John Scalzi - The Android's Dream

"This is how it happened, you know," Hayter-Ross said.

"What are you talking about?" Brian said.

"The Battle of Pajmhi," Hayter-Ross said, and poured herself more tea. "Each UNE serviceman and woman went into battle with a little camera in their helmet, and every camera recorded what it saw and transmitted back the data. Plus monitor cameras that caught the action from above, so long as they weren't shot down by the rebels, and many of them were. But overall, that's over 100,000 points of view of the battle, all recorded for posterity. Not that posterity has bothered with it. All the data feeds are stored in UNE Defense servers and are available for public viewing—Freedom of Information and all that. But no one ever does. Certainly no one has done this—she swept an arm to encompass the carnage—"stitch the data all together and play out the entire battle."

"So this is it," Brian said. "This is really it."

"As best as can be reconstructed," Hayter-Ross said. To her left an infantryman caught a bullet below his left eye; his face caved as he jerked back and collapsed into the dirt. "There are gaps here and there. Even with 100,000 helmets, there are still places where no one is looking at any one time. But it's mostly here. I haven't bothered to simulate the movement of every leaf on every tree. But the battles—yes. Those are exactly as they happened. Now, come along." The table appeared to slide along the landscape; from every line of sight Brian saw death. He longed to warn the humans he saw falling around him but knew it would do no good. Like Scrooge tugged along by the Ghost of Christmas Past, he was seeing only the shadows of the past, not the event itself.

A marine screamed in Briaris ear as a rebel slug raggedly severed her arm from her body, just below her shoulder. Shadow or not, Brian winced at me pain.

"You have no memory of any of this, of course," Hayter-Ross said. "The brain scan that created this version of you was made before you came here. This is all alien to you."

"Yes," Brian said.

"That's probably for the best," Hayter-Ross said. "When you see your friends die, it won't have any meaning to you."

"Did many of them die?" Brian asked.

"Oh, yes," Hayter-Ross said. "Quite a few. And here we are."

Their tea table came to a stop mere feet from a squad of soldiers crouched behind a ridge, exchanging fire with a cadre of rebels in the brush in front of them. With a start Brian recognized himself, only slightly older than he was at the time of his brain scan, tossing a grenade over the ridge at the rebels. Three men down the line Harry crouched, carefully sighting rebel infantry and firing in short, controlled bursts before moving again to avoid being shot himself. Brian was horrified and fascinated at seeing a portion of his life that he had not experienced, and which would shortly end in his own death.

Hayter-Ross noticed. "Unsettling," she prompted. Brian could only nod. "I know," she said. "This version of me was taken from memories stored only until the day before my death. I died during another session to transfer memory and consciousness, so I've no memory of it. I've watched the recording over and over. Watching myself die while doctors and technicians struggle around me, watching the look in my eyes as I realize that I'm passing on and yet not being able to feel the actual emotion. I don't know if it was fear or relief or confusion. I wasn't there. It can be maddening."

"Why are you showing me this?" Brian said, unable to take his eyes away from himself.

"You'll see," Hayter-Ross said. "In fact, you're going to see right now."

Brian watched as the soldier version of himself hurled another grenade and lay low while it detonated. His soldier self peeked over the ridge and saw rebel troops pulling back, let out a whoop, and headed over the ridge to clean up as they fled. Behind him two other soldiers followed, carried as much by Brian's excitement as their own. Watching himself, Brian could hear Harry and their sergeant both yelling at him and the other two to get back, but this other version of himself either couldn't hear or wasn't listening. Within seconds, the three soldiers were heedlessly far from their comrades, chasing rebels through the tall grass toward a copse of trees. Brian felt himself tense, waiting for the inevitable.

It wasn't long in coming. Just short of the copse, one of the soldiers spun wildly from a bullet in the shoulder; another bullet struck as he spun, sneaking under his bullet shield and piercing his back, spattering gore on the inside of his bullet shield as it erupted through his front side. The second soldier was down next, his kneecap vaporized; he was screaming before he hit the ground. From his tea table, Brian noticed the rebels had shot down the most distant soldiers first; the ones in front wouldn't see their comrades fall and would recklessly keep moving forward.

Brian watched helplessly as his other self became the final target. He was struck near simultaneously by two bullets, one in the left ankle and a second in the lower right hip. The force of the ankle hit worked to flip Brian, but the hip shot counteracted the spin; in the end Brian simply flew backward as if hit by an invisible freight truck. Brian the soldier's body flew backward, landing back in the grass with a solid thump; two seconds later he began to scream.

"What do you notice?" Hayter-Ross asked Brian.

Brian collected himself and tried to think. "We're all still alive," he said, finally.

"Yes," Hayter-Ross said. "Alive and screaming and out in the open where anyone who comes to rescue you is an easy target for the rebels. You saw how they shot the three of you in reverse sequence. And they shot you to keep you alive—in the short run at least. You know what that means."

"They laid a trap," Brian said. "I thought I had flushed them out in the open, but they flushed me out instead."

"Because if there's one thing other species know about humans," Hayter-Ross said, "it's that you don't leave anyone behind. And look, here come your squadmates."

Brian turned back toward the ridge to see two soldiers snake their way through the grass toward the last of the soldiers. One lay down a suppressing fire as the second tried to lift the wounded soldier into a firecarry. As he did so he popped up out of the grass. From the copse came a hail of fire; one struck the soldier just below the jaw, tearing open his neck. The soldier instinctively grabbed at his neck, causing the soldier he was carrying to drop heavily to the ground, head first. A second bullet from the copse struck the still-standing soldier, punching him back down to the ground. The soldier who had been laying down fire crawled to the second soldier and pressed his hand against his friend's neck.

"That won't help," Hayter-Ross said. "Look at the spurting. It hit the carotid artery."

"Stop this," Brian said, turning away. "Stop this now."

"Very well," Hayter-Ross said, and everything froze. Brian stared at the stopped time.

"Do you know why I'm showing you this?" Hayter-Ross said.

"No," Brian said.

"I'm showing you this because you have a distressing tendency not to think before you act," Hayter-Ross said. "You attacked the Church's network because you stupidly thought there would be nothing to stop you from burrowing through its defenses. And of course we see how that ended." Hayter-Ross nodded toward the frozen battlefield. "Here, you ran into the open, chasing the enemy you thought you had on the run, and because of it, you died—but not before condemning three of your fellow soldiers to the same fate. You were the last to die, you know. Your friend Harry Creek managed to get to you and stop your bleeding and then protect you and the other fallen members of your squad for two Chagfun days before you could be pulled out. You died just before they got you out. Peritonitis complicated by an infection of Chagfun microbes. The microbes killed a lot of soldiers. Something about the human chemistry superheated their metabolisms and made them reproduce like mad. Your hip had almost entirely rotted away before you died."