Chapter 17

Leo Tangent floated in the heart of the Leafari Empire’s incursion into the solar system and looked into the shimmering orb that was the soul of the artificial intelligence they had built and sent here to subjugate everything he ever loved ... and crossed his arms over his chest, tucked his legs up into the microgravity sitting position that he had learned when he was a child, and started off with: “Well, before we get into a debate, I have to make sure I get some details first.”

“Of course,” the Fleetsoul said.

“Just answer the question, human,” Commander Kade said, his voice holding a dangerous timber to it.

“Be silent, Commander Kade,” the Fleetsoul interjected.

Leo’s jaw tightened as he heard the big, winged Leafari growl under his breath.

“You know, we may have an easier time of discussing this without two angry authoritarians breathing down my neck,” Leo said, trying to sound casual, even as his spine crinkled in the expectation of a blow.

“We’re not idiots,” Yeshna said, her one good wing fanning out, then snapping shut in a reflexive gesture that she corrected for with an unconscious touch of fingers against the curved ceiling of the spherical room. “The Fleetsoul isn’t exactly fragile, but you could do enough damage to be worth keeping an eye on.”

Leo shrugged.

“Okay,” he said. “How long have you been ... aware? Were you created on Leafros? Or did you only come to awareness out here?”

“I was, for lack of better term, born when the fleet was launched into it’s preliminary acceleration phase. It was easy enough to encode information and data on the laser light used to accelerate the invasion fleet up to its initial speeds – this, by the way, is how we got here with significantly more material and ships than the escapees that you adopted. They had to burn half their reaction mass to reach cruising velocity. We could reserve more for a sharper deceleration, and did so relatively close to the solar system.”

Leo nodded.

“There were some refinements in our deceleration protocols, we were undetected by your out-system observers. Fortunate, as it took us several years to do the initial observations and infiltration programs. Finding a weakness in your society was the work of almost a year, and exploiting it took two more.” The Fleetsoul’s central orb – which, Leo reminded himself, was actually the part of the machine that made the quantum computer stupider so she could be sentient at all, an idea that still left his head hurting – rippled and quivered with what almost felt like a shrug. “We expected ... more fracture points.”

Leo nodded, slowly, trying to think of where to begin.

“Lets talk about your assumptions,” he said, steadily. “You say that the Leafari Empire is the only stable, long lasting civilization in the galaxy. How did you come to that conclusion, was it based entirely on your own history?”

“Of course not!” The Fleetsoul sounded almost offended. “It was based on your history, Mission Commander Tangent.”

Leo opened his mouth, then closed it. Shit, he thought.

“Simply put, the Terran history that your computer banks recount are an endless string of wars, terrorism, famine, privation, and bloody revolution. And rather than stabilizing as technology improved, as did the Leafri Empire, your warfare only grew more intense. Need I remind you of the global conflict of World War 1, World War 2, the terrorizing regimes of the United States and Communist Russia, China, and the European Union Emergency Action Committee? Then, of course, the near total ecocide and loss of extant Terran population in the Five Minute War. A war started entirely by mistake, allowed to balloon into such catastrophic levels by your own species volatility and inability to use a stable form of government?”

Leo shook his head. “In our history, you’d note, most of those wars and famines were presided over by empires. The exact kind of thing you’re trying to push on us.”

“Of course,” the Fleetsoul said – and Leo had a feeling he was going to start getting really really really sick of that calm, almost condescending tone of voice she was using. “Your species lacked the Devonians, the most vital biological technology to have ever been discovered. That evolutionary gap led, inevitably, into even your most stable social structures to collapse. But rather than creating the proper society, you have made one where you have countless micro-pressures waiting for long term issues to propagate and fracture.”

“Oh, right?” Leo asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Currently, you allow Devonians and Terrans of middling to poor intelligence and education to vote, hold office, and make economic decisions. This has measurably slowed and even reversed some vitally important ecological and economic recoveries in the post Five Years War period. Mars could be nearly a century and a half closer to terraforming completion, while Earth could be able to sustain a population almost twice as large.”

“And why does that matter?” Leo asked.

“Excuse me?”

Leo felt a tiny sting of pleasure at the tone that he had gotten from the computer. He shrugged and put his hands on his knees.

“Why does it matter?” he asked.

“I don’t understand the question,” the Fleetsoul said. “It is self evident why it matters.”

“Pretend I am an alien from a distant planet, who evolved in entirely different biological conditions as Leafari,” Leo said, smiling lopsidedly. “Pretend my culture is completely different, too. And pretend I have no idea why we should have a larger economy or larger population. And explain to me, why it would be worth giving up the freedoms and pleasure of people now to have more people later?”

“Well.” The Fleetsoul paused for a genuine, long moment. Leo continued to sit in meditative silence. He had a feeling he was on the right track, but he knew that the best way to sabotage this was to start getting too far ahead of his own remass tanks. “This situation right here, in fact. Imagine how more effective your resistance to invasion and occupation would be if you were stronger. This is a problem that smaller states on Earth have had for many, many centuries. Even ostensibly well meaning political projects have been crushed by larger neighbors, while more belligerent, selfish, and totalitarian states have been able to use that very belligerence and totalitarian qualities to survive.”

“So, might makes right,” Leo said, nodding.

“Essentially,” the Fleetsoul said.

Leo stuck his tongue into the corner of his mouth, thinking.

“There’s one flaw in your premise,” he said.

“I’ve already seen it,” the Fleetsoul said.

“You can’t beat us,” Leo said. “You can only kill us – and it’s easy to destroy a planet. We could do it, if we knew that the Leafaros were there, and if we had no compunctions about tit for tat. The Human Union could build an attack ship and destroy Leafaros without much difficulty.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Well, okay, it’d be a generational project and a massive pain in the ass from a technical perspective. But, like. It’s not as if this invasion fleet was something that the Leafari Empire could toss off out of their hat.” He knew he was butchering his metaphors, but he figured that it’d still be parsed.

“No,” the Fleetsoul said.

“So!” Leo pointed his finger at the orb. “While we may not be expanding as fast as the Leafari Empire is claiming to be, I also think we’re not as unstable as you think we are. You say that orb there lets you make errors in your computations – to allow for sentience, right?”

“Correct,” the Fleetsoul said.

“That lets you be creative, come up with new ideas, artistry, the whole second stage,” Leo said. “That’s good. But it also means you have the same foibles and mistakes as our meaty consciousnesses, right? We have biases. You have biases.”

“Yes,” the Fleetsoul said. “But my biases are emergent from a civilization that has lasted ten thousand recorded years.”

“And how long since the founding of the Leafari Empire did it take for spaceflight to be invented?” Leo asked, driving at a new angle of attack, his sense of the conversation shifting. It was possible that the ten thousand years thing was a mythologizing lie – but even if it was, he could work with the assumptions baked into it. His hand waggled from side to side as he continued. “Because, see, since our civilization is so unstable, we can’t really say that the Human Union invented spaceflight. We inherited it from the New Eurasian Bloc and the United Near East Coalition, who, themselves, inherited it from the FSA and the EUEAC, who, themselves, inherited it from the United Stated and the European Union and the Russian Federation, who, themselves, inherited it from the Nazis.” He shrugged slightly. “But that traces back about three centuries. How about you?”

The Fleetsoul sighed. “The Leafari Empire achieved spaceflight approximately the same amount of time before, give or take a few decades.”

“So, technological progress and economic growth aren’t actually linked to stability. I think it’s because both planets had to invent the same things, and the same chains of linked inventions lead down similar roads. It’s the same way that, like, the Leafari evolved from birdlike ancestors, while mine were simians. But we both ended up with two hands, two legs, two eyes.” He pointed at the bodyparts in question. “Why? Because our evolutionary niche of tool using social animals has the same pressures, the same pathways, the same most effective bodyplan.”