The Light Brigade

by Kameron Hurley

I thought the world was simple: good guys and bad guys, citizens and ghouls, corporate patriots and socialist slaves. You were with us or against us. Pick your side.

Nobody ever thinks they chose the wrong side. We all think we’re made of light.

A doppelganger isn’t just a double, but an evil double, a terrible twin to you. I always found it funny that the doppelganger is supposed to be the evil one, though, don’t you? Just as likely that the original is the evil one, and the doppelganger the good. But that goes against our natural inclination to see ourselves as the heroes of our own stories, and the other as the outsider, the enemy, the one trying to take away everything we have.

She said there’s this thing called escalation of commitment. That once people have invested a certain amount of time in a project, they won’t quit, even if it’s no longer a good deal. Even if they’re losing. War is like that. No one wants to admit they’re losing. To end a war, you have to give them some way to save face, to pretend the sacrifice was worth it.

The widespread proliferation of information in the early days of the open knu, back when it was the wild net, should have made truth easier to find. But it turns out most of us don’t want truth. We want stories that back up our existing beliefs. Flood the world enough with information, and I will pick out only those bits that uphold the virtue and rightness of whatever corp I’ve been taught to love.

It takes a while to really get that it could happen to you. You’re the hero of your own story. The hero doesn’t die, can’t die, because then the story ends.