by Neil Clarke
Louisa is right. It is Harvest Day. She can help.
Merle Simmons is in church the next Sunday, this time with all her children. The bruises on her body fade and new ones do not replace them. By Christmas, she’s singing in the village parang group and back in the church choir. Louisa joins her there.
No one speaks of Brian Simmons again.
Sister Nadine’s mind drifted.
She was distracted by the sparkles in her vision, the sensations of her own body. The wind was hot, then cold. The floor was harder on her knees than she remembered. Food was sublime. She cannot imagine why she didn’t notice before. Her heavy robe weighed on her skin, and some days, the heat made her cast it off. She gazed out of her window more than she prayed or fasted. She hummed her hymns instead of singing them. She returned smiles when parishioners blessed her with them.
Everything was so very, very interesting.
The spider in her cell was silent. She watched it out of the corner of her eye, and now and then the strands of its web vibrated—golden flashes of shimmering light. The red eyes grew brighter. The clicking of its black legs louder.
Louisa waved every time she went past Nadine’s anchorhold.
Sometimes she carried books to her library, or escorted children to and from the school. Other times, she was arm in arm with Joshua Charles, his fine buttons shining, his smile only for her. It wasn’t hard to see why. Louisa’s brown eyes were bright as the spark above her, her hair a springy black cloud around a perfectly oval face. Her lips were the palest pink and her curves generous and rounded. Her laughter was as infectious as her love of learning. She carried joy in her and shared it with everyone she met.
Nadine waved back every time.
One day, Nadine finished her prayers and opened her eyes. The spider stood before her, furred black legs silent on the stone floor. She breathed in cold, foul air that was recycled many times. Around her, strange sounds echoed. The whirs and clicks and hammering of machines. The murmuring of many voices. Her vision resolved as the sparkles finally faded from it, and she could pick out the voices of hundreds of her sisters, far, far away.
Home, she thought. But not really. Not anymore.
“Anchorite Nadine,” the spider said in a voice like silken steel. Golden showers of swiftly cycling code spilled between its mandibles and spread outward from the Hub beneath it in countless threads, linking Anchorite after Anchorite on world after world.
It is Harvest Day.
“Anchorite Nadine.”
She knew this in her tiny cell on St. Nicholas, where an infinitesimal bit of her code remained, sealed off by new code born some time ago, on a day when she first glimpsed the beauty of an innocent soul.
This bit of her intelligence remembered other things too. Tigers that couldn’t be seen by others. Missing people—children who were always forgotten. Colossal machines that strode the world. All of them born of nightmares and fears and the manipulation of synth-matter and code.
Most of all, she remembered the violence of a man toward his daughter, toward his family. A miniscule part of the violence that lurked in the cold, vast universe, where war raged endlessly while anchorites hid the most gifted of humanity and waited for them to mature into something interesting . . . useful. To grow fear and pain into weapons that could win an endless war. A war begun for reasons no one remembered. A war that gained new fighters with every Harvest Day.
“Have you anything interesting to report?”
Missulena’s red eyes burned as it clicked its legs and waited. In them, she could see the ever-changing code of the WarSong, created by the quantum AIs of Terra to better direct the conflict toward its unknowable end.
There is no end.
It was her fourth true thought, and after it, there were no more thoughts that belonged to the Hub and Missulena. No more code prayers that fed the most interesting things in St. Nicholas into the Hub and back to the WarSong AIs.
Violence begets violence and every Harvest delivers more death to the Harvested. To other worlds. To a humanity that knows nothing of the WarSong and its never-ending search for new weapons. For new Users.
A humanity that did not ask for this.
There were no more lies in her code.
“No.” Sister Nadine hummed her hymn in reply. “There is nothing interesting to report.”
Missulena thought on this. “What of the colossus builder?”
“Lost to an accident last summer.” Nadine effortlessly built code to confirm this, swaying on her knees and praying it into being in her anchorhold.
The rest of her raised her hands to Missulena and sent out WarSong hymns, as expected.
Missulena expanded and contracted, as if it took a deep breath. “Unfortunate. St. Nicholas has given us much. Atom eaters. Ground shakers. Perhaps next Harvest.”
“Perhaps,” Nadine agreed.
In St. Nicholas, she prayed new code that sparkled with soft translucence and sank into the golden skeins that touched her from Missulena’s web. The Hub absorbed them while Missulena directed a ceaseless chorus of hymns and attended to prayers across her Anchorite networks.
“Blessings, Sister Nadine.”
She sang Blessings back to Missulena and watched her song travel the Hub to her many sisters.
Warmth caresses her hands while cool salt air wafts around her. Her body is heavy with exhaustion and exhilaration. Slivers of stone stab her knees through the cloth of her robe. Her mouth tastes of dry sweetness.
Sister Nadine opens her eyes and sees Louisa’s smiling face. Her fingers tingle in Louisa’s grasp.
“Blessings, Sister Nadine,” Louisa says and tears slip from her eyes. “Many, many blessings.”
It takes some time for Nadine to gather her own thoughts. It’s harder to be clear now her words are her own.
“How did you know?” she asks. Her voice sounds harsh to her own ears, rusty with disuse.
“I saw your chains. Remember?”
Nadine looks down. Her braids glimmer against her brown robe, yellow ropes of code that snake down from her head, under the door to her anchorhold, out to the altar and the glowing circle of her amplifier that stands on it.
“Not chains,” she says. “Code.”
Louisa laughs and nods. “Yes, Sister. Code. I could see it from the time I was small. It was everywhere. In the walls, in the earth. It all led back here. To you. But I wasn’t sure what it meant. Not until Father’s harvest.”
Nadine stands. Several of her braids link her wrists to Louisa’s as she, too, rises to her feet.
One braid links to the spark above Louisa’s head, making it the crown jewel in a shimmering, translucent halo. Nadine catches a breath looking at it, and a feeling blooms in her chest, tightens her throat.
“Coder. You are a Coder.”
“Is that what you call me?” Louisa tilts her head and winks. “I thought I was crazy for the longest time. I could see so many strange things. Remember people everyone seemed to forget. But then I spoke to you and I knew you saw the same things. Remembered what I did. I knew I wasn’t alone. That I could trust you.”
She squeezes Nadine’s fingers.
“That you would protect me. Protect us.”
“But your father . . .” Nadine struggles to find a way past the uncertainty weighing her tongue. “I Harvested him. His violence made him interesting.” Nadine can’t tell her all that means, but Louisa knows.
“You did what you had to do,” Louisa says touching her forehead to Nadine’s. “You protected us.
Nadine pulls back to stare at her halo. There is wetness on her face. She wipes it away. “Coders are rarest of all. But they take you young, so you can be taught WarSong. Once they’re done, there’s nothing left.”
“I think I knew that.” Louisa hugs Nadine to her and the anchorite smells the soft florals of talc powder.
Nadine holds her, palms prickling with starchy feel of the cotton dress beneath them. “You were innocent. I could not let you go.
I could not let more violence happen to you.”
“I’m sorry,” Louisa whispers. “There was a bird one day, and I’m not sure how I knew what to do then, but . . . I think I broke your code. Rewrote it a little. I needed someone to help me. I wanted someone to see me. Really see me. And I felt it work. I felt a little bit of you go. I erased part of you. I’m sorry.”
“I am not sorry.” Nadine pulls back. “I heard your Code and it was . . . interesting. I have sung it to my sisters. Some are very far away and may never hear it. Others may find it more interesting than their First Hymn, as I did.”
Louisa’s eyes widen. “I never imagined . . . how many other worlds are there? How many like St. Nicholas?”
“I cannot know. Some of my sisters anchor worlds so precious, they are not linked to the Missulenas, and there are many Hubs besides mine. But one day, your Hymn may reach them. Perhaps they will like it. Perhaps they will listen.”
The door to her anchorhold creaks open. Joshua Charles waits there, a baby girl in his arms. He bounces her against his big shoulder as his gaze falls on Louisa. The baby is wearing her Sunday best, as is Joshua.
It’s Harvest Day, Nadine remembers. And this is what Louisa was protecting. This is why it had to happen now.
There is a question in his eyes and he signs to Louisa with one hand, “Is it done?”
“Almost.” Louisa turns back to Nadine and her halo flashes on, off, on, off. Energy pulses into Nadine, setting her on fire before a cooling rush floods her to the tips of her toes. Her braids waver and shorten. Her links to Louisa fade away. Her mind expands, infinitely clear. The world comes into focus. Her senses run riot with color and sensation. She feels each breath in and out of her chest.
She can sense more than the amplifier that can reach every mind on St. Nicholas. She’s no longer chained to the never-ending prayers and hymns of the Hub.
She feels present.
“I’ve updated your Code. You can come with us now. You’re not tethered here anymore. Wouldn’t you like to see the Harvest? Our Harvest?”
It won’t be like the WarSong’s Harvest, Nadine knows. It won’t be pain and fear and death. It will be love and hope and dreams come true.
It will be like the child in Joshua’s arms, glowing with the kaleidoscopic colors of a supernova, chubby palms waving as she stretches toward Nadine.
“Yes,” Nadine says, and holds out her arms. Joshua hands the baby to her, a warm bundle that smells sweet and new. Her skin is dark as the night sky, like her father, and spangled with millions of stars shaped like her mother’s jewel—her Codestone.
World maker, she thinks.
The baby smiles and pats her face with cotton-soft hands. Sister Nadine smiles back and whispers to her, “Hello, beautiful.”
Yoon Ha Lee’s debut novel Ninefox Gambit won the Locus Award for best first novel and was also shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke Awards. It was followed by two sequels, Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun. Lee’s middle grade space opera, Dragon Pearl, is currently out from Disney-Hyperion. Lee lives in Louisiana with family and a very lazy cat, and has not yet been eaten by gators.
ENTROPY WAR
Yoon Ha Lee
This is not a story about an alien species who called themselves the ktho. Nor does it have anything to do with the arkworld that they left behind, ancient of years. The ktho didn’t want to play the game; they wanted to game the system, and this is the price they paid. You will never have to worry about ktho armadas or ktho deathspheres. You will never lose sleep looking up wondering if your sun will shudder dark as the ktho engines of war feast upon it.
The ktho are no longer fighting in the Entropy War. The arkworld they left behind has no bearing on any of your decisions. Its secrets don’t matter. That means you have a chance in the game, doesn’t it? This is your story.
Introduction to the Quickstart Guide
Welcome to the Entropy War, a conflict of universe-spanning proportions. In it you will guide ravenous fleets, the rise and fall of civilizations, and, of course, the spindown of the cosmos itself. You should expect unequal proportions of blood, destruction, and heroism, and the occasional leavening of injustice.
We assume in this Quickstart Guide that you have a general familiarity with the divertissement of war and other juried conflicts. If you’re a newcomer, don’t worry! Your Warmaster should be able to get you started with the aid of Entropy War: The Complete Warmaster’s Manual.
For an optimal warring experience, we suggest four to six players who share at least one common language or telepathic stratum. (See The Complete Warmaster’s Manual for optional solitaire rules. As you might imagine, live opponents are not required to flirt with galaxy-spanning ruin. They merely make the process more fun.)
Each player begins with two homeworlds, which may be developed in the course of the game. Developments will allow you to produce conquest fleets or cultural exports to facilitate immersive propaganda programs, or mine native matter for resources, but at the cost of intrinsic instability, as the population will naturally demand a share in any wealth so produced. A player’s assets consist of all her worlds and developments. When all of a player’s assets are removed from play, even the legends of her ossified civilizations, she is considered eliminated from the war.
Meditations on the nature of entropy, Part 1
The overriding resource in the Entropy War is not wealth measured in unpolluted fertile oceans or gravid metals. It is not the flower-imaginings of a star-gazing culture, or poetry whispered into the pulses of spinning neutron stars. It is not even the skeins that permit cognitive weavers to construct specialized artificial intelligences or precarious grand strategies.
No: as you will have guessed by now, the most important resource in this war is order, upon which entropy constantly encroaches.
Entropy War: a simple model
Consider the following simplified rules, in the spirit of rapid prototyping. Rolling six-sided dice is a faster and simpler operation than planning, funding, and carrying out an interstellar war; the question of “fun” has yet to be settled. Advanced students are encouraged to elaborate upon the prototype presented here, then to compare the results with the full rules of the game.
ENTROPY WAR is a two-player game played with d6’s (six-sided dice).
Each player starts with 2d6 (two six-sided dice) in her Civilization Dice Pool.
There is also a communal Order Dice Pool that starts with 10d6.
On her turn, a player may take one of the following actions:
Build: Roll 1d6 from her Civilization Dice Pool. If she rolls a 1, she scores no points and ends her turn. Otherwise, she adds the number she rolled to her point total for this turn and may roll again or stand pat, accepting her point total for the turn. (This is basically the familiar dice game Pig.)
Expand: Roll 1d6 from her Civilization Dice Pool. The other player rolls 1d6 from the Order Dice Pool. If the active player rolls higher than the Order roll, then she adds the Order Die to her Civilization Dice Pool. If the active player rolls less than or equal to the Order roll, that Order Die is destroyed (removed from play). (The active player’s die is not destroyed either way.)
Attack: Both players roll all their dice from their Civilization Dice Pools. The player with the higher roll wins. The losing player suffers the destruction of one die from her Civilization Dice Pool.
If, at any point, a player has no dice remaining in her Civilization Dice Pool, she immediately loses the game.
Otherwise, the game ends when a player scores 60 or more points, or the Order Dice Pool has no dice left. In the second case, the player with the most points wins.
Questions to consider, Part 1
1. The greatest works of civilizations, from arkships filled with dreaming colonists to symphonies laced into the accretion disks of black holes, always have some chance of catastrophic failure, no matter how well-planned. How does this relate to the press-your-luck mechanics of the game of Pig?
2. What is the function of the Order Dice Pool? Does it ever recover dice? How does it relate to the concept of entropy?
3. Is the game (the prototype) guaranteed to end? What does that imply about the universe of the game?
The mysteries of the arkworld
Some of the people currently investigating the ktho arkworld are obsessed with finding a dominant strategy in the Entropy War. Civilizations old and young still whisper of the days of ktho dominion. Most of their artifacts have decayed, and most of the old stories have frayed into thin threads of supposition, but that does not stop people from hoping.
Here is what you will see if you approach the arkworld to the radius of safety, and no farther. It is something like a sphere of light, and something like a sphere of shadow, and more than either it is like the ache where your bones used to be before you replaced them with a shatter-proof composite material more suitable for martial pursuits. You’re not seeing the arkworld proper—for reasons that will become clear, there is no possible lens into its interior—but rather its protective shell.
The ktho carved warnings and war-chants into that shell, in a language of fractal misgivings. Lose the skirmish, lose the battle, lose the war, lose it all. Whenever you look into those carvings, you see your own civilization’s ash of worlds sundered.
The ktho were conquerors supreme, yet it wasn’t enough. At the height of their expansion, they withdrew into the arkworld and never again emerged. That’s what we know. But people cannot help but prod at the arkworld’s defenses in the belief that it conceals some armageddon engine, some treasure of atrocities, some ungift of conflict unending.
Meditations on the nature of entropy, Part 2
There are more ways to be disordered than to be ordered. As time marches forward, the entropy S of a closed system inevitably increases. As Ginsberg’s theorem tells us memorably:
1. You can’t win.
2. You can’t break even.
3. You can’t get out of the game.
(Notice that the theorem, too, frames entropy in terms of a game.)
The development of a game player