Chapter 47: Heading to the Far Beyond

My Admiral,

I am writing and transmitting this message through the agreed-upon means. It’s been since UniPsi that I last wrote by hand, on physical medium no less, but I understand we can no longer use the LE.

It has been several years, Admiral, since you assigned me to the surveillance of Captain Andreï. I now understand the circumstances that led to that order, even though, as Alpha of the Hollow Eyes, I initially took it as a disgrace. Over time, Andreï managed to rally all of us to him through his rather particular mindset, despite missions of little consequence. Whether it comes from Lodovico or elsewhere, Andreï has specific methods and a unique way of leading his crew. I am convinced that after ten years, his entire crew would follow him fanatically to the edge of the universe — as they are doing now — and that he has also become more competent than any other military group. Today, I count myself among those who respect Andreï, and I even try to suppress something that would resemble affection. Thus, I now experience as a betrayal the act of sending you secret reports on his activities without his knowledge. But of course, you have me in your grasp, and I can only obey.

If I am to betray, I might as well do it properly and, as you say, hide nothing from you.

The Alecto departed four months ago, which means we are a third of the way through our journey. After transferring information and skills to the rest of the resistance fleet in orbit around Camerone, the Captain gave a speech to his crew. He explained our journey — a minimum of two years — the risks involved, and also the risks inherent in opposing the Aleph. He offered anyone who wished to leave the mission the opportunity to come see him that evening in his office so he could discreetly arrange their reassignment within HS, without any form of blame or judgment. As far as I know, no one made such a request.

Gentle Sun, partially amputated of a few pieces currently cultivated aboard the rest of the resistance fleet, struggled to compute the reconciliation calculations for the Drift trajectory. The poor creature will calculate for an entire year, refining the trajectory daily. I doubt its precision, but do we have a choice?

We do not have a suspended-sleep system on board the Alecto. Andreï made things clear rather quickly: this Drift year would be an opportunity for us to train and learn new skills useful for our future operations. First and foremost, we had to learn the stellar language. Our Xeno Alpha taught us how to sign. We weren’t very focused the first week. Our thoughts were turned toward what lay ahead and what we had left behind. The Captain sensed it but made no comment. He spent his time with Gentle Sun, whom he pushes to the limit. If it were human, this Xeno would have rebelled long ago. Part of its efforts were for route correction, part for a secret project I will soon reveal to you, part for research — their famous obsession with inverse Drift.

The Captain maintains that what we call intuition is a biological process for optimally solving problems. The other day, we spoke of the Blind Gods.

“The prayer to the Blind Gods,” the Captain told me, “which was passed on to us by the Transients, says: ‘The Blind Gods are in all things and around all things.’ My interpretation is that the Blind Gods are the shortest path between a question and its answer. It lies outside us — a yet-unsolved mathematical problem — but also within us, as we have the potential to solve it.”

During the second week of flight, we were tense. The Captain told us in the morning — that is, at the first watch — that something special would happen that evening and asked us to make sure none of us had any specific tasks. Oh, and notably, he asked us to come in comfortable clothing — a way of saying our nightwear.

When the ship’s clock struck evening watch, he summoned us to the Drift trajectory room where Gentle Sun operates. Many of us expected games or storytelling, and complaints were growing as we feared yet another math lesson. That was not the case. He asked the front row to lie down around Gentle Sun and touch it, then the second row to do the same while touching the others ... and so on until we were all lying down in a chain around the Xeno. The mood was already improving. The Captain also connected himself and gave an order, and we then experienced the most astonishing of experiences.

Gentle Sun, as you know, possesses Psi powers of environmental control. It managed to plunge us into a collective illusion while keeping our limbs immobilized. It’s akin to a controlled dream experience or advanced virtual reality techniques, but the Xeno projected us into something else ... let’s say, more immersive, more sensual. Also, it managed to alter temporality through an unknown process: for us, we lived an adventure, second by second, over several days — while in fact, it lasted only four hours. Finally, the Xeno has never truly seen what, for instance, a ship looks like in the colors we perceive, but it managed to reconstruct them. It’s likely that it rummaged through our memories.

It turns out this immersion experience was a skill assessment. In this first experience, we were colonists on an unknown planet with limited resources. You must understand something crucial about this experience, which changes everything I have previously lived through: in it, we are not ourselves. We can change gender and appearance. We play different roles. The Captain was among us, but no one knew who he was. So after the survival phase, we faced a first contact with the Xenos. The Xenos were invisible to the human visible spectrum, and, weakened by hunger and thirst, it took us a long time to understand this. And when we could finally ask for help, our stellar language was atrocious. We all died one by one. During those “virtual weeks,” relationships formed — sometimes romantic, sometimes rivalrous. We couldn’t reveal our identities, not even indirectly, even though some desperately wanted to scream it out because they had fallen for one another.

We watched our colony die, one by one, beside each other’s deathbeds. Still within the illusion projection, we reappeared in our normal forms in a decompression space where the Xeno broadcast non-invasive feelings of well-being.

We finally awoke, and the Captain debriefed with us. He told us to work seriously on the stellar language because we would repeat the exercise the following week. The reward, he hinted, would be other scenarios. Finally, he said it was very important that no one disclose who played what role in the scenario and ordered us to keep the secret. We were a bit overwhelmed: not only were we leaving for a two-year journey, but every week was now being stretched into two weeks of intense virtual adventures.

In the end, this simulation proved to be highly beneficial: we worked on the stellar language as if our lives depended on it. We scrutinized one another to figure out who we had fallen in love with — or, sometimes, suspecting it, we tried to avoid contact. We had experienced a condensed version of adventure, adrenaline, travel, sex too, love, and harmless anger that perfectly gave us the feeling of having traveled while we remained confined aboard the Anicroche.

What the Captain has just devised is a danger to Gentle Sun’s Xeno race. Beyond its computing skills, if it can produce this kind of psychic projection and that fact becomes known, then they will become prey to every sort of trafficking. This will be a topic to reflect on further — if we make it through the Aleph crisis.

Having said that, we awaited the following Saturday with both excitement and anxiety. We no longer thought about what was behind or ahead of us. We wanted to turn our defeat into victory. The scenario was similar but our roles were different. The interpersonal dynamics were different and enriching, and as I write to you, I understand something: more than an assessment, the exercise is building bonds between us. It makes us wonder who, behind our faces, truly resides. It reminds us that we are capable of loving anyone. In this new scenario, our stellar language was still not great, and the Xenos were clearly visible but so large that they did not immediately perceive us. We managed to establish contact and save the colony. Never have I experienced greater joy, greater success. But that wasn’t all. We received a reward. Time accelerated, and we got to see the colony grow in peace with the Xenos and become a favored homeport of the HS. What had once been a cliff battered by a dark ocean became a charming coastline, lined by a blue sea. We all lived in pleasant houses with gardens or in luxurious apartments. And we celebrated the colony’s twentieth anniversary with a gala evening: fireworks, festivities. Dances. Delicious food. Walks by the sea under the stars. Last kisses and promises of love ... an experience indistinguishable from my real memories.

And since then, every week the Captain assigns us a study topic: piloting a vessel in crisis, gravitational combat, zero-G strategy, material and structural resistance, organic chemistry, xenobiology, Xeno diplomacy, knowledge of the Transients, Xeno religions, Xeno myths and legends, and mathematics, mathematics, mathematics ... we are highly motivated. And we are, in fact, becoming very competent.

The Captain spends a non-negligible amount of time — some would say suspicious — in the communication room with the Wau, starting about a week after the Alecto’s departure. These are regular communications, once every two days, sometimes lasting quite a while. I have no legitimate reason to be there, but I try to find good excuses to enter and grasp the nature of their conversation. The topics are sometimes strategic, such as the new civil hierarchy of the HS. But sometimes — increasingly often, in fact — the subjects are philosophical. I’ve heard them speak of solitude, contingency, the nature of consciousness, life after death and after the After, destiny, love, and forgiveness. I entered the room under the pretext of a matter concerning the crew, which I will detail below. The Captain was speaking with the Wau, and I let him finish a long argument. He was saying:

“The HS, guided by the Transients, has acknowledged that the control of its society hinges on forgiveness. Should we forgive? That question was still being asked as late as 2050, when AIs were already assisting us. We had prison, we believed — and still do, with therapies in the After — that time allows the brain to conform to a socially acceptable norm for the general public. We erased prison from our culture. So then, Wau, should we forgive?”

“I believe we must forgive, Andreï.”

You will note that he calls him by his name and not his rank.

“Would you be able to forgive the Aleph if it stood before you and had killed what you held dearest? Would you exile it?”

“Forgiveness,” explained the Wau, “is like freedom of expression. Freedom of expression is useless for stating the obvious. It is only useful when the person expressing themselves risks their life in doing so. In the same way, forgiveness only makes sense when directed toward what society would deem unforgivable.”