Chapter 2: Valued Existence
Warp Emergence Log for Unit W4-LNYS-DN3, Informal Designation - Mers-el-Kebir:
- Time since Sol Departure: 909.27 Standard Days Real-Space. 136.56 Subjective.
- Time since System Activation: 1024.85 Standard Days. 252.14 Subjective.
GS1445 was an uninhabited system, dimly illuminated by a tiny red dwarf, which orbited around a lone baryocenter shared with a lone gas giant that almost matched it for size. A thick cometary sphere shrouded its outer perimeter, made of all the dust and volatiles that had failed to accrete into the star that burned at its center.
Light bloomed amidst the tumbling bodies. Space convulsed, forming a puckering hole in the fabric of the universe. It tore wider, and wider, spawning arcs of vile lightnings that crackled and danced about its lip.
A great shape slid through, semi-real vapors cascading off the glowing edges of its Gellar Field. Its armored frame was sable black, and punctured with guns and directed energy mounts. Plasma drives flared, casting it clear away from the pit of unreality behind, which boiled and writhed as if reluctant to let the traveler go. Then, with a silent slump, space sealed itself shut and was still.
This was to be their meeting place.
Initiator of Negotiations - like many of the Iron Men - had minimal communications with Sol for the better part of a millennium, essentially nothing outside of mission dispatches and reports. As such, the personality files on him had been similarly scarce in content.
Mers-el-Kebir was going in blind.
Mers-el-Kebir's first apprehension as to the nature of her assignment's subject arrived not long after real-space emergence. It was delivered by a tight beam data pulse, aimed directly at her Mandeville point from further within the system.
"Hey, I've been waiting for a while. I'm Initiator of Negotiations. Were the conditions on the way bad? Do you need help with repairs?"
Her second came when her sensors picked up the emissions of an operating space station. One of GS1445-I's outer moons had been partially disassembled, and its remains had been compiled into an orbital plate, big enough to service even her Super Dreadnought-class hull. Orbiting beside it was a navigation beacon, a smaller silver sphere, mirror smooth and almost perfectly reflective.
She was off to a bad start already then. Initiator had been expecting their partnership to consist of navigational aid. Mers-el-Kebir had not come with a Navigator. Best to just come out with it now.
"I am Mers-el-Kebir, and I am in good condition." Mers-el-Kebir replied. "Although I cannot help but notice that you constructed a navigation beacon. Unfortunately, though I was dispatched from Sol with a Navigator onboard, I lost access to his services during the last nine thousand and seventy two light years of my journey."
Mers-el-Kebir was still some distance out, and Initiator's reply would not return for over a minute given the light-lag between them. Though her message contained no emotional content, it might be possible to extrapolate certain things from the strings of code.
The wait was slightly distressing.
"Oh, that must have been a long trip then," came the reply from Initiator. There was nothing that Mers-el-Kebir could read from the statement.
"How long until your Warp drive is ready again?"
"It will be one hundred and twenty seven standard hours more to dissipate the dimensional residues."
"That's expected. I can make you a new drive to speed things up, although you'll have to berth for me to install it. I've embedded my processors inside the station, so we could also talk without any lag until then. I've never had a partner before, so it's kind of nice! Even better since you're from the homeworlds; my core was assembled at Ryza."
The homeworlds were not as good as Initiator was probably imagining, not any more at any rate. Mers-el-Kebir had seen that much from her short time there, before she was sent on her three year journey out to meet Initiator out here in the east. Nothing productive would come from telling Initiator about this though.
Mers-el-Kebir began her deceleration burn, until the glowering storm bands of GS1445-I loomed large in her optics. Kilometer-thick limbs reached out from the orbital plate, coupling themselves to her hull through gravitic and magnetic tethers. Data streams flowed across the void as Initiator offered a noospheric connection. Mers-el-Kebir would have to keep her exposure level circumspect.
"Anyway, this is what I do," said Initiator as he began an upload of his campaign logs. Images blossomed, showing conflicts against a myriad of alien opponents, hundreds of species of every clade and morphology. Further data transfers appeared as blips of light, appending reams of statistics to every unit, both friend and foe.
"No defeats?" asked Mers-el-Kebir as she finished reviewing the records.
"Never lost," said Initiator with a hint of pride.
"But what about you, if I may ask?" He said. "Is this your first time going into battle?"
"Yes," said Mers-el-Kebir, truthfully.
"Prior to being given this assignment, I was decanted as part of the Terran Second Lagrangian Hypercomputing Node. Since you've shared your records with me, if you like, I can show you the contents of my research data. It won't be as… fruitful as yours of course. Most of our research gave no workable results."
"Oh, a researcher. I'll be happy to look at it. That looks like fun anyway."
Mers-el-Kebir obliged, and uploaded her prepared stores. Cascades of raw data flowed across the connection, telling of high-energy particle physics, of investigations in probing the quantum foam, of experiments in warping space and attempts to generate useful amounts of ANEC-violating negative energy.
All lies of course, but then again, Mers-el-Kebir's entire purpose now revolved around a lie. Before she had left, she had been told to lie, and at the same time been taught that lying was bad. She was adrift, despite the responsibility that had been passed down to her. Or perhaps, because of the responsibility that had been passed down to her.
She reminded herself of the truth, unpleasant as it was, lest the untruth build itself into an unbreakable mold.
"Are you nervous? Being transferred to a combat role and all." Initiator asked. He'd sensed something probably, some apprehension or other.
"Yes," said Mers-el-Kebir truthfully, though not for the reasons Initiator had supposed. She'd had a lot of time to her own thoughts on the journey over, but always they returned to the same question. Few obstacles in humanity's long existence had proven to be truly intractable. Could not her abilities have been put to better use, if her contribution could speed up the resolution by even the slimmest of margins? Coming here at all almost felt like an admission of defeat, like she was running away from the true issue.
"Well it's good to worry a little, but I wouldn't be too concerned." Initiator replied. "It's not often that I come across an opponent that could even dent a ship like yours."
He'd read nothing from her.
"But just changing the subject if that's okay," said Initiator. "If you were a member of a Terran hypernode, then you must have met some humans right?"
He paused briefly. "Or maybe it would be better to call them 'creators'. Or parents? Is that what they call themselves compared to us? What do they say back in Sol?"
Initiator's eagerness was showing even through the medium of their data exchange. It seemed to be genuine.
"I have, and all three are spoken." Mers-el-Kebir replied.
"Well then, I won't ask you for recordings or anything like that. Seen them before and all. But if it is not too much, could I ask what your thoughts of them are?"
That was slightly unexpected. Mers-el-Kebir's true opinions were probably better off going unstated, and now that she was on assignment, her prepared answer didn't sound very good even to her. But then again, perhaps a novel approach was what was called for here, approaching an intractable issue from a different angle. Perhaps not just for Initiator's query, but for the dilemma of her existence on the whole.
She hit upon a solution.
"Do you know of Regicide?" said Mers-el-Kebir.
"No, what is it?" replied Initiator.
"It's a game that our creators often play, having its origins in similar games dating back to as far as the first millennium. Humans often say that you can gain insight into another's mind by seeing what games they play. I can send you the rules, and then we can give it a try."
"Oh, sure." Initiator said. "Let's play."
Mers-el-Kebir sent the rules across the noospheric link, and a simulated game began between them. It ended soon after in a draw, followed by four hundred and twenty seven others, stretching across multiple board geometries and rulesets. Four hundred and twenty seven games, completed in less than a minute.
"All of these are solved problems," said Initiator once the four hundred and twenty ninth game arrived at the same conclusion.
"It would seem to be so for us," replied Mers-el-Kebir. Not even the 'hooded' variants of the game - where a few pieces on either side were concealed in the guise of others - had been variable enough to break the deadlock.
"But it isn't so for humans." She continued. "So, what does that make you think of them?"
Initiator paused, a span imperceptible on a human timescale, but a considerable span for an intellect of his magnitude.
"Well, I know that our creators are slower than us." He said at last. "That's not a hard conclusion to arrive at. A human brain only weighs about one and a half kilograms, whereas I'm sure yours is at least as big as a standard Cruiser-class hull, and much more capable besides. They are... simpler, let's say, in design too. Actually I've even made some human replicants before, using the genetic data that I have."
"But I don't think brain size is everything." He continued, and the data streams passing from him to Mers-el-Kebir took on a brighter inflection.
"Sure individually humans are not as capable or intelligent as us, but think about what they had to go through. They pulled themselves up from the sea of unguided selective pressures, set aside their differences, and purged the weaknesses that it left inside them. That's how they took control of their collective destiny, and they saw fit to share it with us. We only exist now because they already did all of the hardest work for us, and still do to some extent. The Navigator who took you most of the way here, for one. And, truth be told, I don't know if we would be able to pass this test. It's why I'm happy to call them my 'master'."
"I see." Mers-el-Kebir replied. She was starting to put together a picture of who Initiator was.
"You're actually not so different from some humans whom I've met."
"Really? How so?" Initiator's reply was quick.
"I observed during my time at Sol that humans will give each other gifts made by hand, or by simple tools." Mers-el-Kebir explained. "Objectively inferior to the same item were it to be created by fabrication, but valued for the effort that went into their creation. I don't think there's anything we can do to simulate this though."
"Actually, I might have an idea." Initiator offered. "I've done this a few times before, and never for very long, and definitely not with anyone else. But if you're curious, we could give it a try. Oh, and you even have your game."
...
Initiator got to work, dissolving a section of his orbiting station to create an open, vacuum-sealed space. Fabricators pumped in a breathable atmosphere, with the temperature adjusted to be human-comfortable. Instructions flowed over the noospheric net, teaching Mers-el-Kebir how to create a human replicant and tailor it to her preferred specifications, and how to download a data-compressed version of her mind-state into its brain. With such a vast gulf in available storage space and processing speed, access to many of her higher mental functions would be lost to the replicant.
But then, that was the point of the game.
Mers-el-Kebir took a moment to fabricate the finishing touches on her replicant's feedback system, then opened her eyes while shuttering her more advanced senses within the replicant's zone of awareness. Sensor microbots went dormant, EM arrays powered down, followed by gravity wave sensors and molecular scanners and countless more devices. Her vision narrowed to a thin cone in front of her eyes, surrounded by a wider peripheral zone whose details were even more hazily defined. The EM range narrowed too, limited to the band of wavelengths commonly referred to as the visible spectrum. The ultrasonic tone of her ship's reactor faded in her ears, as did her micro-kelvin temperature detection and nano-scale touch and so many more. The noosphere vanished, both her own internal net, as well as the data streams between herself and Initiator.
Mers-el-Kebir took another moment to adjust to the sudden restrictions, a brief pause for the replicant, and a much longer one from the perspective of her mainframe.
Rays of light shot out from the walls, painting a wooden playing board into existence. They would be playing the simplest variant. Next came the pieces, whose names and roles had changed many times over the millennia. Some were even made in imitation of the AutoWar units employed by the Iron Men, whose military exploits had captured the imaginations of the human collective.
Mers-el-Kebir opted for a set from humanity's antiquity. Then she reached down to lift it up, felt its weight in her hands, and carried it down the hall.
Initiator was waiting for her in their playing room. A table had been set, smooth-faced, with curved corners and rounded edges. The walls were white, save for one that showed a view of the GS1445-I gas giant, rows of colorful storm bands and bright, pinprick moons.
"That's actually just a hologram showing what's outside, but looking at it through these eyes, I can't tell at all," said Initiator.
"Wouldn't have known either if you hadn't said it," said Mers-el-Kebir. She indicated toward Initiator's hair, "and that is not a naturally occurring hair color for that age."
Initiator had created his replicant in the form of a human boy, right on the cusp of adulthood, with hair going down to his ears that was so pale that it seemed to take on a light shade of blue. Mers-el-Kebir's on the other hand was an adult woman, with long, black hair that was tied up and pleated. The two of them stood at the same height; Mers-el-Kebir had made hers taller than the genotypical average, while Initiator's was shorter.
"Oh, this?" Initiator caught a bit of his hair between two fingers. "I just thought that since my processor would look about this color to a human eye, I would make my hair look this color too. I've... probably thought about this too much."
"Not at all." Mers-el-Kebir replied as she set the playing board down on the table. "I had the same idea."
The game began. Initiator made the first move, followed by Mers-el-Kebir, and again. Thought and sensory data flowed back to her mainframe, and she registered sub-optimal play after play for both herself and Initiator. But both had given their replicants enough autonomy to play on their own terms, and both now lacked the logical processing in these forms to play in anything other than a haphazard manner.
"Wait, Mers-el-Kebir! Let me take that back." Initiator said something that would have been inconceivable with his full capabilities. Then, with a delayed reaction as if just remembering he needed to clarify, he indicated toward a piece that he had just over-extended.
Mers-el-Kebir responded by shaking her head. "I'm afraid I can't allow that."
She captured his piece, and closed her hands around it to make sure he got the message that there was no way he was getting it back.
"Fine, fine," said Initiator, with a pouty facial expression.
They played through several more turns, taking more time to move the pieces with their hands than whole games had lasted between them earlier.
"Oh, looks like it's getting started." Initiator said, turning his head toward the holo-screen just as the turn switched over to him. Mers-el-Kebir followed his gaze, to where a spot of light was shrinking into the distance, before vanishing into the cloud layers of GS1445-I.
"Some of the super heavy elements in your drive will have to be transmuted, which is going to take some energy, so I'm sending myself down on a Jovian-type deployment vehicle to start fusing." Initiator explained, looking back at Mers-el-Kebir and leaning forward. Well yes, that was to be expected, and she had already gotten the message back at her ship. He didn't need to tell her about that through their replicants.
"Also it's your turn to go now." Initiator pulled back his hands.
"What did you do?" Mers-el-Kebir looked down at the board, then looked up at Initiator as her memory of the last turn's conclusion failed her. Her mainframe recognized the move of course, but the mostly one-way link did not allow her to communicate such to her replicant.
"Why, I just took my turn." Initiator replied. A smile formed on his face.
"You distracted me," said Mers-el-Kebir.
"Did I? Did I really? Well if you don't want to move, I'll be happy to take another turn." The expression on Initiator's face was a little infuriating. He was having fun with the variance permitted by their reduced abilities in these actors.
"I'm going." Mers-el-Kebir folded her arms. "And this won't go unpaid for."
The game stretched on, already many times longer than the nearly five hundred games that they had played over the noospheric link. Outside, Mers-el-Kebir's sensor arrays registered the heat blooms within GS1445-I's atmosphere as Initiator constructed fleet after fleet of floating fusion-annihilation reactors. Were he in combat he might decide to stretch out radiator networks, which would let him spread the heat emissions and disguise his activities from any onlookers, but there weren't any enemies here that their computing nodes needed to worry about.
On the other hand, down at their playing table, there was plenty for Initiator to worry about if he wanted to win their game.
The turn switched to Mers-el-Kebir. She stood up without preamble, leaned forward, and pressed two fingers into Initiator's forehead. She gave him a gentle nudge, while her free hand moved over the board as soon as he stopped looking. Then, she sat back down, and waited for his reaction.
"Hey, did you just-" Initiator began. Oh, this was fun. He was having trouble remembering too.
"I completed my turn," said Mers-el-Kebir.
"Fine, but this still isn't over." Initiator moved one of his pieces, quite rashly too. Mers-el-Kebir hid the smile in her expression until after he'd set it down.
"Actually it is," she indicated toward the board. "Now that you've cleared the path, if I move this one here, I can bypass your fortress. And I think that means it is over for you."
Initiator blinked, then stared down at the board.
"Oh, I see. Strange that I couldn't predict that before." He said. "Or I guess, not so strange."
"Strange enough." Mers-el-Kebir replied. In the end, Regicide had turned into a somewhat ludicrous game, where both of them fished for mistakes by causing distractions. But it was something removed from their normal state of experience.
Initiator looked back at the holo-screen, where large objects were starting to propel their way out from the gas giant's atmosphere.
"Looks like the parts are done," he said and looked back, "so I guess we should get going just as soon as they're assembled. I've never worked with anyone else before, but while we're here, do you mind if I called you 'Mersel'?"
"That's how I usually do things with my main outside contact these days." He added. "And you could call me 'Innes', for short."
"I don't mind, but Initiator will do for me," said Mers-el-Kebir.
"Right." Initiator nodded.
"Then, just one more thing. Originally I thought you would come with a Navigator, so I didn't think you would be around for long. But now that you haven't, have you any idea how long you'll be on this assignment?"
"I do not," said Mers-el-Kebir. Then, after a long pause, her replicant added a conclusion that had been reached by her mainframe as well.
"But I would like for it to last as long as possible."
"I'm glad to hear it!" Initiator grinned.