Ryk E. Spoor's Blog, page 71

Spheres of Influence: Deleted Chapter 3

 

We continue with these postings. In this one… we get to learn more about where Ariane is going… and where DuQuesne was, once.

 

—–

 

 

Chapter 3.

     “So where, exactly, are we going, Marc?”

     She saw DuQuesne give a tiny start at her words, the first either of them had spoken in the little spaceship since they’d left Kanzaki-Three several hours before. She’d been able to tell he needed to think for a while, but after this much time she felt she needed to say something.

     “We’re actually going several places,” he said after a pause. “At least, we’ll get to several places before we actually arrive where I really want to go… and then we’ll go to a couple more.”

     She blinked. “You mean, we’re going to go to point A, then point B, then point C, all so we can end up at point D, rather than going to point D directly? Why?”

     “Yes,” he said with a humorless grin, “that’s exactly what I mean, and the reason is that I want to make damn sure we aren’t followed. And no, believe me, all the privacy and misinformation software in the System isn’t enough to convince me to take the straight path. Not with who might be following us.”

     That confirms it. “So this is something to do with Hyperion.”

     “Yes.”

     He didn’t say anything more, which was very uncharacteristic of him. She realized something about the situation upset him more than she’d even imagined possible. “Okay, you don’t want to explain that. Since I’m going to learn all about at least some of this once we get whereever we’re going, is there anything you do want to explain to me, or are you going to play Mister Grim and Silent all the way to wherever the hell we’re going?”

     That got a small, tense chuckle out of him. “Sorry, Ariane. I’m going to… talk to my old friends from Hyperion.”

     A light dawned. “You want to recruit them.”

     “Bingo. The Arena… it’s just as alien to everyone else as this world was to most of us Hyperions. But it’s more… more like us, in a way. Bigger, stranger, something out of the ordinary. I think we – at least some of us – belong there, not here.”

     “So what’s the problem?”

He shook his head. “It’s… well, in the end we’re going to see one old friend in particular. And hope he’ll see me.”

     “Why wouldn’t he? Or are you using ‘friend’ in the sarcastic sense?”

     “No, no; we were good friends, back then. But… you’ll understand when we get there.”

     “You know, I didn’t like that kind of phrase when my Grandpa used it when I was a kid, and I like it even less now.”

     He winced; she knew that his soft spot for her also meant she was one of the few people that could manage to get under his skin that way. “I know. But … blast it, I never thought it would be this hard to talk about it!”

     He’s really having serious problems. It’s always so hard to remember that he does have his own issues; Marc’s usually so omnicompetent and together that you never really think about what he went through.

     She didn’t want to drop the whole subject, but a different tactic was definitely indicated. “You know, Marc, one thing that’s always puzzled me about Hyperion, ever since you and Gabrielle gave a sort of bare-bones summary, was… how the hell did you end up making friends with other Hyperions? My impression was that most of  you were raised in literally your own little worlds, enclosures on Hyperion a couple hundred meters on a side with the latest in sense-input control to make them all seem limitless in extent. How could one of you meet the others, let alone make friends and… well…”

     “… plan to bring the whole house of cards down like Samson?” DuQuesne gazed off into the distance again, and for a few minutes she thought he wasn’t going to answer her. But then he sighed and looked back at her.

     “Look… the details don’t really matter, and to be honest it really hurts to think about it too much. But I can give you a general idea.

     “The people and AIs who built Hyperion tried their best to make those worlds real to us. When the souce material they based us off of wasn’t consistent, they figured out ways to resolve every inconsistency. The world might not work like this one, but by God it worked, it made sense – just like this one, if you saw something that didn’t make sense, you could bet there was a reason behind it. The amount of computational power put into those designs, and then maintaining those worlds… isn’t easy to comprehend. The Minds that the Blessed talk about could probably have handled Hyperion’s demands, but I’m not even sure of that; there’s physical limits to what kind of device you can build and still think in anything like real-time; speed of light lag’ll get you every time, even with quantum computation.” He paused. “Wonder if that’s one of the Arena’s other advantages; can you use Arenaspace as a computational shortcut? I’ll have to follow up with Simon on that.”

He smiled briefly at Ariane. “Sorry for the diversion. Anyway, running the simulation was a terribly complex operation for each Hyperion; you had to administer the stimuli, track the subject’s reaction, adjust the output to fit what you wanted, and sometimes adjust it for the subject’s expectations, especially in a world where they might be trying things counter-intuitive to the real world. It’s like all the simgames you ever played concentrated into perfection… and the player never knowing anything else.

     “But like I said back when we were discussing whether the Arena was real or just an illusion, eventually some of us somehow caught on to the scam. Maybe we really were smarter even than the AIs running the place, or just were thinking differently than they’d expected. In any case, those few of us who reached that conclusion were able to confirm it with some real subtle tests – biasing our reactions in certain directions and observing how the world followed the bias.”

     Ariane frowned. “But… why didn’t they pick up on your thinking?”

     “The idea was to make us who we were supposed to be ‘naturally’, if you can keep a straight face when you hear that word.” DuQuesne stared sourly downward at his hands. “A lot of us weren’t from high-tech sources, though a lot of us were. Integrating technology into us might not be a good idea from a number of standpoints, and they didn’t install direct neural interfaces and controls specifically to force them to not directly program our personalities. They wanted us to have developed based on how we were raised, on what we encountered, rather than just fed a set of parameters like a simgame’s NPCs. So they had to deduce what we thought, rather than read it directly.

“They could have arranged it if they got suspicious, of course, and in some cases they did – when the poor bastard in question was good enough to figure out the scam but not good enough or controlled enough to hide what he’d figured out. Where was I?” He paused, thinking. “Oh, yeah. Anyway, once we’d determined that something was way off-kilter with the universe, we started trying to find ways of extending our control – real carefully.”

     He turned away from her; his face, dimly reflected back to her from the port he was looking out, was a mask of rage and pain that he clearly didn’t want her to see. “I remember finally getting a data feed good enough to really understand where I was – that the world I was in was a six-hundred-foot stage, and me the only player that mattered, that the Skylark that Rich and I had sweated blood and tears over hadn’t been any more real than a daydream, that all my friends weren’t even who they thought they were… hell, even my enemies weren’t.

     “I really, honestly don’t know exactly how I hid that, Ariane. I just can’t figure out how I managed to keep from losing it completely. But I did, and so did a couple others.

     “That was the really dangerous part, you see; when we’d figured out the scam, but didn’t have any control over the scammers. We had to work through the system like ghosts, like mice, like a disease invading the cells, and always, always so afraid that one of the electronic brains would notice something wrong, set off an alarm, and we’d all be erased, set back to happy little simulations without so much as an apology.”

     “Five of us got that far on our own. When we realized that we weren’t alone – that there were dozens, hundreds of people like us – we knew we had to do something about the monsters that were holding us here.” He stopped there, looking sad, saying nothing.

     After a while, she asked, gently, “So… what did you do? How could you work together? Surely that would set off all the alarms.”

     He suddenly threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? That was the biggest trick of all, and I’m not sure if I’m proud or ashamed that the basic idea was all mine.

     “See, almost all of us were based on fictional characters. We were creations of drama, of adventure, of spectacle. So the people making us, what were they like? It didn’t take many brains to figure that out. Some of us were in worlds where fan-types existed.

     “I realized that this project had been already going on… a long time. Long enough that most, if not all, of us must be pretty much ‘done’ in the sense that we were now the heroes, or villains, that the Hyperion Project was trying to design. So what do you do with a hero when he’s done with his heroing? If it’s a book, you close the book, but this project was something the people involved had put decades of work into. They didn’t want to just fold it up, they didn’t know what to do with us… and so I gave them a hint.”

     “A hint?”

     “Sure.” DuQuesne smiled, a twisted smile made up of amusement, self-loathing, horror, a terrible mixture that sent a shudder down her spine. “What do you do with a hero? Give him a new adventure. I was able to put little clues in their data, hints – comments by us as our ‘characters’, pointers to related stories in their databases that looked like pointers from other researchers, and so on – so that finally one of the researchers had the idea I wanted him to have: ‘crossover!’. Create an adventure involving some terrible threat that seemed cross-dimensional, thus letting all the special heroes meet each other and work together to resolve it. What a wonderful final adventure!”

     Ariane swallowed. “So…”

     “So us super-scientist types found ‘clues’, or our worlds suffered disasters to give us the hint of potential trans-dimensional evil. Characters who were supposed to be magicians, same kind of thing. We started meeting directly – and those of us who knew what was really going on could talk to each other in person. By now we could modify the returned data feeds, make it so they didn’t get the true conversations in their databases. We started picking our next set of allies, people we were going to tell the truth, started preparing for war – against this terrible trans-dimensional evil, the Hyperion Project designers thought, but of course in truth against the Project itself.” He rubbed his temples. “Of course, eventually one of the designers, running a check with one of the main overseeing AIs, caught a hint of something not quite right, and we saw our cover about to be blown… and then it all came apart.”

     She watched two crystal tears slide down his face and reached out, and hugged him. How can he feel almost like a small child when he outweighs me by at least three to one? she wondered. But this is a ghost I think he’s never survived confronting.

     She let him cry silently for a few moments; he pulled away suddenly, floated himself to the far end of the little craft, and didn’t speak for a long time. Then he turned.

     “Thanks,” he said quietly. “I… needed to tell you that. But I couldn’t make myself start.” He looked out the window again. “Can you wait to learn the rest until we get there?”

     I’m not sure I could take learning any more right now. Oh, poor Marc! “Yes. I can.” She unsnapped and floated over to him, and put her hand on his arm. “Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me about it.”

     He gripped her hand so hard it hurt for a moment, a grip that said more clearly than any words could, No. Thank you for being there to tell.

     They floated there before the port, quietly watching the unmoving stars.

 

 

Spheres of Influence: Deleted Chapter 2

 

Leading up to the actual snippeting of the main book, I’m posting these chapters which were the original start of the novel. Now we get to see some things from Simon’s point of view…

 

 

—–

 

Chapter 2.

     What the heck was that about, Simon? Gabrielle’s encrypted transmission was puzzled and a bit worried. He sounded positively jumpy. And Marc’s never jumpy. She paused a moment. Except…

 

     Yes, except. Hold that thought. Once we’re back in my own offices I can feel secure. Because I think Marc has an extremely good reason for being this cautious.

 

     The offices that Simon had used during the initial development of the Sandrisson Drive, and later for the design, construction, and preparation of the Holy Grail were still his. No doubt they would eventually have been taken over, if they had stayed away for several years, but any possibility of that had been negated upon the ship’s unexpected return.

 

     That did not, however, eliminate the possibility that the security of the uninhabited laboratories had been violated.

 

     Simon knew he was nowhere near as competent at this sort of thing as DuQuesne, possibly not as good as Carl Edlund might have been. However, he had the advantage that this was his personal workspace, his personally requisitioned and prepared equipment, and everything in this space he and his AISage were intimately familiar with.

 

     He glanced down at the streamlined, polished case that now hung on Gabrielle’s hip, a case Ariane had given her as they left. And we have one other very powerful ally.

 

     A projection of a pretty Japanese woman in a classic laboratory coat materialized as Simon reached the main research console. “Good to be back in place, Dr. Sandrisson. Welcome back, Dr. Wolfe.”

 

     He smiled at the image of his lifelong companion, the AISage Mio. “It is good to see you back as well, Mio. You have exchanged greetings with our other guests as well?”

 

     “And prepared access points for them.” Gabrielle put the curved case on the indicated area of the console and her brow wrinkled for a moment in concentration.

 

     Immediately a blue-white sphere of what appeared to be pure energy shimmered into existence on Mio’s right; to her left, a dark-haired, serious looking young man wearing a red leather coat over black pants (and, Simon assumed, a black shirt underneath the coat). “Thanks, Mio,” said Gabrielle’s AISage, Vincent. “I appreciate being able to dock here.”

 

The globe of light spoke, flickering in time with the words. “I thank you for your courtesy, Dr. Sandrisson,” Mentor said. “And our next steps are easily visualized. Do I have your full clearance?”

 

     “You do.”

 

     For the next several minutes, three people – Simon himself and two very advanced artificial intellects – searched every record, every physical surface, and every interface; Gabrielle and Vincent watched, obviously recognizing they were out of their league. Not that Gabrielle is any less intelligent, but her skills are not useful for this. I would venture a guess that her AISage augments her own talents.

 

Finally Mentor spoke. “I believe these results are both clear and conclusive. There were three attempts at intrusion. One was successful, and very skillfully so; had you not allowed Marc DuQuesne to assist in the design and implementation of your project’s security, no trace would remain. Even so, the traces were subtle. There do not, however, appear to be any logic bombs, viruses, activity trackers, or other damaging or monitoring software or hardware present. We may speak freely.”

 

     “Did the successful intruder get anything we didn’t want them to get?” Gabrielle asked.

 

     “I don’t believe so,” Simon said. “As you might recall, I kept the key information on the drive in removable media, maintaining my own intellectual control on the IP, so to speak. I required that the same be done with the key elements of the probes’ and, later, the Holy Grail’s design.”

 

     “I concur. This appears to have been an extremely wise policy, as the one successful intruder was able to access all of your sealed records still on this system.”

 

     That worried Simon, and he could sense the same concern from Mio; the encryption and security methods used for such things should be effectively unbreakable, yet whoever this intruder was they had gone almost straight from walking in the door to reading the most private and secure files he had left on the system. That should not be possible, he thought.

 

     Yet it did happen, Simon. It especially worries me that the only way we picked up on the traces was from DuQuesne’s extra security.

 

     Gabrielle was moving on, however. “So you think DuQuesne’s doing something having to do with Hyperion?”

 

     “I would say it is almost impossible that it be anything else. What other unfinished business would he have here that would make him so… touchy?”

 

     She nodded. The discovery that their power engineer was one of the few surviving… experiments of Hyperion Station had been a shock, but even after being around DuQuesne for this long they both knew that they couldn’t really comprehend what it must have been like to be a Hyperion, someone raised in the image of a fictional hero only to discover your entire life had been a mirage, a fantasy created by short-sighted and misguided men and women. “So what are we doing?”

 

     “Partially, we will be doing exactly as DuQuesne recommended – preparing for departure. Which we will have to try to do as subtly as possible, because I am unsure as to what Mr. Naraj’s attitude would be towards our acting on our own.”

 

     “The SSC doesn’t have jurisdiction over what individuals do unless…” she trailed off, grimacing.

 

     “Your Visualization clears, youth,” Mentor said. “Even the – relatively speaking – minimal power embodied in that government can be interpreted to allow them to control access to the Arena. Indeed, it is not an unreasonable interpretation at all, given that the contact between humanity and thousands of other species is potentially a danger to all who live within this Solar System.”

 

     “How do you three feel about this?” Gabrielle asked, looking at the AISage manifestations.

 

     Mio looked at Simon with a smile, then turned to Gabrielle. “I suspect both Vincent and I have the same reaction; we’re your partners and friends. I really wish we could see this Arena, but whether we can or not, we’d rather trust all of you than people we don’t know.” Vincent nodded but said nothing, just smiled at Gabrielle briefly.

 

     “I have, perhaps, a more broad understanding and view of these matters,” Mentor rumbled. “I concur with the general sentiments. There are other aspects of the situation which I would discuss with Ariane Austin and Dr. Marc DuQuesne when they return. But I will certainly aid you with the other aspects of your activities. With your permission, I and the others will begin.”

 

     Of course he’s already figured out most of the rest. “Naturally. Though I don’t want you spending all your time working.”

 

     “I appreciate your consideration, and indeed I will take the opportunity to interact with my fellows in this situation,” Mentor said.

 

     The three avatars disappeared, the two humanoids with a farewell wave.

 

     “‘Begin’?” Gabrielle said. “What’s he beginning?”

 

     “Monitoring of activities so that we can keep an eye on what the SSC and CSF are doing, and be ready to answer any questions they might have… and keep them distracted from both DuQuesne and Ariane.”

 

     “Got you. We don’t want them poking into what DuQuesne’s doing, and we sure as anything don’t want them thinking too much about Ariane or poking into the possible missing pieces of the story.”

 

     “Exactly. Because the last thing we want – at least until we’re back in the Arena itself – is for people to realize Ariane’s position.” He turned to the banks of equipment. “And we have our own work to do. I’ll need your help reconfiguring these arrays.”

 

     “For what?”

 

     “To make them detectors,” Simon answered. He looked out the port, seeing the curve of Kanzaki-three falling away to either side and the glitter of stars above. “Detectors for Sandrisson Drive activations – or arrivals.”

 

     “Arrivals?”

 

     “I’m afraid so. The rules of the Arena … are still not entirely clear. And I am thus not at all certain that we are the only ones who can find the Sky Gates. If others can…”

 

     “Oh, lordy. The Molothos.”

 

     “Exactly. They’re looking for our Sphere. If they find it, they will do their best to take it – and to take our solar system, if they can.” Simon brought up the antenna configuration. “I don’t think they’ll find us soon… but we can’t afford to be surprised.”

 

     Gabrielle looked grim. “Because if those things surprise us, we just might be the shortest-lived faction ever.”

 

 

 

Spheres of Influence: Deleted Chapter 1

 

For health and other reasons, I haven’t been able to write up a bunch of my usual posts. However, with Spheres about to go for main snippets, I realized I had a few other pieces which can be posted.

These deleted chapters are basically what the “What Has Come After” section of the intro were drawn from. The editors felt — quite correctly — that these slowed up the opening of the book before getting to some Neat New Stuff. However, they also have a lot of deetail which is now no longer in the book. Some of you may find this stuff interesting. Thus — I will post them.

Ariane and the others had returned from the Arena not long ago…

 

 

—–

 

Chapter 1.

     The conference room was silent for a long moment. Most of the humans present had incredulous, shell-shocked expressions, something you might expect to see on the face of a normally calm, rational adult who abruptly found themselves sitting at the Mad Tea Party. The silence from the artificial intelligences was, perhaps, even more telling, for some of those present were vastly capable intellects, supposedly capable of thinking at speeds far above human – yet still, apparently, not above being overwhelmed by the impossible.

 

     I can’t blame them, either, DuQuesne thought, unable to keep a cynical smile from his face.

 

     Saul Maginot, Commander of the Combined Space Forces and current head of the Space Security Council, finally cleared his throat. “I… must admit that it is rare that I find someone speaks accurately when they say something like ‘you won’t believe this’, Ms. Au—”

 

     DuQuesne opened his mouth and found that he was interrupting in precise synchrony with Simon Sandrisson, both of them saying, “Captain Austin.”

 

     He saw Saul’s startled look, and felt some of the same surprise himself. I haven’t accepted anyone’s command like that… since Hyperion, maybe. If I ever did. But it’s right. She earned that title, earned it every which way she could have, and by God people will remember that.

 

     Thank you both, Ariane said through the encrypted link that connected the Holy Grail crew who were at this top-security meeting. But if someone needs smacking down, I’ll do it. Mentor’s watching and advising me, based on our plan.

 

     The “plan” wasn’t terribly complex – couldn’t have been, as they’d only had a couple days to work on it after returning from the impossible other-world of the Arena. But that had been long enough to figure out the points they needed to emphasize, the points to downplay… and the few cards they really needed to palm.

 

     And we really don’t want anyone to see the combination ace and joker up our sleeves.

 

Saul Maginot gave a seated bow. “Of course, my apologies. Captain Austin, in this case you were quite correct. Despite the mass of data you have transferred to us and the detailed narrative – and the alien biological samples which are currently undergoing testing in our own labs – I do, I confess, find this very, very hard to grasp.”

 

     “I can’t blame you,” the dark-blue haired woman – almost a girl, actually, she’s barely twenty-seven – answered with a brilliant smile. “There are days I get up and I still  can’t believe it. And I was there.”

 

     “Allow me to summarize, just to see if I’ve grasped the essence of the situation correctly… and, I suppose, to help me finish absorbing it too.” Saul paused a moment, obviously arranging his thoughts.

 

     DuQuesne found himself nodding occasionally as Saul summarized the whole unbelievable sequence of events, starting from the activation of the Holy Grail‘s experimental “Sandrisson Drive”, through their discovery that the monstrous spherical construct they emerged in was merely one of uncounted billions in a lightyears-wide artificial creation called, simply, The Arena. Saul’s summary then touched on their encounters with the various species and factions, ranging from the omnicidal Molothos to the Analytic, the Vengeance, the Blessed to Serve, and the Faith and Shadeweavers, both wielders of powers that seemed nothing short of magic, and then proceeded through the various “Challenges” that they had been forced to meet in their quest to return home – including obliterating a small invasion force of Molothos and Ariane’s last-minute defeat of the Shadeweaver Amas-Garao.

 

“At that point,” Saul said, “Dr. DuQuesne informed Captain Austin that he had made a ‘side bet’ for the energy required to return home. This allowed Captain Austin to demand a different price from the Shadeweavers – restricting them from ever again using their mental influence on any member of the faction of Humanity or our direct and close allies.

 

“This accomplished, they now had the energy needed, gathered the proof and data which was provided to us a few days ago, and finally returned home to the Solar System. And that brings us current as of three days ago.”

 

“That’s not a bad summary. Did it help you any?” Ariane Austin’s voice was both amused and sympathetic. She clearly realized how hard the situation was going to be –– first to believe, and second to deal with.

 

“Actually, yes, thank you,” Saul said. “While I know I glossed over all sorts of fascinating – and difficult to grasp – detail, I think it’s brought the main situation into clear focus. And the first thing that strikes me is that you were all entirely correct to insist that we keep this as secret as possible – even with the protection of the Anonymity War Conventions.”

 

And I’ll bet that was a doozy to pull off. It was sobering to realize that every single person in this room on the orbiting station Kanazaki-III was in fact physically present, not attending by remote transmission or represented by a temporary AISage instantiation.

 

“I’m afraid that we’re not going to be able to keep it secret for long,” said Oscar Naraj. DuQuesne knew Naraj – Director of Fleet Maintenance for the Combined Space Forces – and didn’t trust him one little bit. Born politician… and this is the kind of situation he’s been dreaming of, I’ll bet.

 

But Naraj was still speaking. “Even if no one here decides to talk about it – and my own personal guess is that we’ll all hear a defector ping within hours of this meeting’s conclusion – there are those outside who will put a lot of it together, and of course your crew have their own contacts who will learn something.” His deep voice carried a sad conviction; his dark skin and silver eyes, combined with a sweep of glossy black hair touched with white gave him a tremendous gravitas which DuQuesne suspected was the result of careful design. “What concerns me most, Saul, is that – meaning no insult or disparagement to our guests, who I am sure did the best they could – if I understand the sequence of events correctly, we have managed to alienate no fewer than three major, er, Factions of these aliens already. To the point of essentially declaring war on these ‘Molothos’. Am I correct?”

 

“In essence.” Ariane’s voice was very carefully held neutral, but DuQuesne could sense her annoyance at the diplomatically phrased implication of blame and incompetence. He could also hear, on a sideband, Ariane’s AISage Mentor advising her.

 

Don’t let him bait you, Captain, DuQuesne sent. This guy’s a big time operator in his own way; don’t give him any leverage.

 

Don’t worry, I know what we need to do. Aloud, she continued, looking steadily at Naraj. “However, I assure you we didn’t set out to do it that way.”

 

Oscar spread his hands. “As I said, I mean no criticism. I was not there, I did not have the decisions to make at the time and, of course, you aren’t a military officer or even a politician. I don’t expect a former racing pilot to be aware of the implications of such situations, no matter how marvelous her instincts turn out to be.”

 

Oh, nice condescension there, Naraj. He glanced around, noticed something. New faces since the last time I checked out the SSC roster. A lot of new faces. Oh, that’s not good. A lot of the Old Guard are gone, and the way the new faces are looking at Naraj, I’ll bet he was choosing the replacements. He watched the way Naraj’s glance swept the table and saw the confirmation. You’re playing to an audience that knows your script.

 

“But,” Naraj went on, “the bare facts are that we have a lot of damage control to do here, Saul. My people are going to have to go over the technology and after-action reports in a lot more detail, but it seems that in many ways much of the base technology they have in this… Arena isn’t terribly far ahead of us, so we’re not in the position I had feared when I thought about encountering alien species – they being thousands of years more advanced, with technologies that made ours look the way those of our medieval ancestors look to us.

 

“Still, we have one solar system and these larger Factions control many. They are established for centuries in the Arena, we have just arrived. We need to get back there quickly, figure out a way to negotiate with these people. Perhaps we can avert a war, make enemies into friends.”

 

DuQuesne saw Saul wince as DuQuesne gave his best cynical laugh. “Yeah, good luck with that. The Molothos aren’t friends with anyone. We’d have been at war with them sooner or later anyway. Read up on them, but first I want you to very, very carefully understand the word xenomisoic. Every nuance and implication. Because that word pretty much encapsulates the Molothos. They hate everything that isn’t them, and there’s enough of them, and they’re tough and mean enough, that they’ve managed to keep that attitude for a few millennia in the Arena without anyone being able to smack them around bad enough to make them reconsider.”

 

Without warning, DuQuesne projected an image directly into the vidfeed, so that for a moment each and every other person in the conference room was suddenly face-to-face with a towering seven-foot monstrosity like a cross between a centaur, a giant spider, and a praying mantis, seven jointed legs supporting a central body with an upright torso that sported huge jack-knife fighting claws and a nightmarish crested head with a mouth like a meat grinder. The thing gave a step forward and a screech, and everyone jumped backwards – even the AISages twitched in a virtual momentary panic.

 

“That is a Molothos, and it is exactly, precisely, one hundred percent as nasty as it looks. Not all the aliens we ran into that looked mean turned out to be mean, but these guys look like exactly what they are.” The immense, black-bearded Hyperion grinned, a humorless smile that had not a scrap of comfort behind it. “The only peace you can get with them… is resting in it.”

 

You haven’t lost your knack of shutting people up, Simon noted in tense amusement. Even Oscar Naraj had gone noticeably paler under his dark skin.

 

“I will concede that it may be possible that there is no negotiation to be had in this case,” Oscar said. “But the fact does remain that none of you had any training or preparation for diplomacy, and perhaps it is possible you are wrong. Even if that is not the case for the Molothos, surely we can find a negotiating point with the Blessed.”

 

Ariane shrugged. “You can certainly talk with them – Sethrik isn’t a bad guy – but the real bosses there are the Minds.”

 

“Quite, but we must be ready to find a way to minimize the damage from our initial … crude entry.”

 

“Oscar,” Dean Stout, one of the oldest regular members, spoke up. “You’ve made your point, so let’s move on. Right now they’re the only people who’ve been to this Arena place, and what I’m getting out of this is that we’d better get cracking on setting things up over there, and maybe preparing for an attack here.”

 

“I am afraid so,” Simon said. “But you need to understand that there are some very strong limitations that must be taken into account in both cases.”

 

“Limitations?” Naraj blinked, then nodded, his own AISage clearly recalling the relevant data to mind. “Ah. The fact that only a small number of vessels can be present in the so-called Harbor area of a Sphere at one time.”

 

“Exactly. We can make extensive use of the peculiar physics of the Arena for fortifying our own solar system, once we locate the regions called the “Sky Gates” around our Sphere. But we have not yet located the Sky Gates, which means that we have no way to travel from one point in the Arena to another except by going through the interior of our Sphere to the Inner Gateway, something effectively useless for either in-Arena or in-realspace defense.”

 

“There’s the openings called the Straits,” said a woman that DuQuesne recognized as General Jill Esterhauer of Inner System Security. General Esterhaur continued, “We can use those to exit from the Harbor area of the Sphere and then patrol above the Upper Sphere. If I understand correctly, once you get above the nominal gravity area around the Sphere, you’re effectively weightless and so patrol and stationkeeping should be relatively easy.”

 

“You should be very careful about using the word ‘easy’ with respect to anything having to do with the Arena,” Ariane said with a tinge of humor, “but yes, that’s the way it works, at least as I’ve been given to understand it. We haven’t actually had any chance to verify any of that.”

 

“I’d think we will want to heavily fortify the area near the Inner Gateway.” That was one of the people that DuQuesne didn’t recognize, but through the group’s links he heard Mentor identify him as Andrea Calderon, head of Sim Focus Group tracking.

 

“No doubt about it,” Simon agreed. “Even though we are the only ones who currently have the ability to pass through the Inner Gateway to our Sphere, there is no saying whether this security will not become compromised later.”

 

“Hold on,” Saul Maginot said. “I was under the impression that the Arena itself enforced that security; you can’t hack those controls, can you?”

 

“Oh,” Gabrielle Wolfe said from DuQuesne’s other side, “I don’t think Simon was saying the Arena’s going to give out our passcodes, but the more of us who travel to the Arena, the more chance there will be that one of us will invite someone over in a manner that gives them the authority to do so. Mistakes happen, no matter how hard we try to prevent them.”

 

“There’s that,” Ariane agreed. “But I’d also point out that the Shadeweavers themselves … how did Gona-Brashind put it? They can ‘…perhaps not trick the Arena, but bargain with it, convince it to avert its gaze or to allow a door to remain open, a connection to remain accessible…’. So if someone made an arrangement with the right Shadeweaver, they might be able to keep a connection to our Sphere open long enough for others to cross. Ms. Calderon is very much correct.”

 

“To return to the prior question, you mentioned limitations, plural, Dr. Sandrisson,” Oscar Naraj said. “What other limitations, besides the restricted number of ships in the Harbor area and the need to find the Sky Gates, as they are called?”

 

“Well, if we understand the information we gained from the Analytic, Orphan, and the Vengeance correctly,” Simon said, “once outside of a relatively short radius from our home star, self-replicating nanoassembly will cease to function unless human beings – or, I suppose, any other intelligent species – are present to directly observe and supervise.”

 

“That’s ridiculous!” one of the other attendees said, with an almost offended tone. “If –”

 

“Everything about the Arena and the way it works is ridiculous,” DuQuesne said, bluntly. “It’s also damn terrifying and it’s completely true. We already had evidence to support this, though we didn’t know how to interpret it; the fact that our AI nanoprobes to other local systems never checked back in. Now we know why; they shut down.” He saw the other open his mouth to argue, raised his voice and added just enough glare to make the representative fall silent, “Don’t try to tell me that’s impossible. We know how our physics describes this universe, but the Arena has technology that outstrips everything we have and everything that anyone except the most wild-eyed theorists ever dreamed. It can, and does, change the rules whenever it damned well feels like it. At first we thought those rule-changes were just inside the Arena itself, but the more we learned the more obvious it became that the Arena’s involved in messing with things in this universe, too.”

 

He looked over at Saul. “You people have reviewed what we turned over to the SSC. Do you think we faked all that?”

 

Saul took the opportunity to stand. “I am quite convinced that, preposterous though the story appears to be, it is all unfortunately – or fortunately – true. I would urge everyone here to accept it.”

 

“I concur,” Oscar Naraj said. “Moreover, I think that we need to proceed to concrete planning for our next steps. Dr. Sandrisson, I trust we can count upon you to release your designs?”

 

Simon glanced at Ariane, who nodded. “Certainly. Rather difficult to build even a small fleet if you don’t know how.”

 

“Then in that case, Saul, might I suggest that we allow the Grail crew to leave and take a bit of R&R? I’m sure we’ll need to speak to them again before we select our mission crew and return to the Arena – and we need to do that quite soon, as we can’t leave four scientists over there alone and unsupported – but they’ve given us quite extensive notes and I think we can make a good deal of progress without needing them to sit through hours of debate.”

 

DuQuesne almost objected – damned if I’m going to let a bunch of armchair politicians decide how to deal with this! – but he caught Saul’s almost-neutral expression and stopped himself dead. Gabrielle raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, and he sensed both Simon and Ariane’s AISages saying something urgent that prevented either of them from speaking either.

 

“I think that’s an excellent idea, Oscar,” Saul said blandly. “Captain Austin, Dr. Wolfe, Dr. Sandrisson, Dr. DuQuesne, thank you very much for your time. We will ask you to assist us additionally in the future, but for now and probably several days to come we will be busy debating policy. The SSC and CSF ask that you keep this as quiet as possible in the meantime.”

 

Ariane stood. “Of course, Director.”

 

The doors had barely shut behind them when Ariane turned to him. “Why in –”

 

He cut her off with a gesture. Nothing. Not even through links. Not secure enough.

 

The others followed him as he led them through Kanzaki-Three to the main docking area, along the circular core until he came to a docking ring showing an amber telltale. He concentrated, sending the recognition code, and a moment later the ring glowed green. The door opened at his direction.

 

Simon, Ariane, and Gabrielle followed into DuQuesne’s private vessel, one he’d left here from the time he’d joined the Sandrisson Project; none of them said anything, seeing his upraised hand. Isaac?

 

Give me a moment. The AISage’s projected persona – a spry older man with huge bushy sideburns, white hair, and a cheery smile – typed furiously on what appeared to be an ancient manual typewriter. No immediate signs of intrusion. There was contact with the outer hull twice in the past few months. One small object remains in contact.

 

A bug?

 

No monitoring potential – no nanotech activity, no electromagnetics. It appears to be a vacuum-paper note, in fact.

 

DuQuesne grimaced. And I’ll bet it’s like the others. He looked over Isaac’s data, checked the interior himself, finally breathed out a long sigh. “Okay, people, we’re secure.”

 

“Why the hell did you let us get run out like that?” Ariane demanded, as he’d known she would. “I know they’re the closest thing to a government the Solar System has, but they still don’t get what they’re dealing with!”

 

ON THE CONTRARY, a deep, resonant pseudo-voice replied from the wireless link the Holy Grail crew had established, MY VISUALIZATION SHOWS THAT SEVERAL OF THEM, INCLUDING THE ONE CALLED OSCAR NARAJ, UNDERSTAND VERY WELL WHAT THEY ARE DEALING WITH, AT LEAST WITHIN THE NARROW CONFINES OF THEIR OWN INTERESTS.

 

“You saw it too, huh, Mentor?” DuQuesne said. It wasn’t surprising – Ariane’s AISage, patterned after the nigh-omniscient Mentor of Arisia in the old Lensman novels, was Tayler-5 AI, the most advanced allowed in general private use and at least in theory more mentally capable than almost anything living.

 

I did indeed, Mentor replied, reducing the apparent volume. Computations and probability simulations indicate that sixty-nine percent of the SSC and fifty-two percent of the CSF personnel present were directly or indirectly influenced by Oscar Naraj. My Visualization is that there will be a contest of influence between Saul Maginot and Oscar Naraj, and the outcome will not be in our favor.

 

Simon nodded. “I saw the same thing,” he said, pushing his long silver-white hair back absently. “I am also afraid that I have seen Mr. Naraj’s type before. And so have most of us, but usually in simgames. But the Arena has made politics suddenly much more relevant.”

 

DuQuesne had to admit he was startled. Simon was very far from stupid – a genius, in fact – but DuQuesne hadn’t expected him to be able to interpret the dynamics of the inner council’s politics so well. Then again, he did have to deal with them just to get the permission to do the Grail experiment, so maybe he understood them better than I thought.

 

Ariane’s brow furrowed, and the dark-blue haired Captain and pilot of Holy Grail suddenly grunted. “Oh, damn. You mean, he’s like those people in a club that just can’t stand to let people do what they want but has to get everything organized – and just happens to be the guy in charge of the organization at the end?”

 

“You got it,” DuQuesne said. “Naraj has been around for donkey’s years, always jockying for position, even though if we’re honest about it the SSC and CSF aren’t there to do much. But he just never could leave things as they were. I’m not saying he’s a bad guy – I think he honestly wants to do the right thing. But I don’t think we’d agree with him most of the time on what the right thing is.”

 

He looked over at Simon. “Remember that time back before we left? When we talked about why it was important to get FTL travel? Well, those bills I mentioned, the ones for getting backdoor codes into AISages and things like that, those came from Naraj. Not him directly, but people he appointed and got appointed or elected into other positions. I think he’s one of the ones a little afraid of AIs – and now that he’s heard about the Blessed, you can bet that’s going to get worse.”

 

“But he’s not in charge of the SSC or the CSF,” pointed out Gabrielle. “So even if he has a lot of influence, Director Maginot will make sure there’s plenty of good people in the next expedition.”

 

DuQuesne grimaced. “Yeah, maybe. If he doesn’t get shoved out. Like Mentor says, Naraj’s got a lot of appointees in both groups now. He might be able to finally get Saul bumped. Not because Saul is incompetent, but because other people see the value in shaking up that stability to get more influence themselves. Politics in the Arena means something, and for people who like that… it’s like the difference between playing a sim and being there in life. A good sim is close… but it’s still not the same.”

 

“Well, you’ve got yourself a plan, Marc,” Gabrielle said. “Leastwise, I’m pretty sure you do, or you wouldn’t have brought us all here.”

 

He smiled at her. “Part of one, anyway. I want you and Simon – with Mentor, if Ariane will spare him – to stay around Kanzaki-Three and start re-prepping Holy Grail.”

 

Ariane looked at him. “You’re planning on us going back ourselves?”

 

“You better believe it, Ariane. Unless you feel comfortable letting them take the wheel from now on?”

 

She grimaced. “I really, really want to say I do. I mean, I like Saul. And I’m sure Mr. Naraj is competent at what he does. And God knows I sure don’t want to run things.But…” She trailed off, then sighed. “No. They can look at all the data they want, view all the recordings, but none of that’s going to make them understand the Arena.” She laughed suddenly. “As if I understand the Arena.”

 

Simon smiled at that. “I suppose none of us could really claim to understand the Arena, true, but the other point I don’t think they’ll really grasp is that much of Arena politics seems to rely on personal honor and knowledge. A whole new group of people will be throwing away all the… credit, I suppose… that we built up in our time there.”

 

They nodded, and everyone looked at Ariane again. She doesn’t want to think about it right now, but the real point is that Saul and Oscar can create the best team ever made and it won’t do them one microscopic bit of good if they don’t have Ariane with them… because as far as the Arena is concerned, Captain Ariane Austin is the Leader of the Faction of Humanity.

 

“I have some ideas of what ‘prepping’ we need to do,” Simon said, continuing the original conversation, “but what about you and Ariane?”

 

“I’ve got some … unfinished business that just might get finished now,” he said, and it was startling how hard it was to even say that. Holy jumping cats, as Rich Seaton used to say, I’ve still got some issues. “You don’t need to know the details – and I think you’ll understand why afterwards. But I just need one other person to come with me.”

 

Simon looked at him, and the brilliant green, slightly slanted eyes behind the round, cosmetic glasses met his gaze. And for just one moment, DuQuesne had the eerie and utterly ridiculous feeling that Simon knew everything that wasn’t being said. Then he nodded. “Of course. And it’s probably best that Ariane’s hard to catch up with for a bit.”

 

Gabrielle and Ariane looked at them both curiously. Ariane shrugged. “Well, at least I get to come along on the mysterious journey. And I won’t argue against dodging the interviews.”

 

“All right, then,” Simon said. “Gabrielle, I suppose we’d best go back to the Grail Project admin quarters and secure them again, since this is obviously DuQuesne’s own yacht.”

 

“Starting already?” Gabrielle asked, mildly startled.

 

“Damn well better,” DuQuesne answered, and started the pre-flight checks. “Whether Saul manages a miracle, or Oscar pulls off a coup, it won’t take ‘em long to decide – and just how long will it be for someone to make a new Sandrisson Drive vehicle with your data, Simon?”

 

Sandrission frowned. “Honestly? Not terribly long, not with the CSF’s resources. It’s best to tailor them, modifying a standard hull would take almost as long as making a new one, so… eight weeks. Six, at a minumum.”

 

“Then,” DuQuesne said, as the internal power began to come up, “we’ve got less than two months to get back. The initial meeting today probably is adjourned for the next few hours, but they’ll wrap it up in a few more days, and then –”

 

An electronic ping reached his consciousness, and he saw the others twitch slightly as they, too, received it and realized what it was: a “defector ping”, a signal that someone had decided to abrogate the SSC/CSF agreement to secrecy. There was no way to identify which of the hundred-odd attendees had made this decision, of course… but the “defector ping” let all involved in a secret proceeding know that their secrets were no longer entirely secure.

 

Oh hell, DuQuesne thought. Couldn’t they have waited one multiply-qualified and obscenity-laced DAY?

 

 

 

Spheres of Influence: What Has Gone Before… and a Little Bit After

 

I will begin the snippeting of Spheres of Influence pretty soon — about two months before the eARC release on August 15th. So here’s a teaser and preparation (which is, in fact, at the front of Spheres of Influence as well)

 

—–

 

Previously in Grand Central Arena:

     The solar system of 2375, population fifty-five billion, approaches utopia as closely as most of humanity could imagine. The advent of efficient power harvesting, storage, and transmission of all kinds combined with nanoassembler systems called “AIWish” units has allowed even the poorest people to be assured of plenty of food, comfortable shelter, access to the immense interconnected webwork of information, entertainments, and heathcare sufficient to extend human youth and lifespan greatly; this has also assisted other advances in material and engineering sciences to produce a fully-flowered Space Age, with huge colonies on Mars, orbiting Earth, and elsewhere. Artificial intelligences assist human beings in their daily lives, with most people having a built-in “AISage” who serves as one of their closest friends and a secretary, memory aid, research partner, or almost anything else.

 

     Because of these things, and because of a short but bitter electronic conflict a few centuries past called the Anonymity War, governments as we know them are almost a thing of the past and human individual rights and privacy are nearly unbounded; only the shadow of the horrific “Hyperion Project” has caused any sort of effective central government to arise in the last 50 years, comprised of the Space Security Council (SSC) and Combined Space Forces (CSF) which basically intervene when and if there are conflicts beyond the ability of the ordinary people to address – and ordinary people can have truly staggering resources to their name in 2375.

 

     Work, as we know it in the 21st century, is also effectively a thing of the past. People do not need to work to survive, and the closest equivalents of “money” are called “interest credits” or vectors, where additional resources are given by people to someone that interests them in some way. People now entertain themselves at whatever they wish, ranging from mountain climbing to adventures in full-immersive virtual realities called simgames.

 

     Only one of the great dreams of humanity seems to have been truly elusive: that of reaching the stars.

 

     At the beginning of Grand Central Arena, Doctor Simon Sandrisson believed he had solved that great riddle, and for various reasons assembled a crew for a manned vehicle, the Holy Grail, to test this “Sandrisson Drive”; the crew included power engineer Dr. Marc C. DuQuesne, controls specialist Dr. Carl Edlund, systems integration and conceptual engineer Dr. Steve Franceschetti, medical specialist Dr. Gabrielle Wolfe, nanomaintenance engineer Dr. Thomas Cussler, biologist Dr. Laila Canning, and – as a last-ditch backup – Ariane Stephanie Austin, top pilot in the Unlimited Space Racing league.

 

     With this crew, Dr. Sandrisson plans a simple demonstration jump into “Kanzaki-Locke-Sandrisson  space” which will allow the Holy Grail to effectively travel many times faster than light; they will jump, wait for the onboard fusion generator to recharge the Sandrisson Coils, and then jump back, having traveled perhaps a third of a light year in a few days’ time.

 

     But as soon as the Holy Grail makes the first jump, everything goes wrong; the nuclear reactor shuts down, and all automation – including the AISages on which most of the crew rely – crashes. Only Ariane Austin’s skill at manual piloting saves Holy Grail from crashing into some impossible, unimaginable wall that appeared before them.

 

     Nothing they can do will restart the nuclear reactor, or bring the artificial intelligences back online, and if they can’t find a source of very considerable power, they will be stranded forever in what appears to be a spherical space twenty thousand kilometers in diameter. With most of the crew still suffering from the trauma of losing their AISages, and having their own specific responsibilities, it is decided that for the interim Ariane Austin will be the acting Captain and leader of the stranded Holy Grail crew.

 

     Scanning the interior of this spherical space shows that there is a way into the surrounding structure, and they begin exploring for something that may offer them a way home – and explain where they actually are, and what this structure is. During that exploration, it is revealed that Marc DuQuesne is one of the few survivors of the infamous Hyperion Project, product of a terribly misguided attempt to replicate various heroes of myth and fiction which, so to speak, “Went Horribly Right”. DuQuesne has spent the last fifty years trying to play the part of a normal human and really only wants to live a relatively ordinary life.

 

     On a deeper probe of the interior of this mysterious location, Ariane Austin, Marc DuQuesne, and Dr. Simon Sandrisson encounter alien lifeforms. Shocked to be able to actually understand what the aliens are saying, they nonetheless intervene – for reasons they do not entirely understand at the time – to prevent what appears to be a lynching or kidnapping of one semi-insectoid alien by others; another, mysterious figure in dark robe-like clothing simply watches and then disappears.

 

     The rescued alien calls himself “Orphan”, and seems friendly enough… until DuQuesne notices a suspicious tenseness and prevents him from actually entering the area of the installation (which Orphan calls a “Sphere”) that the humans have set up camp in.

 

     Orphan admits that entrance to that portion of the “Sphere” would have given him considerable opportunity to control entry and exit from the Sphere – and by implication, to humanity’s solar system. Despite this, Ariane and the others decide that Orphan could be useful in at least allowing them to understand what they’ve gotten themselves into.

 

     Orphan agrees to be their guide and instructor, and reveals the truth; that the huge structure they are in are just one of uncountable billions of “Spheres”, each of which represents a single solar system – and there is one Sphere for every solar system in every galaxy throughout the universe, floating in a lightyears-wide space called simply “The Arena”. Outside the shell of the Sphere is not vacuum, but air, light, and even gravity on the “top” of the Sphere, called the Upper Sphere – a place which provides living space similar to that found on a Sphere owner’s native world.

 

     But to gain access to the Upper Sphere, the humans must first traverse the “Inner Gateway” which will take them to a location called Nexus Arena, and then – if they wish to gain the power needed to activate the Sandrisson Drive and return home – establish themselves as citizens of the Arena.

 

     Ariane asks, naturally, how such citizenship is established; the answer startles and worries the entire crew. Everything in the Arena, it seems, revolves around “Challenges” between various groups, or “Factions”. A “Challenge” can be almost any sort of contest, but the essential character of a Challenge is that the stakes are significant on the scale of the Faction itself; for larger factions, that can mean, in essence, bets with literal worlds in the balance. There are over five thousand Factions and all of them have been in existence for thousands of years. Newcomers or “First Emergents” such as humanity haven’t been seen for over three thousand years.

 

     In their first encounter with aliens, they turned out to have met no fewer than three Factions: Orphan, who is the leader – and sole member, currently – of the Faction of the Liberated; the Blessed To Serve, of the same species as Orphan but his major enemies; and the Shadeweavers, mysterious and reputed to have nigh-supernatural powers. Their initial venture to Nexus Arena introduces them to the factions of the Faith, who apparently see the Arena as a holy artifact or site, the Analytic who are an alliance of scientists and engineers, the Molothos who are a species of creatures inherently hostile to all others, and the quasi-faction of the Powerbrokers, who could sell enough energy to the humans to let them return home… if they had something to trade.

 

     Having made this initial foray, Simon and Ariane stay behind while DuQuesne travels back to update the others on what they’ve discovered – and to lead an expedition to the Upper Sphere to see what resources they might have on top of their own Sphere.

 

     It turns out that the Molothos have just recently discovered Humanity’s Sphere, as they send ships to travel through the airy spaces of the Arena and find other Spheres. The Molothos pursue and harry both DuQuesne and Carl Edlund, who accompanied him on this expedition, until trapping the two humans in the Molothos’ main encampment.

 

     The stress and desperation of the moment causes DuQuesne to release all of the restraints he had placed on himself, and unleashes the full capabilities of a Hyperion on the terrified Molothos, defeating six Molothos in a few seconds and then interrogating the surviving officer, Maizas. A combination of careful planning, improvisation, and luck allows DuQuesne and Edlund to destroy the Molothos’ main vessel, Blessing of Fire, before it can reinforce the ground troops and take possession of Humanity’s Upper Sphere.

 

     This turns out to be sufficient to count as winning a Challenge from the Arena’s point of view, and Humanity suddenly is a full-fledged Faction, with its own embassy building… and a new set of problems. Everyone wants to pal around with the new kids on the block, it seems… but they all have their own agendas. The humans also notice some odd characteristics of all Arena inhabitants; they seem more risk-averse than humanity, with odds of 100:1 being viewed in a similar light to those of a million to one by most human beings.

 

     Ariane is invited by the Faith to observe the induction of a new priest, called an Initiate Guide, as part of a ritual that is conducted whenever a new Faction appears. During this ritual, she hears and sees things that seem magical, beyond any science that humanity understands, including a staggering display of power at the “awakening” of the new Initiate Guide’s abilities. It is clear that the Faith – including their leader, First Guide Nyanthus, and the new priest, Initiate Guide Mandallon, firmly believe there is a mystical, numinous power far beyond that of mortality that guides or watches over the Arena. Ariane is impressed, though not at all convinced, and on her way back is more disturbed when Amas-Garao, one of the Shadeweavers, appears from nowhere and has a short discussion with her that reveals that he did influence her to intervene on Orphan’s behalf, somehow. He is unimpressed, even amused, by her confronting him with this, and when pressed, disappears – at the same time somehow teleporting Ariane all the way from where she stands back to Humanity’s Embassy.

 

     The faction of the Vengeance visits Humanity shortly thereafter – a faction who believe that, rather than a benevolent deific-like force, the Arena is a weapon, a tool to keep all other species imprisoned and controlled, and who are dedicated to discovering the secrets of the creators of the Arena, called the Voidbuilders, and wresting from them controll of the universes.

 

     Mandallon, the new Initiate Guide, is obligated to perform some service for Humanity; while he cannot provide the energy needed to return home (apparently older Initiate Guides could, but he cannot), he will attempt anything else. After some discussion, Ariane decides to ask him to heal the one member of their crew who has never recovered from the “crashing” of her AISages (she had three): Dr. Laila Canning. He performs a ritual which shows no objective mechanism for functioning, but nonetheless awakens Laila to herself… although Ariane, and DuQuesne, wonder if perhaps Laila Canning is not exactly who she seems to be, now.

 

It isn’t long before the Blessed to Serve trick Ariane into accepting a Challenge; the Blessed, and their leader Sethrik, come to regret this when Ariane specifies the Challenge mode as being deep-space racing, and manages to win the race with a final daredevil move that shocks all of the Arena natives.

 

     Ariane originally intended to demand a full recharge for Holy Grail as the price for winning the Challenge, but Orphan – just in time – reveals that if all of the Holy Grail crew return home, leaving the Sphere empty, they forfeit all the progress they have made – they lose their Factionhood. The Sphere must always have at least one inhabitant from this point on. At the same time, Orphan admits that his meeting with the Holy Grail crew was not entirely accident; he was directed to go to a certain place, at a certain time, by the Shadeweavers, to whom he owed a debt. He admits that he still owes them at least one more service, meaning that he cannot yet be entirely trustworthy… even if he didn’t have an agenda of his own. She agrees to keep Orphan’s secret… but he owes her.

 

     Ariane decides to have the Blessed foot the bill for having Humanity’s Sphere secured by the Faith, something which is necessary for peace of mind if and when they leave someone behind. This choice, while sensible, causes considerable conflict when revealed, partly due to the disappointment that they are not yet going home, and partly due to the fact that Ariane made this decision on her own. Ariane points out – correctly – that it was her decision to make, and if they didn’t want a Captain in charge they shouldn’t have made her one.

 

     DuQuesne is aware she is correct, and leaves to cool off so he doesn’t argue any further. Amas-Garao takes this opportunity to contact DuQuesne, and shows him around the Shadeweaver headquarters in an attempt to recruit DuQuesne to join their ranks; during this tour, he witnesses part of the induction ritual for a new member of the Shadeweavers. When DuQuesne declines the invitation, Amas-Garao reveals that this was “an offer you can’t refuse”. The Shadeweaver is stunned  to discover that he cannot control DuQuesne’s mind (due to particular design work done by the Hyperion Project), but demonstrates vast, apparently supernatural power, eventually cornering DuQuesne before he can leave the Faction House.

 

     But Ariane received a very short transmission from DuQuesne, enough to know he was in trouble, and has Orphan lead them to the Shadeweaver Faction House… just in time. In the subsequent battle, Orphan surprises everyone by first choosing not to abandon Humanity, despite his belief that they have no real chance against the Shadeweavers, and second by revealing that he has some sort of device that inhibits the Shadeweavers’ powers.

 

The combination of Orphan with the humans’ luck and skill allows the group to escape the Shadeweaver compound – at which point the Adjudicators – enforcers of Nexus Arena itself – show up to prevent pursuit by Amas-Garao.

 

However, the Shadeweaver faction itself then declares “Anathema” against the faction of Humanity, making most members of the Arena avoid doing business with them at all. Only the Analytic and the Faith stand with Humanity, which does at least allow them to continue to operate. During this time, Ariane and the others get to observe another Challenge, a maze-combat race that culminates with one contestant, Sivvis Lassituras, honorably ceding the Challenge to his opponent, Tunuvun, after Tunuvun prevents him from being injured or killed in a fall.

 

Shortly thereafter, Orphan mysteriously abandons Gabrielle Wolf during a shopping expedition to retrive basic supplies for the group, and she encounters a group of the Blessed to Serve who begin to systematically bully her in a strangely uncharacteristic way. By the time Ariane arrives, she sees Gabrielle injured and bleeding, and the exchange of heated words culminates in her issuing a Challenge to Sethrik, leader of the Blessed…

 

… who turns out to have been merely acting as the agent for Amas-Garao. The Shadeweaver accepts the Challenge and says the venue will be single combat… with the prize being either Marc DuQuesne or Ariane Austin herself joining the Shadeweavers. While DuQuesne is much more formidable, Ariane refuses to allow him to risk himself, feeling that he – as a full-functional Hyperion whose capabilities have saved them more than once – is much more valuable than she is. Also, by making herself both the prize and the opponent, she forces Amas-Garao to have to be careful to not kill the very thing he’s fighting for.

 

Despite this, and considerable preparation for the battle, the duel is clearly one-sided; even when Ariane succeeds in striking Amas-Garao, the effect is temporary, and eventually Amas-Garao stops even playing with her and uses his powers to systematically smash her back and forth into the walls and floor of the Challenge ring until she is beaten nearly unconscious.

 

But just as she is about to collapse, her drifting mind makes connections between multiple events – the ritual of the Faith she observed, the fragments of Shadeweaver ritual DuQuesne saw, an injury Amas-Garao took during the fight to rescue DuQuesne, and other things said by Arena residents – and tries one last desperate throw of the dice by invoking the same ritual as awakened Mandallon’s powers.

 

The energy detonates around her and Amas-Garao is barely able to defend himself, so shocked is he. It takes his concession, followed by assistance from six other Shadeweavers and Initiate Guides, to shut down the energy radiating from Ariane. Before Ariane can make her demand of the Shadeweavers, DuQuesne lets her know that he made a side bet that, now that she’s won, will get them the energy they need to get home; Ariane then takes, as her prize for victory, the requirement that no Shadeweaver shall ever in any way use their mind-affecting powers on any member of Humanity or their immediate allies unless directly requested to by the leader of the Faction. Amas-Garao hesitates, but the Arena itself states that this is a fair and reasonable demand and that the Shadeweavers will accept it.

 

The Shadeweavers and Faith then visit Ariane, saying she is now one of them – either a Shadeweaver or an Initiate Guide. She refuses to join either, feeling her responsibility for Humanity outweighs their factional leanings, and not trusting the Shadeweavers at all in any case. They then say that her powers must be sealed more permanently, since if she will not join either one, she will not have proper instruction on how to control it – and Ariane, despite not wanting to believe, sees all too clearly a demonstration of how her own emotions trigger dangerous reactions.

 

The sealing ritual requires seven members of Humanity’s faction. Ariane gets the Arena to allow them to temporarily empty Humanity’s Sphere to perform the ritual. During that ritual, a momentary disruption causes all of the power – of Shadeweaver, Faith, and Ariane – to converge for an instant on Dr. Simon Sandrisson; it seems to have no lasting effect, but for a moment Dr. Sandrisson feels that he can see, and understand… everything.

 

Returning Steve Franceschetti and Thomas Cussler to Humanity’s Sphere after the ritual, Steve, Tom, Ariane, and DuQuesne are suddenly confronted with all of the Gateways that would usually be available for the trip being occupied – thousands of Gateways all simultaneously in use…

 

… By the Molothos, who had deduced that Humanity’s Sphere was temporarily abandoned, and knew that if they failed to return to their Sphere within a reasonable time they would forfeit their citizenship. This trick is not a Challenge, but is potentially worse. However, Steve Franceschetti figures out a way past the apparently-impossible blockade and is successfully returned to Humanity’s Sphere.

 

Energy now provided, the Holy Grail preps to return, many months after departure, carrying Ariane, Marc DuQuesne, Simon Sandrisson, and Gabrielle Wolfe… and evidence of the impossible. “Kanzaki-Three, this is Experimental Vessel 2112FTL, Holy Grail, reporting back.” She grinned at the others, as she continued, “Control, you will not believe where we’ve been!”

 

 

… What has Come After

     The Space Security Council and Combined Space Forces have been forced to accept the reality of the preposterous story told by the Holy Grail crew. It becomes evident, however, that they feel the Holy Grail crew – and especially “Captain” Ariane Austin – are not the proper people to be representing Humanity going forward; the opposition to their ally Saul Maginot is led by Councillor Oscar Naraj, who has been maneuvering for the top spots in both the CSF and SSC for many, many years.

 

     Ariane and the others have no intention of letting people who do not understand the Arena go charging in and trying to run things themselves… especially when there is one key factor they don’t know: that the Arena itself has designated Captain Ariane Austin “Leader of the Faction of Humanity” – and that title is one that even all the governments of Earth cannot take from her. Only she can yield it – and she won’t until she finds someone both willing to take it, and able to understand just what they’ll be dealing with!

 

     Simon and Gabrielle return to Holy Grail to prepare it for a return as fast as possible – with needed cargo and trading materials – while DuQuesne takes Ariane on a secretive but, he assures them, desperately important mission, one they have to complete before the SSC and CSF can construct their own Sandrisson Drive craft.

 

     DuQuesne’s mission turns out to be seeking out the few remaining Hyperions who might be willing to help them; some turn out to be dead, while one is revealed to be an old acquaintance of Ariane’s as well – Velocity Celes, top driver for the Unlimited Ground Racing circuit.

 

     But all their initial movements were also blinds, tricks to shake off a pursuit that DuQuesne would not name, but clearly fears, so they could arrive at one particular location…

 

 

 

 

 

Under the Influence: Yoroiden Samurai Troopers

 

 

The anime Saint Seiya, which I discussed some time back here, gave rise to an entire subgenre which I call “God-Warriors” – young people chosen by something on deific level to battle god-level threats, generally in a “Five-Team” configuration. This of course owed a great deal to the “sentai” shows of the same era, but Saint Seiya codified it for its generation and a number of other shows quickly followed – some following its lead, and others trying to take off from it and go in another direction; its influence can be seen in shows as apparently far afield as Sailor Moon and was parodied and/or deconstructed in numerous other shows; perhaps the most successful of the deconstructions or riffs on the theme was Yu Yu Hakusho.

 

But Saint Seiya itself, though influential, had a number of significant flaws – many of them due to the fact that Kurumada, the mangaka who created the series, was in many ways a one-trick pony, as his later shows such as B’T X demonstrated all too clearly; not only did they have a lot of thematic and action similarities with Saint Seiya, but also the character designs were in many cases essentially identical, with the only changes being which of the five main “faces” got which personality. The Saints stayed almost universally separated from the rest of the world, only interacting with it on rare occasion. They existed in an isolated enclave of their own, either in the Kido mansion or in some remote location or even alternate dimension, battling bad guys whose plans might superficially vary, but always ended up involving a lot of running, posturing, monologuing, and predictable sequences of battle once you’d seen the first season.

 

It was inevitable that something would come along and do what Saint Seiya did, only better, just as later happened with Dragonball and Naruto. That something was Yoroiden Samurai Troopers (roughly translated, Legendary Armor Samurai Troopers), marketed briefly here as Ronin Warriors.

 

The Troopers – Ryo Sanada, Touma Hashiba, Seiji Date, Shu Rei Fan (or Lei Fang, or a number of other transliterations), and Shin Mori – were five young men of roughly the same age who were given mystical armor (“yoroi”) which possessed the powers of the five elements (Fire, air/space, spirit/lightning, earth, and water, respectively) by a mysterious wizard or wise man called “Kaos” (NOT pronounced “Chaos”, but as a sort of cross between “Kos” and “Cows”, as best I can describe it). Kaos’ purpose was to create five warriors to protect the world from the forces of the demonlord Arago; Arago was a man so evil that he battled his way through the hells and took his place as a demon instead of a damned soul.

 

Side note on names: The names of the characters were changed for the American version (Ronin Warriors). This was not uncommon in the early years and still happens occasionally today. What was bizarre about this was that they didn’t change the names of the characters to “normal sounding” North American Names, but gave them, for the most part, equally unusual names which kinda-sorta sounded like the originals. Ryo kept the spelling but got pronounced “Rye-Oh”, Shin became Cye, Touma became Rowen, and Seiji became Sage, while Kaos became “The Ancient One” and Arago became Talpa. While one change made sense (Nasuti, their Big Sis mentor, was pronounced “Nasty”, so changing that to Mia was a good move) I never understood the point of those other changes; if they weren’t changing them to make them “more accessible” to audiences (this was, after all, in the days before the great anime explosion), then why were they changing them at all??

 

What made the Troopers clearly different from, and superior to, Saint Seiya, was their connection to the real world. Much of the action of Yoroiden Samurai Troopers takes place in the real world of Japan, and the characters are clearly at home there. These aren’t isolated characters who would have to work hard to adjust to regular life; these are kids with regular lives who have suddenly been asked to do something more. We learn a lot about the Troopers as people outside of their armor-wearing selves, and they are interested in doing things that ordinary people do – we see Shu and Shin surfing, for instance, or observe the Troopers visiting a restaurant. The only one who seems utterly out of place is Ryo Sanada, whose family is rarely spoken of and who appears in the middle of Shinjuku accompanied by the giant white tiger, Byakuen.

 

The five boys also have two other constant companions: the first is Nasuti Yagyu, a young woman (17 at the beginning of the series, when the Troopers are roughly 14-15) whose grandfather was an authority on mystical artifacts and history. She herself is well-versed on these things and often serves as the source of key information for the Troopers. She’s also their transportation, as none of the Troopers can drive, so they’re always being shuttled to their appointments with destiny in Nasuti’s van! While Touma Hashiba is smarter than her (or anyone else we encounter, with the possible exception of Kaos), Nasuti’s education, level-headedness, and dedication are key to the success of the Troopers as a whole.

 

The second is Jun Yamano, a young boy saved by the Troopers and who is in search of his parents, who may have been killed by Arago’s faceless warrior troops during the initial invasion. Jun initially seems to be a “load”, someone the Troopers have responsibility for but who is too weak and afraid to contribute anything, but in fact Jun is extraordinarily brave for a child of his age (8-10) and there are several key points in the series where it is his actions that help the Troopers. One of the most important was one in which Shu had lost his faith and trust in the armor (due to well-timed revelations and half-truths by the enemy) and could no longer summon it; Jun figured out that the only thing that would snap Shu out of it would be to see all his friends beaten and even Jun threatened, so Jun arranged to get struck aside and pretended to be hurt much worse than he was; this did indeed trigger righteous fury in Shu and caused him to break his self-imposed restraints.

 

Besides Arago himself, the Troopers have to face his legions of faceless mooks (which are still superhumanly strong and fast, but not bright suits of animated armor) and the Ma-Sho, demon generals. There are four Ma-Sho: Anubis, Shuten Douji, Rajura, and Naaza, each representing one of the four seasons. The Ma-Sho also represent four Samurai virtues, while the Troopers represent the five Confucian virtues. The fact that the Ma-Sho wear armor very similar to those of the Troopers is no accident; it is revealed at the end of the first season that all nine Yoroi were forged by Kaos himself, intended as weapons against Arago… and forged from Arago’s armor itself, which Kaos had taken from Arago in the latter’s defeat about five hundred years before. Unfortunately, the four Samurai virtues are more easily diverted to use by evil, since they emphasize things like duty and loyalty which can serve any will, rather than moral choices which are encouraged more by the virtues that the Troopers’ armor are imbued with.

 

The Demon Generals are not, in the end, irredeemably evil; eventually they realize how they have been tricked and used. This is one of the primary themes of the series, that people make moral choices and choices have consequences – good and bad. The Troopers sometimes make bad choices which have consequences for many episodes, often because unlike Arago they simply do not understand the full scope of what’s going on, and by the time they do understand it, they’ve already done some things that they probably wouldn’t have if they’d known better.

 

The first season of YST involves the Troopers learning how to fully wield their powers and trying to understand their enemy, Arago; Kaos apparently told them very little, only advising them at key points. According to several sources, the series was only scheduled for one season, and the grand finale was supposed to kill off all of the Troopers and have Jun and Nasuti somehow pull off a last minute miracle to banish Arago. However, toward the end of that season, the producers were told “Hey, you’re really popular, let’s do another season.”

 

This caused them to desperately stall – re-running Episode 17, when reruns were VERY rare in Japan at that time – and re-writing and re-animating the last episode or two to introduce a complete, pulled-out-of-the-butt  deus ex machina, a white armored figure apparently composed of the entire group unified in Ryo Sanada, which proceeds to blow Arago straight back into his own world.

 

The second season was devoted, to a great extent, to explaining this huge “ass-pull”, the armor known as Keikoutei, the Sun Armor. Once Arago was finally (for now, anyway) defeated at the end of that season, YST had three more stories: YST:Gaiden which was a two-part OVA series featuring a mad scientist tampering with Things Best Left Alone; YST: Keikoutei Dentsetsu, which showed the consequences of the existence of the super armor; and finally YST: Message, which … was confusing even to the Japanese.

 

Yoroiden Samurai Troopers was a big influence on me in many areas, especially in imagery. Kathleen and I introduced the Troopers into our gaming and fanfic world, as the Troopers and the Saints seemed tailor-made as possible friends – there were closely matched personalities and also complementary interests and capabilities. There were several stories, and many games played, around the interaction of the two groups (and, eventually, around how they dealt with the arrival of the most overpowered beings in anime, the Zed team from Dragonball Z… and enemies on their level).

 

Some of those concepts also influenced my world design, helping to solidify how I wanted to depict high-powered characters who were the chosen of the gods (as did Saint Seiya and a few others). Some player characters in my games got to play on that level, such as Rob Rudolph, whose original version of Tobimar tended to collect destinies the way other people might collect cards, who ended up with a version of the Rekka armor, and Chad Baird, whose one character ended up with the Kongo armor… and who looked in many ways so much like Shu that at one point it suddenly dawned on him, and us, that he was even sitting on the floor in the exact same pose as Shu in one of the posters on the wall, and looked like a mirror of the character.

 

I can’t deny the influence on my writing; this will be clearest in the projected Spirit Warriors trilogy, though some of the most obvious “parallels” actually existed long before I saw YST; (SPOILERS for Spirit Warriors, if and when it’s written, so your choice…)

 

 

 

… I mean it — key spoilers for an entire trilogy to be written ahead. If you want to read them clearly, highlight the very light text seen below…

 

 

 

… for instance, five young people with special powers, created by a mysterious figure who created them for the purpose of opposing an evil utterly beyond the ability of ordinary people to fight, and the five of whom combine into one super-being to be the final weapon against the Big Bad sure sounds like YST, indeed… but it’s also the grand finale of the single biggest influence on me of all – E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series.

 

The manipulative, brilliant, and sometimes creepy wizard, Konstantin Khoros, also existed long before I saw YST… but he was based rather closely on Nero Wolfe not just in language but in appearance (he remains very Wolfe-like in dialogue and in the “voice” I hear when I read his lines). After YST I decided to modify his look, and Khoros became the way he is described in Phoenix Rising, as a deliberate nod.

 

The music for the show was surprisingly good, especially as it was really a sort of second-string show, not originally intended to be a front-runner; some pieces of music, especially Kaos’ theme, have stuck with me ever since, and apparently I’m not alone; some other movies used that piece, including the Hong Kong “Dragonball” live-action movie.

 

I would gladly give a link to the show, but it was only released in Region 1 once, for a short time, and the DVD set is now stupidly expensive to obtain. I hope that someday it will be re-issued. But if you ever get a chance to watch it, do so. It’s one of the gems of its era. (NOTE: Do not watch the dub if you can help it. The dub wasn’t bad for its time, but it does not hold up well, and changes some things. The original voice actors with a subtitle are much to be preferred.)

 

 

 

 

test one two three

test one two three

On My Shelves: H. Beam Piper’s “Little Fuzzy”

 

H. Beam Piper was one of the unsung greats of science fiction in his era, producing the Paratime series, stories of Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, and several others. Tragically, he ended his own life in despair, betrayed by his own agent, believing that his future was effectively nonexistent.

 

Of all his works, however, one stands out to me as unique: Little Fuzzy.

 

Little Fuzzy is a story of a first contact not quite like any other. Jack Holloway is a prospector on the planet of Zarathustra, mining sunstones and selling them to the Chartered Zarathustra Company for a nice profit – though the profit would be nicer if it weren’t for the fact that the Chartered Zarathustra Company controlled the entire planet and could set prices unilaterally.

 

Then one day Jack comes home to find a strange creature in his cabin. It’s bipedal, covered with fine golden fur, and seems to be very bright. Jack calms the frightened creature down and it seems fascinated with his house and the things Jack can do, so he lets “Little Fuzzy” stay with him. After a while, he realizes that Little Fuzzy is very smart — so smart that Little Fuzzy turns out to be able to use tools, and understand language. It’s a wonderful, miraculous discovery…

 

… for everyone except the Chartered Zarathustra Company. For the Charter – that gives the Company complete and total ownership of the planet Zarathustra – is valid only if there is no native sapient species on the planet. If the “Fuzzies” are truly a sapient species, the Charter is worthless – and the Company suddenly owns only whatever it has already fully taken possession of, which is only a tiny, tiny fraction of the whole.

 

Victor Grego, the head of the Company, has no intention of allowing a few little creatures take away everything that the Company has built and all it expects to have in the future, and he gives directions to “deal” with the problem – in any way necessary…

 

Despite this familiar, and in many cases grim, setup, Little Fuzzy is the sort of book to bring a smile to the face of anyone who reads it. Few of the people are truly villains – surprisingly, not even Victor Grego – and the Fuzzies themselves are simply delightful inventions: primitives, childlike, yet sometimes surprisingly capable and inventive beyond their apparent mental ages.

 

The center of Little Fuzzy is actually a trial, in which the key question to be resolved is whether or not the Fuzzies are truly sapient natives or merely very smart animals. If the latter, then killing one is at worst unauthorized hunting. If the former, then killing one is murder.

 

Knowing how my preferences in literature go, and the basic thrust of the story, one can guess how that ends.

 

I first read Little Fuzzy not being sure if there were any other Fuzzy stories; as it turns out, Piper wrote two others: Fuzzy Sapiens and Fuzzies and Other People. All three are collected in the omnibus The Complete Fuzzy, which I highly recommend. These are some of my favorite re-reading pleasures in science fiction – not really space opera, not hard SF, yet in some ways feeling more real than most other books.

 

Come, join “Pappy” Jack Holloway as he discovers a tiny intruder in his cabin… and changes a world.

 

 

 

On My Shelves: Gensomaden Saiyuki

 

It’s well-known that we’re willing to take our cultural heritage and rewrite it in amusing ways; red-bearded, bearish, Norse warrior god Thor becomes a tall, blonde warrior speaking faux-Olde English in the comics; Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is remade as a gang war in modern times; the world of Greek Mythology is mixed up with Egyptian, Roman, and a bit of Wuxia film for Xena, Warrior Princess.

 

The Japanese are no less willing to do this to our cultural heritage… or their own. Saint Seiya was a peculiar, to say the least, take on Greek mythology. Nadia: Secret of Blue Water took an idea from the animator Miyazaki and then infused it with a huge dose of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Dragonball began with a mangling of the classic tale Journey to the West and then mixed in a little bit of everything, and Yoroiden Samurai Troopers brought some of the less-used Japanese mystical traditions forward into the 20th century.

 

Gensomaden Saiyuki is an anime adapted from the manga by Kazuya Minekura. It is loosely based on Journey to the West (AKA “Saiyuki”) and takes place in a world where demons and humans have been living in relative peace for many years. Suddenly, however, the demons all begin to go mad, changing from perfectly ordinary if odd citizens into murderous, often power-mad creatures.

 

Genjyo Sanzo, a monk who is the custodian of the Maten Scripture, one of the five great Scriptures with which the entire world was made, is commanded by the Sanbutsushin (Aspects of Buddha) and the goddess Kanzeon Botatsu (Goddess of Mercy) to gather his companions to put a stop to this; the cause, he is informed, is an attempt to revive the Ox-Demon king Guyamaoh. For his companions, the Goddess selects Son Goku, the Monkey King; Sha Gyojo, a half-demon warrior; and the scholarly Cho Hakkai, who was once a man but turned himself to a demon under terrible circumstances. These versions of major characters from the original Journey to the West are… not exactly what one might expect.

 

 Genjyo Sanzo is a cynical, hard-drinking, gambling, gun-wielding (yes, gun wielding) monk who seems to be almost the complete opposite of a holy man. His holy nature is only seen in fits and spurts, and much of the time he comports himself as a bitter and morose man doing a duty only because he knows he cannot avoid it. He was once a much more innocent and optimistic child… until his master, the prior holder of the Scripture he carries, was murdered mysteriously and he was suddenly chosen to be one of the Sanzo Priests, carriers fo the Scriptures. The loss of the one person he really trusted in the world and the sudden demands of Heaven placed upon him have made him deeply resentful of being manipulated by forces out of his control. Nonetheless, he remains actually dedicated to the protection of the world and when forced into action is a frighteningly formidable opponent.

 

Son Goku appears to be a short, hyperactive kid – maybe 12-14 – with a tremendous appetite, a short attention span, and an eagerness to befriend almost anyone (except Gyojo, whom he squabbles with constantly); his weapon, as befits his name and position in the story, is a gold-capped battle staff. Goku is almost pathetically devoted to Sanzo, despite Sanzo’s often abusive demeanor towards the “annoying little monkey”. This is because Sanzo freed him from five hundred years imprisoned in an isolated cave. He was there so long he had actually forgotten who he really was. In actuality, the golden headband Goku wears is a “power limiter”, the most massive limiter we ever see – and for good reason. Without the limiter, he becomes the true Monkey King, who in this world is a monster of capricious and nigh-insane savagery, with essentially unmatched power; while the gods have the mystical power to create a restraint for his, they have nothing to match him in direct combat. Goku is very much the Saiyuki equivalent of the Incredible Hulk; there’s really pretty much nothing that can stand in his way, but there’s also no way to keep him from trashing his friends as well as his enemies.

 

Sha Gyojo is a red-haired half-demon; he’s a womanizing, gambling prankster with, it turns out, an affinity for water (he’s half water demon); his weapon is an apparent staff with a crescent-moon blade on one end, but it can break apart into long chain-connected sections. Unlike his companions, Gyojo has no apparent overt powers aside from water breathing; he’s just a complete badass and stubbornly unwilling to quit. Gyojo is in some ways the most “normal” of the group, and has lived with ordinary people for many years. His womanizing reflects a twisted part of his past; he was the product of his father’s affair with another woman and his father’s wife, effectively his stepmother, hated him as a symbol of his father’s infidelity. He tried desperately to please her but failed and in the end, his older half-brother had to literally kill his mother to prevent her from killing Gyojo. Never having gotten approval from the one woman he’d known, his womanizing is an obvious compensation.

 

Cho Hakkai is the calm, wise peacemaker of the group, so gentle that his deadly capabilities in combat often come as a surprise. He is a master of ki energy, capable of projecting powerful bolts of spiritual power or of using that same power to heal. Once a human named Cho Gonou, he became a demon when he killed a thousand demons in succession in an attempt to rescue his wife from the demons who had kidnapped her; he was, however, too late to prevent them from doing things so terrible that she committed suicide quite literally in front of him. For a short time he was mad with vengeance, but stumbled, mortally wounded, into Sha Gyojo, who nursed him back to health and gave him some semblance of sanity. Gyojo convinced Sanzo and Goku – sent to capture and punish the mass murderer Gonou – that there was more to the story than they knew; in the end, Sanzo found a way out, by declaring “Cho Gonou” dead… but giving to the “dead” man a new name, Cho Hakkai, and a second chance at life. Hakkai wears three power limiters on his ear, and is tremendously powerful; he has been shown to be able to nearly match Goku when he takes the limiters off, but – like other demons – he cannot control himself in that form, especially with the dark influence of the ritual to renew Gyumaoh.

 

Hakkai also has a pet dragon named Hakuryuu who can fly, breathe fire, and turn into a fully-functional Jeep.

 

Yes, a Jeep. This is a strange world, in some ways as peculiar as that of Naruto, where modern-world things like Jeeps excite little comment as they drive through apparently medieval villages, or where a mad scientist can use magical genetic engineering to make monsters and tinker with the magical secrets of creation.

 

Together, these four oddball characters travel (generally) West, seeking the fortress of Gyokumen Koushou, former concubine of Gyumaoh and the one trying to resurrect him with the assistance of the mad scientist and former Sanzo priest Ni Jiyani. “Doctor Ni”, as he is called, is one of the creepiest and frightening antagonists in anime, one of the few competitors to Naruto’s Orochimaru. Dr. Ni manipulates people like a master chessplayer; even those who know him often fall victim to his ploys. Koushou herself is a lot less subtle, but she is a very powerful if temperamental demon herself and is more than capable of acting on her own. She also has a squad of enforcers/ emissaries, but her cavalier treatment of them rather quickly leads to them spending at least half their time figuring out how to not be as effective against the Sanzo party as they might be, without betraying their oaths.

 

Sanzo’s group of questionable heroes often seem more interested in conflict with each other than in their mission; yet whenever the chips are really down, it becomes clear that there is a bond between them and even Sanzo, in the end, does care what happens to them. After such revelations there are often subtle cues, even in the arguments, that indicate the bonds that are there (though Sanzo does his level best to eradicate that appearance himself, often threatening the others with death or smacking them with paper fans he can apparently produce from nowhere).

 

Perhaps, though, I shouldn’t have said “questionable heroes”. Whenever presented with truly nasty moral situations, they generally don’t back down, but confront evil head-on. Despite the cynicism of all of them except Goku (even Hakkai has a gentle cynic within him), they won’t allow evil to win without a fight, and – most of the time – they succeed in beating it back.

 

“Most of the time” is important. There are times our heroes fail, and a couple of those times are truly heartbreaking, emphasizing that sometimes even the powerful heroes can’t fix everything… but that they still need to keep trying.

 

The characters are quite complex – and have deeper backgrounds that go back much farther. The main characters are apparently reincarnations of gods or servants of the gods who were involved in some sequence of disastrous events in Heaven, and for this their spirits were sent down to Earth (except for Goku, who was unable to be dealt with in that fashion so he was sealed in the cave). The main adversaries they face are also fully developed characters; in fact, we often spend several episodes observing what these main adversaries – Kougaiji, son of Gyuamaoh, Lirin his half-sister, Dokugakuji (Sha Gyojo’s half-brother), and Yaone, a fighting alchemist – are up to and not even seeing the Sanzo party at all; they’re not really bad guys so much as honorable adversaries who are actually in spirit as much heroes as the main characters.

 

I need to get the rest of this series; I’ve seen the first two series, but not the third, and I really want to see how it ends… or not.

 

 

 

 

Magic, Crime, and Punishment Part Three: Fit to be Tried

 

 Fit to be Tried

“Pardon my saying so, Majesty… but there appears to be a distinct lack of prisoners in your cell.”

– Poplock Duckweed in Phoenix Rising

 

     Okay, now let’s say you managed to catch (rather than kill in a desperate battle) that criminal. What do you do with him? If the fantasy world has an advanced judgment system, you’ll have to give him a trial. If not, you may have to bring him in for execution, or put him in a dungeon until the King or Tribunal or whatever decides his punishment, but in any case, you’ve got to keep him where you want him.

 

     Here on Earth, a nice solid cell with bars will hold pretty much anyone, no matter how strong or powerful. Without outside aid, putting a person in ordinary clothes and stripping them of their possessions will render them essentially helpless to escape. Yes, there are occasional escapes but most of them required outside aid, and the few others usually get recaptured – and locked in another similar cell – shortly thereafter. The vast majority of prisoners can’t escape, and if they did, they have no chance of remaining free.

 

     Well, our criminal Magalath is stated to be a master of summoning and symbolic magic. Summoning magic usually requires some sort of medium to summon something through… but not always. It’s not at all difficult for a summoner to basically arrange for an elemental or other spirit or being to be summoned to them under some particular circumstances – speaking a particular word, for instance. Symbolic magic is even more of a challenge; a mage who can make his, her, or its power manifest in symbols can draw the symbols in their own blood (or other less pleasant products of the body) or even in some cases in the air itself.

 

     In addition, our friend Magalath is far from the most difficult target to hold. Some mages, and some other intelligent creatures, have inherent magic that’s almost impossible to remove, and powerful enough to not just break out through the walls, but to take down an entire city block WITH their escape attempt; the most obvious of these creatures would be a true Dragon, who start at the size of large dinosaurs and are armored like literal tanks, and go up in power from there.

 

     It’s clear that a simple jail cell can’t reasonably be expected to hold someone with such powers; moreover, given the way the world works, there’s much more incentive for someone to escape as there’s always somewhere for them to go, rather than escaping into a world where the simple act of looking for a job could easily end with you back in handcuffs. Most fantasy worlds – and my own Zarathan is no exception – don’t have the equivalent of extensive databases to search for employment and criminal history, so a person who’s escaped from prison could easily go to another town where they’re not known and start a new life, assuming they didn’t have more grandiose plans.

 

This is partly due to the size and diversity of the population; on Earth we’re used to major countries having hundreds of millions of people (and some now into the billions). For this reason it’s become almost imperative that we be able to track people in large and small groups. On Zarathan, a few million is a large population for a country, and the extended, fragile nature of “countries” make it very difficult to keep track of them all. Even if you were to attempt to do so, there are many individuals and organizations, and even gods, who don’t want to be “pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered!”, and are quite capable of messing up your attempts to do so.

 

Communications is of course another key area. Today, if a major criminal escapes from prison, the news is transmitted to the police immediately, and if appropriate will be sent to local news outlets. By the time most escapees are a hundred yards from their prison, the good guys will already be throwing a net around their position. More, if the escapee manages to elude immediate pursuit and get to a distant city, the cops there will still have the info on him; if he tries to get a job, there’s a good chance someone will ask the wrong question and he’s off and running again.

 

On many fantasy worlds, communication is mostly by the speed of horseback, or at best limited to a small number of high-speed channels with significant limitations. For instance, Tolkien’s Palantiri allowed people to see and communicate over any distance like a super-videophone/spycam combo,but there were only seven of them even in their heyday, and by the time of Lord of the Rings the Big Bad has got hold of one and any attempt to use another will basically put your brain online with Sauron. There are very, very few people who can do that and keep themselves intact.

 

Even on Zarathan, there are limited communications channels. Dedicated teleportation matrices, like the one used by Tobimar, Poplock, and Xavier to go from the Dragon’s Palace to one of the Twin Cities, are one way of getting news fast, but as mentioned before teleportation has its limits.

 

In one of the deleted chapters I posted recently, it’s mentioned that there used to be more reliable long-range communications; it was also shown that one way to sometimes get around that is to summon or otherwise control a fast-moving messenger and hope it doesn’t get shot down or otherwise stopped. This is the more mystical version of carrier pigeons, subject to similar limitations.

 

Taken all together, this means that a prisoner escaping has an excellent chance of getting away if the alarm isn’t sounded immediately, and may easily outrun news of his escape – possibly even outrun knowledge of his incarceration entirely.

 

Thus, magical security must be capable of negating virtually any powers. At the same time, making a facility capable of holding such beings is clearly not a simple one. In point of fact, only large cities are likely to have the people and resources to construct a prison capable of holding high-powered beings on Zarathan.

 

Assuming you’ve solved the problem of holding them, there’s the issue of trials – do you have them, what are they like, and how do you run them?

 

In many fantasy worlds, trials aren’t really like those held in the United States or many other countries; they may be basically dragging the accused in front of the King, Emperor, whatever, and that one person will decide what to do with him.

 

On Zarathan, it’s not quite that simple; what happens to a captured criminal depends on where they are. The procedure in the State of the Dragon King is rather different from what you could expect in the Empire of the Mountain or in Evanwyl or Aegeia. It is of course common for major criminals – murderers and such – to end up committing “suicide by cop” or, more precisely, “suicide by Hero”, but sometimes they are captured. In Zarathanton, they may well be captured by one of the Adjudicators; these are given the power to be judge, jury, and if necessary executioner, but depending on the crime may refer the problem to a trial which is at least superficially similar to the general outline we know here on Earth. In neither case is torture used; there are better ways to extract truth, and those who administer the laws are expected to exemplify them, not skirt them for their own purposes.

 

Many of the limitations in the broader world don’t hold in a trial which will almost certainly be presided over by one of the holy orders of good and justice. While there are often restrictions on the direct intervention of the gods in the wider world (as discussed earlier, and as made clear in Phoenix Rising), in a formal trial held in a temple and/or presided over by a representative of one of the gods, it’s a much different situation. There the god or gods will almost certainly provide direct oversight into the honesty of witnesses and the veracity of the evidence presented. Even other gods are unlikely to interfere in these proceedings; if the plot of another deity was involved in the crime, well, the god won’t be on trial and will simply have to accept this defeat when and if their involvement comes to light.

 

It should be noted that this doesn’t mean that the gods themselves can always walk away scott-free; just that most people will never see exactly how the gods settle these differences. And if a given god or gods cause enough trouble in the “mortal” realm, they may well be reminded, to their great sorrow, that some mortals are more than capable of playing on their level… or that there IS a limit to the tolerance of the other gods.

 

Most crimes in the State of the Dragon King are fairly straightforward; the State has relatively few laws and they’re applied in a common-sense manner (enforced/overseen by the Dragon Gods, which allows a very loose system like that to work) and thus breaking these laws tends to be pretty straightforward and obvious. Where reparations can be made, the sentencing of a criminal tends to favor reparations; as noted multiple times with respect to Kyri and Myrionar, justice and even mercy are preferred over vengeance.

 

Imprisonment for a long term is much more problematic than temporary holding. Incarceration is, therefore, one of the least-used punishments. Execution is used, but it is very much restricted to those who have committed horrendous crimes. In some cases, the jurisdiction may be in question; a traveller from Dalthunia or the Empire of the Mountain may quite justifiably argue that the State of the Dragon King has no authority to imprison or try them. The upshot is that the more powerful and devious the criminal, the more likely that they will end up free and wandering the world again, unless executed.

 

Thus, once more, the need for the Adventurer types. If you really can’t hold these types of people, you either need to kill them, or at the least have someone around who makes them think twice about bothering you. Wandering heroes make things just generally uncomfortable for bad guys, and the advantage of all these powers is that the good guys can be very much loaded for bear and able to match even the powerful villains.

 

     As a writer, of course, this is extremely convenient because I can then center the action around such people and have it make sense that they are, in fact, the center of the action!

 

     Of course, in a metaphysical sense, this is also justified; the actions and choices of heroes are symbolic in a mystical universe, and symbolism is powerful in and of itself. Jason Wood uses this in “Shadow of Fear” to deal with something otherwise out of his ability to control. Crime, in a mystical universe, should be dealt with more by individuals on the side of the light, simply because that is the way that has more resonance with the spirit; not a dry and mechanical maneuvering of legal principles, but a confrontation of right and wrong, of good and evil. This is the true foundation of the way things work in many fantasy realms… and is certainly the truest foundation of mine.

 

 

 

 

Magic, Crime and Punishment Part Two: Prevention and Pursuit

 

 

 

Prevention and Pursuit

“Still, someone has to find out who did this, track them down, and stop them.”

Poplock hopped on his head and then leaned perilously over, looking down into Tobimar’s eyes. “That’s an awfully tall order for one exiled Prince and a somewhat height deficient Toad.”

– Tobimar Silverun and Poplock Duckweed, Phoenix Rising

 

One of the most challenging parts of law enforcement in a high magic world is the sheer variety of powers available to would-be criminals. Here, if we have a vault with solid walls and a locked door that is somehow emptied, we know that the thief had to come through the door (since the walls would otherwise have holes in them), or used some very mundane means to get someone to bring the stolen goods out in some apparently legitimate fashion.

 

On Zarathan, on the other hand, the thief might have walked through the walls using magical, divine, or psionic abilities; might have used a clairvoyant spell to divine the precise location of the goods and some other spell to summon the loot to him; might have mind-controlled the owner of the bank to remove the loot himself and then erased the memory so that the owner honestly has no knowledge of the crime; the loot might never have been there and it was all an illusion; or the crook was a shapeshifter and convinced people he was  the owner; and so on.

 

Of course, there are similar varieties of protections; there are anti-teleportation and “phasing” enchantments (Poplock mentions some of these in passing), wards to prevent passage or suppress scrying, and so on. Moreover, the enforcers of the law have equally diverse tools for their investigations.

 

The other challenge law enforcement can face is bringing the criminal to justice. In our world, if you figure out who the crook is and where he is, it’s generally straightforward to bring him in; yeah, he may be armed, but there’s a vanishingly small number of perps who will be better armed than the police, and essentially none that could directly take on multiple SWAT teams. This is very different in some magical worlds, even those which at first glance appear relatively low powered; for instance, while he rarely uses his full power, Gandalf the Grey in The Lord of the Rings is immensely more powerful than almost everything he meets, only the Balrog, Sauruman, and the Witch-King having equality or near equality with him (Sauron he never directly meets); if he chose not to be taken prisoner, there’s virtually nothing in that world that could take him in. Similar things are at least arguably true in other fantasy worlds such as Brooks’ Shannara, Barbara Hambly’s Darwath series, and so on.

 

 This is doubly true for Zarathan. Only in superhero worlds (which have their own set of different assumptions and tropes) is there a greater potential disparity between the power of the individuals committing a crime and those tasked with bringing him, her, or it in. A normal person on Zarathan – one of the average citizenry – is little more powerful than an average person on our own world. They may know some minor magic which serves them in the same capacity as, say, vacuum cleaners and clothes washers here, but in general they’re not much different from us.

 

By contrast, a powerful wizard, psionic, servant of evil (or even just amoral) gods, or even a highly-trained warrior on Zarathan can be vastly more powerful than the rank-and-file. Most highly capable adventurers (I use the lowercase to include the good, the bad, and the ugly as well as the “Adventurers” who are guilded, self-policed independent troubleshooters, in a sense) are not the sort to join local law enforcement, and while of course any major city or country will have its own high-powered agents, there’s a hell of a lot more high-powered people out there who are not part of the enforcement organization.

 

How powerful? Well, on other worlds this can vary, but one can take a look at the battle between Kyri and Thornfalcon and get a hint. These are people demonstrating superhuman strength, speed, and endurance, wielding powers far beyond normal human capabilities; Thornfalcon can send lightning rampaging through an entire (quite large) clearing, striking everything but him in the process, while Kyri can call upon her god and release a blast of purifying flame that eradicates hundreds of monstrous creatures AND shatters a dimensional portal.

 

Admittedly that last is a sort of special case… but not that special. As of yet, Kyri hasn’t even gotten close to the beings who are really running the show. The top end of what one may have to deal with on Zarathan is mentioned in passing by Tobimar and Xavier when Xavier is told that a small (relatively speaking) set of mountains was created when a single combatant fell on the road. (While it’s not made absolutely clear in the novel, this story is in fact literally true; it was one of the Greatest Dragons, back at the time of the Fall of Atlantaea.)

 

So how, exactly, can your investigative team bring in Magalath the Shadow, a master of both summoning and symbolic magic who’s been known to control elementals capable of leveling (or raising) small mountains?

 

The simplest way is of course the Big Hammer approach – call on one of the Gods to help you grab him, or get the most powerful mage on-call to help. But the gods have their own rules and counterbalances, and they generally aren’t keen on directly intervening in mortal affairs (often for political/strategic reasons); it’s also not at all unusual for another, opposing god to counter the actions of the first, so you can’t really rely on deific help in many mortal settings; for a deity to be willing to directly contest through another’s opposition requires something very important to that god, as it’s possible they may be triggering direct hostilities on their own level by doing so.

 

Of course, the equivalent of the police “staff mage” is likely to be an investigative, not combat specialist. Even if he or she (or it) is highly experienced, many of them won’t be really expert in fighting prepared magical adversaries, any more than CSI techs are really prepared to deal with paramilitary forces in the field. So that leaves two possibilities: bring in the equivalent of government help – “special forces”, so to speak – or go for freelance operatives.

 

In the State of the Dragon King, the “Adjudicators” are the closest to the government special forces you’d have. Some of these are indeed extremely powerful and competent – Toron, for instance, is more than capable of dealing with most opponents of almost any type – but there are not many of them, and their primary function is actually more as a major part of the police force and judiciary combined. That particular country doesn’t really have much of a standing army as such, but instead has a large range of smaller private forces which can be called up at need.

 

This is where the “freelance operatives”, usually called “Adventurers”, come in. The Guild Adventurer is an independent agent who may use many different techniques to achieve their goals, but who adheres to a certain set of basic codes as laid out by the Guild. The code isn’t terribly long, and most of it boils down to “By all means improve your situation in life, but do it in a way that helps people. Respond to calls for assistance and do your best. And make sure you don’t embarrass the Guild.” As the Guild is, by its nature, composed of a large proportion of the most powerful individuals on Zarathan, even someone near the top of the charts in terms of power would think long and hard before trying to screw the Guild over.

 

I mentioned superhero universes earlier, and in many ways this parallels such universes. In both cases you have a proportionately small number of individuals which happen to wield staggering amounts of power, some of them benevolent, some of them malevolent, and really the only things that can reliably stop the malevolent ones are members of the benevolent group of high-powered beings. In both there are legitimate, well-trained people who are overall in control of the political and social operation of the world, but who are specifically powerless, or at least weak, against these types of individuals, and so rely on the benevolent members to assist them in maintaining safety and order.

 

It’s important to emphasize that on Zarathan, a “country” is very little like a “country” here on Earth. This is described to Xavier in some detail but it bears repeating here. When we look at the United States – or even just one of the states, such as New York where I make my home – our maps indicate that ALL of that territory is part of the state or country. Moreover, this is pretty much true; while there are certainly wild areas of the state and places where there are few people, there’s really nowhere that you could point to and say that New York’s government, and through it the United States’ government, doesn’t control it.

 

This is the opposite of Zarathan. While the map accompanying Phoenix Rising (and ones used by people in the novel) shows great swaths of territory claimed by the State of the Dragon King, the Empire of the Mountain, and so on, in actuality these great countries are just a few cities and the territory around them and the Great Roads. The repetition of the Chaoswars, the multiple intelligent (and often hostile) creatures in the various wilderness areas, and the powers of gods and magic which are not always under control make most of the continent a constantly-renewed wilderness, filled with the ruins of possibly hundreds of prior civilizations of various ages and power levels (there have been 40 or so Chaoswars, with as Khoros states an average interval of about 12,000 years or about as long as any civilization has existed on Earth; it is therefore quite possible for there to be many separate civilizations seen in the course of any single period between Chaoswars. Thus, threats ranging from a hostile pack of wolves or giant spiders to a reawakened god can emerge from these places without warning.

 

Besides meaning that the idea of a safe and quiet country is limited to the large cities, it also implies that there is a huge region of no-man’s (or any other beings’) land which criminals and worse can escape to without being really within the grasp of the normal police or guards of the cities.

 

Adventurers are the immune system of this fragile body of civilization. Sure, many of them are strongly motivated by money and glory, but most of them are also genuinely interested in helping the less fortunate. True, a large number of those probably do so out of somewhat cynical motives, but hardly all of them, and it’s what they do and say that really counts. They’re the ones that go out where it’s too dangerous and find out just how dangerous it really is; they’re the ones the police or guards call upon to chase down that previously-mentioned miscreant, Magalath, and bring him to justice; it’s the Adventurers who find themselves in the front of the line when their homes are threatened by invasion.

 

Of course, it’s sometimes also the Adventurers that let the demon out of its sealed crypt, but hey, no one’s perfect.

 

The police or guards of a city who are faced with a potential opponent of superior capabilities, therefore, will often inquire after available Adventurers of an appropriate level of experience and skill to assist them. This may include basic investigation, or range up to and including direct combat and even authorized execution if necessary.  This is of course how Tobimar and Poplock got brought into the search for the “false” Phoenix Saint.

 

Much of an Adventurer’s work is in assessing the situation and determining if it’s something they can handle; many of them will of course be risk-takers and overestimate their abilities, but those who survive to any reasonable level of skill and power generally have a good handle on their own capabilities, and experience in judging their would-be opponents.

 

This is the choice that Tobimar and Poplock face when hired to (as they believe at the time) hunt down a false Justiciar. It’s fairly clear in the text that if they didn’t have other, external indications that this was in fact the direction they should be going, they’d probably have backed out and said “no, thanks, this is way out of our league.” However, that is in Evanwyl, which at the time of Phoenix Rising is a backwater location with minimal resources; in Zarathanton or any of the other major cities, there would be several Adventurers more than willing to take up that challenge.

 

But once you’ve caught your villain, you have to decide what to do with him, and that’s the next section…