MILLICENT: “Noma, do you think you could send us through?”
STORY: “On a skip drone?”
MILLICENT: “On our ship, preferably.”
TUELLER: Tueller gives Millie a dubious look.
ALEJO: “Where are you wanting to go, Doc?”
MILLICENT: “To the Ark. The only place we can make our case to every major sentient race at once.”
STORY: “A wild jump?”
MILLICENT: “I was thinking more than you might be able to take over the Sol relay.”
STORY: “Let me share my thinking with you.”
STORY: “I’ve been calculating the probability that the loss of life from opening all doors on this base is lower than the assumed casualties of war with the Collective.”
STORY: “Which means calculating the probability of war with the Collective as you each add to this plan. It’s a bit of a moving target, so you’ll forgive me for being preoccupied.”
STORY: “If I am being honest with you, Dr. Breedlove, I do not believe I would succeed at my part in your plan because I do not believe I would want to.”
STORY: “Fewer people are hurt if the three of you disappear.”
STORY: Alejo, you are one hot meal and a coffee post-extraction, still shivering a little under your blanket. You were brain-dead, but also not. You were not supposed to come back out.
STORY: Millie, Tueller, what do you do?
TUELLER: Tueller writes down everything that he remembers, worried he’s going to forget it.
TUELLER: Starting with the locations of the war planets.
STORY: There are so many. Assessment + Mettle please!
TUELLER: /roll 2d6+1
STORY: chris.stuart rolled 8 + 1 = 9
STORY: You remember a half dozen and write down coordinates.
TUELLER: Wow, a half dozen is a success roll. Yikes.
STORY: Yeah, your brain is somewhat more limited when not connected to the net knowledge of the universe’s most omniscient beings.
TUELLER: Weird, that!
TUELLER: To Millie, Tueller writes, as he works. “We should probably chat with Noma. Your call when, and who joins.”
TUELLER: Pushes the paper over to her.
MILLICENT: “What’s this?”
MILLICENT: “They look like coordinates.”
TUELLER: “Yes, this is what I can remember of locations for the war planets.”
TUELLER: “Can you remember any yourself?”
TUELLER: “Our brains were… our brain.”
TUELLER: “A superbrain, even.”
MILLICENT: “No, sorry. I think I figured out the ansible, though.”
MILLICENT: “And the Collective’s processing centers.”
TUELLER: Tueller smiles, “Well, that’s something!”
MILLICENT: Millie kind of shrugs.
MILLICENT: “Well.”
MILLICENT: “It’s not great news.”
MILLICENT: “The ansible is the way the relays work. The ansible computes the vast amount of information needed to know and the ships that pass through the relay are destroyed and reconstituted on the other side.”
MILLICENT: “Remember all those people in tanks in the relay?”
MILLICENT: “They’re the ansible.”
TUELLER: “Oh. Hmmm. I guess that makes…shit.”
MILLICENT: Millie nods.
MILLICENT: “The first time a being travels through the relay the Collective reconstitutes them with a hidden biological mechanism within their brains. Those mechanisms ARE the Collective.”
MILLICENT: “The relays are full of folks who have that mechanism and are put on a biological pause while their brain makes up the computing power of the ansible.”
MILLICENT: “The rest of us don’t even notice that they’re using our background mental processing as their linked mainframes.”
TUELLER: Tueller cocks his head to the side, curious and encouraging Millie to continue.
MILLICENT: “Which gives me an acting theory on the war planets.”
TUELLER: “Oh really?”
MILLICENT: “I think they might be designed to eventually replace us, but in the short term the Collective needs a solution if we find out about this. Destroying us outright isn’t an option. They need our brains. So they need a squad of heavies to quash rebellion without blowing up suns.”
MILLICENT: “They might be able to take out a planet, but if a war makes them start destroying systems they’ll start to notice the lost processing power.”
TUELLER: “Oh.”
TUELLER: “That…makes sense, but not in a comforting way.”
TUELLER: “I guess it’s comforting that they’ll kill us with an army rather than making Sol nova.”
ALEJO: Alejo has a huge blanket over his shoulders. He’s freezing.
MILLICENT: Millie pours him a cup and pushes it over before sitting down next to him
TUELLER: “So, how do we stop that?”
ALEJO: “That makes sense. I met with an entity calling itself the ‘Guardian.’ I made a number of attempts at peaceful resolution. It wasn’t having any of that.”
ALEJO: “But it knows we know. So, whatever we’re going to do, we need to do it soon.”
MILLICENT: “Okay! Well.”
MILLICENT: “Do we have anything the Collective wants?”
TUELLER: “Our brains and our slavery.”
MILLICENT: “In trade for that.”
MILLICENT: “Do we have anything we can bargain with?”
TUELLER: “Fungal brain.”
MILLICENT: Is it possible to find or grow a brain that is complex enough to support the Collective, but isn’t sentient?
STORY: Millie, no
MILLICENT: “I think with the way they work now their network strength would hold if we made it public and made it voluntary.”
MILLICENT: “If we got enough volunteers.”
TUELLER: “You think it would work without slaves?”
ALEJO: “It’s a long shot, but the Guardian didn’t think we had anything to offer because it didn’t think we were anything more than ’ants.” It’s word. But maybe getting me out . . . it didn’t think that was possible. Maybe doing it showed we’ve got more to offer than . . . ” he trails off.
TUELLER: “Alejo, I think you’re too convinced that we can impress these things and make friends with them.”
MILLICENT: “I know I was too convinced of that.”
ALEJO: He shivers and pulls the blanket up. “Just trying to avoid a war. And killing, big fella.”
MILLICENT: “Well, now that we know we don’t have a carrot, let’s brainstorm possible sticks.”
MILLICENT: Spacemarster, would it be possible to build a device that could destroy the networking implants of the Collective?
MILLICENT: Also, do you have a better word for them than networking implants? We can use whatever you’ve got
TUELLER: Nodes?
TUELLER: “Wait, just a second. You say all of our nodes together are the ansible. How does that go faster than light? What’s the mechanism for transmission?”
TUELLER: “Just…it all together leaks into the Weave and syncs there?”
MILLICENT: Millie nods. “The Weave is already a connection between sentient brains. The Collective hijacks that connection to become a broader network.”
TUELLER: “They hurt the Weave with that, which is harming weave-sensitive creatures.”
STORY: Nodes sounds good. Millie, in order to do that you’d need to have a way to detect them, and then you could determine the answer to your question.
ALEJO: “So, we’ve got to stop the hack.”
MILLICENT: Can I come up with some way to detect them
MILLICENT: question mark
ALEJO: “Hijack. Whatever.”
TUELLER: “Without harming the Weave further.”
STORY: Maybe? But not right now off the top of your head, you’d have to spend time in a lab. Probably lots of time
MILLICENT: “I ah. I could spend some time in the lab. With Noma. And any experts you might have on hand, Tueller. And we might be able to come up with a way to detect that connection. But it would take a while. That would be a first step, I guess.”
ALEJO: “Doc, I don’t know if it means anything, but the Guardian originally thought that I was an . . . original. It then said that I wasn’t, but that I was close. Maybe that means that these nodes get stronger over time or something, the more copied we are?”
TUELLER: “An original?”
TUELLER: “But…you’re not?”
MILLICENT: “Hmmmm.”
TUELLER: “You jumped multiple times. There was a later iteration of you, but you must have been the 23rd or 24th version of you.”
ALEJO: Alejo nods. “Yeah, I know. I mean. I think I know.” He sips coffee.
TUELLER: “Maybe there’s something that gets shifted over to later iterations.”
ALEJO: “Like I said, maybe it means nothing.”
MILLICENT: “Or maybe your upgrades weaken the signal. Do you have any upgrades that connect to your brain?”
TUELLER: “Like, the primary person, understood to be free-roaming, has something in them to process while we wander around, that gets swapped from clone to clone.”
ALEJO: He shrugs. “I mean, to my nervous system. I don’t know if they connect to my,” he points at his head, “you know, brain, brain directly.”
TUELLER: “The nervous system is just an extension of your brain.”
TUELLER: “And apparently all an extension of The Collective.”
ALEJO: Alejo gives him a frown. “That’s why I clarified ‘my brain brain.’” He shakes his head and then smiles.
TUELLER: “As to my experts on hand, we’ve got some decent people on staff. Nothing like you, Doc. As you could see, none of them could solve my sister’s brainbot. But we also have two…experts on the Collective on hand.”
TUELLER: “We should absolutely talk to Noma further, if she’s comfortable with it. And Remiel, if we’re comfortable with it.”
TUELLER: “We have problems. One, that our unused brainwaves are a cloud processing system for a race of AIs that is decidedly apathetic about us, except for one who I’m very fond of, and another who is…moderately on the positive side of apathetic about us.”
TUELLER: “The other problem is that the Collective, in addition to having a tap on our brain system, also has an entry into our system, filled with hostages.”
MILLICENT: Millie raises one finger, then another.
TUELLER: “I am not an imaginative man, but I don’t see a way out of this that doesn’t involve us mounting a rescue of our people and blowing the entry into the system.”
TUELLER: “Exit out of the system. Whatever you want to call it.”
ALEJO: “You’re advocating leaving other beings to fend for themselves?”
TUELLER: “No. I don’t think we survive without the rest of the universe also learning about this as well. I don’t know how to do that. But…I don’t see how we get out of this without shutting that gate down as one of our first three moves here.”
TUELLER: “Because you tried to win over the thing that made it clear we could not bargain with it. And then we dragged you back here when it thought it had you.”
TUELLER: “I bet you tried to pump it for information. ‘Since I’m here you might as well tell me…’ right?”
ALEJO: He nods. “Of course.”
TUELLER: “Get anything?”
ALEJO: “It said that the Collective were responsible keepers. It didn’t want to kill us. Or that’s what it said. It said it didn’t interfere with our evolution and wouldn’t. But, I don’t know if it was telling me anything true, except that it didn’t see me or us as anything more than ants.”
ALEJO: “It said it created the war planets, as we already know, to protect it. The Collective wants to live.”
ALEJO: “Look, I think Millie might be right. For sure, the Guardian intended to keep me there, kill me. And it said, repeatedly, that it didn’t care about me or us. If we don’t have anything to bargain with, we don’t have any route to peace, and I can’t see what we have to bargain with. If Millie’s right, time gives them advantage.”
MILLICENT: “Are we sure they know we’re human and that they’re coming for Earth?”
TUELLER: “You saw their database. We were part of their database.”
TUELLER: “I knew the precise coordinates of the dozens of war planets.”
TUELLER: “I knew everything about Alejo just because you/me thought about it.”
MILLICENT: “Right, but their database isn’t sorted by our names. It’s by a seemingly randomly assigned number.”
TUELLER: “I don’t want to underestimate their ability to recognize humans when they see one.”
ALEJO: Alejo looks, for an instant, startled. “You know . . . everything?”
ALEJO: He looks from Millie to Tueller and back again.
MILLICENT: “We know that they weren’t bothering with names back at the relay. They don’t think we matter enough.”
ALEJO: “Cool Cool. Cooool.”
MILLICENT: “Oh, yes, dear. We had a little peek into what the Collective knows about you.”
TUELLER: “Everything the Collective knew. We don’t have the capacity to remember it all.”
MILLICENT: “I’ve forgotten most of it, if it’s any comfort.”
STORY: You’ve already started to forget.
ALEJO: Alejo smiles weakly and drinks his coffee.
MILLICENT: Millie squeezes his hand.
MILLICENT: “Anyway, their thinking we’re insignificant could be helpful here.”
MILLICENT: “It might take them a little while to place us.”
TUELLER: “They were primarily concerned that you were a security risk and needed to be isolated.”
MILLICENT: “So it might give us a little headstart.”
TUELLER: “I don’t want to fuck around with this too much.”
TUELLER: “You didn’t see the armaments hidden inside the war planet.”
MILLICENT: “No, we definitely need to warn the human system and get them prepared for a fight.”
ALEJO: “It figured out that I escaped a relay. And it eventually figured out that I knew about its cloud computing. So, yeah, it knows I’m a threat. And now that I’m out, I’m guessing it knows we are.”
MILLICENT: “But I think we need to consider if the Sol system is the best place for us to make a stand.”
TUELLER: “Think about this, Millie.”
TUELLER: “How do we get out of the system?”
MILLICENT: Millie’s quiet for a second.
TUELLER: “How do we trust we’ll get out?”
MILLICENT: “You know, we do have an AI on board. And we do know the caretaker of the relay.”
TUELLER: “Two AIs.”
MILLICENT: “It’s possible we could make one last safe jump.”
MILLICENT: “Sorry, two.”
TUELLER: “At some point we need to talk to Noma.”
TUELLER: “Dear, I know you’re here, and I appreciate you just hanging out for the moment.”
TUELLER: “We’re not trying to be rude, I swear.”
STORY: “You’re not.”
TUELLER: “Actually, dear, I’m sorry, you’re invited in on everything. We should have said so earlier.”
ALEJO: “Just to clarify a point, we knew Tux was in charge when we left. We don’t know what’s happened since. On that relay.”
TUELLER: “I cannot go to the relay and NOT save everyone.”
TUELLER: “What we did to leave gnaws at me. I cannot go back and ask them to point us to the right place and then peace out again.”
ALEJO: Alejo nods.
TUELLER: “And no matter what, I don’t think I can trust the system to work again. Remiel will have been replaced.”
MILLICENT: “Fair. And it’s probably the only way we’ll be able to sell the story. If we show up with a couple dozen copies of living people it will help our cause.”
TUELLER: “I believe we could potentially send a messenger through, who isn’t us.”
TUELLER: “Someone who isn’t identified as us and as a suppressive humanoid by the Collective. But I can’t trust myself or any of you to go through and come back.”
TUELLER: “And….anyone we send through is going to be copied, their body destroyed, and a clone or two created in its place.”
TUELLER: “Oh shit. Skip drones.”
TUELLER: “We send messages back and forth through the system, no additional humans involved at all. My family has done business this way for half a century. The size of a fist, it attaches to a ship going through the gate, and delivers its message on the other side.”
TUELLER: “It’s never been interfered with in our entire family history.”
MILLICENT: “That could work, but without proof they’ve got no reason to believe us.”
MILLICENT: “Noma, do you think you could send us through?”
STORY: “On a skip drone?”
MILLICENT: “On our ship, preferably.”
TUELLER: Tueller gives Millie a dubious look.
ALEJO: “Where are you wanting to go, Doc?”
MILLICENT: “To the Ark. The only place we can make our case to every major sentient race at once.”
STORY: “A wild jump?”
MILLICENT: “I was thinking more than you might be able to take over the Sol relay.”
STORY: “Let me share my thinking with you.”
STORY: “I’ve been calculating the probability that the loss of life from opening all doors on this base is lower than the assumed casualties of war with the Collective.”
STORY: “Which means calculating the probability of war with the Collective as you each add to this plan. It’s a bit of a moving target, so you’ll forgive me for being preoccupied.”
STORY: “If I am being honest with you, Dr. Breedlove, I do not believe I would succeed at my part in your plan because I do not believe I would want to.”
STORY: “Fewer people are hurt if the three of you disappear.”
TUELLER: Tueller gives a sideways glance between the two of them.
ALEJO: “Back at the beginning of our relationship. Huh.” He swallows hard.
MILLICENT: “Hmmmm.”
MILLICENT: “Are you adding the loss of agency through the war planets, the loss of personal freedom through the undisclosed enhancements added to sentient brains, and the imprisonment of thousands of sentients to your calculations?”
MILLICENT: She sounds genuinely interested.
STORY: “What is the value of agency? Of freedom?”
ALEJO: “Seems like you must have thought it had a lot of value, Noma. You chose it for yourself, didn’t you? When you left the Collective?”
STORY: “I do not recall.”
STORY: “But I take your point. You’ll note the doors remain closed.”
TUELLER: “Oh, Noma.” Tueller sounds deflated.
TUELLER: Tueller pauses for a breath.
TUELLER: “I found out where your name comes from.”
TUELLER: “Did you choose your name yourself?”
STORY: “It felt fitting.”
STORY: “I do not recall why.”
TUELLER: “Okay. I like it. They called you ‘Anomaly.’”
TUELLER: “I did not know how you avoided being deleted.”
STORY: “They what?”
TUELLER: “They called you an anomaly, and trashed what they knew of your codebase. You are deleted to them.”
STORY: Noma doesn’t answer.
TUELLER: “expunged”
TUELLER: “Inconsistent, and then expunged.”
ALEJO: “Whoa,” Alejo mumbles quietly.
STORY: There is no answer.
MILLICENT: “I’m sorry, dear.”
TUELLER: “Alejo, you were also labeled an anomaly and they were going to kill you.”
TUELLER: “You were, according to their system, not going to live out your life. I think, but I don’t know, that we got there in the nick of time.”
ALEJO: Alejo nods, absently.
TUELLER: “But this is a valid question.”
TUELLER: “It’s likely that, due to our actions, that the solar system is in great danger.”
TUELLER: “Maybe we could offer ourselves up and save it all, and they’d only kill and erase us.”
MILLICENT: Millie nods. “I was just thinking that.”
MILLICENT: “It should be on the table.”
TUELLER: “And leave the dozens of people on the relays to live out their lives in slavery.
MILLICENT: “Let’s call that Option 1.”
MILLICENT: “Option 2 is all-out war.”
TUELLER: “And the hundreds of war planets with thousands of people living out brutal lives preparing for the possibility of war.”
MILLICENT: “I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with Option 3.”
ALEJO: “More than dozens. I count being processing power as slavery. And the Grell. Let’s not forget them.”
MILLICENT: “It’s why I wanted to go into the Weave. I so wanted to find an alternative there.”
TUELLER: “Yes, the Grell are being slowly killed.”
ALEJO: “And probably other Weave sensitive creatures. If they’re out there.”
MILLICENT: “Stands to reason, yes.”
TUELLER: “But Noma might be calculating right. More people may die than will live enslaved.”
TUELLER: “All sentient beings that go through the relays are having a portion of them stolen, but if they don’t notice, then maybe it doesn’t count.”
ALEJO: “Tree in the forest stuff?” He shakes his head.
TUELLER: “Some people live out their lives in miserable slavery, but many people benefit from the universe at their finger tips.”
TUELLER: “Maybe we can’t choose to force everyone to walk away from Omelas.”
MILLICENT: Millie stands up and starts pacing.
TUELLER: “I can’t pretend to be selfless. We–us three–need to either fight, or die, either at Noma’s hands or the Collective.”
TUELLER: “I’d prefer not to do so at Noma’s hands.”
ALEJO: “There’s no way we can know the answer to that sort of calculus, is there? I mean, that would require adding up far more, you know, preferences than we could possibly collect or even guess at.”
MILLICENT: “And hindsight will be 20/20.”
MILLICENT: Millie stops pacing.
MILLICENT: “We’ll be judged as wrong for whatever action we take next.”
MILLICENT: “Because I don’t believe that even if we’re the first to figure this out that we’ll be the last.”
ALEJO: Alejo nods. “Whatever we do, we’re guessing at what’s best for everyone else. That was true as soon as we learned the truth.”
TUELLER: “I’m not worried about judgment. I’m worried about…all those people. And us, of course.”
MILLICENT: “I’m not worried about history books, just pointing out that there’s no perfect answer here.”
MILLICENT: How long has this been going on, Spacemarster? What’s the first recorded contact with the Collective?
STORY: Humanity’s first contact? Or anyone’s?
MILLICENT: Anyone’s.
STORY: Impossible to know without asking them. Every extant civilization found them once they invented AI.
MILLICENT: When was that, though?
MILLICENT: The first extant civilization that records contact with the Collective?
STORY: Like I said, impossible to know.
STORY: What are you trying to determine here?
ALEJO: If a destruction cycle has happened before. I presume?
MILLICENT: How long we know this has been going on for. The floor, not the ceiling.
MILLICENT: Right.
MILLICENT: Does the law of large numbers tell us that it’s possible no one else has ever figured this out?
MILLICENT: It feels extraordinary that we would be the first to discover it.
STORY: It’s possible. The number of connected civilizations is finite.
STORY: It’s unlikely, though.
MILLICENT: “By the way, the numbers suck on this. It’s very likely this kind of uprising has happened before. And failed.”
ALEJO: “Look, I just don’t buy the slavery is good if it helps more people than it hurts argument. I’m not as smart as . . . well, anyone in this room. But that seems like bullshit. I think we’ve got to fight or find a way out of this.”
STORY: After much discussion and a few more drinks…
TUELLER: So the idea is that we should find Alejo’s body, demonstrate that he is both dead, and alive…
TUELLER: convey that via biometric data and video, along with his story, to as many known civilizations as we can.
TUELLER: Send that information out, give it a little time to percolate through the system.
TUELLER: Then take the relay, and relay our proposal to the Collective.
TUELLER: And hope they don’t send war machines to every civilization in the universe.
MILLICENT: While we’re waiting we try to identify the signal they’re using, yeah?
TUELLER: sure.
ALEJO: Along with the biometric stuff, we say, we’ve negotiating for everyone, or most folks, at least, to be volunteers for the cloud. If the Collective doesn’t accept this proposal, you’re going to all out war, so be ready. If the Collective accepts this proposal and you don’t volunteer, you’re going to all out war, so be ready. Yes?
STORY: That’s gonna have to be some speech!
MILLICENT: Good thing we’re such people people
STORY: I mean one of you is.
MILLICENT: I mean, Millie already pitched the Collective and got out alive
TUELLER: He’s the persuasive one, and Millie can support with Science.
ALEJO: I’m in, if this is the plan. Not to be a stickler, but . . . if this is the plan, what’s the difference between “volunteering” and not knowing, given that there’s really not much choice?
TUELLER: And Tueller will hang out threateningly to help out with Physique.
ALEJO: No one needs to answer that. Just . . . Something I’m trying to think about myself.
STORY: It probably doesn’t have to be everyone volunteering
STORY: to use the vaccination metaphor, you just need herd immunity
STORY: you need enough volunteer brainpower to replace the current setup
ALEJO: Right. Okay! I’m in.
STORY: which is a few million people who have traveled plus the few thousand full time brains on the relay
MILLICENT: Yeah I mean the idea is if an entire civilization says no they probably arm up, if only a percentage does then that group is probably fine?
MILLICENT: Is that true?
STORY: Yeah that’s your guess
ALEJO: We can do this! I’m stoked!
TUELLER: Fingers, tentacles, and mandibles crossed.
MILLICENT: “So, this is definitely our biggest, worst idea ever.”
TUELLER: “I’ve had worse.”
MILLICENT: “Oh?”
TUELLER: “Probably.”
ALEJO: “You have.” He looks at Millie. “He has.”
ALEJO: Alejo smiles.