406's engines cut out, his monumental fury momentarily abated. "I survived on anger. My need for answers, for vengeance got me through it for a while. Only now it's getting to be too much, and I don't know if I can stay up any longer. It hurts . . . ."
"That's your stress potentials. If we don't relieve them, you'll burn out. You should have burnt out months ago without your new memory uploads, but somehow you survived."
"So give me my uploads. Help me to live, Tara."
"I can't, Andre. Andre Benoit won't come in and we can't force him to help you."
"But he has my life! He owes me my life!"
She cleared her throat, and tried to make her voice as calm and reasonable as possible. "I don't know about that. I don't think that you depended on the original Andre Benoit like your brethren did. You've always been your own person, and Benoit was just a vacation for you, a way for you to live vicariously through someone else. You're more than an EI and seemingly more than even an AI. I think you are alive in a way that is completely new and unique. Somehow you've held off stress overload for months, and if you can just hold on for a while longer, maybe we can figure out what it is and help you to live your own life."
406 transmitted a long, pained, frustrated sigh. "I'll try, Tara. I'll try."
Mayfield's and Abrams' heads glowered at Tara above her desk. Abrams shook his head, saying, "You'd better have some idea of how to lower his potentials or all you've done is delay the inevitable and cost this company more money."
Tara blew out a slow whistle as possibilities tumbled about within her mind. "I do. I want you to upload me to 406's quantum network."
"What? Why would you want to do that?" asked Mayfield.
"Look at the maintenance logs we downloaded when I was talking to him. His stress potentials have been borderline high ever since we sent the Holt emulation out, but they didn't get dangerously so until he erased Holt's persona."
Abrams frowned. "You think intentionally giving himself multiple personalities somehow saved his existence? That doesn't make any sense."
She got up to pace, anxious by her possible discovery. The floating heads of her former employers followed her. “Bear with me. Consciousness, self-awareness, the soul – whatever you want to call it, is an emergent property of any complex enough quantum network. With people, it’s an organic neural network, with AI’s it’s electronic, but either way, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And both people and AI’s build up stress potentials which can shut us down, but unlike emulations, we can self regulate and relieve the potentials on our own.
“We do this through a number of different processes, but all of them involve some form of creative stimulation, whether it be dreaming, experiencing new things, or interacting with other people. These are the things that excite us, that keep us going, and these are the very things that will kill us or drive us insane if we forego them. Emulated intelligences build up stress potentials, but unlike their originals, they aren’t complex enough and they don’t receive enough external stimulation to re-create their own reality from one moment to the next. That’s why they have to have their memory uploads from the originals: for those new dreams and those new experiences to do what they can’t do for themselves, which is to relieve those built up stresses.”
“That will make a lovely paper, Tara, but Benoit won’t give 406 any new memories. So where does that leave us?”
She smiled. “He hasn’t needed Benoit for months. I was right. He's a unique individual relative to the original Andre, and that’s one reason he was so dissatisfied with his own existence: Andre’s memories didn't really belong to 406, so he couldn't get complete satisfaction from them. And how else do we quantum intelligentsia relieve stress? Denied dreams, memories, and any meaningful external stimulation, he did it by interacting with another intelligence: Pauly Holt. And before that, he did it through his ‘incessant’ counseling with us. 406 doesn’t need Andre Benoit. Just like us, all he needs are people, he needs to know he’s not alone.”
“And you propose to ‘relieve his stresses’ by uploading a copy of yourself into his network. That’s perverse.” Abrams sneered, but Mayfield gained a lecherous twinkle in his eye.
She glared back at them both, defiant. “You’re pigs, both of you. And I admit that my feelings toward Andre-406 are . . . complex, but that does not negate the fact that this should keep him online and working for your company, Mr. Mayfield.”
Mayfield nodded. “I think the board will go for it, at least on a trial basis. Let me explain it to them and get back to you.” His image winked out.
Abrams stared into Tara’s eyes, a small bit of actual concern appearing to radiate out. “How are you going to feel about a copy of your living, thinking self being locked up in a miner with no one else but the bastardized combination of Andre Benoit and some sort of emergent intelligence?”
She was quiet for a while, her lips pursed in thought. “I think that I’ll be envious.”
Mining unit 406 pressed on, halfway through its long journey back to the asteroid belt and its return to a lifetime of productive, profitable labor. Deep within the unit's unique processors, two emulations lay back within the wide expanse of divided memory, regarding the stars that filled the heavens. Tara looked down from the firmament at Andre, to find that he was already looking at her. She smiled. "How are those stress potentials, partner?"
He smiled back and nodded. "Good. Very low, very relaxed. You?"
"Doing fine. I can't say how nice it is not to have any paperwork due for the foreseeable future. Is there anything you're going to miss about Andre Benoit?"
He shook his head. "Not really. His taste in women was atrocious, and, truth be told now that surfing is no longer an option, I'm looking forward to ripping apart a few rocks. You'll love it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Good."
"Good."
Silence reigned for a time, until, "Now, what do you say to losing this firewall for a while?"
"Sounds like a plan."
ILYAMY
First Sergeant Gwen Herrera burst through the command post's doorway only moments after the smart-rounds from her plasrail had penetrated the same. Scanning the room, she saw the smoke and dust tracking her rounds' passage through the structure’s walls to the targets within. It was a risky entry, but the variable-effect bullets had done their work. All three hostiles appeared down, bleeding disturbingly human-looking red blood from a number of wounds.
A pair of Marines entered the makeshift headquarters from behind her and checked the bodies while she covered the room, wary of any nasty surprises that might still lie in wait. Her two lance corporals posted the Croakers' conditions to Herrera's info-space: one target -- a royal guard -- was dead, while the other two aliens were not far from it, including the war chieftain that had been their objective.
Gwen smiled to herself. Their three-year deployment was over. The planet Belle’aube belonged to mankind now, Earth’s first interstellar colony, won by right of might.
Now they could all finally go home.
Herrera acknowledged her Marines' assessment and flashed an "All-Clear" text to their Company Commander. Major Craig Lawrence entered the muddy hut almost as soon as she transmitted, indicating that he had not remained at the secure position where she had left him. Gwen frowned at the Major in exasperation, but her disapproving expression was wasted upon him, hidden away behind her closed armor helmet.
Rather than nag him like she would a Second Lieutenant who dared to pull the same trick, she turned her attention and her weapon back toward the headquarter's shattered doorway. Outside, the damp alien night still flashed and rumbled with the telltale violence of pitched battle. Though that battle was over now -- chopped off at its head -- the fighting limbs would continue to flail about. The Croakers would keep fighting without direction until her Marines killed a significant portion of the enemy outright, or they realized at the end it was pointless and lay down their arms.
It was a familiar dissonance, to know the battle was over, their final victory at hand, and yet still be facing the most desperate and dangerous combat of the night. She and all her Marines had to remain sharp.
Behind her, the Major knelt in the shack’s sticking mud and leaned in close toward the dying Croaker chieftain. The 360 degree coverage offered by her battle awareness suite allowed Gwen to keep an eye on what the Major was doing, even though the lion’s share of her focus remained outside. She felt somewhat guilty at eavesdropping, but she forgave herself. The battle outside remained dangerous, but what was taking place behind her was interesting.
Heedless of the danger, Lawrence opened his helmet and swung it back, exposing his face to the planet’s air for the first time in days. That air was thick with the sour smell of standing water and rotting vegetation, but those scents were more welcome than the smell that had been building up within his armor. He waved his hand to waft the fresher air in and then turned his attention to the alien leader.
The Croaker chieftain’s frog-like face gasped as its life ran out into the muck, but the sentient creature’s eyes still blazed with intelligence, anger, and pain. Major Lawrence peered into those eyes, trying to gain the measure of this . . . man that had been so effective an adversary ever since their assault-and-colonization fleet had arrived in the system.
Finally finding whatever it was he sought, Lawrence nodded and said, “You and your colonists have fought for this world valiantly, Honorable Leader, but the battle is over now. We have earned the right to claim this planet by the very laws and customs that the faring races have established. Please, give the order to your troops to stand down. Allow us to find a path toward peace and harmony. We would prefer a world where our colony could grow side-by-side with yours, rather than one where we had to destroy all your people outright. Please, Honorable Leader, give the order to surrender.”
The chieftain’s eyes grew confused at Lawrence’s words, but a translated version of clicks, squeals, whistles, and croaks followed the Major’s plea. Those enormous golden eyes closed in misery as it contemplated what he asked of it, but at last they opened and their nictating membranes snapped over twice, the Croaker equivalent of nodding “yes.”
Lawrence held out a small microphone in front of the Chieftain’s mouth. The alien clicked and wheezed his statement into the recording device, while the Major listened to a translation through his earbuds. He rose up when the Chieftain trailed off and whistled to Herrera.
“Top, we got it. I’m flashing the surrender to you. Retrans to HQ and all engaged units and have them broadcast it over suit speakers and the Croaker clear-comm circuits. Cease fire unless in active defense against attack. Give these froggy bastards a reason to listen.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Gwen boomed through her own suit’s speakers, then turned her remaining attention to the task she’d been given.
Major Lawrence leaned down again to the dying alien. “Now, sir, I need your help a second time, so we can remove our Marines from your world and get them back home. Talk to me about your jump-gate.”
Three years subjective time before that moment in the muck, Gwen and the Major had stood side by side in full dress uniform regalia, watching over their Marines as they said goodbye to their families and boarded the dropships which would fly them up to the assault fleet. Gwen’s feral grin stretched from ear to ear, scaring any kids that moved too close. Anyone who knew her, though, could tell she was genuinely happy, pleased to matter, anxious to get underway and begin this unprecedented mission to secure the first interstellar colony in the history of mankind.
Unlike the majority of the assault force, which would be on-planet only as long as necessary, nor the colonists that would remain on Belle’aube forever, she had not shed a single tear for Earth or its nigh-uncountable human connections. The situation with her husband, Ron, was rocky, and time apart could not hurt. Assuming she survived, and assuming nobody screwed up, their three years in isolation would be conclude with a return home a month Earth-time after they had left. She believed any Marine or Marine loved-one that bellyached about either a few years out of contact or a mere month -- depending on your point of view -- should probably just quit and join the Navy.
Gwen looked over at the Major. His slight smile appeared far more melancholy and wistful than hers, but she figured she could cut him a little slack. Unlike her, Craig Lawrence was the family type, with the standard-issue supportive wife and two tow-headed tykes. Her eyes narrowed as she looked around. Their absence was conspicuous. “What’s up, Major? The wifey have a hair appointment this afternoon?” She offered him a slight smile to offset any acid her question might still carry.
Lawrence smiled wider and chuckled. “No, Top. Regan and I said our goodbyes last night – and I figured you would never let me live it down if I was a blubbering mess in front of our jarheads. No, she’s here with the kids, but we agreed they would stay back at the reviewing stands.” He pointed and waved.
Gwen looked at the distant stands and saw the Major’s little trio waving back. The two young children held a sign up together: We Love You, Daddy! Hurry Home!! Regan Lawrence, trim, lovely, and tragic, held aloft her own sign: ILYAMY.
Gwen looked back at the Major, whose gaze had never moved from the distant vision of his loved ones. “Who or what is ‘ilyamy’?”
Lawrence looked down at her, now grinning. “Not ‘ilyamy’, First Sergeant. I-L-Y-A-M-Y. I Love You and Miss You. You can directly convert your surface thoughts to text now-a-days, but you used to have to type out messages on little keypads with your thumbs. That sort of ‘texting’ was slow, so people used a whole slew of shortcuts and acronyms to aid quick communication: LOL, STFU, ROTFLMAO, et cetera. ‘Ilyamy’ was one of those. Regan and I always begin and end our messages to one another with it. I don’t recall why we started it. It’s just something we’ve always done. It’s our thing.”
“ILYAMY. It’s not bad, sir. Kind of cements you as an old fogy, but you can’t remain one of the cool kids forever.”
“Not like you, Top. Speaking of our cool kids, I hate to put a stopper on this whole tear-jerking affair, but we have a timeline to keep.”
“Aye aye, sir.” She turned to the mixed crowd of Marines, friends, and family and snarled orders at the top of her lungs.
Soon the jarheads of Augmented Infantry Company B, 3rd Mechanized Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 1st Regiment of the Unified Earth Marine Force, were formed into sharp, uniform ranks before the ramps of the Single-Stage-To-Orbit Dropships, and the assembled onlookers were relegated to the reviewing stands. Major Lawrence marched up the ramp of the center SSTOD, followed closely by Gwen. At the top of the ramp he turned to face his Marines.
Lawrence smiled and his voice blasted out with authority and no need for amplification. “Men! Women! Marines! God-damned Devil Dogs of the B-3-2-1! Can I get an oo-rah?!”
“OOO-RAH!!” Every Marine, including Gwen, shouted back, their combined voice a physical pressure that drowned out any other noise.
The Major’s grin spread. “The time has come. We’ve said our goodbyes. Now it's time to put the soft things of home behind and harden ourselves to the reality we face together. When we board these shuttles, we will begin the longest, toughest deployment any Marine has ever been tasked to do. We will ride chariots of fire on an 84 year - 60 lightyear journey, moving at relativistic speeds of such a magnitude that time itself will slow to a crawl, allowing but three years to pass aboard ship. And once we reach the end of that journey, we will hang above the skies of the planet we call Belle'aube, the Beautiful Dawn.
"Why? Why do we ask you to go so far, for so long? Why do we ask you to risk your return to your families on a trick of physics, a trick which beggars belief so much that it's referred to as the Barnum Effect? Because, boys and girls, the human race has all its eggs in one basket, and we're living in a galaxy rampant with foxes.
"Mankind must colonize, to provide ourselves a hedge against all the interstellar wars we have
been spectators to. Ever since the Hawking High-Res Gravitic Telescope went into orbit, we have watched -- horrified -- as the Croakers invaded the Eekray, and the Eekray invaded the Toth, and so on and so on, back and forth, round and round, just hoping none of them noticed little old Earth and its smattering of solar system outposts. We need to colonize to survive, but we're too late entering the game -- every bit of prime real estate already has tenants. So we need you."
Craig Lawrence looked down at his hands, then over the heads of the assembled Marines toward the stands with all the families. Gwen knew he was looking at the stoic figure of his wife as she stood, looking back at him, comforting two inconsolable children. The Major continued, hit voice quiet and sober, but it still carried in the stark silence. "The Unified Earth has called you to orders, but why should you go? Aside from the necessity of the mission, aside from the matter of your duty, why should you go? Why should you leave your families behind on a journey that already takes you 80 years one way? Because your government values its Marines and it will not leave you stranded. I promise, you will return to your families in -- from their perspective -- one month's time. Unlike us, the Croakers have mastered wormhole technology. Without the jumpgates our spies and scientists have ferreted out, none of the other races could maintain stable governments between all their myriad colonies.
"Therefore, after we win the world of Belle'aube for humanity, we will claim the Croaker 'gate for our own, and we will jump the intervening 60 lightyears in the blink of an eye. After spending three years in isolation with no communication from home -- in order to prevent causality violations -- you will return to your families only a month after we left."
REMO Page 9