A Broken Machine

Humanity had imagined many enemies, but one of the earliest fears was the tools in their hands turning on them. From axe cults in the mesolithic to ghosts hiding in the new-fangled gaslighting. Then electricity and its invisible, mysterious and lethal power. Nothing compared to when man mixed everything together and created electronics and a whole new type of threat was foreseen and new fears arose.

They never came to pass. It turns out that people are better at bonding with their fridges than their own kind half the time. By the time they could have become an independent threat, they were us and we were them. We gave them bad jokes and awkward relationships and they gave us immortality and everyone seemed happy with the arrangement. We just made humanity bigger.

We had new choices, augmented by our finest work to live out in a galaxy that was slowly unfolding in front of us. New nations, new peoples and almost no reason to fight.

But when had we ever needed a reason?

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“It is our planet! We built it, we have plans for every square meter of it and I’ll be damned if a bunch of fucking icicles are going to take two bloody continents! Not even one, not even a bloody embassy but full independent settlements on two out of our five! And what do we get? Nothing, some useless iceballs that even they can’t be arsed to live on. I vote no, and I’ll go further than that, I’ll dismiss any of you idiots that vote for it!”

The room was filled with dappled light, the air filled with gentle breezes. The rage rang heavily against the carefully contrived peace. The people listening were more than a little shocked and intimidated. The speaker had been the leader of the whole settlement, his work on merging Terran DNA into their own wondrous new forms carried a lot of weight but one still sought to find her voice.

“Speaker, this is a negotiation. They are offering us much that they value, even if you don’t. It is in good faith…” Her voice faded as the growl of opposition grew and it took her a moment to steady it, “Speaker, Council, they ask for lands that we will not be able to terraform for generations, if ever. Your plan is not carved in stone, not ordained by the old gods. It is just a plan. The people,” she emphasised the word, “that made the offer are simply looking for the same opportunities that we are. Those ‘Iceballs’ are the work of their finest artists, not for habitation but veneration. They honour us with the offer and I doubt that many of their people will be content with such a bargain…”

To the surprise of none, the row continued long into the night, even as their new sun disappeared below the horizon.

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The Terran Quorum ship ‘Wisp’ was sitting in low planetary orbit. Its two inhabitants were listening to the slow drone of politicians making a mess of things, both sure that they would end up trying to fix it. They were close to the Terran baseline except for the Mil-tec, Medical and Atmos stuff that came with the job. Except that one of them didn’t seem to have it all activated.

The man looked elderly, a thing almost unheard of now and completely unnecessary, “What are the twigs arguing about anyway? The icicles will pay for those dead continents ten times over, just to have the space to grow.”

That fell into dead air. After a pause came the reply, “Envoy Tolin, I will remind you for the last time to not use slurs. The Arboreals and the Chionate are their preferred terms and a single use of those insults will destroy our credibility. Please remember they are human and have the same rights and abilities that we do.” The younger-looking man nodded at Comms, “For instance listening to things they are not supposed to hear. Am I clear?”

Tolin snorted, “Take your head out of your ass, Silver. What are they going to do?”

‘Silver’ Inkman had already lost his sense of humour with his fellow Envoy. He figured they had pried him out of some office and inflicted him on Greater Human Space out of spite. He just wasn’t sure who they were trying to piss off, him or Tolin. Apparently both. He gave his colleague a dead look and said, “They will read my report when I ask for your removal as a threat to our mission and you will be back fucking about with treeware on Mars Orbital. Again, am I clear?”

Tolin sneered, “Who are you to threaten me? I could report you just as quickly. I should have known you’d be a fan of these bloody weirdos. Teched up until God himself can’t find a human soul. Why all the Silver, huh? Just wanted to be better than the rest of us?”

Silver smiled to himself. That he was one of the God botherers explained why he had been packed off to the wilderness. Also, the ageing in case his terrifying little god wouldn’t recognise him when he died. The common clay of the Earth. You know, a moron.

“Well I inherited a silver tea set from my grandmother but I don’t drink tea so I decided to plate my Augments instead. It seemed to cheer them up.”

Tolin looked confused, “That's bullshit! Isn’t it? What…?”

Silver turned to the console and burst code into the system.

Envoy Mission Specialist Inkman override/ Envoy Tolin Dismissed for cause/Audio attached. Confirm.

The report hit Earth quickly and was sped through the system until it arrived at the Quorum Diplomatic Directors Office. He listened to the audio and summoned the project manager for the new settlement. When she arrived he said nothing and simply replayed the long list of sneering insults. There was an awkward pause and then he snapped, “How did this…relic…get anywhere near a mission?”

She seemed to squirm before coming to some conclusion, “Sir, those relics still have political power. I am constantly under pressure to include them in our projects, they feel they are missing out on all the new worlds. Tolin has been dead weight in every job he ever held, I thought we could afford to carry him on this one and buy some room for the next. How can he fuck up a simple treaty like this…” She stopped. Certain things were unwise to say to your director.

The Director snorted, “Of course, they are missing out! They won’t take any of the augments that they would need to live in the new worlds. They can sit around Sol and bitch about it but it changes nothing. Do they want to pay for a Terraform? Nothing stops them, that's what everyone else does. Oh wait, I forgot they are afraid their God won’t get their forwarding address.” He growled. “Confirm the dismissal. It's a one-man job now. Sent Tolin somewhere miserable.” He waved her away, “Go. And next time warn me when you need to send dead-weight out there. I have better methods. Good try though.”

The project manager pulled the door closed behind her and resisted the urge to lean against it. She walked quietly to her office, another relic that they held onto for some reason and made a call. “Inkman, Forest Planet A8. Now.”

Then she grabbed a coffee and waited.

Tolin got the termination notice while he was still bitching about being stuck out here with a bunch of perverts.

Silver grinned when the tirade suddenly ended and the ship flashed him a new code for the embassy. Looks like he was going solo. He cut all of Tolin's privileges and purged his personal data - a quick skim revealed a hell of a lot of trash that he didn’t want to open. Trust the idiot to not know how to clear his history. He set course for a nearby refuelling dump. He knew it was mean, he could have taken him right back to Earth but, as the saying goes, Fuck him. It took an hour to get there and five minutes for the Ship to chuck his ass out on the platform. It probably had a coffee machine, maybe even a food replicator. None of those ‘pervert’ humans though.

Then the call came through. He picked up, “Hi Boss, how's Earth doing?”

“Worse than you, now I have to place that idiot somewhere else. Couldn’t you have kept him in his room for another week?”

Silver laughed, “Boss if you’d seen the stuff that guy has been watching in there you wouldn’t want to go near it. I’ve already got a level-6 decom running. Just find him somewhere without all of us ‘perverts and weirdos.’ Under a heavy rock.”

There was a pause…”Do have copies of those files? Because I need to push back on the idiots who made me carry his ass.”

Silver silently forwarded the purged files. “I don’t recommend you watch them without serious supervision, I’m guessing about half of it is illegal deep-fake. At least, I hope it's a deep-fake. I was waiting for your call before I burned it off the ship for good.”

He could hear the swearing as she read the file names, “And we’re the weirdos? Alright, I’m giving you the Wisp. Don’t break her. When do you expect to land Tolin? I’ll have security waiting.”

Silver shrugged, “He's sitting on the refuelling dump until someone collects him. I already threw him off the ship.”

He could hear the weariness enter her voice, “Fine. I don’t really blame you. I’ll send a truck out to get him, take him somewhere uncomfortable. From you, all I want is an update and a proper bloody name for that planet. Go settle them down and promise them whatever you need to. I don’t want ghetto planets on my watch, two variants are an absolute minimum and I don’t care who paid for it. Get that done. I call you when I’ve picked up the trash but …don’t fuck up solo, Silver, or I’ll post you out with Tolin for life.”

“Sure Boss.”