Mezhel’An looked down at the rows of operatives she had assigned to her latest task. Two hundred Asceti were dedicated to the archiving project, saving the latest information from the Human data-storage site, and translating, printing, and filing it. The division had already catalogued close to all of Human scientific concepts, and sent them along to another division, this one tasked with divining precisely which fields the Asceti were lacking in.
So far, they had unearthed entire new branches of science, such as “philosophy”, “genetics”, and “dimensional physics”. The last was simply beyond anything she had heard of, pertaining to events that occurred during faster-than-light travel.
She even, proudly, had ascended beyond the obvious path of “ask Leonard’Human Hoschek for help”. There was another team devoted to ‘cross-referencing’ - applying the ancient art of consolidating agricultural and industrial statistics to the art of learning. She had heard that it was used before, in research and development, but she believed that she had truly industrialized the process. Throughout her building, a thousand workers were cataloging, cross-referencing, and making notes on the Human archives.
The goal of the monumental undertaking was obvious - accelerate technology to a point equivalent to Humanity in the areas were her own species was behind. The Asceti, too, demanded things like ‘toasters’, ‘flash drives” and “entanglement generators”. Where the Humans used them for leisure, the Asceti would-
She stopped, puzzled. The train of thought had lead her to a zone that she had flirted with before, the nigh-incomprehensible Human sciences of “philosophy” and “ideology”.
What were the Asceti to do with those goods, once the Creators were rendered unto nothing but dead flesh and dust? The decadence of Humanity seemed more and more relatable, looking at what threats they faced. Even in her own research into the Humans’ weaknesses (for data, of course), she had not been able to find any serious external threat they faced currently. Thus, they must be able to channel their might not into weapons and fortifications, but rather the mechanisms of empty pleasure she had seen so many of the Humans possess.
What would be left for the Asceti, once they reached that point? Would they simply cease to innovate, and backslide into barbarism, as there was nothing to focus their full might on? Or would they somehow manage to create their individual purposes, and indulge in a hedonism similar in magnitude to the daily lives of Humanity? What would the individual soldiers do, if their life-purpose was taken away? There would be nothing to watch the skies for, nothing to use the ten million rifles produced per year on. The two-million hysh’el yearly production of munitions would find no target, the tungsten mines’ output running into endless overflow…
It was like the supply situation, but worse. She had already dealt with a cascading overflow of concrete, and a lack of food production, shifting resources from the factories to the plantations. Now, the unnecessary-fabrication sector was becoming even worse than anticipated. Some resources were being overproduced, some were being underproduced, with the below-necessary sectors requiring resources to be requisitioned from other systems that had suddenly become critically strained…
No, that was irrelevant. The numbers, the factors of production, they were her appointed administrative task, yes. But the other side of the production failure, the “philosophic” level, was what she believed all Asceti would need to task themselves with.
If one looked past the food production shortages, the millions of surplus rifles, the un-expandable mining equipment… she would see a hole in… she didn’t know what to call it. A hole in what she needed, but didn’t need. It was the feeling one would get if locked in a room for days with no task to occupy oneself.
She remembered a half-remembered term from a half-remembered article. It was something she had read before. Spirit, some concept that could be satiated with philosophic activity. She remembered Mussolini, the Human she had observed the records of before being distracted by more reports, had criticized ‘materialism’, citing that it killed the spirit. Seeing Humanity’s luxuries and wealth, she knew that necessitated ‘materialism’, the value of resources for the self over the greater purpose. But what if the spirit needed to be killed?
There would be no need for a greater purpose once the Creators were dead. This was defined, based on her observations of Humanity and their texts. Perhaps the ‘spirit’ was something that was created for times of adversity, and served to harm once the adversity was gone.
Indeed, perhaps the influence of this ‘spirit’ was what was causing her stress, and reaction at the sight of Humanity getting over their true threats. Perhaps to kill it was the final test of a species? Humanity must have killed theirs long ago, and never spoken of it. Perhaps, in a way that was sympathetic to their easy upbringing, their slaying of the spirit had been so trivial, so second-natured that they had not even noticed it was gone.
It was the explanation that made sense, which must mean that Mussolini, despite his striving for the perfect system, the maximally efficient one, had been wrong, in a way that she was not accustomed to. If one said “production is consuming two thousand hysh’el of potash”, and it truly consumed one thousand five hundred hysh’el, that is what being wrong meant. Yet, Mussolini, if her theory was right, was wrong in a way that couldn’t be explained. The very concept was almost painful.
Such a minor thing… Mussolini had been right on the effects of materialism, that was the case from her observation, but its desirability... he had somehow determined it to be wrong, despite the fact that the death of his “spirit” would be a good thing. It would lead to more positive events than negative, and lower the level of stress he would experience through attempting to serve a greater purpose that did not exist.
She had read of his other actions, ones that he stated to be correct, despite being the incorrect course of action. To order thousands killed over an imaginary difference in their “Humanity” was abominable, and the last nail in the coffin for Humanity ever adopting truly efficient society. Her observations into their ‘totalitarianism’ (a word, which, despite its beauty, inspired such loathing from the Humans!) had formed a sad picture.
The Humans simply could not adopt a truly efficient society. It seemed that they resented being in a certain place, and always worked against their designated position. Chaos was woven into their very being, even in the way their data-storage site was organized. The little blue links made it so tantalizing to distract herself from what she was learning, and jump to a new and interesting piece of information.
Indeed, it was this chaos that had finally taken her into the realm of the Human “philosophy” and “ideology”. The variety contained within was immense - there were even Human philosophies that argued that turning nuclear weapons upon their world was justifiable and correct, citing concepts such as the “natural negative state of life” and “inevitability of suffering”.
Such philosophies were concerning - they highlighted a disturbing tendency within Humanity, fickleness and diversity of thought in a way towards destruction. It would be consistent with previous actions in history - those of Mussolini’s own ancient Italy, in fact, for them to decide that her own species was not worth aiding.
Still, she still had to trust them. To push as fast as she could towards technological equivalence, towards a form of independence from Humanity’s fickle chaos.
It was the only way for their great purpose to be fulfilled, and the slaying of the “spirit” to begin.
Still… she had more and more work to do, managing the slowly collapsing precision-engineered Asceti resource distribution network. Today’s issue wasn’t even the impending food shortage, or the extreme overconcentration of mineral resources in munitions industry.
No, it was a shortage of airships. Namely, a failure in the long-range logistics chain that allowed minerals from both continents to be pooled and distributed to regional supply nodes. No Hundresh meant more labor, and no destroyed mines, which meant more output. There were not enough motor-trolleys to carry the increased amount of resources to the bulk-transit airships. There were not enough airships, either. Where motor-trolleys could be redirected from their former tasks transporting finished weapons and soldiers to armories and combat zones, the same law did not apply to the vast aircraft. There were two factories that produced new airships, built thirty orbits ago. They were not designed to be expanded or accelerated.
The failure cascaded out from there. There was not enough raw hydrogen being isolated to fuel a new line of airships, and the infrastructure did not exist to produce more through electrolysis, as the demand for hydrogen was already completely satiated by numerous other processes. Electricity, at least, was not being strained too much. Not needing to run defensive laser installations and produce quite so many energy weapons was doing wonders for the availability of power.
The total image wasn’t pretty. She cursed the system’s failures as she poured over a pile of papers, authorizing every emergency measure she could find. To calculate and specialize so much… could it have been a negative choice? While the evidence at the time defined it as the least wasteful choice, the current situation was redefining it. Could this be why Humans had such strange ideas of “right” and “wrong”?
She felt that she was beginning to understand. That was ‘right’. Perhaps, at long last, it would be what could save the Asceti from peace-collapse.
Cynthia spun and lashed out, knocking another target from its floating perch. The swarm of foam-cushioned, grav-suspended drones floated around her, presenting rapidly-moving, dense targets for her to strike. One was eliminated, falling to the ground in its ‘dead’ state. She paid no attention to the downed drone, instead moving to the next two targets, eliminating one with a lightning-quick elbow and another with a surprisingly vicious headbutt.
The routine continued, as she took down the drones as quickly as possible. The irritating devices refused to die if not enough force was applied, and so she channeled her pent-up stress into finding the most creative way possible to take down the durable little machines. Eventually, the entire swarm of fifty was taken down, rolling on the floor out of range of her feet.
She didn’t kick them while they were down. Despite their amusing bounciness and spherical shape, doing that was for people without restraint, who had no respect for a defeated opponent.
It wasn’t enough yet. She re-activated half of the machines, and pulled out a foot-long folding baton.
The instrumer whirled and hissed through the air as she smacked the drones with enough force for every strike to be a “kill”. The ducking and dancing of the machines was not enough to save them from the strikes.
Mere moments later, she again stood alone, surrounded by dead drones, and finally exhausted enough to meet the day’s quota.
One of the walls in the sealed training chamber was a mirror. She looked into it for a moment.
She saw someone who was disheveled, with dark circles under her eyes. Faint stress lines crossed her forehead. Her hair was tied back tightly. All was well in the world.
She used the implant to handle communications while walking back to her cabin. A five-minute shower and fresh uniform brought her back up to the bridge. It was all a cycle, though one that she was trying to interrupt.
Trying was the key word, she thought. The cycle of work and relaxation was a good thing, perhaps. It kept her trained, ready to engage if anything suddenly went wrong. Say, if a crewman was suddenly revealed to be a spy for some conspiracy, or subverted by a Creator.
If that were the case, she’d rip his throat out. She’d been through too much goddamned misery at the hands of mysterious conspiracies or the mind-controlling soup creatures.
Her escape from Adrian- the Explorer’s quarters still weighed on her mind. If she really hadn’t been able to trust herself to not go off on a rant about the level of external nonsense that was ruining her day, she wasn’t suited to be anywhere but a psychiatrist’s office. Her exit had probably raised even more questions in his mind, maybe triggered him to start waiting for her return, probably with sad puppy eyes if her mental image was accurate.
At least he hadn’t done anything incredibly stupid, like ask if she needed a massage, or some other heinous violation of personal boundaries. That would be just the thing she’d expect - fucking Explorers with no respect for superior officers and the incessant need to make things ‘better’ in the most self-indulgent way possible.
She felt the doors whoosh open, and stepped into the cool air of the Scion of Venera’s command center.
It was nearly silent. Each officer worked at their own task, no more, and no less. There was almost an air of fear. She knew what it meant. It was the fear of their future, of what would happen if they couldn’t prove that they weren’t compromised.
She wanted to scream at the injustice the situation represented. Why could one wild accusation shut down an entire fleet, even if it had a conveniently forged signature?!
Still, at least she had a shot. If the plan worked, and her genetics read positive, the burden of proof would finally be on her accuser. She could be absolved of the damned title of “possibly contaminated personnel”.
The machine was at her desk, stored within a sealed box. She picked it up, stared at a camera, and began to speak.
“I solemnly swear that I am Captain dash Venus Cynthia Aldrich, number VE-C034TH-8513. I understand that a mistake of my identity shall be seen as further indication of my…”
She wanted to laugh.
“Condemned status. I am not a Creator, I have not been compromised by the creatures. I have not come within a mile of anything that possibly could have been, even indirectly. I have not obscured any sort of expedition to the quarantined vessels, or performed any sort of unauthorized contact with potentially contagious alien diseases.”
She opened the box, switched the power on, and placed her hand within the device.
“I desire nothing but an official declaration of my innocence.”
The needle penetrated the skin, and a rivulet of blood flowed into the machine. The blue “testing” light flicked on, as it began searching for her match in the Venusian and Federal voting archive.
The little red light on the camera seemed to look right at her. Instead of the usual threatening glare of a security camera, this seemed almost reassuring. No more suspicions, and no more quarantine. She would finally be able to set the Creators straight for their interference and general atrocities.
She sighed. Everything was finally going to be all right.
Submitted September 04, 2018 at 10:45PM by TheRealVerviedi https://ift.tt/2wI2Twy
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