by Stephen Moss
They were still travelling at relativistic speeds, fast approaching their last decelerating translation through the binary cluster we knew as Alpha Centauri.
Their speed was a physical anomaly. Possible only because of their ability to temporarily step out of this universe and into what was known either as hyperspace or subspace, depending on your dimensional perspective.
But as far as they were concerned, the speed defied the very way by which we perceive the universe, and their punishment was that light no longer told them the truth about the world around them. The light behind them could barely keep up, and so behind the fleet was a wall of blackness, utter and unending, only further emphasized by the shimmering sheet of white that came at them from below, the combined light of every star in the firmament folded into one endless pool of stellar beauty.
And so DefaLuta had chosen this place for their meeting, placing their virtual selves in orbit around their fleet, massive yet minuscule within the greater cosmos, firing all its engines into the whiteness ahead as if feeding it, as though they were sucking the light from above and driving it downward, into their path, into their future, so they could slow down enough to rejoin it.
For DefaLuta it was a beautiful sight, and one she often sat for days contemplating. But today was not for contemplation, and at last Princess Lamati’s form transposed itself into her seat at the table with every outward appearance of exasperation, clearly annoyed at her assistant for having made her too late, as opposed to just the right amount.
“Now that we are all here we may speak, and with your permission I will begin,” said DefaLuta without emotion.
Their treaty, laden as it was with caveats and protections, prohibited conversation at the Council Meetings until all were present, unless the missing party had been deemed as in violation or irredeemably unavailable by the Arbite. Even the Chair could not start without all present. No individual member of the Council had such power.
With no dissenters, and with a nod of approval from the ever-gracious Princess Lamati, DefaLuta called the meeting to order.
“So, our news is limited, but important,” she said. “The coming weeks and months will be filled with key events, most notably the translation through the 1-Point cluster, our last deceleration before Earth’s sun itself, and potentially the most spectacular.”
There were visible nods from around the table, even the famously nonchalant princess was not insensitive to the complexity of this last step-down, a deceleration that would bring them down to a perceptible light range for the first time in nearly thirty years, though it had only seemed like three to them, such was the relativistic gap between them and the rest of the universe.
“As you know, this will be a triple translation, starting with two major steps that will have only a two-hour time lapse, and then a third through the smaller tertiary star that will occur about a day later.” She paused as Archivist Theer-im-Far of the Hemmbar asked for permission to speak.
A virtual nod gave him the floor, and he said, “We catalogue the trinity cluster with particular interest. It was a source of some of significant focus in first run explorations. We want it noted that this will be very informative and important, our full data gathering selves will be focused on it.”
DefaLuta looked at the man with measured patience. The Hemmbar were a major financial contributor to the enterprise despite being the only party present with no significant military or colonial presence in the fleet, and thus no real stake on their prize once it was cleansed. They sought only knowledge, or more specifically, information.
They were strange people, neutering their children at birth and raising them without physical contact at any point, to keep their all-important curiosity ‘pure.’ All new members of the race, such as it was, were cloned from an ever refined source, and as such were considered its greatest member and default leader as soon as they reached the age of ascent, though few actually retained their status as ‘the purest version’ long enough to reach that age. As such the race was truly ruled by the Regents Aggregate, an oligarchy of artificial and natural minds, Theer-im being the only representative of that body that had joined that colony fleet.
For the rest of the Mobiliei, the Hemmbar were a warning, a bedtime story used to teach children what happened when you allowed yourself to be too consumed by the ether, and gave your Artificial Minds too much freedom and influence over your lives.
But the Mobiliei certainly profited from the Hemmbar’s diligent focus, and the race was second only to the many disparate members of the Nomadi Alliance in terms of their contributions to technological progress. DefaLuta glanced at Shtat Palpatum, the Nomadi representative, and noted the difference between the two men. Shtat was perhaps the most reasonable and down-to-Mobilius person on the Council, including her good self, she noted with rare humility. Indeed the only thing the many membered Nomadi Alliance and the Hemmbar could be said to have in common was their avid pursuit of progress, if for very different reasons.
“Thank you, Archivist. I hope I speak for all my fellow representatives when I say that is duly noted.” There were no dissenters, though a snort did escape the princess’s lips, a brash show of emotion which she could have easily kept hidden with her status.
“So, the first item for the agenda today, I thought, should be the celebrations and viewing events we all have planned for the coming translation,” said DefaLuta.
Though they would all, in reality, remain in deep sleep for the entire event, as they had for the entire trip to date, and though they would only be able to view the translation in a virtual simulation, something their AMs could construct for them at any point both before and after it really happened, it had become a custom for most of the gathered states to hold celebrations for the grand events.
The events would focus around viewings of astonishingly detailed renderings of the event. Renderings so complex that any and all members of the million-strong populace of military personnel and colonists could focus in on almost any part of the great fleet, or the infinitely greater and more complex stellar bodies that the fleet was going to pass around and through on warping trajectories, slowing them down to sub-relativistic speeds for the final seven years of their approach to Earth.
“If I may,” said Quavoce Mantil diffidently, though he had already pinged DefaLuta for permission to speak, “I would like to say on behalf of the Mantilatchi, and, I hope, the Eltoloman,” he nodded to his counterpart and sometime friend To-Henton from the neighboring state of Eltoloman, “that the combined events conducted during Deceleration Point 7 were very well received, and we would like to broaden the scope of those shared festivities to others, if other states might be amenable.”
The room was not unaware of the strong bond and long history between the Mantilatchi and Eltolomans, one born out of an ancient rivalry. But that hatchet had long since been buried, and now, much like the similar nations of France and the UK had on Earth, the two had found a solidarity in their shared, if bloody, history.
DefaLuta nodded thoughtfully. She was not insensitive to the tension that plagued their armada. It was both a blessing and a curse that their virtual existences, when in transit, allowed them to remain all but isolated from each other. It allowed the Council to keep the peace while in transit, but God only knew what was going to happen when long-fostered ambitions and long-festered jealousies came together in the cold light of their new home’s sun.
“I can certainly second that sentiment,” said To-Henton, a kind-faced man, but not one to be underestimated. He was a master statesman, and unbeknownst to DefaLuta, or Quavoce, while he had been nurturing his state’s good relations with the Mantilatchi, he had also been doing so with his other great neighbor, the Lamat Empire, and its temperamental representative. If nothing else, Princess Lamati was predictable when it came to her own interests and ambitions, and To-Henton knew that her constancy here could be relied upon.
“… and in the interests of that ideal,” went on To-Henton, “I wondere
d if the Lamat Empire might be interested in merging its festivities with ours on some level?
Quavoce was surprised, though kept his expression benign as he reached out to his Prime Mind, even now lolling gently behind him in the form a burly toskan, most closely resembling a gorilla in size and diet, though with a thick hide and a plated exoskeleton back that made it famously tough, and equally famously oblivious to a world that could rarely cause it much harm.
The two exchanged information even as their avatars remained passive in the swirling brightness of their spectacular meeting place.
Quavoce: ‘that is a surprise. ¿do we have record of a meeting between the eltoloman and the lamat? surely he wouldn’t risk a direct invite unless he felt relatively certain she would not snub him.’
Mantil Prime:
You conniving bastard, thought Quavoce.
Any and all inter-state communications were automatically recorded by the all-seeing Arbite. No one could talk to the Arbite. It was a sealed AM. But its reach aboard the Armada was all pervasive: it saw all and it judged all.
If you crossed any of the plethora of lines that had been drawn in the proverbial sands of their conquest, the Arbite was empowered to do everything from sending a formal censure to the group, to calling a tribunal, to the ability to unceremoniously eject into space any and all parties that crossed the few capital crimes catalogued in their shared contract, all of which centered on the making of separate treaties between any member states in the Armada.
It was a stipulation all had demanded, and all adhered to. They were going a long, long way from home, and though there was going to be a big enough pie for them all to have a slice once they had established New Mobilius, there were many an ambitious soul in the group, and Quavoce looked at his friend To-Henton with curiosity and not a little suspicion as Princess Lamati now acknowledged the ‘renewed friendship’ they had apparently discussed.
“An interesting idea, Henton,” she said with feigned surprise. She would know that all their fellow Council members would probably now be sending requests to the Arbite for records of their interactions. It wasn’t that there wasn’t already a lasting peace between Lamat and the Eltoloman, even a trust. It was that if this signaled a larger coalition that included, say, the Mantilatchi, then that alliance would be difficult to stand against.
But To-Henton and Princess Lamati were all smiles as the group adjusted to this latest diplomatic twist.
“Maybe,” she said to the group as a whole as the table completed another orbit of the huge fleet body, her face now ominously lit with the combined light of the stellar ocean below and the fusion plume of the fleet’s cores, “maybe we could create a small subcommittee to propose a combined event format that would satisfy the needs and interests of all parties?”
Across the table DefaLuta sat, with the fleet’s lights behind her like a great halo, and smiled. She had long since noted the little comment from To-Henton in one of her briefs from the Kyryl Prime Mind, and she chose to sit back and watch as the little façade unfolded.
It had only been a question of time before one of the big players made a move. It seemed innocuous enough on the surface, to be sure, but DefaLuta was not fooled. Princess Lamati was about as likely to be doing this ‘just to be nice’ as DefaLuta was to have her avatar defecate on the Council table. Not impossible, she supposed, but given Princess Lamati’s innate unpleasantness, the results of each unlikely event would probably be equally distasteful.
In the end, though, everyone agreed with fake smiles, with only the Hemmbar abstaining from a joint celebration. A subcommittee to plan the event was duly formed with representatives from each state being put forward.
Interval B: The Fall
The Gliders were lined along the Wall, awaiting their orders to go.
Princess Lamati preened herself in her tent, an act so pointless in this virtual world that even considering it was a gesture of the greatest conceit. In truth, she was not actually that vain. She did not need to be beautiful, such things were the concern of commoners who relied on such advantages. And yet she was anyway, a benefit of wealth in a world of genetic and cosmetic options too many to mention.
She just enjoyed that it was so wonderfully pointless, and she was doing it when there were people outside literally waiting to see if they would live or die by her hand.
She had invited some of the Lamat fleet contingent’s captains to participate. Not its admirals and generals, but a select few of its more connected captains. They too waited outside, their long guns loaded and lining the walls of the Blind Parapet.
She eventually emerged into the bright sun. She had done this for real several times back on Mobilius and was thankful that the sun’s heat that made the Blind Parapet a frankly inhospitable place was suitably diminished. They had not done away with the elaborate tents that would usually have provided shelter from it, though, and she looked around at the grand splendor of their wafting forms, pinned, but still so free-form, so impermanent.
She had often called them home during the great ceremonies that culminated in sumptuous events on this, the highest point in the Castelion, and indeed the whole of BaltanSant city, and she looked on their bellowing walls now with fond nostalgia.
But that was all history. Here, she was the king. Here, she set the pace of proceedings, and here, the virtual representation of the crown atop her father’s empire was kept pleasantly, if unrealistically cool, and she smiled as she stepped into the light, the gathered captains coming over to take her hand.
“Welcome, all of you. I am very happy you could make it,” she said with smile. As a virtual meeting wholly attended by members of her own state’s forces, this conversation was not open to monitoring by the Arbite, and she was glad. She would not want it known that she was associating with such lowly officers.
But for the purposes of the current event they suited her needs, and she smiled with almost angelic grace as she greeted each with a brush of the back of two fingers on their bowed-back bellies. As she did this, each of them rose from their prone backward position and smiled with genuine happiness at the honor she had bestowed upon them.
Brim looked on in silence, barely disguised surprise and a hint of suspicion showing on his face.
“Welcome indeed, my captains. So rare I get to meet the women and men of Lamat’s fleet forces. Thank you for taking the time to join me at today’s event.”
Their surprise at her gracious tone was clear, but they were happy to be here, even if a little trepidatious. Her temper was not a secret, far from it. But they could not disguise their emotions from their own generals and admirals, let alone the woman that commanded them, so they had learned to master themselves when under pressure.
She looked at one in particular, just picked one out at random and focused on him, and he quickly responded, “I am sure I speak for us all when I say it is an honor and a pleasure to join you for punishment, Princess.”
And in that instance he did speak for all of them, and they all shook their arms in agreement.
“Good, good,” she said. “Then we shall begin! Your guns, Captains!”
The punishment they spoke of was not for them. It was for the criminals who lined the Wall below them, out of sight. Murderers, rapists, thieves, they might all end up on the Wall, but such crimes were ever-rarer in their technologically protected world. No, the majority of criminals that waited below were mind-warpers, people who had tried to manipulate either artificial or real minds for material gain, pleasure, or both.
Ether-crimes were very hard to get away with. But if you could do it, the world could be yours. It was a possibility that was too much for some, and every cycle some fool or another would try to hack the AM of some personage or other, be ensnared by a watchful firewall AI, and then tried.
Those found guilty were treated differently depending on the state. Most nations simply removed their interfaces and surgically altered them to prevent future replacement. It was the societal equivalent of removing their faces, cutting them out of virtual society forever. For some states even this was not enough, though, and so they killed or imprisoned them. Some liked a combination of all three.
“Captain, you are with me,” said Princess Lamati to the officer who had spoken. She neither knew their individual names nor cared to.
She approached the edge of the Blind Parapet. She could not fall in this virtual world, but they went through the ritual of harnessing in anyway, then climbed into the great crenellations, the seven captains joining her along the edge of the very top of the Castelion to look out over the plain known as the Boneyard.
The captain she had nominated stood behind her and handed her a long gun. Virtual attendants did the same for the other captains. The old ceremonial long guns would only fire one shot, adding to the sport of the event.
“Are we ready?” she shouted into the stiff breeze blowing up over the edge of the precipitous drop.
“Ready!” came the shouts from the arrayed captains.
“Let the first Glider go!” she said with zeal, and leant forward, out over the edge, her leather harness creaking as it took her weight and she aimed her gun downward.
Far below, a shouted order could be heard relaying her signal and, after a moment’s pause, a glider suddenly flew into view, angling downward, accelerating hard away from the underside of the broad Wall that ran underneath them toward the ground below.
The first of the captains fired almost immediately, but they misjudged the wind, and they watched as the criminal flying the Glider soared away. Four more shots then rippled out in quick succession, a couple obviously clipping the wings of the Glider, and it stuttered.
The criminal piloting it began to pull up, aware no doubt that his damaged wings would no longer be able to take as late a breaking turn as he or she had hoped. The key for the criminal was to balance the need to angle straight down and build up speed away from the nobles so nobly shooting at them, with the need to pull up in time to avoid striking the ground below.