Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Hello, folks,

What follows is an excerpt from the forthcoming book, The Great First Impressions Trip, written by Harding McFadden, and available some time between mid-February and mid-March of this year. It is the follow-up to last year’s The Children’s War, by myself and Mr. Chester Haas. It is my sincere hope that you enjoy this short trip enough to read the whole story once it becomes available. So, without more blathering on my part, here you go:

 

…prologue…A Silent Now

 

When the time traveler stepped out of when and where he had been, into where and when he needed to be, they were there waiting for him. It seemed that there was always someone waiting for him.

Having only just moments ago left his wife and unborn child at the End of Time, he was noticeably distracted by an acidic mix of disappointment and self loathing, explaining away why his reaction time was so slow. He walked into their world and stood looking at his feet on the grass, shaking from what he had just left behind him, and for a moment forgetting about the device that he held in his hand. Forcing himself abruptly back to reality, he looked around.

Surrounding him was an assortment of androgynous-looking humanoids, each a mirror image of the others; each having exactly the same look of fear, confusion, and indecisiveness upon their faces. To break the thickening ice, he cracked a half insane smile and proclaimed, "Hello there, and good morning!"

By all appearances, he found himself in a park. For all intents and purposes, he supposed that that was exactly what the place was. There would never be any amusement experienced here, however, the entire area being suited for nothing more than esthetic pleasure and natural production of air.

Having been chosen by the collective whole as their race’s spokesperson based solely upon the fact that he or she was the closest to this stranger, a person approached him, and demanded, "What are you?" A whispered echo of these same words drifted on the slight breeze from each and every voice upon three planets.

Unsettled, despite himself, and in spite of the fact that this was exactly the reception he had expected, the stranger replied, "Myself? My name, my good whatever-you-are, is Godchick. What I am, is exactly what you all used to be, before you went and watered yourselves down; namely: a human. A male human, to be more exact."

The fear on the faces of those around Godchick escalated; also the horror, and something akin to anger. Though they still considered themselves human, albeit a hermaphroditic hodgepodge of humanity, they had not seen a human of either definable, single sex in more than thirty thousand years. The thought was appalling, and terrifying, these feelings washing over the surfaces of their worlds like the largest tidal wave imaginable.

Remembering himself, Godchick looked to the object held tightly in his hand. It was a cylindrical thing, rather like a large egg, an indeterminate shade of gray with sporadic glimpses of green and purple light throbbing from within it. With a casual gesture, he bent and placed the object on the ground between his feet, and twisted its top a quarter turn. The instant thrumming that came from it could not exactly be heard, but rather felt through the soles of the feet, and up into the legs.

Installation of the device completed, he straightened again, finding that he liked the feel of this world’s sun upon his face. For months leading up to the End, he had spent so much time in space that he had all but forgotten how nice a natural atmosphere could make a sun feel.

The world was one of three inhabited in this system of what had originally been twelve worlds, but now numbered eleven. Some untold number of years ago, the progenitors of this people had obliterated the furthermost planetary body, reshaping its mass and properties over generations into a massive weapons platform that ringed the whole star system, all of its guns pointing out. The third planet from their sun, Stronghold, was a fortress world, meant as an absolute last line of defense in the case of hostile contact. The fifth, Anvil, was a single massive military base, on which were stationed the entirety of the races more than one hundred million troops. The fourth from their yellow primary was a medium sized world called New Edenhome by its founders. It was the first founded, and meant to be their fresh start. It had turned into a glorified ant colony.

"What have you done?" asked the spokesperson, his or her voice dripping with anxiety.

That half insane smile again; then, "Nothing you have to worry about. Not at the present moment, at any rate."

He sat beside the object, stretching out his legs in the grass beneath him. For a flickering moment, he considered taking off his shoes and letting his bare feet be caressed by the uniform three inch green stalks, but then thought better of it. Better to not give them the idea that he was planning on staying.

Intrigued, they came closer, but never nearer than ten feet, save the spokesperson who held at nine, and looked down at him as he reclined there. He could only imagine what an odd sight he made. His beard was full upon a lined, weathered, yet youthful face. He seemed to be an old soul, inhabiting the body of a person decades younger. His hair was kept just short enough to still need a comb. He was mostly fit, but with a bit of a spare tire around his middle that no amount of exercise seemed to be able to get rid of. His clothes were simple: a nice suit, gray, with spats, and no tie. A hippie business man, a friend had once described him. It fit well enough on the outside.

"Care to join me?" he asked the cluster of people around him. All, as if afraid to decline, sat, their legs crossed before them. He had the oddest flash of sensation that each and every person on these worlds was doing the same. The perfect unison in which they moved made him more than a tad unnerved. Putting on a brave face despite his unease, he thanked them.

Endure it until you cure it, he thought.

"It suits me to tell you all a story," his words leapt out in a rush, forcing them to keep up. He doubted that the term hyperactive still existed in their vocabulary. He spoke to the whole, though his eyes never left the spokesperson. He knew that the worlds would see what he or she did through her or his own eyes.

"Thousands of years ago—longer than even I have been alive—your ancestors came here, and began the systematic obliteration of free thought, in the name of some useless nonsense that they called 'The Greater Good'. You quickly became a society of one, where ‘Iʼ means ‘we,ʼ and ‘meʼ means ‘usʼ; a useless conglomerate, at best. I cannot entirely bring myself to blame them for this, though their choice does little to tickle me. Given what chased them, I can hardly blame them for being willing to give up a bit of themselves. Where my issue begins, is that they did it to you all without even asking, as if it were their right. You see, I feel that to give freely of yourself, without consideration of what you are losing, is a beautiful, altruistic thing; but to give of others, without a thought to their wishing and wellbeing, is theft, slavery, and eventually murder.

"They came here, each of them, with a cheating kind of immortality. They promoted it as a love of life so strong that they wanted to go on living. In actuality, it was not a love of life, but rather a crippling fear of death that drove them. Their greatest scientists developed a thing, a microscopic kind of robot, one that could self replicate, and that, once within a body, would control all aspects of that body, right down to its rate of decay. This, they passed onto you; but that is not all.

"After the ordeal that they had gone through, the one that had caused them to leave the original Edenhome in the first place, they came here, to make their fresh start. Fifty thousand people came here. Right here, to be exact. The first settler from Edenhome disembarked from his ship, stepping down right where I am sitting now, and began the conquest of nature that people call civilization."

Around him, the buzzing hum of the humans started, this new piece of knowledge shifting to the communal whole. Apparently, the knowledge of where Cronus Thom, Captain of the generation ship Preia, had stepped down onto New Edenhome had been lost. No memorial or recollection; no Plymouth Rock. He gave them a moment to gather themselves together.

"It was within the first hundred years of settlement here that the great changes began, and you started to lose your humanity. Given the, at that time, limited resources of this world, breeding was strictly governed; the existence of 'inferior' children was outlawed. For this, I curse your forbears. To offset a controlled, but still ever growing population, your former leaders also did something else: they gave themselves a maximum age limit, to allow the children that would follow them their own chance to shine. For this, I commend them. I suppose that even monsters are right occasionally…

"The changes did not stop there. It was decided that the ever present problem with children born with… difficulties, was something that needed to be addressed more directly. It was then that your nano computers were programmed, as a whole, to remove the need for traditional procreation. With this loss, was eventually lost the need for separate sexes at all. It took hundreds of years before your symbiotic computers had changed you all to the point where you are now. There would be no more men, or women. When a person had reached their oldest legal age, they would overnight shut off, and whichever person was most suitable at the time would find themselves pregnant.

"This process has served you well. It has made sure that you never have more mouths to feed than you can afford. It has made sure that there are no children born with special needs that your leaders would have seen as a drain on the whole. In short: it has made you a very good collective of monsters."

The thrumming of the device had begun to increase. It seemed to shake the ground, sending uncomfortable sensations into the bodies of all who felt it. It was a nearly nauseating sensation for everyone, save Godchick. He was not affected in the same ways that they were.

His tone suddenly melancholy, he continued.

"Around thirty one thousand years ago, give or take a century, a great disservice was done to all of you by a group of subhumans who thought that they were doing you a favor. You still had two genders at the time, as opposed to this forced thing you have now, as well as a more or less free will. As is the want of all societies at one time or another, this was decided to be an unacceptable thing.

"Your world has had no wars, internal or external, for thirty thousand years. Do you know why? It is because you are all of a mind. You can’t not be. Many lifetimes ago a monster that even Shelly could never have dreamed of sent a program through the air which affected all of the nanites within the bodies of everyone on New Edenhome. This program connected the minds of all of your people, giving them a kind of psychic interconnectivity with each other, making all thoughts public ones, and ending privacy. Over the following thirty thousand-odd years, it has resulted in a perfect hive mind. You are all a single person, a collective 'We', incapable of individual thought. With this change in your minds, your humanity was lost.

"There are events in your shared past that have been completely forgotten by you, not because of time and memory, but by choice. If, at any point of time, an event was seen by enough of you as too traumatic or unsettling to remember, you all forgot, every one of you. I suspect that this is why you do not remember who landed here, and why. At some time in your past, some one decided that it was a thought best forgotten, and so you all did. Your past is lost to you, because you can forget it, beyond recovering, by a simple majority vote. A friend of mine once told me that to forget the past, is to have no future."

The increase of the thrumming was now intensely uncomfortable for those gathered. Body shuddering, the spokesperson stood, alone, and advanced upon Godchick. Trying to kick the device proved useless, as it seemed to be rooted to the ground.

Helping the shaky pseudo-human to again sit, directly before him this time, Godchick continued. "Today, you conceived and implemented a way to keep in instantaneous contact with the settlements on Stronghold, Anvil, and the Defense Ring. No more lag time between the thoughts of New Edenhome and your other settlements. This is why I had to wait until today to visit you. Why I couldn’t be brought here until now. You have undoubtedly noticed that the collective voice of your civilization is growing dim in your heads. Fuzzy. This is my doing, and for what it will do to you, I am truly sorry.

"As soon as it was noticed what was happening, your people on the Defense Ring began formulating ways to turn their armaments inward, to obliterate this world before this sickness had spread. They wont be able to. Your own form of safety, this hive mind of yours, is to be your own downfall. The doors of Stronghold were barred in moments, its inhabitants preparing for the invasion that I represent. The soldiers on Anvil have loaded themselves up on every interplanetary carrier available, for the simple sake of coming here and killing me. This cannot happen, I am afraid. I have far too much work to complete before I end my walk."

The spokesperson began to slouch forward, his or her face contorted in a rictus of pain brought on by the silence in her or his mind. Solitary consciousness was a new experience, a painful one, and terrifying. Taking his companions chin in his hands, Godchick lifted until their eyes were locked.

"You asked me what this device I have brought with me is. I will now answer you. It is indestructible, built for me, special, by a good friend on Linebarger. Within it is a program, much like the one of your world’s earlier monsters, though opposite. It is reprogramming your nanites, and this will be an uncomfortable process. From this point on, as each one of your race reaches its deadline, the next child to be created will be one with a determined gender. This will continue until there is only a full race of men and women. Following this, your nanites will no longer be able to create life within you, only to sustain the life that already exists. After that, your descendants will have to go about it the old way, mucking about with each other in a most unseemly fashion.

"You and your descendants will no longer share a consciousness. From this moment on, you will have to think for yourselves, and I can tell you now, that of all the changes that face you now, that will be the most terrifying. Freedom is the hardest thing in the universe. That's why some hide from it, while others suppress it. Because it is the only thing that can bring about moments of true greatness and glory worth remembering."

Voice a croaking whisper, the spokesperson asked, " Why?"

"Because there is something coming. Something far worse than your founders had ever experienced; but something that can be beat. I know: I've seen it die. If you were to stay the way you are, none of you would survive. What I have done to you, you will never forgive me for. I will be remembered in your world’s mythology as something akin to Satan. This is alright; I deserve nothing less. But what I have given your children is a fighting chance. I cannot guarantee that anyone will survive what's coming, but I can promise you this: Those that fight and live, will live as warriors; those that fight and die, will die as heroes. There can be no greater death than to lay down your life for your friends, and the people you love. Remember that, if you remember nothing else that I have prattled off to you today."

Abruptly, the thrumming died. Smiling, Godchick released the spokesperson and stood, picking up the devise as he did so. Placing it in the pocket of his coat, he started away from the prostrate group. As if in afterthought, he turned to look again at the spokesperson. His voice commanding, his posture that of a giant, he spoke. "It has been my sad duty today to be the monster that makes your children hate you. They will hate you for what you are, and were, but you do not deserve it. In time, even they will see you as what you are: victims. None of you has ever had the chance to find the greatness that rests in each of you. Now you do. I would suggest that you embrace it."

He turned once more, knowing that he had so much to do, and stepped out of where and when he was, and into when and where he needed to be.