Intergalactic Summit

Blood - bright red, electric on the bright white marble. And screams. I remember the screams.

Funny, I don’t remember much from that time – mostly vivid still pictures. Dreams. I have dreams that include these pictures but they have changed so much through my lives that I scarcely know what pieces could be true. And what is true to a 16 year old? The ghost, some of my sisters call it. That piece of conscience that tickles the brain – left over from my first meat shell. Meat. We have become so advanced technologically that we can build anything our physics can imagine from the atomic level. Yet our awareness has never found a vehicle free from the salty organo-muck residing behind calcified brows.

Maybe next year.

So back to the question. No, I don’t remember much of life on the Estates. House Mirat, at least that older dirt-side form, was nothing but a series of farms: food, nanotech, human labor. Nanotech was steady but the margins were so slim that all it took was getting caught out on the supply side and you would generally bankrupt the plant. And we did. Many times. My father was determined to modernize but never seemed to realize that he was already too late to the industry. Nanotech had long since become commoditized and was only profitable for a brief time while rebuilding industrial infrastructure following the wars.

And slave breeding. Somehow House Mirat managed to have the rights to several genetic lines which produced higher than average numbers of civil engineers. Don’t ask me why, I have absolutely no idea. I stayed away from that end of the business. Slavery is the number one public relations nightmare that we Amarrians have and has directly, in my opinion, contributed to our inability to unify this cluster under the Empress. Unfortunately the institution is so structurally integrated into our economy that to excise it could kill the patient. It is a rabid slaverhound held by the ears: one can neither afford to hold on nor to let go. My father had the singular honor of having our patents on these prize genetic lines expire during his chairmanship.

Bad luck, really.

And why I think he kept hammering away at the nanotech, trying to figure out a way to make money at it. He was desperate, you see, desperate to find some way, any way, to replace that money. We were about to lose our place at court. Only by a greater House’s good graces (and a hefty fee from us) were we granted access rights to certain key ministries.

But I knew. The revolution was coming. I had already begun to hear rumors amongst the more connected youths of my station: immortality was coming for those who could afford it. But it came with a price. Near total seclusion. In the early years one could only survive in controlled environments free from contamination. But once you were scanned and plugged in, your “you-ness” would survive your body’s demise. It was the future of the human race. From that point on there would be two species in the cluster: the immortals and the baseline humans.

My father was determined to get a part of the new technology but we had run out of capital at the wrong time. Borrowing against most of the House’s assets, he leased a facility doing the procedure and marketed the procedure to his successful nanotech competitors. One of them agreed. It was the financial deal that would secure our place at court. But I knew. Remarketing immortality would never save our House. We needed to BE immortal. On the one hand, I was gambling the present of the house against an unknown future. On the other, I was a young, impetuous prince who refused to allow others to become immortal if I couldn’t.

My father vehemently disagreed over the future of the House. To use our one licensed procedure for ourselves would bankrupt House Mirat and insure the permanent loss of our court access. For what? To let *me*, for it must be me – I insisted on it, to let me become a playboy amongst the stars never to return? No macroeconomic model, no pleas for his leadership to execute a vision would sway him. In the end he threatened to have my accesses to House finances revoked.

So I killed him.

The details of our struggle remain largely a mystery to me. A victim of “selective deemphasis”, I’m told. Each life, you see, if you are repressing memories from a former life, they become harder to recall. Blood - bright red, electric on the bright white marble. And screams. I remember the screams.

Desperation is a gambler.

One of the most disconcerting things about meeting immortals is never really knowing if you are speaking to the same person. While not considering the issue of body-spoofing, there is still something different about every immortal I’ve ever encountered depending on the body they happen to be in. Mental augmentations and specializations change your perspective of the universe. And, not coincidentally, change how you deal with your peers. Strange enough, I don’t have a problem dealing with immortals boosted for combat; their world outlook is reassuringly direct. It’s the bright and shiny bodies with full cerebral implants that make me feel real fear. When your most intelligent, capable, strategic body is vaporized there is a moment of self-doubt – “perhaps I really am only human” - before the anger presents itself.

And when dealing with the most ancient of immortals, even more so.

These creatures, cold, cunning, callous, I am convinced, do not see the world as most of us immortals do. For most of us, you see, immortality is a path to riches in order to benefit those we love or to make ourselves feel important and above all the petty squabbles the rest of our pathetic species babbles on about. But the ancients, so disconnected from humanity, do not feel these empathetic human drives. Instead, I am convinced, they see the universe as a series of power flows: measurable, effectible, mutable.

None more so than the inscrutable Mr. B.

When ancient, unknown benefactors drop from the proverbial sky, check your wallet. Or so said my unfortunate, deceased father. After one encounter with Mr. B my wallet had swollen a hundredfold. And that was for lunch. Odd how little specie means to someone who deals in power flows. My youth, my faith, my family, my patricide. All presented to me in vivid definition. The experience of having your secrets and sins exposed – and getting paid a billion credits to suffer through it – cannot be described. Apparently I had been under surveillance from ascension. And “chosen” as a partner in immortality.

Desperation is a gambler. I was desperate on that fateful day over the marble. Driven by the impotency of my father, the pressure of princedom, terrorized by family, I took a desperate gamble and paid the ultimate price: my humanity. And once spent, that self-same humanity had me gasping for any option, however unlikely, to salvage a sense of self from the emotional wreckage.

Screams. Blood. Loathing.

I’m not sure if Mr. B. had quantified who and what I was from an emotional standpoint. Perhaps he had my psyche represented in a 4 dimensional brain vid, or maybe I was just a percentage success potential in his multi-layer spreadsheets. Regardless, he knew he had my attention. Balanced on the edge of a knife, it was explained that I was a kinder and he was a senior. Opportunity was available – for a price. That price was my soul.

I fought it, of course. What self-important son of a noble House wouldn’t? I believed in my god, I believed in my emperor and I believed in my cause. Once the emperor died and war broke out again, I went to fight for my empress as any good citizen would. But what I found dispirited my soul. Children playing at immortality, heaping scorn on our enemies and viewing their own bodies, ships and crews as so much fodder to their game of self-righteousness. I lost my faith in the hell of faction war blobs and self-serving pirates.

And when one loses one’s faith one becomes susceptible to the devil.

...to be continued

...reserved for part 5

...reserved for part 7