“Captain,” Snyder said, her voice climbing in pitch. “I would remind you of our mandate to act as an extension of the Interstellar Union in overseeing, regulating, and deploying the Integrated Galactic Fleet. This is exactly why shipboard cities are so often called the Wombs of Civilization. It’s our job to keep galactic civilization intact, by innovating and sharing our successes with the rest of the galaxy for implementation everywhere. Despite what you might think, it isn’t warfare that we’re at the forefront of, here. No, Captain, we’re on the forefront of progress.”
Husher studied Snyder’s face, shaking his head a little. It was hard to know how to respond to her, especially since he truly did think her intentions were good. Snyder seemed to think she was doing well by nonhuman species, who she considered in need of her help.
Besides that, Husher sensed that Snyder was deeply insecure—her elaborate overlay spoke to that. Fighting for causes likely made her feel like a good, worthy person. But in Husher’s view, her tactics were hurting more than they were helping.
He sighed. “Why was I called here today?”
The mayor cleared his throat. “We’d like you to undergo Implicit Association and Bias Testing, to investigate whether our fear about your attitude toward the Gok is warranted.” Chancey lowered his voice. “There’s a decent chance it might be, Captain, especially considering the unfortunate loss you suffered in association with the Gok.”
Husher felt his eyes widen. Suffered in association with…? The detached, clinical phrasing came nowhere close to describing what Gok had done to his family.
Abruptly, he stood. “I won’t take this test. The suggestion that I’m biased against the Gok is crazy, and besides, the fact you’ve accused me of bias, merely for doing my job, will make it harder to fight actual examples of bias when they come up.”
With that, Husher left the council chamber.
Chapter 3
Military Applications
Cybele’s artificial day was darkening, with the vast compartment’s overhead lighting gradually dimming. Husher’s Oculenses matched that reality, and as he neared Ochrim’s house, stars began appearing in the simulated sky, one by one.
Ochrim hadn’t done a lot with his home’s overlay, but other than that, there wasn’t much to distinguish it from any other house in Cybele. Nothing to indicate that he was a mass murderer, certainly, or that he’d played a major part in shaping both Galactic Wars.
Husher rang the bell, and the Ixan let him in a few seconds later. “Can I supply you with a beverage, Captain?” Ochrim asked as Husher lowered himself into the alien’s favorite chair.
“Beer’s fine,” Husher grunted. I certainly could use it, after that meeting.
The alien returned holding two sweating bottles, and Husher accepted his with a nod.
“It always fascinates me to contemplate that humans and Ixa metabolize alcohol at similar rates,” Ochrim said, still standing.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Husher said. “I’d drink you under the table before I ever started to feel it.”
“Of course, Captain.”
“Why don’t you have a seat?”
“Because I don’t expect you visited merely to drink beer.”
“I came because your message said you have something for me.” Husher tipped the beer’s neck toward the couch across the room. “I need to sit for a few minutes.”
“Very well.” Ochrim settled himself onto the couch.
“I just came from city hall.”
“Ah.”
Another long sip from his beer, and Husher exhaled, long and slow. “After we won the Second Galactic War, I tried so hard to convince the new government to start developing the tech to search outside the galaxy for your species’ creators, so we could deal with them before they dealt with us. But the government wanted nothing to do with it. And here we are.”
“What happened at city hall?”
“They want me to take some test that’s supposed to find out whether I’m biased against Gok.”
The lighter patches around Ochrim’s eyes broadened. “Would that happen to be the Implicit Association and Bias Test?”
“Yeah. That’s the one.”
“Ah. That procedure is riddled with methodological issues. A form of it was determined to be almost completely useless centuries ago, and not much about it has changed.”
“Hmm. Well, I refused to take it. I feel like agreeing to it would amount to admitting I could be biased, and I’m insulted by the very suggestion.” Refusing to take the test was risky, Husher knew. In the last year alone, a capital starship captain had been removed from duty for refusing to do what her city council had required of her. He took another sip of beer, then asked, “What are the issues with the test?”
“It’s based on your response times, but one of the major problems is that it confuses the novelty response with bias. If you aren’t as familiar with other species as you are with your own—which is usually the case, sadly—then the test will almost certainly conclude that you are biased.”
“Wonderful,” Husher said.
“After you failed it, they would probably have recommend that you undergo Awareness Training, to purge you of your presumed bias. The training’s intended to make you aware of your biases, and to help you overcome them. But in reality, Awareness Training has been found to achieve the opposite of its stated intent: studies show it increases bias.” Shaking his head, Ochrim said, “I have plenty of personal experience that shows bias still exists between the species. The problem is real. But the proposed solutions aren’t really solutions.”
“Why are they using procedures proven not to work?”
Ochrim shrugged. “I’m sure there are several reasons. For one, these measures are concrete and relatively easy to implement. For a politician who’s only thinking about the next election, it’s much simpler to have everyone undergo Awareness Training than to implement the type of solution that would bring actual, long-term results.”
“Like what?”
“Again, I can only tell you what the research shows. Addressing galactic poverty is one thing that would benefit all species—Gok, Wingers, Tumbra, humans, and even Kaithe. All have beings who are downtrodden. Studies have also demonstrated that a being’s level of bias correlates strongly with a lack of exposure to members of other species. By finding a way to increase interaction between the species…”
“Yeah,” Husher said before emptying the rest of his beer and placing the empty bottle on an end table. He stood. “I want to see what you’ve discovered.”
Ochrim also stood, though he made no other move. “I have to admit, Captain, that I’m becoming somewhat concerned about our activities.”
“Why?”
“Because the farther I progress with my work, the closer we get to tangible military advancements. Those aren’t viewed favorably in the current political climate, and I’ve gotten in significant…trouble…for contributing to them in the past.”
Eyeing the Ixan with raised eyebrows, Husher said, “I’m sorry, Ochrim, but are you under the impression that not sharing your findings with me is even an option?”
“I am,” Ochrim said holding up claw-tipped fingers to forestall Husher’s next remark. “It’s an option with consequences, but an option nevertheless. The question is whether the consequences of telling you what I’ve discovered are likely to outweigh those of withholding my findings.”
“Right. Let me refresh you on the logic of your situation, Ochrim: this ship is the only place you’ll ever get to live in anything approaching peace. No other captain would even consider letting you step foot on their ship, and as you know from experience, planetary colonies don’t want you either.”
The alien lowered his gaze. “You’re right, of course.”
“I’m glad you recognize it. So let’s hear no more talk of refraining from sharing your findings with me, hmm?”
“Of course.”
“Good answer.”
“Lead on,” Husher said.
Ochrim left the living room, passed through the kitchen, and turned left down a short hallway. Husher followed, pausing only to grab another couple beers on his way through.
“Do you ever miss your people, Ochrim?” Husher asked as they made their way through the hall. He idly fingered a picture frame as he passed—it bordered an artistic rendering of some nebula.
“You mean, do I miss the species that almost exterminated yours, Captain? Seems like something of a loaded question.”
“It’s not.”
As they entered a small, rectangular room at the back of the house, Ochrim sighed. “I was always quite different from the rest of the Ixa. Especially my father, and my brother.”
“I wasn’t asking about your family.”
“I miss…I miss being convinced that I knew what was best for the galaxy. Though false, that level of moral clarity was soothing.”
“You’re still dodging the question, but whatever. By the way,” Husher said, pointing at the floor. “This. This is what’s best for the galaxy.”
“I hope you’re right.” With that, Ochrim knelt, lifting a cream-colored floor tile to reveal a touch interface. Tapping it made a section of the floor lower and slide out of sight to Husher’s left. Below, a dimly lit ladder extended down until it disappeared from sight.
“After you,” Husher said, and the Ixan complied, setting his right foot on one of the upper rungs, then lowering himself to the next.
Husher loosened his belt a notch, tucked the beers into it, and began the climb down as well. His joints creaked as he descended.
Before long, Ochrim started wheezing slightly. He’s getting pretty old, even for an Ixan.
Ochrim’s history was nothing if not complicated. During the First Galactic War, he’d given humanity dark tech, seemingly betraying his own species and allowing humans to dominate the galaxy for the next twenty years. Dark tech was enabled by a rare mineral humanity had named Ocharium, after Ochrim, and it had allowed them to create galaxy-spanning wormholes that could be modified to destroy anything they didn’t want passing through them—like enemy ordnance, for example.
But the gift of dark tech had been part of a plan formulated by a far-seeing, superintelligent AI named Baxa bent on dominating the Milky Way. Baxa had created the Ixa, and he’d been around for several millennia, but he’d also spent some time as a biological Ixan before uploading his consciousness once again. During his time as a flesh-and-blood Ixan, he’d sired two sons: Teth and Ochrim.
Humanity came to completely rely on dark tech, leaving them totally vulnerable when Ochrim used a master control of his own design to subvert each ship’s wormhole generator so that any wormhole it produced would vaporize all organic matter that passed through it. In one fell swoop, the United Human Fleet had lost almost half its crews—hundreds of thousands of service members killed within a few seconds of each other.
If Ochrim was to be believed, his father had convinced him that humanity’s downfall was the best of two horrible options: the other involved humans eventually destroying the universe itself. Except, in addition to humankind’s destruction, the future that Baxa envisioned also included enslaving every living Ixan. When he’d learned that, Ochrim had concluded that his father wasn’t trustworthy after all, and he switched to humanity’s side, abandoning his father as well as his brother, Teth, who’d commanded the Ixan fleet.
Whatever the case, Ochrim was clearly a genius, which was why Husher was willing to have him aboard the Vesta. The way he saw it, they needed Ochrim, to help prepare for what was coming. The AI that had created and manipulated the Ixa had been just one of many such AIs, and though the Ixa had died along with it—all but Ochrim—Husher was sure another superintelligence would come to finish the job that Baxa had started. He’d long considered it his duty to do whatever he could to prepare the galaxy for the AIs’ return. Since the Interstellar Union seemed determined to stunt military advancements, it fell to him to do whatever he could to foster them.
They reached the bottom of the ladder, which touched down in the middle of Ochrim’s hidden lab. The ladder was the only way to enter or leave this room—for Ochrim, anyway. One of the walls could be opened, for the purposes of bringing in or removing equipment, but Husher didn’t allow Ochrim control over that.
Husher had had this lab constructed during a planetary stopover, before Ochrim had even arrived aboard the Vesta. He’d hired outside contractors to do it, to keep it a secret from those who lived and worked on the supercarrier.
Once he’d arrived, the Ixan already had an experiment ready to go, but it took Husher a while to procure the necessary equipment for him. He’d managed it, though, calling in a favor owed him by a Cybele University physics researcher, and he’d obtained the last piece the Ixan needed just three weeks ago.
Ochrim walked to a sturdy black tabletop and leaned back against it, studying Husher with weary eyes under the dim halogens. The Ixan’s age showed in the whitening of his scales around those eyes, as well as wherever they stretched across the many bone protrusions typical of Ixan faces. “You didn’t ask me much about the experiment I intended to conduct.”
“I asked whether it would blow up my ship. That seemed like the most important question to me.” Husher passed the Ixan one of the beers from behind his belt, and Ochrim accepted it gingerly.
“Fair enough, I suppose,” the alien said, opening his beverage. “Either way, to understand my findings, I’ll need to run through the experiment with you first.”
“Try to keep it brief. My next watch starts soon, and Fesky will complain if I’m late to the CIC.”
“Very well. The experiment was a success, and also a historic achievement, I might add.”
“Great. But I’m interested in what it’ll do for my combat effectiveness, not what it would do for your stature as a scientist if you weren’t excommunicated from the scientific community.”
“We’re getting to that, Captain. The experiment involved firing a photon at a polarization filter, calibrated so that there was a fifty-fifty chance it would pass through. I also programmed a com to switch on a microwave emitter only if it detected the photon passing through the filter. Under the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics, you see, two distinct parallel universes form after every quantum mechanical measurement, and so according to the theory, the moment the com detected whether the photon passed through, there were two coms, two Ochrims, and two starship laboratories.”
“Two universes,” Husher said.
“Yes. There’s a lot of evidence to support the many-worlds theory, but none to prove it. Until now. I’ve successfully confirmed the many-worlds interpretation, Captain, by overcoming the quantum decoherence that keeps the universes separate.”
“How?”
“Before even firing the photon, I isolated part of the experimental apparatus so that it did not immediately decohere along with the rest of the system. The isolated part was comprised of an ion inside a Penning trap, which was excited using the microwave emitter only if the photon was detected passing through the filter. Since, under these conditions, the isolated ion takes seconds longer to decohere, there’s enough time to change its state using the emitter. Once it’s excited by an Ochrim in one of the universes—Ochrim One, let’s say—Ochrim Two measures the ion and finds that it’s excited, even though in his universe, the microwave emitter was never turned on.”
“Okay, so Ochrim Two knows about Ochrim One, but doesn’t that leave Ochrim
One still in the dark?”
“It would, if I hadn’t performed the experiment many times. And in roughly half of the trials, it was I that detected the existence of my parallel twin.” A thin smile stretched across Ochrim’s face—a rare occurrence, these days.
“That’s incredible, Ochrim. But I’m not seeing military applications.”
“We’re still at the very beginning. While monumental, I did not spend two decades in prison planning only to detect parallel universes.”
“Out with it, then. What’s your end goal?”
“Captain, I believe it may be possible to manipulate the quantum decoherence process such that we will not only communicate with parallel universes, but travel to them as well. Can you see the military applications in that?”
A thrill forked through Husher’s stomach. “I think I’m starting to, Ochrim. Tell me what you need next.”
Chapter 4
PTSD
It felt good to be back in the Vesta’s crew corridor after spending so much time in Cybele recently. In many ways, Husher’s supercarrier resembled the Providence, which she’d been modeled after. He’d served on the Providence, under Captain Keyes, and he’d first met Fesky there, too.
Like Keyes’s ship, the Vesta’s crew corridors were just wide enough to allow for the efficient flow of traffic, and no wider. Gray, white, and black dominated the decor, such as it was—ornamentation was sparse. Husher liked it that way, and so had Keyes. He wondered for a moment what his old captain might have said about civilian cities on warships.
Three hours before his next watch, a regular checkup brought him to the office of the ship’s doctor, Lindsay Bancroft.
“Mostly everything looks good,” she said, staring at a blank wall where her Oculenses were no doubt displaying the results from the tests she’d performed. A lot of people kept at least one wall clear in their office, so that they didn’t have to stare into space in order to view whatever their Oculenses showed them. Some did do the “staring into space” thing, but many found that awkward.
Ixan Legacy Box Set Page 3