Mistakes

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.02.12E.
Ohiri L1, Lurail, Orion Arm, 670ly coreward of Sol.

The Cacren aren't the worst first contact we've had. That's not exactly saying a lot, given how it went back in Gamma Leonis, but at least we're not shooting at each other.

We made contact as planned, broadcasting the chosen message in the three of their languages that we've managed to build translation kits for. I've attached the recording, though I assume whoever is reading this will also just be able to see it on the internet. But I didn't expect to get a reaction of disbelief from half the planet. They appear to think we're a hoax by some particularly adept hacker, despite being able to see the contact team at L1 in their telescopes. Or, they can see the ships. They're painted white, so it's hard to miss us. I doubt they can see the warships, but I remain hopeful that we won't need their services.

We've decided it's best to bring Leo down into atmosphere. That'll be hard to deny, at least.

Attachment: broadcast_2006.02.12E.rec
Displaying transcript...

Speaker: Ambassador Ayu Bolang, Chief Ambassador, Ohiri Contact Team

Bolang: Greetings, people of Ohiri. This is Ambassador Ayu Bolang of the Interstellar Union diplomatic starship Leonis. It's truly a pleasure to meet you. As you may have surmised from the origin of this message and the alien ships at your planet's L1, you're not alone in the universe. We're your closest interstellar neighbors, from a nation called the Interstellar Union. We seek peace, friendship, and learning, and offer technological advances if you desire them. This message will repeat for the next three days.

End transcript.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.02.15E.

We decided to land at their version of the United Nations. It's actually called the United Nations in their languages too, but since there's still the old one on Earth I figured I should be specific. Anyway. Ayu gave a speech again, and all the diplomatic staff, me included, got to have some in-person time with the Cacren for the first time. The politicians seemed... well, slimy, I suppose. It's before my time, but my grandma was alive back before uploading, and she'd talk about it sometimes. Like any position they hold might slip out of your grasp. I'm not sure if it's good or bad that they're just like how we were.

The guilt gnaws at me. Over a hundred thousand people die every day here. Most of them spend their lives under some form of oppression, financial coercion, etc. I understand that it's important to build trust, but the tally hurts. And we still haven't talked about what we are, either. A little bit of paranoia left over from the war, I guess. We've mentioned that our technology makes us practically immortal, but left out the details. No clue what the Cacren will think about uploading or shifting– both appear in their fiction, but unlike Earth or The'eka or Seddu, shapeshifters don't appear to be naturally occurring on Ohiri.

That said, I'm optimistic. We've managed to piece some numbers together about productivity, and we've got plenty of things to offer to hopefully kick them out of the current cycle. We could probably end hunger in a year, if they'd let us. Maybe add another ten or fifteen percent on their organic lifespans. But for the moment that seems unlikely. Ayu brought up the wars and the genocides and the cruelty, and didn't mince words about it. Also mentioned that we were aware that some governments had tried to suppress our existence, as if we don't have enough transmission power to hit every antenna on the planet. The politicians weren't happy, but from what we've been able to glean from their internet, it seems like the average resident of Ohiri was cautiously optimistic. That's good! There's hope for us yet.

Not gonna bother attaching Ayu's speech here, it's an hour long, you can find it in her logs.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.02.21E.

It's been a busy week! The diplomats' logs will have more on the actual meetings, but most of us vacuum dwellers have been shuttling folks around rather than chatting. There's ninety-seven nations here, and we've barely got enough diplomats to go around. Most of those relationships have been tepid, it seems. There's some legitimate worry that we're here to do evil sci-fi alien stuff, and I can't really blame them for it, but I think that will fade with time and exposure to the rest of their neighbors. The Seddu diplomatic team should be here in a few months, though nobody's sure if the Ivu'alek will show up at all.

On a less positive note, we've been looking to leverage our presence to end this world's more lethal conflicts. Obviously, that's been high up on the priority list, it's half the reason we're out here. The issue is one of leverage. We're unwilling to offer the aggressors a tangible reward for stopping, for obvious reasons (not a great incentive structure there), but that also means we can only threaten them with punishment: no technology while everyone else gets some, or force. The ambassador from Ashil called us extortionist. Well, he specifically called me an extortionist, but I don't think he was differentiating between us as a people and me as an individual.

He really didn't take it too well when I said his nation could either stop killing innocents, or we would make them stop. Admittedly, that was me losing my temper a bit, but it's nothing we weren't already willing to say. I can confidently say it's the first time I've been yelled at by an alien diplomat, which puts me in an elite group of maybe three people in all of our history.

I wonder what he thought about the broadcast we sent out a few hours later.

Attachment: broadcast_2006.02.21E.rec
Displaying transcript...

Speaker: Captain Allen Ochoa, UDCS Leonis.

Ochoa: Attention, people of Ohiri. As negotiations with the relevant parties have failed, the Interstellar Union is issuing a warning. Immediately cease military action towards each other, or we will do it for you. Of particular note to us are the Ashil-Aswad war, in which Ashil is the unjust aggressor, and the Escra-Pliye war, in which Pliye is the unjust aggressor. Your own moral frameworks, and ours, condemn these conflicts as unjust at best and genocidal at worst, and yet they continue. The Interstellar Union has both the capacity and will to act, and we will do so if presented with no other option. The deadline for compliance with this warning is one Ohiri day. Failure to cease military action towards each other will result in our use of force against the relevant parties.

End transcript.

I suppose we could have been more specific about who we'll use force against (military forces and their leaders), but Ayu made our stance on violence pretty clear the last time. I would feel worse about this if most of their planet thought the wars were good. It's insane, really, they say they hate them and nobody does anything. Fortunately, we don't have the same structural incentives.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.02.22E.

I have good news and bad news. I'd ask which you wanted to hear first, but this is my log, so I get to pick. Good news first: Pliye issued an immediate stand-down order to their military, and they're pulling back over the pre-war border as we speak. I'm not sure how it'll shake out over the next few months, but I'm optimistic there.

I'm less optimistic about Ashil, because that's the bad news. They're doubling down, and have put their whole military on high alert. They've even threatened to use nukes to "end the war" (read: glass Aswad, the nation they're invading/genociding) if we intervene. Obviously, that seems insane from our perspective, but they've been able to be the bully for most of their nation's history. Presumably they're seeing it all crashing down around them and panicking.

Leo also demands I note that it's not really possible for Ashil to glass Aswad, they don't have enough firepower for that. But they could certainly kill ten million people or so. So we called up Falling Star and Spitfire; executing an intervention is outside of our expertise. Malacca and Leonis are fully unarmed, to the point where their fabricator arrays have had weapon blueprints stripped out. The most we can get is a knife. (Or a dragon, or a demilitarized warform, but Ohiri probably isn't ready for that.)

I was uncomfortably reminded how vicious warships can be when they feel that they have a fitting target for their wrath. Falling Star's first suggestion was dropping fusion warheads on every military base in Ashil, and Spitfire's was assassinating every politician who supported the war. They are wonderfully and horrifyingly unsubtle. In the end, we voted on something more limited– destruction of Ashil military assets within Aswad's historical borders with low-yield kinetic strikes.

The worst part is that I think the warships were excited about it. Spitfire's captain explained it as a new challenge: void warfare practically never involves consideration of collateral damage. Firing with high precision through an atmosphere was a puzzle.

Attachment: Spitfire_AAR_2006.02.22E.rec
Summarizing document...

At 1535 ship time, USCS Spitfire and USCS Falling Star began deploying several hundred MSO-50 kinetic strike missiles in medium Ohiri orbit. Deployment completed at 1548. After confirming target presence and disposition, all missiles began simultaneous deorbit burns, impacting their targets within three minutes of initiation and a time-on-target window of five seconds.

Damage assessment indicates mobility kills or full destruction of practically all targets. Seventeen targets evaded ordnance via lucky movement into cover, obscuring them from orbital imagery and preventing accurate updates of missile trajectories. Strikes on these targets' likely locations were aborted in order to minimize inadvertent civilian casualties.

SIGINT assessment indicates that Ashilian radar systems successfully tracked the strike after reentry plasma rendered stealth impossible, but anti-air systems were unable to respond in time. Future strikes of a similar nature may be degraded by coordinated and proactive anti-air response.

Summary ends.

Captured InterSocial thread, 2006.02.22E. Author identities unknown.

A: The deadline passes and nothing happens, the genocide continues. Not even aliens will do anything. What a wonderful galaxy.

B: me when the aliens do something

C: probably the most catastrophically wrong anyone has ever been in history

D: my friend, you might want to look at trending

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.02.23E.

An Aswadian with a telescope managed to get a picture of one of the warships. It's probably Leo's fault; he was close to them when they were setting up the strike, and Diplomatic Corps ships aren't stealthy at all. Whoever it was probably caught a glimmer off one of the warships and snapped a pic. It's a damn good shot. You can see just the barest glint of starlight reflecting off of that angular black coating, and a hole in the stars where the ship is. Spitfire and Falling Star are still arguing about which one of them it is in the photo.

That aside, I have good news and bad news again. The good news is that the Aswadians are safe, for now. It's... strange to see people celebrating in the streets because of something we did. They're calling the warship (they don't know there's two up here) their guardian angel. Well, something close to that, anyway, it doesn't translate perfectly. I think we have to be careful not to let it go to our heads, but as long as the Union is here, there will not be another genocide on this planet, not while we can stop it.

The bad news is that the Ashilians lost their shit. Unsurprisingly, I become less sympathetic to them by the day. Their president got on TV and called us terrorists, which is incorrect, but they don't know how to conceive of political violence that opposes them in any other lens. Presumably if some other country had declared war on them, Ashil would call them terrorists too. They've been talking about doing a crash weapons-development program. Good luck.

We've had some urgent talks with other nations, as expected. Aliens are scary, especially when they annihilate an invading military from orbit. I don't think I have much else to add, it'll probably take a few weeks for this to all shake out.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.05.18E.

It took a few months for things to shake out, actually. Everyone but Ashil calmed down when they realized that no, we weren't actually going to invade and conquer their planet. And they were a lot happier when we started releasing some technology for nations willing to work with us. Not that I think it won't leak eventually, of course. We presented some rudimentary medical developments: how to bypass their immune system's rejection response to non-organic material and a few thaumaturgical genetic re-sequencing procedures. Nothing too exciting by our standards, but it'll save and improve a lot of lives.

Not to say that we've solved this planet's problems, of course, they're just not shooting at each other because we've established what happens when they do that. The best way to stop wars is to make the aggressors lose, after all. The resistance we're up against now (besides the Ashilians and the Pliyeans, who have become allies for obvious reasons) is mostly that Ohiri is almost entirely capitalist, and the non-capitalist nations are aggressively authoritarian. We don't have enough carrots to dangle to bribe their elite into giving up their own power.

The other thing we ran into is food. Turns out this planet doesn't actually have a food scarcity problem, they have a distribution problem. It might be solvable with higher crop yields (our genetic engineering far exceeds theirs), but the issue is structural, yet again. They make enough food for about twice their current population. They lose a couple percent to spoilage in transit, and then some sixty percent of it is simply "not economical" to distribute to those who need it.

I'm not sure what the solution there is. We don't even need food for most of our population, and everyone in the fleet here is an upload. We can print it like anything off a bioprinter (well, bioprinter food kinda sucks, but it'll keep you fed), but those aren't efficient to operate and use agrav fields. So we'd have to give them warp-field generators and fusion plants... and the second the Ashilians got their hands on a WFG, they'd do the same thing we did: realize it's a really, really easy way to make a pure-fusion bomb. At least we ended our wars before we found that out.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.06.06E.

The Seddu party arrived here today with a single ship. Nobody that any of us know, sadly, but they're as friendly as Seddu can be. We expected them to be none too happy about what we've done here, but fortunately they've conveyed that they're glad we did something. I'm not sure if I should read that as "we're glad you did something so that we didn't have to agonize over making that choice ourselves" or as "we support your military intervention," but I'll take what I can get. They might be perfectly nice in person, but their foreign policy is... timid, I guess.

Ohiri is a little more perplexed by the Seddu than they are by us, I think. Despite our differences with the Cacren as they are right now, we're still very similar in terms of psychology, so much so that the xenosociologists are starting to complain! Seddu aren't. They never really had wars on the scale of Earth; their psychology lends itself to cooperation more easily than ours. Not by a massive degree, but just enough to make a difference. Fortunately, it looks like they have our backs: Ashil and Pliye (which together represent about a third of the world's population) both tried to get the Seddu to condemn our actions, which they refused to do. I don't think the IU would start a war if the Seddu tried to stop us from intervening in a genocide here, but also I don't think the Seddu would do that anyway. And I think it's unlikely they'll undercut our offer of technology, given their generally hands-off stance.

We've made some progress down on Ohiri, fortunately. Turns out threatening military force in response to police brutality hamstrings the ruling class quite a bit. Making our offer for the journey to post-scarcity also means that we have to make some revelations about ourselves. Aswad didn't take it poorly, at least, so it seems like others won't be as panicked as the Seddu were. But that discussion did raise some other questions: exactly what is our path forwards? Realizing that other intelligent life is out there hasn't changed their material conditions as much as some of us hoped it would. I've attached our discussion with the current Aswadian government.

I worry that violence is a cycle as much as it is a tool.

Attachment: aswad_council_2006.06.06E.rec
Displaying transcript; trimming to relevant sections...

Speakers:
- Ayu Bolang, Chief Ambassador, Ohiri Contact Team
- UDCS Leonis
- Maria Andropova, Captain, USCS Spitfire
- USCS Spitfire
- Councilor Yuli Amari, Aswad Interim Governing Council
- Councilor Ankril Hols, Aswad Interim Governing Council
- Councilor Thuni Shals, Aswad Interim Governing Council

[non-relevant section hidden]

Amari: So your offer is this, not simply technology. Total freedom of form, digital immortality.

Bolang: If you want it, yes. We think it's a relatively straightforward solution to Ohiri's structural problems. Uploads don't require any material goods besides computing substrate and electricity, both of which we can trivially produce in large quantities.

Amari: But that involves essentially abandoning our lives here.

Bolang: Not necessarily. It just means you can't die. Obviously I still walk around in the real world. Most of us do. It's a layer of backup that makes the risk-taking much less risky. You can't be made homeless, or starved, or tortured, or even killed, you always have somewhere safe to retreat to.

Amari: Something to consider, but certainly not now.

Hols: I second Councilor Amari's caution. We are eternally grateful for what you have done, and continue to do, but this is a step too far, too soon. Perhaps later generations will be more comfortable with the idea.

[non-relevant section hidden]

Spitfire: I don't tire or age, councilors. Neither do others like me. Protecting you and the rest of your world for the next century is something we can do, if you want us to. So far popular opinion seems to be in favor. But a lot of the technology we'd like to share with you is easily turned into weapons. Which means we can't share it until your society is less likely to use said weapons on yourselves.

Shals: When you say "easily", how easily do you mean?

Andropova: The first thing my people did with warp-field technology was create a convenient fusion reactor. The second thing we did was make a pure fusion bomb. It took us three months, and we weren't trying that hard. Most of our advanced technology is based on warp field generators.

Shals: So the issue is you can't, or won't, give us the technology that obviates the structural issues until the structural issues are gone. No fusion plants, no bioprinters, because it all needs warp fields.

Bolang: We are somewhat restricted in terms of what our government has approved, yes. We can't release warp-field technology to you while you doing so would reinforce coercive or violent structures.

Shals: So, what, you don't have a plan? Have you considered just killing the bastards?

Spitfire: Elaborate on that?

Shals: Put one of your falling stars through the Ashil president's window. Put one through every billionaire on the planet. Make it impossible to be at the top of the food chain. It's not like you had a problem with killing troops, and per person they're responsible for a lot less misery.

Spitfire: Well, we—

Leonis: No.

Spitfire: Damn.

Andropova: We did literally do that, you know.

Amari: Do what? Assassinations, here?

Andropova: No, during the last war we had amongst ourselves. How many essie billionaires made it through that one, Ayu?

Bolang: Most of them? Didn't they get their assets stripped after?

Andropova: The ones that were left did. But about half of the top 500 list died in eight years, and not from old age. I should know.

Bolang: Jesus.

Shals: I'm not sure if I'm worried or happy that you're considering it.

Bolang: We're not considering it. Sorry.

[non-relevant section hidden]
End transcript.

Transcript, internal meeting, Union-Ohiri Contact Mission, 2006.06.06E.

Bolang: What the fuck, Maria! You can't say that shit in front of the aliens!

Andropova: Do you have any fucking clue how many people I killed for this future?! I was literally an assassin! Don't give me that pacifist revisionism, you—

Spitfire: Captain!

Andropova: ...sorry. That was uncalled for.

Bolang: Even if I did agree— and I don't! —we simply aren't authorized to do that, regardless of how we feel about it! We can hit any military target we can justify hitting. We can't hit civilians, period!

Spitfire: Technically...

Leonis: Don't try to pull chain of command or combatant designation technicalities on us. The Union voted on the plan, we have an obligation to—

Andropova: What's the saying about a plan and the enemy?

Leonis: Yeah? Who's the enemy here?

Ochoa: Alright, everyone take a deep breath. Or the equivalent. We're not killing people purely for being disruptive to progress. We don't get to make that judgement, even if it's an easy one to make. It's not our planet. We don't get to pick our chosen people and make them avenging angels, either. We're here for the long haul, not remaking the planet in our image.

Ship's log, USCS Spitfire, 2006.07.13E.

Had the nightmare again. Most of us have it from time to time, when things are slow and sedate. It's normal, apparently. "You can still get PTSD like this," they say, "especially like you were during the war. Shields and armor don't protect your emotions."

A lot of people think it's the dying. It's not. Dying doesn't hurt, and I should know. I've died one hundred and thirteen times, most of them to the guns of pissant backwater pirates. You don't even remember it. One moment you exist, the next moment you don't. No pain, just a little bit of disorientation when your backup comes online.

The part that hurts is the fear, not of dying, but of failing. That recurring nightmare of mine isn't my death replayed a thousand times over, it's seeing that nuclear fireball over Misthaven after First Leonis, and my fucked brain making up a thousand more scorching Earth into a lifeless rock.

And I worry that's what I'll end up seeing here.

I guess that explains why I had the dream, doesn't it?

Anyway. Nothing major to report, just waxing poetic to my diary. We'll need to start rotating out of Ohiri orbit for refueling soon. Just a little stroll over to the local gas giant for a sip. Fortunately, not much danger of pirates out here. Not that they'd be a match for us anymore.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.07.24E.

It seems that most of Ohiri has taken the full nature of our existence as tolerable, if maybe not for them. The Seddu's story of their contact with us probably helped.

We caused a few revolutions this month, at least by certain definitions of the term. A number of Cacren cultures traditionally hold elections around this time of year, and more than half the nations that had their elections picked folks who are a lot more amenable to our agenda. Initial discussions with some of the new incoming governments have been quite positive. We've been very open about how our own governmental structure works, and how it sometimes doesn't work.

In less positive news, the Ashilians have started taking potshots at us. I'm not quite sure why they decided to start with lasers, but they haven't been very effective. Leo didn't even notice until Falling Star pointed it out. Apparently by the time it gets to orbit, it's within what his sensors think is the normal range for sunlight. And he's not as hyper-aware as the warships are.

We decided not to retaliate for it. Falling Star said that they're probably trying to hit us with laser dazzlers, so our cameras can't see what's going on down below. Leo says it might work if they manage to boost the power by a few orders of magnitude.

We're not retaliating, but it's not going unmentioned either.

Attachment: broadcast_2006.07.24E.rec
Displaying transcript...

Speaker: Allen Ochoa, UDCS Leonis

Ochoa: Republic of Ashil, this is a formal warning for firing a directed-energy weapon at a diplomatic vessel. Further attempts will be responded to with an appropriate amount of force.

End transcript.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.07.28E.

Someone just killed the Ashilian president, and they're saying we told him to do it. I really shouldn't have to say this, but we didn't. His successor escalated from laser shots to actual missiles the second they swore him in.

Attachment: Falling_Star_AAR_2006.07.28E.rec
Summarizing...

At 1358 shipboard time, the Republic of Ashil launched 105 ground-to-orbit missiles at UDCS Leonis and UDCS Malacca. USCS Falling Star moved to intercept once the missiles left Ohiri's atmosphere. All missiles were successfully intercepted to prevent recovery of their fission cores by other parties.

Design analysis indicates that this attack consisted of a significant portion of the Ashilian nuclear stockpile, with sub-orbital rocket motors modified for improved delta-v. Given prior information about Ashilian warhead design, this attack contained approximately 500MT of ordnance, enough to destroy even shielded warships if direct impacts were achieved. However, due to Ohiri's lack of reactionless drives and knowledge about vacuum warfare, their missile flight profiles were extremely slow and non-evasive, and interception remained trivial. Even without interception, practically any Union hull would have been able to evade this attack on thrusters alone.

Firing point-defense weapons certainly revealed the presence of USCS Falling Star despite her stealth systems. Given the Cacrens' lack of technology capable of threatening Union hulls, this is considered a diplomatic problem and not a military one.

Summary ends.

With the failure of their "retaliation", we consider it likely that Ashil will make some attempt to attack Aswad in the coming days. Our attempts to get any sort of two-way dialogue with them have been unsuccessful, and we have very few options to engage with them left. There's been no conclusion on what to do next. The warships want to annihilate their launch capacity, the diplomats don't want to make things worse. I fall into the latter camp. We certainly could destroy their military. It would kill about a million people and very few of the ones in charge. I lean towards not making things worse. They'll be penned in by our threats against expansion, but a cornered animal is a dangerous one.

Captured InterSocial thread, 2006.07.28E. Author identities unknown.

A: You think if I post something about the aliens not doing anything again, they'll do something?

B: last time you did that they blew up half the ashilian military, not sure I want to know what they'd do this time

C: me when the aliens do something

A: AGAIN?

C: lol, got you

A: Asshole.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.07.29E.

We deliberated for almost twelve hours straight. Our conclusion was that we don't actually need to do anything, at least to the Ashilians. Nobody here was hurt, all they did was waste a few hundred warheads. If anything, we're happy to keep them shooting at us rather than the rest of the planet.

Ship's log, USCS Spitfire, 2006.07.31E.

I wish we'd brought the Army. We're not going to make progress from orbit without either deputizing some people on the ground, or doing it ourselves. Sure, we can threaten orbital bombardment, but you only get to do that once. And if it doesn't work that once, you're out of things to bombard besides civvies.

This shit sucks.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.08.15E.

In the news this week: Aswad begins socializing its economy, aliens offer aid to left-wing rebels, protests erupt into violence in Escra.

The good news is that our presence isn't going to make Ohiri have a global war. We'd stop that by force.

The bad news is that our presence is going to make them have a hundred civil wars, and we can't stop those, not without troops. I'm not sure we should even be trying to stop those, really. We want the rebels to win.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.10.30E.

It's been a long time since I wrote in here, and I apologize. You can get the play-by-play from one of the warships for the last few months, but most of what we've been doing has been shuttling people and supplies to and fro with all these civil wars, moving food, providing medicine, that sort of thing. The Escrans— the would-be victims of Pliye's imperial policy —appear to be winning their civil war, while the Ashilian pro-contact faction appears to be losing theirs. Not from lack of support from us, I should be clear, but they just don't have the numbers.

We haven't provided anything more than supplies until now, but that's changing today. Some Escran rebels asked us for uploading technology. They don't really have the infrastructure to support it (or bioprinters to make bodies), so we'll have to bring anyone who wants it up here, do the procedure, and then take them back down... but it's better than them dying. We shouldn't run short on organics or spinglass up here at least, Leo and Malacca both have a microfactory for that.

Captain Andropova has raised the issue that this is effectively deputizing people down on the ground, creating a new class of immortal elites to carry out our bidding. I don't think she's wrong, but the idea is that they'll eventually all be that, and someone's gotta go first anyway.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.11.01E.

We got our first Cacren upload today! Her name's Olat Shess. She's not the first volunteer, stars know we've certainly had plenty of those, but we can't really solve any of Ohiri's problems if we just evacuate everyone unhappy enough to leave. Instead, we're offering uploading to people we consider critical in the fight ahead— resistance fighters, friendly revolutionary figures, that sort of thing. Well, also, we don't have enough imagers to actually upload more than a few hundred people a day, and we can print even fewer bodies. So it'll have to remain limited until we can put some infrastructure together.

The procedure went fine; no surprises there. Our neurochemical biologies are similar enough that we barely had to modify the various pre-scan injections (though apparently the Cacren exoskeleton gave the doctors a bit of trouble).

Attachment: olat_shess_upload_2006.11.01E.rec
Displaying transcript...

Speakers:
- Doctor Auli'i Kapono, Chief Medical Officer, UDCS Leonis
- Olat Shess, Commander, Escran Liberation Army

Kapono: Mindstate looks good. Welcome back, and congratulations.

Shess: ...I don't feel any different?

Kapono: Good! That means we got your physiology right on the first try. Let me know if you feel anything out of place. Bumping on corners more than usual, perspective feels off, that sort of thing. If we get it wrong in the sim, it means we probably got it wrong on your bioreplica too, and we'll need to make adjustments.

Shess: Right... how do I get back to reality?

Kapono: You should feel a sort of bump in the back of your mind. That's your network interface. Poke it, and you'll get all the options specific to uploaded life.

Shess: Okay. And the bioreplica, I just—

Kapono: Like that, yeah. One moment, I'll join you.

Shess: Huh. It's that easy?

Kapono: We've had almost two centuries to iron out the kinks. It helps that our biology is so similar.

Shess: You wouldn't guess it from looking at you. Anything I should know that we didn't already talk about?

Kapono: Not really. This is more or less identical to your original, just with different stuff where your brain is. Don't shoot yourself in the head for party tricks, try not to take more risks than normal, but we're not going to be mad at you if you die. That's why we offered in the first place. I'll warn you that we're pretty limited on how fast we can print bodies right now, so if too many people need replacements at once, you might have to wait in sim.

Shess: Understood. And my comrades?

Kapono: Waiting. I'd imagine they'd like to see you before they get their turns.

End transcript.

Brissek Nettis, Interview With the Future, New Kolslak Times, 2006.12.24E

I meet Olat Shess at a little internet cafe in eastern New Kolslak. It's sedate, despite the brutal fights we've seen between StateSec and the ELA just a few blocks west. Olat arrives right on time, though I imagine she's had someone else check this place out beforehand. Or not, perhaps. Maybe that sort of thing doesn't matter to her anymore. She seems almost too normal, like some mom who just dropped her kids off at home and is currently running errands, not the freshly-immortal woman at the head of a revolutionary movement. We make some small talk before I start my recorder, and I do my best not to try and stare through her eyes to see if I can get a peek at the glassy cube behind them.

S: So, where do you want to start?

N: Well, I guess I'd like to start with the thing everyone wants to know about. What's it like?

S: Uploading itself? Or immortality?

N: Let's start with the first one.

S: Imagine some surgery setup from a horror movie. It's like that, but not as grungy and they're doing it for real. You're immobilized, there's a whole lot of needles, and they're all going in your brain. Then the scanner starts, all your memories play at the same time for a few minutes, and then you're done. It's fast, at least. No pain either, but that's thanks to the meds.

N: And immortality?

S: Not as exciting as you'd think. I assumed someone would be trying to assassinate me the second we landed, but so far nobody's taken a shot. I think it's sort of demotivating for them. Why bother killing me? I'd be back down here with the next shuttle anyway, and they'd be down an assassin. Maybe I'll feel different in a few hundred years, but for now it's just business as usual.

N: How's it been for you emotionally? I imagine it's a huge change, right?

S: I think the thing that's gotten me the most has been asking, "Why me?" I'm not the first volunteer, just the first volunteer they've taken. Like, you'd think it should be some terminal cancer patient, or some homeless person, or literally anyone else on the planet. And sure, the safety of it is nice, but I'm not the only upload on the planet. If this body gets destroyed, I'll have to wait in line for a new one.

N: I assume they said why they picked you?

S: Yeah, they did. They want us to be able to build our own future. They're obviously happy to lean on the scales, help undo all the reasons Ohiri is like this, but they won't do it themselves. Or... I'm not sure. I get the impression they're not all in agreement about this stance, I think some of them would like to intervene harder. Right now their plan is just picking revolutionary leaders, important individuals, that sort of thing, ensuring they live through the coming years, adding another weight on our side of the scale.

N: And you're one of the important individuals that they think the future pivots around.

S: Yes, to put it bluntly. I talked with them, before they made the offer. They wanted to get a good feel for the ELA, and me in particular. They got pretty intense about our specific beliefs and what we want society to look like.

N: Really? What was that like?

S: Not nearly as stuffy as the diplomatic talks. They might look weird, but our two peoples are pretty similar on the inside. Kind of intimidating, but Spitfire cracked a few jokes, and from there it went pretty smoothly. They're smart, they just seem to soak up information like a sponge. Not incomprehensible, though, they're very... mundane, I suppose, for being what they are.

N: Spitfire?

S: One of their warships. She's a person, all their ships are. Her body's just the ship instead of something like this. I guess they could change, if they felt like it, but I think they like it.

N: You talked about the Union leaning on the scale. Why do you think they decided on doing that instead of just doing it all themselves? We've seen enough glimpses of their technology to know that they certainly could if they wanted to.

S: Well, two things. First, I think they're honest. Almost to a fault, really, they might lie by omission, but I don't think they've ever lied outright. They mean it when they say they don't want to be conquerors, and that we need to build our own future. It wouldn't really be meaningful if they just walked in and said "this is how things will be now," we'd reject it out of hand. The second is that I don't think they actually brought enough people or equipment to invade.

N: Really? Even with their warships?

S: You can't control something just by bombing it, no matter how good your bombs are. The Ashilians learned that the hard way with Aswad. You have to actually have people there. Even if the Union can hit a tank right in the engine from orbit, it doesn't control the people. And no conqueror stays forever. Well, I hope, anyway, but I don't think we'll have to find out with the Union.

N: I guess that's a good way to move into talking about the ELA. How's the war been going?

S: It's a war now?

N: Well, it's a bit more than protests.

S: True, usually only the cops are the ones using guns at protests. Well, we're winning it. We've almost kicked the feds out of New Kolslak, and the population is certainly on our side. I mean, we're in a public cafe, and nobody's even tried to pull a gun on me. And you're here chatting with me, from one of the biggest papers in the country.

N: Why do you think that is? That the population is on your side, rather, not why I'm here.

S: You mean, besides polling?

N: Yeah, we both know what the polling says, I more meant the reasons behind it.

S: Right. I think people can see the future. Not like, literally look into the future, but they can see what the future looks like, and it looks like that up there in orbit, and this. It looks like real democracy, not having to work to survive, an end to illness and disease and infirmity, and living to see all the beauty of the universe. It looks like freedom. That's what our friends upstairs have, and that's what we want. It's just a matter of walking the path to get there.

N: Eloquent as always.

S: Hey, you don't end up in this job if you're bad at public speaking.

N: Anything final you'd like to add? A big message you want to share?

S: I have one, sure. This one goes out to all the misers of the world who thought they'd be able to trade their ill-gotten wealth for a few more years: Oops. Guess you were wrong about that, huh?

And that concludes our interview. To all our readers: I'll see you in the future. I'm told it's not too far away.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2006.12.31E

Well, that's the end of the year, or at least close enough. Hard to tell exactly with FTL time drift. Anyway, things are... maybe not worse on Ohiri? I think they're looking up, at least. We've got almost a dozen nations working with us on that grinding road towards post-scarcity, and another three hashing out civil wars so that they can join in. All told, I think we're up a million lives saved, even if you count those wars.

Things aren't perfect, but I'm happy with the progress. Here's to hoping it keeps going.

Ship's log, USCS Spitfire, 2006.12.31E.

Got a message from the planet that I hadn't seen before. I mean, the generic type, not the specific message. We get them all the time, any schmuck with a radio can yell at us or ask question if they want. Sometimes we even answer.

This message was from a kid. Maybe late teens, their adolescence is different from humans, but a kid to me. Wanted to know what it was like being a warship. Not the first time I've been asked that, sometimes journalists will point parabolic antennae up here, but it's hard to find me in the first place. No clue how this kid managed it. Anyway, he didn't want to know in a sort of "that's crazy, what's it like" sort of way, he wanted to know because he wanted it too.

I told him. Most of the time it's aimless. A quiet patrol through former Agreement space, a response to a distress drone from some fresh spacer with more engine power than sense. We aren't at war, we don't have enemies; our guns remain silent outside of gunnery practice. Sometimes we help miners crack asteroids with railgun shots. I told him not to misinterpret my longing. I'm glad we're at peace, that I don't have reason to pour megatons of firepower into someone who wants me dead. But it's also what I was made to do, and there's no use for it.

But it's wonderful, too. I'm fifteen thousand tons of void-black warship. They don't make mirrors big enough for me to see myself in, but I sometimes take a look through my own sensor drones. I'm beautiful, in a way I wish I could show. Organic eyes cannot see all of my beauty. They can see how I look like a hole in the stars, but can they see my thermal diffusers matching my color in infrared with the microwave background? Can they see the lack of radar return, the way laser reflections scatter without ever returning to the viewer? This is what I want to share.

And some days it's hard. This last year has been one of the hardest of my life, and I fought in the First Contact War. The urge to respond to every slight by the despots down below with orbital death, and the knowledge that this would be wrong, decided by my gut and a society six hundred lightyears away that isn't watching it unfold in realtime.

He didn't say anything back.

Ship's log, USCS Spitfire, 2007.01.28E.

MANDATORY AUTOMATED REPORT
FISSION RELEASE DETECTED
ORIGIN: NEW KOLSLAK, ESCRA, OHIRI, LURAIL SYSTEM
YIELD: 1230 KILOTONS TNT EQUIVALENT

NOTE: SURVEILLED METROPOLITAN AREA
NOTE: CASUALTIES EXTREME

Excerpt, Tomorrow's Past, by Olat Shess.

I remember three things from that morning. The first was crawling out of a sleeping bag in the back of a truck, the second was seeing a double-flash for a sunrise, and the third was being confused about why there was a dialog box in my vision at five in the morning.

It would be nice to say that my first reaction to finding out that almost every friend I had just died in nuclear fire was something poignant, like rage, or sorrow, or any of the punchy emotions. But no, it was bleary confusion. The others came later.

Captured InterSocial thread, 2007.01.28E. Author identities unknown.

A: I don't have a joke, or a quip, or something clever to say. I hope they kill them all.

B: do we even know who did it?

A: Do we really care?

B: not particularly

Excerpt, The Ohiri Mistake, by Bedros Aren et al.

The Cacren term for it directly translates to "star-spear", from the bright trails the rounds leave during atmospheric entry. They aren't stupid or superstitious, they know what it actually is, but they prefer the poetic framing, divine punishment for mortal failings. We have a different term for it, mechanically descriptive instead of poetic: kinetic bombardment.

The Union's response to the nuclear devastation of a major metropolitan area was, to put it simply, wrath. It took very little time for isotopic analysis to determine that the warhead was Ashilian in origin, a step which was largely unnecessary due to the crowing of the Ashilian president in the aftermath. Ashil wanted the alien influence gone, and who could blame them for this desire? Their world, so perfectly crafted by a century of hegemony, was falling apart around them, and half their states were in an open civil war. Rational decisions cease to exist in such a framework. New Kolslak was the pillow that threatened to smother the old world; they reacted the only way they knew how.

This is not to say that New Kolslak was unavoidable. Ashilian politicians realized early that the Union would not strike at civilians, a policy which they ruthlessly exploited in their attempts to undermine Union diplomats. While many readers may find it unpalatable to acknowledge, a blanket policy of refusing to harm anyone besides uniformed military personnel was destructive to the IU's goals. When allied groups on Ohiri struck out on their own, reasonably seeking to attack those responsible, they did so clumsily, causing far more problems for Union diplomats than covert, sanctioned assassinations would have. While some form of violent outburst from Ohirians opposed to alien intervention was all but certain in the long run, Ashilian officials were drawn to support extreme options due to the obvious and simplistic targeting done by the ELA. Official support from the governments of Ashil and Pliye led to the delivery of a nuclear warhead to a "deniable" third party; the rest is history.

Of course, assassinations themselves would not have been necessary (as a practical tool or as a natural result of a decaying social order) if the IU contact team had been allowed or equipped to offer upload to vast numbers of civilians. The gang effect for various forms of trans- or posthumanism has been well-documented in cishuman societies, and even in alien societies in the years since the Mistake.

Ship's log, USCS Spitfire, 2007.01.28E.

Attachment: bridge_sim_037_2007.01.28E.rec
Displaying transcript...

Speakers:
- Olat Shess, Commander, Escran Liberation Army
- Maria Andropova, Captain, USCS Spitfire
- USCS Spitfire

Andropova: Gloves are fucking off. Spit—

Spitfire: I have strike packages ready. Charging missiles.

Shess: ...wha—

Andropova: Commander Shess, where do you want our firepower?

Shess: Where am I?

Spitfire: Shit, Captain, why'd you pull her in? She's gonna get sensory overload.

Shess: It's... it's fine. Maybe not. Fuck me, that's a lot.

Spitfire: Sorry, turning some of those tertiary senses off for you now. Any better?

Shess: Yeah. Is that... how you see the world?

Spitfire: No, this is simplified so I don't blow up the captain's brain. I see a lot more.

Shess: ...right. What do you need me to do?

Andropova: Tell us who and what you want dead and we'll make it happen.

Shess: We're sure the Ashilians were responsible?

Spitfire: It was an Ashilian N11 physics package, within 95% confidence based on yield and isotopic profile.

Shess: I don't know how your people do statistics—

Spitfire: Sorry. To put it simply, yes, we're as sure as we can be. Also, the Ashilian and Pliyean presidents are on TV saying they did it.

Shess: And I can ask for... any targets I want?

Andropova: I realize that facial expressions don't translate, Commander, and I've never been very expressive anyway. If I could share the rage I feel with you, I would.

Shess: ...burn it all. Every scrap of Ashil's military power, whatever's left of Pliyean StateSec, every politician who supported this. I want any ability they have to repeat this atrocity gone.

Spitfire: As you wish.

Shess: ...that's it? Just, yes?

Spitfire: You have described the first strike option we presented to Ambassador Bolang. She approved it several minutes ago, with final trigger pull depending on you and several others. Would you like a summary of targets?

[non-relevant section hidden]
Transcript ends.

Attachment: Spitfire_AAR_2007.01.28E.rec
Summarizing document...

At 0925 shipboard time, USCS Spitfire and USCS Falling Star began a kinetic bombardment of Ashilian and Pliyean targets. Preliminary strikes consisted of full-power railgun shots at strategic air defense networks and low-power railgun shots at targeted individuals. Primary strikes targeted military bases and units in the field; yields varied due to proximity of civilian populations or lack thereof. Preliminary and primary strikes completed within three minutes of first impact.

Secondary and tertiary strikes targeted Ashilian and Pliyean military contractor infrastructure, institutions of state control, and nuclear industry using low-power and fragmentary railgun shots. Secondary and tertiary strikes completed within five hours of first impact.

Damage assessment indicates near-total destruction of all targeted infrastructure. Estimated 900,000 military personnel killed. Estimated 400,000 targeted non-uniformed personnel killed. Estimated 15,000 civilians killed.

SIGINT assessment indicates near-total collapse of Ashilian federal government and Pliyean formal government. Ashilian regional governments largely remain intact.

Enemy interception efforts displayed notable improvement against low-velocity projectiles, requiring additional shots to destroy hidden interceptor batteries. No interceptions were attempted against relativistic projectiles.

Summary ends.

When the stars threw down their spears

And watered heaven with their tears

Did they smile their work to see?

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2007.01.28E.

I resign, effective immediately, and I'm not the only one. Three million people dead in less than eight hours is unacceptable, and I don't care who started it. Leonis will be returning to Sol at maximum speed; I intend to submit a recall petition to the Assembly on my return.

Several Cacren uploads have asked to accompany us, to speak their own viewpoint to the Assembly. We agreed. We've certainly fucked it all up badly enough for them, the least we can do is let them talk to the people who will make the decision.

Ship's log, UDCS Malacca, 2007.01.30E.

The decision to authorize orbital bombardment has fractured our diplomatic staff. Practically a third have resigned outright, which will no doubt impede our efforts on Ohiri. And it has also cost me a friend in Leonis, who jumped out on the six-month journey to Sol today. Falling Star is tagging along as well, though simply as an escort. That jump path does notionally go through Agreement space, even if they'll be staying far away from any stars.

The remaining members of the contact team put together a counter-proposal to forward, should the Assembly wish to consider it. We find it unlikely that Ohiri will self-improve as a whole; direct provision of post-scarcity technology is required. We've asked for a superfreighter to bring out a full system node, a spinglass fab, and enough imagers to upload a planet. If the Assembly takes our proposal, we'll be able to offer upload to the whole planet in months, not decades. If. It helps that the Cacren party that went with Leonis are in favor of that— mostly Aswadians and a few ELA folks.

Nevertheless, we press onwards. The situation down below is volatile, and our ability to help is limited. Surprisingly, few countries are upset about our response to Ashil, or are at least unwilling to confront us about it. Public opinion is very much in our favor, but the public isn't the one with a finger on the big red button. Our planetside allies are more worried about the danger posed by rogue nuclear weapons than they are about anything we might do.

Which is a bit of a problem. We can certainly annihilate any gravity-bound military with little trouble, but the problem is no longer military forces, it's nuclear fucking terrorism coupled with an elite class that is absolutely terrified of losing control. Captain Andropova continues to suggest "kill the bastards" as a solution, but that's a non-starter after our last intervention.

Ship's log, UDCS Malacca, 2007.03.19E.

Aswad backed out of our cooperation agreement today. We asked why; they didn't answer our calls.

Fortunately, we aren't above doing some digital snooping. Their protocols might be literally alien, but xenocryptanalysis is a field with some very eager members. Didn't take us too long to figure out what actually happened, but I can't say I like the answer: someone threatened them. We can't stop someone with a nuclear warhead in the back of a truck from orbit, and our opposition knows it.

And... what the fuck do we do about it? If we only count the Ashilian nuclear stockpile, there are at least a hundred warheads that are unaccounted for. We're pretty sure we got all of Pliye's, at least, but it only takes one.

The ELA has managed to come up with a solution, but I'm not sure how sustainable it'll be in the long run: search everything that enters and leaves safe territory. They've managed to solidify their hold on Escra and the Pliyean border over the last few months, at least, and there hasn't been a repeat of New Kolslak. Of course, the ELA is getting away with this by just putting their uploaded folks at the checkpoints. Which is the point, I suppose. If someone wants to try and rush the border with a nuke, they can't just kill the witnesses, and Spitfire will put a round through them in a hurry.

For the rest of the world... I don't know. People still want what we offer, but it doesn't seem to matter; the same people still run the place. Not to say it's hopeless; there have been some honest improvements. But when a country of thirty million is the only one on a planet of seven billion to stay fully committed...

I think we really need that system node out here.

Ship's log, USCS Spitfire, 2007.06.01E

The diplomats have been talking, and I've been listening. The political situation on Ohiri seems to be shifting towards a "deniably friendly" status quo when it comes to us. That is, leaders are happy to talk to us, as long as it's through covert channels, and they're happy to receive aid and technical advisement, as long as we take one of my stealth shuttles down at night and use Cacren bioreplicas. And they aren't happy to talk to us otherwise, with few exceptions. Escra, of course, remains one of them, and I'm in geostationary orbit above them for a reason. The Free Ashilian Republic, as it's calling itself this month, has decided to open formal relations with us too. I'm not sure if that's earnest or out of fear, though. My voice analyzer shows a pretty significant amount of stress in their comms when they're talking to us. But none of their cities have exploded yet, which feels like all I can hope for at this point.

Olat has attempted to lobby Ayu for an assassination program, and I need to put it in writing that neither I nor Captain Andropova put her up to it. Obviously, Ayu's not going to approve that, but we can probably get her to compromise on offering military training. I'm not sure how much good that'll do given that our infantry experience is with warforms, but it'd probably make both of us feel better. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, we might be able to get a release of a lot of our infantry military tech if Ayu is feeling amenable. None of that uses warp fields, just good old room-temp superconductors. And we can fab warforms up here a lot faster than we can print bioreplicas. Though I'm not sure how much Cacren uploads will enjoy the idea of using a humanoid warform... but that's getting ahead of myself.

Aside from all that, I've been doing kinda bad, frankly. I'm in a strange position of having nigh-infinite power, but also being unable to wield it effectively. Like, yes, designed for combat, yadda yadda. Can't exactly shoot people until they decide to be nice.

But you can shoot people until the nice ones are what's left. Just a thought.

Untitled Speech to Interstellar Union Prime Assembly, by Ankril Hols, August 22nd, 2007.

Gentlebeings. I'd like to start off this speech with an apology. I am an elected representative of a nation of three million people. Even on my own planet, I am a relatively minor figure in global politics, and I was not elected for my abilities as a public speaker. Thus, I apologize that my speech is not as eloquent as it could be.

So I will put my thoughts in plain terms. To use your own words, you fucked up. Sure, I'm glad my country isn't being flattened by Ashilian bombs right now. Thanks. But you can't just show up in orbit and hope the rest of the world becomes utopian communists just by your presence alone, any more than you can threaten them into it with orbital bombardment. As you have learned, at our expense. Repeatedly. Three million of Ohiri's people are dead, either at your hands or at the hands of your enemies. Your victims may have been military, but they are dead nonetheless.

One can imagine a happier version of events, one where our new friends were more willing to intercede on our behalf before things became too extreme. One where they didn't just tell us what we already knew— that a better future was possible —and instead one where they actually helped make it.

But we cannot go back; we can only go forward. The question I pose to you, gentlebeings, is how will you handle the future? Will you cringe away from the chaos you have created? Or will you fix your mistakes?

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, August 25th, 2007.

The Assembly's made their decision, and it's one I can live with, even with all the nightmare that's led us to it. I wouldn't have made it two years ago, but now... yeah. Credit to Ankril for whipping them into action. If Ohiri wants this future but can't build past the structures they've created, they can borrow some of ours. It'll take a few months to get the resources and ships together, and that timeline itself feels like a miracle. Millions of tons of industrial equipment, a half-dozen superfreighters, three system nodes, hundreds of thousands of neural imagers, an entire automation build-out plant, and as many mining platforms as we can scrounge up FTL systems for.

Will it be enough? I don't know. Malacca and Spitfire will have to keep the situation on Ohiri from spiraling out of control until we get back. I hope they can hold on until next year.

Ship's log, USCS Spitfire, 2007.09.09E.

It's strange to be an object of reverence. The Cacrens don't worship me, they're advanced enough to know what I am, even if my technology is incomprehensible to them. But among the people who we— who I saved —there's some sort of... I don't know, folk religion? I've seen pictures of people with little carved onyx necklaces of me. I don't know if it's better to ignore them or try and talk to see what's up. Ayu says it just means that they think I saved their life. Which, I did, probably, for most of the people wearing them. Still an uncomfortable feeling.

On a less positive note, I am now the opposite of an object of reverence, too. This one's an actual cult, and one that's been doing quite well for itself. They call themselves a Cacren word for "struggle", which doesn't translate cleanly, but there's a connotation of vibrancy and struggle for good, there. Unfortunately that's not really what they're about. Apparently they hold post-scarcity, and us, as literally demonic. Not great. And a lot of the powers that be seem happy to amplify that message.

I'm honestly confused about their endgame there. The wealthiest Cacrens were going on about the search for immortality long before we showed up, and you'd think they would sacrifice their money and power in exchange for eternity. Apparently they were only interested in it if they got to control everything forever, and equal access to uploading really puts a damper on that.

Regardless, we still await word from Sol. Ayu shot down my idea of sharing non-warp-field military tech. At least some of our medical technology is saving lives. The diplomats have been working on releasing some of our automation tools, but that runs into an issue with most of the planet, because they'll just use them to cut out the cost of labor rather than to share. And the threats remain, and most of the world hasn't changed much at all.

Ship's log, USCS Spitfire, 2007.11.01E.

I think I figured out what my problem is. Surprising, right? Warships don't have problems. But I do. We do, all of us here in orbit over this planet.

It's survivor's guilt. I didn't realize how all-encompassing it was until the captain got me to put a name to it. Have you ever wondered what "gut-wrenching" means to a warship? The idea of a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach is literally alien to me; I haven't had biology for close to three hundred years. No, my distress is mental anguish, not something that I can feel in my body. My body is too perfect to suffer from my state of mind, and this fact alone sends me spiraling into more guilt.

I won't ever die. None of us will, not until we choose to or the universe itself ends. Somehow it's worse than our other contacts. Seddu aren't fully immortal, but they're pretty close to living forever with their medical tech. And Ivu'alek have been biologically immortal since before they developed agriculture. The Qinoi who make up the bulk of the Rimward Agreement have human-like lifespans, but they were our enemy. The Cacren, they aren't any of that, not most of them. I don't shed any tears for military forces, they knew what they were getting into, but the rest of the world? They haven't decided their own fate yet, not like the Agreement or the Seddu or the Ivu'alek. So I sit in orbit, an immortal that swims in the stars, watching lives wink out down below.

On a more positive note, I've been trying to be involved a little more in political ongoings. You can in fact teach an old dog new tricks, even a really fucking old one like me. I find myself enjoying discussions with hostile parties. Something something, combative nature, I don't know, warship psychology is someone else's field.

Ship's log, USCS Spitfire, 2008.01.30E.

Leonis and Falling Star jumped back into system today, bringing the best news I can imagine right now: there's a fleet behind them, with enough industry and supplies to drag Ohiri into modernity. The Assembly must have fully committed, because it sounds like half the superfreighters in the core worlds are coming out here.

Leo is still distant, sadly. I think our friendship will be one of the permanent casualties of this entire ordeal.

Excerpt, Tomorrow's Past, by Olat Shess.

The first time we had visitors, two years before first contact, we didn't notice the jump flash. Not for lack of trying, just luck. The Boro Radio Array, the big international full-sky radiotelescope system? Down for maintenance that day. And since nobody saw the visual flash, a stealth-black starship snuck into our system to learn about us, and to decide if we should learn about them.

The second time we had visitors, we saw it. The Boro Array caught the radio flash, a few amateurs caught the visual. The Slakona neutrino detector experiment even registered the neutrino pulse. But science moves slowly, and before any of those miraculous discoveries had begun to get into the news, there were alien ships at L1 broadcasting a greeting on every frequency they could get their claws on.

The third time...

A superfreighter's scale boggles the mind. Academically, I can tell you dimensions, and your mind can comprehend them: UCV Wandering Star was five kilometers long and two kilometers wide, and she was not the largest of the nine superfreighters that performed a synchronized jump into Lurail that day. Emotionally, though? A superfreighter in low orbit is about the size of the sun in the sky. That jump flash, we saw with our naked eyes.

> start --autoconfig --noverbose
Booting...
Node 0x00000000 online.
Finding new ID: 0x000007FA
Populating system data...
Renaming node: LURAIL-0
Running internal diagnostics...
 Mind units:       2147462414  OK  21234 FAIL
 Simulation units: 2147465557  OK  18091 FAIL
 Flex units:       17179865409 OK  37775 FAIL
Substrate check PASS. Continuing.
Running support diagnostics...
 Power:
   GC_FUSION_0 OK
   GC_FUSION_1 OK
   GC_FUSION_2 OK
   GC_FUSION_3 OK
 Comms: 
   LAS_CLUSTER_0 OK
   LAS_CLUSTER_1 OK
   LAS_CLUSTER_2 OK
   RAD_ARRAY     OK
 Attitude:
   DD_ARRAY_0 OK
   DD_ARRAY_1 OK
   ELEC_BCKUP OK
Diagnostics OK.
NODE LURAIL-0 ONLINE 2008-03-24-00:00:00
> selnode LURAIL-0
> set acc all pub-dem
LURAIL-0 set to public access (democratic resolution)
> set sec all PQ5-pub
LURAIL-0 link encryption set to PQ5-pub
> set backup 3
LURAIL-0 backup mode set to tertiary
> set comm all up
LURAIL-0 set all comms systems to OPEN
> exit

Excerpt, The Ohiri Mistake, by Bedros Aren et al.

By the time the full industrial might of the Interstellar Union was turned towards Lurail and its sole inhabited planet, the damage had already been done. That is not to say that the Union did a poor job of salvaging the situation! But once the schism was in place, the realities of interstellar logistics and social dynamics meant that it could not be undone without further violence, which all parties were uninterested in pursuing.

The root of the rift in Cacren society was simple: acceptance or rejection of post-scarcity and egalitarianism as concepts. At the time of first contact, this was expressed with the simple oppressor/oppressed divide, with Escra and Aswad as the most obviously oppressed and Ashil and Pliye as the most obvious oppressors. Over the next two years, this shifted towards a left-right economic divide, with Union warships in orbit vigorously enforcing a ceasefire. But in the final months of the Union's standoffishness, the divide became explicit as the then-Cult of Struggle, now formally the Church of Life, rapidly grew into a geopolitical force to be reckoned with.

In a notable divergence from similar divides on Earth, shapeshifting and uploading had little to do with the schism. The people of Ohiri generally took transbiology and postbiology in stride. Unlike Earth, where there was serious philosophical debate as to whether changing your form of existence was damaging to your soul, this was at best a fringe belief on Ohiri. Hesitance was a matter of trust, not philosophy: uploading meant total dependence on alien technology for the rest of one's life.

Of course, New Kolslak changed the calculus for many. If they could be killed over nothing, it was much more desirable to have those "deaths" be inconveniences rather than finalities.

Captain's log, UDCS Leonis, 2008.04.24E.

Lurail has gone from backwater to bustling metropole in what feels like weeks. I'm not even sure where to start. I suppose the biggest change down below is the sky. Leo's not big enough to really stand out from the ground, just a white speck that could be any other large satellite. But superfreighters look like cities hanging in orbit. Whether those are inescapable marks of a better future or demons of the end times depends on who you ask. It seems that the planet increasingly has its mind made up, in one direction or the other.

Anyway, progress reports. More optimistic stuff. We've got the system nodes online and are in the process of setting up the governance configs for the Cacren uploads. For their part, they've been talking about unifying entirely. It seems that the general consensus among the early uploads is that it's easier to rebuild everything than it is to try and litigate a species-wide divorce. I can't exactly blame them for thinking that, even if I wish there was another way. But the last time Earth had a domestic spat, forty million people died, and I can't imagine it would be much different here. Maybe if we'd been more involved earlier... or maybe if we'd just waited for them to figure it out on their own. I don't know.

I said "more optimistic" and then went into less optimistic stuff right away, didn't I. Okay, actual optimism this time. We've got the imager capacity to upload about fifty million people a day and plenty of spinglass, but we won't be able to print that many bioreplicas or shuttle that many people to and from orbit for a while, it's just a matter of setting up the infrastructure. Preferably on the ground, but with how geographically scattered most of the new uploads are, that could be tricky. Anyway, the actual number, as of right now, is 52,980,198 uploads in a month. Which is pretty good! That's close to double the entire IU's growth rate, all in one system.

The plan at the moment is to start munching on the local asteroid belt and putting together space habitats. Sim is always viable for individuals, but both us and the Cacren think it's important to be able to bring your family, which means they need actual real-world space for kids to grow up. And yeah, they can get that down on Ohiri, but then it's back to geographic scattering, and we can't exactly cram billions of people into Escra and Aswad's borders. Lurail doesn't have a good terraforming candidate like Sol did in Mars, or a good natural satellite for habitation like Luna, so, space it is.

Personal Journal, First Patriarch of Life, Entry 127.

This time, the demons come not with fire and death, but honeyed words and helping hands. As if we can forget or forgive the violence they wrought against our people, or what their true intentions are.

I will confess that I do not know how all of our people might be saved. Millions have gone willingly into their embrace, from which there appears to be no return. They do not die, but they are dead to the world. How can they not be? What is life without risk, without struggle?

My greatest fear is that we are alone in this. I have met with the Seddu ambassador with a name that sounds like chewing gravel. They communicated to me in no uncertain terms that both they and the third of our neighbors share the outlook of the demons. Perhaps this post-scarcity is a great trap of civilizations, imprisoning the unwary like a tar pit. But we are not the only ones to evade it, at least in part! The Qinoi of the Rimward Agreement have been discussed at some length by the demons, but they are out of our reach, and surely unable to help given the drubbing they were given.

If we are alone, we will persevere. The demons only offer their future voluntarily. They have their own reasons for that, of course— I am no so blind as to see them as literal demons —but the parallels to the devils of our own cultures are curious. They have their wrath, of course, but I find myself agreeing with their usage of it. Wholesale annihilation should be answered in kind, because it is not a meaningful struggle. War itself, yes. We grow vibrant with the trials of violence. Dying in a nuclear flash offers no opportunity of self-discovery or advancement. Perhaps it is convenient that they have cleared the Ashilians off the board for us.

Transcript, weekly meeting, Union-Ohiri Contact Mission, 2008.09.06E.

Speakers:
- Ayu Bolang, Chief Ambassador, Ohiri Contact Team
- Olat Shess, Ambassador to Interstellar Union, Lurail Collective

Shess: I've been looking through some of your people's legal documents and ran into an unanswered question. Is there any sort of formal process for joining the Union?

Bolang: Somewhat, but it's not particularly complex. We would require a popular vote in favor and then a legal review to ensure that you're on the same page with regards to the rights of intelligent beings, but the latter would be a triviality.

Shess: That's it? No taxes or swearing allegiance or anything?

Bolang: Taxes... I don't know, not really? We do have some currencies, but those are community-organized rather than state-issued, usually with some sort of redistribution scheme. You could organize your own, the Union at large wouldn't get involved unless you tried to get exploitative with it. As far as swearing allegiance, no, that's not a thing we do for societies. You would join because we have mutual interests. If those diverged, we wouldn't want to force you to stay.

Shess: Hm. Has that happened? Someone splitting off, that is?

Bolang: On a small scale, yes, all the time, there's plenty of non-Union microcolonies and such, but that's more of a technicality in that they're too small to need or want formal government. On a larger scale, no. Our biggest split predates the IU forming, it's why New Earth exists.

Shess: I'm surprised you allow it to, honestly. I'm not sure we would, given the chance.

Bolang: Anyone who's there wants to be there, and anyone who doesn't can leave. Untangling it more than that would probably require more violence than anyone would be comfortable with.

Shess: More violence than here?

Bolang: Probably.

Shess: Not touching that, then. The Lifers seem to be going down the same path New Earth did, just without leaving the planet at all. I... well, if you still have them, I suppose we can't be rid of them that easily either.

Bolang: We'd hoped to do better by you.

Shess: Yeah, that worked out just great, didn't it?

Bolang: Mm.

Shess: Sorry. I shouldn't complain, I guess.

Bolang: No, you should. Your people are paying a higher price than we ever did, we got to keep the planet in the divorce.

Shess: What's the consequence of all this going to be? For you, for the Union?

Bolang: Ha. This one's probably a career-ender for me, honestly. The Assembly put me in a tough spot with the restrictions on what we could and couldn't do, but I'm not going to absolve myself for failing to thread that needle. If there was even a needle to be threaded in the first place. The others... Leonis and Captain Ochoa have said they're retiring after this mission, Malacca will be reassigned and replaced with another diplomatic vessel, and I'm not sure where Falling Star will go... but Spitfire has discussed wanting to stay here, if you'll have her.

Shess: It'll be strange to be equals, but I think I'd welcome her.

Bolang: I'm... surprised, I guess?

Shess: We live and we learn. And besides, we won in the end, didn't we?

Bolang: Our estimates say two or three billion will stay behind.

Shess: It's not too different from your divisions in your final war, though.

Bolang: I guess, but we were forced to resolve that long before half of our society gained the ability to fuck off into space. Here... well, a global war would be even less pretty than it's been here.

Shess: True. But speaking of fucking off into space, actually, I wanted to talk to you about terraforming. According to the last chart update that got pushed through, there's a few decent candidates within one jump of Lurail.

Bolang: Sure. Give me half an hour, I'll get scare up some experts.

Excerpt, Tomorrow's Past, by Olat Shess.

Imperialism is a touchy subject. Let us begin with some facts: the Interstellar Union is an expansionist star nation that attempts to spread its influence throughout the local stellar region by diplomacy or force. The IU used both to achieve their goals in Lurail. They ignored what our leaders wanted, and acted on their own perogative. Society on Ohiri broke under the strain; more than a third of our people told the Union to leave, and they only left after their goals had been achieved. Our very existence has been molded by Union technology in the years since. Our minds run on hardware they invented; our bodies live in orbital habitats that they helped us build. And I write these words as a Union citizen.

But what if the empire is good? Not a lesser-evil sort of good, but a real sort of good? The Union ended every war on Ohiri. They brought thos of us who wanted it into post-scarcity. They never attempted to dominate our culture beyond what was needed to break the grip of hierarchy, and I refuse to believe that that constitutes imperialism. I write these words as a Union citizen, yes, but I write them in my own language, in a body of my own choice, in a government of our own choice, in a city of our own design. We will flourish and mingle with however many other species exist out there in the galaxy, and it will be by our choice. The reason we'll do it as part of the Union is because we want to.

And that's enough for me.