The Highest Evolution of Economic Order*

We always knew this day would come. I mean, it's inevitable, right? That's how entropy works, that's how consumerism works.

You try to accumulate potential even as potential must naturally ebb away. You try to accumulate stuff, but the more stuff you have the less it means. The Law of Diminishing Returns should be written in letters of fire across the sky, hundreds of kilometers high.

They'd burn out eventually, of course. The Law is universal.

Well. As soon as people started to figure out that the planet is a circle, a cycle, a snake eating its own tail, there's been a big push to get off it. Never mind that they're all running to another planet that is, itself, another closed system, they're just trying to get away and "get theirs" before somebody else gets it, and try to die with more than average. Doesn't matter, what the "more" is, they just want it.

I'm not quite alone on this world. It's a pretty nice world, or it was before the inevitable industrial cycle, repeated now so many times in so many places. Fire, wheel, wood, metals. More fire. Electricity, a variation of fire when you think about it. The heat economy, the information economy and finally the long, drawn out shuddering orgasm of everybody who can scrape up enough money, spurting off the surface of the world just as fast as they can, just as soon as they can see that the party is nearly over, that economies and cultures cannot grow anymore. They run away, knocking themselves, paradoxically, back to a barely more than primitive state, on some strange new world where humans have never been, and start over.

I'm not exaggerating a lot when I say "fire and wheel," either. Settling a new world with only a few hundred thousand colonists, with what little technology they can carry with them, there are small pockets of technology while those hardier souls that venture out to the frontiers of those new worlds do it with even meaner means to their names. Some of them have to relearn how to make fire.

And then there's always us. We're the ones who don't run.

We could if we wanted to. There's always a few of us who stay behind on a smoothly shaved planet, in a reamed out husk of an asteroid. Always some who opt out of the panic.

You see, it's one thing to say that the world is depleted. In many important respects it is. There's metals still to be found in this world's crust - there's no possible way to get them all, let's not kid ourselves - but it's too much trouble to do. Dig much deeper and you get to discover what the world's molten mantle smells like. There are no hydrocarbons left to combine with liquid oxygen to power rocket engines off the ground, although I suppose you could, with a bit of work, power an ancient ground car with what could be scraped together. Not that you would - solar power works fine and has for generations - but I suppose it could be done.

So here I stand on this reamed, raped planet, me and a few million other people. "Plucked bare," the news reports said. "Tapped out," the economic analyses decided. Okay, if you say so. Take your last load of shipmates and go.

With the sound and fury of all that commerce, all that technology and striving and wild eyed desperation finally gone, one can feel oneself cooling off.

I've said before that money is the heat of the friction of the engines of commerce. The hotter they run, the more money there is - but what of it? It's people that make the engines go. It's people that commerce is about, and money in addition to being a side effect is also the product while also being a means of keeping track of whose engine is running harder. What happens when all the commerce, the engines and their noise and heat go away? What's left?

Me. That's what's left. On a planet nearly devoid of human life - a few million counts as nearly devoid, on this scale - you can feel yourself cooling off as the heat and noise all go thundering off into the dark. Let them go.

"Depleted" doesn't mean "dead." The soil's pretty good, it rained yesterday and my tomatoes are coming along. I'll have beans in a couple of weeks and once I've finished hoeing these weeds out of the corn, there's a hammock under the shade of a pair of maple trees just waiting to take the load off my back. It'll feel especially good when I've earned the break.

I've got all the resources I could ask for. I've got mine. It isn't much, but it is certainly more than enough.

*Originally published on Reddit in r/WritingPrompts

Lost in Transition*

He looks around himself and attempts to concentrate. He blinks several times as his eyes focus.

He has pain. That was to be expected so the pain is not a significant concern. The Automated Resuscitation System - ARS - is going through its steps to assess his condition.

He is responding to the directions. He is holding still for the tests. He holds still for the injections. He is answering the questions.

"This body feels acceptable."

"There are general aches, but nothing unexpected."

"He remembers that he is on a slower-than-light sleeper interstellar spaceship. He remembers his name: Richard P. Winkler."

"He doesn't understand the question."

"He doesn't understand the question."

"His cognitive processes seem to be functioning normally."

"He doesn't understand the question."

The ARS finishes its evaluation. It has more questions but he need not stay in the cryogenic chamber to answer them. The ship's intercoms follow him throughout the passageways as he opens lockers, dresses in the clothes he finds there, and begins addressing the checklists that will prepare the ship and the rest of the sleepers for the end of the trip.

"His cognitive processes seem to be functioning normally."

"His name is Richard P. Winkler."

"He is speaking normally."

"He does not know."

The ARS' line of questioning is illogical. His cognitive processes are functioning normally, but the ARS continues to explore his certainty of that fact. It will not accept his assertion that his behavior is normal, that his identity is established. The ARS may have malfunctioned during its extended down time. He will examine it during a scheduled discretionary period.

...

Checklist one is complete. Three sleepers have died during the transition. The bodies have been recycled and the appropriate notations entered into the log. He recognized two of their names; one was a Ship's Engineer's Mate. The other was a colonist. Neither of their sleep pods had malfunctioned.

One sleep pod had malfunctioned. The sleeper within had suffocated before she could disengage the pod's life support systems. He did not recognize her name. She had damaged the umbilicals; he has recycled the body and repaired the pod. Its self-check routine is underway and will be complete in seventy-three minutes.

The remaining three hundred fifty-six pods report that their sleepers are in acceptable condition. Two pods are out of specification and will require refurbishment before they can be used again.

The ARS continues to explore his assessment of his own mental health and acuity. He answers its questions.

"He is in acceptable health."

"He is allergic to tree nuts."

"He has not eaten any tree nuts."

"He graduated from the University of Utopia twenty-eight years, three months and two days ago."

"He majored in Mechanical Engineering with minors in Electrical Engineering and Aerospace Medicine."

"His ambition was to become a Ship's Engineer."

"He is Ship's Master Engineer, assigned to the Interstellar Expansion Administration colonial sleeper ship Peregrine."

"He will consider the hypothetical circumstance."

...

The second checklist is complete. The colonists' equipment has undergone the transition with nominal damage. One loader's battery packs had degraded beyond its specification. He replaced it. Access to the pack was time-consuming and required revising the estimated time to completion of the checklist. He has reached another discretionary period. The exertions required by the pack's replacement have necessitated inactivity during the discretionary period.

He is considering the hypothesis proposed by the ARS. The ARS asserts that his responses, while nominally acceptable, lack qualities that are expected in responses that would be assessed by the ARS as fully normal. The ARS asserts that his responses are not fully normal and are indicative of a dissociative state or other psychological malfunction.

"He understands what 'ego' means."

"No."

"No."

"Yes."

"Play the recording."

"Hey! This is Master E Rick Winkler, folks, and I'm going to give you a quick rundown on a couple of details before the Captain takes the mic away. Peregrine is the first of her kind, equipped with both the higher-impulse Gen Five light plasma drives and the Sanatana cryo pods. We're going to go faster and you're going to sleep deeper and we're all going to arrive at Luyten B in just under 125 years. Interestingly, even though the Pitseolak Ashoona left twenty years ago, we'll be arriving at about the same time. These engines are that good.

"I'm told that in testing these Sanatana pods are way better than the older models. You know what they say: "twenty years asleep in a pod feels like a month in Purgatory." Not these pods, folks. You're going to wake up at the other end thinking they didn't work and we're still around Titan. Don't be fooled! You're going to close your eyes, open them, and we'll be approaching Luyten B. It's going to be a great trip."

The ARS is comparing behavior observed in the recording to his current mode of behavior.

"He remembers making the recording."

"He does."

"He does."

"He cannot."

"He cannot explain why egotistic expression is no longer present."

"Without testing that hypothesis' validity cannot be established."

"Begin the resuscitation."

...

The ARS is waking a colonist. The colonist is a psychological counselor and spiritual pastor. His name is Uri D'Angelo. He may have insight and experience that can explain the alteration in Winkle's mode of behavior.

"His name is Richard P. Winkler."

"His name is Uri D'Angelo."

"He has directed the ARS to resuscitate Uri D'Angelo out of sequence so Uri D'Angelo can render psychologically rehabilitative assistance to Richard P. Winkler."

"He observes dissociative cues."

...

Uri D'Angelo has died. He suffocated when he exited the airlock. There was no allowance on the body disposal checklist for this circumstance. He has made the appropriate notations in the log.

...

The ARS asserts that his psychological health is poor. The ARS asserts that both Richard P. Winkler and Uri D'Angelo were in acceptable psychological health before entering cryosleep. The ARS asserts that the acute dissociation of two formerly psychologically healthy individuals is statistically unlikely.

He asserts that two instances are an insufficient sample.

He overrides the ARS' safeguards and will wake three more sleepers. He cannot choose random numbers. He achieves randomness by rolling dice. He does not know their names.

...

The three woken colonists have died. One died of either hypovolemic shock or cessation of lower brain function after overriding a hatchway safety interlock. The hatch closed on his head.

He has recycled the body. Bone shards trapped in the hatch rails forced a closer motor overamp condition. Its breaker opened and has been reset. He has cleaned the hatchway.

The other two colonists have killed each other. One exhibited associative behavior and was responding to the ARS' questions when the other approached her and stabbed her with a knife. She took the knife away from the colonist and stabbed her in turn. Both died of hypovolemic shock. He has recycled the bodies and made the appropriate notations in the log.

He does not know where the knife had been. Knives are part of the colonists' supply manifest but none had been stored in the personnel spaces during the transition.

The ARS expands its line of questioning.

"He does not know what a soul is."

"He does not know if he has a soul."

"He does not enjoy his current state. He knows what joy is. He cannot feel joy."

...

He has set the scuttling program to begin opening atmospheric valves in five minutes. He has disabled the cryo pods. The sleepers will die without waking. They will not experience the dissociative state. The ARS asserts that they are incomplete persons, that they are unhealthy. Unhealthy people are not suitable colonists.

He has made the appropriate notations in the log.

*originally posted on Reddit in the r/Writing Prompts forum

POC

In the modern usage, POC means People or Person Of Color.  It's supposed to be a convenient shorthand meaning a nonwhite person.

So it would appear that white is not a color.  I don't think that's really the case though.

Why am I bringing this up: I just responded to a request with the response, "That is a very white person thing to do."  The individual was asking for the return of an item that had been surrendered, ostensibly permanently.  Now he wanted it back.

The asker replied, "That is a racist thing to say."

And he's right.

Frankly any such statement that ascribes a pattern of behavior to an entire demographic is, at its core, racist.  Or classist or ageist or whatever -ist you want to apply, it's a blanket statement that is prejudicial in nature and often derogatory. 

In this case the statement wasn't without merit.  Native Americans' history with white settlers was rife with broken promises and altered contracts.  The old slur of "Indian giver" is actually backwards, possibly an attempt at deflecting guilt by projecting it.

It doesn't make it any less racist that I, an extremely white person with exclusively Northern European heritage, was the one ascribing such behavior to an entire segment of the population.   I made the statement feeling some shame at the behavior of my nation's forebears and wanting to express my derision for it, but in so doing gave myself a little stab in the conscience.  By calling out their transgressions, I committed one myself.

Perhaps I shouldn't take on such burdens.  My people didn't come over to this country until the late 1800s and early 1900s and were, by and large, farmers on the northern prairies.  I'm pretty sure we didn't do a lot of oppressing.  Both sides of my family seem to be folks who pretty much minded their own business.

It seems to me that it doesn't matter what your color is, it's a color.  We are all people of color.  In this context where I'm sitting right now I'm a member of a socially dominant majority, but I don't have to go very far at all to find myself in a small geographic area where I would absolutely NOT be in the majority - I would be respected as a guest but would have no political influence of any kind - not even a vote.   Or a little bit farther yet and I would be in another different minority entirely.

So I think it might be best if we could start seeing past colors.  It's a convenient way of categorizing people but it continues to divide us, and as we've already seen we don't need more of that.

The Student*

"Look, kid...you know, it isn't bad. I kind of like it. But it's so...big. Does it have to be so big?"  The youngster's project was kind of pretty.  But there could be no denying, it took up a lot of space.

"Yeah? It's a universe, universes are big!"

Light made a noise, if it could be called a noise, with her mouth, if it could be called a mouth. From one frame of reference she was immensely tall, softly rounded, and could be described as timelessly old. From another frame of reference - her own - these terms didn't really have much meaning.  

"Big," however, still had some context. Bigness wasn't limited to the mere three dimensions this upstart young god worked in. He hadn't even made much of an effort with time, he just set it in motion and watched the pretty waves it made.

These kids.

Some of these gods were pretty young indeed.  Some, and here she had to admit that she was a little impressed, willed themselves into being.  That was pretty cool, no denying, and even she wasn't entirely sure where, what, or how they came from.  They weren't and then they were.  Boom.  But they tended to be kind of abstracted about everything and went off on their own tangents and sometimes were never seen again.  Their versions of existential crises were extreme even for gods.

There were the old ones such as herself.  Beginning and End, Light and Dark, Love and Hate.  The dichotomies that defined not just universes, but Being and Nonbeing.  Mere universes were a catch in the breath to such things.  A hiccup.  There were even others who loomed largely, but diffuse, somewhere Light herself could only faintly glimpse.  She knew she was old, if she wanted to use a term like "old," but those fainter, greater entities made her feel like a tiny, glimmering spark that has only the faintest idea of what fire really is.  And in that context, what does a spark know of time?  If she was old and timeless, then what could the spark say about the fire that created it, and would endure long, long after the spark itself and had died and cooled to nothingness?

These thoughts made Light feel small but very safe.  She would shine as long as her spark lasted...and then there would be more sparks.

There were some gods who didn't will themselves, but were willed by others.  Those poor minds generally flared like a raging inferno that consumes its fuel before it has barely even begun, a chaotic explosion of self-hatred, rage, and confusion.  She felt terrible for each of them.  And there were so many, a constant foam of minds, crackling in and out of existence like lightning.

And Light felt terrible for each of them.  She consoled to the best of her ability, pitied as they became gradually madder, and mourned as they died, each and every one of them, flickering in and out, and out, and out.  Thousands upon thousands of hopeful, insane doomed young gods blinking into and out of existence with every breath.

Sometimes, Light held her breath for a few millennia.  It seemed to help.

This new fellow had peeled himself away from an older iteration of himself, who had taken one look at his new, vigorous younger self and promptly crumpled up and died.  The youngster had eaten his older self, greedily.  No one blamed him.  Few things are more nourishing to a young god than an old god.  It's not often that an old god will hold still long enough for someone to eat him.  You take the opportunity where you can.

Unfortunately he didn't seem to be quite as clever as his older self, and was relearning some of the lessons he had learned before.  Earlier younger selves had been down this path too, but of course he didn't remember that.  He never did.  Maybe sometime in the future he might, but not yet.   She decided to give him a nudge.  She almost always did, and it usually worked out well.

"Come here, youngster. Look close."

She pinched her fingers together, allowing them to be fingers the poor little fellow could understand. "Tell me what you see."

"Nothing. You're just pinching your fingers together."

"Hmpf. 'Fingers,' he says. Okay, so stipulated. Sure, they're fingers and they're together. What's between them?"

"Nothing."  His young, smooth features didn't crease with concentration at all.

"You think so?" She pressed her fingers together tighter. "What about now? Is there less nothing now than there was a moment ago?"

"Uh, no. Nothing is nothing, you can't have less nothing."

"Ha! You'd think that. But no. Why don't infinities go both ways?"

"What, you mean like negative infinity?"

"No sweetie, that's just counting in the other direction. No, I mean infinity nothing."

"I don't think I understand that. Zero. Nothing. It isn't infinite at all."

"You're still thinking expansively, about bigness. You need to think about nothingness and how much room there is inside it, and how your big universe is actually kind of gaudy. Sure, it's pretty, but it has no elegance at all."

"I really don't understand how that's supposed to work."

"If I told you there were such a thing as a universe that existed for no time at all, would it exist?"

"If you tell me it exists, then it exists...right? Please throw me an easy one."

"That was the easy one, sweetie. It exists for no time at all. I say it is, so it is. But it has no time at all. So it isn't, too. It's nothing, but it's real."

"How does that even work?"

"Well, there's ways and ways. For instance we can just leave off the pesky time dimension like I suggested and there you are. You can't say it existed, or will exist, or does exist - these things are markers of time, and there is no time. So it's nothing, but it is."

"I still don't think I get it."

"Tell you what: get into the space between my fingers, and mull things over for a while."

"But there's, um. No space there. Right? There's nothing."

"You have to get into the nothing to get a better handle on what a universe is. If you're going to call something a universe, an entire collection of everything, you really need to get a handle on the other end of that spectrum: you need to explore the broader nature of nothing."

"How do I do that?"

Light sighed, a bosom of the faintest dawning rays rising and falling. Star systems whispered out of her mouth.

"Think it through, child. Concentrate on nothing whatsoever. I'll take this with me," she said, carefully tucking the new universe under one arm, "and check up on you later."

The young god did as he was told, because there was no arguing with Light. She was relentless, and worse - relentlessly right. But at least she was a little more open, a little more of a guide than her slightly older, much colder twin sister Dark.

Dark gave him the shivers.

Light knew how the youngster felt about Dark.  Sometimes she felt that way about Dark, too, a little.  But Dark wasn't bad, she was just infinity, like herself.  Dark was infinity counted in the other direction.  Once you appreciated that about her, she made a lot more sense.  Light understood this intrinsically.  Dark was her sister, misunderstood by far too many, and Light loved her.  Dark made Light lighter, just as she made Dark darker.  They were made for and by each other, and were never far apart.

She looked over the young universe carefully.  It was big, no doubt.  And the patterns of time inside it were pretty, there was no arguing about that.  She gave it a very gentle shake and watched the ripples course from one edge to the other, waves of causality and consequence merging, diffracting, finally diminishing to insignificance.  She set it to one side, giving it a tiny spin so she could enjoy the way it sparkled.  It was orderly with consistent math inside it that made it hum with pleasant harmonic overtones.  A little too logical to be truly beautiful, but it was very nice to look at.

The youngster had sat himself not too far away and appeared to be trying hard to not try hard.  She smiled at that, it was the one mistake they all made at the beginning.  Like the overtones of consistent math, that was a familiar constant in his presences.  She watched patiently, waiting while he went through usual cascade of epiphanies.  She knew what he was going through, having seen him go through it so many times before.

So he sat quietly, and concentrated hard on nothing. No, wait, concentrating was putting too much of something into it. Not concentrate...don't concentrate. Let it go. No, don't think about letting it go, just let it...not. Not go, not stay, just...not.

Light watched from a distance, if it could be called a distance. She held up her hand in front of her eye, bracketing the student with her thumb and finger so his image was framed between them. Slowly, she pressed them together.

When her fingertips parted again, there was nothing.

*I originally published this story as a response to a Writing Prompt on Reddit, but couldn't leave Light alone.  She had so much more to say in my mind, and I wanted to hear it a little more clearly.

The Tar'van Diaries: Chapters 11 and 12

Eleven

She had been running for hours.  She had never been a runner - okay, she had been a runner once, but she'd been a teenager once, too, and that was when she had been a runner.  That had been many years ago.

Despite having not been a runner in decades she knew she had covered at least ten miles.  She actually felt a little proud of that, never mind that there probably weren't any members of her family left to brag to.  She was proud of herself.  It wasn't a marathon, but it wasn't insignificant either.  She hadn't stopped once.

She had survived the end of the world thus far.  That alone put her in a small group, about eighty percent of the world hadn't survived.  Six billion people, gone.  And of course they weren't just gone, the dead had died at such a rate that briefly the world's vulture and other carrion eater populations had skyrocketed.  Raccoons had become a dominant force in some cities and according to rumor, had formed small bands that would hunt and eat rats, since the readier food supply of dead humans had tapered off.  She wondered what the future might be like with predatory raccoons in it.

She hoped she would get to find out.  Raccoons liked to eat shellfish, among other things.  It would be amusing to see an Ordan running for his life, chased by hungry, determined raccoons.

How many Ordans are there?  How many raccoons would it take to kill them all?

I wonder if their disruptors kill raccoons?

That would be pretty handy, if an animal generally regarded as cute and never worse than an occasional nuisance turned out to be Earth's homegrown answer to the Ordan invasion.  Fight crabs with raccoons!  It would be funny if the whole situation weren't so awful.

There were more alligators to be found in Florida these days, and she had had to give more than a few a wide berth as she jogged on the road.  She didn't see any more crocodiles, however.

In over two hours, she hadn't seen a single car.  Fortunately there was a full moon so she was able to see everything clearly, even the murkily dark gators.  A couple of the smaller ones made halfhearted lunges in her direction as she passed, but once they got more than about four feet long, they seemed to understand that the running biped was too alert to be a good meal. 

She knew better than to get too near any body of water.  The road was arrow straight, running alongside a canal for much of its length.  Highway 78, the canal had no name that she could tell, sometimes the side of the road fell into a deep ditch, filled with water and choked with weeds.  The thrumming of bullfrogs and the trill of spring peepers was incessant.  Occasionally she saw the glimmer of eyes away from the road: gold for frogs, red for gators.

She spent an hour jogging, Highway 78 eventually running into the 27 and she turned to continue going east, until she saw lights.  Several lights.

Not streetlights.  Those hadn't been on anywhere she'd seen them, and there hadn't been many along 78 in the first place.  But as she approached a clot of buildings and houses, she could see she was finally approaching a town.  Not the aggregation of residences that had been the mobile home park a couple of miles ago, but an actual town: Moore Haven.

And one of these buildings had power.  Power and lights.  Where there was power, there were probably people.  A low, green-topped sign at the front of the complex read, "Moore Haven Correctional Facility."  Across the street, behind her, another sign proclaimed the Glades County Sherriff's Office.

She knocked at the gate.  Someone responded immediately.  The voice seemed to come from a security kiosk beside the gate.

"Yeah?"  A deep voice, very Southern. 

"Can I come in?"

"Sure."  The gate started to clatter open, but she took a step back. 

"Is it...safe?"  She couldn't make out a face, but a medium-large shadow stepped between her and the lights, and was leaning on the gate to heave it open.

"Sure.  I guess.  As safe as anything is anymore, I guess."

 She stepped through.  "What are you doing here?"

"Prison got wiped out when the crabs landed.  First day.  Frikken crabs touched down over Miami, just started scannin back and forth across the peninsula like a big dot matrix printer, back and forth, 'memba those?  'Round about Boca Raton, they started goin clean across, back and forth.  Moore Haven got hit in like the first or second pass.  Kept that up until they got north of Orlando, then they stuck to the coast, east coast mostly.  Sent a detachment over to Pensacola to take out the Marine base when the jarheads started shootin back, then they started doing north-south passes all along the Gulf coast.  Dang, listen to me ramble."  He had shoved the gate shut again and dropped the latch back into its catch, but she saw that no lock was attached to it.  His face was coming into faint focus as they approached the light.

"God." 

"Yeah.  Pretty awful when we got here, the inmates here weren't terrible people.  Medium security, minimum security.  Little stuff, guys makin bad decisions.  They were pretty much all gonna go home soon enough.  They never had a chance.  Hey, name's Jim."

"Hi, Jim."

"How ya doin?  Y'okay?  Bin runnin."

"Yeah.  All night, so far."

"Okay.  C'mon in."  He stepped back and the gate clattered shut behind them.

"If the inmates are all dead, why shut the gate?"

Jim chuckled to himself.  "Habit, I guess.  Before the landin I was a sheriff's deputy, office right across the street there, you saw it, and I don't think I could leave this gate open on a dare.  After you're on the job long enough, there's some things you just don't do.  Leaving the prison gate open is one of em."

"How did you not get hit when the Ordans carpeted the place?"

"North end a th' county.  Pickin up a D&D - sorry, that's 'drunk and disorderly' - up to Buckhead, up at the top'a th' lake.  Was about halfway back here when the most godawful noise come over th' radio.  Get back here, everybody's just lied down an died.  Damnedest thing I ever saw.  An I guess on the next pass they were north of here.  Got lucky, they just missed me."  He paused at the door before entering, looking out at the moonlit expanse.  "Not sure what kinda luck you'd call it, though."

Inside the prison was spotlessly clean.  The whole structure wasn't lit up, but several rooms were lit.  People went to and fro on errands she couldn't immediately make out.  Jim cracked open a door and stepped in, turned on a small desk lamp that showed the blinds in the office were drawn, and the name on the door showed: JAMES TAYLOR.

"A few folks have trickled in over the years and we've just made the place into a kind of apartment building, I guess.  Can't really call it a shelter, shelter's whatcha call it when you're gonna go somewhere else after the crisis ends, whatever the crisis is.  This?  This might be home, now.”

"Who knows how this is going to end."

"Aw, don't say that.  It's gonna end, and they're gonna be gone."  He seemed to have contradicted the tenor of his earlier statement, but he didn't remark on it and she didn't point it out.

"You think so?"

"I know so." Jim's big, dark face was supremely relaxed.  In the light she could see him clearly: a large black man so weathered under years of Florida sun the darkness of his skin almost didn't even register.  "Ya just gotta have faith, hon."

In other days she might have quietly resented the casual familiarity of the "hon," but not today, not from this man.  "I'm really tired.  I haven't run like that in forever."

"Where'dja run from, iffn ya don't mind me askin?"  He waved her to a chair and she slumped into it.

"I don't know.  I was coming straight down the 78, I think I've covered about ten, maybe twelve miles?"

"Middle a nowhere, then."

"I passed a concrete plant."

"Yup.  Quikcrete's out that way.  Or they was.  Yeah, you ran past a whole bunch of not much.  Farms and fields.  That's pretty much it.  If you'd gone the other direction, go about the same distance you woulda found yourself in LaBelle.  Bigger town than here."

"More people?"

"Once upon a time, but not last I heard.  They started gettin big again and the crabs sent another buncha their damn little shuttles, scannin back and forth ova tha place.  As of last month LaBelle's dead as the moon.  Somebody mighta moved back in, I dunno."  He sat back in his desk chair.  "Gotta stay small.  Get too many in one place, the crabs notice.  They send some ships after a crowd."

"How big a crowd does it take?"

"Tough to say.  At first contact Moore Haven didn't have but about fifteen hunnerd people in it, and it looks like the crabs took their scan clean across the peninsula to include it.  Last month LaBelle had got back up to a couple hunnerd and the crabs came.  So it doesn't take a big bunch a people for them to send a ship after it.  We're at about forty folks right now, and that's about all I want."

"Thirty-nine, Jim, including your friend," came a voice from down the hall.

"Thank you, Irene!" he called, but not too loudly.  "Irene Jackson, she got ears on her like radar dishes."

"I heard that."

"Toldja," Jim snickered. 

"What kind of people are here?"  She yawned hugely.

"Families, a few singles.  Coupla moms 'n' kids. Listen, you're dead on your feet, let's find you a room and you can get some rest.  You're pretty safe here.  Talk more in the mornin."

Her "room" turned out to be one of the prison's cells.

"I really don't want to stay in here."

"Well, this is what we got.  It was a prison, openin up walls to make nicer living spaces isn't really easy in a place like this.  If you really want you can have a bunk in one of the barracks, but there's kids in 'n' outta there all night.  This is a designated quiet hall, so you should be able to get some sleep."

"Do the doors lock?"  The room looked like a large closet with a toilet in it.

"You know, I dunno.  Haven't locked em in a long time."  He wandered back to his office and came back with a ring of keys and tested the lock on the door.  "Sure does.  Would you feel safer if the door was locked?"

"I would be locked in?"

"Well, yeah.  Prison.  The locks are for keepin folks in, not out."

"I've been locked up enough with the crabs.  Could you leave it unlocked, please?"

"Sure enough.  Hey, this bein the minsec wing - sorry, that's 'minimum security' wing - you got your own light switch.  They's ya throne right there, sink, they's extra TP in the cabinet right there..."

"You still have toilet paper?"

"Well, yeah."

"Oh my God."

"Tell you what, I'm just gonna step out now an I'll see ya in the mornin."

"Good night, Jim."

"G'night, Miss."

She slept the deep, silent sleep of a small child, and when she woke it was with a blink and a small start, suddenly awake, and then blinked again at the shaft of hard light lancing through the chinks and gaps of the blinds in the window.

It felt as if no time had passed.  What kind of sleep did they call that, alpha?  No, that was dream sleep.  Delta?  She barely even remembered getting into bed, but clearly she had made it, stripped to her underwear with her clothes folded on the counter next to the sink.  She didn't remember folding her clothes at all.

In a bed.  After months of waking on the almost yielding surface of the paddock's floor, with no covers and no pillows, she had a mattress, two pillows and sheets and even a light blanket. She sat up and threw the covers off her legs, stumbled over to the toilet and used it again, almost too sleepy - but not quite - to revel in the luxury of an actual toilet and, once she was finished, actual toilet paper.  The facilities aboard the Ordan cruiser were not as nice as a conventional toilet.

After running much of the previous night, her feet tingled and stung when she put them, bare, on the concrete floor.  She spent a few minutes stretching out the tightness that had set in after lying down so soon after so much exercise.

When she went to turn the door handle, it didn't open.

Twelve

"You know, it fills me with pride on a very deep and primitive level that there are groups of people out there that are so damned dangerous and difficult to exterminate, that the interstellar invaders have decided the only safe way to kill them is by meteoric bombardment."

Tar'van didn't shrug. His anatomy wasn’t designed for it, though he somehow managed to convey the impression.  "Approaching one group in particular at closures of less than ten kilometers has proven to carry at least fifty percent probability of direct engagement, with probability of Ordan success in such engagements initially no better than seventy-five percent in the first minute, degrading by approximately twelve percent every minute thereafter.  Any engagement lasting over five minutes is almost certain to end in complete loss of the entire Ordan contingent.  Meteoric bombardment to eradicate all life in the area carries the least risk to Ordan personnel and equipment.  It is the smart move, as humans would say.  That group is on the landmass you call Africa.  Another group, similarly dangerous, is in northern Europe.  I have been told the area is called Finland.  No such extremely dangerous large groups are in operation in North America, but we have been warned to be very wary of any group of eight or more humans in North America, especially what you call Canada."

"You seem to have a fair amount of tactical data on hand, Tar'van.  Why is that?"

"Standard pre-mission briefing.  Established forbidden areas must be avoided to prevent unnecessary losses.  Basic opponent behavioral profiles are part of the briefing.  I can indicate it on a map."

A map was found and held up for the supine Ordan to observe, and he directed the man's pointer until it was resting on the west coast of Africa.  "That band has been operating in this region since the human extermination project began."

"Looks like about Senegal or Gambia."  The other human however, behind Tar'van, shook his head.

"Ask me later."

Tar'van continued, "The humans in that group have access to extraordinary firepower.  The most heavily shielded striker in one strike group was destroyed by a single shot, and subsequent fighting brought down three more strikers in less than two minutes.  The group had no aircraft that were reported, and according to reports they suffered no losses.  A second, much larger mission was sent to eradicate the group and was again met by the large weapon, but one striker in that group of ten was able to escape with significant damage and reported that at least two human fighters had been killed."

"What about using the disruptor?"

"The engagement mostly took place outside the disruptor's range.  By the time the strikers had moved into disruptor range, most of the contingent had been destroyed or disabled, and even the surviving striker's disruptor was destroyed before it could engage the opponents.  The pilot had to resort to extreme low altitude flight to evade further engagement, as his weapons were disabled and drive system had been affected."

"Lucky bastard."

"Yes."

"Hmm.  How many strike craft are aboard each cruiser, Tar'van?"

"I am converting to your units.  Two hundred and eight."

"What was life like on the Ordan homeworld?"

Tar'van fell silent for a moment.  "The air is drier.  There is less surface water.  The days are a little shorter, and the gravity is approximately twenty-five percent lighter.  Many of us find spending much time on this planet very fatiguing.  The temperature is warmer, though significant portions of your planet are too cold for Ordans."

"How did you come to be selected for this mission?  What was the selection process?"

"My number was called."

"What, a random drawing?  Like pulling names out of a hat?"

"Ordans do not use hats."

"Try to focus, Tar'van."

"Not a random drawing, a  non-random locale.  Regions of certain landmasses were deemed to need population reduction, so Ordans living in those areas were selected to populate the expedition.  I was living in one of the first to be called."

"How do you feel about that?"

"I should have moved the season before the announcement.  Earth is proving to be bad for my health."

"I daresay you're getting funnier, Tar'van."

"Maybe if I'm entertaining no one will try to cut off any more parts."  He waggled his head.  "I don't have any to spare."

"It's always been my impression that humor is a pretty complex concept.  I'm frankly kind of surprised that you're able to express any.  I didn't see, shoot, I still don't see much emotional range in your kind.  I'm not sure exactly how you're doing it."

"Monkey see, monkey do?  No, wait, do as the monkey do.  Does."

The human had to stop and laugh for a long time.  The entire room picked up on it.  When he had mastered himself again, the interviewer wiped his eyes.  "Okay, that was really quite good."

Tar'van said nothing.

"All right.  Getting back to the point, how do you feel about being shipped away from your home to Earth?"

"I do not like it here.  I want to go home."

"What's compelling you to keep working toward the stated Ordan goal of human extermination?"

"Orders.  The orders shall be obeyed.  When the mission is complete, I may be able to gain passage back home.  If the Tar is sent home, I will go with it.  I will probably not be permitted to transfer to another ship, but the possibility exists.  I have hope."

"Tar?"

"Yes.  My ship is the cruiser Tar."

"Does that somehow tie in with your name?"

"The phrase 'tie in' is not clear to me.  My name is a designation.  I am a Tar.  Other Ordans serving aboard the cruiser Tar, are Tars.  I am Tar'van, a designation that does not translate easily into any human words I know.  I am a gatherer of information that is about behavior, societies and cultures..."

"Anthropologist."

"I do not know this word."

"Now you do.  It means what you just said."

"Very well.  An anthropologist aboard the cruiser Tar seeking insights that will improve the human extermination project."

"What can you tell us about the cruiser?"

"The cruiser is kept in a semi somnolent state, like an Ordan regeneration cycle.  The cruiser is not permitted full wakefulness.  They are not intelligent but are very strong willed and not biddable unless kept subdued by means of the disruptor system."

"The cruiser is a life form?"

"Yes."

The human leaned back and exchanged a wide eyed look with the man at the machine bench.  "Holy moley."

"Yes."

"How does the cruiser's propulsion system work?"

"The cruiser's own propulsion is a light sail and magnetic sail combination.  We have added light pressure drives to augment the creature's acceleration.   If we had not done that they may not have reached this planet before life support and stasis support systems began to fail."

"More's the pity.  What do the animals live on?  What do they eat?"

"That is not known to us.  They were provided but no instructions on their upkeep were conveyed with them."

"Provided?"

"Yes.  The cruisers were gathered from their native environment and parked in orbit around Ord, ready for use."

"Who provided them?"

“The progenitors.  They are the ones who give the orders.”

The human sat back.  “I think we need to take a break.”  He looked back to the other man at the table.  “What do we need to do?  Are you hungry, Tar’van?”

“I could eat.  I like bread, though the last time I had any it did not end well.”

“We’ll find you some food you can eat, and you will be assisted.”  Two other people came to wheel Tar’van away.

“Well.  That was enlightening,” the computer operator said.

“Some.  It seems to me these people are only barely people.  They do what they’re told, exactly what they’re told, and don’t question the orders.  In the face of the difficult resistance we’re hitting them with, they keep at it because there’s no room in the orders to consider a different objective.”

“One would think that upon finding the planet already inhabited, the colonial force would divert to a secondary objective.”

“Yeah.  I mean, Mars is right there.  We have next to no presence on Mars, and these guys already have significant technology for landing there, beginning terraforming, all that stuff.  Their follow-on forces are three hundred years away, shoot, in three hundred years even we could maybe have Mars terraformed.  These guys already have the horsepower to seed it with every big chunk of ice they could pry out of Europa, and there you’d have an atmosphere and water ready to go in just a few decades.  Lighter gravity, too. Why not just do that?”

“No room in the orders, like you said.  And no volition in the operatives, so they just go where they’re sent.”

“In fact, now I think of it, if they were going to terraform Mars now would be the time.”

“Think?”

“Yeah.  They’ve already eliminated the majority of our military forces and I think it’s a strong bet that their first waves killed off virtually every person who could facilitate a rocket launch.  Maybe Blue Origin could scrape enough people together, they were off in some forsaken hinterland of Texas, but everybody else?  They were here, or Huntsville, or DC, or Baikonur.  Wenchang, in China.  Populations are too big in those places, they would have sent strikers to mow ‘em down.  The operational intelligence, the experience required to get a rocket launched just doesn’t exist anymore.  We’d have to do some hard studying to figure it out.  We’d probably blow ourselves up if we tried.  I know all the stuff is written down in all the manuals and whatnot, but we have no idea what order to even read them in.  We just don’t know anymore.  And even then we don't have multipurpose craft like their strikers.  Just rockets that go up to orbit.  No maneuvering or anything that can adapt on the fly like their little ships.

“So now, when we don’t have much hope of sending retaliatory strikes against them, now would be the time to step away from Earth and go colonize Mars.  They’ve still got most of their ships and if I understand this downloading thing right, they haven’t lost any operational intelligence.  All the minds they started with, they still have.  For what those minds are worth.  I’m not too impressed, frankly.”

“I’m kinda impressed, they’ve killed us off pretty well.”

“Well, shit, if you give a monkey a gun you stand a chance of getting killed, technology can be dangerous regardless of how advanced the mind is that’s using it.”  He stood up.  “Go colonize Mars, get things underway there, and that’s a nice big planetary base from which they can launch endless assaults until this planet’s just dead.  And they haven’t done that.  I mean, shoot, they haven’t even established bases on the moon!  What the hell, man.”

“Are they picking up rocks from the moon to do their, what’d he call it, meteoric bombardment?”

“Hell if I know.  After they fall from the sky one meteor looks like any other to me.  If their orders tell them to utilize asteroids to provide rocks, then probably they skirt right around the moon to go and follow their precious orders.  That’s my guess.”

“Any way to check up on that?”

“Dunno.  Tar’van’s kinda open with the info, I reckon we could ask him.”