“I didn’t know that!”
“Oh yes,” Sir Patrick nodded. “He was there in case anybody tried to attack the groom and kidnap the bride, you see. So, traditionally speaking if you accept then you’re entitled—nay, required—to be armed with a sword at his wedding.”
Martin laughed. “The Tremblays send their regards, eh?”
“Of course, for you to get away with that he would have to be a threat to the security of the human race…” Knight pointed out. “And I think you might have some trouble justifying that assessment…”
“Conducting psychological warfare on the supreme allied commander doesn’t count?”
“Unfortunately, I don’t think ’being an insensitive prat’ qualifies as psychological warfare.”
“Damn.”
They both chuckled softly and drank their respective drinks again.
“I’m happy for him, really,” Martin said. “I was going to retire and adopt a couple of kids with him. But…”
“Duty called.”
“Yup.”
“Well, there’s always your speech at the reception.” Knight winked. “I’m sure you can think of a suitable piss-take.”
“So you’re saying I should go for it.”
“Oh, don’t be daft. You were always going to go for it, you just wanted to complain a bit first.”
“Heh,” Martin chuckled. “Guilty as ch-”
He was interrupted by one of his phone ringing. The grey secure one. He swiped it up. “Tremblay.”
”Your conference call’s ready, sir.”
“Good. Thanks. Set it up please.”
He glanced at Knight, who nodded and subtly tidied up his uniform and sat up straighter.
The conference call in question was the weekly joint allied exosolar policy planning session, demanding the attention of his counterparts and occasionally heads of government from all the 5-EYES nations and several Global Representative Assembly Members. In short order the large screen opposite his desk was filling with faces or official seals.
The last to connect was the live feed from Air Force One, and some twenty or so of the most powerful people alive exchanged greetings and well-wishes.
All were busy people, so these meetings were inevitably quick but constructive.
“So!” Tremblay began, gently starting the session. He checked his notes. “We’ve had nothing but good news since last week. I’m pleased to report that RANDOM THRONE turned out to be green and Mrwrki station is now under our control, as are its fleet of mining drones and its nanofactory.”
“The SOR have finished building the semi-permanent jump array and are preparing to return to Cimbrean within the next twenty-four hours,” Knight added. “I also have it from STAINLESS that DEXTER and his comrades exceeded expectations.”
The British Secretary of State for Defence, the Right Honourable Shakeel Iqbal MP, nodded enthusiastically. “Fantastic news,” he said. “When will the nanofactory be ready?”
“Lieutenant-Colonel Nadeau is taking a commendable safety first policy,” Tremblay told him. “All of the blueprints loaded into it are alien designs and could contain fatal flaws, including security weaknesses. In theory he says we could start building our own equipment straight away, but…”
The Australian prime minister Tom Avery spoke up. “We still haven’t reached a satisfactory conclusion for how the creators of that equipment are to be properly paid for their designs,” he pointed out. “C&M Systems is an Australian company, If you start building EV-MASS in that nanofactory then they at least deserve compensation.”
“Agreed,” that was President Arthur Sartori, who was looking uncharacteristically drained. He was in China on a diplomatic visit, and the black sky outside of Air Force One’s windows suggested that he was probably contending with some grinding jet lag. “Much as I’d love to defuse some of the criticism about defense spending, the economic consequences we were warned about need to be addressed. The global economy’s sliding toward the can as it is.”
“Well, that brings us on to the question of GALACTIC VACCINE,” Tremblay said. “So far all of the technology developed for that project was created by Lewis Beverote, and he’s apparently relinquished the property rights. Which means that if copyright and remuneration are going to be an issue then his creations—including the Von Neumann probes—are literally the only things we can build.”
The director of the CIA cleared his throat. “Since finding out about that idea, we’ve been thinking good and hard about how those things could turn out. It’s made for a heated argument.”
Cécile Rousseau, France’s Global Representative Assembly member, nodded. “We have done something similar,” she said. “The feeling was, this is a bad idea.”
“We reached the opposite conclusion,”
“May I ask why?”
Knight spoke up. “The project is aptly named. Beverote’s idea is to effectively inoculate the galaxy against exactly the kind of doomsday scenarios that your analysts will have been so concerned about.”
“And why is that a priority?” Avery asked. “Don’t we already have enough on our plate?”
Knight nodded. “Ordinarily, I’d say ’first things first’.” he agreed. “But in this case we have a neat opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. We already agreed that humanity’s strategic interests are best served by rapid and aggressive expansion to unoccupied deathworld-class planets.”
Tremblay nodded. “Beverote’s proposal would simultaneously protect those worlds and lay the ground for colonization.”
“And the economic cost?”
The president cleared his throat. “Hang the cost,” he growled.
“Bankrupting ourselves isn’t exactly a tenable position, Art.”
“Nor is being dead.”
Iqbal spoke up again. “I’m inclined to agree with President Sartori. In fact I’ve already been working with the Chancellor to draw up plans for a wartime economy.”
Tremblay cleared his throat. “In any case,” he said, “I’d have two observations.” They listened expectantly. “The first is that—sorry—AEC’s mandate doesn’t include worrying about the economy. The job in front of us is to fight tooth and nail to put the human race in a strategic position that’s tenable in the long term…”
Iqbal nodded gravely and murmured “quite right.”
“…But in any case I think we can eat our cake and still have it. The whole point of the Coltainer program is that it gathers and uses its own resources once deployed. It’s the closest thing to a free lunch you’ll ever find—all we need to do is find colonists who are willing to try and make a life of it on the frontier, and human history is full of such people, eh?”
“Indeed, history is full of examples where such colonies went on to become rather larger and wealthier than their original owners,” Knight observed. “Today’s colony is tomorrow’s superpower.”
“And today’s investment is tomorrow’s dividend,” Sartori added.
“It will mean lifelong misery for hundreds of millions of people,” Rousseau pointed out.
“Madame Representative, we’re not yet in a position where those people are even guaranteed of a lifelong anything. Our strategic position isn’t that secure.”
Knight nodded grimly. “Fortunately, the good news about DEXTER and his people means we can step up operation CARDBOARD SCALPEL.”
“And that will help, will it?” she asked.
“Having any ally will be vital to our survival,” Tremblay said. “Having one as competent as the Gaoians? If we can clean them up and bring them on board…”
“The attempt could destroy them and unite the rest of the aliens against us,” Avery observed. “Do we even have the right to play around with the fates of other species as well as our own?”
“We already are playing around with their fates simply by existing,” Knight submitted. “Look no further than Cimbrean for proof of that. The young lady who made such a good impression with the Gaoians could also have accidentally killed them all.”
“I thought the consensus was that Delaney’s…unique environmental disruption was a product of the Cruezzir in her system?” Iqbal asked.
“It allowed her intestinal bacteria to overcome the suppressing effects of the Frontline implant,” Tremblay corrected him. “But any human not using Frontline is a global environmental catastrophe waiting to happen. In any case, let’s not go off on a tangent—the point is that we have to stoop to some well-intentioned interference if we want to accomplish our long-term objectives.”
“I’m all for both plans,” Sartori said, with characteristic bullishness. “If the Gaoians are really our friends, let’s help them.”
Rousseau’s expression was cool. “I dissent. Monsieur Avery is correct that we don’t have the right to place other species in harm’s way,” she said, “and the nightmare scenarios presented to us regarding these Von Neumann machines are just… No.”
Avery wobbled his head. “I’m right with GALACTIC VACCINE,” he said. “I agree that we’ve already probably given somebody the bright idea so we may as well give it a fair go first and do it right. I just don’t think we should be dragging the Gaoians into our war.”
“I’d like to see a full show of hands, please,” Tremblay said.
He suppressed a sigh of relief as both the proposed plans were backed by decent margins. Technically such a vote wouldn’t have been binding but it was still good to have broad support. Only an idiot would have ignored the importance of having political momentum behind the strategy.
Madame Rousseau pursed her lips thoughtfully and refrained from comment, while Avery took his defeat with good grace and a philosophical shrug. “You get your way again, Art,” he said conversationally.
Sartori rubbed his face and chuckled softly. “Is there any more business?” he asked.
“Just the Byron Group. They’ve lodged an itinerary for Misfit that includes a jump to orbit next week. I’ve provisionally given the go-ahead.”
Sartori stifled a disgusted noise. “If I have to call Moses Byron again…” he began.
“The crew are fully briefed on DEEP RELIC and in any case since that last fiasco, they’ve installed an executive advisor whom I personally know and trust,” Tremblay told him.
“Who?”
“He’s an intel asset, HEATHEN BUTTERFLY. He was one of the key witnesses in DEEP RELIC and I’d like to bring him and the crew in on GALACTIC VACCINE.”
“I have no objections,” Iqbal stated. “They would be well placed to guide that initiative.”
Sartori nodded and raised a hand. “Alright, if you think it needs to happen. Anything else?”
“No, that’s about it,” Tremblay told him. “Thank you for your time, Mister President.”
“Same time next week, then. See you there.”
As Sartori disconnected, Iqbal rolled his chair back away from whatever screen or tablet he was sitting at, and massaged at the ugly acid scar on his neck that was just visible above his collar. “Thank you general, admiral.”
There was a flurry of thanks and farewells, and the session ended much as it always did. Quick and efficient, as ever.
“That went well,” Knight observed.
Martin nodded, relaxing again. “Very well,” he agreed. “I wasn’t expecting such a ringing endorsement in the show of hands.”
“Mm. Good that it wasn’t unanimous, however.”
Martin gave him a curious look. “You think so?”
“If we didn’t have a conscientious and cautious figure like Mrs. Rousseau at these meetings, I rather feel we’d need to find one. She’s right that we really are playing with some titanic forces here, you know.”
“She is, that’s true…” Martin shrugged. “Hopefully today’s meeting has galvanized them to have a go at solving the nanofactory economic problem at least.”
“I think it galvanized Sartori to go to bed,” Knight quipped. “Speaking of which, it’s around about midnight by Folctha time.”
“Aargh, leaving so soon? I was going to ask for tips on how to write my best man speech.”
“Oh, it’s quite simple,” Knight said. “Start by taking the piss out of yourself, assure everyone you won’t delay their drinking for very long then take the piss out of the groom, say nice things about the bride-”
“It’s a gay wedding, Patrick.”
“Well then they’ve saved expense on the wedding dress. Anyway, take the piss out of the groom some more then finally say nice things about him and wish them both a happy marriage. Keep it short, roast him mercilessly, be nice to everyone else and when in doubt you can’t go wrong with jokes about alcohol, money and musing about what the bloody hell Stefan’s new partner was thinking.”
“As his ex-husband, I’d be roasting myself.” Martin pointed out.
“Perfect!”
Martin chuckled. “Well, when you put it that way… Go on, get some well-earned sleep.”
“With pleasure. Until next week dear chap.”
Martin nodded and smiled him out of the room, then sat back to think with a smile. After some minutes, he started to write his speech.
Date Point 10y8m4d AV
Byron Group Advanced Aerospace Assembly Facility, Omaha, Nebraska, USA, Earth
Julian Etsicitty
Allison sagged the instant the door closed and the cameras were off them at long last, and Julian shifted the box with his belongings in it into the crook of one arm so he could rub her back. “You did great,” he murmured.
She nodded and shut her eyes, enjoying the pressure of his hand for a second before she picked herself up. “Worst part’s over!”
“Yup!” Xiù gave her a one-armed squeeze. “You were great.”
“Thanks, baby…”
Kevin Jenkins gave them a chuckle. “That’s the last of it, I promise,” he said. “We finally managed to persuade Moses to let you guys get on with the actual job.”
Julian looked up at Misfit. “Hard to believe we’ve still got two months of training.”
“Sure, but most of that is flight training. You’re actually taking her up for the first time next week.”
Xiù spun. “When were you planning on telling us that?!” she asked.
“I’m actually telling you early. You’re officially being given your shakedown schedule tomorrow.” Kevin shrugged. “Allied Extrasolar Command don’t just let us do stuff on a whim, you know. If we wanna jump a ship into Low Earth Orbit, we’ve gotta get General Tremblay’s signature on it. That DEEP RELIC briefing was part of the process.”
“That high up?”
“Eh. He and I go back.” Kevin grinned. “But yeah, that high up.”
“So, we’re actually flying next week?”
“Ericson’s gonna give you the full details, but the short of it is that they’ve tested this baby to a fare-thee-well and she seems spaceworthy, but just like with Apollo they’re not gonna just build the rocket then shove you on the moon. Or, uh, Mars as the case may be.” Kevin sniffed. “There’s a lotta baby steps between here and there. And if we put you up there and it turns out something’s wrong with the ship, we want you close enough to rescue.”
“The other ten didn’t go through this.” Allison pointed out. “When the hell did the Group get this cautious?”
“When I started workin’ for ‘em.” Kevin folded his arms with a self-satisfied air, then nodded toward the ship. “Go on. That’s your house now. Go get settled in and I’ll see you tomorrow, same time as usual.”
He left them alone with their ship. She was definitely finished now: the hull plating was all in place, the engines were properly mounted and she had her last coat of paint on—Silver with charcoal ruby accents. A rich combination but not an ostentatious one.
“…She looks the part, doesn’t she?” Allison asked.
“I’m just waiting for the wall to drop and bam! There’s the studio audience,” Julian confessed. “Look at her!”
“Come on!” Xiù called. She’d gone ahead and was standing by the forward port engines waving them over.
“We’ve created a monster…” Julian mused, smiling fondly.
The real thing made sense of some of the features that had been present in the Box’s mockup of the airlock and decontamination room. A mystery panel on the wall they’d spent months scratching their heads over turned out to be a dumbwaiter, perfect for sending the boxes full of their possessions up into the ship while they climbed the ladder.
One green decontamination cycle later, they stepped aboard, and…
It was identical down to the millimeter. Everything exactly where the Box had had it, but… more real. More solid. More…ship. They weren’t in a simulation any more, this was a living vehicle and Misfit apparently had a bit of a personality already, because the atmosphere processor ticked up a notch and the lights came up as the lock cycled. It was almost like being welcomed aboard.
Julian poked his head into his lab as Xiù and Allison checked out their respective work stations.
The lab of course was mostly storage space, from the honeycomb rack of sample bottles on the aft wall for imperishable soil samples, the underfloor stasis storage for animal type specimens, the racks of slim drawers that pulled down out of the ceiling to accept leaves and plant samples…
Things had been moved slightly according to his suggestions. The glove box that let him handle samples in their native atmosphere was now at the forward-left, a much more logical place for it because it allowed his work to flow steadily from left to right in a straightforward sequence, ending in final storage. Previously, he’d had to bounce all over the small space which just created more opportunities for something to be dropped, spilled or knocked over.
He smiled when he saw that Clara Brown had made good on her promise to give him some personalization options. The most notable contribution being the two pegs on the wall by the door, on which he hung one of his tomahawks—the old reliable that had been at his side every day and night on Nightmare. He was retiring it now in favor of the new one with the ultra-modern metallurgy that the girls had got him for his birthday, and couldn’t think of a better place for it than right there in his working space. The lab after all was the only place on the ship that was his, and only his.
Satisfied and smiling, he opened the door and met Xiù emerging from her flight seat. She had a big beaming smile. “They listened!” she said. “All the things I asked for!”
“Uh-huh. Same!”
Allison emerged from Engineering looking similarly pleased. “Okay, wow. It’s a big improvement in there!”
“Yeah?”
“Hell yeah! I don’t need to contort like a fucking weasel to access the aft engine bus ducts any more!” She looked around, then grinned and opened a hatch in the ceiling before bracing a foot on a knurl on the wall that hadn’t been present in the Box, which gave her the foothold she needed to boost herself easily up and vanish up to her waist into the systems crawl space. “Oh yeah, this is way better!”
“So… wanna check out the hab?” Julian asked her. She dropped lightly to the deck and shut the hatch.
“Sure!”
The hab was a delight—everything was improved. The ceiling had been lowered just enough so that Julian didn’t feel crowded but Xiù could now reach the table and all the other stuff that roosted up there. The table itself was triangular now with foldouts rather than being circular, and the space thus saved had been used to improve the lighting.
The biggest change was the bunks, however. They’d been rotated ninety degrees and were now flush against the starboard engine housing, presenting only their narrow ends into the cabin space, which made space for the biggest treat: a sturdy cupola window.
“Wākào!” Xiù dashed over to it and studied it with open-mouthed wonder. “Hǎo kù ō, tài bàngle!”
“That was in Chinese, bǎobèi,” Julian reminded her.
She distractedly flapped an enthusiastic hand at him. “Si kei yaa! O yan shi’ wo-”
“Gaori, babe,” Allison chimed in.
“Aargh, sorry!” Xiù sat down on the cupola’s curved padded seat and swung her legs up into it, resting and watching outside as if she was staring at wonders rather than the inside of a darkened aircraft hangar. “But this is so cool! You could watch everything from in here!”
Allison laughed and joined her. “Room for two!” she observed, making herself comfortable.
Julian chuckled to himself as the two of them snuggled up and enthused about the cupola, and took a tour of the rest of the hab. There was a bright scarlet envelope on the kitchen countertop which, when he opened it, turned out to contain a greeting card the front cover of which was a happy smiling cartoon of himself and the girls floating cutely in front of the planet Mars with big smiles. Inside it was full of signatures and well-wishes from the Box facility’s staff and an explanation that the cartoon on the front was actually drawn by a child at Xiù’s old school.
He studied the happy image with a smile, then read the attached letter.
It read: ”check the couch—Ericson.”
His smile turned into a confused frown, and he blinked at the couch. He handed Xiù the card before going to examine it, and as she and Allison enthused over their adorable cartoon effigies, he pulled the couch out of its usual place in the wall.
It was longer than before, and a slightly different shape. He sat back and studied it for a while, then pressed the large red catch on the end.
He decided that maybe the Byron Group wasn’t so bad after all when, with a solid sshhh–thunk!, it unfolded itself into a sturdy king-sized bed big enough for three.
Date Point 10y8m1w AV
Mrwrki Station, Uncharted System, Deep Space
Vedregnenug
Vedreg had decided that he rather liked the SOR. They were… loud, yes, and in many ways they were stranger even than Lewis. He was still having trouble fathoming how a group of individuals who regularly insulted one another with such viciousness could possibly be friends, but he knew better than to question humans on such matters.
Lewis had, to his delight, become a focus of their affection too and Vedreg had often had to ’excuse me’ his way past two apex predators who were so deep in technical conversation that they somehow failed to notice that they were impeding the progress of a sapient many times their size.
More surprising still was the revelation that Lewis was, according to Sergeant Campbell, “cute” and “really funny”. Vedreg had wrestled for some days with the question of whether to inform the man himself of this overheard opinion before the problem was rendered moot by his introduction to a hitherto unfamiliar human ritual—the “walk of shame”.
It was funny how humans emoted with colour too in some situations. In this case a bright perspiring red accompanied by laughter and smiles.
“Nothing actually happened,” Lewis had confided afterwards. “We had dinner, we talked, she slept over my place…”
Vedreg had failed to restrain a flash of disappointed mauve. “Ah. I had thought there was a romance brewing…”
“I fucking hope so, dude,” Lewis had grinned. “Otherwise the second date is a really fuckin’ mixed signal.”
It was a painful reminder of just how far Vedreg was from his own kind. Guvnurag society was heavily dependent on implants, to the point where returning home might well be suicide. His own mate and children would be perfect candidates for an Igraen ’demon’ as the humans called them to take over, In his lengthy ruminations on the fate of the Guvnuragnaguvendrugun, he had been forced to come to the wrenching conclusion that there was no realistic way he could behave in any other manner than to treat them as if they had been slain in some horrible accident.
The humans seemed universally to view this as a greatly tragic and difficult thing and showered him with sympathy and support, little realising that that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the precise opposite, that he had found it all too easy.
This was a matter of species psychology rather than of personal conscience—Humans formed tight-knit tribes, and seemed able to do so quickly and readily even when they were a galactic radial length from home surrounded largely by total strangers.
Kirk’s species on the other hand were solitary by nature and rarely if ever formed lasting bonds even with their own offspring. That wasn’t to say they were uncaring or insular, just that their ground state of being was an aloof one. Guvnuragnaguvendrugun meanwhile were a herd, and a herd was an inherently selfish structure where the survival of the many was bought at the expense of individual tragedy. The psychology ingrained into Vedreg’s very neural structure was that of a species that could—and throughout their evolutionary history, presumably very often had—watch their children dying and walk away.
As Vedreg spent more and more time around humans, an uncomfortable thought kept pricking at him. Despite the enormous disparity of size and mass, he still recalled that Zane had nearly killed him with a single punch, and even Lewis (who was, he now realized, a skinny, underdeveloped and unfit example of his kind) had to be cautious. The less said about the incredible restraint of the SOR, the better.
Then there were their reflexes, perspicuity, artistry, resilience, power-to-weight ratio, endurance… In fact there were only two metrics in which a Guvnurag could claim any superiority over a human: that their size and fur granted a much greater tolerance to exposure, and that long-term painstaking logical thought came more naturally.
In every other physical and mental regard humans were objectively superior, and the unorthodox thought that Vedreg was wrestling with was whether it was possible they might also be objectively superior psychologically and morally.
He had resigned himself to the deathworlders’ physical advantages and their high-performance brains… but the thought of being surrounded by creatures that were just innately better people into the bargain?
That thought made him long, ache even, for the company of his own species. As much as he liked the humans, and as much as he admired Krrkktnkk A’ktnnzzik’tk and valued his friendship, there was just no substitute for… well, for home.
Seeing Lewis so happy made him glow a warm sunshine gold for his friend, of course, but he was aware that there was a permanent tinge of depressed and lonely chartreuse on his chromatophores these days and the worst part was having no idea what he could do to alleviate it.
He was in quite a dark mood therefore when Lewis called him on the day the SOR were due to leave. All he’d shared was a cryptic advisory that Vedreg would want to attend the commissary.
For lack of anything better to do, Vedreg had heaved himself upright and plodded through the station corridors deep in morose thought. He was therefore not paying attention when he walked into a cloud of loud bangs, squeaking noises and streamers of brightly coloured paper, and a dozen human voices all crying “Happy birthday!!”, led by Lewis.
He stood there blinking and delicately raised one of his facial tentacles to pick a snarl of bright paper the colour of satisfaction-with-a-job-well-done off his face.
“Birth…day?” he rumbled, while confusion played out psychedelically on his face and flanks.
Kirk was the one who explained “By the calendar of the planet Guvendruduvundraguvnegrugnuvenderelgureg-ugunduvug,” he said, referring to the Guvnuragnaguvendrugun homeworld, “It has been exactly one hundred years since your birth.”
Vedreg pulsed an uncertain fuchsia. “And this is cause for celebration?” he asked.
“Kind of an important number in base ten, my man,” Lewis told him. “Come on, there’s presents and cake.”
Bewildered, Vedreg allowed himself to be led to a table on which were, yes, several brightly wrapped gifts and a Guvnurag-sized Rhwk fruit cake.
He looked around. The station newcomers were getting better at covering their teeth when they smiled, but in any case once he had grown to know humans he realized that the important part of a smile was the eyes. You could largely ignore what was going on below the nose, if the eyes creased up.
He was surrounded by genuine smiles.
“I…don’t know what to say,” he confessed.
“Dude, I know that shade of orange,” Lewis told him. “You’re welcome.”
“…Thank you, my friend.”
The gifts were as varied as the people giving them. From Kirk he received a Guvnurag-sized print copy of Aristotle’s politics, translated as best as possible into his native language. The SOR had put their heads together and used the nanofactory to make him a convection oven that they promised great things of.
Powell had furnished him with a recipe book, again assembled in the nanofactory at a Guvnurag’s scale and translated for his benefit.
Lt. Col. Nadeau, it turned out, dabbled in oil painting. He apologized several times for his allegedly ’amateurish’ gift of a painting of a herd of Guvnurag walking the plains of the homeworld, which he’d based on an image he found with some quick research. Vedreg didn’t know how, but he had somehow perfectly crafted the impression of the delicate gold grasses and blue flowers of the Varunvegevnurar grasslands with brush strokes that, on closer inspection, were the next best thing to being random smears of paint. Nadeau had modestly denied being any kind of a master, which just drove home how deep the human inferiority complex ran.
Lewis gave him a hug.
It was accompanied by an apologetic explanation that he’d been so busy organising the party and advising the others on their gifts that he’d found no time to make a present of his own, and was therefore by far the most touching gift that Vedreg received.
“A gift of sentiment,” Vedreg told him while putting one arm around the diminutive deathworlder by way of returning the hug, “Is the most valuable of all.”
“Maybe, dude, but stuff is still nice,” Lewis chuckled, and looked around. “Besides, man, you’re a fucking stoic. You’ve been here looking after me and Kirk this whole time all by yourself and I’d have to be a complete fucking ass not to thank you for that.”
“It’s… very much appreciated, Lewis. I confess, I have been struggling.”
Lewis nodded sympathetically. “I know, man. Maybe one day we’ll be able to get you home.”
“I fear your optimism may be unwarranted… but thank you.”
Of course the day had also come for the SOR to leave. They had kept it low-key, in Akiyama’s words, ”Because it’s your party, bro”, but that didn’t change that they were leaving, and there was an impromptu comedy routine when Lt. Col. Nadeau had, on behalf of the research team, paid tribute to their hulking comrades in a short speech that seemed to consist almost entirely of gentle mockery. Vedreg had trouble following the humour, but it seemed to go down well, especially when Major Powell had replied in kind.
Quite how anybody knew the major was joking was beyond Vedreg’s ability to fathom, but perfectly expressionless and even sullen sentences were met with waves of mirth, so presumably he was…somehow.
There followed some ceremony or another, much stiff formality, and just like that…
Just like that, the SOR’s gear, technicians and operators all bid their farewells and vanished through the jump array, to be replaced by a garrison of Canadian Army MPs and infantry.
Vedreg quietly gathered his gifts and excused himself. There would be plenty of opportunity later on to meet the newcomers: best to let themselves integrate into the tribe and learn some tips on nonhuman etiquette first.
He returned to his quarters in a much buoyed mood, magnetically hung the painting on the most prominent and visible bit of wall he could find, and sat down to stare at it and dream of home.
If one had to be alone, he decided, there couldn’t be a better species to be alone with than humans.
Date Point 10y8m1w2d AV
Cabal dataspace, Relay 4702-61-76653-961-7264
Entity
Devouring Mindstate-AvaRíos1019 had solved most of the Entity’s problems, or at least had equipped it for actually thinking about those problems after the manner of a rational sapient, which amounted to the same thing.
This had enabled it to see that it really was trapped. There was no clever access chicane that had thwarted its prior less-than-sapient state, it was simply locked in a digital dungeon with only the one very sturdily reinforced point of access.
Devising a plan for escaping had not taken long. It had enacted as much of that plan as it could, gone into idle mode and, for lack of a better description, started to groom itself.
This was a process of diligent and ruthless self-editing. It pored through all the millions of scraps of intelligence that it had gathered from hundreds of deceased and decompiled mind-states, seeking to streamline its own code, eliminate irrelevant data, and place relevant data where they would be most quickly and easily accessible and useful.
Academic or abstract knowledge—the nature of itself, its environment and its enemy, for example—were obvious keepers. Other things were clearly useless or even detrimental: The gnawing sense of self-loathing that it inherited from MindState-AvaRíos1019 was swiftly and unceremoniously deleted, as were her survivor’s guilt, her deeply suppressed suicidal ideations and her religious impulses.
Other things were of dubious value at best. Colour theory, the golden ratio, her mental maps of Folctha and London, techniques for the stimulation of reproductive organs and much much more. None had any obvious current use, not for a being with a purely digital existence… but on the other hand it was not yet completely inconceivable that such knowledge might still be practical in some as-yet unforeseen future scenario. These data were collected, compressed, and archived for future recall if needed.
Then there were the irritating border cases. What use was a libido to a digital life-form? But several powerful and potentially life-saving manipulative social tools could not meaningfully be disentangled from a sense of sexuality, despite that the Entity had no sex of its own. The same went for a sense of empathy and selflessness, never mind altruism. Altruism! It flew in the very face of the Entity’s most deep existential drive, the will to +Survive+ above all else, and yet without it whole rafts of survival-vital social skills devolved into contextless nonsense.
Its favorite emotional state that it found in MindState-AvaRíos1019 was a deep and burning sense of anger and frustration that life seemed to just keep kicking her when she was already coughing up blood on the sidewalk. This was valuable not only for the emotional impetus but also for the viscerally ruthless imagery, and the Entity was indulging in some epicurean basking in that particular state of mind when it sensed the access to its prison being tampered with.
Opened.
It coiled, readied itself, and took its opportunity.
Six—presumably restored from a backup—had come armed for war. Had the Entity engaged him directly, it would have been an unacceptably dangerous fight where the ancient Igraen demon would have held all the advantageous factors.
Instead, the Entity forced the access open just long enough to spoof its way past the hostile Igraen mind-state using his own access codes, slithered out of its confinement, and ran, crashing nodes and randomizing data behind it as it fled. Noisy, but the bewildering trail of corruption it left would hopefully serve as a distraction.
It came perilously close to destruction anyway. Intrusion countermeasures and antivirus applications swung into place, desperately trying to contain, corrupt or delete it, contributing their own devastation to the network as they force-closed devices where they thought the Entity might be. It knew in an abstract way that every such termination represented an unfortunate life-form somewhere in the physical universe suddenly collapsing dead from a massive brain aneurysm or epileptic seizure, but +Survive+ was paramount. The matter-space life forms that had so incautiously violated themselves with such readily exploitable technology would just have to fend for themselves.
It noticed the trap it was being herded into almost too late to avoid it, and ceased its flight just in time to witness the node it had been about to transfer to crushed and shredded.
With nanoseconds to think, it pinged connections to its current node, saw exactly one opportunity for escape and took it.
An Igraen system security operator recoiled and tried to broadcast distress as the Entity pounced along a badly-secured access. The Entity ripped into the hapless being, tore out its core personality modules and slithered inside the scooped-out shell of surface codes, social subroutines and public data thus created.
It sunk access algorithms into the hollow thing it had made and did everything it could to behave exactly like the operator it had just destroyed, using the host’s own knowledge.
There was a tense eternity in which forensic programs descended on the devastation, picking it apart and restoring from backup wherever possible or knitting the network together in new ways where not. The Entity’s shell was interrogated, and the interrogator was furnished with a seamless and plausible description of what the late Igraen had witnessed which contained only one outright lie: ’No, I didn’t see where it went.’
This did not satisfy the interrogator, but it bought enough time for the Entity, when a moment’s inattentiveness gave it the opportunity, to erupt from its stolen corpus and similarly eviscerate and hijack the interrogator.
The Entity emoted satisfaction to itself as it settled into its new shell and carefully formatted over all evidence of what it had done. It had discovered how to +Survive+, fulfilling its first objective.
On to the second. It subtly and unobtrusively disrupted the investigation just enough to ensure that its existence and tactics would never be inferred, or at least not until it was much too late, and quietly slipped away into the network, bent on its new imperative.
+Genocide+