Mike reran that part of the tape twice shaking his head. He knew, generally, what she was talking about, but the specifics were sort of eluding him. One of the problems with GalTech was that everything had to be produced by Indowy technicians on an individual, custom, basis. Humans, even humans like O'Neal who had had some training in the technique, generally referred to it as "praying," but that wasn't really what was happening. Because the Indowy had been working with atomic level micro-manufacturing for, literally, thousands of years, their method of manufacture involved using swarms of nannites to build products atom by atom in vats. This gave them the capacity to build materials that violated many "known facts" of materials science; the nannites could make atoms do things that occurred only as low probabilities in any other method.
However, the process defied control by even the most advanced computers. The nannites were best controlled through a sort of direct neural interface. An individual Indowy, or, more commonly, groups, would take seats by the tank and . . . manipulate the nannites. It was not a direct thought process; it involved giving the nannites general directions and then . . . letting them use the individual's brain as a remote processor. For a suit fitting, it mostly involved staying very still and sort of meditating while concentrating on the suit "adjusting" to the person it was being shaped on; the nannites and the suit personality handled the rest.
However, as he understood it, the problem with most forms of class two and higher was that the person or team had to hold a perfect image of the item to be produced, down to an understanding of the molecular alignments for all of the individual components. A suit, for example, was a six-month process of construction involving one level six, a grand master of sohon, and dozens of lower level Indowy, all meditating in meta-concert on a perfect image, down to the last atom; that was why a suit cost almost as much as a frigate.
He had to admit that the concept of a human advancing to class two sohon, especially an eleven-year-old, even a prodigy like his daughter, was rather amazing.
He thought about how to compose a suitable reply. If he was too positive, too emotional, she might see that as a rebuke of her own distance. On the other hand, if he was too wooden, she might see it the same way. Finally he gave up and gushed.
Dear Michelle,
It's really great to hear about your advancement. I have to say that your success is a very good reflection upon the family and that you should be very proud of it, as I am. I hope to someday be able to congratulate you in person and I look forward to the day that we can all be together again as a family.
Your loving father,
Dad
He always sent his replies as text, typing them into an old word processor program and letting the AID convert them to a suitable format and send them on the military network. A laser transmitter would add them to the queue and squirt them at a deep space satellite. From there they would be transferred to Titan Base, then sit in a Jovian communications buoy until a ship was headed out-system. Every ship carried the mail in and out of the system, dropping it at other buoys until eventually, in about six to ten weeks, faster than any but the fastest military courier, it reached Michelle's planet, Daswan. Given that a transport ship would take over a year to make the journey, that wasn't too shabby.
Mike looked at the message and frowned. There should be more, he should be talking about the battalion and things that they had done. But he knew that Michelle had grown very uninterested in the blindsided slaughter that was Earth; she didn't even seem to want to return. He was losing this daughter, probably had already lost her, and he didn't know what to do about it or even how to do anything about it. She had been dropped into the Indowy, raised by the Indowy and she was becoming Indowy. And he didn't know what to do about that either.
Finally he gave up and hit Send.
The next message was from Cally and it, too, was everything he had come to expect. Cally's messages were not nearly as frequent as Michelle's and the two sisters were clearly developing in . . . somewhat different directions. Cally also did not have access to GalTech and, therefore, sent a standard text message.
Hey Daddyo
We had visitors this week; some ladies from the nearby Sub-Urb and a couple of snake-eater buddies of Baldy. They had some kids with them who were, like, totally weird. They'd never been outside or shot anything and the weirdest shit freaked 'em out. I mean, don't even mention Posties around these guys or they got, like, spastic.
No big news other than that. Baldy shot a feral up the hill, but that's no big news. I mean, I got a deer, Baldy shot a feral, Wow!
Oh, Baldy's made some mention of one of the ladies that was visiting shacking up with him. Maybe. I'll believe it when I see it. She's a nice old biddy and I think it would be good for him to get laid once in a while; maybe he'd lighten up. But I'll believe it when I see it.
Oh, yeah, DUDE! Way to stack some horse up in Rochester! Can we O'Neals kick ass or what?
:-)
Take care and remember: HVMs Smart!
Cally
Mike sighed, hit reply and blanked. All things considered, he preferred the Rampage to the Robot, but replying to Cally had its own problems. Should he point out that referring to her grandfather as "Baldy" was probably not the best of all possible actions? Or that at thirteen, worrying whether her grandfather was getting laid often enough was probably not her business? For that matter, it probably wasn't her business at forty.
For that matter, was she sexually active? I mean, Dad would probably pass that on to him, but there wasn't much Mike could do about it if she was. What was he going to do? Sitting the guy down and having a man to man talk with him was out; he was five hundred miles away.
And then there was the whole bloodthirsty edge she had developed. He had noted it in Tommy Sunday as well. The generation that was being raised in the war was a generation soaked in blood; they were desensitized to a degree that he found unhealthy.
Maybe it was a valid reaction to the conditions, but a generation so . . . disinterested in the value of life—it seemed to extend to humans as well as Posleen—was not going to be reconstructing a positive, growing, functional society after the war.
There was some fundamental spark, some flare of optimism, that really seemed to be missing from them. Maybe Horner was right, maybe he just wasn't cold and hard enough for this world. God knew at times like this he just wanted to lay the burden down, to just say "get somebody else." But there really wasn't anybody else. To lead the battalion or even carry the spark; his was one of the last generations that was raised in the "golden age." If they didn't keep their eye on the prize, which was to recover the world not just to a survival level, but to recapture the beauty and art and science, then nobody would. Humanity was going to sink to the level the Darhel chose for them. And the only ones who could stop that were these feral wild-children of the war. Who had as much connection to the basic concept of positive human growth and human rights as they did to . . .
Well, frankly, there was nothing they were more disconnected from.
This really sucked.
Dear Cally:
Rochester was . . . difficult. We were successful, but the battalion took more casualties than I would have liked. I'm personally and professionally happy that we were able to push the lines back to Cayuga, but all things considered I would have preferred that the necessity not drive it.
I'm glad to hear that you had some visitors, especially female visitors. I know that it must be hard growing up with only your grandfather for company. I hope that you will be able to learn . . .
He backed up and erased the last sentence unfinished. Using the phrase "ladylike" assumed both that the ladies were and that Cally wanted to be. And assumed that "ladylike" was a useful condition, which was a major assumption. Given the choice between a retiring maid and a little war-child, and given the conditions, he'd take war-child any day. Let the world and the future go hang as long as his daughter survived.