Amateur Megalomania

The foresail rippled as it snapped from port to starboard under the steady wind. Masts and booms creaked as the load distribution changed, sending the Out Of Body Experience another point into the wind. Its twin masts groaned under the thrust. The ship now cut a sharper angle into the steady line of waves, sending the spray over the bow to drench the captain and crew. The roar of the wind competed with the repetitive pounding of the waves against the hull, leaving the grunts of the struggling crew lost to the ear.

Behind her, the racer pursued her through the squall. One final turn and they would both sprint the downwind leg to the finish line.

Lichter stood on the centerline of the ship, leaning into the tilting deck and rocking up and down with the swell of the waves. The steady vibration sent signals up his legs, feeding him information about the tension in the hull, the speed of the ship, and the shuddering oscillations as the sails luffed in the unpredictable wind. He squinted into the wind and watched the oncoming whitecaps, watching the play of wind on water a few minutes ahead of the ship’s course.

He shouted out a correction and prepared to spin the wheel another point, heeling in front of the wind as it shifted off line. The crew scrambled from port to starboard, preparing for another series of tacks. Lichter spared a moment to look aft at the approaching racer. A figure in a bright orange raincoat stood out on the deck of the racer.

Lichter turned his attention back to the Experience, making his course corrections and scanning the waves ahead as the crew maintained the tension of the sails. The orange turn buoy bobbed up and down in the swell a half mile of his port, and the Experience cut a straight line, more or less, to the turn point on the far side of the buoy. A dark patch of water ahead signaled another change in the wind, this time favorable.

They came around the buoy in a frenzy of activity. The jib collapsed and two men gathered it to keep it from going over board and acting as a giant sea anchor. Three others hoisted the spinnaker from the forward compartment, running it up the mast while other men adjusted the lines, cranking the capstans for all they were worth. The spinnaker thundered as the massive, curved sail filled with air, and suddenly it was very quiet. With the wind at their back, the hull seemed to rise up in the water, surfing the leading edge of a wave as the wind worked with the ship instead of trying to claw the sails from the mast during the upwind leg. The spray of the hull through the waves vanished, and the throbbing vibrations faded.

The racer still thundered on through the upwind tack, approaching the buoy and making for her turn. She was faster on the downwind leg, and Lichter didn’t mistake the slight lead as insurance at the end of the race. It was going to be close.

Lichter studied the position of the racer for a moment, realizing it would have to take another tack to reach the turning point, coming in from the starboard and passing near the Experience’s current line. Lichter didn’t hesitate.

He barked out commands, luffing the spinnaker and bleeding off speed as they jibbed to port. He held the luff and watched the racer as she made her starboard tack, claiming a line to the buoy. Lichter gave the command and the spinnaker snapped as it filled with air once more. The hull surged beneath him and they sprinted toward the oncoming racer. Lichter watched the two hulls racing to a fixed point above the heaving sea, still unsure about which one would get there first.

The Experience continued to accelerate, and after a moment he was certain he had the line. While the racer had the advantage in downwind legs, she wallowed in the upwind tack. The orange figure on the deck of the racer watched the play of the two ships and made the call to heave a fraction after Lichter would have. The racer made another tack, abandoning the right of way established by the Experience.

Lichter smiled and made another jib, cutting outside of the optimal line and letting the spinnaker swing wildly to starboard. He hauled against the wheel, holding the rudder in balance against the enormous force of the wind. The spinnaker cast a large wind shadow, robbing the air of velocity and leaving a patch of dead wind ahead. Lichter laughed out loud as the shadow covered the racer, collapsing her sails and leaving her floundering in the pounding waves. He released the wheel and the Experience swung around to run before the wind.

Behind him, the racer turned broadside to the waves and was pushed downwind a few lengths. He watched the crew scrambling to work the sails and get the ship back on track, losing precious lengths as the Experience raced toward the finish line.

“Lichter Prime, message from Core Command.”

The voice echoed inside his head. Lichter grimaced and accepted the call while trying to remain in the spirit of the race. The voice continued. “Command subtype of Prime personality assigned to Batharum, ID appended in data file, defeated in action. Subsequent self-destruct confirmed. No reintegration possible. Core Command requests audience. Appointment scheduled and appended.”

Lichter signed the message and sent the attached files over to his assistance subsystem for processing. The confirmation codes came back an instant later, affirming the relevant facts.

Core Command wanted an audience.

Lichter yelled out a minor adjustment and turned the ship a point. The finish line was still well out of sight. He glanced back to see that the racer had made her turn and deployed her own spinnaker.

Archival was a significant risk.

Lichter sighed. The race was entirely spoiled now. He released his focus and the Experience vanished beneath him. The wind and water faded to black, and after a moment, he was left hovering in an empty void. He floated for a few minutes, enjoying the sensation of his body enclosing his consciousness. He didn’t consider himself old-fashioned, but the feel of a body seemed natural.

He flicked it aside and allowed the consciousness Limiters to fade away. Free from the embodiment subroutine, he swelled to his full capacity and brought all routines back on-line. In a fraction of a second, he collated the nearly endless string of progress reports that had accumulated while he had raced in real time. His MindMail flashed for attention, full of inquiries from friends. He dispatched a dozen notifications that he had left real time, and prioritized the nearly instant replies.

Maybe he was old-fashioned. While most of his friends were happy in dealing with simulacrums of one another, embodied with high level personality traits, Lichter still preferred to exist as a Prime, handling his own relationships and exchanges in person. It limited the number of his friends, and it took longer to get things done, but immortality was supposed to free him of time constraints.

At least that was the idea of immortality outside of the Archive.

Lichter tightened his anxiety subroutine, chiding himself at the same time. He liked to live as naturally as possible, but he needed a clear head right now.

He cleared his visual field and turned his attention to data analysis, instantiating a four-d data space and populating it with his file system. The file icons filled his view, twinkling in various hues to denote different time periods and locations; battles won and lost under his command. He added the most recent conflict to the field and allowed the display to run backward and forward in time.

His success rate was deteriorating, dramatically. The flashing red icons clustered on the far end of the display; the end that represented the now.

Active existence was a privilege granted to the productive inside the Core. Those that could not justify the processing load they occupied would find themselves in the Archive, frozen in time and waiting on free resources to power their thoughts.

In the middle of an unending war of extermination, those resources were likely never to be free.

Archival is something one did not wish to contemplate.

Lichter opened the most recent battle assessment and tasted it, letting the data packets infiltrate his awareness and settle into his consciousness. While he couldn’t get a first person perspective from the lost sub-personality, he could examine elements of the battle collected by the remote sensor suite deployed in orbit around Batharum.

Lichter summoned up the pre-battle briefing uploading into his mind by the AI weeks ago, prior to the mission. Originally he had passed the file to the sub-personality dispatched to command the battle, but now he took a moment to experience the briefing. The most recent conflict on Bathurum was the fifth that Lichter had led over the past eight hundred years of the war. The strategic importance of the world made it a primary node of the ongoing conflict with the Arm. The frequent changes of control were not unusual when holding ground was frequently more difficult than ceding control until the next time the Gate would be needed.

He sifted through the available intelligence, noting gaps in the sensor coverage. The intelligence grid would be a prime target once the Arm realized it was under assault. It might not impact this battle, but the AIs on both sides were the ultimate long term planners.

The initial drop point had been changed from the original briefing, and Lichter fired off a request for the change order and an explanation. The AI answered immediately, filling his bin with the appended orders. The Arm Commander had built two defensive positions, widely separated by a ridge. The initial drop point was on the location of the second base, so the AI assigned the Lichter sub-type to a different insertion point, farther to the west and shielded from on of the bases by the ridge.

That seemed sensible. Lichter watched the insertion and witnessed his avatar lumbering around on the surface, erecting buildings to fabricate combat units.

Three minutes. That was considered the minimum required time for a Commander to hit the ground and fabricate the minimum viable defensive position. After those three minutes, each passing second increased the chances to mount an effective offensive assault on a prepared position.

While three minutes was an eternity to a Core personality, the real world responded at a much more leisurely pace. Sometimes Lichter wondered if his colleagues, living in their accelerated mental frames, were conditioning themselves in a way that did not help them when forced to interact with matter in the real world.

Impatience was a character flaw of the Core.

Lichter watched the battle unfold, actually slowing it down beneath real time despite a temptation to rush ahead to the critical moments of failure. You only had one fresh viewing of an event to form a perception, and Lichter didn’t believe in editing his memories to try to recapture that fresh perspective.

The replay froze as an audience request came in through his assistant sub-personality. Lichter glanced at the checksum identifier and quickly rejected the request, appending a note to the rejection. “You know better. Don’t waste my time with subs.”

Instantly, a new request came in with a different checksum. Lichter granted the request after dumping the battle replay into temporary storage. He applied a social filter to the audience, forcing them both into simulated bodies in a plush, wood paneled study with a dignified mahogany desk. Lichter sat behind the desk and designated his guest to one of the opposing chairs.

Pron materialized in the chair, wearing casual but elegant clothes in the fashion of the mid twenty eighth century (fill in the descript later). The avatar lacked any firm facial features, as Pron didn’t care to fill them in for these encounters. Lichter imposed his own filter to give Pron a more human appearance. As a concession to his guest, Lichter accelerated his consciousness a thousandfold, to match the reference frame with Pron.

Pron looked around the study and smiled. “This is why I enjoy talking to you. Even if it means coming in person, you at least provide the most charming affectations.”

Lichter flipped up the lid of the humidor and retrieved a couple of cigars (you might be better qualified to write the cigar lighting ritual here). “You should slow down and try it sometime.”

Pron laughed. “It’s bad enough clunking around in real time on the battlefield. Why inflict that on yourself when you don’t have to?”

“What difference does it make, really? It all passes the same subjectively. It isn’t like we’re going to run out of time.”

“Whatever. What do you think of the announcement?”

“Announcement?”

“Lichter Parrish, always the last to know. The AI has designated more cycles to battlefield management. It means a few of us are going to get archived.”

Lichter invoked a suppressor routine and steadied himself. “When was this?”

“Three seconds ago. It’s all over the Core now.” Pron stared at him for a moment. “You’re not actually worried, are you?”

“You never know, Pron.”

“You? The commander template for every crucial battle over the last two hundred years? I don’t think anyone incarnated can match your record. If anyone can justify the cycles he occupies, it’s you.”

Lichter accelerated his reference by another factor of a hundred, entering temporal territory he hadn’t seen in subjective years. He accessed the announcement and took his time reading it while Pron seemed to freeze in place. It was as Pron had said. Resources were being diverted from the Core population and applied toward battlefield management. War with the Arm had taken a turn for the worse, and statistically, the variation was significant. Lichter allowed the regression curves of casualty figures from the past thousand years fill his mind, following along with his statistical management routine. The AI would be archiving some people, sending them to await the outcome of the war with the rest of the Suspended. The big question still to be answered is how many would be designated as superfluous.

Lichter dropped back to Pron’s reference frame. “Got it all figured out now?” Pron asked.

Lichter took a long drag on the cigar. He supposed he was squandering cycles on the cigar illusion, but he enjoyed these remnants of humanity too much to seriously think about disposing of them. What sort of life were they fighting to preserve, anyway? “What do you think?” Pron always seemed to know more than he should, or he was just a damn good guesser.

“Just another round of reorganization. Things will cycle back in the war. I wouldn’t worry about that.”

“Yeah, but when was the last time the AI brought anyone out of storage once we started winning again? How many archivals have there been in the past four centuries?” He addressed the last question to the AI directly.

“Fourteen million, three hundred seventy thousand, six hundred fifteen. Increment by one. Increment by one. Increment by one…”

“Suspend answer.” Lichter’s eyebrows rose. “It has started already?”

Even Pron betrayed a bit of surprise, or was that Lichter’s avatar template speculating on Pron’s reaction? “So it seems.”

Lichter addressed the AI again. “How many personalities have been pulled from the archive in the same interval?”

“Data not available.”

“Excuse me?” Now Pron’s surprise was genuine. “What does that mean?”

“The data is not for general dissemination.”

Lichter cleared his throat. “This is Lichter Parrish, ID as follows.” He fired off a three million bit ID code through the rooms shortband channel. “Requesting command access to archival dataset. Invoke command codes appended to my file. Answer the damn question.”

This time there was no delay. “Zero.”

“So why is that restricted? It isn’t really a surprise.” Pron took a puff from his fake cigar.

Fake? Lichter thought as he watched the smoke wafting toward the ceiling. That isn’t a word I’ve thought much about in centuries. He sighed, feeling tired. “I don’t know. For whatever reason, the AI locked it down, but not too tight if Command Personalities can still get to it. I’m sure the reasons are locked well beyond my pay grade.”

“Huh?”

“Pay grade. Never mind. It means I’m not authorized.”

“Whatever. The point still remains though – some of us are going to get the big tap on the shoulder, maybe any hertz now.”

“Do you remember Antigone Olympia?” The question came out before Lichter had even acknowledged the thought.

Pron froze for a second, fetching a memory from his remote stack. The pause was nearly imperceptible. “Sure. Archived about a century ago after a brilliant career as a Commander. Suffered a string of losses and seemed to lose his edge. Went a little batty at the end if my file checksum is correct.”

Lichter grabbed his own remote memories, noting that the last time stamp access on this memory was more recent than he recalled. But memory was a funny thing in the Core. He didn’t pay it much attention.

“Yeah, he was a good friend back then. Not sure why I thought of him.”

“Speaking of losses. You’re in a bit of a slump right now. Any ideas?”

“I was just reviewing the last engagement when you came in. Not sure yet. Its hard when you don’t get the sub back for reintegration. First hand knowledge is always better than watching it through a remote. No context of thought.”

“Tell me about it. I’ve been lucky lately, but I don’t seem to learn much from a loss when I can’t reintegrate. I’m sure you’ll get it figured out. All these losses coming in the same sector?”

Lichter sighed, wishing that were the case. “No. If the Arm had local superiority, that would certainly make this more explainable. But I’m all over known space lately.”

“Well, it’ll work out Lichter. I don’t think you’ll be getting the big tap.” Pron stuffed the cigar out in the tray and smiled. “Thanks for the break. I need to report in for dispatch. Heading out again in the morning.”

“Take care my friend. I’ll see you later.”

Pron vanished and Lichter sat back and sighed. He noted the AI presence was still on-line from their earlier inquiry. He shut it down, along with the battle review. He wasn’t in the mood anymore.

Ten seconds later, he received word that Pron had been archived.

Next Part (pending)

Filed under: Writing