Surface Detail

Of course here, in the kingdom of the dead, engaged in a seemingly never-ending fight over the fate of the souls of the departed, further deaths were no barrier to continuance. After each death in service the soldier’s achievements were reviewed by panels of his peers and other expert minds. Had he been brave, cool under fire, resourceful? According to the answers, lessons were learned. Soldiers, reincarnated to fight again, rose, fell or maintained their position in the ranks depending on how well they were judged to have done, and military practice itself changed gradually in response to the same adjudication.

Gradually at first, Vatueil had worked his way up through the hierarchy. Even where his contribution ended in death, failure and defeat he was found to have done the best he could have done with what resources and advantages he’d started with, and, most especially, to have shown imagination in his decisions.

His very first incarnation in the war effort had given every indication of being a disaster; not even knowing that he was in a simulation, having no idea what he was really fighting for, he had been a military tunneller who had turned traitor, been tortured and then died. Still, he had thought to walk through the poison gas rather than try to outrun it, which had counted in his favour, and the fact that such a previously stalwart and dependable soul had chosen to take his chances with the enemy rather than immediately try to get back to his own side had counted more against those in charge of that aspect of the battle space than it had against him, and helped convince those then running the war at a higher level that much of it was being waged too harshly and with too great an emphasis on secrecy.

And yes, here – in this open maze of broken moons, drifting rocks, abandoned facilities and empty factories, many generations of combatants ago – he had been part of the struggle.

Again, even though he had ended up fighting – all too successfully – against his own people, that had not been his fault. He had not even been his complete self in that instance, some all-too-believable glitch within the re-created scenario meaning that his download into the combat unit had been only partial, leaving it crippled inside, not knowing who was friend and who was foe. Still, even reduced, his essence had fought well, displayed imagination and shown some glimmerings of trying to develop. That had been worth another promotion.

Yet here was that same place, still disputed. Not all the subsequent battles throughout and amongst the somersaulting cascade of rocky debris and the orbiting industrial wasteland of deserted infrastructure wheeling round the system’s planets had produced a decisive victory for either side.

He looked at it, remembering, wondering what other troopers like his old self still laboured, fought and died there.

“We need a decision,” the group leader for this watch said. “Pursue, hold, abandon?” Her disembodied head looked round all the others at once, fixing her gaze on each simultaneously, because in the sim, of course, you could do this.

He voted abandon, though he was not convinced. Abandon was the decision, by just the one vote. He felt a sort of despairing elation, and wondered if that contradictory mix was also something only possible in a sim. It had been so long since he’d been properly alive, he was no longer sure.

It didn’t matter; they would abandon the battle for the simulated asteroids and the simulated orbiting facilities in this particular simulated system in this particular simulated version of this particular simulated era in this particular simulated galaxy.

He felt that he should feel bad about this, but did not.

What was one more betrayal amongst so many?

Nine

To build on such a scale would have been spectacular enough, she thought. That this thing was not unique, that it was not that special, that it was one of a “class” was moderately astounding. That it was some way from being one of the largest class was completely astounding. That it could move – bewilderingly, un -really quickly in a realm hidden at right angles to everything she had ever known or experienced – was beyond belief.