23 Years on Fire Read online

  “Streets are pretty quiet,” Choi was saying, with that East-Asian stilt to his English that was the standard Anjulan accent. “I’m not a social psychologist, but there’s going to be a big problem assimilating this. Many won’t accept it. Right now they’re stunned, they don’t know how to process it. But that doesn’t mean that when they do process it, we’ll like how they do it.”

  All com networks had been taken over, forced to run footage of Sandy’s discoveries, and the discoveries that were now continuing to pour out from the Marines that had now taken over the underground facility. Ari had suggested they just run the footage live and unedited, with jerky visuals, foul trooper language and all. Certainly, it was more effective that way, more authentic to a disbelieving public. On another channel were Anjulan rebels, transmitting from a Parliament office, scrolling through lists of names and inviting Pyeongwha citizens to come forward with names of their own, with photographs, medical records and DNA samples, if possible. They were getting a lot of response, but it was not overwhelming. Most of the security forces, the occupiers agreed, had not been eliminated, but had merely gone to ground, sheltered by the populace. Even with these new revelations, it was unclear which way the population would go.

  “It’s just the most fucking amazing thing,” Ari said, a steaming cup of chai in hand, looking worn and dazed. He had a moustache now, which Sandy didn’t think she liked. And he looked older. “The whole thing’s a giant, collective, mutually-agreed-upon brain fuck. I mean, they knew. They had to have known, there were so many clues, so few other alternatives . . .”

  “Oh, they knew!” Moon said loudly, shaking with emotion. “They all knew, half the damn population!”

  “It’s a feedback loop,” said Ari. “In most societies the population splits fifty-fifty on any question, but the genetic modifications made here didn’t stop once NCT took off; they accelerated. They were genetically pre-selecting the most well-disposed toward the technology, and those changes were in turn shaping the direction of NCT itself. Like a feedback loop on an unsecured microphone—sound produces vibration, vibration produces sound, round in circles until all you’re left with is out of control squealing.”

  “It’s no different from what we’ve seen in human societies before,” said Vanessa. “It’s just another variation of authoritarianism. We’ve just never seen it interact with technology like this before.”

  The footage from preliminary debriefings in the medical facility was the most chilling of all. Ordinary men and women, highly qualified, family people with no apparent psychological disorders, who saw absolutely nothing wrong in their daily work. Not in the killing, not in the experiments, and not in some of the truly horrific things that were emerging on the lower levels.

  “All human psychology has a natural inclination toward consensus,” Sandy said tiredly from her reclining chair. “NCT is a technology that actively creates consensus. With uplink technology it works like a kind of mass telepathy, a collectivisation. And it’s exhilarating, I bet. Made them heaps productive, wealthy, talented. I worried about it all the time in GIs. Tacnet and instantaneous communication is just so immersive, some come to not like the real world half as much. They’d rather stay connected all the time.

  “You add that to the genetic tinkering they were doing, actively breeding out the non-NCT compliant as an economic and social measure . . . at some point it just reaches some really scary place that the rest of us unconnected just can’t process; a place where people start to practise mass slaughter and not see the problem. Their value structure is completely consumed into the NCT network.”

  “There is a report,” said Alemsegad, his lanky frame lounged on a chair. His manner was sparse, inscrutable, his sentences short. Ethiopian heritage, Sandy guessed. “A classified report. Fleet Intelligence. On NCT and brain structure. The network software was changing brain structure.”

  “All uplinks do that,” said Ari. “Ours too.”

  Alemsegad shook his head. “Not just increasing existing pathways. Overall structure, composition, processing order. Actively, short term, not long term.”

  “Shit,” Vanessa murmured, almost as fascinated as horrified. “Really?”

  “Write new software, new brain structure appears. Two years, maybe less. So, at what point does the brain write the software? Or the software write the brain?”

  Silence in the room. Moon and Choi looked particularly uncomfortable. Almost certainly they’d had some form of NCT augmentation. The technology was variable, as were degrees of augmentation. Many non-compliants had rewritten their implant software, dialed it down, and escaped the worst effects. But nearly everyone on Pyeongwha had it done. It’d been mandatory for twenty-four years now, and semi-mandatory for another forty before that.

  Neural cluster tech wasn’t so different from League synthetic biology, though. Human psychology had been adjusting to neural implants for a long time now—several hundred years, with the more basic tech. League tech copied natural brain function to the degree that the human brain did not recognise it as foreign, and that caused the brain to naturally rewire itself, certainly, in ways that were still surprising many researchers, growing new pathways to cope with network information flows that could never occur in nature. NCT was different in that it allowed a lot more two-way interaction, telling the brain what to do in ways that League tech, being purposely more passive, didn’t.

  Could synthetic biological implants cause a brain to rewire itself to look more like the implant and less like the original brain? As an entirely synthetic entity herself, Sandy didn’t like the idea. If regular organic brains were that rewritable, what did it say of a GI’s chances? And yet, she thought, it might explain some things. League researchers designing GI tech for the war hadn’t been like peacetime scientists, sharing information in the spirit of open discovery. They’d been shut away in massively funded, isolated institutions, concentrating on the sole purpose of building better fighting machines. Sandy knew from experience they’d been less than honest about exactly what they’d discovered, and how GIs really worked—even with each other.

  “I don’t buy it,” Sandy decided. There was still a moral issue at play, after all. “Blame the technology. Maybe NCT leans them in one direction, but people still get to choose.”

  “And you didn’t hear it from me,” Alemsegad finished, giving Sandy a long, skeptical look. That didn’t surprise her. A lot of Fleet officers remained cool toward her. They’d thought the Federation’s war against the League had been a war to defeat the scourge of artificial humanity—GIs, like her. That it had actually been about liberating, or presenting the choice of liberation, to the most advanced GIs, was not something that a lot of them accepted. She could see it in his eyes as he looked at her: I lost all of those good friends for this?

  “So how do we do this?” Vanessa asked Moon and Choi. “You two know the place. How many of the population are as hardcore as the administration?”

  “It’s not how many are that hardcore,” said Choi, shaking his head. “It’s how many are prepared to accept an alternative. When something is your whole world, it’s hard to believe it’s not true, even when someone shows you proof.”

  “There will be conspiracy stories,” Moon agreed, nodding vigorously. “They will make up tales about how the whole thing is a Federation plot. Probably they won’t believe the facilities are even real, or say we made the whole thing up.”

  “And that gives a resistance movement enough of a foundation amongst the populace to mount a guerilla resistance,” Captain Reddy summarised. “Could go on a long time.” Alemsegad looked at him. Evidently they’d had this discussion before. “Could lose a lot of people on this rock.”

  “Could stop following orders and stop calling yourself a Marine,” the admiral replied. Reddy looked at his boots. “We only control Anjula, anyway. Let’s wait for the rest of the planet. I’ve heard it’s not as bad away from Anjula, out in the rural belts.”

  Choi and Moon looked skept
ical, but did not argue.

  “Or we could find a way to use NCT against them,” Ari suggested, deep in thought. “I need to think about that for a bit.”

  Soon they departed, everyone with much to do except Sandy, who’d been told to rest. Ari waited too. Vanessa lingered in the door with a look of concern, then departed with an encouraging smile at Sandy.

  “Hi,” said Ari, hands in pockets.

  “Hi,” said Sandy, still reclining. It had taken something out of her, that fight, combat reflex hiding from her that she’d nearly lost a lung. Now the masking agents had worn off, she was worn out, and didn’t much feel like sitting up straight, much less standing. “You did good. Saved a lot of people.”

  “You, too. How were the hoppers?”

  “Amazing tech. Revolutionary technology for sure, we pinned down an entire city with just fifty troops and good network support.”

  “There’ll be a counter-technology though, there always is.”

  “Yeah.”

  A silence. Ari looked at his feet, a familiar, nervous mannerism. Sandy sighed. She really wasn’t good at this. She was drastically civilianised over what she’d been when she first arrived in Federation space, but still she had her limitations. Being a good soldier meant knowing what those limitations were.

  She heaved herself reluctantly to her feet, muscles aching, walked to him, and put her arms around him. He put his arms around her too, carefully. For a moment, they held each other. Then she kissed him on the cheek.

  “It’s okay, Ari,” she told him. “You know I don’t make scenes. I’m not mad. You’re free to live your life, don’t worry about it.”

  He gazed at her, with those intensely browed, intelligent eyes. “Sandy, you know, I wish that I could . . . I mean, I wish it didn’t have to . . .”

  “I said it’s okay. I understand.”

  “I don’t think you do.”

  Sandy’s expression hardened just a little, her head cocked to one side. “You’re not going to make this difficult, are you? Because you know I don’t like difficult.”

  “But everything’s always difficult,” said Ari. “That’s the point.” His comebacks were always so fast. She had the quickest reflexes of any living thing, but sometimes, talking to Ari, she felt overwhelmed and sluggish.

  She chose not to reply.

  Ari sighed. “Look, Sandy.” He took her face in his hands, one of the very few people who’d dare. One of the very few who knew her well enough to know that there was really nothing to dare. “I love you. I’ll always love you. Just because we’re no longer . . .”

  “Yeah.” She still didn’t really understand that bit. She wasn’t accustomed to being left. She’d never really understood what all that meant until now.

  “I just needed that part of my life back, at this time, that’s all.”

  “It’s okay, Ari,” she insisted. “You’re allowed to have your reasons. I forgive you.”

  He didn’t leave. She wished he’d just leave, that would be easier. But he stood there, and gazed at her, as though she were the most confusing, confounding problem his hyper-intelligent brain had ever struggled and failed to comprehend. Well, she knew how that felt. Then, finally, he kissed her on the forehead, and left.

  Vanessa came back in the door as soon as Ari went through it. She hadn’t departed, merely waited outside. That made Sandy more emotional than the exchange with Ari had. She hugged her friend, who hugged her back.

  “You okay?” Vanessa asked.

  “Yeah. Twenty-two years old, I guess it’s about time I learned what it’s like to get dumped.” She wiped her eye. “Stupid thing to worry about now. It’s not like there aren’t more important things.”

  “You’ve got to live, Sandy. Life doesn’t just stop because things in the universe suck. You and Ari were good together. It’s worth feeling sad about.”

  Sandy released her and gazed out the windows. “You never seemed that surprised, though.”

  “Well it’s Ari. And you, I mean, neither of you are that predictable. And look, you’re still so young, you’ve only been a Federation civilian for what is it now, seven years?”

  “Seven,” Sandy nodded.

  “And you were with Ari for five and a bit of those, which is longer than most people gave you. But let’s face it, everything for you is still a bit of a learning curve. Chalk it down to experience and move on. This shit’s happened to all of us; it certainly happened to me.”

  “Yeah.” Vanessa was divorced, shortly after Sandy first met her. She’d not seen her ex-husband since, not even heard word of him. Given their working circumstances, Sandy knew she and Ari weren’t going to get the same clean break.

  “Besides which,” said Vanessa, arm about her, “you’ll always have me.”

  Sandy smiled. “Only you go and get married again, and leave me all alone in my house . . .”

  “Oh, poor Sandy,” Vanessa laughed. “As if seeing me all day every day for work isn’t more than any sane person could bear.”

  True to his word, Admiral Alemsegad only kept them a week, until Marine and Army reinforcements arrived. After that, the FSA assault team were free to return to Callay on the first available cruiser.

  Sandy recovered fast; she’d need the bandages for a while yet, but the damage hadn’t affected a joint or moving part, so her mobility was relatively unaffected. Mentally, from the combined effects of events on Anjula and finally seeing Ari again, she was less unscathed. She had several mandatory tape sessions, where the shipboard psych ran invasive readjustments through her short term memory—standard for all soldiers to prevent the onset of post-traumatic stress, and it worked pretty similarly for GIs and straights alike. It helped her sleep, though truly, like most tape-adjusted vets, she had no idea if she was actually susceptible to PTSD or not. Common theory was that GIs weren’t, thanks to the response-deadening effects of combat reflex . . . but then, she’d seen GIs blow themselves to bits rather than face an upcoming fight. Twice. And she’d heard of a number of others.

  Whatever the cause, she still felt off, and so resorted to her old League-side medicine: fucking. GIs of any designation were largely immune from jealousy and other inconvenient emotional strangleholds, so Khan and Han were obvious choices, and lucky for her, both volunteered simultaneously. It had been a long time since she’d done anything as wild as two at a time—League-side, she supposed, when life had been simpler, and life expectancies considerably shorter, leading to more enthusiastically wild entertainments of the kind.

  The orgasms were incredible. And it bothered her a little, because Ari had been a good lover, and they’d had some great sessions together. But there were things a straight human man simply couldn’t do, like experience some of her more wild and powerful manoeuvers and live to talk about it. On her cramped shipboard bunk, she embraced alternately Khan or Han, and really went for it, and felt so liberated that she did not have to worry about harming either of them, let alone killing them, as could easily happen when she truly lost control. No more careful sex, then—Vanessa had told her to make the most of where life took her, and this was one obvious advantage. She kept the two men busy for nearly an hour, until finally collapsing, sweat-drenched and exhausted, on a bunk with torn sheets and a newly-bent frame.

  After a shower, she called on Vanessa, a short walk down a narrow, dog-legged corridor to the small gymnasium. It felt weird to be on a combat ship again, where she’d spent so much of her previous life. The faintly stale, recycled air, the low overheads and the emergency acceleration slings lining the corridors set off all sorts of memories, some fond, others utterly unwanted. That she was bandaged, with a healing hole in her side, returning from a fairly nasty fight with the after-effects of trauma tape in her head, and the recent recipient of a truly awesome fucking, all combined to amplify the effect.

  Vanessa was belted into a weights machine, lifting about five hundred kilos’ worth of resistance with her legs. That was somewhat remarkable to watch of such a small girl
, and a good two hundred kilos more than she’d have managed perhaps a year ago. Sandy herself, of course, could do comfortably ten times what the machine could offer without breaking. That wasn’t what made GIs dangerous, however—it was the fast-twitch, high velocity release of all that power.

  “Good to be back amongst your own kind, then?” Vanessa asked her with a grin, sweaty and not-particularly strained, as Sandy sat on a bench alongside.

  “You heard?”

  “I walked past your door half an hour ago. Sounded like you were trashing the place. Are the boys okay?”

  Sandy smiled. “They’re fine. And quite talented too, if you’d like a turn.”

  “Oh no,” said Vanessa, still pushing. “Happy monogamy for me. If even you could manage it for four years, I’m sure I can.”

  “Even me,” Sandy repeated, taking mock offence. But her heart wasn’t in it.

  Vanessa saw. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, nothing.” She thought about it for a moment. “I think I’m reverting.”

  “To what?”

  “To how I was. I’d thought I was progressing. Maturing as a person. I was learning civilian life, I had a steady boyfriend, I actually made a pretty good girlfriend too, at times.”

  “You did,” Vanessa agreed, nodding.

  “I mean, I wasn’t pushy or demanding. I could be fun, I’d drag him out of his comfort zone often enough to make his life more interesting, and he seemed to appreciate it.”

  “He did.”

  “I’d thought that was the direction I had to go. To move away from what I’d been, as a League soldier. A drone.”

  “Sandy, you were never a drone.”

  “Oh, we all are at some point. All GIs. Some of us grow out of it, that’s all. I’d thought I was growing, but now I’m back to old ways. Fighting, fucking . . .” She shrugged, and ran a hand through her wet hair.