The End of All Things: The Fourth Instalment

by John Scalzi

  “And why is that?” Calderon asked.

  “I can’t tell you,” Abumwe said. “Quite obviously your governments are not secure. We can’t tell you everything.”

  “And what will happen when we declare independence?”

  “The Colonial Union, quite predictably, will overreact and fill your sky with ships in order to intimidate you.”

  “I’m failing to see the benefit to any of us in this plan,” Calderon said, wryly. She had, for whatever reason, assumed the leadership role for the assembled representatives.

  “We want you to declare independence but not become independent,” Abumwe said. “We will respond with the appearance of force, not force itself.”

  “You’re asking us to believe that the CDF won’t crush us flat.”

  “If we wanted to do that we wouldn’t need to have this meeting,” Abumwe pointed out. “No. I’m offering you a way out of that eventuality. Make no mistake, Representatives. Any attempt to leave the Colonial Union will be met with force. We cannot afford to have your planets leave the union, and at the risk of sounding patronizing, we are absolutely certain you don’t appreciate the danger you are putting yourself into.” Abumwe motioned to Okada again. “Minister Okada here can speak to this from experience.”

  “You want us to trust you. You might understand why it’s difficult for us to do that.”

  “I’m not asking for your trust,” Abumwe said. “I’m making you an offer.”

  “There’s not much you can offer us, Ambassador, if you’re already denying us our freedom.”

  “Representative Calderon, let me suggest that it’s not freedom that you are looking for.”

  “It’s not.”

  “No.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s control,” Abumwe said. “Which is what I am offering you.”

  “Explain,” Calderon said, after a moment.

  “You are all representatives to the Colonial Union government,” Abumwe said. “I don’t need to tell you how little that actually means in terms of how the Colonial Union is administered and its relationship to your home planets. At best you are responsible for the most minor of tasks. At worst you are ignored entirely.”

  She stopped to let her comment take root. There were nods among the representatives.

  “That is going to change. It has to change. The Colonial Union will need to rely on the colony worlds more than ever, including for the soldiers, which it has never done before. It can no longer rule from the top down. Bluntly, it will need the consent of the governed. It will need to be ruled by the governed. It will need to be ruled by you.”

  There was dead silence for a moment. Then:

  “You’re joking,” Dwivedi said.

  “No,” Abumwe said, looking at Calderon rather than the Huckleberry representative. “It’s been agreed to in principle. At the top. What we need now is a group of representatives willing to do the work to create a system that reflects the reality of our situation with the Conclave and others, along with a truly representative government.”

  “You want us to draft a constitution,” Calderon said, only a little incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  “In exchange for this little act of subterfuge with our declarations of independence.”

  “Yes,” Abumwe said.

  “It’s that important.”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re going to need to consult with our governments,” Dwivedi said.

  “No,” Abumwe said, and looked around. “I need to be clear about this. There is no time. We already know that you plan to announce your independence in as little as a couple of weeks. We need that timetable to continue. We need everything to run as if it’s already been decided. There can be no pause, no hint that anything has changed. You are your colony’s representative. Represent. Your decision here now will commit your planet and we will hold it to your decision. And one other thing: This decision must be unanimous. Either you are all in or none of you are.”

  “You’re expecting us to create a viable system of interplanetary representative government right now,” Calderon said.

  This got the faintest of smiles from Abumwe. “No. Details will wait. But you have to commit now.”

  “How much time are you giving us?”

  “You’ll have tonight,” Abumwe said. “I’ll be here to answer what questions I can. Okada is here to tell you about Khartoum’s experience with Equilibrium. It’s eleven P.M. now. By eight, I will either need your unanimous agreement or your refusal.”

  “And if we refuse?”

  “Then you refuse and everything becomes much harder and much more dangerous. For everyone,” Abumwe said. “I’m going to leave you for a few moments. I will be back to answer questions presently.” She walked out the side door I had brought Okada in from. I followed her.

  “That was inspiring,” I said.

  “Of all the things I need at the moment, Wilson, your sarcasm is not one of them,” she said.

  “It’s only partly sarcasm,” I said. “Do you think they’ll commit?”

  “I believe Calderon is convinced. I think she might be able to convince others.”

  “And do you think the Colonial Union is actually going to agree to the changes you’ve just committed it to?”

  “That’s Rigney and Egan’s department,” Abumwe said. “But none of us would be here if we didn’t already see the writing on the wall.”

  “True enough,” I said.

  “I need you to call in Hart Schmidt,” Abumwe said. “I need him to take your place in the room. I will brief him on everything.”

  “All right,” I said. “What are you going to have me do?”

  “I have two things I need you to do,” Abumwe said. “First, I need you to talk to Ocampo.”

  “What about?”

  “The whereabouts of Equilibrium. They fled from their base but that hasn’t stopped them from continuing their operations. We need to know where they are now.”

  “He might not know,” I said.

  “And he might. You need to ask him.”

  “You’re the boss,” I said. “What’s the other thing?”

  “I need you to go to Earth.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “You know they don’t like us, right? As in, if one of our spaceships shows up above the planet, they’re likely to shoot it out of the sky. Not to mention it’ll take me several days to get there, with no reasonable expectation of getting back, once they shoot my ship out of the sky.”

  “I expect you to solve all of these problems before you leave.”

  “I admire your confidence in me.”

  “Then don’t disappoint me, Wilson.”

  * * *

  Tyson Ocampo and I stood on a beach, watching the waves roll in and the seagulls circle overhead.

  “It’s beautiful here,” Ocampo said, to me.

  “I thought you might like it,” I replied.

  “Which beach is this?”

  “Cottesloe Beach. It’s near Perth, Australia.”

  “Ah,” Ocampo said. “I’ve never been.”

  “Well, it’s on Earth, so that’s understandable,” I said.

  “Have you ever been?”

  “Once,” I said. “I went to Perth on business and had a free day. Took the train over to it and spent the day watching the waves and drinking beer.”

  Ocampo smiled. “We’re watching the waves, at least,” he said.

  “Sorry about the lack of beer.”

  “Lieutenant, when you’re not here, the simulation I see is of a small, square cell. It has three books in it, the titles of which rotate after I read them. I don’t get to choose the titles. There’s a single small screen on which is ported just enough entertainment material that I do not go entirely mad. Once a day they make a track appear so that I can give myself the appearance of physical exercise. My only visitor—aside from the occasional Colonial Union interrogator—is a chatbot which is not quite well programm
ed enough to give the appearance of being a person, and only serves to remind me that I am, well and truly, alone in my brain. Trust me. This beach is enough.”

  I had nothing to say to that, so we continued watching the simulated waves of simulated Cottesloe Beach tumble onto the simulated shore, while the simulated birds reeled in the sky.

  “I assume this is a reward,” Ocampo said. “For our last session.”

  “As it turns out, you were entirely correct that a trap was being laid for the CDF ship at Khartoum,” I said. “My ship got to skip distance in a dangerously short time—we nearly overloaded the engines—and skipped directly into the attack. That was lucky timing.”

  “The CDF didn’t send one of the ships it has on standby.”

  “With all due respect, Secretary Ocampo, you’re a confirmed traitor, and you have a history of leading ships to their doom. They would not send their own ship, but they didn’t mind if we played Russian roulette with ours.”

  “I’m glad you trust me, Lieutenant.”

  “I trust that you have nothing left to lose, Secretary.”

  “That’s not quite the same thing, is it.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not. Sorry about that.”

  Ocampo smiled again, and ran a toe into the sand of the beach. This simulation was about as perfect as I could make it, and from a programming point of view was in fact a bit of a marvel. The simulation was only detailed to the degree of Ocampo’s attention. Any part of the beach he wasn’t looking at was a low-resolution map. Any part of the sand that wasn’t directly under his toes was an undifferentiated texture mat. The beach existed as a bubble of perception around a man who himself existed as a brain in a jar.

  “Did you make this beach for me?” Ocampo said. “As a reward?”

  “It’s not a reward,” I said. “I just thought you might like it.”

  “I do.”

  “And I confess I didn’t make it for you,” I said. “Rafe Daquin had a birthday recently. I modeled it for him.”

  “You still haven’t given him a body?” Ocampo asked.

  “His new body is ready,” I said. “And he can move into it any time he likes. Right now, he’s decided to stay with the Chandler and pilot it from the inside. He’s really very good at it now. He’s done some amazing things.”

  “I wonder how he would feel if he knew you’d given a gift you made for him to the man who caused his brain to be taken out of his body in the first place.”

  “Actually he was the one who suggested I do it. He told me to tell you he remembers how lonely it was, and is, to be a brain in a jar. He hoped this might give you some peace.”

  “That was very kind of him.”

  “It was,” I agreed. I conveniently left out the part where Daquin told me that if I wanted I could program in a great white shark that tore Ocampo’s simulated body to pieces. It would not be convenient to the current situation. Rafe might have forgiven, in his fashion, but he had not forgotten.

  “Lieutenant,” Ocampo said. “As much as I appreciate a trip to the beach, I’m not under the impression that you’re here because you and I are friends.”

  “I need a little more information from you, Secretary. About Equilibrium.”

  “Of course.”

  “Will you give it?”

  Ocampo didn’t answer this. Instead he stepped forward onto the beach, into the water that rushed up to surround his feet and make them sink just a little into the sand. Despite myself I smiled at this; it really was a good simulation that I had thrown together.

  “I’ve been thinking about why it was I became part of Equilibrium,” Ocampo said. He looked back at me as he said this and grinned. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant, I’m not going to try to make this a monologue of disillusioned nobility that you will have to politely nod through. At this point I can admit that much of the reason I did was ambition and megalomania. That is what it is. But there was another part of it, too. The belief that the Colonial Union, however it had gotten that way, was antithetical to the survival of our species. That every other species we know had come to associate humanity with duplicity, savagery, ambitious cunning, and danger. That this is all that we would ever be to them.”

  “To be fair, none of the rest of them are exactly angels,” I said.

  “True enough,” Ocampo said. “Although the response to that is how much of that is them dealing with us. The Conclave brought together four hundred species of spacefaring beings into a single government. We can barely get any to tolerate us. It does suggest the problem is not them, but us, the Colonial Union.”

  I opened my mouth to respond; Ocampo held up a hand. “It’s not the right time to debate this, I know. My point is this, Lieutenant. For whatever reasons, I aligned myself with Equilibrium; independent of that, the problem of the Colonial Union remains. It’s toxic to itself. It’s toxic to humanity. And it’s toxic to our survival in this universe. I’m going to help you if I can, Wilson. At this point there is no reason not to. But you have to understand that unless something happens to the Colonial Union—something big, something substantive—then all we’re doing here is kicking the can just a little further down the road. The problem will still exist. The longer we wait the worse it gets. And it’s already almost as bad as it can get.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “All right. Then ask your question.”

  “After Daquin attacked Equilibrium headquarters the organization pulled out from there.”

  “Yes. The location was no longer secure, obviously.”

  “We need to know where its new headquarters is.”

  “I don’t know,” Ocampo said. “And if I did know definitively, they wouldn’t use it, because they would have assumed that you would have extracted the location from me.”

  “Then I would like a guess, please.”

  “Equilibrium is a relatively small organization but the emphasis here is ‘relatively.’ It can operate from a single base but that base has to be relatively large and also recently abandoned, so that its systems can be brought back up to operational capacity quickly. It needs to be in a planetary system that’s either friendly to the Equilibrium cause, or recently abandoned, or not heavily monitored outside of core worlds.”

  “That should cut down on the number of available military bases,” I said. “At least that’s something.”

  “You’re limiting yourself,” Ocampo said.

  “How?”

  “You’re thinking like a soldier, and not an opportunistic scavenger, which is what Equilibrium is. Or still is, for the moment.”

  “So not just military bases,” I said. “Any sort of base with the requisite infrastructure.”

  “Yes.”

  “And not just of species obviously aligned with Equilibrium.”

  “Right. They would know you’d already be looking at those. They’d want something that’s in the Colonial Union’s blind spot.”

  I considered this for a minute.

  And then I had a really truly stupendously far-fetched idea.

  My computer simulation must have accurately replicated my Eureka moment, because Ocampo smiled at me. “I think someone may have thought of something.”

  “I need to go,” I said, to Ocampo. “Secretary, you need to excuse me.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Not that I could make you stay, mind you.”

  “I can leave this simulation running,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he said. “I would like that. They won’t keep it running for more than a couple of minutes after you leave. But I will enjoy it until then.”

  “I could ask them to let it run longer.”

  “You can ask,” Ocampo said. “It won’t make a difference.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and despite everything Ocampo had done, I was.

  Ocampo shrugged. “This is how it is,” he said. “And I can’t say that for all I’ve done I don’t deserve it. Still, let me put a thought in your head, Lieutenant. If that idea in your h
ead pans out, and all your plans for it succeed, then ask a thing for me.”

  “What is it?” I asked. I was concerned he would ask for a new body, which I knew the Colonial Union would never ever give him.

  He anticipated that thought. “I’m not going to ask you to ask them for a new body. They won’t do that. Institutional forgiveness never goes that far. But I have a place, on Phoenix. Had it, anyway. A small summer cabin up in the mountains, by a small lake. It’s on a hundred acres of forest and meadow. I bought it ten years ago with the idea that it would be a place for me to think and write. I never did, because who ever does? Eventually I thought about it as a foolish investment. I thought about selling it but I never did. I guess I lived in hope I’d eventually make use of it. And now I never will. I won’t ever see that cabin again. Really see it.”

  He looked back out, away from the beach, into an Indian Ocean that didn’t exist.

  “If it all works out, Lieutenant, and you get what you want out of this whole adventure, then use your influence to get me that cabin, here, in simulation. I know that I’ll never be out in the real world. But if the simulation is good enough, maybe I can live with that. And these days I have nothing to do now but think. Finally, I would use the cabin for what I bought it for. A version of it, anyway. Say you’ll do that for me, Lieutenant Wilson. I would appreciate it more than you can possibly know.”

  * * *

  “Sedna,” I said.

  Colonel Rigney, who was in the small conference room with Egan, Abumwe, and Hart Schmidt, frowned at me. “You’re trying to get me to use my BrainPal to look something up,” he said.

  “Sedna is a dwarf planet in Earth’s system,” I said. “More accurately, it’s a dwarf planet just outside of Earth’s system, at the inner edge of its Oort cloud. It’s about three times further out from the sun than Neptune.”

  “All right,” Rigney said. “What about it?”

  “Ocampo said he didn’t know where Equilibrium’s new base was, but that they would likely take a base, military or otherwise, that was recently abandoned. And also one that we wouldn’t think to look for. One that’s in our blind spot.”