Polity Agent

‘Hey, Logan,’ Harris squirmed, rubbed at his face, scratched the crook of his arm—generally gave a good impression of what Miranda was doing as she sat beside Logan. ‘I need a private word.’

Doctor Logan took up his kitbag and followed Harris into the gloom under the pines. It did not take long and was surprisingly easy. Harris chopped him across the throat, swept his feet out from underneath him, then came down with a full-force axe kick on his chest. While Logan gurgled and gagged, Harris turned him over on his front, grabbed his elbows and with a knee pressing into Logan’s back, pulled hard, snapping the man’s spine. He pocketed the gun and threw the kitbag into a stream as he walked away. But that night he knew, another Logan would be along some time soon.

The world was full of Logans.

— retroact ends -

7

Much has been theorized from the Darson/Dragon dialogues, but with Dragon’s pronouncements being Delphic, convoluted and sometimes just plain crazy, really not much has been learned. Dragon has claimed to be an emissary from an advanced civilization, also something that just grew on Aster Colora and outlived all other lifeforms there (though there is absolutely no fossil evidence of this) and on one memorable occasion claimed to be God. On another occasion, driven almost mad by his lack of progress and on the worst side of a bottle of BelaVodka, Darson began screaming and throwing rocks at Dragon.

‘You are upset,’ Dragon noted.

Darson’s reply is not worth recording here, suffice to say that it demonstrated his facility with languages. Later, when he calmed down a little, he asked, ‘Why always so fucking Delphic? Are you incapable of giving a straight answer?’

Dragon replied, ‘I am the white stone bound with the red ribbon.’

Though Darson returned to the city, where he further exercised his liver, some very high-level AIs got rather excited about that particular statement. A little research reveals that the temple at Delphi contained a white stone bound with a red ribbon — the former said to represent a navel and the latter said to represent an umbilicus. The AIs felt this proved that Dragon did indeed represent some civilization, to which it was somehow still connected, bound.

- From ‘How it Is’ by Gordon

‘Maker technology is based on Jain technology,’ Cormac suggested. Waving a hand, he dispelled the two holograms and inserted another one in their place. Now hovering in the air was the guardian creature that killed Gant on Samarkand. ‘You are based on Jain technology.’

‘There went something else,’ said Mika.

Through his gridlink Cormac sent, ‘I understand the Delphic pronouncements, the lies, the half truths. Do you understand what is happening now? What has always been happening?’

‘I understand,’ Jerusalem replied.

‘Would somebody explain?’ asked Mika.

‘Dragon is, and has always been, fighting its Maker base programming,’ Jerusalem told her.

‘Oh,’ said Mika, and nothing more.