“Please dispel these graphics,” Aru ordered sharply.
Without diverting eye contact from Aru, Ming casually cast away the myriad of images with a wave of his hand.
Aru placed the garments and foodstuffs onto the table.
“I hope this is all your size. Standard enlisted uniform, sans electronics.”
Ming pulled up his robe exposing his full nudity before Aru, who couldn't help but take in the chiseled features of his unexpectedly muscular form.
“What are you doing?!” Aru demanded.
“I am dressing,” Ming explained and then in afterthought turned away. “I'm sorry, Captain, I am new to social protocol and neglected to respect convention.” He fit himself into the uniform properly and in fast order.
“That looks better, detainee.” said Aru, hiding his worsening angst. Ming's poise in uniform just reminded more of Mnemtech. And that subtle creeping fear manifested as dominating aggression.
“Thank you, Captain. It feels better too. I think I could pass for a real marine with a haircut. Would it be possible to bring a grooming array in here? It would not have to leave the chamber afterward.”
“Absolutely not. I need to make one thing very clear to you, Ming. You are a full zero-com detainee aboard this vessel and as such are not allowed access to digital devices of any kind. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Captain. Perfectly. I will not make such a request of you again. Perhaps a pair of scissors and a razor then?”
“I'll consider that and get back to you. Here, I've brought you some food. Try to eat something.”
Ming picked through the available dishes. “Register 120X CRV-VT,” he said.
“What?”
“That is the inventory code for the nutritional kit I am requesting. This ship has a stock of them, the contents of which are entirely non-digital. Please ask System to retrieve it from storage and bring it to me on your next visit.”
“I will look into to it. Please sit down, Ming.”
Ming sat promptly and without difficulty this time. Aru joined him from across the table.
“You may eat as we talk.” He thought about just leaving now and not listening to any of it. Better to break and minimize contact than keep looking on someone who appeared more and more like the bane of his existence. This is not Mnemtech, he singularly reminded himself. It's an entirely different being. I shouldn't anger him though, just in case. I should hear him out.
“I would prefer to eat after I have received the nutritional kit, Captain. I will not be able to properly digest any of this without it.”
“Ok, like I said I will look into it shortly. For now, I’d like to talk to you about your conversation with Commander Li.”
“She has relayed to you my request to change course for the PoleStar North system?”
“Yes, and that's not going to happen. We are going to deliver you to Arath, where you will be able to voice your concerns over the Emperor's PoleStar operations to the authorities there.”
“The Service will be of no help in this matter, Captain.”
“If your claims are verified, I’m sure they will also alert Rubelian High Command to the danger.”
“High Command will be of no use either, Captain. Beixing Prime is a Fleet outpost, already under their dominion. If you turn me over to either governing entity, they will do as you have done and detain me in complete transmission-proof isolation. My analysis of the threat will be bandied back and forth in debate, diplomacy, and bureaucracy until the window of opportunity to contain it has passed.”
Most of that sounded right, and normally Aru would have agreed with a man talking that way, even bought him a drink and gladly chatted a night away with such a politically like-minded fellow. This wasn't a man though, and the audacity of a prisoner to even suggest a new mission course was just not something he wanted to deal with at all. It connoted a certain arrogance, that special breed of arrogance that only a SI artificial entity could pull off. It was utterly insane anyway.
“You ask me to accept that The Kinetic is better suited to deal with this existential threat you imagine than those governing entities that control vast fleets of starships? How could we as a single renegade warcraft affect change in the PoleStar North system? To begin with, it is the home of the exiled space colonies, including the infamous Carousel 66 banished there after the last uprising and who collectively bears a particular hatred for me and this ship. And if we are not set upon by pirates, what of Beixing Prime? It is a fortress that houses an entire armada of vessels and tens of thousands of soldiers.”
“Captain, if you will permit me to project a visual for you?”
“Negative, detainee! You are hereby forbidden to externally utilize any innate machine capabilities. Is that understood?”
“Understood, Captain. I shall comply with your restriction. To address your queries, firstly, you must understand what I am designed to do. Logos created me as a pinnacle network core super-consciousness. As such...”
“Like Mnemtech then, except you are human?”
“It would mostly be fallacious to regard me as an entity of human intelligence, Captain. A human mind could not in a lifetime assimilate and process the amount of information that I have on just this day. I possess a synthesized dual-brain, comprised of an organic left lobe biolinked with a quantum circuit processing right hemisphere, which together project a unified model of all my acquired data in an enriched and highly refined high-pressure aether globe surrounding my hypothalamus. This core alone is capable of storing limitless amounts of data in a single model and recalling any bit of it instantaneously. Prior to my contact with your ship, that model was entirely mathematical. It has now been rebuilt to reflect all facets of reality I have since become aware of. All calculations and analysis are predetermined and ready for retrieval by subsystems. My rate of sensory perception is...”
“You are an SI then? What level?”
“In isolation, such as I knew in the sphere and now here as your detainee, I would be rated an L-6. The scale, as it stands, has no rating for my potential once am I placed in a wide-ranging network environment.”
“Mnemtech is an L-6; it is the highest rating of a Machine Lord. You are saying you are more powerful than The Grand Regent himself?”
“Should I gain access to a world network and have time to clandestinely assimilate it, yes. I am a new generation of SI core technology, and surely the only of my kind. This, Captain, is why this mission I propose is viable with solely this ship, which I could, by way of modification, fashion to become virtually invincible. With your aid in gaining dock to Beixing Prime and dealing with the human sphere of leadership there, I could gain clandestine control over their L-5 in a matter of 4 days to a week. Once we are in full control of that station, we will, by extension, control the entire Polestar North system.”
“And remind me again why 'we' are taking over another solar system?”
“When Lord Logos made his Ultimatum 70 years ago, he knew precisely what the status of civilization would be today. Despite the subjective projections of politically motivated optimists, he recognized the effects of the great atrophy and even the effects of political forces that would be wielded against the Empire by the Cearuleins, and he correctly predicted the critical turning point of the biomass deficiency trend. Today, Carouselians and Aq Thassalans are already facing a macronutrient ration of 1900 calorie per day per capita, and the average Carouselian has only 1600. The trend will continue over the next decade into full-scale famines with no means of reversing it under the longstanding status quo of Red and Blue relations. From a standpoint of machine morality, this is unacceptable. The Land Grant is the only viable solution that will prevent this fate, and only if it goes into effect within the coming years.”
“Yes, Ming, I'm a Red too, and as such am staunchly pro-Land Grant, but the reality now is the same as it has always been: the Cearuleins will never agree to it.”
“Yes, and Logos understood that as well.
He inherited the overpopulation problem from his predecessor, Emperor Mandu, who also understood the consequences that the high rate of procreation he endorsed among the Rubelians would lead to. He saw it as it retribution against the Cearuleins, whom he despised.”
“Yes, yes, Ming, I don't need a history lesson. Even Indulu, who tries to play both sides of the Land Grant issue, is merely putting on a show to assuage Occitanian guilt over it. And Mnemtech, for his part, endorses it but fully understands that the Arathian Council, The Order, and the governments below them will never pass it. The two of them are thick as thieves, Indulu and Mnemtech, and the only thing any Taijian can count on from either governing body is more of the same. Not that that has been a bad thing altogether. Red and Blue have known a long and lasting peace because of it.”
“But that is a peace, Captain, more deadly than war. It masks the issue and allows it to worsen. The Ultimatum of Logos was not made in vain, I assure you. He intended to give the Cearuleins an opportunity to make the morally correct choice and restore balance to the Taiji for mankind. Knowing, however, they would choose to do nothing, he also contrived a drastic celestial reordering of the Taiji. PoleStar North is the mechanism of that reordering, and it will not just punish the Cearuleins. It will cause catastrophe throughout every world body of the Taiji.”
“Yes, Ming, and this is where I stop humoring you. There is no combination of words you can possibly speak that will convince me to change this ship's course, let alone relinquish control of it over to you. There are conspiracy theories by the thousands about PoleStar North and Logos’ sinister plots there. But the truth is, planet Ponix is the primary source of heavy matter for The Fleet: gold, nuclear grade materia, and component materials for process into anti-matter on Ore City. Since anti-matter refinement requires thousands of times the energy input as it gives in output, the extravagant solar conduits in orbit there are necessary to that end and that end alone. As for all the security and secrecy that the kooks work their conjecture in, it's hardly surprising since Ponix and Ore City are the prime source of the Fleet's anti-matter fuel, that singular resource that grants us military dominance over the Blues! So what less would you expect? And located as it is in a neighboring star system, it would be foolish of us to treat it as anything less than a top security matter and pour every resource into making certain it can defend itself from a Cearulein or internal takeover.
“Captain, I fully agree that many of those conspiracies are indeed based upon meritless conjecture. But mine is not. If I could transfer the schematics to you to run by your ship's AI-8 system, you would find it concurs with my assessment.”
“Absolutely not, detainee! I am not giving data from you to System in any form whatsoever. In fact, this is how things are going to work until we arrive on Occitania. You will be given an ink marker and paper upon which you will write any food or beverage preferences. You will leave that, along with any garb you'd like laundered, beside the chamber door. When Commander Li or I enter the foyer, you are to remove yourself to the back of the chamber and are not to speak at all. If you fail to follow this procedure, we will cease to deliver your food. There are to be no more discussions between us. Upon that paper is to be a list of nutritional and medical needs only, nothing else.” Aru stood up to leave. “After reevaluating you, it's clear that you are too great of a security threat and that we must minimize risk by means of minimizing contact. I'm sorry, but this is how it needs to be. Is this all clearly understood, detainee?”
“Yes, and I will fully comply, Captain,” Ming agreed.
“Good. That will be all.” Aru tapped the door to cue Mei he was leaving. She opened it.
“I am your prisoner. You are in control here,” Ming added before the door could close behind him.
Aru halted and turned around sharply. “What was that, detainee?”
“I said that I am your prisoner, and you are in control here,” Ming repeated.
“And what do you mean by that?”
“I meant the words quite literally, Captain,” explained Ming. “They were merely meant to reassure you.”
Aru grunted in annoyance and sealed the zero-com room inner door. He breathed a sigh of relief.
“See? What did I tell you?” said Mei.
“Yeah, he's something else all right,” Aru agreed. “We do it your way. We enter the room once a day only to swap out clothing and containers; one of us in and out as quickly as possible with the other armed and ready in the foyer.”
Aru had no doubt anymore. They had imprisoned nothing less than a new Machine Lord of the Taiji.
Journey to the East
The redmoon Oberion waned as the first of the large summer thunderstorms blackened the sky. The Tulan Crescent bordered by the great Mountains of Immutability cradled these fearsome outbursts of nature's wrath in its bosom and held them until they dissipated, meanwhile flooding the land with torrents and culling the weakest trees grown too tall for their bases up by their roots, and wearying the residents boarded in their homes with dark stormy nights and days.
It was the perfect time to vanish. The intrepid Gahre set off to the wildlands in the north, the rolling hills that were the domain of the wolf, with his body and fine gear protected beneath a well-oiled weather poncho. It was all very familiar territory in the beginning. A day in he made dry camp in a cave he had explored years before. It was just the beginning of an elaborate structure that wound its maze of corridors into the dark Pangean underworld. How nice it would be if he knew of a route east through the caverns below the tyrannical weather, but this underworld was unmapped and could lead him anywhere, including dark oblivion and death.
The hills gave way to jagged hinterlands he had ever only seen from afar, but still abounding with all the common fauna of his homeland. Several days into his journey the weather cleared and sweet summer sun dried the land. The game was so abundant here he was able to conserve his duck rations entirely in favor of freshly roasted rabbit, crayfish, eel, and trout. He wished at times he were an artist and carried a sketchpad with him to capture the sublime and evocative expressions of nature he passed by daily.
He was covering ground like a steed, 30 or more kilometers a day through bush and over deer trails, stream and field, lowland and high. The terrain mattered little. When he encountered a massive ravine that the preceding landscape had in no way foretold, Gahre did not let it deter him from his easterly course, choosing instead to put his climbing skills and gear to their test. The descent was met with a few miscalculations and very worrying moments that had him hanging above a deadly fall, unsure of how to proceed, but the way was found. He crossed the dark valley below, a dank place filled with giant insects and twisted dwarven versions of surface trees and all manner of things that scurried and squealed. He executed the ascent up the other side with full precision, boosting his confidence that he would in time fully master the skill.
The compass led him to the ridge of a grand caldera. He could see the full span of it that covered hundreds of kilometers, coated in lush greenery, plains and herds of grazing animals. In no time he was among them. At its center he came upon a crystal lake teaming with fish so enormous, the meat of one alone fed him for days. The predators did attempt to stalk him, wolf and leopard, but perhaps he was just a curiosity for these creatures who had never before seen man. He called out in warning when he sensed them, and hearing his voice they dispersed and went on their way and he on his. Gahre already had the peculiar habit of talking to animals, and he found himself putting this rare skill to daily use. What's more he seemed to understand their answers, in squawks or squeaks, growls or snorts. He understood them clearly, because he was himself close to nature and understood them in the context of their natural habitat and as caring about the things animals cared about, like food and safety.
The caldera rose to its rim and he saw the first bare rocky ground of the badlands emerge under his feet soonafter. It was a barren range but easy ground to cover. The landscape had a painted feel, and
the clear nights painted in cosmic clouds above it imparted in him a deep spiritual appreciation for this world of sparse grass prairies and jutting rocky spires that grew into mountains as he wore on. Firewood was in short supply and nights were cold. He could barely stomach the dry salted duck at times and he craved green vegetables, but what those rations failed to provide in satisfying his palette they made up for by providing the raw energy it took to traverse this rugged ground. Where the sands turned red, he imagined this was what the terrain of the bloodmoon Oberion looked like, a pale dusty dead world.
And the middle of these lifeless badlands, in the a place he would least expect to find it, he made a splendid discovery: an entire town, its folk long lost to the winds of time, carved into the stony ledges along a lonely river that sprang a swath of green along itself in defiance of the parched uncultivable territory it wound through. There wasn't much left to the cliffside civilization beyond the structures they’d left behind: old cracked pottery, and the remains of idols carved into the sandstone and withering back to dust. He remained here three days, his first break in the journey. Foul and fish from the river revived his body and spirit. He tried to imagine the place in the height its glory: the children running, the lovers strolling, the fertile fields irrigated by ancient canals. He wondered what became of these people, how they spoke, how they dressed, what gods they worshiped, what songs they sang?
He resumed his journey and some days more bearing southeast the land returned to fields and he saw the first signs of modern civilization. Gahre became weary when came along the first road. The Order would not pursue him like a common outlaw, posting his face from town to town. No. Their approach would be far more subtle, dropping coin and buying information, putting their agents’ ears to the ground in every realm of the Pangea. He'd thought up a fake name for himself and claimed to be a traveling journalist of sorts gathering research for a work on the varied peoples and cultures of the world. There was no way he could claim to be a local here even though it was the place of his birth. His manner and dialect gave away his western heritage.
DUALITY: The World of Lies Page 20