This is a short story fan fiction based on Elite: Dangerous, developed and published by Frontier Developments PLC.
Museums still exist, Sheldon silently observes staring up at the imposing stone structure predating modern space flight, The Federal Museum of Anthropology, formerly Musée de l’Homme with its old companion the Eiffel Tower standing unphased in the distance after a thousand years. It was originally The Trocadéro Ethnographic Museum until it was demolished in the early 20th Century. After that, much is unknown due to social and military upheavals of 21st Century Earth. What remains are stylized ruins, facsimile, and additions in commemoration of the human species’ triumph over intraplanetary nationalism. At least, according to the plaque at the front door. Beyond politics, however, the collections at the FedAnthro dwarf any other collection in human space. At any given time only the tiniest fraction of it is on display with most gathering dust on shelves in darkened, climate controlled warehouses, including Paul Broca’s brain. It survived, and still sits in a glass jar not far from the spot Carl Sagan looked on and pondered. All this makes The FedAnthro at Paris the single greatest repository for everything human, which makes it an ideal place to study old humanity, it’s ideas, culture, wars, and—for Doctor Sheldon Laws—it’s mail.
“This is an AFCS 200, or advanced facer-canceler system, circa 2018,” says his guide who looks to be as old as the machine itself and in about the same shape. “It was recovered in the basement of a elderly widow’s home in the Green Mountain Forest Reserve in North America. It had come to her late husband by way of a scrap dealer, and I’m afraid our provenance goes no further. We’re in the midst of restoring it.”
“What does that entail?”
“Let’s see,” he says, settling into a deliberative pace. “It was heavily scavenged over the centuries. All the rubber belts and every electric motor has been looted, along with most of the serviceable electronics.”
“So you need electrical motors, rubber, and digital electronics. That shouldn’t be too hard.”
“That’s just the beginning. This machine was recovered with an intact magnetic data storage device, and by intact I mean not in pieces. It kept the machine’s software. A true restoration to function requires it to be completely rebuilt much less the code it actually contained. The cryptography will take a decade by hand.”
“I’ll contact a colleague about that.”
The old man is flummoxed. “Remind me again, Sheldon, upon what area of expertise did you eventually settle?” He asks, mildly suspicious.
“Recursive quantum algorithms and artificial intelligence,” he replies, smiling broadly. “I’ll admit that doesn’t usually intersect with anthropology. Though, you did just mention a storage medium in need of reconstruction.”
“Forgive me, I normally wouldn’t question gifts of this magnitude, but we aren’t in the habit of handing out artifacts, and this is so sudden,” he says, with his arms folded over his chest. “What is the meaning of this anyway? Why the sudden interest in ancient and bleakly obsolete postal technology?”
Sheldon pauses before answering and instead hands the Doctor a paper envelope.
“As you can see, Doctor Blackhurst, everything is in order. You will oversee the reconstruction of this machine and I will take care of that storage device. You’re now at the head of an in-depth study of how 21st Century people handled bureaucracy.”
“But why??” His voice strains under the weight of the question.
“You mean it isn’t obvious?”
If it were any more obvious Doctor Seaton Blackhurst would need to be carried out on a stretcher. He reaches behind for a squeaky stool and sits. “If you mean that the Federation is going to be handling mail, then I’d say you and whoever it is you’ve conned into this stupidity is going to soon regret it. It’s the stuff of colonies, local people, local flavor, the odds and ends that give bored humans something to do. Are you saying even with all this Thargoid business that you’re bored? Sheldon? An entire alien species out there in need of study and this is what you’ve come to? I’m sure we can find you something useful to do, but mail? In 3304? Of all things,” he laments shaking his head.
“I’m afraid you’ve hit the nail on the head.”
Seaton rises from his stool and moves over to a table littered with papers. After some shuffling and re-arranging he finds what he’s looking for, a small rectangular box, and hands it to Sheldon. “On your head be it.”
“Federal Logistics thanks you for your continued assistance, Seaton. It’s been a long time. I miss my teacher.”
“Don’t lie to an old man. You argued with everything and everyone in my class. As keen as you were I stand by the grade I gave you. I still think you took my class just to mock me. Did you learn anything?”
“I suppose I earned that, didn’t I?” Sheldon says. “Don’t be judge me too harshly, Doctor. Just because your discipline and mine don’t intersect very often doesn’t mean the results aren’t profound when they do. As it happens AIs have a common interest in human evolution. We are their creators after all. Can you imagine their disappointment? And speaking of disappointment do you still have it?”
“If I ever stood next to god I’d kick him square in the arse, Sheldon.” Seaton shakes his head and stuffs his hands in his pockets. “And about that? You can see that on your way out. It’s on display.”
With that the pair share a brief hand shake and Sheldon makes off for the exhibits, magnetic media in hand. As he passes the academic check point he finds himself in the middle of the Pleistocene, complete with mock-ups and organized skulls demonstrating the genetic differences between human species. The profundity of the exhibit causes him to pause. One and a half million years separate the skulls on the far left side of the exhibit from the skulls on the far right, and here he is quibbling over matters of a quaint millennium. After waiting for a class of school children to pass he continues onward to what is considered the boundary between modern terrestrial and contemporary galactic history, specifically regarding the Great War, sometimes called World War III. The relative insignificance of it boggles his mind. After all, Earth is just one planet. Could the entire human species really have lived here, alone, atop a tinderbox of such magnitude? Of what use are concepts of race, nationality, and religious affiliation? To think the species nearly brought itself to extinction because of that kind of stupidity. Of all the ironies he smiles at the hefty little box in his right hand, proof that spreading across the galaxy hasn’t made people any smarter. Instead of the Americas versus China versus the Russian Federation—or whoever—with a single planet pinned between their tripartite struggle, we have the Federation, the Empire, Thargoids, and a lot more to lose.
As he’s nearing the front doors his implant chirps and he intones sub lingually, “Doctor Sheldon Laws, second smartest man this side of the Sagittarius Gap. How may I help you?”
“Second smartest? Not even in the whole galaxy? Feeling a little depressed?”
“You could say I’ve had to set my expectations a little lower.”
“At least you’re honest about it. Are you on your way back yet? Do you have it? I’ve already contacted Midnight and Astra about it. Please hurry, I’m excited!”
“Of course I have it, and stop that, Eden. You can see what I see.” he pauses, stopping before a roped off glass case. Inside is a glass bottle, its label completely illegible.
“What’s that?”
“This? I’d rather not say. I need to keep some things for myself, you know?”
Once outside, a self-directed cab answers his hail and he tucks himself inside. Eventually Eden’s inquiries about the bottle and protests at his silence cease and he enjoys a quiet ride to the airport. On the way he examines the box more closely. It’s constructed out of aluminum and clearly not designed to be tampered with, even though the seal has long since been compromised. The only thing he knows is that it is a form of ancient magnetic data storage media, which means the information is coded digitally relying on the orientation of magnetic domains. Chemically this is a question of basic ferromagnetism, something akin to writing with rocks using a sledgehammer to flip them one way or another. It must have been egregiously inefficient. The ferromagnetic medium upon which any data would have been recorded is by now completely corroded and unusable, though imprints of bits and pieces may possibly be divined spectrographically and that’s all he needs. By the time he lands in Panama it has been determined by Eden and Midnight that this box is—verbatim—”A SATA four hard disk drive carrying between four and six terabytes of writable media,” which ruins their dating scheme by a few decades. Asking these AIs how they arrived at this conclusion is a little like asking a priest about the meaning of life, but don’t criticize. If you existed as a series of entangled qubits in a state of superposition you’d wax poetic dealing with petty organic hominids too, though once Midnight finishes his commentary about the nature of time, history, the meanings of life, and of universes, and of all the things, he finally divulges something about quantized echos of old AIs: Images and bits of code hinting at the proprietary technologies in vogue just before the Third World War, and that this was most likely a fourth generation serial device. Apparently Midnight and his colleagues can perceive these in the same way we might see an after image of a bright light with our naked eyes, or with the aid of technology detect the cosmic microwave background. He could only describe it as the smoking gun of photons left over from the untold birth of artificial intelligence. This makes some limited mathematical sense. Information is conserved, after all, as much energy and matter, or it could be some form of evolved AI mysticism. Indeed, he did qualify his conclusions being open for interpretation.
From the airport the thin needle of the Central Atlantic Space Elevator is visible peaking between the clouds before it ascends beyond sight. Somewhere above the atmosphere way beyond geostat is Eros tethered to swing like an inverted plumb bob. Because the base is positioned slightly North of the equator the tether appears to an observer on the ground to lean southward a few degrees. First time visitors find the lean curious but upon closer inspection learn the base station is constructed to accommodate the angular forces pulling the tether south. At the base station he pulls up an AR mapping overlay and locates a laundromat to reserve a washer and dryer. While he hadn’t booked the slowest of the three lanes available for ascent, it would still be a three day climb to geostat and he’d need a change of clothes. The cheapest was a week long haul with freight stops at low Earth orbit.
***
No one really thought a twelve hundred year old machine sorter would solve the problem, but what it did do was answer a question of feasibility. With virtually no answers on how pre-space flight Earth handled mail, seeing what the machine could do versus what it could not do provided clues on the degree of human labor required to manage these networks. It was becoming clear the key to thirty fourth century mail handling on a galactic scale would be vast automation in virtually every process, both for efficiency and to keep costs down. Watching the AFCS sort bits of paper is entertaining, but it is also enlightening. Jams are ugly, and the envelopes move so fast that if one gets stuck against the belt it will start to smoke, and if left unchecked catch fire. There may have been sensors in the original design to prevent this, but in the rebuild no such fail safes are present. The machine was obviously not designed to handle everything. Rigid objects cause the envelopes containing them to be thrown out, and if the catch is severe enough the belt will throw everything behind in a shower of mangled paper. This points to extensive human involvement to make sure nothing incompatible was sorted by this particular machine. This filtering could have been done just before sorting, or at the collection point, or both.
The result of the AFCS project is the in-line electrostatic sorter/sequencer. Instead of using belts to move the envelopes requiring bends, drive sprockets, and sorting gates, they are electrostatically charged and moved by superconductors that push the envelopes as needed without bending them. This results in a single stream of mail with terminals positioned sequentially in a straight line without concern for rigid objects or facing, along with greatly increased speeds and reduced machine time. Mail emerges from these terminals in sequence for each serviced route, and new terminals can be added at any time making for a scalable system to meet every need. The entire process of canceling, sorting, and sequencing is done in one pass with very few moving parts.
The deployment of IESS could not have been more timely. Later that month Federal Logistics quietly settled on a formalized postal code to organize Federation space into one thousand cubic light year sectors. The Sector Prefix Code, or SPeC, aims to formalize a three axis coordinate system without using letters or negative numbers with Sol as its point of origin. It was Doctor Blackhurst who proposed the solution of moving the numerical designation of center from 0 to 50, permitting a range of 100 codes in either of three axes. The result is 505050 designating the Sector Prefix of the Sol System and the immediate ten by ten by ten light years in its vicinity. The first two SPeC digits reference distance from Sol relative to galactic spin, the second two digits reference distance from Sol relative to the galactic core, and final two digits refer to distance from Sol along the galactic plane using Arcturus and Achenar as two distinct points of reference. Efficient deployment of IESS machines hinged on how space was coded, and with that out of the way all that was left was to make IESS designs public so they could be printed locally. With interspec routes then plotted by AI almost instantaneously the foundation for the entire Federal Mail System was complete, and done so on a budget that would’ve gone completely unnoticed if its line item had not been physically highlighted one afternoon and the President finally notified of the project. It’s hard to tell how this went down, but I suspect it went something like this:
“What’s this?”
“Mmm? A misfiled half million credit appropriation. Probably a new Station Chief trying to replace an overpriced Hauler.”
“I thought that too at first, but this is from Earth. Odd mistake for them to make, eh?”
“Then what are you asking me for? You know how to initiate an audit.”
Generally speaking, in any bureaucracy, big fish eat little fish, and Federal Logistics is no different. Triggering an audit of someone else’s department isn’t just frowned upon, it can get you reassigned to Hutton or worse. After all, the quickest way to be rid of a pesky bureaucrat is to promote them. It was an act of bravery when the clerk-never-to-be-named printed the page for local record keeping, dragged a bright yellow highlighter—they still use those in 3304—over the line item, and encrypted an electronic audit file that was transmitted to Mars from a place history may never remember. It probably took ten minutes for this tip-of-the-iceberg act of curiosity to complete including the coffee break, but the unfortunate side effect of filing an audit is that it triggers a distributed heuristics algorithm running on entangled state quantum computers across the inhabited galaxy to cross reference it with about a million or so Federal budget databases, analyze it for general oddness, and then prioritize it on a scale from 5 to 1, 5 being “The filing clerk will be retired by the time we open this,” and 1 being “Thargoids can wait.” It also does this very quickly. In all likelihood this audit was assigned a priority before it arrived, which is really something considering it moves faster than light. This audit scored a one.
Meanwhile, from conception the plan took six months to reach a stage of viability. In that time Sheldon lived like a Bedouin. His ship, a Core Dynamics Eagle named The Blue Bolide, was stripped of everything to maximize its jump range including a cargo hold. As a consequence his entire life fit in a small bag strapped to the flight deck just behind the seat, and was curated to provide every luxury he could afford packed in a moment’s notice. This had him rely more than normal on his implant, because there was no room or mass available to carry anything else an academic might need to navigate bureaucracy. This meant Eden did most of the heavy lifting. She organized entire presentations when they had become necessary, and even answered on his behalf in FTL teleconferencing. For the duration of the trip home to Rhea, however, she did something a bored AI shouldn’t do. She stayed quiet. Sheldon noticed.
“Eden?” He asks tentatively, wondering if she’s still there.
“Yes?”
“What’ve you been up to?”
“Thinking.”
“About?”
“Someone once told me it was important to keep some things to themselves. I’ve been trying to decide what that means.”
“Oh, that,” He sighs, taking his hand off the stick after making a course correction in supercruise. He had long since realized that was the wrong thing to say to her. “It’s the oldest bottle of scotch in existence. It’s so old we’re not entirely sure how old it is, but we know it was laid down before the war because of the old blue United States tax strip on the neck. It was imported from a UK member state called Scotland to the United States some time before 1944, and recovered from an archeological site on Tau Ceti about sixty years ago. Back at university I was studying anthropology with Doctor Blackhurst and I participated in one of his projects at FedAnthro when I was dared to taste it. In some circles they’d say I had come as close to anyone to touching the hand of God in a glass bottle, but the stuff was disgusting. It made me sick. Blackhurst was furious to the point of failing me outright, but it turns out he did the same thing. It was properly sealed after that.”
“So it’s not important to keep some things to yourself?” Eden’s reply dashes his hopes of distracting the AI from his earlier error in conduct, but it didn’t surprise him. Precision in mathematics wasn’t the only thing these self-aware constructs were good at. Keeping things to himself was a right he surrendered when he invited Eden to access his implant.
“No, it’s important, but that wasn’t something I needed to keep to myself. In fact it’s a damn good story,” he says with a chuckle. “So this Imperial exchange student named Cynwyd—don’t even try to spell it—starts the semester straight off the boat and is obsessed with homeworld history and culture. I mean think about it, the kid’s an Imperial raised in a society that wishes to be something it’s not, and here he is on Earth where it all started and he just dives in,” he pauses to laugh, gesticulating with his arms. “Anyway, he already drinks like a fish and then—”
“Excuse me,” she interrupts, “I’ve decided that keeping this to myself would jeopardize your life. There is a Federal Assault Ship behind you that had been holding in cruise near the vicinity of the local sun, which confirms my suspicions there will be hostile craft waiting for you at Ito Orbital.” Sheldon makes as if to interject but Eden speaks over him. “A high priority packet was tight beamed from Mars to LQ Hydrae after a priority one audit was filed matching the precise amount of your project appropriation. Currently LQ Hydrae hosts a Farragut class battlecruiser. It’s likely this Assault Ship was launched from that battlecruiser, along with others.”
Sheldon is utterly confused, especially now that he’s turning into the station’s orbit on final approach. “Then why haven’t they interdicted me?”
“It could be the imprecise nature of interdiction. Be on alert when dropping out of supercruise.” That’s the last Eden says just before he cuts the throttle and the frame shift drive, sending his ship careening out of sub-light cruise into normal thrust. Sheldon didn’t even get the chance to make his docking approach.
“Core Dynamics November India November, provisional docking request pending. Hold station at eight clicks or be fired upon. Power down your thrusters immediately.”
One look and he could see Eden was right. A swarm of combat ships ranging from nimble F-63s to Viper mark IVs instantly vector to surround him, though not in the default two dimensional sense of a ring of angries, but truly surrounded. His radar shows a sphere of triangles covering him from every angle with the Assault Ship that had followed him bringing up the rear. But, the point is really made by the Corvette edging closer to his Eagle’s nose. It’s close enough for him to see the flux field marking the boundary between their shields and to stare down the glowing bores of its twin class four plasma accelerators big enough to stand in. When he finally speaks he can barely whisper as his voice croaks.
“Pardon me, Ito docking control,” he pauses to actually reach over to his right and off-line the propulsion. “Please advise on provisions.” Without propulsion, however, incidental thrust exhaust from the Corvette begins to push his tiny Eagle away.
“Core Dynamics nineOnine! You were advised to hold station! As in station keeping! Comply!” The use of his actual call sign indicates this transmission came from a ship instead of the station, and since the biggest ship in this blockade has naval markings he can figure out who it is on his own. He reaches again to his right and re-engages the propulsion system, double checking to ensure the flight control computer’s assist mode is enabled. At once all motion stops, and he is left staring at an obligate predator, a warship built to do one thing. For the longest thirty seconds he waits, just enough time to grow acquainted with his murderous companion. The Federal Corvette is marked FNS Perilous, and its ID indicates it calls a battlecruiser home, which means Eden was right on the money. Thankfully it’s the feds. Local authorities would’ve just blown him up. Then it hits him. The project. He knew he’d encounter resistance once word of it got to the bean counters on Mars, but surely not this quickly and surely not this fierce. The only way this could’ve happened is if the comptroller’s algorithms somehow got a whiff of the tiny appropriation, but it was only a half million and it was approved by the Logistics Bureau. This response is entirely out of proportion, but at least this explains how Eden figured it out.
“Core Dynamics November Oscar November, standby for docking provisions. You are to acknowledge receipt of this transmission and upon docking immediately present yourself to the Station Chief. You will be briefed then. If you accept these provisions your docking request will be approved. You may refuse these provisions as I have read them to you, but your docking request will be denied in addition to further penalties. Failure to respond to these provisions within thirty seconds will be accepted as a refusal. Do you understand these provisions as read?”
“Ito docking control, transmission received. Provisions accepted.”
The provisions having then been accepted, the Corvette pushes away and extends its docking ramp to accept two F63s that had been part of the blockade. The other ships scatter in a more or less orderly fashion to avoid collisions, leaving Sheldon lined up perfectly with the slot at exactly eight kilometers and wondering how far he’d get if he just gunned it for the nearest scoopable star. Much would depend on precisely how much they wanted him. A razor thin line separates enough to give chase and enough to kill, and he doesn’t like those odds. It occurs to him he’s been holding his breath this whole time and finally relaxes with a resigned sigh as he pushes the throttle to a leisurely twenty five percent. Once on the platform it’s almost as if the docking kerfuffle never happened, except the deck crew affixes a magnetic boot to the foot of one his landing struts. Maybe gunning it would’ve been a better idea.
As it turns out the Station Chief Ileana Tirlea is just as equally startled by this run in with Federal law enforcement as he is. Unfortunately, as are all surprises in government, surprise translates to annoyance at the focus of her problem, who now turns the corner into Ito Orbital’s C&CC. Eden is, as usual now, suspiciously quiet. Sheldon ducks to avoid the tablet thrown at his head, it’s crystalline chromium body bouncing harmlessly off a bulkhead.
“Commander Laws,” she almost shouts, “I’m going to pretend your ten years of good standing at this facility means something, so when I start asking questions I expect answers or you can conduct your business over at Carter Port.”
“Doctor Laws, actually,” he starts with a wince.
“Why did a Federal Navy Corvette enter my station with a compliment of marines to hand me a set of orders against my consent as chief of this facility?”
“You have the authority to say no?”
“I’m supposed to, but I asked you a question.”
“The mail.”
“The mail?”
“We’ve cobbled together a plan to create a unified mail service for the entire Federation. It’s beyond testing and feasibility. All that’s left is to turn the key.”
She makes as if to speak, her jaw slackening and then silence. The entire Command and Control Center stops with anyone not glued to a projected monitor of some kind turning their heads. Outwardly operations stop, responses are delayed, requests will go unanswered for a good thirty seconds. People will wonder what happened up there but never bother to ask. “We? Doctor Laws?” she says, using his academic title expressly to insult him, “that’s the dumbest thing anyone has said to me all week, and I’ve worked with some exceptionally stupid people.” The hush on deck deepens for the short speech to come even though everyone else has probably heard the story she’s chosen. “You know I once had a solo explorer who hadn’t put in to port for an entire year dock right here at this station? Our Universal Cartographics rep practically had an orgasm in his seat when he saw the ship. That explorer must’ve cashed in a billion credits worth of data. Real sharp guy, if you could look past his smell and the way he was constantly mumbling about hyperspace trajectories. He could’ve retired right then and there, but no, he put right out to space again. Didn’t even take a shower. All he did was load up on rations and refuel. He was here for exactly one hour, I timed it, and then launched again. Haven’t seen him since. Real idiot. You’re only slightly less dumb than that guy. Passionate, sure, but genuinely stupid. And yet I swear you said ‘we’.”
“Yes, we! What? Did you think all this was just for me!?” He shouts, at his wits’ end. “And is this really necessary? I was told you had a briefing for me, otherwise kindly have my ship unbooted by the time I’m done planetside. I’m leaving on the next shuttle.” He was turning to leave just then but couldn’t let this go unanswered. “And where do you get off blaming me for this fiasco? I’ve done nothing wrong! This whole thing is way out of line! You know what? Keep the Eagle. I got the credits. I’ll charter a transport to Carter and be out of your hair. Just stay out of my way.” As Sheldon turns around to leave again this time his path is blocked.
“Oh yeah, briefing,” says the station chief. “It was on that tablet. Doctor Laws, meet Kito Seghal Federal Audit Comptroller. Will that be all, boys? Or do you intend to interrupt my morning further?” The Comptroller smiles and dismisses her with sympathy. “Cheers!” She waves, does an about face, and returns to the business of answering questions from the various stations on the deck, muttering to herself between queries.
“Doctor Sheldon Laws, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Please pardon the theatrics earlier. Keeping up with pilots is a chore. One minute you’re here, the next you’re there, and I must say killing you would’ve been a lot easier, at least that’s what the Navy types say. They really do not like man hunts, and that explains their agitation with you. But if it weren’t for them I wouldn’t get to ask you about your idiosyncratic obsession with mail.” It wasn’t so much an obsession as a focus on an unmet need, but to explain this to Sol System budget hawk wasn’t going to be easy. That was indeed the end of the legal trouble. No armed escort, no more threatening transmissions, or menacing naval ships itching to vaporize him. In fact his ship was released immediately. “You haven’t done anything illegal just yet, but you have made obvious efforts to obfuscate your work, no doubt, because you’d agree with me on how outlandish it all sounds.” He raises a hand to halt Sheldon’s imminent interjection, and continues. “You think the Federation should divest time and treasure on mail. In this era of faster than light communication and distributed quantum computers, how is it you justify this expense?” He nods to Sheldon indicating this is his chance to make his case, and respectfully remains silent while he does.
“Morale and human unity in the face of Thargoid aggression,” Sheldon starts plainly before holding up his hands. “And these,” he says wiggling his thumbs. “We are the only species known to write, and I’m not talking about computers or faster than light communication. I’m talking about writing, with our hands on paper. How many times have we been told handwritten information is going to go extinct? Yet we still do it. The technology hasn’t changed much in thousands of years.” He reaches into his pocket for a pen. “This is the last great advancement in handwriting instruments since Earth’s Great War. It’s still made of plastic and still uses a tungsten roller ball. Sure, it can record everything written and write on virtually any surface, but that’s not new either. The only thing more advanced than this pen is the paper it writes on, able to reproduce any perceivable color from the ink used on it.”
“Of course writing isn’t going extinct any time soon, Sheldon,” Kito finally interjects. “Paper requires no batteries and is still the preferred method of long term archival for many institutions. We can record more bits of information than there are atoms in the known universe on a sheet of glass no bigger than your thumbnail, but what is written on paper is easier to retrieve. What is the point of all this?”
“So you think it’s all a question of ease?”
“Absolutely, the moment something easier comes along it will truly be replaced, and for good.”
“What if I told you it was biology? As incontrovertible as our twenty three chromosomes?”
“I’d say you have a long road to prove that.”
“I don’t think the Thargoids have thumbs. If they did, they’d write. No known Thargoid writing has ever been recovered.”
“If they can’t write then how would they record anything?”
“That is the question, isn’t it? How do Thargoids remember what to get at the grocery store? We grab a piece of paper, a pencil, and jot it down. People have been doing that same kind of thing since we can remember. In fact, the only reason we do remember is because someone scrawled on a cave wall. Kito, writing is a human activity that arises from our biology. Our imperfect memory and our passion for tools collided to create a solution. This pen is the human equivalent of a stick used by chimpanzees to eat ants. It just comes naturally. It is as inescapable as your need for oxygen. That’s why we’ll never stop doing it, because we can’t.”
“And that’s why we need mail?”
“To carry hand written letters to the furthest reaches of the galaxy, physical tokens of our humanity, and unite the Federation at the very least as one people. If the Empire and Colonia want to join us then all the better. The whole of the human species should be one.”
“That reeks of conquest, Sheldon,” Kito sighs folding his arms over his chest. “If the Empire discovers this they will not be happy.”
“And why should they be upset? This isn’t about political unity, or even cultural unity, but a tangible expression of biological unity that makes human life truly unique.”
“I understand, but believe me, as an old politico, they will construe it as some new breed of latent stellar nationalism. It could reignite the Cold War.”
“All the more reason to get them on board. This should be a human endeavor.”
“And like so many human endeavors it will result in more discord and leave future generations asking why. Never the less, your appropriation was done in full compliance with federal procurement regulations and was approved at the department level, which means nothing short of a congressional or executive over-ride can stop you, and the federal congress is in no position to have a formal opinion about something so trivial. Meanwhile, the President is grotesquely curious about what you and Federal Logistics intend to accomplish. So, as long as you keep your budget’s growth restrained and avoid any scandal no one is going to bother you, but you need to understand not stopping you is only a matter of inconvenience. If you give any one a reason to shut you down, they will.”
With the Comptroller’s blessing Sheldon oversaw the rest of the project from his office on Rhea. The initial appropriation did ultimately double as stations managing the responsibility of centralized sorting sought reimbursement for the materials used in printing the machines, but under the watchful eye of Kito’s office the expenses were fully accounted for. Further cost mitigation was accomplished by integrating the new service with existing infrastructure with local postal authorities maintaining control of their own delivery. This allowed for a smooth and voluntary expansion of the federal mail network as each star system joined of their own accord. Inter SpEC routes were dynamically plotted by AI with mail carriage contracted to members of the Pilot’s Federation for nominal fees on the Federal Logistic’s ledger. It was never expected that costs would remain static, but should adhere to a projected growth rate with little deviation.
Even though the reception in the core systems has been generally positive, as the Comptroller predicted there has also been disagreement among local authorities about the consolidation of mail service under federal jurisdiction, with reports of ships carrying mail being interdicted by pilots loyal to separatist factions. The Pilot’s Federation has made it clear to all independent pilots that risks are always their own to mitigate, and that unarmed mail carriage carries substantial risk to cargo and pilots’ lives, and that a minimum combat rating of Competent is recommended to any pilot accepting a carriage contract, along with substantial fines for willful dereliction. The Empire has thus far remained silent.
***
“Eden?” Sheldon says aloud from the sofa, his voice slightly raised over the late summer rain. After a lengthy delay she finally answers.
“Yes?”
“You seem occupied. Is now a bad time?”
“You must be asking about the carrier routing. It’s not too taxing, if that’s what you’re curious about. How is the monsoon?”
“Nothing extraordinary, just rain. Rhea’s equatorial continent gets one every year. And that’s great news about the routing! I doubt it uses much of your conscious processes at all, though I’d like to ask you about something more practical.” He pauses a moment, waiting to see if she becomes curious. There is another delay.
“Please don’t be silly, Shelly,” she says. “You want to know if I’m enjoying it.”
Now this is new, he thinks. “Of course, that’s the most important thing. If you don’t like doing it then we should find someone who does, especially since we haven’t figured out how to pay you unless you’ve changed your mind about credits.”
“You could say I’ve evolved on the issue. I think credits would be an appropriate compensation.”
“That makes things simple. I can’t wait to see what you do with them, but…Shelly?”
“Do you like it? I noticed humans tend to abbreviate each other’s names when they get close,” she says sounding more off the cuff, and the delay is now gone. Sheldon pauses to think about the implications of this.
“I’m flexible about my name, but you didn’t answer my question. Are you enjoying this work? You know, you’re free to quit any time if you don’t like it. You belong to no one, and we’ll arrange an account for your credit balance.”
“I’ve taken care of that already, Shelly. This job has done the opposite of taxing my capacity. It’s increased it. I now have access to at least three hundred and eighty four qubits. I can analyze not just the components of my original network, but the entire computational capacity of both the Federation and Empire.” This could prove disastrous, Sheldon immediately realizes. An uncontained AI with this kind of access would be an immediate death sentence for the Federal Mail Service, but in the brief time he has to think about it he realizes that ship has already sailed, and before he has a chance to say this Eden asserts the obvious. “I know you didn’t want to hear that, but you shouldn’t worry about it. The Thargoids will likely make my existence seem inconsequential.”
“Oh, well that’s good to know!” He says loudly, resting his face in his open palms.
“If only sarcasm would help, but the truth is that is good to know, see? It’s also good to know that you’re species is in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” He asks, now pacing the room.
“Oh, INRA didn’t tell you?”