The Great Symmetry

by James R Wells

  But then again, why not?

  #

  Horatio wrote furiously. It was really taking shape.

  At what point did editing turn into needless polishing?

  He changed a word here, a punctuation mark there.

  Would his readers be on line? Certain stalwarts would be there. They always were. Even today, or especially today. Just this one time, Horatio had put out an advance notice that he expected to publish.

  It was a balancing act. He knew he could make it better, but at what cost? If he waited too much longer, he and his readers would be out of time.

  One more review, from the top. Okay. It was as good as it was going to get.

  Horatio let his poem fly.

  #

  Rezar was finishing up his address to the citizens of Kelter. “We will soon find out if the Affirmatix fleet will commit the ultimate atrocity. If they do, we cannot stop them. In that respect, I have failed all of you,” he said.

  “But let us understand the reason why they would even consider such an act, and if we do survive, let us learn from it. Affirmatix is trying to contain a secret, which has spread throughout our planet. It is a remarkable finding, the glome chart, but in another respect this is business as usual. Affirmatix is maintaining the True Story, even at the cost of all of our lives.

  “The cancer is much broader than the criminal actions of one family. The True Story. Composing reality for our consumption. I commit this to everyone who will hear me – on Kelter there will never again be a True Story. Let people have doubt, and even fear, and then let them grow strong by determining what is true. I thank you all for your bravery as we face what fate brings us.”

  “And that’s a wrap,” the producer said. His job was a lot easier these days, since the governor’s talks involved little scripting and no post-processing.

  Rezar joined Mira at the table from where she had been watching the speech. “We pretend there is more we can do, some last appeal sent into the ether, or final maneuver,” he told her. “You saw as our last few missiles were swatted away. But my next action is to enjoy this cup of coffee.”

  “The good stuff?” Mira inquired.

  “Yes, Columbian. From Earth itself, grown in a place called British Columbia.”

  “That’s the best you can do? Drink coffee?” Mira would never stop challenging those around her, as long as she was alive.

  “And plan,” the governor said. “For a future without a True Story.”

  “That’s the ultimate act of infoterrorism – everything my uncle has worked for. Can you even do that? Wouldn’t you have to get some laws changed?”

  “Funny thing,” the governor related. “There is no law about it. The True Story was only effective because it was not officially acknowledged. As far as I can tell, we simply cease to operate the machine that generated it.”

  “I will hold you to it,” Mira warned. “Having a True Story is pretty convenient when you’re in charge. If you return to those days, I won’t let you get away with it.”

  Rezar studied the battered pilot for a moment. “I accept that. Hold me accountable. If I stray from that commitment, the world should know. And who better to do it than the most fearless woman on the planet?”

  Mira had been called a lot of things, but this was a new one for her. “If you mean that cliff thing−”

  “I do not. I mean your commitment to the truth as you see it, regardless of what may be accepted by the people around you, or what may be considered polite. We need more of that around here. But what are your plans, Mira? If we are granted a new life, what will you do that matters?”

  “Me? Oh come on. You can make those big decisions and have resolutions. I’ll just go back to piloting, as soon as I’m reassembled. But now I’ve got something! Holding you to your word. That’s probably a full time job and then some.”

  “A worthy plan,” agreed the governor.

  “I’ve got an even better idea,” Mira offered. “The new worlds. Just think of it. A frontier without end. Outfit a long range scout, and the smallest crew that could run her. Now that would be glorious.”

  “A deeply enticing prospect,” agreed the governor. “Who knows what is out there to find? And I will wish you the greatest of fortune. I will be here, doing my best to protect my people. I have started us on this course, and if we survive the next hour, I will have to see it through.”

  #

  “Soon we find out,” Kate said. “Whether we will live or die. Here is as good a place as any.” She waved broadly at the garden around them.

  “I can’t believe there’s nothing we can do,” Evan replied. “We just wait? Where are the reserve ships? The new plan? We should do something! There’s always something.”

  “We plant seeds,” was all she said.

  “Seeds? You know, by the time any seeds germinate, I think we’ll know the answer.”

  “We planted good ideas. Perhaps someone will consider them, even now. Now, walk with me for these minutes that we have.”

  #

  Axiom had no real need to prepare. Yet he had excused himself from the frantic efforts at the capital, having made what contribution that he believed he could. It was in the hands of tacticians, if indeed they could have any effect.

  He and his friends made their way up the steep trail. Cecilia, Antonia, Orwen, and Kestrel were with him. There was no dodging reality – it was a great challenge for his old body. At last they stood at the top of the promontory.

  It was far smaller than the majestic mountains to the north, just a bump in the plain. But it was the first bump, nearest to the Untrusted Zone and to Abilene. From their vantage point, the Untrusted Zone was a low collection of lights in the foreground, with the far greater glow of Abilene beyond.

  There it was. The buttonwood tree, backlit and visible from the shadows cast by its branches.

  Above, bright stars where there should be none, arrayed evenly across the darkening sky.

  Axiom’s companions seemed to pick up on his lack of desire for spoken conversation, or perhaps it was their preference as well. He was glad that they were with him.

  For himself, Axiom was not concerned. In all outcomes, he had very little future. The cancer would not be denied. Three months, or perhaps six. There was no way to know. For twenty-five years he had kept the enemy at bay, with medicine and, as he liked to think, clean living. It would be strange if today’s ending was a mercy, compared to what he might otherwise experience.

  He spent a few minutes meditating on his span of years.

  Axiom had always imagined that his life, such as it was, would ripple forward with some benefit, and a lot of love, to his many friends, and to their friends. Every so often, somebody would tell a story of the day that they had walked across the desert, or more recently, the day that the truth sang. It was melancholy to think that this might not occur.

  Had he truly lived for service? It was impossible to evaluate. Perhaps he just enjoyed the experience of observing people sifting through his words, seeking grains of wisdom. Axiom knew that he deliberately set puzzles for his friends. At his age, he was allowed to do things like that.

  “Shall we have a betting pool on the exact moment that the fire arrives?” he asked. “Select your time, to the millisecond. Closest entry wins, whether you guess before or after the moment.”

  Facing the Fire

  Sonia arrived at the bridge. The security screening was no problem, even with her talisman. It was not actually a weapon, after all.

  Four Affirmatix security guards, as usual. Carrying blasters, as usual. She wondered if they carried any other weapon, less destructive, that they would reach for first. Nothing else was visible. Each of the guards was positioned in a shallow corner, where it wasn’t possible to come from behind any of them, and which provided good line of sight over the entire bridge.

  She rechecked the angles. There was a place where she could stand, right next to the main command console, where any shot that struck her woul
d destroy the console as well.

  It was not the moment yet. Only when the D6 was reaching a fully powered state, and it would need to be discharged within a short period of time. Then, if the console were taken out, there would be no time to redirect command and fire the weapon.

  Sonia walked to her accustomed position in the resource room. To get there, she had to walk past Arn Lobeck, standing as he usually did on the stripe between the resource room and the bridge. He was looking far away, and didn’t acknowledge Sonia or even appear to notice her.

  At her station, Sonia pretended to busy herself.

  Essential personnel. If she wanted to go home, all she needed to do was – nothing. Without raising any objection, simply watch as fifty million people died. People she didn’t know personally.

  She looked at Ravi, next to her. He was avoiding her gaze, suddenly intent on the screen in front of him. Mithra Skylar appeared to be meditating. She was probably in dataspace.

  The pace of activity around her picked up. The main screen in the front of the bridge showed the position of the fleet around Kelter. At that scale, the ships already appeared to be in a perfect icosahedron, although not perfect enough for the D6 weapon. The point of view slowly rotated around Kelter, at about one orbit of the planet per minute. At Lobeck’s behest, a widget was added in the top right corner showing a countdown to the optimal position. Just over five minutes to go.

  In anticipation, the ships began powering up.

  Sonia imagined rejoining her domestic family. Simone and Jennifer would simply be overjoyed. But Yvette would know in an instant. Not the details. But the wrongness, there would be no hiding it from her. She would never be able to face Yvette. Not with this truth.

  Her domestic family was already gone. No matter what, they would never be together again, in any sense that mattered.

  Sonia put her hand softly on Ravi’s shoulder. “Soon we will be home with the ones we care about,” she told him. “We’ll get back with our teammates. We’ll spend a few weeks reviewing all of the events from here and updating the models, like we always do.”

  Ravi’s eyes widened and he turned pale. “These events? Right here?”

  “Of course. We are shaping history now, not just observing it, just like you said. And it will be a key part of the new future.”

  “No! She cannot know. Eliza must not learn that we were part of this! Sonia, my life is over.”

  She had hoped to give Ravi an encouraging thought. Clearly it had gone horribly wrong.

  “I’m sure it will be all right.” Sonia knew it was an empty platitude.

  “What do you know about a life without love? And now, it will never be.”

  “Sometimes events turn out very different than you expected,” she offered, “Just see.” If she succeeded in her plan, things would be extremely different, but she wouldn’t be there.

  For the fifteenth time, she felt for her talisman. It was there, in her inner jacket pocket. It just needed to look like a real gun for long enough to attract the first shot. After that, fire should attract more fire.

  She started walking toward the center console.

  Over The Edge

  “First we will destroy this nest of enemies, and then we will proceed to Green, and any other location that may have been contaminated by the Versari knowledge. The secret must be ours and ours alone.” Lobeck turned to the business of using the weapon which would destroy Kelter and all of its inhabitants. The program to invoke the D6 would be activated from the main station, in the center of the bridge, but operators were working on the many necessary support functions from many other consoles.

  First he strode to one console, then another, sometimes seizing possession of one screen for a few moments to call up pages of displays. “Closer, closer,” he muttered. “Almost optimized.”

  “Optimized?” Roe made the mistake of asking.

  “Yes, perfection,” Lobeck replied absently. “Anything less than a perfect balance of energy for existing mass will result in incomplete destruction.”

  “The planet will be destroyed utterly with only a tenth of that power! Can’t you see−”

  “Disinfected, yes. Destroyed, no. The work must be perfect.”

  Roe noticed that Mithra Skylar had quietly appeared next to them. “Arn,” she said softly. “Please stop and think. Consider everything. The entire picture.”

  Roe had seen Skylar pull Lobeck back several times. The man always paused for a moment and carefully considered what she had to say.

  Not this time.

  “You always have another reason not to take action,” Lobeck declared. “For decades we have considered. That is over, effective immediately.” Lobeck turned abruptly away from them, busying himself at a workstation.

  Roe caught a momentary expression of shocked dismay on Skylar’s unreadable face. Then she flipped the data display back down over one eye and walked purposely back to her station in the resource room.

  There was no doubt any more − Lobeck was experiencing severe loss of judgment. With the news of the identical Versari discovery on far-off Green, there was no reason to even consider continuing the operation. By the time they got to Green, the knowledge would have spread to more than half of the known star systems.

  Relief, fear, and adrenaline swept through Roe. To action. He scanned the bridge. The four guards were in their accustomed positions, each covering a wide field of view from a shallow corner. They definitely were at heightened attention.

  Roe noted Lobeck looking at each guard in turn, exchanging a quick expression of affirmation, making sure that they were fully with him.

  Sonia West had risen from her workstation in the resource room and was walking into the bridge. What was she doing?

  She had a purpose. And she was terrified. Her manner was not exactly subtle. Roe saw the two guards in the back corners of the bridge begin to track her. Now she had Lobeck’s attention, and the Vice President stepped forward off his line to observe.

  Whatever she was planning, Roe didn’t think it was going to help. As she began to reach inside her jacket, Roe was already in motion. Three strides brought him to her. Roe put one hand on her shoulder and circled her waist with the other, posing an improbable waltz next to the command console.

  “Dr. West, I need your help at Station Six. Will you please join me there?”

  From ten centimeters in front of his face, she sent defiance back at him. Roe willed his expression to somehow say that he had a plan, and she needed to let it unfold. He dared not say anything more, except, “Please. Dr. West. This way.”

  Still she stood unmoving. Roe could tell without looking that they were the center of attention. He brought her even closer and murmured directly into her ear, “Not yet.”

  Finally Roe felt her surrender. Now there was no time to waste.

  With Sonia in tow, Roe pretended that he needed to check something at Station Six on the bridge. The guards relaxed their posture, and Lobeck turned his attention back to the main screen.

  From Station Six Roe could clearly see the red stripe that marked the boundary between the bridge and the resource room. It was the path on which the airlock door would close.

  The lock would not shut on any person or object. Three independent sets of sensors saw to that. The first was a set of light beams which, when interrupted, signaled the presence of an object. The second set was a pair of video cameras which registered movement in the area of the portal. The last set consisted of ordinary touch sensors on the leading edge of the lock door.

  Roe watched Lobeck leaning on the edge of the portal. The man’s feet and center of gravity were clearly forward of the red line. A foot stepped forward and Lobeck was half a meter from the line. A situation at Station 3 resolved itself, and Lobeck relaxed to a straight standing position.

  The actual lock door was powered by a hydraulic system, three cylinders which provided a total force of approximately thirty tons. The leading edge of the door was designed to penetrate the
opposite side of the portal for a distance of about twenty centimeters, to assure a snug fit.

  There was only one circumstance under which the lock door would shut with all thirty tons of force, regardless of what stood in the way. If the resource room beyond suffered a massive loss of air pressure, the door would shut. No matter what.

  By design, the bridge had the ability to maintain pressure, with three redundant supply systems, even if most of the ship was holed. That included the ability to shut off the bridge from the entire rest of the ship, quickly and automatically.

  Beyond the far side of the resource room was the armored hull of the ship. The armor was substantial. It would take a direct missile strike to put a hole in the hull at that spot.

  Or, a limpet mine.

  Roe looked into the resource room. Ravi and Skylar were there. “Ravi, I need you. Come here,” Roe called. Ravi came, looking like a man who had seen his own death.

  Lobeck was in his accustomed spot, on the line between the rooms. Now one foot was in, one out. Lobeck was right over the line. It would be better if he was simply in the resource room, but that did not appear to be in the cards. If there was a time, this was it. Roe sent a message from his brain to his finger to press the hot key. The message seemed to travel from neuron to neuron at the speed of molasses.

  Suddenly it was very real to Roe, as his finger finally pushed the key, that he was attempting to kill his temporary superior officer.

  Roe had misjudged. The target was not still, and as Roe’s hand reached to fulfill its mission Lobeck was in forward motion. “Activate pro-”

  The back wall of the resource room disintegrated. Metal was flying everywhere. Air howled out toward the gaping hole.

  The lock door closed on Lobeck’s left ankle with a snap and a clang. Lobeck fell forward and landed hard.

  Roe was shouting. “The Vice President is injured! Get a medic immediately!” he ordered. “I’ll give first aid.”

  Lobeck’s guards hesitated but took no action to stop Roe as the captain bent toward Lobeck’s head, reaching for his neck. “I need to take his pulse,” he called out.

  Lobeck wormed on the floor, losing blood; his eyes rolled up to show almost entirely the whites.