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So we get stuck down here in the swamp water while he gets to go gallavanting around on his link?
Scratch shrugged. At the moment.
I think thats a load of crap for what he's paying me. The other man nodded.
Scratch lifted his hand off his rifle, sighed and rubbed the salt and pepper grizzle on his chin. I'll let him know you feel that way. He smiled.
I'm serious.
I'm sure you are. Let's just get out of here and then you can bring it up with him.
The man nodded. Yeah, the sooner the better.
I think you hate them because you're jealous.
Sil smiled. College graduate?
She looked on the verge of throwing the drink in his face, but she didn't. He watched the tiny muscles flex momentarily in her hand, electrical impulses twitching beneath her skin, tendons tightened, veins bulged, momentarily more pronounced as the muscles around them coiled and contracted, the fingers gripping tighter against the carved sides of the glass. Or probably crystal he thought. He glanced around the room. The high ceilings made the building feel larger and older than it probably was, the white linen of the table clothes was pressed and starched. The cutlery polished. Whoever she was she had money.
Why don't you do it? Why don't you throw that drink in my face if you dislike what I said? You want to know why I hate this place? That's why I hate this place, because it is so sanitized, so neutered and so utterly out of control. This is the safest place in the world. Where we are right now. No one is going to come through the door with machine guns, no one is going to throw a vial of nanobots in your face when you walk to work in the morning. There isn't any real violence here. And yet everyone is afraid of it. Afraid of the invisible hand out there that is just waiting for the guard to come down, waiting for the other eyelid to slip into sleep, waiting for the back to turn, waiting for the eyes to give up their vigilance, for the ears to miss that telltale warning, the hair on the back of the neck to confirm what they have always suspected, that someone, something thing is coming. For someone they wronged and forgot about, for someone they haven't wronged but holds them accountable anyway, for the one who hates them just for existing, for the one who simply is hate. But they aren't coming. They never were coming. That person isn't out there. There is no evil in the world only things that look different from a long way a way, people misguided, making bad decisions, people trying to gain or to deprive. There may be a couple people, statistical anomalies that think they really are evil, but they aren't, they're lonely and scared. We are all scared. That's what this place won't admit, that we are all afraid, not of the invisible creeping thing the is stalking us but of the very real fears, the fear of what will become of us, what will become of the ones we love.... The ones we love. He repeated the phrase again. That's the greatest fear you know, the fear of the unknown. Lovecraft said that, I believe. And I think he meant it in the monsters sense, he being Lovecraft after all, but the real unknown isn't some thing, it's the very fundamental parts of us -- will we be loved tomorrow, will we be here to love tomorrow at all. If you want to be afraid of something be afraid of that. That will keep you alive in the middle of everything else. Every other fear simply passes over you, you look it in the eye and you either flinch or you don't. Sometimes you flinch and it passes anyway. Other times you do not flinch and it backs off only to let the fear of consequences come in behind it, the rear guard, the fear that because you did not flinch, because you remained firm in the face of your fears in the face of even violence upon you, upon someone dear to you, upon a stranger even, you face that down and you think you might have some sense of victory, some moment of piece, I looked at it and I did not flinch, but yes, you did not flinch, now what does that mean? Will someone else have to pay the price for your not flinching, will the calculus of fear and consequences come next to your mother, your sister, your brother, your unborn children, your friends, the man or woman next to you who did flinch or who zigged when they should have zagged, ducked when they should have run, run when they should have waited, there are million possible consequences to every action and that is the paralyzing fear of the unknown, that is what stops us from acting, from throwing the drink at me, because we cannot anticipate every reaction, every action puts us again back in the face of that ultimate fear, the unknown, what will happen? It is far easier not to act.
Sil picked up his glass and studied it in the light before bring it to his lips. The wine was slightly bitter, slightly sweet, not bad, not good. He decided he rather liked it.
She didn't say anything for a moment, just watched him slip the wine. Everything you have is because of this place that you hate, this place that is you home. You were educated here, you worked here. We have been digging into your background. We know everything about you and we know you hate hypocrisy above all things, yet you are the model of it. Come on Sil, to think the way you think, to believe what you believe, you would not believe these things if you did not have the luxury, the absence of the real violence that you seem to think is keeping us from whatever it is that you think it is keeping us from...
It's keeping you from stopping it. He snapped.
What do you mean?
Everything here is a myth. And you're right, I got to see it all, but it is built on the backs of ghosts, of sacrifices, of people who were not as lucky as me. Or you. Yes. I got to see it. He swirled the wine absently and stared at her forehead, watching the lines furrow and unfurrow. I got see the twilight of the empire as the British might call it, or we might call it if we had been able to stomach that word. We watched it fall and yet we're still afraid. Still afraid that we will have to pay for our sins in some unexpected, personal and horrifying way. You don't throw that drink in my face because you would then have to worry about me. Especially me since I am an outside, I left even before the changes, before the decline. Good god what might I be capable of... I probably eat babies. I do eat babies. He smiled. But because that violence has been so far removed for so long you no longer realize what it is when you visit it on other people. You know longer understand what it means to be truly afraid. I didn't either until the war, but even the war was far from here. All you had was images, feeds in I2, no different than the movies that had imagined it for years before it began and so easy to watch as if it were a movie. And you did nothing to stop it. You still do nothing to stop it because you do not know what it really is and until you know what it is, until you have to feel it, I am afraid of you. I do not trust you and I certainly will not work for you.
She smiled. Do you really think you are just going to walk out of here? That there isn't someone waiting for you just outside? Do you really think that you hold the cards here Sil? We are offering you a chance to survive, a chance to do the right thing. A chance to avert the violence you abhor. I may not have doused you with expensive wine, but I can assure you you would be dead before you got out of your chair if I wanted it that way.
Really. Sil considered it. And how would you do that?
Her eyes flicked up to the balcony where woman sat next to a man at another table, further from the chandelier, partially hidden in darkness nearer to the ceiling. They have been tracing your signal through I2, a man is just outside the door of the room you're in Arbellville. He's just waiting.
Sil laughed. He set down the wine. See that's why no one wants to do business with you, it's why no one is on your side anymore, it's that smug hubris, that belief that, despite where you find yourself outside of this clever little construct, you're still in charge, you're still the one's with all the power. He laughed again. I tell you what, why don't you send in your man and see what happens?
She frowned at him. You think I'm bluffing?
No I don't think you're bluffing. But I do know that, wherever we may be right now, I am not in that room you think I'm in. It might look like I'm in that room, but your AI, even the AI that you don't want the rest of these people to know about, isn't half as good as what the rest of the world has so yeah, it might look like the signal is coming from that room, but trust me, it isn't.
She glanced up at the balcony and nodded. Sil kept smiling at her. She got up from the table. This discussion is over.
What's wrong, he laughed, the trap didn't work? Is that really why you asked me to come here, you went to all that effort just so you could backtrace the signal and kill me?
No. I don't want to kill you Sil, I want you to be on our side.
The secret to my success is that I don't have a side. I try to do what's right. That's it. And I'll be damned if I'm going to let you near anyone I care about. I don't care how many agents you send.
He ripped off the headset and looked up to see Scratch cooking a can of beans on the stove. The boat was rolling, trimmed against a descent wind, one that was keeping them apace of the swell off the bahamas.
So? Scratch didn't look up.
Sil shrugged. That was weird. Like visiting with a lost relative that thinks they know you because they met you once as a kid.
Scratch grunted.
Sil glanced around the bulkhead toward the bow cabin. Is Dahlia asleep?
He got only a shrug in response. Scratch picked up the lukewarm beans and headed topside. Sil slide out of the table, and reached around to turn off the batteries before following Scratch up out of the hatch. It was quiet up top. They were running, moving at the same speed as the wind, which made it feel as if they were not moving at all.
Did you learn anything? Bean sauce had dripped from teh spoon into Scratch's beard, but he seemed not to have noticed or simply didn't mind. Sil decided against point it out. Clearly we have something they want. Something they want bad. I don't know who she was, but she was way above our pay grade as they say. They sent agents too apparently. Traced the signal all the way back to Arbellaville.
Scratch raised an eyebrow.
I know, I'm not sure how they got through the redirects in the Bahamas. They're AI is improving. Or they're outsourcing. Either way we need to go back to being paranoid.
I was worrying more abou the agent in Arbellaville quite frankly.
Hmm. Yes. There is that. Assuming it's true.
We would have to assume that for now...
Yes, we would. Of course they know we would so it may well be that we're playing into their hands...
I'd rather play into their little psych games than get ambushed by someone with real guns.
True.
They give you any idea what it is they want?
No. We didn't get that far.
Something to do with those disks the girl had?
I assume so, but I can't decrypt them so who knows. We need to find someone who can.
You think?
Maybe not. Maybe it's better not to know.
Why don't we just sell them? If the Protectorate wants them that bad I'm sure the UAS would love to have them...
We could do that, but then we'd lose whatever insurance they might be buying us right now.
We've never had any insurance before, why do we need it now?
We've never had anything valuable before.
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