Mote Memory

Uncensored Transcript of Dialogue / Melniss CanB Spindle / 07.07.3906

Commander Sutsainna, E.I.E


Fra Plight


Commander I must apologise for my temper and behaviour last night.
“Think nothing of it, Fra Plight. The arrival through the tear here has an unnerving effect on the calmest of people.

Nevertheless …….
Your apology is accepted. Did you sleep well?

No better than usual. This place gave me too much food for thought.
Sanctuary from the hounds if Ii Ai Ii. Marriage because my children will need a father. A flock of lost souls needing spiritual guidance. In return I ask you to help me do something at which I’ve had no training.

That, and more. Since when have you been Ii Ai Ii? That particular colour of uniform is recognised throughout the Federation, especially by people like me.
You used to be more observant, Fra Plight Maybe it’s the light. There, is that better?

It’s a slight relief. Gray. But the cut and style are the same.
This, is the uniform of Eksinteks. External Internal Expenditure. You could call us the auditors of Ii Ai Ii.

Which is still at odds with the Sutsainna that I knew at Llas. That woman disdained anything that smacked of Federation Authority with a capital A.
Thank you. This is, though you doubt it, the same woman. Have you ever heard of The Scoundrel?

More than heard, Commander. He was my role model and mentor, though we never met.
His funeral took place in thirty-eight seventy-nine. Although it was a family only occasion …….

Several thousand turned up. Most of whom were Ii Ai Ii agents watching to see who came. I was there.
So was I.

You were just out of Llas.
Too quick for me to have gained the recruiters’ attention? He was my father. But there was a secret internment a month later. A score of family, and a black man in black with a white eye-patch who knew me better than any stranger should.

Dsaneš?!
Last night you asked what Project-Commander Tamjik was doing in a jumpers. Why?

As Ii Ai Ii or Eksinteks, you should know.
I could have found out, Plight. But you were not the issue Dsaneš asked me to investigate. Don’t look at me like that! You never told me at Llas that you were anything more than an eccentric lecturer. Had I known that you were one of the most sought after a sneak-thief-of-state-secrets my professional interest would have been aroused instead of my personal one. Witness’ Sii Ai Dii funded my studies.

Ah. You’re a copper. Ok. Dsaneš was the blood-hound who trailed your father for most of his career and was probably responsible for your father’s death. Tamjik is my blood-hound. She always finds me. So it was a shock to see that she had got here before me.
Not, probably. Dsaneš told me that he personally had killed my father. Better, Dsaneš said, to die quickly than have mintrep.

So he put you in his debt. What did he ask you to investigate?
Him. On the Lama’s Joke.

HIM?
He showed me a transcript of a Tandreš communication he had received shortly after my father’s funeral. It was Karol Smetana thanking him profusely for attending the marriage of his daughter on Medit. Dsaneš also showed me the recording of both the ceremony and the reception. Dsaneš was prominent in both. He then showed me, by way of proof, the Ii Ai Ii’s recordings of the funeral where he is visible among the dignitaries at the back.

The point, Plight, is that wedding and funeral occurred on the same day, at the same time, fifteen tears apart. That is what he asked me to investigate. I followed him to Lama’s Joke. Just hours before we were due for the first time in Ii Ai Ii Headquarters, Dsaneš was recorded on security screens diving, unaided, through the heat vent of the Izezentil smelter.

You joke!
I initially thought his suicide was due to my having survived, more by accident than design, several very subtle attempts to kill me on my journey to Lama’s Joke.

I was getting to the point where I was thinking of jacking it in when the duty technician at the smelter the day of the suicide approached me, as an Eksinteks officer, with a strange problem.

The week of Dsaneš’ suicide they were cleaning the smelter’s main crucible. Dsaneš had dived into a recently mixed compound. Both smelters automatically analyse the chemical contents on an hourly basis because the hourly inputs of red selenium have to be very tightly controlled. Too little affects the conductivity of the Izezentil and too much …….

Big Bang and no more Lama’s Joke.
Right. Forty-five minutes after Dsaneš dived in, the smelter’s analytical probes indicated that a double input of red selenium had occurred the previous hour. That as the technician explained was impossible. The input the previous hour of two point five kilograms of red selenium had emptied the input silo. The input went into a compound that did not contain any red selenium at all.

But no Big Bang.
The smelter was in the process of heating up. Below twelve hundred degrees the compound is relatively inert. But there’s something that is even more dangerous than getting the red selenium inputs wrong. Water. The air pressure in the smelter unit is higher than that outside to prevent ingress of airborne water in whatever shape, form or weight.

But not bodies.
Irrespective of the temperature, water and red selenium interact explosively. Dsaneš’ dive into the smelter should have blown Lama’s Joke into smithereens.

Ergo, Commander, it wasn’t Dsaneš. So who was it?
Not who, Plight, but what was it?

N…no, Commander. I’ve seen the costings and the time projections for mechanical Ei Ai production. Among the documents I have, er, filched from State archives.
In my invitation and instructions I asked you to give me your observations.

You’re jumping from one topic to another. No change there, I’m happy to say. Very well. I came through the tear as you had instructed in reverse. Strange instructions that saved my life. So my observations of the Spindle are from the cliff top after I had landed.

The Spindle design relies on solid bedrock and mild wind conditions. This Spindle is unusual. First the base appears to be anchored beneath the surface of a sea that looks as if it’s made of glass. Secondly there is light-vessel landing strip encircling the Spindle at its mid-point. Third the shaft of the Spindle is far greater than either the height or the addition of the landing-strip requires. Fourth there are only four levels of jumpers platforms where the standard requirement is fifteen. Interestingly, only two of the jumpers are occupied.

I recognised both of the occupants. The one on the upper level is a familiar face from the Challis Guards. The one in the lowest level is Project-Commander Tamjik. But how she got here before me is ......... You'll explain later right?

There would appear to be a chain of semi-submerged islands lying some five kilometres from and parallel with the coast. I deduce the Spindle is set into and anchored to one of these submerged islands. The coastline consists of an unbroken line of cliffs of about a thousand metres in height topped by a barren desert. There is a fairly extensive conglomeration of buildings clinging to the cliffs at a point about forty-five degrees to starboard from the Spindle viewpoint. That’s the topographical observation.
They were the construction crews' living quarters. They’re being renovated for the evacuation of the personnel.

There seem to be about one-fifty to two hundred technicians working on the living quarters on the cliff face and a couple of thousand here on the Spindle. They are very different. Chalk-and-cheese. Those on the cliff face were uncommunicative, distant and cold totally unlike the friendliness and warmth I experienced here on the Spindle. But I suppose that is the difference between military and non-military personnel.
“What makes you say they’re military?”

On my walk down the stairway….. I could not make the lift work………….I was aware of a great deal of organised activity. The sun was heading for the horizon when all the activity ceased. There were no commands, no bells, no alarms. There were no signals at all. I was reaching the lower tiers of the living units when the activity re-started. Again there were no audible signals. That’s military routine for you. But there was something else. During the rest period they all lay down on couches in the shade of the awnings on the balconies at the front of each unit. They all lay in the same posture. They looked like effigies on tombs. It was very eerie, Commander. Very eerie indeed!
Eerie and worrying, Plight. No matter. Tamjik. Her name here is Dauet. She’s a Commander-Director. She was in command of this project until I arrived. That was a year ago. You are frowning, Plight. Let me make you look puzzled and frightened at the same time. The images I am displaying on the screen are?

Tamjik. Tamjik and Tamjik.
Wrong. Project-Commander Tamjik, Commander-Director Dauet and Advocate-General Feliish.

I don’t like where this is going.
Nor do I, Plight. Nor do I. In my offer of sanctuary I hope you understood that I could also tell you why you have become a non-person.

Other than my prowess as a sneak-thief of State secrets?
Indirectly. When we first met you were de-bunking the Praesidium’s claims that Albenden Henschell-Littmaior was nothing more than a deranged lunatic. Later I heard through the grapevine that you had unravelled his Mote theories. Correct?

Yes. First the Praesidium funds his entire lifetime research. Then they destroy everything. It was the manner that caught my attention. Ask anyone who Henschell-Littmaior was and the answer will be that maniac who conned several billion Lunars out of the Praesidium to fund an extravagant lifestyle. The corpus of his research is unknown. In fact the erasure of the archives is astonishingly thorough. It was then that I got involved with the Kirk.
Basically the Mote theory is that without knowledge of all those brief, tiny and seemingly inconspicuous memories that are stored in the core of the mind the concept of an exact human simulacrum is not possible.

Word, letter and emphasis are absolutely correct! Eitch-El said those words as an introd…….
Aitch-Ell argued that it was necessary to record, and copy, every single Mote from the very first instance of brain activity in the womb. What he was proposing would be hugely expensive. But he also proposed a supporting theory…….

That if the will was there to succeed the boundary between the impossible and the possible would inevitably be pushed back.
Have you ever wondered why Eitch-El got involved with Motes?

The only true element of the Praesidium’s destructive thesis was their use of Albenden’s own explanation. The family research into Ei Ais had reached a dead end. His grandfather wished the focus of research to reverse the process and look at the end product first.
Good. But incorrect. I'll grant you that that's what he said. I would like to give you several shocks.

I’m unshockable Commander.
Nevertheless I will try. Albenden Henschell-Littmaior lived and died during the first two centuries of this millennium. The Orphan Project began in three one zero six with Henschell-Littmaior named as First Project Director.

Impossible. He was only twenty!
First shock. The Orphan Project was officially closed at his death. But the funding has never ceased.

Commander. I’ll grant you the first shock but that is typical of the Praesidium.
I’ll try harder. This facility is funded by the Orphan’s Project. This Spindle was constructed between three four oh five and twenty six. The design used Eitch-El’s argument of building what the future requires. The project is entirely self supporting.

There is, for example, a waste management system that is so finely attuned that once you Ident card has been scanned it will record waste levels on an individual basis. This is vital information for recycling and supply but also for indicating who is a glutton and who a wastrel and …….. Project-Commander Dauet’s bodily wastes represent ninety four percent of in-take mass and nintey-eight per cent of intake energy. ………………………… Plight. Don’t just take my word for it. The records are in front of you…………………… That is why Dauet is incarcerated in a jumpers cell. Getting her there was not pretty. Second shock?

Dead centre……………… But there is a further problem with the Motes.
He theorised that if simulacra were possible it would be necessary not only to record the ongoing Motes but also to affect a dialogue transfer between the simulacra to ensure what he termed homogeneity of thought and action. That, given the galactic distances involved and the wey-wah effect was, Eitch-El deemed, plainly impossible. At the time.

Was and is, Commander.
A fact that has gone unnoticed is that the Henschell-Littmaior dynasty is matriarchal. No, Plight. I am not saying that Albenden was a woman. I am telling you that the females of the family carry the name. Albenden was not born Henschell-Littmaior. His family name was Stalybrik.

The name means nothing to me.
Nor should it. But it is nevertheless the name of a maverick scientist who led a privately financed research project fifteen hundred years ago. The link is so feint Plight that even Ii Ai Ii is unconcerned that the connection will be made. Stalybrik was the theorist behind the project that was responsible for the Eitch-Kei-Em Catastrophe.

Oh God. That was Flauvain. Three shocks Commander. You’re doing well.
One of the characteristics of maverick scientists is that the logic of their research is illogical. The Praesidium has long accepted that while it’s the endeavours of mavericks that are at the fore-front of the drive to expand the limits of knowledge, those same endeavours are also the greatest internal threat to the stability of the Federation. You, Plight, are a maverick.

Your corpus of research, your protests at the treatment of Albenden Eitch-El’s memory and your ability to gain access to State archives were all manageable. Then suddenly out of nowhere Plight, you wrote a monograph entitled “Extinction Theories of Sentient Species”. You theorised that while the last entity of a non-sentient species will live out its natural span of life because it is unaware of being the last, by contrast the last entity of a sentient species will probably commit suicide out of the stress of despair. You made two mistakes in composing the paper, Plight. As a maverick you were under constant surveillance by Ii Ai Ii. The contents of your tablet were regularly checked. In fact every time you saved anything to the crystal a staz was sent to your handlers. The straw that broke the camel’s back was this line:

“Flauvain is a hybrid of particular, non-sentient algae and the liquid crystals of red selenium; the supposition that Flauvain cannot be sentient because neither of its component parts is sentient is deeply flawed. None of the component parts of any of the arvra are in themselves sentient.”

The reason that you suddenly went from being a mild irritation to the equivalent of the sword of Damocles was because, against all expectation, the book rocketed to the top of the most read list and stayed there for more than a year. That was good for you, and ultimately for me. The legal royalties suddenly allowed you to purchase that nice little flitter-bug that keeps you one-step ahead of Tamjik. But what was good for you was not good for Ii Ai Ii. You had in all innocence laid bare the essence of an operation so secret that Ii Ai Ii in their paranoia could not believe you were working alone.

This Spindle is, as you correctly surmised, set into and anchored to, a chain of submerged islets. The upper, visible portion of twelve hundred metres is matched below the waves. There are a hundred metres of the mast surrounded by sea-water with a salinity that is truly terrifying and then eleven hundred metres set into the bedrock. Beneath that, Plight, is a cavern formed quite naturally about two million years ago. Fossils in the strata were luminescence dated.

The cavern is immense. It extends about three kei-ems in all directions. The bottom was quite flat with vertical sides of between thirty and fifty metres in height. Twenty million tons of sand from the desert wasteland along the coast were melted and streamed into the cavern. The intricacies of the project are mind-boggling. A little over a kilometre below us is an enclosed anaerobic ferro-silicone flask with a diameter of almost six kei-ems and a depth of twenty-five metres. Full capacity is just shy of a billion litres of liquid. While the flask is almost full, only a tiny fraction, to a depth of less than one micron is liquid.

The glass pillar which you’re leaning against contains purified sea-water. At the centre is a glass tube. Although invisible through the water I can assure you that the central tube has a uniform radius of fifteen centimetres surrounding a central flow-tube half a micron in diameter. The pillar extends from within the breeding flask to an unexpected artefact mid-way up the Spindle mast, just above the landing strip. The sea-water serves two purposes. First, it keeps the contents of the flow tube at an ambient temperature. Secondly it provides security.

Flau....Flauvain. That’s what’s in the flask and the tube. The algae, Commander, is a fresh-water variant. As a result the hybrid still maintains its frailty in saline conditions. Let me guess. The unexpected artefact is the delivery system.
And the most important of the reasons for asking for your help. The current settings for the delivery system are to a Platform fourteen tears away. I can’t work out where and I don’t really want to know. What I do need to do is change the intended destination but don’t know how. You on the other hand pilot your flitter-bug, and do.
I want to send the delivery system to somewhere so vast, so uninteresting and so empty that it is seldom if ever visited except by the su’do’. You can use that desk.comp.

Only one location fits that description. The Empty Quarter known as The Swirl. There are three known tears for The Swirl. But the Flauvain requires a host otherwise it will not survive the tears. Ahem. Have you told him you are sending him to his death? Because the Flauvain will do exactly what its predecessor did at Eitch-Kei-Em.
It won’t for two reasons. It won’t have total control and it won’t be the only Flauvain entity.

Sorry. You have, now, well and truly lost me. No. I can affect the changes in the settings and listen to you at the same time. It’s your logic which has confused me.
In order to commit suicide the Flauvain needs to have total control of the host body. Total control will allow it to manipulate the delivery system. Your argument in Extinction of Sentient Species is that so long as the host has any Mote memories of being itself, the parasite can never exert total control. That Officer is here not because he was sentenced to a Jumpers Spindle, not because I subverted the decision of the Presiding Judges, not because I know him of old. The harsh truth is that he is the only Challis Guard available. And the Challis Guards possess a singular characteristic that makes them almost unique. They are trained to develop a ‘lock down memory’.

Palderdash Commander. Up till now everything you’ve said makes sense. Now. Now, you’ve moved into the realm of total fantasy.
Do you still have that facility to read Eff-Veh-Veh script? That will be a help. I’m going to increase the light level. Behind me is a carbon copy of a section of a bulkhead in Lama’s Joke. Had we not been sitting in such low light you would have found it difficult to listen to me? …… how about reading it out loud?

………………….. The unborn ship…..vessel…..transport wrecked on Tahkei returns……have returned ……..will return…….two memories……….minds……brains……unimpeded……….unhindered……Koshwa…no that’s wrong…Flauvain. Damme! It’s been a while since I read an un-translated script……….. Ok! The unborn on the transport wrecked on Tahkei have returned with two memories unimpeded by the Flauvain.
The deepest mystery, Plight, in the mass suicide of the Eff-Veh-Veh species is how they achieved it. They knew Flauvain operated at the mental level. So,

How did they hoodwink it? Let me play catch-up with your thoughts, Commander. The Eff-Veh-Veh expansion programme required a large number of impregnated individuals to be in the second wave behind the exploration units. One of these is wrecked on Tahkei. We know from the admonishment in the command section of every Eff-Veh-Veh platform that Tahkei is a taboo destination punishable by death. So there isn’t a rescue attempt. Some time later …… presumably after several generations, possibly even centuries, the unborn descendants return to space. But while on Tahkei they’ve managed to sever the control of the Flauvain mental link by creating two lots of memories.

Now, wait…. Wait a bit……There’s no time reference because time meant nothing to the Eff-Veh-Veh. The assumption has always been……… our assumption being based on the Avrasindahl and the Junoeskei's assumptions that the total obliteration of the entire race was a well co-ordinated mass suicide. What if……. What if………the unborn descendants had a memory of the Flauvain’s control and their population was of parity with the Eff-Veh-Veh? Civil war?
That’s what I think. But it’s only conjecture. But the part about two memories struck a chord. What do you know about the event in eighty-seven on Trespassers?

Couched in Federation phraseology? A Line Officer was being held to account for the failings of a Staff Officer. The planet is under Hamrilcar Protocol Protection. The entire system orbiting the star is enveloped by one of those ancient and quirky su’do’ that provide the protection system. The indigenous species of Trespassers has not yet been identified. Beyond that nothing. I tell a lie. Both the Alliance and the Äkkeidiiz take advantage of Eitch-Pi-Pi to use the surface for Ar-an-dar.

Ess Eff Sii's request for exclusive Alliance rights of use was turned down by the su’do’. There had never before been any conflict, accidental or intended, as the su’do’ placed all visiting vessels of the Alliance in stasis while the vessels of the Äkkaidiiz collected their troops from the surface and departed. Or vice-versa.
Now there was a sizeable Alliance fleet in stasis when the su’do’ – not the Äkkaidiiz – requested help in the finding and capture or destruction of a rogue Äkkaidiiz that seemed to be bent on killing the indigenous species. The only military unit that has the capability to operate effectively in a non-mechanised environment are the Challis Guards. As fortune would have it, there were two half companies available.

The su’do’ permitted the same operational parameters for the Alliance and the Äkkaidiiz. A scout stroke recon vessel was permitted to maintain a static orbit above the general area of the search. Once the vessels were in orbit the su’do’ froze it in place. Scanning of the surface was permitted. Communication with the surface was permitted through one comm.set. The Guards units companies were placed under the command of a solitary Federal Flag Officer who stayed on the scout vessel. The Guards were sent planet-side with very strict orders to avoid getting into general conflict with the Äkkaidiiz but to do their utmost to return with an Äkkeidiiz. Dead or alive. Stupidly she also ordered them to operate as two separate units. The unit without the comm.set was the one involved at the Flashpoint.

Flashpoint occurred at an up-welling of fresh water in a ravine on a high mountainous plateau. The Ai-Ah scanner picked up the tell-tale flashes of a phaser. At the time the unit with the comm.set was separated from the Flaspoint location by extremely hazardous geological impediments. That is a quote from the Eff-Eff-Oh’s witness statement. The Flashpoint interface lasted for eight Trespassers days. By the time the comm.set reached the ravine the troops of the other half-company were so dehydrated they were totally incapacitated and the Äkkaidiiz had affected their customary clean-up operations and gone. In the enquiry that ensued, the Eff-Eff-Oh blamed the senior Non-com of the Flashpoint unit for the operational failures to return with an Äkkaidiiz or to provide any description of the phaser weapon. The Court of Presiding Judges ordered that everything within the power of the Federation be used to examine the sole source of information regarding the weapon.

Their memories.
And believe me, Plight. By everything, I do mean everything. Including the forbidden.

No way. If he’s here on the Spindle they couldn’t have! Mintrep is so invasive that its application is fatal. That is why it's only sanctioned by the Upper Tier of the Praesidium.
But sanction it they did. The witness statements of the fifty-four troopers were all basically the same. The need for water. The extreme heat by day. The extreme cold at night. The diffuse phase beam that kept them from reaching the well. The corpses of the Äkkaidiiz that littered the ravine. The stench of putrefying flesh and excreta. The manner in which the beam burned a target be it vegetation or Äkkeidiiz. The manner in which the lone Äkkeidiiz warrior with the phaser moved amongst the corpses chopping off their limbs with the traditional twin-bladed sword. The fear at the realisation that medieval weaponry is useless against phasers. All fifty-four had the same memories.

They all reported the action of their Non-Com. He managed under the cover of darkness to get close to an Äkkaidiiz corpse. He played dead for three days before the warrior approached him to dismember the Äkkaidiiz corpse over which he was playing dead.

At that point the last clear memories of the entire half-company are the warrior using the phaser weapon to dispatch an Äkkeidiiz spear thrower, then tugging the sword from its belt bending and lifting the weapon for the downward stroke. There follows in quick succession the warrior falling with a cross-bow bolt in his forehead and the sudden revival of the corpse. The revived Akkaidiiz slings the Non-com over its shoulder and leaps into the well. A split second later the phaser detonates. The flash has permanently blinded twenty-three of the troopers. None of them recall seeing their Non-com emerging from the well. His claim is that he climbed out unaided but cannot put a time on it.

The concern of the Court was that although the Non-Com was lying at the feet of the warrior when it used the phaser, he had no memory of the weapon itself. The Eff-Eff-Oh persuaded one of the Presiding Judges that the Non-Com was using a selective memory technique. Yes?

That Presiding Judge was Feliish?
Well done, Plight. The Eff-Eff-Oh’s argument was that the Non-Com had seen the weapon but was keeping it a secret from the Federation as he was intending to give the information to Jonti. This claim was made despite the evidence from a battery of memory scans. It was a last gamble ploy by the Eff-Eff-Oh. If she failed to pin the blame for the debacle on the Non-Com, she would find herself the subject of an enquiry. Unwittingly she had pressed the right button.

A long-held and never admitted fear amongst the Federation High Command is the emergence of a powerful portable weapon that would give the Challis Guards parity with the far more numerous SFC Command. My personal witness statement contains the counter argument and evidence that the memory training of the Challis Guards permits them to store separate events but not the specific details of the event. The Upper Tier dismissed my statement as unscientific ... and sanctioned Mintrep.

Since he’s still alive something unexpected must have happened.
It was believed by the Court that the prisoner should not be informed in case such knowledge affected his mental stability. First he was transferred to a Bii Ess Ell Six facility where the virus was injected while he slept. The memories flowed and flowed and flowed. The quantity was impressive and the detail was stupefying. It was so stupefying that the transfer almost ground to a halt for lack of drive-space. And time was pressing.

Jonti had somehow been informed and Hisself the Currant was beginning to make dire sounding threats. Mintrep is chronological. The first hiccup occurred when the early memories did not include the memory training schedule. The second went unnoticed by all but me. I once spent a very enjoyable interlude with the Non-Com. Those memories were missing. Outside the Bii Es Ell Six facility, The Upper Tier were beginning to back down in the face of economic sanctions and the withdrawal of all Challis military units from Federation command when the really unexpected happened. I think you could almost say it was the unthinkable. The Non-com’s immune system began to destroy the virus. Oh, Plight! If not for Hisself the Currant that Non-Com would have been subjected to years of examination.

And if they ever get their hands on him again you suspect that not even Hisself would be able to stop them. Why did they release him at all?
All the medics involved argued that ultimately the virus would triumph. So they released him to satisfy Hisself’s demands but laid down the condition that he remained in Federal custody until the investigation was concluded. There is a time set for the conclusion.

After which Ii Ai Ii will come and collect him and he will have an accident on the way back. When is the deadline?
Tomorrow.

When is the delivery system programmed to go?
The Spindle personnel evacuate tomorrow.

Oh Christus! You're cutting it damme fine. If the Non.com doesn’t know how to operate the delivery system he needs to get in there fast to familiarise himself.
He’s there now doing just that.

Good because we have here, Commander an interesting Command file. I think it best that you look at this screen. I suspect there are controls that trip alarms if it’s viewed by more than one simultaneously.
What am I looking at?

The left hand column is an ID code. The middle column is a sequence of timed instructions. The right hand column is a second set of ID codes.
What does oh oh nine oh to one one five nine activity hash five stroke twenty-three bii four mean?

That there’s a correlating file that relates to the type of work to occur between nine in the morning and eleven fifty-nine. But look! The next one simply indicates rest. You do understand what this means. Commander? COMMANDER?
“What IS Dauet doing?”

Is that what I think it is? She's broken up the cell furniture. If that stuff's flammable she's making a fire. Oh god. I must’ve tripped an alarm. The Spindle’s got a sea-water sprinkler system? Is there an over-ride system to switch it off? Turn it off, Commander. TURN IT OFF NOW! Oh Lordy this is very bad, very, very, very bad for my nerves. Now keep me informed of what she’s doing while I compose a new instruction.
There’s smoke rising. Small flames. Dauet is scratching the skin of her left arm. Oh Lord. She’s ……….she’s peeling her skin away. No blood visible. It’s more like a sheath. She is looking at the sprinkler unit over head. Now she’s looking at the flames. Taking her tunic off. That is now smouldering. Flash fire, Plight. She is holding her arm out. Wait. Now she’s walking towards the edge of the platform. Jumped.

Instructed to jump. I’ve seen filched technical specifications for artificial simulacra. A skeleton of a red selenium compound makes a durable and robust structure plus a power pack. And what, Commander happens when water interfaces with red selenium?
A big bang.

And Tamjik must have had about eighty kilos in her bone structure. There is shortly going to be an underwater explosion of seismic proportions.
No one swims here. Not only because of the salinity. I’m not babbling, Plight. The Spindle’s cooling system uses sea water. But it must be kept moving at high speed lest it clogs the system. The input is gravity fed while the movement within the system is controlled by an expeller that pushes out fifty thousand litres a second. Dauet has jumped into a rip-tide and will……………………………………………….hopefully be that far away. My god the water plume must be as high as the mast! Damage control teams report in to damage control centre! I’m feeling inordinately relieved but you, Plight are looking very worried.

We’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. On the cliff are two hundred and nine artificial simulacra with an end command sequence of kill. On the Spindle there is the threat that if anything goes wrong we all get infected by bio-flauvain. Neither option is good.
Change the instruction, Plight.

I can’t. It’s an end command. Only the composer with the same code can authorise and conduct a change.
So. What are the options? Can we assume that if the evacuation doesn’t occur that they will come here?

Very likely. Total erasure of witnesses and information will I think be the case. They will come here whatever we do to ensure that no one is left alive.”
The pontoon? Can we destroy it?

Is the Spindle equipped with explosives?
No. How many can your flitter bug take?

Half. I cannot leave half my flock behind, I’ve only just met them. Wait a minute!”
“PLIGHT! Now is not the moment to get romantic ideas!

Goose!
Goose? What are you doing? I thought you said you couldn’t change the end command?

I still can’t. I can programme my flitter bug from here. I can instruct all two hundred and eleven to board it.
And then?

Drive malfunction and fragmentation explosion a thousand kiloms out over the ocean. They will all drop into the sea. Result. One huge explosion and a tidal wave.
A good idea. But not good enough. Dauet stripped her skin off. Ergo the selenium needs to be bared. Your flitter but might be bared but can you guarantee they will be. Because if any survive the experience they will still have the end command to obey. Am I right or am I right? And please don’t think of doing the same thing inside the tear because we do not know whether they are mechanical Ei Ai or bio-mechanical Ei Ai.

Give me a little time. I will think of something suitably devious. In the meantime, satisfy my curiosity and answer a couple of questions. You said that it would not be the only Flauvain entity. Secondly …. Who are you really? And why have you been transmitting all that we’ve said?
The last shall be first and the first shall be last. The Non-com is Cohort Commander Nutrition Richerald Deretten of the Challis Guards. He was born on Saveryede sometime in the three four forties. The sheep farmers on Saveryede were and are largely illiterate but to compensate they do have the most unbelievable abilities to memorise such important aspects as their histories. Unfortunately the Great Saveryede Drought of the three seven fifties hit the mountain sheep farmers the hardest. Whole communities died of starvation, Derettens’ amongst them. He had fled Saveryede believing he was wanted for the murder of his cousin. Mintrep proved he had been framed.

He joined the Challis Guards in 4663. His Commanders always wanted him to become an Officer but he was too distrustful of authority and he took issue over the taking of life. That, Plight, was the main reason I liked him. He was acting Co-Co-Nut in the Challis Guards unit that was on Plutarch when the war started. He was still there when it ended. Hisself the Currant firmly believes that had Deretten been in overall command on Plutarch a good deal fewer lives would have been wasted. That was why Hisself was so angry when he discovered that Deretten was undergoing Mintrep treatment.

Derettens is not a jumper, Plight. As far as he's concerned, a life wasted is a life wasted whichever way you view it. But he’s a marked man. You can’t confront an organism as big as Ii Ai Ii and live to tell the tale. If you run and hide you will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. He’s not a jumper but neither does he want to live for the rest of his days putting all those he befriends into danger.

OK. I get it. This is a mote memory for him. Well, tell him form me that he has my earnest admiration, respect and that I promise to look after them as if they were my own.”
You just have. Plural, Plight?

The flock, goose! And besides you’ve just answered the middle question. Monologic or dialogic?
Monologue, dear.

I’m beginning to suspect you’re related to Machiavelli. Try this one. Melniss tear has a ‘forbidden’ on a ridiculously low entry velocity. The Diitii is a black hole.
“But if its forbidden doesn’t that mean there’s a bar to coding them in?

It’s my flitter-bug. I removed the bar.
Ah. Do you have time to set up the instructions?

I already have. But this, Commander, is a command decision. Hit this button……..what are you waiting for? Compassion for killers?
I am praying, Plight. I am praying that when I hit this button you don’t obey the instruction.

Me too, Commander. Me too. So, hold my thumb and we’ll both press it. The instruction should be almost instantaneous. So who are you really?
Have you noticed anything familiar about these ID numbers? Plight! Pay attention!

I was wondering when we would get around to them. They’re Upper, Middle and Lower Tier Codes. Small wonder they sanctioned mintrep for our friend Deretten.
Sometimes you really surprise me. Thank you for that, Plight! Thank you! Both of you, f…. fizz! …………………………………………………….

Buzz. Er. Can we sort of keep our eye on the ball? My blitter fug’s gone. We should now evacuate the flock and get the hell out of here.
Blitter fug, Plight? No. No. No! Keep your hands to yourself. You, also, seem to have forgotten something.

What?
Who am really I. Clue, my grandfather and you will get on like a house on fire. On Jonti.

On Jonti?
On Jonti dwells Hisself the Currant.

Oh Fa…………………….
No Plight! It's Fizz.