Chapter Seven

In what already felt like her previous life, Sofia was trained to find patterns where it was very likely none existed. Certainly, most of her time in the lab was spent maintaining the machines that did the actual monitoring, but the whole reason her job still existed was that you occasionally needed a human to make a decision. Machine power had come a startling way along in the last two or three centuries, but there was simply no replacement for the human mind. And as it turned out, one thing that humans could do much better than machines like Sai was connecting the dots, finding patterns in the stars.

Like every other delegate aboard Audacity she had spent a month in quarantine back home, submitting to daily medical tests and no outside contact. From there she had boarded the shuttle with the other delegates for a three-month ride, and while the sixty-odd people aboard were fine company it remained a cramped scene, socially speaking. As a consequence, when the shuttle finally docked and they were allowed to sit in the grand chamber and hear the evening speeches, and later reconvene for an evening mixer, the relatively tiny space station suddenly felt like the largest, most populous place she could fathom. Her head spun at the sight of over two hundred people mingling and chatting, after four months of isolation. She had found a pattern without meaning to – the system of boarding Audacity seemed to inadvertently acclimatise its inhabitants to being part of such a small community.

The mixer had music – inoffensive and generically “classical” string music (whatever that meant), piped from invisible speakers – an enormous buffet, and even some modest supplies of alcohol. She tried a beer that a placard informed her was brewed on Earth: Garden – dark, murky, and surprisingly sweet – and noted how few of her colleagues were enjoying the same drink. She didn’t trust the most reticent faction any more than anyone else, but she could at least drink their beer.

There was a queue down the centre of the function room of people wanting to meet the King of Earth: Herald. He stood at one end shaking hands like this was his own special appearance. Sofia supposed that when you were as important as a king, every appearance you had made in your life was special. Until now, she thought.

A part of her wanted to get in the queue to ask him just who he thought he was, walking around like he owned the place, when Earth: Carmen were the ones who had built the station and his planet had supplied so little to help – but it was still the first day. There would be time for all that. Instead, she approached a pair of Garden delegates, still dressed to the nines in their military uniforms. One was a man, but she couldn’t tell the other’s gender straight away. Gaean, like her native tongue, had provisions for referring to people ambiguously in that regard, but despite month of learning the language the exact terms escaped her right now. She avoided any indirect address for that reason, hoping it didn’t come off as passive aggressive. As it turned out she needn’t have worried, as their Gaean was worse even than hers. Either that, or they didn’t feel much like talking.

Their names were Graves and Jenks, and they both introduced themselves with ranks – Sergeant and Private respectively. Graves was a scientist while Jenks was an interpreter and assistant to one of the four Colonels aboard the station. Both had been on the scene the first day the rift had opened. Sofia wanted to ask why exactly that qualified them for the delegate position, but there was every chance they could throw the question back in her own face. Amongst all these Drs, Lords, and Sergeants, she was all too aware of her status as a señorita. Instead, she asked whether they had been given any trouble when their shuttle embarked. She knew that the war on Garden was fought at least partially above the Earth, and presumed that the departure of a spaceship containing fifty important diplomats must have been noticed.

Jenks nodded. “They tried to knock us out the sky, but we were ready for them. We had decoy shuttles as well as fighters running interference, so we made it away.”

“Decoy shuttles?” said Sofia, knowing better than to ask who they were. “As in replicas? Who was aboard those?”

“Nobody. Well, no delegates. Just a pilot and maybe a gunner. They would have launched from different points on the planet at the same time, gone up for a few hours, then landed again.”

“Was anybody hurt? I mean, did they get anyone?”

Graves and Jenks looked at each other, and the former said “We don’t know. The communicators never said, so I assume it was fine. The mission was a success, though – we got here.”

Sofia felt a chill. She wondered if there was much small talk on Garden that didn’t end in counting casualties and mission statuses. She nodded and excused herself, taking another sip of her beer.

On her own shuttle, the delegates had all talked amongst themselves about an agenda. They drew up a list of priorities that they wanted to address in the early days of the first term – things that needed to be established earlier rather than later. Rules for movement through the rift, classification of both exclusive and non-exclusive (meaning found on multiple planets) goods for trade, the potential to build embassies on one another’s worlds, the building of a centralised informational resource, the rights of machines on planets that did not have them, and a bill of human rights that all planets could agree on as the minimum another life should be afforded. All these were brought up and agreed as priorities, but Sofia and a minor contingent of the Carmen delegates were insistent that there should be another – discovering exactly how and why the rift opened in the first place. Related to this was a project that mapped the specific histories and divergences of each planet’s timeline – the assumption had always been that each universe was split off from another by some decision made differently or some roll of a die, and that if they could pinpoint the exact divergence points of each universe they might gain some insight into just why they had all been brought together, and possibly even the nature of free will itself.

She was quickly shouted down, albeit in the faux-reasonable highly logical manner common to her peers. They argued that even if the divergence theory was accurate, there would be absolutely no way to determine which decisions spawned any other universes, let alone the tiny sample size of four that they had. On top of which, was it was the job of this Parliament to ask questions of philosophy? Did that make peoples’ lives better back home? Did it advance Surplus? Did it, in short, matter?

In the moment, she had no good responses to that, and that was all it took for the matter to be considered buried. She knew her position in the delegation – she was the voice of the youth, and little else. Nobody had told her that she was of a lower rank than the other delegates; in fact, the intent was the opposite. As back on Earth, nobody in the delegation had a higher station than anyone else, and everyone treated each other with something resembling respect. But as back on Earth, that didn’t necessarily happen in practice. She was routinely talked over by other people who didn’t even know they were doing it, and who would later ask her thoughts on a narrow “youth” issue. That was her function, just like a machine. Except even machines got a better deal than her on the shuttle.

Her hope was that now, among all the other planets’ delegates, she might find a niche that would afford her more respect. If that meant allying with another faction, so be it; there was no planetary whip that demanded they vote together. She was going to find the people who were looking for the truth, even if that meant putting other planets before her own.

She saw Sai make their way over to the buffet where she had gotten lost in thought. When they had gotten their assignment to Audacity Sai had to choose a body, which Sofia knew made them uncomfortable. But a physical presence was a necessity up here that wasn’t always the case back home; it would be hard to negotiate and interact with others as a projected three-square pattern. “hola, sofia,” they said in C-Castilian. Delegates were gently discouraged from using non-Gaean languages in public functions, so as not to alienate other delegates, but she’d noticed that everyone else was doing it already, so she replied in kind.

“Hi, Sai. Having fun?”

“sort of. talked to a herald kid who seemed to not know that i had a brain. was half tempted to take off my face and show him.”

“You didn’t, did you?”

“no. but the next person who calls me an ai… seriously. you’d think that they would do their research. did i see you talking with the garden folks over there? any light shed on, you know, their whole deal?”

“Not so much. They were shot at while trying to leave the planet, though.”

“hell. i can’t say i’m in a rush to visit.”

“I hear that. Listen, have you seen the list of Presidential nominees?”

“seen it? i’m on it!”

“You are? I didn’t spot your name. Maybe because there’s like a hundred people on there.”

“yeah, it’s a mess. i heard an edoer call it a clusterfuck, which i’m for sure using in future. you know your systems, right? what did they screw up?”

Sofia was surprised by the question. Sai had always been kind to her, but she hadn’t expected them to ask her opinion.

“Well, you needed three nominees to get on the list. Maybe that wasn’t enough – it could have been ten, or twenty. And maybe they should have said that at least, I don’t know, five of those had to be from a different planet.”

“good. that might have worked. i was thinking that if you nominated someone you couldn’t run yourself – that would put a serious limit down. i’m hearing that a lot of people have just formed groups of four and all nominated each other.”

“Maybe, but that would probably mean no nominations until the last minute – people wouldn’t nominate early if they want to keep their options open.”

“right. still, too late now. though there’s always next time; it might be an idea to change these rules sooner rather than later.”

“We can do that?” she asked.

“sure we can. we make the laws, remember? the constitution doesn’t say anything about how the president or vice president are chosen, just that we need them before we can introduce bills. it’s not just elections too – there’s a whole process here that’s only half-designed.”

Sofia mulled this over. Sai’s expression was animated – both literally and figuratively. They were fired up about this, and she had to admit it was within her wheelhouse. But there was trepidation too. She remembered what the older, more experienced men on the shuttle had so confidently said. “Aren’t there real issues to deal with first? What will people back home think if the first thing they see is us stalling like this, futzing with the rules before addressing the big questions? What would you say to them?”

Sai gave her an odd look. They had been friends long enough that Sai could see right through her. “i’d say it has to happen some time. there has to be a good system in place or everything that follows will be rotten. not to mention that the later we finally go over this stuff, the harder it will be to change.”

“Makes sense. So this is your agenda? Your platform for President?”

“more or less. it’s a starting point, anyway. and i’m thinking that if i get elected i’ll name you an ascendant, with this as your portfolio. if you want it. or something else.”

An ascendant was a close advisor to the President given special privileges, including a certain number of vetoes and the right to support any bill through a committee. It was a powerful role, and one that Sofia couldn’t have imagined getting. She knew she was being pandered to right now, that Sai was using their friendship as currency. But what the hell, she was buying. She nodded and tapped her chest by her heart – what other worlds would have thought of as a handshake, when faced with a person who doesn’t have hands. They went their separate ways for now; Sai had more people to approach, more votes to win.

She didn’t think, for now, about whether Sai would be a good President. They were smart and diligent, she knew, and they could turn off the smartass act when they needed to. What’s more, there had to be an advantage to having a leader who didn’t need to sleep. There was a question of electability – for all that the other worlds had accepted machines among their delegation, Sofia didn’t think they would all jump at the chance to be ruled by one. But she didn’t expect that too many more offers like the one she had just received would be coming her way, so why not hitch her horse to this race?

She put the thought aside and went to fetch another Garden beer – she had grown to enjoy the taste. Again she turned to scout out the room, finding that the King’s queue had vanished, and he stood alone but for the advisors surrounding him. Before she could look away his eyes shot across the room and met hers, and he raised a hand in greeting. She tilted her head upward in a half-nod, not in the mood to make much more effort than that. To her surprise, he began to walk towards her, and she had the strangest instinct to flee. Instead she stood her ground and waited until he was right next to her by the wall.

“Good evening, Your Glory,” she said as he approached. The King nodded, presumably in approval of her correct address.

“Good evening to you – Sofia, wasn’t it? I remember from the speeches.”

“Indeed,” she replied, “Sofia Castillo. I can’t say the speech was my finest hour, though. It certainly didn’t have the impact of your own.”

He smiled. “It does seem to have everyone abuzz, does it not? I note that a few other names have nominated themselves for the Presidency too. Are you among the pack?”

“Oh no, sir. I mean, Your Glory. I don’t think I quite have what it takes.”

Self-deprecation is typical on Carmen, and the usual politeness maxims would instruct the other speaker to try to deny it, thereby making the first speaker feel better. Apparently, they had no such maxims on Earth: Herald. “Probably sensible. Besides, it makes you a free agent, so to speak, which I sense might be vastly more powerful. Do you think you’ll be joining my faction in voting for me?”

Sofia became aware, somewhere in the back of her head, that if she wavered or equivocated on this question then it would lead her down a path of indecision for the entirety of her term. If ever she was going to put her foot down, it needed to be now. Then again, maybe that was the Garden beer talking.

Whatever the cause, she said: “No, sir, I wouldn’t say so. I don’t believe that anybody is born with the right to rule, and that your power on your own Earth doesn’t extend as far as the rest of us. Moreover, it’s my intention to vote for a President who seeks to service this station rather than expect this station to serve him.”

She had broken every rule there was about talking to the King, but if he was fazed he didn’t show it. Instead he nodded, as though agreeing with her. “Well,” he said, “I’m disappointed to hear that. I would perhaps ask you to consider it more logically, however; I was led to believe that rationality is the typical ethos of your planet. You are no doubt aware that my entire faction is committed to voting for me, and since they comprise a full quarter of the total electors…well, do you really think it likely that any other candidate can muster that level of support?”

Sofia frowned. “So you’re saying that I should vote for you because you’re most likely to win?”

“So to speak. It’s good to be on the winning team, is it not?”

“I don’t…” Sofia shook her head in frustration. It was the senior delegates on the shuttle all over again. She knew that he was wrong, that his argument made no sense, but she couldn’t quite put it into words. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re winning – there aren’t teams – is this really… is this really the best start for the Parliament? To devolve into factionalism straight away?”

Sofia was aware that people around her were watching them talk; she didn’t think she had raised her voice, but perhaps the mere presence of the King was enough for people to take notice. He seemed oblivious to the audience, however. “Factionalism has its place, señorita Castillo. Think of the -‘’ here he turned to an aide and said something in H-Greek, searching for the Gaean translation – “millennia of history we have spent alone, working towards global unification – something only our respective planets have achieved thus far. There is simply no avoiding it. My faction will vote together because we are stronger that way. I suggest you get used to that reality before you too are left behind.”

Arguments piled up in her head, but to her frustration she could voice none of them. Seeing that she had nothing to add, the King smiled again and said “We’ll talk again, I’m sure.”

With that he swept away, leaving Sofia still holding her beer but with a suddenly empty radius. Everyone who had been watching considered the matter completed and moved away just as swiftly. Only Sai met her eye, putting their arm to their chest in subtle solidarity. She felt herself turn red. More private conversations were perhaps the way to go on Audacity.

Over time the function room began to thin out. Perhaps it was the second loop of the orchestral playlist, or the diminishment of the beer supply, or perhaps delegates had simply run out of polite icebreakers. Sofia had met an Edo über-landlord, a Herald lady with no real job as far as Sofia could tell, and countless interchangeable Garden mooks. She tried to avoid returning to the relative comfort of her snooty Earth: Carmen associates, but even the insulation that the station staff tried to provide could only cushion so much culture shock. Instead, she returned to her office/apartment, one of fifty identical rooms in the Carmen accommodation. The rooms were stacked on top of one another with walkways connecting the two sides, like a pair of skyscrapers that ended in more wall instead of sky. Someone had strung fairy lights from one balcony.

Once inside she picked up her device – she had left it on her bed, though she suspected she would need to get used to carrying it around. At the mixer, most everyone else had kept it in their pockets or in a bag, constantly pulling them out to check something – a delegates’ name, perhaps, or who nominated who for the Presidency. For the other worlds, she understood, but any Earth: Carmen delegate with an augment of equal or higher power than her own oculus didn’t need to physically hold the device to get that information. Perhaps they didn’t want to stand out. Now she knew how they felt.

Still, she picked it up and scrolled through the lists of names by swiping her finger across the screen. Swiping to the right brought up the list of proposed bills before the Parliament – empty right now, but for the “Bill to Nominate and Confirm The First President of the Parliament of Audacity”. The device could do more, she knew, but she didn’t have the energy to play with it more – her head was full of potential responses to the King, far too late to be of use. She dropped it onto her desk and set it to sleep, but as she prepared to do so herself the device blinked awake with a ding! sound. She had a message.

Sofia reached over and opened it. It was from the Herald woman she had met – Lady Marcia Kouris, as the device informed her. The message was short – it said:

I didn’t want to say while there were so many people around, but I heard you debating the King on factionalism. I have to say I quite agree. Let’s do something about it.