Surface Detail

That was the war they were losing, and that meant that if they were serious about what they had been trying to do – and were still trying to do – then they were going to have to think about cheating. And if cheating didn’t work, then – despite all the accords and laws and customs and regulations, despite all the agreements and solemn treaties – there was always the truly last resort: the Real.

The ultimate cheating…How the hell did we get into this? he asked himself, though of course he already knew the answer. He knew all the answers. Everybody did. Everybody knew everything and everybody knew all the answers. It was just that the enemy seemed to know better ones.

Nobody knew who had first developed the ability to transcribe a naturally evolved creature’s mind-state. Various species asserted that they or their ancestors had been the ones responsible, but few of the claims were credible and none convincing. It was a technology that had been around in some form for billions of years and it was continually being re-invented somewhere out amongst the ever-churning stew of matter, energy, information and life that was the greater galaxy.

And continually being forgotten, too, of course; lost when ingénue civs were in the wrong place at the wrong time and copped a nearby gamma ray buster or a sudden visit from advanced unfriendlies. Other hopefuls accidentally – or by demented design – blew themselves up or poisoned themselves or their birthplace, or contrived some other usually highly avoidable catastrophe for themselves.

No matter; whether you made it up all by yourself or got the makings from somebody else, once it was possible to copy a creature’s mind-state you could, as a rule, if you had the relevant background and the motivation, start to make at least part of your religion real.

“Vatueil, we’re running out of time here, son. We need to come in there. You need to stand down, do you understand? You need to off-line your… let me just see here… your Aggressive Response, Target Acquisition and Weapon Deployment modules. Do you think you can do that? We don’t want to have to come in there and… we don’t want to have to come in there and treat you like an enemy.”

“Sir.” (A different different voice. It was going to be easier to number them.) “Couldn’t be dead, could it?” (Different voice 2.)

“Yeah. Maybe Xagao got it.” (Different voice 3.)

“With his itsy carbine? With one from the half-clip he got off before it blew his fucking arm and both legs off? Have you seen the specs on this thing?” (Different voice 1.)

“It isn’t dead. He isn’t dead. He’s there and he’s listening to everything we’re saying.”

“Sir?” (Different voice 4.)

“What?”

“Xagao’s dead, sir.” (Different voice 4.)

“Shit. Okay. Vatueil, listen; we’ve got one man dead out here. You understand that? You killed him, Vatueil. You dropped our TT and now you’ve killed one of us.” (TT stood for Troop Transport.) “Now, nobody’s going to punish you for this, we know it wasn’t your fault, but you have to stand down now before somebody else gets hurt. We don’t want to have to come in there and disable you ourselves.”

“What? Are you fucking crazy? We’re seven suits against a fucking monster robot space tank piece of shit! We won’t have a hope in-” (Different voice 1.)

“Will you shut the fuck up? I’m not telling you again. One more word and you’re on a fucking charge. In fact, you are on a fucking charge. That thing can hear you, you fucking moron, and you just gave it our whole fucking status. If we do pile in, you’re now officially leading the fucking charge, genius.”

“Fuck.” (Different voice 1 = Genius.)

“Shut up. Vatueil?”

Seven. There were seven of them. That was useful to know.

Almost every developing species had a creation myth buried somewhere in its past, even if by the time they’d become space-faring it was no more than a quaint and dusty irrelevance (though, granted, some were downright embarrassing). Talking utter drivel about thunderclouds having sex with the sun, lonely old sadists inventing something to amuse themselves with, a big fish spawning the stars, planets, moons and your own ever-so-special People – or whatever other nonsense had wandered into the most likely feverish mind of the enthusiast who had come up with the idea in the first place – at least showed you were interested in trying provide an explanation for the world around you, and so was generally held to be a promising first step towards coming up with the belief system that provably worked and genuinely did produce miracles: reason, science and technology.