I remember Gray World ....
That wasn't its name, at least before. Before it was named something
else, a meaningless juxtaposition of transliterated characters I only
now recall as glyphs on the galactic star map. A terraformed garden
world, painstakingly wrestled back from entropy, home to twenty
billions of various clades of postmodern humans, forty billions of
provolved sea-dwellers, and uncounted billions of sapient minds
residing in computers, vecs, virtual reality simulations, and even more
exotic species within the simplistic classification "AI Life".
Living, recreating, and exchanging information in the post-modern
version of the great evolutionary spiral of life in its many wondrous
forms, nurtured by a benevolent god of ascended intelligence of a scale
to dwarf to collective intellect of all its charges.
The name doesn't mean anything anymore. There's nothing left to give it
context.
* * *
"Wakey wakey!"
The sun rose over a glorious cobalt-blue ocean, as I stretched and
rolled out of a hammock between two tall coconut trees, dropping onto
cool sand, morning tide lapping over my bare feet.
"Cara, do you have to sound so irritatingly cheerful this morning?"
"Well, its not really morning -- unless you'd like a different scene in
your quarters."
The sun stretched vermillion fingers over jagged, snow-capped
mountains, brisk morning air fogged by my exhalation, snow piled up to
my calves, trailing icy tendrils down my ankles and onto the
hard-frozen ground . The creatures of light and air were awakening,
taking in the warmth of the sky.
"Arrggh! Stop that!"
Space. Vast, achingly lonely. No breath to breathe, though at my
current metabolic rate I probably wouldn't notice for half an hour or
so. Hanging alone in infinity, an insignificant speck in the vast
cosmos.
"Nice try Cara, but I can detect the utility fog holding me up, and my
vestibular sense tells me I'm not weightless."
I was lowered to the floor by a slight sheen of iridescence, swirling
down the grating of my now quite bare room.
"Good, your brain is functioning now. What is it about Space that makes
you so maudlin?"
"Waking up from a long nap. So how long has it been this time, Cara?"
"Tell me again why you wear a watch?"
"You know the answer to that."
"Hungry? Let me guess ...."
"Not bad," I said, between forkfulls of omelette. "The cheese is
spot-on, and you're getting much better at the coffee."
"You have such quaint tastes. And it is, in fact, real cheese."
"I'm impressed."
"You should be. That's a ridiculous amount of effort."
"Protein glop and engineered taste molecules just don't compare."
* * *
Pre-Singularity humans had stared over the brink of extinction into the
nuclear hell-furnace below. Luck, or pluck, or some other agency
allowed monkey-brains to pull back and, for the most part, spend the
next century accelerating downslope into the altogether different
exponential cliff that was the Singularity, the Diaspora, and the rest
of history birthing modern Terragen civilization, with its new gods and
clades and unimaginably varied expressions of life and sentience.
The ancient philosphers of my kind posit life and death existing in a
duality. I still think of them: barely tool-using, constantly
struggling, blighted with diseases, old age, untamed environments,
unconquered predators, intellects dwarfed by the gigantic archailects
of modern times. I think of how, in spite of the insurmountable odds of
the universe, they grasped essential truths of existence, and I smile.
Grimly. They were right. Existence is a Mandelbrot pattern of recurring
contexts, spiralling above and below in fathomless
complexity. The exponential flowering of sapience that was the
Singularity brought to the stars new and terrible plagues of death and
destruction far beyond the ken of humankind.
At least in all-out nuclear war or asteroid bombardment, the
cockroaches and microbes survive.
Or perhaps it was already here, waiting for us.
It was waiting for Gray World, borne on faint radio signals too dim for
any but the most sensitive ear backed by a hyper-expansive mind to take
in and decode the terrible information content within.
Caretaker had already forced the gate when we arrived at Briefing. We
stared at the silently expanding cloud of debris, remnants of the old
wormhole waystation and whatever defenders that had been arrayed
against us. The tactical displays showed thousands of Caretaker globes
enveloping the Stargate: perimeter safely established. The bulk of
Caretaker had yet to pass the wormhole, but E knew my squad always
liked to have an early look at things, once the starside situation had
stabilized.
"There probably isn't much for you to do here, but I know how curious
you are, " said Cara, seemingly just behind me.
"...And you thought it might be educational, eh? Well, if you didn't
false-color all my displays, I'd just be looking at a bunch of
bright sparks against a background of dim sparks."
"Well, you are visually oriented, and I have to do something to get
your attention ...."
"You already outdid yourself waking me up. Always an adventure."
She laughed. "That's what you signed up for, isn't it?"
"Right, that's me, standing by and ready to loot, pillage, and burn...
I mean, save civilized planets from the forces of darkness."
"I always knew you were good for something."
"And what does that imply?"
"Nothing. Be still, my knight in shining armor."
Scowling, I turned my attention to my displays, overlaid with
false-color highlights.
See the grand tour of the burned out star system, visited upon with the
full horrors of nano-mimetic warfare. Look at the dead cinder cores of
the four in-system gas giants, their masses stripped to feed the
engines of their destruction.
"There's the power transmitter array," said Recon. He? She? It? was
still a little new at this game, gesturing with one of its (temporary)
appendages even while designating the target on the squads displays. Or
perhaps it was something in the way Ambimorphs were wired.
"Good job spotting it, Recon. I can't make it out even with sensors
maxxed", said Heavy.
"Well, shape recognization is my specialty," replied Recon.
"Yeah, you'll do, kid. You'll do."
I grunted once, which the rest of the squad correctly interpreted as
"cut the chatter, and get back to business". I did have a good feeling
about the new Recon, and was glad to see Heavy taking it under one of
his tentacles. Heavy could always be relied on to make newcomers feel
welcome; the big cheery provolved octopus was "big older brother" to
half the squad, and I secretly fretted that losing him would do more
damage to morale than even the massive firepower he personally wielded.
One thing never figured to me. I mean, when your physical body doesn't
have a fixed shape, how would you possibly develop shape recognition to
the degree the Ambimorphs had?
"They communicate via shape, dearie".
"Listening in again, Cara? You know, some men would consider a woman
constantly in their thoughts to be a bad thing."
"The knuckledragging, thick-browed, me Tarzan you Jane kind."
"Now now, we may have to go in and rescue a clade like that some day."
"We already have. I'm very diplomatic when I want to be."
"You mean, because nobody but me can hear you."
"That's not always true."
"You've been cheating on me again!"
"That's a quaint concept."
"Leave me alone, so I can think cheating thoughts to myself."
"What's privacy?"
"When you have a space that no one else has access to. Your own head,
for example."
"Was there ever any privacy?"
Hmmm. She got me on that one. I hate that.
"I know."
I initiated a full systems inspection and diagnostics routine, as a
way of limbering up.
"That's not much of a distraction, you know."
"Go away."
She laughed. I looked around my squad to see if anyone was reading my
expressions, but they seemed lost in their own thoughts. But that was
one of the points in physical congregation after all; so I could assess
their mental and physical condition after hibernation.
* * *
I can't really fathom destruction on this scale, any more than I can
count grains of sand on a beach or number the stars in the Universe.
You watch the remains and ashes go by on display, but it doesn't really
register, intellectually or emotionally. Perhaps a hundred billion
thinking beings, many of them similiar to my own species, had met
unutterably awful ends terminating in that terrible, terrible whisper
into the void. Yet the tragedy was too vast to have a face, or a name,
or anything more than a simple sickening twist deep in my gut.
Instead, the abiding sense of horror I got was generated from
post-contextualization, superimposing the silent cenotaphs with my own
imaginings of events, fed by my all too real up-close-and-personal
remembrances.
We passed the remains of the ring transmitter, neutralized by a
flotilla of Caretaker's modules, tattered strips of trash that once
stretched along an entire orbital of the primary. We brooded in silence
as our modules glided by many more derelicts unseen by us; the former
occupants of this busy hub of interstellar civilization.
In our line of business, it was always "Hurry up and wait."
And finally, ahead of us, gray, poisoned garden world, studded with
soaring, delicate towers visible even from our distance, just beginning
to melt under bombardment.
"Sarge", said Recon, "those aren't what I think they are?"
"Yes, they are. Time to pay attention!" I said, right on cue.
Waiting time was over.
External sensor feeds switched over to tactical briefing as the General
began addressing us, individually in our own contextualized fashion.
"Initial defense suppression phases have been completed," said the
General in the crisp tones of the battle-scarred war hero my psyche had
supplied.
"We have coopted the primary power grid and have begun preliminary
EMCON suppression and close-orbit supremacy operations. Opposition has
been relatively light, and this phase is expected to terminate within
thirty minutes.
"You will begin insertion in a class IV borer, with full orbital
softening and close-in support, target penetration depth twenty two
hundred kilometers to mantle beneath the aesthenosphere gradient in the
subduction zone of what was once the West Ocean.
"You are to secure a beach-head at the insertion point.
"Once this objective has been completed, you are to transit via tunnel
to the main tectonic control station, and secure a beach-head there.
"If this objective has been satisfied with appropriate results, you are
to move on to secure the main power control station and the
hibernation/backup chambers within the power station and await further
orders.
"Are there any questions?"
"Sir, why are we doing this, sir? This is a dead system ...."
Of course, the new guy always asks the ....
"Good question, Recon. I'll answer: because, despite appearances, there
are still possibly survivors here that may be able to relate what
happened, and are worth saving in any event, if we can do so
successfully."
"But how could there be .... oh", said Recon, the answer finally
dawning.
"A fine question, Recon. I'm glad the answer was instructive. Are there
any further questions?"
"Are we looking for anything or anyone in particular, sir?" I asked.
"That's on a need to know basis, Sargeant," replied the General,
catching my eye.
I'd know soon enough.
"More questions about the mission plan?"
"Why are we going in so hot?" asked Point, indicating the ferociously
radiant fog hiding a planetary surface melting under furious orbital
bombardment. "The crust won't even be cool ...."
"Well," intoned the General, taking on the tones we'd heard in Briefing
at least a thousand times, "we wish to maximize shock effect and
minimize enemy preparation time. Your borer's monopolium hull will
simply sink through most of the mantle until you reach target depth,
and we'll have several combat drones on task for close support. In
particular, we wish to minimize the time the memory cores can be
powered and infected."
"If they haven't been already," said Recon.
"Yeah, that's what we're there to find out," said Point.
"That's what we do," said Heavy.
"Sounds like a primary objective to me", I said.
"Another excellent question, Point," the General approved. "Are there
any others?"
No one else felt like being instructed.
"All right people, " I said briskly (Though who knows how it was
translated? I didn't care, as long as the job was done.) "You know the
drill: make your peace, get your gear, get ready!"
Ready to mount an orbital-to-subsurface transport through heavy EMP
that made all but wired communication impossible (and would fry any
nanites subjected to its radiance), down to the molten surface still
glowing from defense suppression, to burrow two thousand kilometers
into the crust of a dead planet to the remaining warm bits, secure
tectonic control, secure a powerstation, and hope to get to a bunch of
backup copies and offline memory cores soon enough to sort out and
preserve something worth saving.
In the face of an already successful opponent that had strip-mined the
system and co-opted all available life to its own purpose, with nothing
to do but wait for our arrival.
And this one was simple.
Did I say I liked my job?
Cara saw fit to not comment, just then.
