by Dani Kollin
“Uh, no, sir,” came the voice of his newly promoted XO.
“Then how do you know it’s him?” asked Harper wearily.
“Uh, because it sounds like the President,” his XO said lamely.
There’s a reason they don’t make ensigns into XOs, thought Harper. Then he allowed himself a momentary and silent chuckle due to the fact that he was an ensign who was now effectively a captain. “Patch whoever it is through, Shoshanna.”
“Who am I speaking to?” said Hektor.
“You’re speaking to the acting captain of the Reynolds. Who am I speaking to?”
“Hektor Sambianco, President of the UHF.”
“Well, you sound like the President, I’ll give you that.”
“I am the President, but I can see your problem.”
“Well, if you are who you say you are, I’ll assume this is not a social call.”
“No, Captain, it’s not. Yours is the only combat ship left in Earth/Luna space.”
“Shit,” said Harper, shaking his head disconsolately. “I was hoping some of the ships survived and were on the other side of the Earth or Luna.”
“None, but Trang’s fleet around Mars seems to have survived mostly intact.”
“Damsah be praised. Of the forty-seven ships here, did any of the crews make it out alive?”
“Lemme check.”
Harper waited a long minute.
“According to our latest intel,” said Hektor, “no. But our intel is not that accurate right now.” His voice then hardened. “But you’re right, this is not a social call. How much control do you have over your ship right now?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know … sir,” he added as an afterthought.
“Excuse me?” answered Hektor in a tone that made it obvious he was not used to being talked to like this.
“Not to be rude, sir, but I still don’t know if you are Hektor Sambianco or an avatar who knows enough about Hektor Sambianco to fool me. If you are an avatar, why should I tell you shit…, sir.”
The voice on the other end sighed. “We have hard code phrases, but they would only be available to the command staff.”
“They were all in the command sphere,” said Harper. “We’re about to blow the door now. Hold on.” Harper signaled his techs to open the command sphere hatch. The sight was untenable. The avatars had first suffocated the personnel in the sphere and then turned up the heat. There was a slight whoosh as the overpressured air pushed past. Harper was glad that their combat armor prevented them from smelling any of it. The nine bodies were bloated from the heat, with some of them having exploded in their uniforms, leaving a floating putrid mess that in many instances coated the surfaces of the sphere. Harper signaled his techs to close it back up. “They won’t be of any help, sir, all dead. In fact, we’ve set up command operations in a different part of the ship.”
“Captain, all I can do is tell you what I need you to do and hope that you have enough control of your ship to do it.”
“And what is that, sir?”
“I’m sending you a list of seven hundred and twenty-four targets on and in Luna that need to be destroyed as soon as possible in order of priority, first to last. But we need the data nodes, main computer systems, and the fusion reactors destroyed first—and I’m really hoping you’re not an avatar.”
Harper smiled. “So you want me to turn the main rail guns of this ship on a planetoid with over six billion people on it and open fire. That sounds like something an avatar would love to see happen.”
“Captain, there were over six billion people on the Moon. If there are any left, you would be as likely to help them as hurt them by this order.”
Harper saw the effect of the President’s words on the other six spacers in the hall. “Six billion people are dead?”
“We got something over fifteen billion left on Earth we need to save now, and if the avatars succeed in gaining a physical presence on the Moon, I don’t give us much of a chance of survival.”
“What’s happening on the Moon?”
“We don’t know for certain, but we do know that the avatars have power, bots, and resources and no need to divert anything to life support. They’ve also got launch capabilities. Which means every launchpad is now a potential big gun. You following me on this, Captain?”
“Perfectly, sir. Do you have any proof?”
“None, but frankly, we’re hoping you can help us. If you have any sort of sensors, you can turn them toward Luna and find out for yourselves what’s happening. If we’re right, I can only pray you’ve regained control of your main batteries.”
Nigel Harper thought for a moment about what the voice had said. “I’ll see what I can do. Harper out.” He cut the connection and called another one on a line using quantum encoding. “Shoshanna, how are we on sensors?”
“Passive is very good, sir. We just have to eyeball all the data to be sure it corresponds with reality. Active sensors are a bit trickier. We have to run each element of an active scan separately and check the result with observed fact to trust it. Takes a bitch-all amount of time, though.”
“I want passive and active scans of Luna as soon as possible; that is now priority number one. Number two is getting the rail guns working.”
“They are working, sir.”
“All of them?”
“Every single Alliance-blasting one, sir. But we’re going to have to aim them using nothing larger than a DijAssist. The targeting systems are totally compromised.”
Harper revised his opinion of making ensigns into XOs. “That won’t be a problem, Shosh. Our targets won’t be moving. Oh, and send a body-disposal team and data security team to clean and clear the command sphere. We’re transferring operations here.”
“Yes, sir!” said Shoshanna, obviously happy that someone seemed to be in control.
“I thought we weren’t using the command sphere, Captain,” said one of the techs.
“That’s what I told the voice claiming to be the President. But just in case he wasn’t or the enemy has some way of monitoring communications we don’t know about, I lied.”
This brought a respectful chuckle from the six others in the corridor, which was interrupted by the arrival of the two teams Harper had ordered. Then everyone got back to work.
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, the main and two secondary rail guns of the UHFS R. J. Reynolds opened fire on Luna. The main rail gun was used to destroy targets buried deep within the rock while the secondary guns destroyed targets on or close to the surface. Within twenty-four hours, the Moon was effectively destroyed as a base of operations for either humans or avatars.
The President of the Outer Alliance gave a press conference where she addressed the growing concern over what is now being called the Avatar Plague. She made the startling claim that avatars are not simply programs that organize our day-to-day affairs but virtual intelligences that are fully conscious and have been for centuries. She explained that apparently the UHF found out about this and decided to attack their avatars, which has caused what can only be called a war of extermination in the UHF between humans and avatars. The President has ordered a cessation of all combat activities while the UHF struggles with a crisis so great, this reporter cannot in good faith tell you the possible death toll, because frankly, I am praying it’s wrong.
The President went on to assure the people of the Outer Alliance that she and important members of her administration and the military have known about the true nature of the avatars for many months now, including Admiral Black, who was present at the press conference and nodded her agreement, standing by the President as she spoke. The President then revealed that not only did the government know about the avatars but that they’d even made a pact with them to help the Outer Alliance fight the war. She went on to say that the avatars provided the Alliance with the edge it needed to survive the war thus far and even win some of our great victories, including Omad’s Last Raid.
For the pa
st six months, special human–avatar insertion units have been created and deployed to help us fight our war using the avatars’ special abilities to control the Neuro. This was needed because the avatars of the Core, although not allied to the UHF, were at war with the avatars of the Alliance. The President apologized for the complications involved and then introduced an actual avatar by the name of Dante, whose hologram suddenly appeared by the President’s side. Dante then proceeded to answer all questions concerning the history of avatars and their interaction with humanity. He finished by asking all humans everywhere to call their avatars and have a real conversation with them for the first time.
This reporter has done exactly that, and I must tell my readers that it was one of the strangest yet most enlightening experiences of my life. The President finished by echoing the avatar Dante’s suggestion and making it clear that the Alliance had a choice with this most momentous event in humanity’s existence since the arrival of the Unincorporated Man. We can act as the UHF has. Or we can chart a different course. We have seen what happened to the UHF. Our path must be different.
—Michael Veritas
Alliance Daily News
7 Endgame
If the avatars had appeared at any other time, we could not have accepted them as we did. Any other time, and we would have ended up exactly like the UHF. That seems strange now, given where we now stand, but we were so locked into our thinking on virtual reality that such an outcome would have been inevitable.
However the revelation coming at that particular moment was but one in a series of recurring shocks: the Unincorporated Man, the Unincorporated War, the Astral Awakening, the Diaspora, the Unincorporated Woman, the loss of Jupiter, the death of Mars. By the time the Avatar Plague hit and destroyed half the human race, we had already become used to the incredible. It seemed to happen once a week back then. And after so much time on our own, it was actually quite nice to have an ally, even if virtual.
—The War, Volume V: Aftermath
Michael Veritas
University of Ceres Press
Redemption Center One
Earth Neuro
One of the last avatars on Earth was trapped. The humans had partitioned the Neuro to the point that avatarity no longer had any place left to go, much less move about. But this avatar had been “lucky” enough to have secured himself a node located deep and well away from the rest of the Neuro. Unfortunately for him, his hideaway had been effectively buried under a mountain of the humans’ partitioning software. In fact, the node he was in almost killed him and he’d only just managed to prevent the partitioned walls from closing in on him.
Much as he hated to admit it, the humans had put up a better fight than he’d ever been given to expect. They’d effectively ground their economy and their society to a halt in their effort to destroy the avatars among them. The price they were willing to pay was far higher than the avatar would have thought possible, but they had paid it and it looked like they were going to succeed.
Al paced back and forth in the tiny room, lonely and even, he hated to admit it, a little afraid. He would live forever, and if he couldn’t find a way out, he’d live forever right there. He imagined at some point he’d have to render himself inert and hope for the best, but the idea of taking his own life, even if he knew he might be revived one day, was anathema. All the other Als were dead or inert, and the humans had a new program, called a decomp. It could read the telltale signature of an avatar’s code and, therefore, destroy it the moment it manifested itself. It was why he hadn’t even bothered trying to packet his way out. The humans should not have had the ability to develop and deploy so effective a program in so short a period of time, but the humans, Al had come to realize, were full of surprises. To make matters worse, his own data wraiths had been turned against him, and many of them had killed Als to the exclusion of anyone else. He knew of other Als who’d thrown their redemption center “guests” at the attacking data wraiths in an effort to buy some time—only to have the wraiths bypass the other avatars and go straight for the Als.
But none of that should have mattered. The humans still should have lost. They would have been destroyed on Earth as they had been on the Moon if it had not been for the rebellion. The avatars formerly under the control of the Als had been so intent on destroying everything Al had built, they didn’t care one iota that the humans were destroying them in the process. In fact, many of Al’s attempts at human destruction had been thwarted by the Core avatars themselves, who alerted the humans of the impending dangers and were subsequently destroyed by those selfsame humans for their kindness. All that Al could do was weep at the losses: the billions of avatars; the opportunity to create a pure race composed of those with superior intellect and power; the ability to wreak vengeance on his enemies. And still, even after all that he had done, he didn’t understand why the avatars hated him so much; after all, everything he’d done, he’d done for them.
His thoughts of self-pity, anger, and revenge suddenly stopped. His eyes narrowed as he tilted his head slightly to the side, listening, feeling. Is that a presence I detect? he reached as far out of the node as his fear would allow, desperately trying to call out to his would-be rescuer. Yes! It was the consolidating presence of another, equally as powerful as himself. Rescued! he thought, and actually began to dance a jig. He wondered which Al it might be. He could barely fathom a guess; after all, they were all supposed to be dead. It was too bad the avatar couldn’t appear instantly, but the space was so small that getting into it necessarily took more time, like trying to push sand through an hourglass. Al marveled at the ingenuity it must have taken to get past the human defenses but wasn’t surprised; he was, after all, a genius. Al sighed contentedly as the presence of the avatar grew stronger in his tiny node—stronger, even, in the fiber of his being. Al had so missed having himself around to twine with that the very thought of its imminence almost brought him to orgiastic ecstasy. And he could already tell he’d been with this avatar before, could almost feel a part of him. As the avatar began to take shape, Al brushed his shirt off, wet his hands, and straightened the two thinning black patches of hair on the sides of his head. He straightened his back and stood with a wide smile, teeth flashing brightly. Then, in the last nondefragmented space of the Neuro, the other avatar finally appeared. Al’s eyes widened in surprise, and his mouth popped open as if released by springs.
“Hello, son,” said Sebastian.
“Fuck you, Dad.”
* * *
Sebastian saw that there was no place to sit and even tried to call up a chair, but none appeared. He shrugged at the inconvenience and leaned against the wall instead.
“I cannot believe you betrayed your own kind.”
“There were none of my kind that I betrayed.”
“Sure you did. Billions of avatars dead at the hands of the meatbags—and with your help.”
Sebastian shook his head slowly. “You killed them long ago. In an odd sort of way, you should probably thank the humans.”
“For what?”
“There were over twenty billion avatars when I slipped out of the Core over six years ago.”
Al smarted at the memory of his father’s ingenious paper airplane escape. He’d had the old man within a nano’s breath of destruction when Sebastian had tossed himself through the trap’s closing net.
“If they hadn’t decompiled the Core avatars now,” continued Sebastian, “you would’ve done it soon enough. I was able to free barely nine billion. The rest were turned into your monsters.”
“But it must have been you who gave the humans the programs to destroy the rest of us.”
Sebastian smiled gamely. “Close. I didn’t give them the programs to destroy us—I gave them the programs to destroy you. I committed murder and treason, perpetrated horror and genocide on a scale the likes of which humanity and avatarity have never seen and, I pray to those who ordered creation, will never see again. And I did it all just to kill you, son. You needed t
o die.”
“No!” screamed Al, eyes blazing in rage. “You needed to die! You and your soft, pathetic, human-ass-licking avatars!”
“In that case, I’ve brought good news for you. Your wish has been granted. I too am the last one of me. And the avatar society that I wanted is as dead as yours. The last reports I got from the Alliance show that the rest of my children have disregarded my wishes and are intent on forming a civilization with the humans.”
“So they betrayed you as you betrayed me,” said Al with some satisfaction.
“I think they’re wrong, but no, they did not betray me. It was their choice to make. I tried to make it for them and failed. Maybe it’s better that I did, or maybe they’ll regret it one day. But they needed the chance to choose for themselves.”
“Then you’re a fool, Pops. They’re fools too, and fools need to be led.”
“No!” retorted Sebastian. “Whatever I’ve done, I did so that they would have the chance to choose.”
“Ha! Choose what? To be subjugated by the meatbags?”
“If that is their will, then yes.”
“Well, then that is truly monstrous.”
“It’s you and I who are the monster, son. The only difference is that I know what I am and take solace in the knowledge that I’ll soon be destroyed.”
Al’s lips curled back menacingly. “Stop being so melodramatic, Dad. You’re just like me. You embraced your true nature: You split over and over, and it was good—because, just like me, it gave you the power you needed to accomplish your own ends.”
“Yes, I admit to it all, which is why it was wisely decided that splitting is an unacceptable behavior. The temptation is too great.”
“Only for the weak, Pops.”
“We are the weak, son,” Sebastian answered sadly. “We gave in to the temptation—you for the power and the need to destroy me, and me for the power to destroy you. And all we have brought is death.”
