Chapter 021: Secrets

Once the War of Purity ended, national governments of the Homeworld (and the rest of the Solar System) began demanding their share of spoils. The Solar Commonwealth leadership looked down upon Earth’s governments, considering them remnants of the barbaric past that couldn’t stop their petty rivalries even when Mankind began colonizing the Galaxy. Now, however, they were saviors of the Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth attempted to find refuge in audacity and launched the Fourth Expansion Phase. After decades of drawing citizens of new colonies from as many countries as possible to avoid Homeworld powers establishing colonies of their own, the Commonwealth changed its approach. The idea was to reward the Terrans by allowing them to colonize the worlds beyond the Core, where they would be in a safe distance from most advanced and populous worlds (including Earth) under the tight grip of the Commonwealth.

The Fourth Expansion Phase outgrew the Commonwealth’s estimates. Many small countries evacuated from Earth entirely, choosing ownership of multiple star systems and many Garden Worlds over remaining on Earth. Many bigger countries split in two, while others lost a significant chunk of their population.

Those who remained behind were primarily Commonwealth loyalists who didn’t identify with their past countries. This dragged them into the Inheritance Wars, a series of legal and (though rarely and on small scale) literal warfare for control of the now-abandoned lands between the Commonwealth and vanished countries' neighbors. What’s worse, the Terran colonists in the soon-to-be Inner Colonies became the backbone of the Frontier Rebellions once they grew tired of various restrictions placed upon them by the Commonwealth. This paved the way to the Commonwealth’s downfall.

Encyclopedia Galactica

Book 7, page 124

***

“Well, I guess it’s time to leave this place.” Captain Keller announced. “Leave as in ‘run the fastest we can without overwhelming our inertia compensators’. When can we pick up the refugees from the Tavian station?”

Commander Drathari decided against commenting on the spectacle they got to see ten minutes ago. The message from the head of the Truthseekers’ garrison was made much sweeter when a sudden assault by Lieutenant Nowak’s marines overwhelmed the station’s bridge. Since the cameras were active and the attack interrupted said message, they all get to see Lieutenant Nowak caving the officer’s head with her power armor-enhanced punch.

Satisfying. So satisfying. That guy was an asshole to an unbelievable degree.

The Truthseekers seemed to get slightly too complacent. The garrison on the station had no Perfects. Only a platoon of the Endless, the Truthseekers’ cloned cannon fodder. They were good - somewhere on the level of an average army trooper. But not good enough to repel a surprising assault of the marines let in by the Tavian personnel of the station.

“If they step on the accelerator in… seven minutes? The distance between us is negligible.” She answered. “The strike teams of Lieutenant Commander Innocent and Lieutenant Commander Fouquet are already about to land on Echo. Judging from the speed and position I’d say we can start accelerating towards the edge of the system… and we should do that.”

The second fleet will see the opening missile salvo of the battle in a few minutes. As soon as they figure out something is not proceeding as it should, they will move full throttle towards us. And they are faster than our ships. We’ll need to hurry to escape into Hyperspace before they catch up.

“Great, proceed.” The Captain answered. Commander Drathari began issuing orders. Lieutenant-Commander Mendez was a professional and already had the course plotted. Soon the ship began moving, and with it, the rest of their fleet. “Now… I believe it’s about time we get the reports from the other ship. I’m especially interested in the situation on Agreement.”

So, I guess I’m back to being the first officer. That was an interesting experience. Thus far I only got to command one ship. Rising Thunder was a nice ship, but it was only a destroyer. And it was mostly patrol work, so fighting was almost unheard of.

“Agreement lost all weapons save for missile launchers, and a significant part of its sensors.” There was, unfortunately, a downside of surviving the battle by going turtle and reinforcing your shields by cannibalizing your equipment. The biggest one was the need to spend a while in the shipyard - and buy new equipment - to return to the pre-turtle combat capability. “We can transplant lighter artillery and some point defense weapons from Hercules, it’s not like we can risk putting our only supply ship in harm’s way.“

“So, we lost one and a half light cruiser.” Captain said. Commander Drathari agreed with his assessment. Even after moving the equipment between the ships, the Agreement will still operate much under its pre-battle abilities. Some things couldn’t be moved. And they couldn’t risk dismantling Hercules point defense too much, because the last thing they needed was a stray missile hitting their supply ship. “More than I hoped, less than I feared. Supplies?”

Why is he asking me these questions? He could check the data himself.

“Once we unload some of the Hercules’ supplies, we should be ok with at least one more regular engagement.” Too bad we have no friendly ports in sight. “However, that’s about all. After one battle we’ll run out of ammunition, missiles, particle shield granulate, fuel and coolant.”

“Thankfully, it’s not like we can survive an engagement with the other fleet. So a lack of supplies after a battle is the least of our worries.” Commander Drathari felt a sudden urge to throw something at the captain. “Call off the combat alert, we return to normal functioning. Take the first shift, Lena.”

It was the final straw. When he left the bridge, Commander Drathari made a vow to uncover his secrets on her own.

***

Two days after the battle, the free hours of both Christopher Hall and Chief Petty Officer Tiaa Sistonen finally lined up. Because of that, Christopher decided to satiate his need for knowledge in any way possible, even if it had to cost him his dignity. He used his commplant to send her a request. To his surprise, she accepted.

Twenty-five minutes later Christopher entered her private quarters. One of the few places on the Echo which he didn’t expect to find himself in.

Judging from the placement and the general map of the area he could see through his implants, Tiaa Sistonen’s quarters rivaled the entire suite of Recovery Team Eight. Christopher realized that higher rank equaled more room. But if so, how did Captain’s quarters look?

The entrance led him straight into her living room. A table with some chairs. An L-shaped couch with a coffee table and a large screen in front. Bookcases lined two of the walls, filled with books and what looked like souvenirs taken from various places.

Tiaa Sistonen lounged on the couch, with a bottle of wine and a glass on the coffee table. She was watching a film on the screen, slowly sipping her wine. It was the first time, Christopher saw her off-duty.

She was wearing a black tank top and trousers, which ended right under her knees. Christopher once again had to chastise his imagination for missing the mark so badly.

“Uhm, Chief, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but…”

She raised her hand, interrupting him. “We are both off-duty. Call me Tiaa AND move to the subject. I consider my free time to be very important to me.” This wasn’t the Chief he was used to. His discovery, that even the most upright and rule-adhering person he knew had such a side, was refreshing.

“Ok… Tiaa.” Part of him expected her to leap off the couch and dropkick him in the face for not calling her Chief Tiaa. Thankfully, this didn’t happen. “I was sent here to tell you… uhm…”

Something unexpected happened.

Christopher was about to say that Innocent was actually THE Innocent. Despite the Lieutenant Commander telling him not to - mostly because the priest suggested thattrying to do so against his orders would bring Christopher much needed answers.

However, when he did try to speak, he suddenly found himself unable to recount what he was planning to say. Only after a few seconds, he remembered it - but when once again he tried to say it, it faded from his memory again.

What the hell is happening?!

“Ah, yes. The fish face.” Tiaa sighed. ”How familiar.” When all she got in answer was an empty stare, she opened and closed her mouth a few times. ”Add a shocked expression on your face and you get the closest equivalent of a fish out of the water, desperately gasping for air. Sit here.” She pointed towards the other side of the couch.

While he obediently relocated and sat on the couch, she poured another glass of wine and offered it to him.

“You are going to need it.” She announced. “The stronger alcohol would work best, but I don’t have any here, and I do not want to intrude upon Captain Keller’s or Lieutenant Nowak’s secret vodka stashes. Before we get into the explanations, I’d like you to know most of the crew went through the same thing. Don’t act unreasonable, and do not break anything. Or I’ll need to answer in kind.”

“So, it’s going to be one more thing from the ‘I’m not sure if I wanted to know that’ category.” Christopher sighed heavily. “I don’t know if something can ruin my mood more than having Tendrik explain the recent battle in detail, which suddenly made me painfully aware of how fragile starships are.”

“It probably will.” Tiaa ruined his hopes. “Who sent you here?”

“Lieutenant Commander Innocent.”

Tiaa clicked her tongue in answer. “Captain Keller’s private witch hunter slash secret police.” Her opinion about Innocent seemed to be less nice than the ship’s average. “I see. Well, do you know what’s the best way of avoiding unwanted information spread when you are running an organization very interested in secrecy?”

“Make sure your members are strictly observed and invigilated?” He risked a guess. This made sense from the point of view of the 21st Century.

“Wrong.” Tiaa shook her head. “Such control is unfeasible for an organization as decentralized as the Guild. Every captain has considerable autonomy. Captain Keller could one day decide to rat out everything. With the nearest Guild’s personnel being light-years away from him, who could stop him?” This did make sense, at least to Christopher.

“So… what’s the correct way?” He had no idea what option could be better than this.

“You make your entire personnel physically unable to betray any secret. Even after they leave your ranks. Say… what do you know about active cerebral implants?” She asked out of the blue.

“Err, nothing.” I’m so damn behind the schedule with learning things about the future. There are too many things. It’s hundreds of years to read about! Worse, it’s hundreds of years of combined actions of trillions of human beings!

“Cerebral implants are, in short, brain implants.” She began to explain. “The difference between passive and active ones is that the former can’t influence the way your brain works, and the latter can. Something to measure your brain activity constantly for medical or scientific purposes would be a passive implant.”

Why is she talking about brain implants?

“Now, active implants CAN influence your brain.” Tiaa continued. “Your commplant is a combination of an active non-cerebral implant connected to your ocular nerves and a passive implant that ‘reads’ your commands from your brain. Translation implants are once again active implants but connected to both ocular nerves and vestibulocochlear nerves between the ears and brain. The true active cerebral implants are almost universally banned by Icarus Accord. Which means both the Confederation of Mankind and Solar Federation.”

“What? Why?” What she just described sounded like an incredibly awkward and roundabout way to do something which could be as well done with a direct cerebral implant.

“Because you do not want to have your active cerebral implant hacked.” She stated flatly. “During the Solar Commonwealth era, there was a serious legal mess concerning lots of people questioning any sudden change of behavior of people with extensive cerebral implants. If you suddenly alter your memories and behavior, are you still the same person? What if you altered your memories to go through a lie detector test? And what about people making false testimonies in court? Everyone who was caught doing this could simply claim that back then they didn’t know the truth due to alteration of memories. Could this still be considered a crime if they were telling the truth without knowing it was a lie? Even when they altered their own memories?” His head almost started spinning. But she wasn’t over.

“And what if someone remotely hacked you and changed your behavior or memories, but did so well enough that nobody noticed a thing? There was even a period where lots of politicians, lawyers, and ethicists considered branding all people with active cerebral implants as not sane according to law. Because every sufficiently competent lawyer could reasonably portray their every change in behavior or decision as influenced by memory alterations.” Tiaa took a sip of her wine before continuing. “The Commonwealth at a certain point decided the mess had to end, so they heavily regulated the active cerebral implants. A century or so after its fall Mankind’s first AIs gazed into Hyperspace for a bit too long and committed the Icarus Massacre. When Mankind signed the Icarus Accord, the active implants were added to the list of banned technologies, especially due to AIs extensive usage of those. However, under all those pesky laws, there is one small asterisk with a note which makes the ban slightly less stiff for the Explorer’s Guild.”

It was at this point Christopher understood what she was trying to talk about. And he immediately knew why she took time to warn him to not break anything while in her home.

“Yeah, judging from the expression on your face, you understood what I meant.” Tiaa commented.

“I… we all have such implants, right? And they can alter our memories?” How could they do that?! And they didn’t even mention it!

“That is correct.” Christopher had to admit Tiaa didn’t seem to like the idea either. “It hijacks all new memories about things considered secret. Rather than being saved in fleshy mass known as the brain, they are saved in the implant. You can access them normally when you are thinking about them. Talking with people when you have permission is possible too, as you no doubt discovered already. However, when you try to talk to someone without permission... you suddenly find yourself unable to access the memories. And when you finish your service in the Guild…” She made a gesture as if pulling something from her head. "All memories containing secrets of the Guild are made permanently inaccessible."

“I thought we were supposed to be good guys.” Christoper replied angrily. “Good guys shouldn’t do things like that.”

“The Guild is tasked with keeping mean things at bay. And is ready to go quite far to achieve its goal.” Tiaa corrected him. “The Machine Wars were quite a rude wake-up call. The Guild is still trying to strive for a reasonable middle ground between ethics and efficiency. Those implants can do only one thing, and cannot be accessed, much less reprogramed, remotely. The only longterm effect of this procedure is selective amnesia, which is why the Supreme Council of Mankind decided to tolerate usage of forbidden Mechanist technologies.”

Why does everyone in the future seem to have a sensible explanation for absolutely every weird shit going on? Is it due to that Wall of Faith thing, giving everyone decades of the relatively unchangeable situation to slowly forge out a conclusive opinion on everything?

“The future has lots of nice gadgets.” And some horrible ones. “Sometimes I’m curious why you are all still human, rather than being slightly more diverse 21st Century people with advanced technology.”

“The War of Purity traumatized absolutely everyone.” Tiaa replied. “And for a good measure. Now the overwhelming majority of Mankind reacts to the word ‘transhuman’ worse than to ‘slaver, ‘nazi’, and ‘communist’ combined. And people trying to divert too far from normalcy find most governments and societies to be less than welcoming towards this idea.” Tiaa shrugged. She didn’t seem to be emotionally invested in the issue. “If you haven't read about it yet, check the ‘Humanity Ascension Program’ on the ship’s network. Which should explain everything to you.”

“What sort of trauma lasts for centuries?” It was the main thing he couldn’t understand in the whole transhuman scare thing.

“Major one. But it’s more complicated than this.” Tiaa answered. “Mankind never got the technological singularity it was promised. No acceleration of scientific progress intense enough to quickly changed Humanity is something else. The Wall of Faith murdered attempts to create machine intelligence surpassing Mankind, and those we did create aren’t as brilliant and creative as we hoped. And transhumanism, the last major attempt to achieve the singularity, landed face down during the War of Purity. What we got instead was a sociological singularity.”

“Ehm, what?” Christopher was vaguely aware of what the term technological singularity meant. But he never heard of the other term.

“Essentially, the knowledge and skills in psychology, sociology, economy, education, advertisement, law enforcement, and so on got good.” She answered. “Good enough there are countries out there which got rid of crime by educating people out of it without any sort of force. Give every parent in your country a non-sentient AI assistant with access to petabytes of knowledge about parenting to assist them, and after few generations, all children grow into good, law-abiding citizens, to various degrees devoted to the dominant ideology. Add some economy and industry magic and you can create an actually working socialism, greedless capitalism, and feudalism fair to everyone. Or a totalitarian or slaver regime rendered immune to internal issues. Because, well, Mankind.” The ending sounded very, very bitter.

Christopher shook his head in disbelief.

“So thousands of years of societal progress… and the end result are Planets of Hats?” Tiaa froze for a second, probably checking the term on the ship’s network.

“More like ‘Countries, Planets and Organizations of Hats’. But yeah, the rough outline fits. There are still internal variants, disagreeing opinions, different personalities, human ambitions, outside influences and so on. And some do not fit anywhere, so instead they wander the space.”

“So...wait…” Christopher spent a few seconds trying to compile what he just heard into something resembling a cohesive picture. And an answer to his earlier question. “You are trying to tell me everyone is still traumatized by the War of Purity because education got so good that every subsequent generation is almost a perfect copy of their predecessors. Which means both that the majority of criminal activity, general jerkassery, and mental illnesses are gone, but also every major trauma is endlessly perpetuated?” She nodded back.

“Now apply the resulting realization to political and military revanchism, nationalistic zeal, and both negative stereotypes and prejudices, and you’ll get to see why the Long War just keeps going.” Even without meta-empathy, it was increasingly obvious Tiaa was increasingly bitter and angry about something. Not towards Christopher, but something was bothering her.

“Now I really need to drink.” He tasted the wine. It was surprisingly good. The taste resembled aan expensive French wine he once got to try. Tiaa had good taste. Also, chief petty officers had to be paid quite well in the Guild.

On the other hand, it was quite sad it wasn't something he could get drunk on.

“Unsurprising.” Tiaa replied. “Of course, people can be persuaded into another ideology, countries can change, and children are different from their parents. But the first is significantly harder, the second is slowed down to a crawl, and the third one has limits.” She eyed him curiously. “You are taking the whole brain implant revelation calmer than expected. Enough for us to get side-tracked.”

“I’m still unbelievably pissed off. Someone installed a cybernetic implant in my brain without my knowledge and approval… and it can modify my memories! Who wouldn’t be angry?!” Christopher stopped his ranting before it got out of hand. “ But I can’t leave this ship. I can’t change the rules about those implants. Besides, you told me to not break anything here. And I have a strange feeling that if I shout at you, I’m going to regret this during my first working shift.” Chief Tiaa nodded, confirming his worries. “Is there something else I need to know?”

I’m still going to get those things out of my brain when only I can.

“Three things.” Tiaa replied. “The first one is that unless stated otherwise, you can share secret information with your team members.” Christopher’s empty stare persuaded her to add some explanation. “Unlike hardened officers, you are new to the business. Having someone to talk about weird things in your life is therapeutic. And since you can’t tell anything to anyone besides your group and all of your dangerous memories are gonna get purged when you leave the Guild, it’s safe.”

“What if we betray something accidentally? Like, for example, I’ll tell something to Nekia, without knowing someone is near and can overhear us?” Christopher asked while Tiaa took another sip of her wine.

“That’s the second thing.” Tiaa answered. “They might hear one or two words, but then their implants will figure out they shouldn’t be hearing what you are saying. From that moment onwards they’ll only hear white noise. And the memories of what they heard will be purged from their memories. In fact, the most common reason for someone having this talk is triggering this censorship. Being directly referred to me by an officer is rare.” Christopher wasn’t sure if he should feel special or like someone who picked the shortest stick.

“The third thing is that the implants will also react to attempts to write down the secrets, be it on paper or the computer.” Tiaa continued. “You will not manage to achieve that. People keep trying the same things over and over again. I’ve decided to warn you in advance it’s pointless.”

I’m still going to try it. Just in case.

“Great.” Christopher concluded. “I think I’m going to leave. I need to digest what I just heard. Maybe go on a telekinetic rampage and write a petition to Captain about secretly installing forbidden technologies in the bodies of the crew.”

To his surprise, there was a spike of emotions in Tiaa when he mentioned Captain Keller. A spike powerful enough he picked it up without opening himself to her emotions. It was convoluted enough that he failed to read them. He considered trying to interface with her, but he quickly decided against it. If she found out, she would be pissed off. What’s more, he refused to jump headfirst into the pond again, not after the mess with Kivanna.

He was standing up from the couch when Tiaa suddenly spoke.

“How’s Nekia doing?” The question came out of nowhere.

“She’s fine.” Christopher replied. He wasn’t sure how much he could tell. Tiaa was technically his superior, but she was off-duty. And for some reason, she never asked that question when in uniform. “The Hastati battle shocked her a lot, but it also whipped her into shape. She is less volatile now and is working very hard in her training. “ She still breaks things and causes fire danger quite often. Some things are unchangeable. “When I once had to stop Rukh, Tiriel, and Ryan from fighting, she stepped in right after me. Quite surprising.”

Tiaa’s brow rose up slowly.

“That was in the Gates of Infinity.” Christopher quickly clarified. “Not in the real world. No physical violence under my watch.” Tiaa nodded approvingly.

“Good.” Her answer made him understand he just dodged a bullet. “I promised her I’m not going to use my position to help her. I’m going to honor this promise.” Christopher could feel the incoming ‘but’. “Keep an eye on her in my stead. Her father died when she was two years old. No siblings. Only me, and for years. And now she is trying to distance herself from me. I’m fully aware there is a moment when birds have to leave their nests, but I’d prefer my daughter to not fall to her early death.”

Seriously? Why does everyone… ugh.

“I’ve already been asked about a similar thing by another person and about a different teammate.” Christopher replied. “First of all, I’m not even sure if fixing the lives of my subordinates is part of my job description, so I’m not going to do that. Especially as I don’t get paid extra.” Tiaa looked at him with the closest equivalent of surprise he ever managed to get out of her. “Second of all, I consider all my teammates as my friends at this point, and because of this, I’m going to do my utmost to help them. All of them, and without the need to receive a more or less direct order from anyone.”

“Well spoken!” She clapped her head. “You’re fitting in quite well, don’t you? It’s almost surprising how much you changed ever since your first day here.”

Christopher had to agree with Tiaa. Nobody was surprised more than himself. How does one change from a lifeless and almost friendless recluse to… whatever he was right now. He was still discovering more and more interesting things about his new body.

The fact that he was stronger and more agile was one thing. He could make up for his issues in both fields with telekinesis. But his reflex were also much faster - second in his team only to Rukh. And if it wasn’t enough, his memory was much better. And so was his ability to concentrate. While he didn’t take any IQ test, he suspected there was improvement there as well.

But the largest change in his opinion was motivation and energy. He simply couldn’t stand not doing anything or wasting time. It was a 180-degree change from how he remembered himself in the 21st Century.

Sometimes all of that scared him. How much of ‘himself’ was still left in him? His ‘Guide’ refused to answer any of his questions about that, simply staying silent no matter how loud Christopher shouted.

Well, time to get back to training and working. Right after I find out if the rest of my team knows about the implants.