why spaceships?
The Heisenberg drive works by transferring all an object’s inherent dispersed quantum uncertainty into its spatial dimension, at which time it becomes possible to impose new relativistic coordinates on it. Great. So now we can flit directly from the surface of one world to that of another.
Not quite. Unless you want to risk occupying the same coordinates as something/someone else, and make the biggest possible bang for your mass. Better pick some vacuum close to your destination.
Which means space. Which means a way to get down from space. Which means spaceships.
But no extravagant takeoffs. Landings, yes. But takeoff consists merely of disappearance and the clap of inrushing air.
Maybe it’s pretty extravagant at that.
So at the field I bought my ticket and took my chances.
And found myself entering the portside lock of Babylon, dazed, confused, and utterly bewildered. (The ancients thought jetlag was something!)
When I trod accidently on the paw of a human-sized feline (I was still wearing my loamy shitkickers), she turned hissing, teeth bare, and said, “Watch it, meat.”
I backed off, muttering apologies. The first thing I did was unvelcro my boots and ditch them.
But I kept the semi-derogatory, semi-joshing name. I was sick of my old one anyway, and felt I was embarking on a new life. And it proved a fortuitous choice. No one expects much subtlety from a giant named Meat—which pays off when you are trying to separate them from their valuables.
(And now I’ve kept my promise to you about explaining my name!)
I called us lazy grasshoppers earlier, and I suppose, compared to others, we are. You can exist in the Commensality without working, thanks to the bounty from the labor of mek units directed by your AOI. But sophonts being sophonts, there is still plenty of enterprise in the Commensality, people providing services and products that others want, so as to raise themselves above the lowest common denominator (all in a Commensally aware manner, of course; no rapacious merchant princes need apply).
But such an existence wasn’t for me. I had worked harder than these people for all my life. Now I wanted to take it easy. But I wanted to do it in style. So I became a thief. Which turned out to be work too, but also fun. I surprised myself with my talents in this area. For years now, I had been content and happy.
But then Babylon had made me think.
I came walking upon the shore to a delicate spray of frozen methane that looked like the bridge to Asgard. I kicked it to flinders, without deriving even the satisfaction of feeling it through the quilt.
What did I owe the Commensality? I had fitted into this peculair polis like a hand into a glove. They had saved me from a life of boring drudgery, providing a matrix in which I could become me. And what had I contributed in turn? Oh, sure, I had made individuals happy (and some no doubt sad). Anyone can do that. But what had I given to the Commensality as a whole? What were my community responsibilities? Did they involve killing another sophont?
Damn that Babylon! I wanted to cleave the thick roof of his hidden cavern beneath the city and let this frigid sea flow in on him.
I stopped walking, and turned. I was far away from the city now, out on a promontory slapped by the hydrocarbon waves. The thick atmosphere hid the dome from me. The next moment, though, an eddy in the gases developed. (We called these windows mooneyes.) Through the mooneye shone the lights of Babylon, various heat-tones of red, orange, yellow, white and blue, like Captain Nemo’s undersea city.
So exotic, so fragile, so mine.
I decided to do what Babylon wanted.
* * * *
So three days later, why was I still hesitating?
(My nerves were strung so tight that every time I happened to step into Shadow—or Shadow swept over me—I flinched.)
I had passed the time in various pursuits, none of which served to truly allay the nervousness I was feeling.
I conducted a scam or two—nothing too extravagant, just something to keep my hand in, and pass the time while I decided how to take out the Conservancy’s envoy. One deal had some interesting facets. It involved the infamous Babylon Sisters—
But that’s another story altogether.
In any case, my growing credit balance did nothing to soothe my apprehensions. So I turned to sex.
I picked up this stegasoid in the refectory outshowers, and we spent a fun three hours together. But of course, with the way my luck was running, there had to be repercussions. It turned out she was just in from offplanet, somewhere less fastidious than Babylon, and had a bad case of scale mites. You’ve never known irritation until you’ve had those active little critters under your overlapping spinal plaques. Took an hour in the infirmary to make ’em surrender.
When I got out of the ward, I went to a bar to waste a few idle hours in muzzy rumination.
In the dimness of the bar (haven’t really changed in centuries, I understand), I got a TAP from Babylon.
[I called to see how matters were progressing,] he sent.
I jolted up in my seat when his words filled my brain. [Oh, fine, fine, Babylon. I’m planning my strategy right this minute.]
[Good. I suggest you pay more attention to the mental condition of your commensals while you procrastinate. Perhaps their malaise may help motivate you.]
I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but pretended I did.
[Sure. I’ll check it out.]
There was silence then, and I thought Babylon had broken the connection. But he came back with a request.
[Meat, I have a thing I wish you to read. Will you?]
I sent back acceptance, and Babylon squirted me a book.
It took a couple of seconds to absorb and store it, but since it was only a few megabytes of information, I soon had it integrated.
The nature of the information took me by surprise. I had expected something that would help me with my goal. Instead, I got a book of poetry.
It was titled Crimes Embedded in a Matrix of Semi-serious Poems.
And it was all about me.
[Babylon, I— What’s this all about? Who wrote this?]
[I did. But I am not releasing it for general consumption. It would be too likely to incite similar behavior.]
[But why? And why me?]
Babylon sent something wordless akin to a shrug. [I write a lot of poetry in my spare time, and your life seemed dramatically interesting. Not many people talk directly to me, you know, and I have to do something. Also, believe it or not, I actually like you, and would be sorry to have to scoop out your cortex. So I thought I’d share my work with you. I will not hide the fact that I also calculated the action would provoke a slightly higher
