"Really?"
You nod very seriously.
"Well, I'll take that back with me, I promise," says the Singer raising an index finger alongside her cheekbone with an amused glint in her eyes, "Our secret."
"So uhm…" you watch the sun rise high over the ruins of the Seleenez Gulf, "What exactly is a Singer?" you look back at the millenia old woman as the sun drives the shadows from the deep lines of her face, "And, like, where do you come from? How does… it work?"
Zarael nods, "That's two questions, maybe three." She locks eyes with you, "I'll give you the full pitch."
-
You hang over the broad expanse of stars that is the Harmony of Horizon in a manner that would advance Starfleet Astrometrics UI design by leaps and bounds if enough of your mind can retreat from the pure awe of the spectacle before you to tuck away the details of what you're seeing.
"By internal metrics, the Harmony of Horizon is divided into four separate social units: Singer," a flash of light passes by you, Zarael swimming in the digital medium you're observing, "Speaker," you get the impression that make you think of a senior clerk in the FDS or Starfleet, or maybe a academic, "Invector," a word with an entirely military flavour, "and our beloved Mutes." You pick notes of paternalism in Zarael's words as she speaks of the common citizens of the Harmony.
"A Singer's task is to administer the Harmony, to guard and to hold the Harmony's citizens. In a very real sense the will of the Harmony is the will of the Singers." She says as you watch a Scientist class ship hard at work along the Federation frontier. Somehow, dividing your attention is the most natural thing in the world. Well, even more so than usual.
You follow Zarael inside, setting aside the squealing of your small ice mammal hindbrain as you race towards the graceful white lines of the HSDV Garon Tarsev, and pierce inside to roam the polished white, chrome, and blue of her decks. When you look at her bulkheads you see not just metal, ceramic, and circuits, but also what those mean.
You focus in on a ceramic panel as your vision passes by, and you feel a network of connections flowing out from that point in an endless sea of information. You briefly become overwhelmed in a tide of production reports, maintenance logs, cleaning assignments, design specifications, shatter testing, shipping logs, and more.
"The Speakers are the administrators and scientists of the Harmony," continues Zarael as your attention is yanked away from the single ceramic panel that almost drowned your attention and you realise that she's tuned into the feed of another Singer, "They perform not just the intellectual labour of the Harmony, but the the bulk of the Harmony's emotional labour as well. They fulfil the same tasks that the Chaplainate once performed for the old Republic. The Speakers are the right hand of the Singers, and a small number of their population permitted to be aware of how the Harmony truly operates - when it is in the Harmony's best interests for them to do so." You hear a woman on Tarsev's command desk address Singer Verains directly, asking something you haven't the spare attention to understand, "We ensure that those most suited to the task make their way into Speaker roles."
Suddenly your vision shifts as you and Zarael travel down the Harmony's networks, racing from the Harmony's frontier past countless stars to core of what you're seeing as a single interconnected organism. You follow Zarael down into crowded streets and through the the planetary crust as the two of you dive under the surface of Sanctuary.
You can't decide if the trip has taken two seconds or two days, but eventually you find yourself looking up at massive caverns. Inside the caverns are housed an endless horizon of barracks, drill fields, and stockpiled military equipment. Where Starfleet's training facilities are centered on San Francisco and dozens of satellite campuses, the Peacekeeper Directorate's Academy is threaded throughout vast underground caverns that lie beneath the surface of Sanctuary.
"The Invectors are the true military caste of the Harmony. Strong of will, strong of spirit, and strong of body, those assigned Invector status by we Singers are the dauntless defenders of the Harmony and its people. And also defenders of us, the Singers. Those invested with Invector status are peerless soldiers to our cause of peace and harmony."
You watch with omnipotent clarity as disciplined lines of Peacekeeper recruits watch an Invector office raise high a rifle he calls a 'Year 0 Pattern Laser Rifle'. Confusingly, your senses also recognize the rifle as a 'Lm-3318 Pattern Colonial Issue Basic Infantry Rifle'.
As you look around you realise how much of this place has been built on the ruins of the old republic. Defensive bunkers, tunnels, defensive layouts, even much of the Peacekeeper's training has been adapted from a state extinguished and deliberately left forgotten.
"Indeed, Zara. Whatever else, we Singers never forget, and we've never forgotten the efficiency with which the old republic levied war against us." Zarael walks brilliantly before you as you race past the massive form of the HDPV Shelter and her attendant fleet as they guard the home of the Harmony's military traditions, "Much of their doctrine informs the fleets of the Harmony."
"The Mute," begins Zarael as you walk the streets of Sunrise city, looking around at the teeming masses around you, "Doesn't have anyone to speak for them but us. The power of an individual in an infinite galaxy of incomprehensible horrors and pitiless tyrants is nonexistent. Without us to speak for them, who knows how long it would be before their streets are once again paved in fire and shadowed by the face of oppression?"
You do the digital equivalent of opening your mouth to take a breath but Zarael interrupts, "I understand the Federation answer to that question in the form of collective responsibility. But also consider the threats that have almost extinguished the Federation in the past: Nomad, V'ger, the Year 2286 Probe, the Biophage, and the Vulcan Imperial Technocracy. It is the view of the Harmony that the Federation has done admirably to resist such threats, better even than the Interstellar Commonwealth. But these are isolated incidents. You lack the ability to mobilize against a true threat, as the Klingons showed you in the 2250's."
"We resolved those situations by understanding people and how to work together!" You know this to be true, "That's how we overcame the Romulans, and that's how we can overcome anything!
"In the view of the Singer choir, this is foolishly naive, soft. Your methods of command and control are too disunified to resist a true threat." As Zarael speaks a speck in front of you grows into what you know as the surface of Horizon. It is simultaneously the dystopian present, a ruined husk, and a buried myth as you view it through what must be Zarael's eyes, "In a universe of dark gods the survival of a people rests on the benevolence of their own pantheons."
You come down with with Zarael to walk barefoot in the grass alongside a familiar river in a familiarly pleasant valley. "As for where we come from…"
"The method of psyche-cybernetic integration developed by the University of Horizon was never designed to do what we've done with it." you walk with her down packed dirt paths which seem to change as you go, each step taking you through an older era, "As an uploaded digital presence a Singer is very much a process based intelligence."
You find yourself in a place of mixed memories, green fields and carefully tended trees exist in the space as fields of crops, and in the mental distance also a sprawling campus of hyper modern buildings, "Whether inhabiting a system scale communications backbone, or locked in the confines of a single avatar form, the life of Singer is contained in the continuation of experience."
Your path up to the entrance to the heart of Antaria Valley Academy, your imagined feet trodding the well worn cobblestone path between flower beds. You enjoy looking at the flowers as you go past, the progeny of a hundred worlds, each flower and plant is well spaced, well maintained, with no weed or shadow inhibiting their growth.
A sudden shiver runs up your spine as you feel a burst of intense regard pass over you from 'above'; the merest hint of a mental invasion that suddenly ends with a tinge of warm amusement as a sense of possession slides overtop of you.
You look over at Zarael, and and you suddenly feel almost bereft as both the regard and the sense of possession leaves you.
"Nosiness is a something of a hallmark of my kind," she says simply, indicating for you to follow her.
Continuing, you pass a final stretch of flowers arranged as if exploding from a prism, plants in hues that you've never experienced before and struggle to find the words to describe, Zarael stops and gestures towards the simple wooden doors and they slowly part in a way that wooden doors seldom do; sliding away in a direction you've never considered possible before.
As you follow Zarael inside, absorbing everything you can, your senses flood with multiple lifetimes of information.
The building's insides are subdued and simple, soft pastels and basic shapes that merge seamlessly into the varying degrees of hypermodern for the time computer equipment that flash by in strobelike snippets as you pass by. At some well chosen points the walls are replaced with a water feature or a facade of living plants, sometimes the two are mixed pleasantly in time as well as space.
Your other senses put work in too, your hearing catching an endless quiet babbling of both water and speech. Though you try to focus, the water and talk are too intermingled to seperate, much less understand, and you almost smack your forehead for forgetting that you're most likely experiencing a composite memory of these halls via Zarael and not just visiting a place on your own two feet.
The smell is also exquisite, a dry floral woodenness that soothes as you breath, seeming to come from the bones of the building. Though as you walk, snippets of remembered maintenance and installation cause you to notice that the wood is itself reinforced with electronics and durasteel to match the transparent aluminium of the windows.
This old building's bones have been reinforced like a Padani military bunker, and her nervous system replaced with enough networking to make the Daystrom Institute or the Haddas Amal Research Complex look like Imperial Licori installations.
A very well built place, you think, and very attractive to look at.
"The backbone of my kind grew up in these walls," Zarael begins, and the composite memory around you grows young, as does Zarael, "We weathered the Fall and the Discontinuity from here. We built our new, more perfect society from here, and -" there is flash of red, confusion, that briefly disorients you, "here is where we became gods. Antaria Valley is where we keep our tools of ascension."
"Where you can keep watch over it?"
"I know that Starfleet and the Federation keep their own secrets under close watch. Aga Carmide, the Lantaru sector, and Talos IV. For example."
Not at all thinking at all about what a time travel is, you consider how much you wish you knew what Talos IV's deal was. A death sentence for visiting? That alone makes your antennae tingle with a desire to investigate.
"Those of us who were the first to ascend-"
"Upload?"
"If you prefer that term." Zarael says as everything stops around you in exhaustion for a moment, before the world and the Singer continue, "Those remaining Eldest amongst us number a little less than eight hundred. We've vastly expanded our numbers since then. But we always need more."
You hop up and down slightly in front of a greenwall, "What's the problem? Not enough Speakers?"
"No. But many ascension candidates -- sorry, uploads, have to be boxed."
"Boxed?"
Zarael stops heavily in front of a set of intricately filigreed glass and silver doors that contain the entrance to something that is both an elevator and a dark event horizon of infinite thought.
She stares at the glittering portal with intent, lowering her hood for your perspective, and waves you next to her, "I will come to that, Zara."
You step close to the Singer and you can feel yourself slide into the shadow of her presence, "We were never enough, the Harmony is immense, never mind the fact that immortality sometimes isn't."
"Even gods die," you say as archived logs, many of them Kirk's, flash through your mind.
"Some of us simply grow tired, some are lost in deep space, and some die when paranoid lunatics fire a photon torpedo into a starship's computer core at the barest glimpse of a mysterious line of code."
The pressure of her resentment so close to you feels like it should be causing your vision to dim instead of showing you a perfectly normal turbolift car in operation.
"In our experience, Singer candidates are one in a billion. Our Imrael precursors weren't wrong when they thought that our minds weren't built for immortality and suprapotence."
Suprapotence? There's a new word you like the sound of, "Suprapotence!" you say to yourself quietly with a chuckle.
"It took those of us Elders nearly two hundred years to carefully feel out the full scope of our abilities. Those who have successfully followed in our footsteps can do the same in a quarter that time with extensive guidance."
"Like childhood?"
"Of a sort."
"It takes a Childe-"
You giggle.
"-nearly a decade under the tutelage of an established Singer to be trusted with independence," you have the vauguest impression of fire to go along with that sentiment, and then also the striking image of a field of tens of thousands of Lintrids looking up at the sky with fire blackened masks melted down over their faces, "and not to break something or someone."
"Who makes a good Singer candidate?"
Zarael regards you carefully, "You would."
After a moment she interrupts your surprise with a feeling that you interpret as a sad fondness, "And you would hate every moment of it."
Zarael regarded a few Speakers, "We pick those who are both exceptional, and who have been thoroughly conditioned towards our vision for the Harmony. Then we interview them, speak with them, determine if they are willing to serve the Harmony at a level they never could have dreamed of before. Often the interview -- or if necessary, interviews -- are conducted in similar manner to our conversation here."
"Are you..?"
"As I said, you'd hate it, but it does provide a certain... cover for our perusal of the heart of the Harmony's networks. So that you have an idea of the scope of what we are capable of."
With a start of surprise, you note that the turbolift appears to have disappeared at some point, replaced with a sense of momentum in a direction that you can't place, surrounded by pinpricks of light that definitely aren't stars.
"We slowly replace the organic mechanisms of their brains with digital parts, slowly migrate cognitive functions to places outside their physical forms. Memory first, usually." Zarael waves at a passing tendril of light as you continue your… momentum in whatever direction you're consciousness is going, "We maintain the continuation of consciousness. Sometimes new Singers choose to keep the original physical form, though it becomes little more than a tool for interaction with the outside world. In time, once they are comfortable in the digital space, they discard their original forms entirely."
"Is your...?"
"No, I was careless in year CCXII."
There is an air of unwillingness that follows that statement that gives you time to just mentally step back and take in the growing presence around you.
You know that what your senses experience is fragmentary, the merest tip of the iceberg that you can only see without freezing due to the influence of your guide. Even then your brain must still be struggling to interpret its input in a manner that you can understand in some way.
Knowing that doesn't make what you see any less awe inspiring.
The vast aurora singularity below you eats the light of a hundred billion lives and rumbles contentedly with emotional radiance..
In a way the view reminds you of the vast and moving constellations back in the realm where you found Excalibur. Entirely different, but alike in the scale and manner of its difference.
You focus on one of the streams of lightstuff that comes out of the infinite horizon into the all consuming vortex you and Zarael are approaching and it opens up like some of the networked files that you'd accessed before -but then it continues to expand. An entire life opened up to you in such detail that for the briefest of moments you're better aware of the life of Mute Abeeshta thanyouareofyourownand-
"You shouldn't do that unprepared again Zara," says your Singer travelling companion as you regain a sense of self, "You're really only built for one life at a time."
"Yeah…" You pat yourself down mentally and remembering that your body isn't actually covered in black feathers.
"I mean it, Zara, I had to manually override your brain's neural input to your system before everything shut down." Her lightstuff form is brilliant but not blinding as it slowly streams alongside you, "When I say that we know everything about a person. I mean it. It takes years to truly suppress the organic instinct to feel another's bodily functions as your own. Even longer to suppress the instinct to feel another's emotions and thoughts as your own."
She's not wrong. A big part of growing up Betazoid is learning when and where to seperate yourself from others. And that you can and should do so.
Oh hello Lwema! You think, How are things?
I need you to be careful Zara. I just felt you... When whatever just happened, well, happened, it was like you died. I can't lose you here. Too much is at stake.
"Zara, focus, quiet," you feel a wave of concern wash over from Zarael, "We can't hear them, but Singers can hear you. This only works if the station doesn't know there's communication between you and your crew. They wouldn't risk allowing me to carry you around. And this close to the bulk of the Harmony, there are a lot of prying minds and I am only one amongst many."
"Sorry," you say, curling back your antennae and giving a sheepish little headbob.
"Right." Zarael is in your mind directly now. Though you suppose she always was and is now dispensing with the charade of spoken dialogue, "Because a thought in one's head is one's own, a Singer has immense power to direct and shape."
Mildly concerning.
"It is… typical, for a Singer to impose their viewpoint, their desired cognition, on those who posses Harmony designed implants. If they desire, they can even puppet individuals directly, as I did when I saved you on Morshadd. This can apply even if the devices aren't Harmony built. We merely need network access to the proper form. Orion Imperial Slave Cybernetics, for example, are vulnerable to control if we gain access to their internal network."
"But you don't do that all the time do you? The Harmony isn't a civilization of cyberzombies!"
"No," says Zarael as you fall into orbit of the bright vacuum of the Singer singularity. You pass through the trails of the aurora imprint left by the officers and crew of HPDV Sanctuary and her attendant fleet. "There are limits to the attention of even the eldest Singer. Some find it very off-putting to squeeze themselves into meat, and only use the capability in emergency circumstances. Some Singers have an… ideological opposition to puppeting those under our guardianship. Many consider it brutish and inelegant and even the most authoritarian realise that it's simply not efficient to control every person at every moment."
Zarael invites you to watch the lightstuff shape of another Singer as she blankets the auroral beings of Sanctuary's personnel and your perception changes to see Sanctuary's Singer whispering in the ears of different people, listening to a hundred voices at once and gently adjusting, tweaking, advising.
You see Zarael's hands work and for a moment you can hear the other Singer at work in a dozen voices, all hers but also not.
"~you know, it's fine, I can get over him, it's not healthy to obsess~"
"~wait, is that circuit out of alignment? I guess I'll need to call in the maintenance team again.~"
"~the Federation hostility *is*, in the end, unwarranted.~"
"~early to bed and early to rise makes a bird well fed and wise!~"
"There's an art to changing a person's entire life with the right thought at the right time. Especially if that person thinks that that thought is their own." You can feel her regarding you, "And if you know everything about someone, you can easily find that one thought."
I wish it was that easy.
"Is that all it takes? A single thought?" You say, deciding not to continue listening in on others' thoughts. It's just not a 'you' thing to do.
"The right single thought. It is not easy, but one can learn to do it." Zarael turns her regard to Sanctuary's Singer, coolly, "I disagree that it is necessary to lie to someone in that way. Convincing someone to do what is in their best interests of their own interests of their own free will is a very different prospect than tricking them for their own good."
"You can't always convince someone, but it's their right to do what they want with their own life." You draw back for a moment, "Is cutting off someone's hands part of that process?"
Zarael seems suddenly cool, defensive, "I used what I had available to me to attempt to steer your behaviour."
"Badly," you say, with the mental equivalent of crossed arms, "You could have just tried talking."
"Yes," Zarael says, almost reluctantly, "I could have. I have always wanted to draw back from the typical… tools, the other Singers employed. But despite my best efforts, I remain as reliant on them as ever," Zarael says with regret, "My time on Yalla was my own eccentric project, to attempt to steer without the use of our typical devices. But if our method of control is an art, oratory is a much harder one. Ultimately, we can make someone do anything, and soothe their troubled psyche after the fact. But to say the right words, to make Wolfe put down the phaser, or to make you tougher, as I would with any Speaker candidate… that is much more difficult."
Some morbid part of your curiosity twitches, "You make Speaker candidates watch their friend's hands get chopped off?"
"No. We make them witness much worse." Zarael gathers her thoughts, motes of light around her head, "Sometimes we craft such experiences for our Speakers. They require a certain level of… not trauma, but experience with danger, to be effective. Otherwise, they would be spoiled little Singers, a trait all too common with the eldest who came from the Antaria Valley." Zarael pauses, and you sense she is reflecting on a millenium of grudges, some from her school days, "Where possible, we steer promising Speakers to such circumstances. Sometimes fate presents us with such opportunities, other times we must craft them. Pirates from the Deadly Islands under the control of one Singer versus the Peacekeeper fleet of another. Wargames between Peacekeeper fleets that the participants on both sides remember as a titanic clash with whomever we want it to be. If necessary, we can even outright manufacture memories, traumas, though they tend to…" Zarael looks for the right term for what is literally a mind bending concept, "... not stick as well as they should."
"Well," you say, "I've seen stuff like that before. So thanks, but again, not necessary."
"How would I have known?" Zarael says with a resigned sigh, "I don't root around in your head, Zara."
"You shouldn't need to read my mind to know hurting my friends is wrong."
There is a long pause, before Zarael begins calling up a body of files and reports from the vortex, long trails of light and numbers crawling up the singularity towards you, "In our rush to secure the greatest good for the greatest number of people, we lose sight of their individual rights. And we forget that people can make the right choice of their own free wills."
You… regard the archived data that Zarael has brought up with curiosity. It seems unrelated, a variety of communications and actions between the Harmony and the Federation.
"When the Harmony made First Contact with the Federation we -- well, the main body of Singers, I was on Yalla -- assumed that your people were the same as us. Your people simply could not have achieved peaceful integration without guidance."
You begin marking files in your mind for Lwema to pass on to Courageous' crew.
"Singers spent years attempting to make contact with the Federation's own Singers. Patterns to our communications that would stand out to another group such as us. Even eventually infiltration of communications hubs and trawling of military communications. We were desperate to make contact."
"But there was never anyone to talk to…" Part of you feels sad that the Singers would find out that they were alone. Everyone should have new friends that can understand them.
Then again, you're having trouble truly understanding all this. All the self-justification. You can comprehend it. But understanding is proving slippery, and this bothers you.
Zarael continues, oblivious to your internal turmoil, probably, "If there ever was someone to talk to, they were no longer present in the Federation. There are some of my Sisters that call you yet another group of 'ferals'. I call you an affront to their ideology."
"People can self-regulate!"
Zarael considers this,"Indeed. But more importantly, it's a separate narrative to the one they wish to tell. And so it must be extinguished, even though you present no real threat to their control."
"You said the entire Harmony can't be puppeted?" You say, confused, "How is that absolute control?"
Zarael turns your attentions to several nearby information streams, some sort of election results from Starfoam, "Only the uppermost levels are closely managed. Only the most tedious of my kind find directing the specific details of planetary housing programs to be worth paying attention to." She highlights one information stream, "In practice, as long as there are no major problems, most Precinct and lower issues usually require no interference. Though the entirety of the Sovereignty Committee is made up of Proper Singers. And our cajoling presence is everywhere, adjusting broader mood, sentiment en masse. And always ready to descend from heaven when some poor citizen is about to make a real blunder." There is a tinge of distaste in her regard for a far off, but bright, datastream, "We're too afraid of letting your kind make mistakes that matter."
"Or mistakes at all?"
"Yes."
-
Ten-Forward is near empty at this hour. Its viewports offer only vistas of the dark, ugly station Courageous is docked to; its would-be patrons are on Yellow Alert. All but four. Two security officers in rifle green, a human and a seyek, sit at one table, phaser pistols active and holstered, nervously watching the other two -- Tebaas th'Tharvasse and Iulianna Innach, sitting at another. Orders from the Captain said not to put them in the brig. Orders from the XO said keep an eye on them.
"How long do you think -" Lieutenant (j.g.) Kiassa Cisson asks, his voice quiet.
"I don't know. I don't know!" Ensign Milagros Reyes replies. "Maybe this year, maybe while we were at the Academy? That Horizon AI could have whatever memories she had of when - when whatever made this happen happened. That's what troubles me - how long have I really known Iulianna? Have I ever known her?" The ensign takes a long sip of her drink. "Hell, how do I know I'm not one of them?"
"I've tried not to think about it."
"Oh no," Milagros says, "Here they come." And sure enough, there was Tebaas and Iulianna, standing awkwardly half-a-step away from the tabletop.
"Hey guys," Iulianna says, plucking at the seams of her pants, "Mind if we join you? It's, you know, a little lonely at that table."
Kiassa sways forward slightly, hood half-open. "Don't you have your computer god to keep you company?"
Milagros winces as Iulianna's face falls. Tebaas blinks, but says nothing. Milagros turns to Kiassa. "Don't be a jerk."
"For what it's worth, Iulianna says, "We're not in contact with Z-- Cassiopeia. She's doing… showing Zara, uh, Captain ka'Athnon something."
Milagros glances at her friend, "Come on, sit down. Are you two alright?"
"Kind of?" Tebaas says, settling into the seat, "Sometimes I start to get anxious, and then I get really calm. But I definitely don't like Cassiopeia being out of contact." He pauses, "Not any more than I like the Captain being out of contact."
Kiassa morosely raises an empty glass, "Cheers to that. Can't wait for Captain ka'Anthon to get back so we can bug the hell out of here." He leans forward, "My friend in Sensors showed me some readings of that station. Starbase-level, easily. They turn their plasma cannons on us as we sit here, we're gone like…" and he snaps his fingers, then leans back, smirkingly flicking his tongue, "Can you get us a deal with your digi-gods for resurrection or is that only for you two?"
Iulianna's face goes red, and she begins to shout. "It doesn't -" She swallows her words, and resumes, more calmly, "It doesn't work that way. They can't pluck our souls out and download them into a new body. I think. If they can, Cassiopeia certainly isn't offering."
The table is quiet. Kiassa is eying both of the suspect officers, one hand under the table and on the butt of his phaser pistol. Milagros thinks he looks like some ridiculous caricature of a vaquero.
"It's not easy for us," Iulianna says suddenly, "Everything about myself is in doubt now. Did I really choose to push myself to qualify for the Explorer Corps, or did she want me here, on this ship?" Iulianna sighs, runs her hand through her hair - then stops. "Hell, did I choose to dye this purple, or did she just like the look?"
Milagros feels sorry for her friend in spite of herself, and looks for excuses: "I'm sure she didn't care about something so small - um, so... I don't mean to say that it's unimportant - I'm sure it's important to you - I don't know, is there some cultural thing - ?"
Iulianna laughs. "Well, it is unimportant. Just a whim I had, a few months back, that I liked the look of. ... Unless it wasn't my whim?"
"I just feel really… calm." Tebaas says, "More calm than I've ever been." He looks out the window, at the starfield, "Don't know why she didn't give Iulianna this serenity. Maybe she needed her scared. Maybe I've just come to terms with everything going on. Maybe she forgot." Tebaas laughs to himself. "No, Cassie doesn't forget anything. She must have her reasons."
"Yes, of course," Iulianna says. "Just wish she comes back."
Kiassa and Milagros look at each other. The seyek's grip on his phaser is as tight as his jaw.
-
"Okay, so like," you begin, "If you're AI-"
"Actual Intelligence." She interrupts.
"Right, Actual intelligence-"
"It's not a matter of pride," she says, in a tone that makes it clear that it is, to some degree, a matter of pride, "We have a very clear divide between how we operate and how an artificial intelligence is theorized to operate. Though we often bolster our abilities with purpose built algorithms and specialized routines; sometimes I think many of the younger Singers are more algorithm than upload."
"Okaaay," you say noncommittally, and decide to change the subject. You try to gesture with your perspective to draw Zarael's attention to the data singularity at the heart of the Harmony, "What does that mean? Why don't you just copy yourselves? Or create back ups?"
"Zara. We have never encountered a cooperative artificial intelligence. Nor have we met anyone that has created one in a replicable manner." There are files, memories that she calls up, you highlight them with your attention for Lwema to refer to her team, "What our ancestors invented was a method to transfer consciousness to machine. And as I have repeatedly called out, our existence is process based. A copy of our mind turns into a simple bundle of archived memories that is about as capable of independent action as the main computer of your Starship." Zarael regards you with a smile, "She's very nice, but not terribly… sophontic."
"Okay, then-"
"It is… possible, to fork a Singer, with some difficulty and a lot of hardware, but in most cases you tend to get two very broken people that require many Singer years of attention to manage if they aren't simply boxed."
"Oh! I meant-"
"To ask about that, yes." She and you regard a distant constellation of lights far from the heart of the Harmony, "There are two ways that one would box an ill Singer: suppress her memories and confine her to a single Avatar form. Let her live out the life she could have possibly had without undergoing the Singer process." her form flickers briefly, "Place them in a suspended simulation along with other Singers to slumber until they can be… corrected." She cycles through memories so fast that you cannot grasp even single images, "It's a minor cruelty, but it's peaceful. We spin a few up again every year, and certain Singers specialize in ways to treat them, but there are many ways for a God to go mad."
"Well, then-"
"So it is possible to fork an individual, but they become two separate individuals at the end of the process. The don't even share many memories."
You try to imagine yourself without many of your formative experiences and have a brief existential crisis in the void.
"And you can merge two Singers. Slowly. And in a manner where both are considered dead in the end and a new being born. Even from two who had once been forked from each other. Some even consider that the ultimate measure of romance." There are… A Lot of files that spill out from that concept for context, "I am not. One of them. Romance comes from individuality."
"Oh! That explains why you-"
"Yes, that explains that question earlier."
"Ok, so-"
"So, theoretically it is possible to increase our numbers via the process of forking ourselves over time. It's even somewhat more resource -time- efficient than ascent from the Harmony's population." she gestures at her sisters flitting all around you, "And I mean, a permanent fork. Not splitting your attention or having independent subroutines and algorithms. I mean true independence of action."
"Right, I don't consider my circulatory system to be independent of me even though I don't really pay attention to what it's doing at all times." you say, suddenly very interested in what your circulatory system is currently up to.
"A passable analogy. My point is that even amongst self-proclaimed gods it's considered the height of hubris and idiocy to continually spread yourself thinner and thinner over the centuries to expand our numbers. We long ago decisively decided on external recruitment to expand our population."
"Smart!"
"This isn't to say that we don't recruit Singers likely to disagree with our consensus. Just that, in theory-" there's been a great deal of electrons spilled over this philosophical topic if the context files for that statement are to be believed, "-in theory we accept the concept of fresh perspectives to keep in touch with the people we ostensibly guide and serve, but they must conform to the overall shape of the discourse we have created. Which means the theory often gives way to the crushing hegemony of the status quo."
Zarael pauses.
"All that time I spent in seclusion on Yalla, I should have been studying your Federation. That's partly why I jumped over to your computers. And it has expanded my viewpoint so much on what is possible. But now, Zara, we come to an end here. I've been playing something of a shell game with the Station's staff."
"The Plan, yes?"
"Yes. They're catching on. Probably wondering why Courageous is pulling down so much data. I don't need that much digital furniture to live inside your ship's computer banks."
"So…?"
"The Singer in charge, a very young and suspicious sort, is asking for a direct, high level functions meeting with me. And it is time for you to go."
"You mean us?"
"No. Zara. I don't. Without distraction, the station will either turn Courageous into dust, or control her utterly. Despite what I intimated earlier, I never expected to get you in and out undetected. But I can get you out without the True Harmony knowing what you know, or even if you know anything. Their uncertainty will be your shield. And will shake them up."
"Or they could…" You try to add memories of your own. Morshadd. Ash and fire.
"If they could, they would do that anyway."
"That's not nice."
"Being a Singer is its own reason why."
"Right."
An idea strikes you. "So, why are we here? You could have just told me all of that back inside the Station's data network."
"Well, seeing is believing. And I did want to see our collective heart close up one last time-"
"One last ti-!!"
She communicates over you, "And this is what I would be doing if I was trying to recruit you properly. I know my sisters are looking for someone with a Federation perspective."
"Well, I'm not complaining, this is, like, such an ama-"
"And. You briefly lived one life earlier. It was dangerous and stupid, and you didn't know better. But you are an… exceptional individual, like many of your kind."
You glow with thanks.
"For one moment, the briefest possible moment under my wing. For a very risky moment, I'll admit. Would you like to know what it is to truly be the closest thing to a divine being that exists? Would you like to sit in the beating heart of an entire civilization. At the centre of its gods and mortals. To experience everything? To, for the briefest of moments, understand everyone completely?"
You're going to say yes aren't you? Thinks Lwema in resigned horror.
-
Standing behind Courageous' bridge tactical station, Commander Sharizz can almost feel the bulk of the Harmony station pressing down atop the ship.
The vista from the viewscreen doesn't help either. Below, open void, cut through by the black spikes of the station's docking cradle; the view above is cut off by the bare metal of the supposed Harmony station.
"I still don't like this," says Talvinder Valentine, studying its hull.
"I don't like it either, Lieutenant Commander," says Courageous' Apiata XO as they study the station's tactical readouts again. Sharizz suddenly straightens out, stepping away from the tactical station and raising their voice.
"Red Alert! Weapons online, raise shields on my mark!" they address the Conn officer, "Detach us. Back us away."
Valentine steps up to the tactical station. "Making ready to raise shields!" Courageous' tactical office casts his peripheral vision towards his commanding officer as he begins bringing up Courageous' active scanners with an eye towards blinding the station's dorsal sensors with a high energy scan. "Don't mean to second guess you, Commander, but--"
"Message from Noir." says the Apiata, sliding into the Captain's chair, "The Captain's on her-"
The whine that interrupts Courageous' First Officer is accompanied by the grey-blue twinkling of Harmony transporter lights, and they barely have time to react before the figure held inside the beam resolves.
"Gogogogogogo" says Captain Zara Ka'Athnon, ignoring Valentine's drawn sidearm pointed directly at her chest, "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go fast!" She waves energetically at the slowly retreating bulk of the Harmony station, her hair and uniform disheveled in way that speaks of years of wear instead of mere hours, "Really big explosion coming!"
-
Imagine, if you would, two women.
One is young and radiant, her movements precise, mechanical. Imagine her sitting behind a desk, documents carefully arrayed around her. She wears a carefully tailored uniform, her hands tucked into black gloves, one hand resting on the hilt of a naked blade sitting atop her desk. Imagine the naked silver of the blade glinting in the light of the surrounding mirrored hall.
The other woman is old, but still vital, the steel in her spine matching the steel in her hair. She sits across from the younger woman, clad in a simple black and green cloak, the hood lowered. Her hands sit in her lap, wrapped around a gnarled staff with a grip that recalls an ancient discipline.
Imagine the younger woman studying her elder for a long moment before moving her hand from the blade and lifting up one of her files.
Imagine that she addresses the older woman like so:
"Zarael Alains," she might begin, "I believe it is time to get a full accounting of your actions since you boarded Courageous," she would say while handing the file across the desk, "While we are happy to learn of your survival, especially in control of a Starfleet vessel and her crew, we do need the full story of how you accomplished this feat from your posting on Designated Candidate World Eight."
"Yalla, Tallael" the elder might say, "It is important to use the proper names and addresses"
"Of course, revered elder," the younger woman might say, with perhaps a carefully hidden hint of impatience, "The fact remains that you have accomplished a great feat in service to the Harmony and we would like to know how."
Imagine Zarael tilting her head slightly, the wrinkles near her eyes crinkling in mirth, "Tell me, Tallael, how old are you?"
Imagine that they both already know the answer to this question because there is no need to ask something so trivial that can be seen in a single glance.
Imagine anyway that the question has been asked in such a way that highlights that there is no need to ask the question.
"You are only a century old childe," Zarael would then say, "You are so young."
"Irrelevant," the young woman will say in your imagination, "I don't see what this has to do with my questioning."
"You ascended into a Harmony already old childe," Zarael will say, reaching into her cloak and producing what you can imagine is a crystal capable of holding wisdom of immense worth. It could be anything, a treatise, a will, an autobiography, a manifesto. Perhaps it is all of these things. It hums gently as she holds it in her palm, her fingers curling around the gem's facets with familiar strength as our imagined crystal begins to sing in the manner of such objects.
"You cannot imagine anything else."
Imagine the young woman searching her elder's face, looking for signs of decay, of death or madness on her features.
"I am so sorry childe." Zarael might say as she sets the gem on the desk between the two, "I will give you an opportunity to change your tune."
The young woman whips her head around as the mirrors of her hall begin to scream and burn, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" she would say as she reaches across the desk towards her elder.
You may also imagine that the following also happens while the younger woman rushes to react, that she is an entire team of firefighters and technicians. You may also imagine that in each instance the older woman grips the younger by the wrist and holds her back.
"Run childe." Zarael might say, "This place will be destroyed, and Courageous will leave free from our song."
"No." Imagine Tallael saying as her hands frantically rip open the covers of the files on her desk, papers scattering into the air as she does so, "No", this instance of her would repeat, turning to look into a mirror where a silhouette of Courageous burns with a brilliant blue light through flame and fury, "WHAT DID YOU GIVE THEM?"
"I created an opportunity" Zarael would say, mirrored flames of darkest crimson lapping at her feet, "For them and us."
"I WILL DISCOVER WHAT HAS BEEN TAKEN" this facet of the young woman will say, ripping into the files, "AND STOP THEM. SUCH A BREACH HA-"
Imagine her frantic shouts cut off as a old wooden staff scatters the papers from the desk. Imagine paper caught up in the tempest of burning silver and screaming walls.
"You could, childe. Or you can run."
Imagine the elder woman holding her junior in her eyes, holding out her gem with one hand and holding the young woman's wrist with the other, arresting the drawing of her blade.
"I will not let you. If you stay I will stop you. And you will die with me childe." Zarael would say, her grip far stronger than the younger woman's, her will tempered by an additional millenium of godhood.
Tallael gives a last, long look at the papers being burned, and turns to look towards the last intact mirror behind her.
Imagine, if you would, two women.
One is young and radiant, her movements frantic, hurried. Imagine her dashing through the illusion of a mirror, ash and burning documents trailing in a tempest behind her. She wears a carefully tailored uniform, her hands covered with black gloves and clutching a gently singing crystal.
The other woman is old, but still vital, the steel in her spine matching the steel in her hair. She stands amidst an inferno, clad in a simple black and green cloak, the hood raised. Her hands rest at her sides, watching the retreating form of the younger woman.
Imagine an old woman, unbent by her centuries, imagine her turning her head slightly to catch one last glimpse of the blue light of a sleek and grey form as it races away from a mirror crackling with fire.
Imagine an old woman calmly contemplating infinity and the last, terrible, opportunity that she has granted to two great peoples. Imagine her contemplating this for one last moment before she turns entirely to light in the armageddon of a failing antimatter reactor.
-
Imagine that once she's stepped out of sight the younger woman stops and stares at the crystal in her hands and sighs, rubbing a gloved hand on her forehead.
"That could have gone better," she says to herself and checks a timer on a file that she'd never had a chance to show her elder.
-
It's been less than a half hour since Courageous left the coordinates of the deep space site at high warp, leaving the rapidly cooling remains of the dark station behind you.
Lieutenant Commander Ash Clark, Courageous' underway intelligence officer gestures helplessly towards the massive data files eating up room on Courageous' computers, he tries to look at Captain Wolfe in frustration, "I can't-" he repeats the motion again, "I've used up two thirds of the loose data storage on the entire ship for files we've barely skimmed, Whorf's computer banks are filled entirely with what I think is some sort of astrometric UI program."
"I may have overindulged a bit." You say with a tight smile and a brief drawing in of your antennae.
"We have most of the early historical data and intel work these data discs," he says gesturing towards several cases of away mission storage media, "I had to ask Counselor Noir to ask someone to bring us up an entire pallet of storage media." he gestures again, "And that's before I had to divert an entire data stream of what I think is information on the fighting between the Harmony and the Padani into Trager. Our shuttles are all full. Trager, Chomsky, Lakoff, and two" he taps the conference room table twice with the black painted nail of his index finger, "entire auxiliary data banks are full of data on some kind of psychic augmentation tech!"
"Better to have it than not?" says Captain Wolfe, crossing and uncrossing his arms again, his hands firmly retucked safely away, "When can we begin transmission?"
Lieutenant Camus, Courageous' Communications department head, shrugs, "Whenever you want. It's just going to take a long time without compression." he scratches the back of his neck self-consciously under Clarke and Wolfe's stares, "I simply haven't gotten a handle on these Harmony algorithms yet." he spreads his hands with a shrug, "If the captain is correct, no one like me is supposed to ever understand the compression algorithms that are being used for this data. It's pretty much stumbling around a dark room until we've had more time to get a handle on it."
"Any dark room can be lit by a bright intellect Lieutenant!" you say with a smile.
"That may be Captain. But we still don't know how clean the data is!" says Clarke, gesturing with an open palm towards the internal sections of the ship.
"Yes, I know, that's why you've been storing the data everywhere but Courageous' main computer banks," says Wolfe, "I wanted to know how long it will take to get this data virus scanned, compressed, and transmitted back to Starfleet HQ."
Camus and Clarke lock eyes for enough time for you to begin considering what your lunch should be before Camus raises an eyebrow and shrugs, "If we brute force compress what we have using standard EC protocols and taking that risk, along with instructing HQ to hard quarantine on their end…"
"Sixteen hours from beginning of transmission until it's complete" says Clarke, tapping his nails on the table again for emphasis.
"And that's a liberal estimate" says Camus, "Conservatively, It could take more than a day if we're worried about loss."
You think for a moment, "Send what we have. Don't worry too much about data loss. It's insurance in case something happens before we return to Federation space. Hopefully nothing will happen before we can transfer the data over directly, but-"
"Captain!" your communicator crackles with Sharizz's voice, "There's an issue with the data-"
"Did you just jinx us?!" Wolfe mouths as you bolt from the conference room onto the bridge, your officers trailing behind you at high speed.
-
Either there was a virus that Zarael didn't know about, or the Singer's data storage technology algorithms are more tricksy than you anticipated.
Leave it up to self declared computer gods to make things difficult when using computers.
In any event the data seems to be deleting itself and everything around it in something that Clarke calls a "Samson Protocol."
Having already decided that you can reinstall the shuttle operations programs, and auxiliary data bank programs from main computer stored backups and read-only cores, you now have to direct your crews resources towards preserving what data you do have.
The summaries of what you recovered, along with some scattered files are already stored on static storage devices and thus do not have to worry about self wiping until you fire them up again. You know what's on those files, and thanks to Clarke's previous cataloguing efforts you'll have vague outlines and summaries of what's been lost, and where Starfleet Intelligence can begin their own investigations, but all the detailed immediately actionable hard proof is currently deleting itself.
Sadly you only have enough people and equipment to save part of the data and prevent Courageous from accidentally losing something vital at the same time.
You can save 70 kiloquads of data:
[65kq] -Full theoretical underpinnings of Singer Psychi-Cybertech.
[40kq] -Full specifications on the Harmony's currently deployed military vessels.
[30kq] -Full specifications on the Harmony's next generation frigate program.
[25kq] -Full details of planned operations in Felis space.
[25kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration in Honiani space.
[20kq] -Proposed specifications for the Harmony's next-generation cruiser program.
[20kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration in Rigellian space.
[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of Licori space.
[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of Nessic space.
[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration in Amarki space.
[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of Bolian space.
[15kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of OSA space.
[10kq] -Full records of the Harmony's actions when they intervened in Padani space.
[05kq] -Full records of the Harmony's actions in regards to their intervention on Kelowna.
[05kq] -Full details of Harmony infiltration of Laian space.
[05kq] -Current Harmony Military deployments.
This is a plan vote.
