She had also clothed herself in a standard Defence Force uniform, a Lieutenant’s blue uniform, although she was missing a starship’s badge. A quick check revealed that the face matched the last recorded face of Lieutenant Chiyo Takahashi, who had been reported as missing a month ago, after a probe into a Killer star system. She hadn’t been one to use the MassMind much — like most humans, she had lost her virginity in a virtual world rather than a physical one, and she had played several adventure games before growing bored of the unreality — but the MassMind knew her. Chiyo — and almost the entire human race — would have been shocked to know how much the MassMind knew about her. She had grown up on a settlement, she’d experimented with various stimulants and dubious drugs, she’d had seven love affairs, been invited to join a group marriage — and declined — and joined the Defence Force, where she had been recommended for promotion. She would have been transferred to a warship after her probing mission, perhaps even given a chance at command herself, but instead…
“Hello,” the representative said. His voice was low and pleasant, calculated to be reassuring. He held up a hand before Chiyo could speak. “We have to scan you, I’m afraid.”
The MassMind reached through and analysed Chiyo’s personality before she could protest. The entire examination took seconds — it was looking for danger signs, warnings that she was a virus targeted on the MassMind, rather than her deep secrets — but the representative saw her wince as she was studied. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, the MassMind knew, to be scrutinised so completely — the memories of personalities who had been scrutinised spoke against it — but there was no choice. Chiyo might be nothing more that a Judas Goat, leading the herd to the slaughter…
“She’s clear,” the MassMind spoke, finally. Its relief was enough to echo through the entire core of its existence. Countless personalities would feel it, without ever knowing what had passed through them, or why. “Speak to her.”
“Welcome home,” the representative said. Chiyo smiled at him and, a moment later, began to cry. “You’re safe now.”
She gathered herself and shook her head. “No,” she said. “No one is safe now. Where am I?”
The representative considered the question and finally came up with an answer. “You are within a virtual reality world created by the MassMind,” he said. “You were transmitted to the Defence Force starship Lightning during the Battle of Shiva, compressed down to an inanimate piece of data. You were transferred into the MassMind and move into this world for your own safety and ours. We decompressed you and… well, here you are.”
“I never thought I’d go on into the MassMind,” Chiyo said. “My…”
She shook her head. “Listen carefully,” she said, “We may not have much time.”
The MassMind had only focused a tiny part of its attention on Chiyo, enough to handle anything that might reasonably happen. It wasn’t a lack of interest, but even a tiny fraction of its mind represented more computing ability than the human race had dreamed of, long before the MassMind had formed into existence. Now it focused considerably more intellect on her, analysing each and every one of her words and comparing them against what it knew about the Killers. It was privy to everything the researchers had pulled from the captured Killer starship and the two wrecked ships. It knew enough to trust her…
Yet it hadn’t played entirely fair with her. It hadn’t violated her thoughts, but it would know if she lied… yet would she know if she lied? No lie detector could detect a lie if the person lying didn’t know they were lying. As she outlined her story, the MassMind checked and rechecked; she was telling the truth, as she knew it.
“They somehow sucked me into their computer network,” Chiyo continued, after talking about her dissection at Killer hands. The MassMind had been surprised to hear that the Killers had actually taken her prisoner and studied her; there were no other reports of Killers taking prisoners or test subjects for vivisection, although it did concede that if it had happened, it was unlikely to result in escapes. The Killers had probably analysed the bodies and then vaporised them, or fed them into their pet black holes. “How is that even possible?”
“There are multiple redundancies built into the recording implants,” the MassMind said. “If the Killers attempted a broad-spectrum scan of the implant, as we do to attempt to recover mental patterns before a starship is destroyed, it would have dumped your personality into the scanning system. The Killers appear to have created their starships to house their own mentalities and it would be possible, perhaps, for a human personality to exist inside their network. Are you still present there?”
“I do not know,” Chiyo — Chiyo99 — admitted. The MassMind had been shocked enough to hear of the duplications, although it had agreed that Chiyo Prime had had little choice and that it wasn’t likely to lead to criminal activity that would have made prosecution difficult. Even so, it was probably fortunate that few — if any — duplicates survived. “I just pushed myself out and then…”
“The human language doesn’t lend itself well to such terms,” the MassMind agreed. There was a hint of humour in its voice. Every year, experienced researchers published endless papers trying to redefine language to adjust for the MassMind, or the Spacers, or all the other new forms of human being. They’d had particular headaches trying to determine if the MassMind was male, or female, or some strand asexual version of a human. The MassMind itself tended to regard the entire argument as silly. “What did you learn about the Killers?”
“A great deal,” Chiyo said, and outlined everything that she’d learned since she’d been pulled into the Killer system. The true nature of the Killers — she was rather annoyed to discover that the human race had already figured out that the Killers lived in gas giants, rather than rocky planets — and their history, including the tragic origin of their quest to obliterate every other race. Their mentality — she knew less about that, but the MassMind could make deductions from what it knew of the captured ships — and their ultimate plan for the universe. It was a plan so staggeringly vast in concept and scope that even the MassMind was impressed. No one could accuse the Killers of thinking small.
“They have to be stopped,” Chiyo said, grimly. “We need to act now.”
The MassMind contemplated the wealth of data Chiyo had brought. The locations of Killer star systems — there were far more of them than the human race had known, although less than they had feared — was important, but when it was compared against the Community… over seven thousand Killer worlds were sharing star systems with human settlements. No one had even suspected that the Killers infested so many gas giants — how, the MassMind wondered, could they destroy so many star systems? The fission weapon that had created the Cinder might be usable against the gas giants, but the effects would spread well beyond the Killer planets. The Community might be forced to destroy large chunks of its own settlements to save the rest.
“I will convene the War Council,” the MassMind said, finally. It had abandoned the representative and was speaking directly to Chiyo herself. “We will decide how we are to react.”
The MassMind was, inevitably, a representative on the War Council, Patti knew. It was also rare for the MassMind to take a direct interest in proceedings, preferring to allow personalities like Tabitha Cunningham to handle its affairs. The summons to the War Council had been a surprise for all of the delegates and one — Rupert the Spacer — hadn’t bothered to show up at all. Under other circumstances, that would have worried Patti — the Spacers took the lead when it came to distrusting the MassMind and never downloaded themselves into it — but now it was a minor concern. There were others they had to face.