Ex Machina

by Christopher L. Bennett

  “What for?”

  “Well, for making sure I still have an Ohio to go back home to one of these days. Really, that was amazing what you did.”

  Kirk fidgeted. “I don’t deserve that much credit. It was… it was a team effort,” he finished lamely, not really wanting to get into this again.

  “Speaking of rogue computers,” McCoy interposed, perhaps sensing Kirk’s discomfiture, “you seem to make a habit of cleaning up after them, Mr. Lindstrom. First Beta III, now here.”

  “Not to mention the Avrosians that Commodore Wesley liberated,” Lindstrom added. “It is a fascinating sociological study,” he went on, his blue eyes gleaming as he warmed to his subject. “Both the similarities and the differences. Landru didn’t really institute a religion to govern its people, it basically just told them what to do, what to think. Treated them like cogs in a machine. The Avrosian Worldlink fed its people illusions to make them perform as its drones, but let them think they were leading free and independent lives. But the Oracle’s control was much looser. It left the Yonadans their individuality and awareness; it just regulated them through a religious institution and imposed sanctions when they violated its rules.”

  “You mean it burned a hole in their brains if they had an unauthorized thought,” McCoy shot back.

  “Yeah, but plenty of humanoid institutions have been just as strict. Methods aside, the approach of the Oracle wasn’t all that different from a lot of other organized religions. I came here expecting to find more preprogrammed drones, to help them relearn how to think for themselves, like we did on Beta. But they had plenty of their own ideas already.”

  “Mr. Lindstrom is too kind.” It was Natira, gliding her way in between them. “We had much to learn indeed, and it has been a struggle to cast aside the lies and superstitions which held the People down for so long. We are eternally grateful to you and the Federation for helping us find the way.”

  Her words made Kirk uncomfortable. “The way is yours to find, Governess. All we’ve done is make sure you had the opportunity and the liberty to seek it for yourselves.”

  “Either way, we owe you much, and I am eager to show you the fruits of your efforts. If you will allow me, I have arranged for a tour of our fair city.”

  “Er, excuse me,” Chekov interposed. “Given the current unrest, are you sure that’s wise?”

  Natira seemed taken aback by his bluntness. But before anyone else could speak, Minister Tasari said, “You will be touring in closed hovercars. A full security contingent will surround the vehicles at all times, and the vehicles will not be left unattended. There should be no danger to you or the governess.”

  “And the People must see that we continue to live as normal, that their leaders are not cowering in fear. I trust my People, Captain, and I know they are with me. A few isolated malcontents cannot prevail against our combined will.”

  * * *

  Tilono’s finger tensed visibly above the crossbow’s trigger as the betrayer Natira and her Fedraysha cohorts emerged from the capitol tower. Moredi hated that tower—all the towers, really, all this bright openness and straining toward a sky that should be forbidden to mere mortals. The bitch thought herself and her cronies worthy to exist on such a divine plane, as though she were better than the decent, pious, hardworking people she’d turned her back on. And those Fedraysha blasphemers, who hunted down gods and killed them wherever they found them—on Yonada, on Beta, on Avros, on Gamma Trianguli—they took advantage of her hubris, used her as their puppet to spread their evils, to destroy every vestige of the Yonadan way of life as they had destroyed the Oracle.

  So Moredi couldn’t fault Tilono’s eagerness to fire her grenade arrow. But still he said, “Easy, sister. The time is not right.”

  “Even with the guards, the blast should be enough to kill her,” the fair-haired young woman protested. “But she will be in the car in moments!”

  “Yes, but it would kill the Vulcan Spock as well. Dovraku wants him alive.” The Great One had arranged this carefully, knowing that his attacks on Natira’s government would prompt her to summon her Fedraysha cronies for help. Now that they were here, it would be unconscionable for one acolyte’s overzealous trigger finger to spoil his sublime plans.

  “But why? He is one of the godkillers!”

  “Dovraku says he is more. He was touched by the new god V’Ger. And V’Ger escaped destruction, and ascended to the heavens.”

  “Does Dovraku think this Spock somehow saw the light, and stayed the godkillers’ hands? If so, then why did he not slay them himself?”

  “Take care, Tilono,” Moredi snapped. “It is not for us to doubt the wisdom of a prophet. Dovraku says Spock must live—at least until he can be brought before Dovraku himself. After that… who can say?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Even historians fail to learn from history—they repeat the same mistakes.

  —John Gill

  THE HOVERCARS WERE more Federation technology, though of an antiquated design. There were very few of them in evidence on the streets. Not many people were out, even on a fine day like this, but those who were visible were mostly walking, or riding carts drawn by a local species of draft animal resembling a small ceratopsian dinosaur.

  As with the capitol building, the design of the city was in sharp contrast to Yonada’s claustrophilic austerity. The streets were wide and lined with trees, and a number of small parks were scattered throughout the city. The cylindrical buildings were full of large windows and arranged with a good deal of open space between them so as not to obscure the view of the mountains to the north or the wide river to the south. And the buildings themselves were often adorned with vegetation, seeming to blend into the landscape. It was one of the most beautiful cities Kirk had ever seen beyond Earth.

  On the other hand, it struck him that the locals’ garments, while still brightly colored, were not as garish or elaborate as they had been on Yonada. Some still wore the traditional robes and wraps, but others, including all the government personnel he’d seen, were dressed in a more modern, clean-lined style. “And that is as it should be,” Natira told him when he mentioned it. “We are no longer on Yonada. Instead of clinging to the past, we should look to the future, and develop new styles along with our new way of life.”

  “If I may say so, Governess,” Kirk replied, “your own taste in fashion doesn’t seem to have changed.”

  She smiled indulgently. “Perhaps before, I was more of an iconoclast than I knew.”

  “Actually,” Lindstrom said, “there was always a lot of variety in Yonada’s fashions over the centuries. With the Oracle’s restrictions, the people only had so many outlets for expression. They had essentially no literature, no literacy outside the priestly class and the bureaucracy. After all, the more people read and write, the harder it is to limit their exposure to ideas.”

  “Well, with the Instruments of Obedience,” McCoy said, “what did it matter? It knew what they were thinking.”

  “In fact, the devices were not so advanced,” Spock replied. “The Instruments merely detected sound and certain biometric data, and transmitted them to the Oracle via microwave signals. If that telemetry exceeded certain parameters, it would amplify its microwave signals to deliver heat pulses to the brain, causing either discomfort or death, depending on their duration.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Spock,” McCoy said. “That part I remember vividly.”

  “Anyway,” Lindstrom went on, “they didn’t really have literature, and they didn’t have much musical freedom either—music can be very subversive, you know—so they threw themselves into visual media like abstract art, clothing design… things that didn’t have any straightforward ideological content but still allowed expression.

  “Now people are freer to express themselves in other ways, so maybe they don’t need their clothes to be as vivid. Still, the conservatives tend to favor the old styles, see them as a mark of tradition—even though they originated as a form of resistance to o
rthodoxy.”

  The hovercar turned a corner, and such abstractions were driven from Kirk’s mind as the first of the bomb sites appeared. “The city arena,” Natira said. “It was attacked eleven days ago, shortly after an exhibition game of Parrises Squares. Fortunately the audience had left, but six employees were killed, a dozen more wounded.” To Kirk’s practiced eye, the damage suggested a fairly low-level explosive, commensurate with Lorini technology and the prior attacks. The building was still largely intact, with only the portion around the entrance reduced to wreckage. It could be repaired. But that wouldn’t bring back those six lives, or the others before and since. Kirk warned himself not to let their low level of technology make him cocky. The danger posed by terrorists was in their tactics, their decentralization, the ease with which they could scatter and hide and wait out their hunters.

  The tour led them past several other attack sites, which Natira described with unwonted simplicity, letting the images speak for themselves. Kirk recognized one or two from the data files accompanying her original request for help. But more were new, having been hit in the two weeks it had taken the Enterprise to reach here. Kirk knew they’d arrived as soon as they possibly could have, but still the knowledge burned.

  The farther they got from the center of the city, though, the fewer attack sites were in evidence. “Clearly the militants are targeting only the authority structure and symbols of the Federation, not the general population,” Spock observed, still in that rigid, ultra-Vulcan tone.

  “Not that they truly care,” Natira said. “Some bystanders have been killed and wounded.”

  But in this part of the city, the people Kirk saw didn’t seem afraid for their lives. Most of the adults he saw, in fact, were accompanied by one or more small children, who were running, laughing, and playing as their parents struggled to keep up—and most of the parents had a baby or two in their arms as well. It was a sight Kirk had seen on many young colonies, and a clear sign that the rigorous population controls of Yonada no longer applied on Lorina. Kirk recalled seeing few Yonadi who looked younger than forty, and the same was true of the adults he saw here. It must have been quite a change, suddenly being not only free to procreate at will, but encouraged to have as many children as possible. And with so many older Lorini, it must have been particularly hard to keep up with all the children. “The way these people are willing to let their children play in the open like this,” Kirk said, “suggests that they don’t consider the terrorists a threat to them.”

  “Indeed,” Spock replied. “It indicates that the general public does not see the enemies of the state as being enemies to themselves.”

  “That could make this problem a lot more complicated to solve.”

  “I would prefer to believe,” Natira told them, “that the people have faith in our ability to protect them from the fanatics. And that they are unwilling to let a few madmen drive them out of the light.” She sighed. “Still… the number of people you see here, letting the sun touch their faces, is but a fraction of what I would wish for. As I have said, it is a struggle to bring the People into the light of day. Even without the Instruments of Obedience, many are still afraid to move beyond the limits the Oracle placed upon them. Most of the People remain below us, still dwelling beneath the ground and crawling through dim tunnels.” She looked out at the parents chasing after their children in the park and smiled. “Mercifully, the young have not been weighed down by such fears. It is my hope that they may teach their elders.”

  Spock furrowed his brow. “Although such a preference for subterranean existence is no longer necessary in this environment,” he said, “I fail to see the harm in allowing it to continue. There are certain advantages to underground dwellings, such as thermal regulation and protection from meteorological extremes or solar radiation. And this region is not prone to geologic upheaval.”

  “To see the problem, Commander Spock, you must look beyond the superficial,” Commissioner Soreth told him in a stern, lecturing tone. “If the rank and file of Lorini are irrationally attached to the custom of dwelling underground, it is only logical to infer that they cling similarly to other atavisms. There is resistance to change on all levels, and as you have seen, it has reached the point of violent fanaticism. Indeed, that is the very reason you are here.”

  “Yes, it is, Commissioner,” Kirk replied, disliking the way he addressed Spock like a slow pupil, but keeping his own tone quiet and civil. “Governess, of course I’m disturbed by what I’ve seen today, but we need to understand the causes behind these attacks if we’re to be able to help. Am I right to understand that they’re being launched by a group that still worships the Oracle?”

  “Quite correct, Captain,” said Natira.

  “Even though they know now that the Oracle was simply a machine?”

  “Even so. They have been shown the truth and yet they still deny it. They have even kept the priesthood alive, appointing a new high priestess after I cast aside that fraudulent role.” She lowered her eyes. “It is an embarrassment. My administration has done all it could to bring the truth to the People. We have made the contents of the Book of the People available to all, and have aggressively spread literacy so that they may understand it. We have brought them Federation schooling, given them terminals to access Federation informational networks. Commissioner Soreth has organized frequent seminars to promote knowledge of science, of technology, of Fabrini and galactic history. Yet these foul superstitions linger, as though the People are too blind to see what is before their eyes!”

  “If I may, Governess,” Lindstrom said, then turned to the newcomers. “The reality is more complicated than that. Yes, the people were shown that the Oracle is a computer—but you have to keep in mind, they didn’t know what a computer was. As you saw on Yonada, its people had either regressed or been deliberately placed by the builders at a preindustrial level. To them, the technology of the Oracle was supernatural power. When you or I see the mechanisms behind the temple, we think ‘Oh, the Oracle is just a computer.’ And since computers are everyday things to us, that demystifies and diminishes it in our eyes. But what many of the Yonadi, the Lorini come away with is, ‘Oh, a computer is a kind of Oracle.’ And that means they see computers as something mystical and powerful, even something to be worshipped.”

  “Deus ex machina,” Kirk observed.

  “Literally, sir. The cult that’s taken responsibility for the attacks, led by a man named Dovraku, is one that embraces this point of view to an extreme. They worship machine logic above all, advocate a rigid way of life in which people are ruled by a computer’s calculations… a lot like Beta III was under Landru, in fact. We’ve had cultists come to the Federation consulate and pray to our mainframe.”

  “Indeed,” added Soreth, “their propaganda condemns the Federation for what it sees as a policy to subjugate or destroy artificial intelligences on other worlds—a ‘war against the gods,’ as they describe it. They believe you came to Yonada with a specific agenda to destroy their Oracle. You, Captain Kirk, have a particular reputation as a ‘godkiller.’ ”

  “Who, me?” Kirk put on his best doe-eyed innocent face, though the humor was lost on the sour Vulcan.

  “And in fact, the current uprising seems directly inspired by your recent encounter with the entity called V’Ger.”

  This time Kirk’s surprise was dead serious. “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as it is possible to be when dealing with the irrational motivations of religious fanatics. The propaganda states that V’Ger’s… transformation represents a failure of your latest deicidal effort, and is thus an omen, a signal to the people to rise up and overthrow the secular order, at which point the Oracle will be magically resurrected.”

  Kirk sat back, dismayed. Damn this reputation! He’d thought the publicity and sensationalizing of his missions had only been a nuisance, an embarrassment. But now, apparently it had spread even to this remote world, thanks to those Federation network terminals, and it was gett
ing people killed. He knew it was irrational to feel responsible—the blame lay with those who misrepresented his actions, and those who used them as an excuse to act out their own malicious urges—but he did nonetheless. “Governess… if there’s anything I can do to resolve this situation, rest assured I will.”

  “Of that I have never had any doubt, Captain Kirk,” Natira told him. “What I ask is that you provide your security forces to help protect the innocent from these fanatics, and to use the technologies at your disposal to help us root them out of their hiding places and ensure that they are brought to justice.”

  Kirk pondered her request. The Prime Directive forbade taking sides militarily in an internal conflict, true; but the aggressors here were not a rival state, merely a band of misguided fanatics. This would be more along the lines of a peacekeeping effort, apprehending a group of criminals.

  But before he could answer Natira, Lindstrom spoke up. “Captain, I advise against that. The actual terrorists are only a small minority, but they have a great deal of popular support. The Fabrini have been a religious people for a long time, and their faith is still important to most of them. If we send in the troops, it could be seen as an attack on their belief system, on their whole way of life. And that would just make things worse.”

  “I must interrupt,” Soreth said. “Having heard this line of argument before, I can tell you that Commander Lindstrom is about to propose negotiation, although he is well aware that it is against Federation policy to negotiate with terrorists.”

  “I’m not saying we should negotiate with terrorists. I’m saying we should negotiate with the nonviolent majority that has the same grievances as the terrorists. Right now they’re sympathetic to the extremists, keeping quiet about what they know, maybe even helping to hide them, because they think the extremists are the only ones that can do anything about their concerns. Most of them don’t like Dovraku’s tactics, but they don’t see any other way of bringing about change. If we can show the masses that they have a legitimate avenue for addressing their grievances, then we can marginalize the terrorists, strip them of their support.”