John Scalzi - The Observers

“Well, start with this,” Wilson said. “How old do I look to you?”

Lowen looked. “I don’t know, maybe twenty-two? Twenty-five, tops? You being green messes with my age sense. A lot younger than me, and I’m thirty-five. But you’re not younger than me, are you?”

“I’m ninety,” Wilson said.

“Get out,” Lowen said.

“More or less,” Wilson said. “You’re out here long enough and you eventually lose track unless you check. It’s because as long as you’re CDF, you don’t actually age.”

“How is that even possible?” Lowen said. “Entropy still works out here, right? Physics hasn’t totally broken down?”

Wilson extended an arm. “You’re engaging in the pathetic fallacy,” he said. “Just because I look like a human being doesn’t mean I am. This body has more genetic material that’s not strictly human than it does material that is human. And it heavily integrates machines as well. My blood is actually a bunch of nanobots in a fluid. I am and every other CDF soldier is a genetically-modified cyborg.”

“But you’re still you, right?” Lowen asked. “You’re still the same person you were when you left Earth. Still the same consciousness.”

“That’s a question of some contention among us soldiers,” Wilson said, setting his arm back down. “When you transfer over to the new body, the machine that does the transfer makes it at least seem like for an instant you’re in two bodies at once. It feels like you as a person make the transfer. But I think it’s equally possible that what happens is that memories are transferred over to a brain specially prepared for them, it wakes up, and there’s just enough cross talk between the two separate brains to give the illusion of a transfer before the old one shuts down.”

“In which case, you’re actually dead,” Lowen said. “The real you. And this you is a fake.”

“Right.” Wilson took another sip of his drink. “Mind you, the CDF could show you graphs and charts that show that actual consciousness transfer happens. But I think this is one of those things you can’t really model from the outside. I have to accept the possibility that I could be a fake Harry Wilson.”

“And this doesn’t bother you,” Lowen said.

“In a metaphysical sense, sure,” Wilson said. “But in a day-to-day sense, I don’t think about it much. On the inside, it sure feels like I’ve been around for ninety years, and ultimately this version of me likes being alive. So.”

“Wow, this conversation went places I wasn’t expecting it to go,” Lowen said.

“If you think that’s weird, wait until I tell you that thanks to the mechanics of the skip drive, you’re in an entirely different universe and will never see your friends and family again,” Wilson said.

“Wait, what?” Lowen said.

Wilson motioned to the Laphroaig bottle. “Better pour yourself another drink,” he said.

Drink four, sometime later:

“You know what the Colonial Union’s problem is, don’t you?” Lowen asked.

“There’s just one problem?” Wilson responded.

“It’s arrogance!” Lowen said, ignoring Wilson’s question. “What sort of government decides that the smart thing to do, the prudent thing to do, the wise thing to do, is to keep an entire planet in an arrested state of development, just to use it to farm colonists and soldiers?”

“If you’re expecting me to act as defense for the Colonial Union’s practices, it’s going to be a very short debate,” Wilson said.

“And not just any planet,” Lowen said, ignoring Wilson again. Wilson smiled; clearly Lowen was self-winding when she was tipsy. “But Earth! I mean, seriously, are you fucking kidding me? The cradle of human life in the universe, the place from which we all spring, our home planet, for crying out loud. And a couple hundred years ago some pricks on Phoenix thought, Hey, screw them. Honestly, what did you think was going to happen when we found out how badly you’ve been messing with us? And for how long?”

“I reiterate my comment that if you’re expecting me to defend the Colonial Union, you’re going to be sorely disappointed,” Wilson said.

“But you’re one of them!” Lowen said. “You know how they think, at least, right? So what were they thinking?”

“I think they were thinking that they would never have to deal with the Earth finding out anything,” Wilson said. “And for the sake of accuracy, the Colonial Union did do a very fine job of keeping the Earth in the dark for a couple of centuries. If it hadn’t tried to kill off a friend of mine, and his entire family, and his colony, for the purposes of political expediency, they’d probably still be getting away with it.”

“Hold on,” Lowen said. “You know John Perry?”

“We left Earth on the same boat,” Wilson said. “We were part of the same group of friends. We called ourselves the Old Farts. There were seven of us then. There’s three of us now. Me, John and Jesse Gonzales.”

“Where is she?” Lowen asked.

“She’s on the colony of Erie,” Wilson said. “She and I were together for a while, but she eventually wanted to leave the CDF and I didn’t. She married a guy on Erie and has twin daughters now. She’s happy.”

“But all the rest are dead,” Lowen said.

“They told us when we joined that three-quarters of us would be dead in ten years,” Wilson said. He was lost in thought for a moment, then looked up at Lowen and smiled. “So strictly on a percentage basis, the Old Farts beat the odds.” He drank.

“I’m sorry to bring up memories,” Lowen said, after a minute.

“We’re talking and drinking, Doctor Lowen,” Wilson said. “Memories will surface just as a matter of course.”

“You can call me Danielle, you know,” Lowen said. “Or Dani. Either is fine. I figure if we’ve drunk this much Scotch together, we should be on a first-name basis.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Wilson said. “Then call me Harry.”

“Hello, Harry.”

“Hello, Dani.”

They clinked their cups together.

“They’re renaming my high school after your friend,” Lowen said. “It was Hickenlooper High. Now it’s going to be Perry High.”

“There is no higher honor to be bestowed,” Wilson said.

“I’m actually kind of annoyed by it,” Lowen said. “I get mail now saying, ‘Greetings, Perry Graduates,’ and I’m all, ‘What? I didn’t go there.’”

“If I know John at all, he’d be mildly embarrassed to have your high school’s name changed out from under you,” Wilson said.

“Well, to be fair, the man did free my entire planet from the Colonial Union’s systematic and centuries-long campaign of repression and social engineering,” Lowen said. “So I guess I shouldn’t begrudge him the high school.”

“Possibly not,” Wilson agreed.

“But that just brings us back around to the original question: What the hell was the Colonial Union thinking?” Lowen asked.

“Do you want a serious answer?” Wilson asked.

“Sure, if it’s not too complicated,” Lowen said. “I’m a little drunk.”

“I’ll use small words,” Wilson promised. “I would be willing to bet that in the beginning the Colonial Union justified it by thinking that they were both protecting the Earth by taking the focus off it and onto the Colonial Union worlds, and then also helping humanity in general by using the Earth to help our colonies grow as quickly as they could with new immigrants and soldiers.”

“So that’s at first,” Lowen said. “What about later?”

“Later? Habit,” Wilson said.

Lowen blinked. “‘Habit’? That’s it? That’s all you got?”