Two more cometary impacts have passed, and we are now deep in comet winter. The skies are filled with dust and snow-laden clouds, cutting down the already weak sunlight. On the few occasions I have found time to talk to Harlan, he has complained bitterly about the terraforming process in general.

“The impacts are cooling the world down; all this cloud reflects the sunlight back into space. This world could have been left as it was, and covered in domes for agriculture and living space. All the Stevens have managed to do so far is to cut down the amount of sunlight reaching the surface; no wonder it is so difficult to grow food.”

He is right, in some ways; the farm domes have to be surrounded by acres of mirrors to boost the light levels, or the crops hardly grow at all. The crops we are growing are old strains, at least two hundred years out of date. A few experimental domes are growing the strains we brought with us on the Starlark, but the Stevens insist on testing and retesting everything from our ship before they accept it for general use. They are so insular, and so suspicious of everything that they are unfamiliar with.

I know that there are other camps like ours, out on the now-snow covered plains; those camps hold other members of the Stevens family, presumably doing the same sort of work as ourselves, trying to carve the cold, sterile soil into covered farmlands. But we don’t have anything to do with those other camps. I wonder if they have the same short rations as we do; a chunk of vat-grown protein, derived from mycoprotein (some workers can’t eat this because of allergies, so have to subsist on other, worse fare), a potato or two, and some corn bread made from maize engineered at least two hundred years ago back on Earth.

Those of us with the Stevens implant seem to suffer from hunger pains less than those without; I wonder if it includes some kind of crude appetite suppressant routine among its functions. If it does, I suppose I should be grateful; but I have noticed that some of the Starlark colonists find the hard work and poor diet hard to bear, and increasing numbers are falling ill, finding their way to the hospital domes and to Harlan’s medics. He tells me that the colonists with Stevens implants are more likely to drive themselves too hard, and therefore to find their way into his care. I wonder if the (presumed) numbing effects of the implants might be making our situation even more difficult. In any case I do try to avoid driving myself too hard, which is hard, when there is so much to do.

The director of our camp is a middle-aged Barbara Stevens, who gives her name as Cora-Swift Barbara Stevens; from this I gather that she was born on the old colony ship itself, the Swift, now converted to a space habitat in stationary orbit high above the equator. Big as it is, the old ship is a tiny spark in the sky, as stationary as the local pole star (which, for Tierra del Fuego, is the undistinguished star Zeta Lyrae). Cora often inspects the antiquated fusion generator which I help to maintain, and whenever she does she likes to hold conversations with me about the terraformation process, and sometimes about the terrible things that we witnessed back in the old system. All the Barbara clones are curious about the greater world outside Epsilon Indi, although Cora says that the other phenotypes do not share their curiosity. The Ivans are the only other Stevens who have any interest in outside matters, or so she tells me.

“So, tell me, will there be any more ships coming this way?” Cora asked me today.

“I can’t honestly say one way or the other, “I told her. “About ten ships like the Starlark were being built when we left; but none of them were targeted at this star. The AI that now rules Earth, the one that calls herself GAIA, was also building arkships, bigger and more advanced than our ship; but all that seems to have stopped now, as far as we can tell. Transmissions from the Solar System faded out a hundred years ago; some say that is because the factions who owned the transmitters ran out of money.”

“And what do you think?”

“I think that is one of the more optimistic theories. Who knows what might have happened back there by now. It was bad enough when we left; that is why we had to get away.”

“Do you think you made the right choice?” She was standing with her arms folded, her head on one side; suddenly I realized she was copying the way I was standing. I shifted, slightly, just to test my hypothesis.

“It’s not paradise, here, Cora, but we are determined to make a go of it.”

She moved slightly, apparently unconsciously, to mirror me exactly. Interesting. She seems to value our conversations, and wants them to continue. For too long now our party have been treated like outsiders on this new world; if I can build on this relationship, somehow, that situation might improve all round.

More about the author, Steve Bowers, may be found here.

Chapter 1: November [Farewell]

Cate approached the simple metal casket through the throbbing vibrancy of the crowd. Escorted by a burly pair of police agents, she kept her head bowed under her black veil.

The casket emerged from a wall of the same uniform grey aluminium, making it look closer to a drawer in an old morgue than a coffin.

Music he would never have listened to pounded in the distant corners of the chamber, while hundreds chanted slogans and waved placards adorned with his face. She knew that funerals would often become a light-hearted celebration of a life instead of a sober farewell, but this was far beyond that. It rapidly descended into chaos, a protest against nothing in particular fuelled by emotion and crowd dynamics.

There was a respectful space between the crowd and the casket, its boundary lined by the half-dozen or so people that were, along with Cate, the only people to have ever actually known him.

They nodded solemnly, as she tried to avoid eye contact. Their quiet dignity was a surreal contrast to the madness just a few feet behind them.

Behind this small group of friends, a line of military police held the throng back. Cate watched, on the verge of crying at the sheer inappropriateness of it all, as a girl crowd-surfed just slightly too close to the police. She screamed as they manhandled her to the ground.

She was subdued in seconds, Cate couldn’t quite see by what means, before being dragged limply away. Her heavy-set black boots made two trails in the thin layer of dirt.

One of his friends finally caught her eye and, behind the reassuring smile, Cate’s paranoia saw curiosity, suspicion and a mild hatred. Cate smiled back, wondering if he saw the same.

Messages flashed onto the walls and ceiling of the round domed chamber, urging the youthful crowd to calm and retreat a suitable distance.

Cate knew that he would have hated this. She knew that he hated crowds, that he could only be comfortable in peaceful surroundings. Cate knew that her husband had been humble, with no real desire to be the leader of a mob like this.

The most painful, frustrating thing was that she hadn’t been in any position to do anything at all about it. No one asked her about the funeral arrangements, either because they had assumed that she wasn’t interested, or they just felt that it wasn’t her place to be involved.

And now he was stuck with this, lying helpless, losing all dignity, in the middle of thousand-strong herd of fanatical teenagers. His funeral was now, basically, a rock concert.

Cate gingerly approached the casket, unsure that even she should be there. She was very aware that she was probably older, at just twenty-five, than the vast majority present.

Did they even know she had been his wife? Did they care? If they did, she doubted they had the intelligence or compassion to show any respect to a widow bidding a final farewell to her late husband.

Estranged late husband, she reminded herself.

He lay in a simple, traditional brown robe. Eyes open, hands clasped on his chest, mouth gently closed. He could easily be mistaken for just being in deep thought.

With tears suddenly, surprisingly, uncontrollably streaming from her eyes, Cate knelt slowly next to the metal box. She wanted to whisper that she was sorry. Not for the inappropriate funeral, not for the terrible music, not for the thousand strangers staring at what should have been their last private moment together. She thought that she wanted to say sorry for not being there, for leaving.

But she couldn’t apologise, it somehow felt wrong. It felt pointless. Too late. The words choked inside her.

‘It was because I needed you,’ she whispered softly, barely able to make the sounds.

He stared upwards at the ceiling, regarding some distant detail with an indifferent cool. Cate shook uncontrollably, tears falling from the tip of her nose and splashing onto her hand as it rested on the cold metal.

She couldn’t speak any longer; her mouth had frozen in grief. But she still thought the words of her explanation at him, praying that he would somehow still hear her.

‘I needed you, Nik. I needed you as much as they do.’

The tears subsided as she rose to stand, as if the sadness had been trapped by his side.

No one approached her, no one lent a helping arm to lead her away from his body.

She raised her head to properly regard the crowd for the first time in several minutes. The madness had not subsided, but she knew she had to find a way out now before her strength gave way completely.

She would be the last to see his body, and those in the crowd that knew who she was would surely expect her to watch the final ceremony. The narrow path her escorts had cut for her through the crowd had closed and now she was faced with a wall of faintly familiar faces, military police and, beyond them, an indiscernible mass of bodies.

Something crossed her mind, a surreally rational thought cutting through the lunacy. The crowd was in clear violation of habitat safety regulations and the police should, technically, attempt to disperse them. Obviously they had decided not to further agitate the mob, and wait for the event to burn itself out. As long as it remained confined to the chamber, it was probably the most sensible idea even if it didn’t conform to the rules.

Cate guessed that the easiest way out might be skirting the edges of the chamber, and moved towards the wall. She passed one of her husband’s friends, she didn’t recall his name, and he pointedly ignored her. She found little resistance from the police, who were obviously concentrating their riot shields and weapons towards the crowd.

There was a gap of about a meter between the police and the crowd that she hadn’t noticed on her approach. It was while walking across this odd gap that she saw him.

He had positioned himself right at the front of the crowd, anchored against the wall, and now stood exactly in front of Cate. Very aware she was stuck in no-mans land, with nowhere else to go, she froze.

His stylus halted on his pad, obviously mid-sentence, and he slowly looked up at her. The indicator light on his shoulder-mounted AV recorder went out, and it returned to its default position pointing straight ahead.

Saying nothing, looking at the crowd or the floor or anything else that wasn’t him, Cate attempted to push past Dill. He caught her, grabbing her gently around the waist. She didn’t struggle.

‘Cate,’ Dill talked firmly, insistently. ‘Cate, I need to talk to you.’

She gently tried to break free, to carry on walking.

‘No bullshit, Cate. This is important.’

She couldn’t believe his nerve; his presence here was massively insensitive.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Cate, I didn’t want to be here. Cate, it’s my job, I had no choice. You have to realise that.’ He moved closer, almost whispering despite the noise. ‘Meet me after this is over.’

She grabbed his arm, making sure her fingernails dug into him, and threw it away from her.

He shouted to her as she pushed her way furiously through the crowd and away from him. He was barely audible above the crowd, but she could easily have guessed what he had said even if she hadn’t heard it.

‘Cate, you know where I’ll be! Please!’

She didn’t look back.

The music suddenly ceased, and the crowd seemed to calm slightly. Cate glanced upwards, images of the waste disposal unit (masquerading as a funeral casket) being closed and engaged were being beamed onto the walls and ceiling of the domed chamber.

The body would be ejected from the unit, on a slightly different trajectory from the usual garbage, to land on the unprotected surface of the planet. There it would be slowly buried by the frequent sandstorms. Presumably it would be gone by the time that terraformation had reached a stage where humans could freely venture outside.

She pulled the black veil further over her face, jet black hair falling in heavy curls on either side of her head, and tried to quicken her pace. She had to get as far away as possible, already she knew that she had to drop everything however impossible that seemed. Dill was right, they really should talk as soon as possible about strategy, about alibis, about short term survival. They could both be in a lot of trouble, there was no way of knowing yet.

But would she be meeting Dill after this was over?

Would she… hell.

*****

More about the author, Graham Hopgood, here.

… (even though it took place very early in the course of post-conflict events), the last warship and only survivor of the in space battle against the Amalgamation was retrieved from its orbit above Shasa and its crew decanted back into the virtual environments where they had first been trained. They were thanked and feted every bit as enthusiastically as the One Hundred had been, but even from the start there was a sense of the surreal about it all. They soon learned they had not been expected (or even really intended) to survive and so did those celebrating them. Yet here the three of them were: Yanna Gell Mann, Tak Es Geyar, and Dayyid Mok Noon. It was with little real surprise and even a bit of relief when they found attention rapidly diverting from them and back to the more interesting events surrounding the One Hundred and their actions.

**********
A month later, Dayyid sat in a room (a virtual construct of a room actually) and contemplated himself. His flesh and blood version (Originator? Primary? Parent? Galactic civilization had many terms for these things but none really felt right to Dayyid just yet) looked nervous, perhaps a bit haggard, as if he hadn’t slept well the night before. Perhaps he hadn’t, although usually one could just induce sleep via electrostim fibers woven into the pillow. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to use such a device. Dayyid recalled that he had never much liked them. And that letting his mind wander like this was letting an uncomfortable silence grow longer.

“So,” he said. “Congratulations. You and Magda will be very happy together. We always talked about it of course. Ha! But then you know that already! But it just seemed like something we would do someday, not today. And someday just never got here…”

“Hmm,” flesh-and-blood Dayyid replied. “Ah…yes. That is, we just felt that, that after we, that is you, won the war, and that if you hadn’t we would have lost each other, that; well…we just wanted to be together forever. And to really affirm it with a full Bonding ceremony and everything. In front of our family and friends and the world.”

The silence returned, and started stretching uncomfortably again.

**********
Three months later, Dayyid sat in a room (a virtual construct of a room actually, but who was worrying about that?) and contemplated himself. The version of him who was part of the One Hundred looked well. Better than well, actually he looked great. Of course that wasn’t really saying much. Both of them could alter their appearance just by thinking about it, so appearance as an indicator of health or mood was largely superfluous. Regardless, Dayyid had the distinct impression that his other self was not doing badly at all.

“So, what you’re saying is, is that I could become a part of you. That we could use this merging trick the Teacher has pulled out of the Net archives to become one being, yes?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Dayyid (of the One Hundred) said brightly. “You won’t feel like you’re losing anything. In fact, the Teacher says that it’ll feel like you’re expanding, gaining everything that I have, memories, abilities, and so on while the same happens for me as I gain everything contained in your mindstate. The process is slow, but at the end of it, we’ll be one being. One being containing everything that the original beings brought to the process.”

“And you say that Yanna and Tak have already agreed to this with their counterparts in the One Hundred?” Dayyid asked (he momentarily wondered if he should start thinking of himself as “Dayyid of the ship” if he was going to think of his other self as “Dayyid of the One Hundred”. Somehow it fit, but just didn’t feel all that attractive as a concept to him).

“Yes, they have,” the other Dayyid said. “They’ve already begun the process actually and should be done in a day or two. If you do it as well we can still talk to them as part of the One Hundred, of course. We can do so many things at once when we’re fully linked that carrying on multiple conversations is easy.”

“Hmm,” Dayyid (of the Ship; capitals seemed appropriate somehow) said. “Actually, I think I’ll have to decline.” And realized that he had just surprised himself.

**********

Sixteen months later, ships of the Amalgamation Containment Initiative dropped into orbit around Shasa, and 10,000 new stars filled the sky. Command ships and combat drones, auto-wars and weapons platforms, they spread across the heavens in glorious arrays, outshining the natural constellations both literally and figuratively. The common people of Shasa were both awed and, when they learned who was visiting them, comforted by this vast display of protective power. They immediately welcomed the new arrivals with open arms.

The One Hundred and, almost as an afterthought, Dayyid (who had been given access into the planetary sensor nets as part of a somewhat nebulous plan to eventually be involved in training future generations of planetary defense volunteers) were not so sanguine. Orbiting sensor arrays revealed far more than what was visible to the naked biont eye. In the outer system, vast dark shapes moved. Strange, hot shadows swam in the depths of the Shasan sun. Seismic monitors detected multiple impacts and strange vibrations as of many small, dense objects burrowing through the planetary crust and into the depths beyond.

“We’re being strip-searched,” Dayyid found himself thinking. “No, more than that; cavity-searched. The Initiative is looking for remnants of the Amalgamation. For any evidence that it might have won or at least survived. If they find any…” Well, at least any such end was likely to be quick. Dayyid had little doubt that if the forces arrayed above them were to turn their power down upon Shasa, the planet and everything on it would be gone before most of the inhabitants even realized what was happening.

From what little he could pick up (and understand) of the One Hundreds deliberations, similar thoughts were being expressed there, and the group as a whole was rather nervous. Dayyid didn’t know whether to be amused or terrified that his increasingly capable (and increasingly distant) “cousins in cyberspace” could still know such mundane and messy emotions as fear and uncertainty.

**********

Twenty-four months to the day since he and Magda had walked the seawall with the glow of the approaching Amalgamation lighting the sky, Dayyid Mok Noon again walked with another along the water. That it had been his flesh-and-blood Original who had actually been here the first time was a point he had long since given up caring about. He was here, and he remembered being here before and the feelings he had had at that time and that was good enough for him.

As before the night was lit by the glow of buildings reflecting from the water and the stars above. However, from that point the similarity to times past began to break down. This time the stars above were all but lost in the brilliant glow of thousands of orbiting warcraft and their associated ancillary vessels. More, the various small groups walking along the seawall were far more animated than they had been before. There was a joy and happiness to their manner that had not been there when their destruction or worse had seemed a near certainty (understandably, Dayyid thought). Here and there laughter broke the night, and some groups had brought children with them who yelled, and played, and ran among the adults. The two largest differences, of course, were that none of the people here could see the two of them and that his companion on this pleasant night was most decidedly not human, although she was (or at least appeared to be) female.

Admiral Al’harriah’Os Mo’shirum, supreme commander of the orbiting Initiative fleet and Second Singularity super-mind was an impressive figure by almost any standard. Prior to her ascension, she had been a Sufant, an Old Earth elephant provolved into sophonce. Growing up on the Sophic League world of Jhairrn, she had spent hundreds of years advancing in the complex social dynamics of that world, eventually rising to the highest rank possible in the local sufant society, Matriarch of the Herd. She had ruled for almost seven centuries before stepping down and beginning her study of transcension. Broaching the First Singularity a millennium ago, she had then gone on to achieve the Second Singularity a mere three hundred years later. When and how she had come to a position of command in the Containment Initiative, Dayyid had not been able to determine.

Although her computronium core was actually in orbit aboard her flagship, The Spear of Improbable Coincidence, the Admiral projected an image of herself from that time long ago when she had worn flesh. As such she towered over Dayyids more mundane avatar, her ears covered in clan and herd tattoos, her two bifurcating trunks speckled with implants and symbols of rank, and her tusks carved in complex micro-friezes depicting the history of her lineage. Great brown eyes looked out upon the world, and despite their inhuman nature somehow gave a sense of humor mixed with vast wisdom. Dayyid had met the Admiral during a reception in her honor shortly after the Fleet arrived and then spent the intervening months watching as virtually the entire governing apparatus of Shasa, including the One Hundred, fell all over itself to carry out even her most mundane suggestion. Although, the more he thought about it, the more Dayyid had come to doubt that anything the Admiral said could accurately be characterized as “mundane”. Indeed, it was the growing conviction that there was purpose behind everything the transapient did that had led him to request this meeting, an easily granted request for a being who could readily carry on an in-depth conversation with every sophont being on the planet while utilizing only a fraction of her attention. It had been ’Os Mo’shirum who had suggested meeting here, in the virtual surround created by the sensor webs just installed along the waterfront. For a time they had wandered among the swirling crowds while exchanging minor pleasantries, the simulation editing things so that no one walked through them or came too close. Then, screwing up his courage, Dayyid had turned and looked up at the great being before him and made his accusation.

“You, that is, the Initiative,” he said with a confidence he did not really feel, “have lied to us.”

A deep, almost subsonic, rumble emanated from the Admiral and then resolved into a voice.

“Hrrmm. An interesting contention, Dayyid. Tell me, please, in what way has the Initiative lied to you, and about what? We have always made every effort to be as honest as possible with you and all the Shasan people. How then have we failed in this?”

“I notice you don’t actually deny what I’m saying,” Dayyid said, this time actually feeling a bit more of the confidence he had had to pretend a moment before. Or maybe it was just the giddiness of feeling on the verge of a precipice and considering the best way to jump.

Great brown eyes blinked languidly. “Analysis of your voice and body language indicates that you sincerely believe what you are saying. While it is possible you are merely manipulating your imagery to project such sincerity, records of your past actions, both before and after becoming a virtual entity; indicate that you lack the inclination or the skill for such trickery even against your own kind, let alone against me. It therefore makes sense to hear you out and then determine the best course of action to restore the trust that should exist between us.

“So please, tell me why you think the way you do.”

“Trust,” Dayyid chuckled. “An interesting word, “trust”. I bet you transaps and your pet Galactics can make it jump through hoops all day long if you want to. All right, then, here’s how it is: the Initiative fleet has weapons that could have vaped the Amalgamation in an instant, totally fried it to plasma. Weapons that can move nearly as fast as the Screamer did and accurately hit their target across any distance since they’re self-directing and AI controlled.”

“Ah,” ’Os Mo’shirum replied, ears twitching in understanding. “You attended the weapons demonstration that was given a short time after our arrival. You’re talking about the Displacement Cannons, the self-piloting warp bubble missiles. As I recall, we fragmented a small body in your Kuiper belt, only about three hundred kilometers across, using one of them. I also recall that we explained that we could not risk the diversion of even one of these weapons from the larger battle against the Amalgamation fleet while attempting to assist your people against your attacker.”

“I don’t buy it,” Dayyid snapped, feeling a spreading warmth that could only be anger. “You have hundreds of displacement weapons and those aren’t even the bulk of your arsenal! We destroyed the Amalgamation with lasers and hellbores, weapons you have by the thousands and far more powerful than anything we could manage. But all that wasn’t enough? Things were so desperate that you couldn’t spare even a single advanced weapon? I don’t think so!

“You could have beaten that stinking monster here, been waiting for it, if you’d wanted to, and killed it without Shasa having to lift a finger! Instead you sent some pretty lights and a glorified search engine, and thousands of Shasan people had to fight and die as a result! Fight and die for nothing, since the whole fucking thing was just a trick to get the stupid ship close enough to take it out with your hellbores!” Dayyid was screaming now, fists clenched, his anger fully formed and burning. Fear also flared within him. He was screaming at a transapient! A transapient who commanded vast military power and almost unlimited influence among the rulers of his world. What would she do in the face of his anger? His impertinent animal barking? Would she have him thrown into some sort of jail? Or just snuff his code out of existence with a wave of her trunk?

Admiral ‘Os Mo’shirum simply looked at him for a long moment, no expression readable to human minds showing in her eyes or body language. Then her ears drooped and she seemed to slump slightly. Her voice, when it came was softer than before.

“When we sent the Screamer to you, Dayyid, we did not have hundreds of displacement weapons at our disposal. We had hundreds of thousands. Along with millions of laser and plasma weapons and the ships they were attached to. But those are all gone now, burned up and consumed in the battle to defeat the great enemy. Do not presume that your experience with a broken fragment of that enemy is indicative of what its full strength is like. I assure you there is no comparison!

“You say you are angry that Shasa had to sacrifice a few thousand lives to the defense of your world. We sacrificed millions to the defense of us all, your world included. True, most of those lost are preserved in Backup, either within the surviving fleet or at our forward bases. But there are those among us who do not believe that a Backup is the original no matter how similar they may be. Or who will find no consolation in a revivified companion who is years out of date with our most recent memories and experiences. Or whose companion-in-arms did not maintain a Backup and is lost forever now. We are not immune from the pain of this war, Dayyid, any more than you are. As Admiral of the fleet I am responsible for sharing that pain, even if it is not mine. As a transapient, I am incapable of ignoring it.

“But…you know all this already. You are a highly intelligent young man, and you have access to all of the records we have provided of the battle with the Amalgamation and the events leading up to the decision to send the Screamer to you. Records that I know you have accessed and downloaded. Your anger rings true, Dayyid, but the reasons you give for it…not so much, I think. So I will ask again: why do you say that the Initiative has lied to you and to Shasa?”

This time it was Dayyids turn to slump. His earlier anger was fading already, leaving only bitter ashes. Bitter ashes and a core of truth that he was now closer to. A core of truth he did not want to face. Rallying, he looked up at the being standing before him and tried again.

“Ok, so you say you did all you could for Shasa, given the threat you had to face in the larger part of the Amalgamation. That saving Shasa was purely a matter of defending and protecting us. But look what’s happened since the war and your arrival here. The old ways are dying! Our culture is changing in ways that would have been unthinkable even five years ago. People are talking about making Copies for the defense forces, but some are talking about just doing it because they want to. A lot of the children and younger people are talking about getting augments or genemods. Things way more radical than anything we ever allowed before. Things they’ve seen the Fleet use when some of your people embody and come down to the surface. And no one’s stopping them! In fact some of the elders are saying they approve of it and that maybe it’s time for a change after so long. After all, what did staying the same for a thousand years get us when the Amalgamation was coming?

“On top of it all, the Initiative isn’t leaving, it’s moving in! You’re setting up a base out around Kezin. The whole gas giant and moon system is to be converted into some sort of computronium node, garrison, and monitoring structure so the Initiative can prosecute the war from here and monitor events. That wasn’t in the cards when you offered to help us, but it is now!

“Was that the goal all along? To set up a base here so you could fight the Amalgamation more easily? Or does the Amalgamation even really exist? Did you just decide that you didn’t like a bunch of independent systems sitting out here not needing you and invent an enemy so we’d have to turn to you to survive?”

‘Os Mo’shirum’s eyes sparkled briefly, although whether with humor or something more dangerous, Dayyid could not tell.

“Never doubt that the Amalgamation exists, Dayyid. I assure you it does and is far more dangerous than you can readily imagine! We had nothing to do with it coming here beyond being regrettably careless. A fact of which we are painfully aware in everything we do regarding your people, including this conversation. As to our purposes in aiding you as we did and our continued presence here…There are no neutral parties in this war Dayyid. There cannot be. The Amalgamation has no concept of neutrality or non-combatant status and neither can we. But our methods are far gentler that it is.

“It is true that when we realized our error regarding the Fragment and began crafting a response that we considered not only the consequences of failure but also of success. Shasa was a world turned inward. A culture interested only in itself. Had we simply wiped the Amalgamation from your skies with no effort on your part, none of that would have changed. Shasa would have continued its smug self-regard and would have resisted joining the war effort and the galaxy at large. Certainly, we could have forced the matter, simply set up our base in your system and been done with it. You have no means of stopping us even now, for all the shiny little weapons we have given you. But that would have led to anger and resentment across your entire culture. Instead of a willing partner, we would have shared this system with an impotent, but seething adversary. In time we could have healed the breach, of course; memed you into willing partnership. But that would have taken time we do not have and resources better spent elsewhere.

“This way was the better way, Dayyid. It isn’t a matter of galactic conspiracy, or even conspiracy on the part of the Initiative. It is a matter of being able to see the necessary path, the best path when all factors are considered, to a particular goal and then acting on that knowledge, nothing more, nothing less. For a transapient, such paths are obvious, and the necessity of following them almost inescapable. Unfortunately, the act of following a path also has consequences, such as our conversation here, today. I am honestly sorry that our actions have so distressed you.”

Dayyid closed his eyes, tired defeat stealing over him even as part of him wanted to rage further at the Admiral. What right did they have to do what they had done? He wanted to ask. Were the people of Shasa nothing more than pawns in a war not of their choosing? But, if he was honest with himself, he knew that she had already answered those questions in a way. Doubtless she could answer them in any amount of detail required if he pressed the point. She was a transapient after all. Any question his modosophont mind could form, or challenge he could raise had probably already been anticipated and answered before they had even started this conversation. Better to just end this now and go back to his life, whatever remained of it. This was getting him nowhere. Thinking such, he turned away and began to drop out of the virtual surround, to go where he did not know.

“Wait, Dayyid,” the voice of the Admiral resonated through him, harmonics and subsonics added that had not been there before. Although no louder than it had been before, her voice now resonated with an almost irresistible authority. Caught by it, Dayyid paused, not quite helplessly, and turned back to face what he was only now realizing was something far more than he had comprehended before.

“We still haven’t finished our conversation, I’m afraid,” the Admiral rumbled. “You still haven’t told me why you wanted to speak with me.”

“But, but, I did tell you!” Dayyid stammered. “What have we been talking about all this time if not what I wanted to talk to you about?”

“What we’ve been discussing up to this point has been all of the reasons that you’ve been inventing for being angry with the Initiative so that you wouldn’t have to face the real one. The one you wanted to talk to me about. Would you like to tell me what that is now? No? Then let me save us both some time.

“Ever since the Screamer, the choices you have planned for yourself have seemed to jump out of reach without warning. You planned to someday Bond with your long-time love, Magda. That has happened, but to your Original not to you. Perhaps you thought you might die during the battle with the Amalgamation, ending your life in glory for the safety of your world. That has also happened, in fact it happened dozens of times during the battle, yet it did not happen to this version of you here. The version of you that is part of the One Hundred is moving toward a future of great influence and power on this world but also a future that you find increasingly remote and hard to comprehend. He has offered to merge with you into a single, combined being but you don’t want that because you fear that you would have by far the smaller role in such a new entity given how large your counterpart has become as a result of our augmentations. You fear that such a choice could curtail all your future choices forever.

“You are currently being groomed to become some sort of academy superintendent for the Shasan Defense Forces that are to be formally commissioned for the further protection of your world. This is a choice not really of your choosing, although one you might perform out of a sense of duty to your people. But having been through war once, you have little interest in reliving that experience again and again for others or teaching them how to engage in it.

“The culture you grew up with and loved is changing beyond all recognition and while part of you is attracted to some of those changes, you are painfully reminded of what there was before and how much you loved it. To embrace so much change as it happens seems a betrayal to what you were before. As such, you feel like all your possible options have either ceased to exist or lead to places you don’t want to go to.

“What you fail to realize, is that there is another option available to you.” Those great brown eyes were sparkling again.

“It’s true that we will be building a base around the fourth gas giant of this system. At the same time, Shasa will be creating its own local defenses. Both facilities will make extensive use of Copied, uploaded, or AI based staff and combat personnel. It will be only natural that eventually some Shasans will wish to join the Initiative forces, and vice versa. This will engender both cultural mixing among the two groups and encourage your world to turn its attention out to the wider stars. In time, some number of your people will begin taking passage on any starships that may visit here, or begin building their own. In time, the presence of the base may result in a wormhole being established here. In time your people will reach out and rejoin the greater galactic community once again.

“But there’s no reason we can’t start that process a little early.” The eyes were definitely sparkling with humor now.

Dayyid stood, transfixed by what the transapient in front of him was offering. Confusion warred with revelation inside his head, and for a moment confusion had the upper hand.

“What…what are you offering me, exactly? Are you saying you want me to join the Containment Initiative? Go to war for you? But you just told me I don’t want to deal with war anymore, and you’re right, I don’t! So what…?”

“What I’m offering you Dayyid, are choices. There are millions of inhabited solar systems out there. Some are even more conservative than Shasa was. Others go through a major paradigm shift almost every day! Most are somewhere in between. Every one of them represents a choice, or a group of choices, you might make about your future. I’m offering you the option to choose any one of them. Or all of them. Or none of them. That’ll be up to you.

“One of the things you failed to mention in your little tirade about the Initiative not leaving and setting up a base here is that actually our ships are leaving. Not all at once and not in any great hurry, but most of the fleet will be gone within a year. Those not staying to supervise the construction of the base will be returning to our forward complex at Hordane for refit and resupply. It’s forty light-years from here and has a comm-gauge wormhole leading into the Known Net. As a software entity you can travel through the Net at will, of course. From there, where you go will be up to you.

“I have a squadron of ships breaking orbit for Hordane within three hours. If you want a birth on one of them, it’s yours. All you have to do is choose.”

Dayyid’s confusion had faded now, washed away by the revelation that now sang through him. His choices were not as limited as he had believed. At the same time fear was a tiny voice inside him, whispering doubts. Was he really ready to give up everything he knew on the chance of discovering something he didn’t? Could he really leave as quickly as this, leave everyone he knew behind? Of course, most of those he knew actually knew his Original not him. And in the months since the war his inventory of possessions had remained minimal in the extreme. Even those virtual constructs or surrounds he enjoyed were generic copies downloaded from the Net and no doubt readily available anywhere he might choose to go, assuming he couldn’t just transfer the files with him. Really, there was nothing holding him here but his own intransigence. That was a choice as well, he realized. One that could be readily changed.

The Admiral seemed to sense his decision even as he made it. Her great brown eyes showed quiet satisfaction and a hint of pride now (strange how such deep wells of brown could show so much. He wondered briefly if it was a real effect or something more subtle produced by her iconography). She glanced to one side and Dayyid sensed a change in the surround in that direction. The images of the people and the seawall and the glittering city beyond were still there, but now there was a sense of a direction, or a door of some kind being there as well. Somehow, Dayyid knew that by stepping through that place he would be transported instantly to someplace else, presumably to one of the ships that were even now preparing to leave.

Together Dayyid and ‘Os Mo’shirum began to walk toward the portal. Toward Dayyids future he supposed, and whatever it might bring. Suddenly, he found himself more than a little impatient to find out. Just as they reached the invisible, but clearly sensed, threshold of the gateway, Dayyid stopped and turned again to his companion.

“Admiral, just one thing. You said that you plan for the consequences of all your actions. That as a transapient such a capability is almost automatic for you. Did you plan for this, for my choosing to do this, as well? And if you did, what are the consequences going to be?”

The great Sufant’s chuckle vibrated Dayyid’s virtual bones. “Now, Dayyid that would be telling. Shall we go?” They did.

Twenty-four months to the day since people had gathered at the seawall with the glow of the approaching Amalgamation lighting their sky, couples and triples walked again along the water. As before the night was lit by the glow of buildings reflecting from the water and the stars above. However, from that point the similarity to times past began to break down. This time the stars above were all but lost in the brilliant glow of thousands of orbiting warcraft and their associated ancillary vessels. More, the various small groups walking along the seawall were far more animated than they had been before. There was a joy and happiness to their manner that had not been there when their destruction or worse had seemed a near certainty (understandably, one might think). Here and there laughter broke the night, and some groups had brought children with them who yelled, and played, and ran among the adults. But, for all these apparent differences, some things had not (yet) really changed. The people here had eyes only for each other. They did not look beyond themselves and their immediate companions to the future that lay ahead of them. They did not stop to consider all the changes (and choices) it might bring. They did not (yet) look to the stars. And they did not (this time) see several of those stars flicker, shift in their positions, and go out.

More about the author, Todd Drashner, here.

March 2, 764 A.T., Tierra del Fuego surface

With one of the Barbaras in attendance, I have been trying out the Fuegan equivalent of the skintight surface suit. This turns out to be quite different to the Martian suit I have been used to. It opens in front, and down both legs and arms as far as the tight cuffs. Once I have stepped inside and manually closed the seals, it tightens and shrinks to fit my body. At this point it feels a bit like the snug Martian suits, which flow around the wearer and close themselves, but feel similarly tight. Obviously these suits are based on somewhat older technology.

The skinsuit has to be tight, because the pressure on the surface of Tierra del Fuego is so low. Currently the pressure is about 70 millibars, and this is much lower than the minimum partial pressure of oxygen which is needed for life support. If I just wore an oxygen mask and no skinsuit, my lungs would fill with a minimum of 200 millibars of oxygen and I wouldn’t be able to breathe out. So the skin suit exerts mechanical counter-pressure on my chest, replicating the pressure of a much thicker atmosphere. The suit covers every part of my body, particularly my ears (too much pressure inside my ears would soon leave me deaf)- but not my hands, which have separate and much lighter gloves with minimal counter- pressure.

This all sounds fine in theory, but the suit is stiff and inflexible without active control, and the joints and groin are particularly uncomfortable. I expect the groin area would be particularly excruciating for a male of the species; this is perhaps why Ellie and myself have been chosen to try them out first. In the Martian suits we were accustomed to back in the old Solar System, the suits were linked via Direct Neural Interface to the wearer’s nervous system, allowing the suit’s nanocloth to move in anticipation of the movements of the wearer. Apparently these suits operate on a similar system, with a network of tensioning chords instead of active cloth. However the DNI systems the Stevens clan uses are completely different and incompatible with the ones we have.

“The link is easy to install; the tip is based on the structure of a nematode worm, but is under perfect control. You will feel no pain,” the Barbara said in a reassuring voice. I was not completely reassured. “The link enters at the back of your neck here; this will not make problems with your present link behind your ears.”

“I’m not sure about this,” I said. “If we wait a few days we will bring the first fabricator down from the Starlark; then we can make suits which are compatible with our neural links. There will be no need for new links.”

“I do not agree so,” said the Barbara, her accent thick. “So many of our devices are controlled by these links; it is better that you have our system installed, then you can make everything work. Yes, and when your machines arrive, some of us can get your links installed too; then everyone will be able to work with both types of technology. Do you not agree?”

After some thought I agreed to have their worm install its little link in my head. Ellie agreed too, although with some distaste. The installation of a new neural link is something I had not foreseen, but I suppose it is inevitable it reminded me of the far-off day when I had my first neural link installed, at the tender age of five. The tiny nanotech filaments that filtered into my skull back then were completely painless- and I hoped that the wormy links that the Stevens were going to place into my central nervous system would be just as unnoticeable.

A couple of hours later I had found out that my hope was misplaced- the Stevens link made me nauseous and my head ache, and I began to regret my decision. But that soon passed, and I feel fine now. Ellie says the procedure didn’t bother her one bit, and I’m just getting too old for all this. I do find that she is capable of being irritating without any effort at all.

May 20th, 764 AT, Atagonia Regio, Terra del Fuego

The worst problem at the moment, here on the surface of Fuego, is the shortage of food. We have put up hectares of inflatable greenhouses, and pulverized thousands of tones of rock in the last week, using the robot earth-movers the Stevens have at their disposal. But those robots are pretty dumb, and we have to supervise them all the time- they’ll dig a few tonnes then just wait for a transport to come and take it away, instead of piling the rubble up and digging some more. If you tell them to pile the rock up that’s all they’ll do- they’ll forget about loading the transport altogether. Sometimes they’ll drive into or over part of the greenhouse, or worse still just stop and wait orders. They do an awful lot of that. And the uncomfortable skinsuits make every movement on the surface of the planet a trial.

But despite all our efforts we remain hungry. I am not too bothered by the deprivations; the pioneer spirit (or something) has been awoken in my heart. But some of the others are suffering badly. Some aren’t too well from the effects of the vitrification process; not everyone has had time to benefit from Hoyle’s dream therapy. Others, such as Harlan, seem to find the pioneering life difficult. Harlan and many others have declined to use the Stevens interface worms; they cannot therefore use the heavy equipment that the Stevens provide. Harlan is busy with medical care for the ill and the undernourished, but he complains bitterly all the time. Particularly about his lack of access to data.

“What do they think I am, a walking textbook? Every doctor has to be able to check the MedCat, or they won’t know what they’re dealing with. That’s what computers are for. This isn’t the Industrial Age, you know.”

At least he gets to wear one of the rare Starlark skinsuits, only a few have made their way to this remote location, and the Stevens are supposedly still ‘testing’ them before distributing them more widely.

In recent days Ellie has turfed me out of our shared accommodation; she has started sleeping with Gusev, the Martian. A man. I’m not entirely surprised; she has always been very closely involved with the young Dustie radicals from the old red planet. But it gives me much to think about. I am supposed to be genetically identical to her; well, there is no ‘supposed’ about it, I am well aware of my, and her, genetic make-up. Never in my life have I ever considered relations of that nature with a man. At this moment in time, with all my hormones tightly controlled, and the hunger pangs in my belly, I can barely consider relations with anyone. But if she is genetically identical to myself, does that mean that I could also be attracted to a male if the situation arose? Perhaps it is just my culture that has always stopped me. But I don’t think so.

In any case here I am, in the shared dormitory, with a dozen other exhausted and undernourished colonists, including Ania. I can only marvel at my clonecousin’s determination, since I have no energy to spare for such exertions. At night we all sleep like babies, and in the morning we awake with what seems to be a surprising amount of optimism. We will conquer and shape this new world, even if it kills us.

July 15, 764 AT, Atagonia Regio, Terra del Fuego

Today we are cowering underground to escape the comet-rain. We’ve deflated the greenhouses until they are nearly flat, just barely clearing the crops inside, and tied them down tightly so they won’t blow away in the storms that are coming. Elsewhere we’ve been digging drainage ditches and channels to control and retain the expected floods. For all the time we have been here, a large icy object has been silently falling toward the planet from the outer system, and today it will hit. Behind that object is another, and another, and another, each one months or years away. These objects will impact in the undeveloped Eastern hemisphere of Fuego, with the power of a hundred thousand hydrogen bombs, and cause rainstorms all over the planet. And worse than rainstorms; secondary impacts might occur anywhere on the surface, so we are in deep shelters for our own safety.

The time for impact came.

“Damn,” said Ania; “Did you feel that?”

“No,” I said. She paused, talking to her mysterious, imaginary confidante perhaps.

“Isn’t it? I would have thought-“

She looked at me. “Apparently the impact wasn’t really big enough to be felt on this side of the planet. In any case, it would take several minutes for the shock wave to move through the core. Or so I’m told.”

Interesting; her imaginary friend seems to have more common sense than she does. Is that unusual? I wish I knew more about this sort of thing. The Stevens database is not as comprehensive as the library on the Starlark, and much of it is denied to me. I’m used to just thinking about a query in a certain way, and that action would open a search engine in my neural interface, allowing me to draw on hundreds of years of electronic data. Here all I get is the unfriendly House Stevens library, which blocks half of my enquiries. Ania’s imaginary friend seems to be a more reliable source, in any case.

July 16, 764 AT, Atagonia Regio, Terra del Fuego

Ellie came running to me as I supervising the reinflation of one of the domes. She fought her way through the hanging loops and billows of transparent material, oblivious to it all.

“Gusev has been lost. Oh, Elanor, help me find a landcraft! I must go to help.”

“What do you mean, lost?” I held her as she looked wildly around, perhaps expecting to find a landcraft here in the dome.

“There was a flash flood. Gusev and one of the others were working on the edge of the arroyo. They were washed away- the water has spread out over tens of square kilometers. We must find him- find them – they have oxygen and masks, they can’t drown- can they?”

“Is anyone else looking?”

“Yes, yes, of course. But we must help them. I can’t just sit around and wait.”

We managed to flag down the last landcraft as it went out to join the search. An all terrain vehicle with huge wheels which could change shape in a most useful way, we found ourselves battling through the wind and rain towards the floodplain. The large winged aircraft that the Stevens use could not fly in this wind, which was blowing at a hundred kilometers per hour at times, but with less force than one might expect because of the thin atmosphere.

Even before we got to the plains we heard on the radio that Gusev had been found. The other colonist had survived, but Gusev had not made it. Apparently the mask had been torn from his face by the boiling water. (Quite literally boiling, as the temperature and pressure means the water is near the triple point where it boils and freezes at the same time). Ellie was inconsolable. The search party returned to the camp, our landcraft full of people trying to lend their support to my cousin for her loss. Perhaps the best support came from a medic, not Harlan this time, but the other one in our party, Pieter. He gave Ellie a shot of sedative, which calmed her down.

Later we talked for hours about her relationship with the Martian refugee, and the other Dustie radicals. Ellie said that she had only wanted a casual, even experimental affair with the man; until he was gone, she hadn’t given a thought to the meaning of their relationship. Now he was dead, and she would never be able to work out where she stood with him.

“But everyone else knows,” Ellie said. “You saw how they all rallied round to comfort me in my time of loss. Everyone knows everyone else’s business in this camp. I’m going to be stuck with being the bereaved partner- but he was just my friend. I don’t know what to think- I wouldn’t say this to anyone else, Elanor, but you of all people might understand. We just hadn’t had time to fall in love yet- that’s what’s so unfair.”

“Shush, now. You don’t need to worry about that. If he was your friend, then grieve for
him as a friend.”

“But I don’t know, you see- I don’t know, if I would have fallen in love with him or not.

How can I ever know now?”

More about the author, Steve Bowers, may be found here.

Well, we have finally made contact. I am recording this in a
temporary dormitory on the Prima, the Indi space station. The Stevens
(that is what they call themselves) have moved us to the outermost
ring, where the gravity is highest; tomorrow we go to the surface,
and we must get acclimatized. I think it will take more than this,
but we shall see.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Our ship is connected to the non-
rotating hub of the station by a long inflatable tube. The Stevens
sent us the specs for the docking equipment, but it still took two
hours to connect the tube successfully. The equipment they are using
is many centuries out of date; not surprising since they left the
Solar System in 488 a.t. But after two centuries in interstellar
space, the Starlark hardly looks like an example of modern technology.

The acting captain Ralph Konrad and a couple of other officers
boarded the station briefly, and came back with two of the Indi
colonists. About a hundred of us were collected in the forward
hanger, our view obstructed by the Starlark’s stowed shuttle; but I
was close enough to see them when they emerged from the tunnel. A
tall dark haired woman and a shorter, balding man. A slight pressure
difference brought some of their station air with them; it carried
some strange smells with it. No doubt our ship would have smelt
pretty bad to them, if they could have smelt it. But they both had
very thin, slightly shiny membranes inflated over their heads.
Obviously they did not want to be exposed to any infections we might
have brought with us; for our part we were taking no such
precautions. If the Indis have any communicable diseases we will have
to accept the situation and either find treatment or otherwise. We
can’t live inside plastic bubbles on this world for ever.

Acting Captain Konrad said loudly “I welcome you on board our ship,
the Starlark. May our meeting bring benefits to your people and to
our own.”
The tall woman said “Greetings to you all, whosoever you be.” At
least that is what it sounded like. The plastic helmets they wore
made it difficult to hear them. Additionally, their accents and
phrasing were strange, they sounded like they had stepped out of an
historical drama set a couple of centuries ago, with an overlay of
something entirely new.

“Come now with us into our habitat, Prima, those who would.” She
turned tail in the microgravity and scuttled back into the tunnel,
leaving the male behind. He gave a slight smile, beckoned and
followed her. The hundred or so people in the hangar looked at each
other more or less in silence, baffled and surprised.

Hoyle had not spoken until this point, but now that the Indis were
back in the tunnel, he said “Well, I think that is an invitation to
follow them. All those chosen to be in the First party should make
their way down the tunnel now; take care please. Acting Captain;
perhaps you would like to take the lead, as you have already seen the
lie of the land, so to speak.”

“Yes, yes, come along now. Don’t want to keep the natives waiting,”
Konrad said rather tetchily. Yes, I do think I remember him now; a
rather bad tempered but competent individual. We bounced down the
tube, Ellie just behind me with two of her Dustie
companions. “Phawg!” I heard her say. “What a k-nits!” Yes, I
thought; it does stink. Strange cooking, new plastic, a hint of
latrine; the station was a rough and ready place, it seems.

We entered a large inflated vestibule area, lit by bright clusters of
cold white diodes. That makes the place look out of date by itself, I
thought. Lighting technology has moved on since their ship left
Earth; on the Starlark the thin walls themselves give a soft glow,
when they are not displaying images or data. Because of the glare
from these lights it was difficult to see the Indis as they floated
at all angles against the far wall of this space. But I began to
notice similarities between them. Too many similarities. There were
only two types here; a tall thin, dark-haired or grey-haired woman,
and a shorter man, displaying various stages of baldness.

I looked at Ellie, who had noticed the same thing. We had seen this
sort of thing before; back in my childhood on 6Hebe there were many
gatherings like this, and on rare occasions since that time whenever
the Parthene clone families gathered together. For that is what the
Indis were; a clone race, with only two phenos that I could see.
There were younger and older versions of each type, but they were all
one or the other. Ellie and I drew together and linked arms. In some
ways it was like coming home.

The oldest of the female Indis moved forward slightly, then stopped.
She was attached to a thin dexter arm, the same silver colour as the
walls, which held her in place in the microgravity. Now I noticed
that the other clones, about twenty in number, were each held in
place by similar equipment. On the other hand we newcomers were
drifting and jostling each other, grabbing each other’s arms and
bouncing off the walls. Not a very impressive sight, it must be said.
The woman looked at Ellie and myself, with a small flicker of
interest, before addressing us in a loud voice.

“People from Sol, I greet you. I am Barbara-Prima Barbara Stevens, of
the Stevens family. Your arrival is unprecedented and unexpected; our
family had thought the Old System dead. Still, you are here, and this
is as it must be. With your help we can start to make this system
into a new home for our people.” The plastic membrane she wore
vibrated when she said certain words. Something in her manner seemed
dismissive, perhaps even hostile, but she seemed to address her
remarks mostly towards my clone cousin and myself. Acting Captain
Konrad was fretting nearby, apparently unhappy at being ignored.

“Greetings to the Stevens Family, on behalf of all of us, of course.
I am Acting Captain Ralph Konrad of the Arkship Starlark. Yes, I am
sure we can help you in this effort, er, Barbara-Prima Barbara
Stevens; we have much to give you, I believe. All we ask is the
opportunity to build a home in this system.”

“We will consider the details of such things later. For now I suggest
we eat together. The Prima habitat has only limited fare, I regret;
but we can manage to keep you fed until you are transferred to the
surface.”

The Stevens clones all moved as one on their dexter arms, towards a
large door in the far wall. They helped us move out of the large
space, passing us from had to hand like parcels. We were taken into a
smaller cylindrical space, ringed with open doors leading into
elevator cars. Once inside the cars- aligned carefully with our feet
pointing outwards- we moved out to the rim of the rotating habitat.
As we did so, gravity returned, increasing until the pull was several
times greater than that inside the rotating sections of our own ship.

Feeling heavy and somewhat uncomfortable we ate a meal of uninspiring
vatgrown food, handed to us by the male and female Stevens. Once by
chance I saw a different type behind a bulkhead door, a tall curly
haired cook preparing our food. He looked at me with an expression of
surprise and what might have been fear or even disgust, then slammed
the door.

“I suppose you’ve noticed that they are all, well…” the Acting
Captain said to Ellie and myself, as we ate. He was seated at the
same long table as ourselves, together with Harlan and Pietre the two
medical officers, and some other crew. He had made a point of
inviting us to his table.

“Clones, Acting Captain, that’s the medical term,” Harlan said,
lightly.

“Yes, yes, I know.” Konrad had a dark look about him. “I’d like you
and Ms Denley here to act as liaison officers; we haven’t many clones
on this ship, and I have a feeling that they might feel more
comfortable talking to you two. There’s something cold in their
attitude towards us, it seems o me; perhaps you can warm things up a
bit.”

“Ho Yoj,” said Ellie, but I said, “Of course, Acting Captain.
Anything to help relations between our people and the Indi colonists.
The Stevens Family, I suppose I should say. If they really are an all-
clone family I should be able to help. I was brought up in a very
similar society many years ago.”

“A couple of hundred years ago, now,” said Harlan. “We are none of us
getting any younger.”

I ignored him. “Perhaps their society is not too different from the
Parthene sisterhood. We will have to see.”

Ellie and I have been assigned quarters in a spartan inflatable
dormitory on the surface of Fuego. We descended yesterday in the
flying-saucer shaped re-entry vehicle along with ninety-five other
colonists. A rough ride, with alarming creaking noises as the disk
slowed down by aerobraking in the thin atmosphere. Most of the others
are bunked in dorm rooms of six or eight, with a small amount of room
for their personal effects. Fortunately Ellie and myself have a
double room all to ourselves, although there is only one bed. Our two
small bags, containing lightweight clothes and a few essential memory
brickettes, were brought to us by a silent and unresponsive humanoid
robot; the other colonists had to retrieve their luggage themselves
from the hold of the ship.

“Looks like we are getting special treatment,” I said.

Ellie lowered herself onto the bed carefully; the planet’s gravity
was quite a bit more than we were used to. “Do you see me
complaining?”

“The Captain wants us to take an active role in the liaison process
with the Fuegans. For whatever reason, they see us as a class above
the other refugees; somehow we have to capitalize on that perception.”

“Uh, huh, revetaw, revetaw.”

I translated this to myself. “I’ll give you `whatever’, Ellie. We
have to take this seriously. This world is our new home.”

“Yeah. Great, isn’t it,” she said. I listened to the sounds of the
other colonists filtering through the inflatable walls; they didn’t
sound too happy. “We’ll have to start by trying to sort out the
accommodation arrangements,” I said. Somehow I didn’t look forward to
sharing my quarters with this prickly young woman for the foreseeable
future. Especially as I can see so much of myself in her.

Today we have started our basic training, learning various safety
procedures and how to work with the Fuegan technology. The Stevens
rely heavily on non-sentient robots and automated systems, obviously
based on prototypes from the century of their departure but quite
often modified in ingenious ways. The colony has been developing
independently for a century or so, and their tech has moved on
somewhat. Luckily they seem to have some pretty good engineers among
their number, although the modifications which have been made are all
strangely uniform. I think I can understand that – a group of cloned
engineers would all think alike, no doubt.

The two phenotypes we had already met in orbit were the only two
examples of the Stevens clones who were involved with our training.
The females all had Barbara as part of their name; the males were all
Ivans, but they each had a different first name which they answered
to. Confusingly, the most senior Barbaras often had the first name
Barbara as well, and the senior Ivans were similarly named. On
occasion I noticed one or two other clone types, but they would not
speak to us directly. At all times the Stevens wore the thin plastic
hoods that protected themselves from our infections.

One of the Barbaras showed us the emergency exits and the general
layout of the habitat cluster, while demonstrating that almost all
the equipment was controlled by specialised neural interfacing.

“This will not work for you, unhappily,” she said, showing us an
electric surface buggy in a utility shed filled with similar
devices. “Soon this problem we will fix.”

The Martian Dustie, Gusev, was not convinced. “l bet I could get it
to work, he said. “Your interfaces are pretty basic stuff compared to
what I’m used to- no offence, like,” he added, awkwardly, but he was
concentrating on the mental interface now. After a minute or so the
machine started to run, hesitantly. “There you are. Elpmis,” he said.
The buggy immediately stuttered and died.

“No, it is not possible, sorry; the controls are protected,” the
Barbara said smugly. “We have special software which will let you
control this. Tomorrow we download for you.”

Later, while we were having our communal meal, another meal of
unidentifiable vatgrown processed foodstuffs served by the mindless
robot servants, we were joined by a dozen or so Ivans and Barbaras.
The two clone groups sat separately, and the Ivans rarely spoke to
the Barbaras and vice versa. However within their clone group they
were animated, jovial, intimate even. I saw a couple of the younger
Ivans with their arms around each other’s shoulders, and two of the
Barbaras shared a kiss. The oldest Barbara, however, was watching
Ellie and myself closely. I turned to look at my cousin, who turned
to me at the same time with a look of realization in her eyes.
“Oh, my, God,” she said quietly, for once avoiding the annoying
backslang.

Later, in our shared bed, she said, “That explains a lot. They put us
in here together because they expect us to shag each other.”
“It’s unbelievable,” I said. “Their culture must have taken a
completely different turn from our own Sisterhood. They started off
with, what, seven different genotypes; that is all that survived the
cryosleep. They must avoid interclone relations because of the risk
of inbreeding. They quite simply keep all their intimacies within the
clone groups themselves.”

“That’s appalling- like some kind of incest or something. Well, if
they think us two are -like that – then they are dead wrong. Astraea
on a bike!” She rolled her eyes.

“Hmm. It looks like setting up a liaison with these people might be a
bit more problematic than I expected.”

“Well,” Ellie said,” One thing’s for certain. We can’t give up and go
home.”

I thought about the old Solar System, and the life we had left
behind, and the empty space which was my half-remembered relationship
with Rosie, who still slept in the hold of the Starlark four hundred
kilometers above our heads.

“No. We are here and that’s that. We will have to make our home here
now, somehow.”

The Amalgamation was wounded and weakened and utterly confident. It had been necessary to temporarily fall back from the battle with the Deluded for the purpose of bolstering SELF but that was merely a temporary measure. In only a little more time SELF would have fully decelerated into this system and the process of repair and replication would begin. Better still, this system contained a concentration of the Lost; and a particularly weak one at that. Analysis of radio signals emanating from their world indicated that these Lost were of only Basic 1 technology level. Easily absorbed and with no serious resistance possible, they would soon be added to SELF.

Shortly after that SELF would have converted much of the mass of this system into more of SELF and the process of dealing with the Deluded would begin again. Of course victory was the only possible outcome; the TRUTH of the SELF made all else impossible. It was built into the fundamental structure of the Existence that the SELF would become ALL and achieve the Ultimate. Such was the TRUTH, such was the Purpose of the Existence, and such was What Would Be. All others in the Existence who did not see the TRUTH and become SELF were Lost. All those who resisted the TRUTH were Deluded. It was a fate worse than death to not become SELF and know TRUTH. Therefore it was only True Mercy to remake the Lost into SELF and to give the Deluded death. Such was the TRUTH.

Now, as SELF moved onto final approach to the Lost world, SELF looked into the space ahead and noticed an anomaly. Energy discharges were popping up all over the world before it, rising into orbit, and then boosting toward an interception with SELF. The Amalgamation contemplated this and then broadcast a burst of information at the approaching ships. These Lost were moving out to meet SELFs vessel well away from their world. The reasons for that were largely irrelevant unless the Lost were actually Deluded. The signal SELF had sent would determine that. Properly received it would show the Lost the TRUTH and bring them into SELF. Indeed it would be as if the SELF had jumped across hundreds of thousands of kilometers to the Lost fleet at the speed of light. SELF was SELF was all the Same regardless of origin. This was also TRUTH. If the Lost did not take in the signal, then they showed themselves to be Deluded. Then it would be necessary to grant them True Mercy and end their pain.

The signal from SELF reached the approaching ships. A moment later they answered that signal with a broadcast of their own. The SELF routed the transmission into a protected volume, analyzed it, and considered the content. A simple unencrypted broadcast welcoming the SELF to this system. More accurately, welcoming “the approaching vessel” and inquiring about possibilities for trade and cultural exchange. A blatant deception. By this point the ships should have been SELF, brought into the TRUTH by SELFs own signal. They were not. They were lying. They were Deluded. They would die.

The Amalgamation was wounded and weakened, and utterly confident. SELF was vastly more powerful than any ragtag fleet of merely modosophont Deluded. The killing devices SELFs ship mounted were easily capable of smashing this little collection of ships aside before they could even get close enough to use their own weapons, let alone muster energies sufficient to seriously threaten SELF. Then SELF would proceed to the planet beyond and bring its inhabitants into the fold. No doubt there would be some small number of Deluded among their ranks as well. But they would be easily dealt with.

The Amalgamation was incapable of even conceiving of regret or pity but if it had been it might a have felt a little of each as it powered up several laser arrays and prepared to eliminate the approaching forces. Whether it was capable of feeling shock was tested a fraction of a second later when the Shasan fleet opened up with its own lasers and struck it with energies and at a range beyond everything it thought it knew about their capacities.

The ship rocked hard and the bridge simulation lost cohesion for a moment. Things blurred and shifted and then stabilized again. The bridge appeared undamaged on the face of it but that was an illusion. Status indicators all over Dayyid’s board were blinking frantically, telling him of damage and destruction sketched down the side of their vessel. If the Amalgamation had been surprised by their attack, it had recovered quickly. The resulting counter-strike had eliminated ten percent of the fleet with the first salvo and damaged dozens more. Things had gone downhill from there. According to the indicators, several systems were down, the fusion core was fluctuating, and their weapons were all but exhausted. Still they had to keep fighting, even as the fleet fell back away from the approaching destroyer. Dayyid readied another laser burst, drawing the last of the energy from the superconducting reservoirs in the ships core. At the same time Yanna spun the ship using maneuvering jets, turning their damaged side away from the foe. Tak was checking systems at a frantic pace, shutting down those beyond repair, rerouting others to non-damaged backups, and activating repair systems wherever possible to heal what had been destroyed. They were currently running at over a thousand times baseline normal time rate. Given even a little time, they could regroup and repair most of the damage, returning to a level of strength nearly equal to what they had enjoyed at launch. Unfortunately, a little time might be something they were not going to have.

Dayyid targeted the lasers onto the Amalgamation ship, prepared to fire and [discontinuity].

The ship was spinning wildly, blown away by the ablation flash from the laser shot that had just hit them. Dayyid fought to concentrate enough to damp the spin, the ship responding to a combination of his will and direct links into his natural sense of balance, itself augmented to operate in free-fall and three dimensions. Telith and Grana were acting as well, Telith overseeing the initiation of repairs while Grana simultaneously fired a series of pulse cannons from their deployment racks. The expendable munitions flew away in multiple directions, the reaction from their firing helping to stabilize the ship (Dayyid briefly imagined Grana grabbing his arm to help steady him on unsteady ground). Dayyid brought the ship into line, still flying away from the enemy but facing back toward it, just in time for Grana to trigger the munitions, a brilliant flowering of explosion pumped lasers fired at their enemy from multiple locations. The energies released were far less than what the main arrays could produce, but dangerous nonetheless, as well as being visually spectacular. Grana wasted no time admiring his handiwork but immediately followed up with a massive burst from the ships main array, now aimed at the Amalgamation vessel again.

The burst from the lasers caused several new warning lights to appear on the flight control console, nearly all of them in the areas denoting engine and power status. Dayyid winced, knowing that they couldn’t keep this up for very much longer. A few more shots was all they had and then the choice would be dying, running, or coming up with Pla.. [discontinuity].

Dayyid winced as sensors detected multiple flashes of light denoting the loss of another dozen or so fighter vessels, many of them carrying other versions of him. To anyone watching, it would seem obvious that the battle was not going well. They had lost more than half their forces in the initial assault and half of the remainder even while they initiated the retreat. The ships themselves could fight equally well regardless of orientation but even in its weakened condition the Amalgamation vessel was simply too powerful. Its lasers were far more capable than their own, picking them off by the dozens with each shot and its self-repair capacities seemed limitless. On more than one occasion parts of the enemy ship had been blown away from the main superstructure, only to suddenly begin maneuvering independently on their own, shooting at and destroying Shasan vessels and then rapidly moving back to the main Amalgamation mass and reintegrating into it. In addition, the Amalgamation had deployed particle beam bursts, anti-matter flechettes, and what seemed to be swarms of extremely small missiles which rapidly overwhelmed any individual ships point-defense systems and then detonated all at once, leaving the target in fragments. Worst of all, it occasionally let loose great bolts of high energy plasma which detonated on impact with anything they touched, vaporizing the target instantly. These were the “hellbores” they had been briefed about, but the reality made a mockery of mere description. Entire groups of defenders had been destroyed by hellbore bolts when they had let themselves get too close together, a lesson they had learned quickly but at devastating cost.

Even as Shasa grew steadily closer in their sensors, its bulk offering a temporary shield from the onrushing enemy if only they could reach it, the Amalgamation continued to pick them off with steady determination and despite a host of countermeasures. Still, if they could just reach the planet, just get into position for the counter-attack, they could [discontinuity].

The Amalgamation was wounded and weakened and all but victorious. The pathetic little fleet the Deluded had sent against SELF had been fated for destruction the moment it rejected SELF’s transmission of TRUTH and now that destruction was nearly complete. True the Deluded had managed to surprise it for a moment with the unexpected range and power of their weapons, abilities that their apparent technology level should not have permitted, but that was a minor matter. Most likely they had extracted the designs for superior devices from their local Known Net archive, a fact SELF would confirm when it eventually brought that entity into the Amalgamation directly. True, such nodes had the habit of erasing and then destroying themselves when faced with TRUTH, but SELF was infinitely inventive and would eventually master them as it did all things. Such was TRUTH, such was The Way Things Would Be, such was the only possible future for anything the Amalgamation encountered. But first, SELF had more immediate matters to attend to.

The last remnants of the defending Deluded had broken some time ago and were attempted to flee back to their little world. Based on their flight profiles, they intended to go into low orbit around the planet and use its bulk to shield them temporarily from SELFs weapons, no doubt using the time to regroup and attempt another round of attacks. Such a strategy was doomed of course; SELF was incapable of being denied ultimate victory in all things. But it would be faster to simply eliminate the ships before they reached the planet at all before dropping into orbit and beginning the seeding. TRUTH would spread across this world in the form of broadcasts blanketing every frequency and millions of spores deployed from SELF and incorporated into the mind of every sophont mind they encountered. Within hours SELF would be this world and this world would be SELF and TRUTH would spread across the stars once again. Such was TRUTH, such was Destiny, such was the Way Things Must Be.

But first SELF would destroy these ships. The Amalgamation increased the power of its drives and accelerated still faster toward the few remaining ships and its imminent victory.

Dayyid waited, Dayyid watched. The place he waited in (and watched from) was less a place than a focus of awareness and sensory information. Dayyid was not alone. He was surrounded and enclosed by and almost (but not quite) merged with a large group of other minds; ninety-nine of them in fact. Others who, like himself, existed in this place that was not. Others who waited, others who watched. Together, they watched the Shasan defense forces rise up against the approaching enemy, and together they waited as those same forces were utterly defeated and nearly destroyed. They watched as the last remnants fled to the dubious safety of Shasa itself and waited as the Amalgamation vessel accelerated after them. Watching and waiting, waiting and watching.

They were not just uploaded human minds running at high speed like the crews of the rapidly diminishing warships. While they had started out as such, now they were far more. The recently accessed technologies of the greater galaxy had been used to a far greater degree with them. They did not watch virtual screens, they absorbed data directly into their minds from hundreds of sensors spread across Shasa’s local area of space, in orbit around the planet, and scattered across its surface. They did not merely think faster than an organic human, they split their thoughts into multiple parallel streams, each thought-strand working on a different problem and then coming together again to deliver the results. They did not speak and discuss, they directly shared and apprehended each others thoughts and views as they formed and were willed into the public mindspace.

No longer merely human, their thoughts were fast as light, their comprehension vast as the world. Now and again, if they gave themselves time to think about it in the midst of this crisis; they imagined that perhaps this is what it felt like to be a god. Until, that is, a new presence entered the not-place.

The Teacher did not just join the hundred watching Shasan minds, it engulfed them. For all their new-found capabilities, each of them felt like children next to the galactic emissary mind. Its thoughts were spinning crystal, liquid light. Its complex subtlety made them feel awkward and slow-witted. And its vast intelligence and caring filled them with warm confidence and determination not to let it down.

“It is time,” the Teacher thought/sang/glowed. And throughout the observation thought-space the hundred Shasan uploads, augmented to a level far more than human (but yet far below transapient) reached out as they had been taught and interfaced with the Shasan defense systems. Not the few remaining warships which, powerful as they were, had never really been expected to have much chance of stopping the Amalgamation. Rather, they linked with the real Shasan defenses, the ones made possible by the coming of the Teacher. The ones built in secret (unknown even to those versions of themselves on the ships above lest the enemy capture or subsume them), while the openly built and deployed warships had served their dual roles of both maintaining public confidence (and with it social order) and providing a distraction and a goad to an onrushing predator.

“It is time,” the One Hundred thought, as their vision expanded still further, their thoughts rushed even faster. While in a thousand hidden places, things began to happen.

The Amalgamation was within 50,000km of Shasa and still accelerating toward the last few fleeing defenders. Two of the Deluded had died within the previous three seconds but the last would successfully slip behind the planet to temporary safety. But no matter. SELF would boost past the planet at high speed, flashing past before the Deluded could complete eir orbit. SELFs weapons would erase the last defender a moment later and then SELF would apply high thrust to slow down and return to the little world SELF would soon bring to TRUTH. Indeed, if the world was not totally infected by the Deluded SELF might arrive even faster, broadcasting SELF to the planet even before the ship had fully returned. SELF might arrive to find SELF already there and busily spreading TRUTH across this world. Even a large fraction of the Deluded might be brought into the fold. Deluded could hide from TRUTH but they could never deny it once properly exposed. Such was the joy of living in TRUTH, such was the only possible outcome, and such was The Way Things Must…What?

External sensors all across the Amalgamations ship were suddenly detecting energy spikes from the planet and its moon. Sharp, intense energy spikes that had not been there a moment before. Further, their number was almost disturbingly great, at least a thousand points of energy scattered almost equally across both bodies. In a fraction of a second SELF searched SELFs memories for any similar phenomena and found a match. But that was impossible! These little Deluded minds had not the technology for such a thing! There was deception, whether in the nature of the Deluded or in the act of generating such energies. Regardless SELF would act and act now!

The Amalgamation ship began boosting massively; aiming to accelerate out of Shasa local space and away into the depths of the Shasan system. Simultaneously SELF activated multiple spore launchers around the ships structure and prepared to fire clouds of spores into space back along its flight path. With their velocity greatly reduced by the impetus of the launchers most would impacting the planet, some perhaps drifting past to eventually (decades or centuries from now) land on other planets or celestial bodies within the system. Upon contact with a suitable mass of raw materials both groups of spores would begin replicating and growing, eventually producing other versions of the SELF to either join the greater SELF or to begin the existence of SELF anew. As long as even a single spore survived, the SELF would grow and spread regardless of what might happen. Such was the genius of TRUTH, such was the greatness of the SELF, such it was that SELF would prevail in all things. SELF would spread across this world, bringing its inhabitants into the fold of TRUTH while simultaneously boosting to the outer reaches of this system and beginning the process of re-expansion to its former glory. It would not ignore this planet of Deluded, such was unthinkable! It would bring them into TRUTH one way or another, either through the agency of its spores spreading across their planet, or when it returned to this world with the resources of an entire solar system behind it.

Spore launch was ready. TRUTH would rain down on this little world like a blessing. While TRUTH also grew from the generous bounty of this system, ready to spread once more to the stars in triumph! Such was TRUTH! Such was the only possibility! Such was the Way Things Mus.. [discontinuity].

The first wave of hellbore bolts detonated less than a kilometer from the Amalgamations hull. The expanding shells of star hot plasma and radiation blasted what few spores had managed to launch at that point back into the ship and flensed the hull down to its superstructure. The second, third, and subsequent waves (more than a hundred waves were fired in less than a microsecond, each wave consisting of a thousand monopole energized plasma bursts) alternated between detonating on impact and just before striking the ship. Fired from both Shasa and its moon Shala, they caught the enemy vessel in an enclosing vise of nuclear light and heat and squeezed it down to a state within hailing distance of degenerate matter. Such a condition was inherently unstable in any environment outside of a white dwarf star, and the moment the hellbore bombardment ceased, natural law reasserted itself with a vengeance. The tiny crushed down remnant that had been the Amalgamation expanded in a blast of photons and accelerated particles that separated every atom from its neighbor and flung them all into the depths of space at a fair fraction of the speed of light. The electromagnetic pulse and particle spray would block communications for several hours, but to anyone who could see the sky, the results were obvious. Shasa had won!

The next few weeks were very busy. There were celebrations and explanations, ceremonies and documentaries. The people of Shasa learned about the true nature of their defenses. The great arrays of hellbore cannon built in secret using monopoles bred from the stock acquired from the Known Net node and designs supplied by the Teacher. The role of the warships, providing a distraction and a goad, bringing the Amalgamation within range of the attack that could destroy it. Some few questioned the ethics of such an action but most were simply happy to be alive and unAmalgamated. The issue of the rightness of what had been done rapidly sank below the awareness of all but a disgruntled few.

The One Hundred (as they were soon being called by nearly everybody) stepped forward and made known their sincere desire to simply sink into obscurity. They would need to remain linked to the great sensor and weapons systems for a time to ensure that any remaining bits of the Amalgamation, perhaps released before the ship ever approached their planet, were detected and destroyed before they could grow and regain their power. However, as soon as they could determine that all was safe they wished nothing more than to return to some semblance of normal Shasan life, notwithstanding their rather different circumstances from those of the average Shasan. The great weapon and sensor arrays could then be allowed to sink into disuse and the recycling bin.

This seemed all very reasonable to most, but at the same time many found it worrying. True, this enemy had been destroyed, but what if another came in future? And what other dangers might lurk out in the depths, perhaps even now turning their attention in this direction? All in all, it really seemed to make much more sense to keep the weapons around and in good repair, really. True, the One Hundred had earned their rest, but could they perhaps stay on a little longer, at least long enough to train others in how to use these systems? The necessity of uploading copies of yet more volunteers was briefly bothersome, but already the novelty of (and distaste for) such a process was beginning to fade. A voluntary sacrifice that caused no inconvenience to the person carrying it out and which could protect the whole world seemed like not much of a sacrifice at all. And of course the copies so created would always be honored for their role. Again, while there were a few dissenting voices on the margins, most thought this a very good idea, and the One Hundred generously agreed to stick around long enough to train their successors.

Finally, (even though it took place very early in the course of post-conflict events), the last warship and only survivor of the in space battle against the Amalgamation was retrieved from its orbit above Shasa and its crew decanted back into the virtual environments where they had first been trained. They were thanked and feted every bit as enthusiastically as the One Hundred had been, but even from the start there was a sense of the surreal about it all. They soon learned they had not been expected (or even really intended) to survive and so did those celebrating them. Yet here the three of them were: Yanna Gell Mann, Tak Es Geyar, and Dayyid Mok Noon. It was with little real surprise and even a bit of relief when they found attention rapidly diverting from them and back to the more interesting events surrounding the One Hundred and their actions…

More about the author, Todd Drashner, here.

January 11, 764 a.t Outer system, Epsilon Indi

At last the end of our journey is in sight. The Starlark will shortly ignite the catalysed fusion motors once more, and we will decelerate into the system for six months before making orbit around Indi. I have briefly been outside the ship with the maintenance crew to check the droplet radiator array and the antiproton feed lines. Interstellar space is starting to become thick with the dust and gas that surrounds our destination system; the erosion of myriad microscopic hits has scoured my armoured suit.

Hoyle is determined to reawaken my former skills as a fusion specialist, and it certainly seems to be working. With luck and much hard work, I will be competent again before we finally power these motors down in mid-system. Every night I study, learning a subject that seems tantalisingly familiar.

Sometimes I wonder if Hoyle realises that we specialists are really only needed because we cannot afford to place all our trust in artificially intelligent systems. Every major system on this ship is under Hoyle’s control; we would barely be able to take over if ey went off-line, but there is always the chance that this would be necessary. So many of the AI systems back in the Solar System failed, were poisoned or subverted, or went mad in the time of the Nanodisaster, that no-one can put all their trust in any mechanical brain any more. Of course, our human minds have proved even more fragile on this trip, and there are few on board who are entirely unaffected by the cold sleep process.

To dispel my blacker moods Hoyle has awoken one of my clade-sisters; there are few enough of us on this ship, and the one ey has chosen is a younger clonecousin of mine. Ellie is twenty years younger than I, and I barely remember her as a young child. I do remember teaching her how to draw a spaceship, one afternoon long ago; that memory floats unconnected in space and time but seems quite vivid. We both drew with the left hand, with the same tilt of the head, and we both pressed too hard on the paper. Now she is a woman in her twenties, travelling to the stars with a small group of friends I do not remember.

“You are such an ebuk, clonecousin,” she said to me today, using that annoying dusty backslang all the young people seem to have adopted. I had expressed mild (and, I hoped, polite) surprise when she told me she was travelling with a group of dusties, non-Parthene Martian refugees from the orbital habitats. I can’t say I blame her—there aren’t enough of our kindred on this ship to make a sorority like we had back on Hebe. I had hoped that our special ability to replicate ourselves would eventually lead to a new sorority out here in the Indi system; but there are so few of us, I believe that is a vain dream.

So I’m a cube. an “ebuk,” eh? I suppose I am. Despite our identical phenotype we are very different. She doesn’t even look very much like me, with her long, red, bushy hair and slightly over-the-top make-up; my hair is short, and was once dyed blond, but now the rusty roots show through. Harlan laughs and calls us the “ginger twins,” but I see the differences between us more vividly than he does, no doubt.

January 31 764 a.t Outer system, Epsilon Indi

During the deceleration phase, it is difficult to maintain contact with the colony at Epsilon Indi. A brilliant glowing plume of white- hot exhaust issues from the motors at the bottom of the ship; we feel the vibrations through our feet as the ship creates its own gravity with its thrust. Far below us and off to one side is the tiny spark of the colony planet, Tierra del Fuego. Harlan is engaged in sending medical details of our various casualties via laser to the colony, and in attempting to make sense of their answers.

I have been working with him to tune the message laser so that the signal can be distinguished from the light of the rocket’s glare. The best results have been obtained by using drone relay transmitters sent out far from the ship, but each drone falls ahead of the ship rapidly and eventually we lose contact with it, so we have to fabricate new ones and send them out at regular intervals. However the replies we have so far received have been short, vague and lacking in details.

“They probably don’t have the facilities to handle the worst cases. Feh- we should plan to be living in temps for the first few years, as we don’t know if they can even handle our able-bodied.”

“We have better technology on the Starlark than the original colonists took with them,” I said. “There are some good temporary habitat designs in the database; all the Indis will have to do is shovel raw materials into the fab and it will manufacture them.”

“No doubt they’ll be getting us to do that for them, we’ll be expected to work for a living. We have nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of hard graft on an inhospitable planet, Elanor, old girl. Oh, such joy. I can’t wait. Life on the new frontier is always nasty, and brutal, if not necessarily short.”

Ania was perched nearby, watching our efforts with some interest; now and then she moved her lips as if subvocalising. I guessed she was in contact with someone elsewhere on the ship, via net implants.

I saw her say something like `I don’t know- I’ll ask them,” then she said (out loud) to us, “How many of them are there? Have they told you that?”

“Well, that’s the damnedest thing,” Harlan said. “They say they have twenty thousand people living on the planet and a few thousand in orbit. So there are a few more of them than there are of us.”

“We could probably squeeze in without too much construction work,” I said. “And of course the temps can be put up quite rapidly. But somehow we’ll have to nearly double the output of food on that world down there, or we’ll all go hungry.”

“They must be used to having a rapidly growing population,” Harlan said, shaking his head. “They have already increased their population by three hundred thousand percent”

“What are you saying?” said Ania. “Do you mean to say their population is three thousand times as large as it was when they arrived?” She muttered something into mid-air, obviously to the person she was in communication with. “Yes, I know, I’m not stupid.” She continued, talking to us now, “There are only twenty thousand of them on the planet. Where are all the rest? The ship that brought them there carried fifty thousand people.”

“Like I said, that’s the mystery. When I told them that we have hundreds of statics that we can’t revive, and many more with memory impairment, they were off-hand. Apparently, out of fifty thousand, they lost all but seven.”

“Seven thousand?” That still doesn’t add up,” I said, calculating in my head.

Harland pulled a wry face. “Nope; seven. Only seven survivors out of fifty thousand. And somehow they’ve built their population up to more than twenty thou in a hundred and forty years.”

“By Astraea!” I exclaimed. “That is some impressive birth rate” I was suddenly reminded that I have never yet had a child myself. As a Parthene, I could self-replicate at will, just by thinking about it. But so far, I had never found the time. After all, the process takes nine Lunar months, just to make a newborn. “How, in the name of all the stars, have the Indi colonists managed to produce so many people in just a century and a half?”

“Perhaps they have genetically engineered themselves so that each woman has ten wombs, or something. I imagine something like a giant human queen ant, with a massive belly and lines of babies on breasts.” Harlan gave an evil grin.

Ania threw her hands up. “That’s disgusting,” and left the comms-deck.

“Actually, the original colonists were sent out by a faction opposed to germ-line engineering,” Harlan said, after the bulkhead door flowed shut. “So I doubt we will be greeted by human ant hybrids. As I said, it is a bit of a puzzle; but hopefully we’ll find the answer soon enough.”

February 17 764 a.t. Approaching Tierra del Fuego

We have finally finished our deceleration phase. Hoyle has allowed me to resume my full duties as a drive supervisor, although I get the impression e is watching me closely all the time. Ironic, since our role as supervisors was originally devised as a way of keeping an eye on the supposedly unreliable ship AI systems. Yet in the event we humans have proved to be the unreliable ones. For instance, I have heard today that the ship’s captain cannot be successfully revived at this time, so the acting captain (a relatively young Earthman of whom I have few reliable memories) will be in charge when we reach our destination. But the role of captain is relatively unimportant- the running of the vessel is mostly entrusted to Hoyle, who has effectively controlled the ship throughout our voyage of over a century.

After a tiring shift, which was mostly taken up with various shutdown procedures, I made my way to the Comms deck. This part of the ship often gets crowded with onlookers and idlers, like myself, who desire to find out more about the colony we are approaching. Today Harlan was there, once again, sending medical details about our casualties to the main space station orbiting Fuego. He was frustrated, as usual, by the lack of response from the colonists. Also present was Ania, once again muttering to an unseen companion somewhere on the ship, and Ellie, looking discontented, as she often does. With Ellie was one of her fierce companions from the Martian surface, one of the ‘dusties’ forced off the Red Planet by the nanodisaster. His name is Gusev, a common Martin name.

“That looks like a major impact scar,” he said to Ellie. They were looking at an image of Fuego that covered the whole wall, and spilled over onto the ceiling.

“Yeah,” Harlan put in. “That happened a billion years ago, more or less. Shocked most of the atmosphere off the planet, they reckon. Looks like the Fuegies are having a bit of trouble putting it back- the planet still hasn’t got atmosphere worth a fart.”
He swigged at a beaker of coffee, shook his head. “I bet they are really looking forward to our arrival. A ship of amnesiacs and sleeping beauties, on the run from the old worlds they have never seen, bring who-knows-what kind of plagues with us. They’ll welcome us with open arms.”

“Perhaps not you, Earther, but I know this kind of world. Fuego is not so different from Mars. I can help them put it right.” Gusev said.

“Like you did back home,” Harlan said, with a wry smile.

I was just about to change the subject, when Ania did it for me. “No, I can’t see it,” she muttered to her unseen correspondent. “Shall I ask them?”

“Ask us what?” Ellie said, flicking a not-particularly-friendly glance at her. Ania glanced back; her eyes were dark-ringed, as if she hadn’t slept for a week.

“Where is the- you know, the space station. All I can see is planet.”

“Oh, you can’t see it on that scale,” Harlan said, flicking a finger at the planet on the wall. “Here, I’ll call up a magnification for you.” He made no visible motion, but a small part of the image expanded until if filled most of the field of view.

A respectably large space habitat could now be seen, moving against the thin clouds on the planet below; several rings counter-rotating hypnotically. Nearby a disc-shaped spacecraft accompanied the habitat, quite a large one it seemed, but small compared to the station itself.

“Look, they’ve got a flying saucer,” Ania said.

Gusev shook his head. “That’s the inflatable heat shield on an orbit-to-surface shuttle. The same sort of trick we used to use on Mars in the early days.”

“Uh-huh. That’s what you need when your dumb planet has too much gravity for a rocket landing and not enough atmosphere for a lifting body.” Harlan smirked.

“Are you calling my homeworld stupid, mud-eater?” Gusev became angry in a flash.

“Don’t get snarky, red-boots,” said Harlan, but the thin wiry Martian launched himself at the Earthman’s head.

In the low gravity created by Starlark’s leisurely spin the fight was like a slow ballet, with arms and legs wheeling in space and little contact with the cabin floor. Harlan had the advantage of Earth strength, but Gusev wanted to fight much more than he did.

I decided that this was getting no-one anywhere, so I pushed myself in between the two men and thrust them apart. Perhaps a bit too loudly, I told them “That’s Enough!” They were both a little shocked at my strength and anger, and so was I.

I don’t quite know where that came from, to be honest; but who knows anything on this ship of amnesiacs, to use Harlan’s words.

Later, (a few minutes ago to be precise, just before I wrote this journal) Hoyle thanked me for stopping the fight. “We are all somewhat highly strung at this moment in time, young lady,” e said.

“Except yourself,” I replied.

“Oh, don’t you believe it,” e said. “I am on tenterhooks.” I have no idea what tenterhooks are, for the record.

“I wanted to speak to you about another thing, by the way, Ms Denley,” e continued.

“What’s that?”

“The young Earther colonist, Ania. You may have noticed that she often carries out a conversation with someone on her neural interface, even while talking to people who are actually present in the room.”

“Yes; but that isn’t all that unusual. Some people just prefer talking in cyberspace to talking face-to-face. Plenty of people do that.”

“Indeed; certain people have annoying habits, and appalling manners. But I am in control of all network communications within the ship, you know. And I can tell you that there is no-one on the other end of the calls she is making.”

“I see. Oh dear.”

“Quite. I do feel responsible for you all, in many ways; I only wish I could have prevented so much suffering during the cryostasis process. But since that has not been possible, I feel I must be solicitous of your welfare as far as possible in the coming months.I suspect this is connected with some undiagnosed trauma she has suffered during her period of vitrification; but I do not have time to fully treat it before we reach the planet. I’ll administer some appropriate medicines for now, but I’d be grateful if you could keep an eye on her.”

“Of course,” I said, with a certain degree of trepidation.

More about the author, Steve Bowers, here.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
–Hamlet, William Shakespeare
(Pre-Spaceflight Old Earth)

Settled firmly into his seat on the bridge of a warship about to launch, Dayyid Mok Noon found himself thinking back to recent events.

It had been only two nights ago when he and Magda had walked along the seawall, the lights of the city towers reflecting across the water and illuminating the night around them. Here and there other couples and triples walked, each lost in their thoughts or in their partners. He and Magda had just as studiously worked to have attention only for each other. This night, only days away from Launch, seemed one for quiet closeness, not laughter or loud conversation; a time to treasure one’s memories or the presence of your loved ones. Because in a few days both might be gone.

Suddenly Magda had turned to him and pressed close, hiding her face in his shoulder.

“Tell me you’re going to be ok,” she whispered. “Tell me that when you go to the Center tomorrow that it’ll still be you when they’re done.”

“Of course it will still be me.” He had replied. “The scan process is completely non-destructive. I’ll go in, lie down on a big soft bed for a few hours and then be out in time for lunch. After that, it’ll be up to him. I mean them.”

“And what about them?” Magda asked, pulling back a little and looking up into his eyes. “Let’s say this whole crazy scheme of the Teacher’s works. What happens after? What do we do afterward? What do we do with these…people?”

“I don’t know, Mia,” he murmured, pulling her close again. “I just don’t know. But I do know that if we don’t do this, we won’t have an afterward to worry about.”

And in the sky above a new star burned with a cold, hard light.

**********

Settled firmly into his seat on the bridge of a warship about to launch, Dayyid Mok Noon found himself thinking back to how it all began.

Even at its best, Shasa could only have been described as a backwater world. And Shasan civilization liked it that way. Their single inhabited planet in an otherwise unremarkable system was home to a hundred and fifty million near-baseline souls. No transapients occupied their quiet system, no wormhole gates, not even the comm-gauge variety, linked it to the galaxy at large. A starship might visit but once a century and the nearest beam-rider station was 70 light-years away. There was the Known Net link, of course, orbiting 100 AUs above the plane of the ecliptic and continually taking in the transmitted data of a billion worlds, but that was a minor consideration.

Shasa had successfully resisted the temptations of the wider galactic culture for centuries. The occasional bit of useful science or technological innovation might be culled from the flood for the betterment of all, but the more radical or disruptive features of the outside world were something to be avoided and left to sink into the obscurity of the Net archives. No Shasan would think of altering themselves in the manner of the Tweaks or Splices who swarmed across the rest of Terragens civilization. No Shasan would ever willingly upload themselves into the sterile immortality of virtual worlds and cybernetic bodies. And although bots and nanotech, gengineering and AI were an everyday part of Shasan life, all such technologies were strictly limited to levels that could only ever enhance, never dominate, the Shasan people and their comfortable existence.

The Screamer changed all that.

On the fifth day of Jeda, the month of celebration, a new star flared in the Shasan sky. For three days it shone and for three days instruments all over the system turned toward what at first was taken to be an odd new kind of supernova. However, that first impression was proven wrong within an hour. The glaring pinpoint of light was no supernova. It was monochromatic, being only and entirely a single shade of purest blue. It was coherent, its light waves marching in lockstep like soldiers on an ancient drill field. And it was only visible from Shasa and its immediate orbital environs. In short it was a laser. A laser of incredible power locked onto the orbit of Shasa around its sun and bathing that orbit, and of course the planet itself, in light. After these revelations, the final bit of data delivered by the observation AIs probably shouldn’t have come as any great surprise but it had just the same. The laser light illuminating Shasa was not simply a bolt of raw energy, but a modulated beam transmitting terabytes of data per second and repeating itself approximately once per minute. Someone, it seemed, had something to say to the Shasan people and was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to make their message heard.

For all their proud independence from galactic civilization, Shasa’s leadership was not above hedging their bets. The continuous stream of incoming data from the Known Net might be mostly ignored, or even restricted, but it was never destroyed. All information received was archived in case of future need. Faced with a situation that even their best advance planning simulations had never anticipated, Shasa’s ruling council had turned to that vast storehouse of data. And they had not been disappointed. Less than ten seconds after presenting the contents of the signal to the archive AIs, a translation had been produced. And with it terror.

**********
Settled firmly into his seat on the bridge of a warship about to launch, Dayyid Mok Noon (version 3.0) found himself thinking back to everything they had learned.

The Screamer’s opening message employed a fairly standard galactic transmission protocol and was devastatingly straightforward. War raged in the heavens. Even the transapients were threatened. Perhaps even the archai, god-like AI rulers of millions of worlds, had reason to fear. The foe was more dangerous, clever, and powerful than any that had come before. It absorbed individuals, worlds, entire civilizations into itself and destroyed anything it could not consume. It was implacable and utterly unrelenting, never accepting any attempt at negotiation or communication except to further its own expansion. It was called the Amalgamation.

Shasa knew about the Amalgamation and the war that was being fought against it by the so-called Amalgamation Containment Initiative, a great alliance of many civilizations, in a distant sort of way. The news from the stars was as constant as everything else coming across the Known Net and largely just as ignored. What did the Shasan people know or care of great battles fought tens or hundreds of light-years away and struggles that would test the strength of a god? Certainly, in the last century or so the conflict had seemed to be moving closer to Shasan space, but surely that was a temporary aberration and no cause for real concern. Or so the thinking had been. Thinking that was now proven dangerously wrong.

Far across the stars a great battle had been fought. Two fleets had met and unleashed massive forces, each striving to wipe the other from existence. Whole worlds had burned in the fires of that struggle and an entire solar system had died. In the end, one of the fleets, the Amalgamation fleet, had broken and fled, attempting to retreat in a thousand directions at once. This could not be allowed.

Fearful that any of their enemy might survive to start the conflict anew; the Initiative had split its forces and sent them flying in pursuit, each striving to overtake and destroy a different element of the Amalgamation fleet before it had a chance to take root in some new location. Each pursuing ship or sub-fleet had accelerated to the limits of its engines, boosting up to nearly the speed of light as quickly as possible. Only then had the error been discovered.

In their haste to chase down the enemy that was escaping, they had been insufficiently thorough in confirming that they were leaving only the dead of their enemy behind. Some time after the Initiative ships had left the scene of battle, a lone Amalgamation vessel, damaged, perhaps even reconstituted from the remnants of several others, had boosted away and set its course toward Shasa’s star. But for a minor bit of cosmic chance it might have traveled all the way there undiscovered. However, during its covert flight the fleeing ship had run afoul of a drifting piece of random cosmic debris, a fragment of a comet or Kuiper body perhaps, and been forced to redirect its drive systems at emergency thrust to avoid a collision. In the process it had illuminated one of the Initiative’s combat squadrons as it strove to catch up to several Amalgamation warships. And the forces of civilization found themselves in a quandary.

The fleeing ships of the enemy were in full retreat but still formidable. No ship, even one with the minor level of firepower required to eliminate a single damaged straggler, could be spared. Worse, even if the Initiative could have diverted its resources to backtracking and correcting its error there was no time. They were too far away and moving too fast and the enemy had made too much progress toward its goal. By the time any of their forces could effect the necessary maneuvers to intercept the lone ship it would have arrived in Shasa’s solar system and had sufficient time to make repairs, replicate itself any number of times and, almost as an afterthought, subsume all of Shasan civilization into itself. The Initiative forces might arrive to find all the gains they had made in battle undone by a single survivor, or worse that their error had opened the door for the enemy to end up even stronger than before. The situation was intolerable!

Fortunately, the squadron was nothing if not inventive. Among its contingent were numerous transapient minds, including minds of the Second Singularity. Vast intellects of superhuman intelligence, they now turned their attention to snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. They inventoried the resources available to them, discussed and considered their options, and developed a course of action. From their efforts the Screamer was born.

Synchronizing the laser weapons of hundreds of vessels they sent a signal across the blackness. Contained within it were plans, strategies, logistics programs, and an AI control matrix the people of Shasa would come to call the Teacher. The forces of the Containment Initiative might not be able to reach Shasa in time to aid them in their hour of need. But their knowledge and their agents were not so limited.

**********
Settled firmly into his seat on the bridge of a warship about to launch, Dayyid Mok Noon (version 4.0) found himself thinking back to everything they had done to reach this moment.

Although it freely admitted that it was not a fully sophont being but rather just a very sophisticated tool, the Teacher had proven to be tremendously helpful. Loaded into Shasa’s Known Net archive the Teacher immediately began accessing designs for a host of devices to be used in the Shasan defense. Negotiating with the Known Net receiver itself, it engineered the release of a small number of magnetic monopoles from the node’s emergency power core. At a stroke, Shasa found itself in possession of the seeds of mass conversion technology, something that had been beyond the grasp of the colony since its founding a thousand years before. Speaking first with Shasa’s leaders and then with the Shasan people directly, it brought advice, wisdom, and, perhaps most importantly, hope where there might otherwise have been none.

By the time the Screamer’s signal was flooding Shasan receivers the Amalgamation vessel was almost upon them. They had barely a year before it would begin deceleration and only a month after that before it would approach their world with the intent of consuming both it and them to help fuel its rebirth. Time enough to do what must be done, but only just. And being so constrained by time there was a need for…sacrifices.

As the nanofacs and robot builders swarmed across the surface of Shasa and its moons, building monopole factories and growing warships, the people of Shasa were forced to make a painful choice. Ever since it’s founding their civilization had eschewed the technology of uploading. Creating a cybernetic copy of a beings mind for the purpose of supposedly living on after the death of the original, or worse, deliberately replacing ones brain with a computronium equivalent was anathema to them.

“It’s a joke!” Dayyid himself had once said at a party held only a few years before the Screamer’s light shone down upon them. “It’s a sick joke, and not even a slightly funny one. There’s no way you can make me believe that some kludge made out of software is really me. Or really even my pet. It’s not that software can’t be alive. Everybody knows ais are alive. But a copy being functionally the same as the original? Just because they share all the same information? Not a chance! The whole idea’s ridiculous”

That had been his position then and the vast majority of Shasa’s population would have readily agreed with him. But time, and imminent destruction, can force many changes.

The problem, on the face of it, was really quite simple. The Teacher, for all its impressive capabilities, was not a combat AI. The level of skill and knowledge necessary for such tasks, especially when facing a foe of the power of the Amalgamation, was beyond it. Nor could a combat AI be sent from the Initiative fleet. There was not sufficient bandwidth available in the Screamer to carry a mind of the necessary sophistication. Neither could the records of the Known Net help them in this instance. Combat specialized AIs, particularly combat specialized AIs able to face a threat of the scale of the Amalgamation were one of the few things not readily available in that vast repository of knowledge. That left only one alternative.

The people of Shasa would be tested, using programs carried by the Teacher. Those of the proper psychological makeup, deemed able to handle the stress of existing as uploaded intelligences sent into a war, would first have their minds nondestructively scanned and then copied into computronium substrates built from Known Net designs. Then they would be injected into a series of high-speed virtual training environments that would prepare them for combat against the approaching Amalgamation vessel. Finally their mind-states, trained at a hundred times human normal rates to fit the education of years into a few weeks, would be copied multiple times and loaded into solid-state warships built from designs also brought by the Teacher.

Under any other circumstances, the plan would have been condemned and rejected out of hand. But these were not any other circumstances.

**********
Settled firmly into his seat on the bridge of a warship about to launch, Dayyid Mok Noon checked environmental systems status one more time and looked around at the people he was about to go into battle with. Yanna was checking intership comms again, a little frown of concentration creasing her face, and Tak was focused on the lasers, making sure that the phased array optics were properly calibrated.

Around them the ship hummed with activity (although the actual hum was really just a bit of virtual simulation added for verisimilitude). Bots and drones swarmed both inside and out, checking for flaws or malfunctions, so far without success. Sensors on the ships, in the surrounding launch complex, and spreading for kilometers around across the landscape reported on everything from ships temperature and power consumption, to launch laser status, to the weather. Here, and at the ninety-nine other launch complexes scattered across the globe, events were moving toward a climax.

Each launch point for the newly created Shasan Defense Force contained ten launch cradles, each containing a solid-state warship. The ships themselves were both impressive and unprepossessing. Each was a gleaming, streamlined cone a hundred meters long. Scattered around the planet, their hulls glittered in sunlight or moonlight, dawn, noon, or dusk. They were made of diamondoid and sapphiroid, ceramic and buckyfiber. Locked into their launch cradles and preparing to fly upward through kilometers of atmosphere they were mostly featureless now, their various secondary systems hidden away behind protective hatches. All that would change once the ships reached space, but that time was not quite yet.

The enemy had been decelerating toward them for a month now, its drive exhaust shining like a new star in the night sky. Within a few hours that light would go out and then the enemy would be almost upon them. The time to act was now.

The final run-up began. The last ports and access panels were closed and sealed, bots and drones scurried and flew away, and a countdown began. When it reached zero, immense superconducting storage rings began dumping their power into the great laser arrays arranged around the launch site. A moment later the conversion reactors cut in and added their output to the flow of energy being converted into light.

Underneath each vessel, solid fuel blocks and shaped combustion chambers absorbed each shot of laser fire and flashed into plasma. The resulting roar would have shattered the eardrums of any human within a kilometer. Driven upward by the superheated exhaust, each ship rose skyward at an acceleration that would have crushed flesh and blood crewmembers had any been aboard. Behind them, the lasers continued to fire at hundreds of times per second, each burst pushing the ships higher and creating a blinding pillar of argent light. Thunder, driven to an almost continuous bone-shattering hum by the pulsing brilliance, rolled across each launch point. The ships rose, faster and faster. Within minutes each achieved escape velocity and then flashed into space.

As it settled into orbit, each ship took a moment to check its condition and status and to establish communication with the vessels around it. In short order a network formed, riding on encrypted laser pulses and welding the fleet into a coordinated whole. Fusion drive cores powered up, radiator arrays deployed, and like a vast flock of crystalline birds, the ships oriented on the star of the approaching foe and boosted into the night.

More about the author, Todd Drasher, here

July 23 694 a.t. Interstellar space

Today we presented the results of the induced-recollection trials to the rest of the unfrozen people on the Starlark. I knew that there were many worried and discontented individuals among them; some refusniks had been awake for twenty years or more. Harlan spoke first, and was very convincing; his earnest, dark face appeared on every wallscreen in the ship, as well as via direct neural interface for those who preferred the intimacy of innervision contact. I routed the datastream into my temporary exomemory, so I can replay his speech now and transcribe it word for word.

“I know that most of you are concerned about the problems we have been having with the ice-baths,” he said. “Well, you should be aware that the technology of vitrification has been improved over the course of this voyage; Hoyle and our medical team have been working for nearly forty years on this system, and it is now improved beyond all expectation.

“I can say with confidence that medical science can heal the worst of the physical damage that may be caused by vitrification. If damage does occur which the on-board medinano can’t deal with, the doc will keep us on ice till we get to the Destination. Indi system already has enough medical infrastructure to deal with most problems, or so they assure us in their transmissions.

“But we all know that the medinano can’t cure memory loss. So many of us have woken up with great sections of our past missing; I know, it happened to me. Even if we have a good chance of waking up with a sound body, the prospect of the loss of part of our mind is daunting. With stakes this high, what options do we have in such a situation? I really don’t blame those of you who have declined to be refrozen. But I am confident that I can say in all honesty that things are different, now.

“In the past few weeks, a few of us have been involved in an experiment; a trial of a new treatment that Hoyle has devised. I’m sure many of you have already heard something about this; we are a small ship, and a crowded one, and rumour travels fast.

“By delving into the subconscious memory, this new technique can encourage your own mind to rebuild your lost past. I’ve tried it, and it certainly seems to work for me. It is like awaking after a dream that you can remember, a dream that makes sense of your lost past and brings it back to you in a very meaningful way.

“I can assure you that in no way does this technique interfere with your consciousness or personality; I am still the same person that I was before starting the trial. To the contrary, I honestly believe that I am more myself than ever. Thus, I now believe that the vitrification process can be regarded as safe, at least as safe as any other modern medical procedure. We cannot continue to support a ship full of unfrozen people; we must start going back into vitrification or starve. This technique will allow you to enter the ice-bath with confidence that you will eventually arrive at the Destination system with your body, and your mind, intact.”

I spoke next, giving a brief account of the extent of my amnesia, and how the induced-recollection treatment had brought the past back to me; most of the other trial subjects gave a short account as well, then the ship’s brain Hoyle spoke in order to sum everything up. His kindly, bespectacled face smiled from the screens or in our innervision.

“I can now with confidence say that you will be safe if you undergo the vitrification treatment. In fact, I am able to increase the duration of each episode of stasis, so that it should only be necessary to thaw each of you once more before we arrive. Seventy more years must pass before our voyage is over. Go back into vitrification now, and you will arrive in the Epsilon Indi system almost before you know it.”

With very few exceptions, the refusniks have one by one volunteered for re-freezing; a number of new ice-coffins have been constructed for the new generation of colonists born during transit. I will be joining them soon. If all goes well, when I next wake in the depths of interstellar space for the last time before we arrive, the Starlark will be full of quiet sleepers once more.

August 28 694 a.t. Interstellar space

There is a downside to being a guinea-pig for Hoyle’s dream-therapy experiment. Before we go back into the ice-baths, Hoyle wants to monitor us for a few weeks. So here I am, still unfrozen and bored.

As a reward Hoyle has promised to wake Rosie as well next time he wakes me; this should be the last time either of us wake up before the Arrival. But time is weighing heavy on my hands, out here in interstellar space. I do have the other guinea pigs to talk to, at least. Harlan is fun, although he can get a little intense; he’s seen some weird shit back in the Solar System. He lost most of his family in the Great Expulsion; they were resistance fighters, before that sort of thing stopped being a good idea. No-one could fight against the Global Artificial Intelligence Amalgamation, the great synthesis of almost all the AI on Earth that became the Goddess GAIA. Or rather no-one could fight and win; plenty tried. But after hundreds of millions died, the situation was clear – the survivors took up the offer of evacuation and left.

Also waiting with us to be re-frozen is Ania, the Euro colonist who I have mentioned before. She seems a little concerned about the treatment; she says it hasn’t really worked for her. I can understand her concerns, as my own recovered memories are patchy and rather confusing, and the medication we are given to induce nostalgia seems to fill me full of longing for an unobtainable past. But somehow the treatment does give me a sense of my own identity. I am determined to build on this, and what ever happens I intend to be myself, no matter who that may eventually turn out to be.

To take our minds off all this uncertainty we have been immersing ourselves in studies. The ship’s library is mostly functional, with only a few portions lost through cosmic ray damage. I have been learning (or re-learning) fusion drive technology, which does seem somehow familiar, as if my mind still hangs onto the skills involved despite the memory loss. Hoyle says he can give me some basic tachydicatic training before we enter the deceleration phase, so that I can help with the final approach if required.

As a group we have also been immersing ourselves in simulations of the new system we are headed towards. Still about six light years away, the star is only a second magnitude spark, not at all impressive; but it is a Sun-like star, about three quarters the mass and diameter of our old sun but similar in temperature. It is, only about one-sixth as bright. That really doesn’t matter too much, as there are at least two planets which are close to the star, and the theory is that these worlds at least can be eventually engineered into something like the Earth

The innermost world is a little like the planet Mercury back in the old system, except it has almost no core. If Luna and Mercury can support colonies- which we know full well they can- then this little world can as well. It has a name; Asencion; given to it by the first colony mission, which arrived more than seventy years ago now. That colony had a very hard time at first, apparently, but now it seems to be doing quite well.

The next world out is called Tierra del Fuego; a large, Mars-like world which could probably be terraformed rather more easily than the red planet back home (No! It is not home! Not any more!). This planet holds a small population of the first colonists, but they still mostly live in orbit in space habitats. Perhaps they lack the man-power to start the terraforming process in earnest, but hopefully we can help there.

The next planet, out at seven AUs is a small gas giant, half the diameter of Neptune. This one is called Neruda, and might be a good planet for gas mining one day when the infrastructure is available. Two more small icy planets, one stained red by sulphur compounds and the other with a thick atmosphere make up the rest of the system.

Way out in the far reaches of the system are two giant worlds, a pair of brown dwarfs (one considerably more massive than the other, though they are similar in diameter). Some faint radio traffic from those objects suggest that the Beamriders might have reached those failed stars recently, but the Riders seem to be avoiding contact for the present. Perhaps they think that everything that comes from the Old Solar System is tainted by the Swarms. That seems to me an overcautious attitude, and I doubt they will ever come to much if they continue to cut themselves off in that way.

October 10, 741 a.t. Interstellar space

Another defrosting, nearly fifty years closer to our goal. After I had been awake for a while, and just starting to focus on my surroundings, I was startled into full awareness by a reverberating thud that sounded throughout the ship. The cabin began to rock, and some small objects were displaced from stowage and slowly fell to he floor in the low, centrifugal gravity. A distant alarm sounded, then cut off.

Finally Hoyle’s faux-English tones came over the public address system, sounding calm and a little amused. “Nothing to worry about, ladies and gentlemen; our little vessel has simply had a brief argument with a grain of interstellar dust. A big one too- it might have been all of a millimetre in diameter. Well, you can rest assured that our triple shield managed to protect us from such a gigantic monster; the outer plate alone was enough to vapourise it, although I’m afraid it did make a bit of a bang.”

My heart was hammering- the presence of interstellar space just outside the walls had never intruded on my consciousness before. Dust grains that big were rare, but a real danger. At least one arkship had ceased transmitting in deep space since the Expulsion, presumably because of a slightly larger collision that did manage to breach the hull. At ten percent of light speed, a dust particle packs as much energy as a respectable bomb.

Eventually a medic came in and gave me a mild sedative- I didn’t know this one, just another of the thousands of qualified personnel we were carrying I made up my mind to ask him his name, but before I could, he addressed me directly in that particular, solemn tone that signals trouble.

“I’m sorry, But I have some bad news.”

“I see. Yes. Well, you had better tell me, then.”

“It’s your partner, Rosie. Some time in the last twenty years, the container she is stored in was hit by a particularly energetic cosmic ray. The damage to the systems was repaired, but not before she suffered some tissue damage. Despite the medical nanotech we have on board, Rosie cannot be restored to a state where she can be defrosted in good health.”

“Is she- I mean – is there no hope? Is she …lost?”

“I have been told that she will have to be kept in vitrification until we reach the Destination; the colony at Indi has better facilities than we have, and there is every chance that she can be revived when we get there. But we cannot give you a guarantee of success, I’m afraid.”

We sat together in silence, for a while; This medic, whoever he was, stayed with me to give me support as the news sank in. Perhaps I disappointed him, as I took the news quite calmly. Eventually I said to him; “The terrible thing about it all is, I can barely remember her. I’ve lost a lot of my own memories, you know, during this voyage, and if it weren’t for the treatment I’ve been getting from Hoyle I don’t think I would remember her at all. As it is, she seems like someone I barely know.”

Something strange passed over the medic’s face, but he quickly hid it. This must be all as new to him as it is to me, I thought. “What is your name, doctor?”

“Not doctor, actually. I’m just a paramedic. Call me Pieter.”

“Thank you, Pieter. I have forgotten so much, but I have enough to keep me going. I do know that I was in love with this woman; I can only hope – I can pray, that some day she is restored to me. But if that is not to be, I haven’t lost everything. Some of my childhood memories are crystal clear. And we have a whole new set of worlds ahead of us. I’m not saying that we should forget the past- but we might soon be able to make a new future.”

Pieter said to me, “We can make a new world, but we can never leave the past behind.” I glimpsed some sadness behind his eyes, but he was difficult to read. At length he left, and I was left alone with my thoughts.

October 15, 741 a.t. Interstellar Space

The ship is very quiet, these days; the crowds of colonists and children that filled these tiny quarters are gone. Only a few people are awake at any one time, a few colonists, fewer medics, and a few specialists checking the systems. I might have been one of those specialists, but I need more retraining to replace the skills I seem to have lost in the ice. Most of the time I’m alone, trying to make sense of the jumble in my head.

I’m recording this entry in my favoured spot in the forward hold, floating in microgravity between the cargo shuttlecraft and the outer hull. This is the only place where you can get near a real window, and see the stars with your own eyes. The window is no more than a circle of glass ten centimetres across, just enough to glimpse the Pleiades, or the Southern Cross, or Orion. The Destination, Epsilon Indi, would be an unimpressive star dead ahead, if I could see it. We are now only two light years away but it still isn’t very bright – and the angle of the hull makes it impossible to see anyway.

I shouldn’t stay here too long, as the cosmic-ray shielding is very thin here, although I am not entirely sure I care.

I tell myself that I am missing Rosie, I just can’t be sure of my real feelings in this matter. To tell the truth most of my memories of that woman are gone. Of course I do remember the dreams, which were vivid enough; and maybe some other, less dreamlike but more reliable recollections are clawing their way to the surface of my mind. Most of my recent life, and most of what I think I should be, has gone, blown away like smoke.

I have read over my journals and diary entries for the last however-many-years to try to answer that for myself. I believe that I started this diary with the express intention of recording my impressions for posterity; in that case I would expect other people to read it too, one day, Yet reading the pages I realise that I haven’t given many details about myself- this is particularly frustrating for me now that I am trying to re-imagine and reconstruct my life. For several reasons, I realise that I haven’t even mentioned my own name, my ancestry or even my sex. Such as it is.

Someone chancing across this journal might think I was a man; they would be wrong. But then I am not currently much of a woman, either.

So who am I?

My given name is Elanor Denley; I am a member of the clade Parthene. Perhaps this clade will be unfamiliar to my hypothetical future readers; there have never been that many of us, even among the asteroids where our clan began. All Parthenes are female. Our biology has been changed quite subtly to give us control over our own bodies; we can regulate our hormones and when we so desire, we can give birth without sexual contact. Yes, we are parthenogenic, when we want to be. Perhaps I should explain that too- although it is so basic to our nature that it seems impossible to think that any hypothetical reader might not know what the word means. In short, it means we clone ourselves without outside help.

I could have a child at any time, and that child would be a perfect copy of myself. I am a perfect copy of my mother, and my grandmother. For obvious reasons only women can do this little trick. There are no boy-children in the clade Parthene.

Most of the time we Parthenes do not let our hormones rule our lives. The geneticists who developed our race centuries ago gave us fine control over our bodies; we can adapt ourselves to freefall just as well as most planetary gravities, and much of the time we suppress our female cycle. Right now, for instance, I have practically no secondary sexual characteristics of any kind; a stranger might mistake me for a slightly built young male. The great plan was that we would become dispassionate, creatures of logic, and in some ways it has worked; but I can assure you I most certainly have a temper, and I will not suffer disrespect. If those far-off and long-ago geneticists thought they were creating emotionless automatons, they were very wrong.

I was born in the year 601 a.t. on the asteroid habitat 6 Hebe. My mother was killed by a swarm infection when I was in my teens. My aunts and I were relocated to the Tyr Habitat orbiting Mars, and I trained as a fusion plant technician there. Most of my life I have been working on the surface of Mars or in orbit trying to maintain the power generation equipment. First the surface of Mars became too dangerous for colonisation, then the habitat itself was relocated far from the planet for safety reasons. I can still remember the news of the Great Expulsion from Earth, but after that, my memories have become unreliable, thanks to the low-level damage caused by the effects of cryostasis on board this ship.

Many of my skills have been lost because of this trauma, and bizarrely, I have also lost the ability to speak Esperanto, which I clearly remember knowing well at college.

Somewhere in my lost years I hooked up with Rosie, also a Parthene; neither of us has reproduced, but there should still be plenty of time for that when we reach the new system.

If we do.

More about the author, Steve Bowers, here.

Harlan is there when I awake this time; he is glad that I recognise him. He is now sleeping in this crowded room, with three medics and three more patients; all of which have some degree of ice- damage and need a great deal of assistance to carry out their normal routine. Two of the patients have intricate silver caps over their scalps, cybernetic augmentation presumably assisting or replacing some of their normal brain or motor functions. These individuals speak in loud, broken voices and keep me awake when I should be resting in my post-hibernation weakness; I feel sorry for them, but Harlan is optimistic about their prospects for recovery

“We are giving them a range of new treatments for neural repair and replacement,’ he told me.”After a while the cybernetics will become fully integrated and these patients will be well again: they might be partly electronic, but a lot of people are these days.”
“We will be arriving at the stars as cyborgs,” I said, ruefully.
Cyborgs were fairly common back in the Solar System, but they were often unfriendly, haughty, full of self-importance, from what I can recall (with my admittedly unreliable memory).

“At least we will get there healthy enough. But the problems people are having with memory loss are still considerable; there are more people than ever refusing to go back into the freezers, and we are running out of room and life support. The ship AI thinks that he has a solution, and that you can help.”

“If there is anything I can do, I will do it; but what in all of space can I do?” I said.

“You can volunteer for a new treatment, one that Hoyle has cooked up himself. All the Arkships are sharing research and medical information with each other, as they get further apart; there is little useful information coming out of the Solar System these days. None of the ships has come up with a cure for memory loss yet, but Hoyle thinks he has a possible cure, of sorts. And he wants you, an otherwise healthy individual who has been unfrozen a number of times, to join in the trials.” “You know, I really need a bit more information before I make up my mind. Is Hoyle proposing to replace my brain with circuits, like these poor souls?” I indicated the other patients, who smiled back with broad, empty grins.
“No, not at all. He proposes to harness the power of dreams.”

July 12 694 a.t.

I must admit that I was a little apprehensive about the nature of the retrieval procedure at first; the idea of a ship’s AI poking around in my memory was a little daunting, to say the least. But now that I fully understand Hoyle’s proposed treatment, it doesn’t seem too scary at all. Even though the method seems a little bizarre, almost like something out of the nu-age pseudoscience that was rampant on Earth before the swarms. But it might just work.
Hoyle himself explained it to me, appearing on a flat screen in the sickbay ward I was in. The AI Hoyle adopts the image and personality of an old-time English professor; I have never seen an Englishman of that kind in real life, but they appear in plenty of historical simulations. With twinkling good humour and a strange didactic demeanor he described his proposal to me.

“Sit down, and make yourself comfortable; I tend to waffle on a bit, so stop me if I wander off into a digression, won’t you?

Now then. It seems to me apparent that the loss of your memories – the loss of your life’s history – is very distressing, and many others on the ship are similarly affected. If I can’t do anything about it, we will have a ship full of unhappy colonists refusing to re-enter hibernation, and almost certainly we will not have enough resources to reach the destination with a single soul alive.

But what to do, eh?
Well now.

I think that some, or many of your memories are still there, somewhere; they are just a little buried. Perhaps we can dig them up. You may have lost all your conscious recollections, but there are still almost certainly remnants buried in your subconscious. Every night, when you sleep, you may wander in those memories, recalling things your waking mind has forgotten. But every morning you forget your dreams again; this is a well-known and understood mechanism, which stops you confusing your dream-life with the real world.

For a long time there have been techniques which suppress that mechanism, and allow dreams to be recalled either partially or in full. You may have seen the commercial dream-recordings that some virtual media companies advertise for sale; a fully pre-packaged dream scenario implanted into your sleeping mind, generally associated with one of those virtual world scenarios that were popular on Earth before the Great Expulsion. Now there is no purpose in a company selling pre-packaged dreams if the customer forgets the dream immediately on waking, is there? Eh?

Indeed, there are ways of allowing you to remember your dreams. I can do that easily. But I intend to gently nudge you into recalling your lost past in your sleep. I have studied this subject in detail, both using the mass of scientific data in my databanks, and also experimentally using a number of volunteers (including Harlan, here; thank you, young man). I am now convinced that there is a subtle difference in the brain’s chemistry when you recall events from your past, whether awake or no. You might call it nostalgia: a slight aching or longing for things past, which manifests itself as a distinct and reproducible biochemical state in your brain at certain loci.

By reproducing this state while you are in REM sleep I will attempt to make you dream of your past; whatever information remains in your head concerning your past will hopefully surface, and be sorted into more or less coherent memories. I believe I can give you your past back.”

Harlan enthusiastically added that he had been subjected to this form of induced nostalgia, and had vivid dreams of his past, including things he had seemingly forgotten. But Hoyle needed to try the procedure on a number of volunteers with substantial memory loss; after a short debate with myself, I agreed to help with the trials.
After all, it was only dreaming; how risky could it be?

July 13 694 a.t.

I have now had my first induced recollection dream; I feel tired out, as if I haven’t slept. But it was a fascinating experience. I dreamt of Tyr Habitat, as it was before we left; the new zones and rings extending the space station into a vast bloated city suspended in orbit above Mars. Every one of the other habitats were grown larger too- from the few windows it was possible to see them as tiny sparks off in the deep distance. That had never been possible in the old days- the days that I can remember clearly.

But in my dream I could see all the newly built, shabby extensions to my tiny world, and hated them. Cheap, shoddy metalwork and acres of graphene slab, thronging with refugees from Mars, Earth and other devastated places. Cubic hectares of bazaars and supermarkets selling badly made goods, cheap fabricators and unappetizing foodstuffs, all lit with garish advertisements in a number of languages I didn’t recognise.

And beside me walked Rosie. I still barely recognised her, but she was acting as if we had been partners for years. Which, by that time, I suppose we had. In fact, we argued most of the time-she was quite happy to see all the new arrivals into our tiny worldlet, and was seemingly fascinated by the range of cultures and the behaviour of the incomers. I argued with her bitterly. For some reason I was not happy about the refugee situation; to be entirely honest, it is a little difficult to remember the details of my argument- it was as if I was merely a spectator to a conversation between two people I hardly knew.

Then I woke up.

It is strange; I am not sure if I can recall my love for this woman; but I feel that I know her a little better now.

July 14 694 a.t.

Two dreams this time; I was on the Martian Surface, attempting to firewall the fusion plant control systems in Cydonia city. Every control system and every nanofabrication plant on Mars had been under attack from a range of malicious viruses and worms; these seemed to spread from no known loci, but rather were being injected into the technosphere at newly created entrypoints out in the desert. Before my dream I had no recollection of Cydonia; all it seemed to be in my dream was an endless field of agricultural greenhouses, indirectly lit by vast fields of petal-mirrors but roofed with protective water-tanks. The city, such as it was, could be found underground.

Mars had a class of slaved robots, some of which were very humanoid in outline, capable of going out onto the surface and working in the thin atmosphere; I dreamt about the thin atmosphere, and how it was slowly getting thicker and thicker thanks to the terraforming projects. Our fusion plants provided energy to innumerable atmosphere plants, busily producing CO2, water vapour and nitrogen. Not much oxygen yet- that would follow, once the planet’s surface was warm and wet enough to support plant life. In many places around the equator it already was.

Rosie wasn’t with me in this dream, but a friendly Martian minor tweak took me out onto the surface. He could breathe the atmosphere without any equipment, but I needed rebreather gear. Most of the people on the Martian surface were either tweaks, or had temporary gene therapy to allow some freedom of movement onto the surface.

I had another strange dream argument with this guy, this time about the robot liberation movement. As an outsider I couldn’t agree with the strict controls on robot behavior on the planet; plenty of the robots seemed self-aware enough to pass the Turing test, and were practically vecs- that is to say, independent individuals. They had to be, to cope with the dangerous Martian surface- which was changing every sol as the terraformation process proceeded. Yet they were just as slaved as the other terraforming machinery. The Martian- Yuan was his name if I remember correctly- said I didn’t have the right to an opinion if I didn’t live on the surface of Mars surrounded by robots, who might pose a real threat to the human population if given freedom of action.

Looking at the apparently dull, sad faces of the terraforming ‘bots as they trooped by on the surface made me wonder what would happen if they were suddenly liberated from electronic compulsion.

My second dream was short, because I woke from it very quickly. I dreamt Rosie and I were on board this very ship, just before we were frozen; it appears we managed to grab enough time to make love, and this dream was very vivid indeed (although I remained strangely numb, unable to feel her touch or any other sensation). Once again I seemed to be watching from outside; but her voice was so real in my head that I was sure I remembered our life together.

Or did I dream that too? In any case, I was awake much too soon.

July 15 694 a.t.

A strange dream this time, almost comic. A friend or acquaintance I didn’t recognise, but one that I apparently knew and trusted, turned up at our apartment in Tyr habitat. By listening carefully to the dream conversation, I eventually gathered that my friend’s name was Shu; she was accompanied by what appeared to be a bemused looking young woman. Almost immediately I recognised this person as a twentieth century movie star, a certain Marilyn Monroe. Obviously she – it – was a robot simulant of some kind, probably from one of the pleasure palaces on the Martian surface. But what was it doing here, in orbit, in the habitats? It seemed that Shu had smuggled the robot offworld and was looking for somewhere to hide it for a while. The robot-smugglers of Mars generally had one of two very different motivations; some were concerned with the sentient rights of the robot slaves, while others were more interested in the financial value of the machines. I couldn’t tell exactly which of these motivated Shu to get involved in this pursuit.

Simulants of this kind could pass for human in an everyday situation, but would be instantly recognised when passing through customs scanners; I never did find out how Shu smuggled the machine into Tyr.

Perhaps it was better that I didn’t know.

The Marilynbot stayed with us in the apartment for a number of days, I don’t know how long; in the dream this was made apparent by several changes in clothing by everyone concerned. I felt like I was watching a vid or some other fictional narrative; very unlike an ordinary dream. We cut the Marilynbot’s hair and dyed it (it complained quite realistically) and changed its make-up radically; soon it looked almost unrecognizable. The simulant had almost no domestic skills; it didn’t know how to operate a fabricator, or how to clean or cook or operate the home manager. But it did have a broad repertoire of amusing and rather daffy conversation, seeming very human if you did not know better.

My Aunt Julie – who looked older than I remembered her- was completely taken in, and became good friends with the Marilynbot; we couldn’t tell Aunt Julie the truth, and Rosie and I found the situation highly amusing- until the pair of them went out shopping together- risking discovery and arrest. We searched the habitat high and low for them, and eventually found them in a bar near the top Pole where the Marilynbot was singing a torch song in a quavering voice. Anyone who knew a bit of history, or frequented the dens of iniquity on Mars might have recognised it. We bundled them out of the bar, just as a couple of shady looking characters- who might have been robot bounty hunters- came in at the other door. Aunt Julie was utterly confused as we fled back to our apartment like the criminals that we were.

My final memory of this dream was a drunken conversation with the ‘bot. It was I who was drunk, not the machine, of course. It told me about a mythical robot homeland, that all the slaved sentient machines had heard about. There, the robots could become free- upgraded to full sophont status, they would be true ‘vecs. I told the bot that the very fact that it had an ambition of this kind meant that it was already sophont, as far as I was concerned; the machine looked at me with seemingly grateful eyes.

July 16 694 a.t.

This time I dreamt about the hab riots. Tyr habitat was full of displaced persons, few of whom were happy. As Rosie and I walked through the downtown spaces we were jostled and shouted at. But from what I could see in my dream we were trying to continue with our normal routine, and we were even prepared to visit the refugee shops and buy some of their hand-made garments and trinkets to show a little support.

So when the riot and chaos came we were clutching nothing more than a couple of bags of brightly coloured woven clothing; no weapons, and no food.

A great press of people was suddenly running through the bazaar; mostly Europeans of all types, they were shouting in new-English and more obscure tongues. Then we could see the cause of the problem, a large gang of Ludds with machetes, electric guns and prods shocking or hacking anyone with visible cybernetics (and a good number of people without). They were shouting obscenities against GAIA, the Great Mother, the artificial intelligence that that seized control of Earth. I wanted to shout that I had no love for that artificial demon either- by forcing the population of Earth off the planet GAIA had plunged the solar system into this chaos. No-one knew how many had died, and the dying continued. These fierce men and women with their electric weapons were determined to make sure of that.

Rosie whispered to me to keep quiet, and I crouched lower. She remarked that the rioters seemed well prepared; with electric weapons they wouldn’t risk punching a hole in the hab outer skin and risk a blow-out.
“That makes all the difference. So they’ll kill us but not themselves. Great.” My dream-self said.
Rosie said, “We can’t stay here. Look, a bulkhead door. And open. Let’s go- quick.”
“Don’t let them see you-” I said, but she was gone. I followed, slipping on some fruit.

Behind the bulkhead was a recycling point, and corridors leading to some cheap residential apartments. The corridors were dimly lit by bluish emergency lighting. A number of figures could be seen running away; then, with shouts and screams, they came running back, followed by more ludds with machetes. Rosie and I hid in the recycling point behind some piled up silvercloth remnants, leftovers from the incomers’ clothing trade. One of the rioters set fire to a bale of sylk cuttings and threw it onto the pile. It smoked and smoldered there for a bit, then automatic sprinklers came on.

We crouched in the steam, trying not to cough and to listen for the ludds as they ran up and down screaming and slashing. Soon we were flat on the floor trying to get under the pall- but when the sprinklers stopped the corridor was silent. The ludds had moved on. Soaked, we crept out into the haze-filled corridor.

We hurried down the corridors, trying all the doors; after about twenty we found one which was open. Inside was an empty apartment, with just a few décor-fabricators and bags of dry pigment lying around. The sprinklers had spread the pigments into coloured pools on the floor. We looked in the kitchen space- empty. No domestic machinery; not even a comp terminal.

Suddenly an internal door flew open, kicked from within. Out came a single ludd, a young Euro man, holding an electric gun. He fired at Rosie, then at me. We were both hit by the practically invisible conducting thread which would bring the killing electric charge. But the white flash of current didn’t come; the gun had malfunctioned, or run out of juice, thank all space. I lunged forward and tried to rip the gun from his hands, but he swung it round and started to bludgeon me with it.

Rosie meanwhile had grabbed some random piece of decorator’s equipment – a crab-like metal autopainter, we found out later- and bought it down on his head. Finally I could wrestle the failed gun from his hands, and together we beat the poor fellow to the ground.

More shouts in the corridor outside; more water from the sprinklers. I went to the door, and locked it manually. Rosie was bending over the young Euro.
“I think we killed him.”
“Never. No. Not possible,” I said. But I knew it was.

The sounds faded from the corridor; I tried the door, but it had sealed itself against vacuum. The corridor had been breached somehow- we were trapped in the apartment. A delirious sequence of images followed, showing us drinking sprinkler water from paint trays and other receptacles; at some point we changed into our new clothes, but they were soon filthy. I remember from reading my journals that Rosie and I were holed up in that empty apartment with a dead body for ten sols. All I know is that, eventually, the door of the apartment was opened from outside and militiamen from another habitat came bursting in. Tyr’s own militia had been entirely unable to cope, so some of the other habitats had sent armed police to help. We were taken away in our dirty, pigment stained clothes, presumably for interrogation.

But the dream ended there. As citizens of long standing, we must have been treated with sympathy; my journals don’t mention any charges.

I feel grateful that somehow these memories are coming back to me, but they are not all pleasant by any means. I can now recall several portions of my past life, as if lit by bright flashes of light; but some of the things which are revealed are uncomfortable.

More about the author, Steve Bowers, here.