Todd Drashner
… (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.