The Thousand Emperors

evenly balanced Inimical and Coalition forces, each side equipped with weapons the nature of which neither truly comprehended.

You see? said the Ambassador, from somewhere far away.

He remembered that once his name had been only Luc Gabion, but now he had a billion names and faces, scattered across multiple worlds, and in the cold, dark depths between stars.

Simultaneous with witnessing this battle, he stood in a busy street and watched figures – some more or less human in appearance, some multi-limbed and bizarrely alien – engage in what might have been a dance, or a ritual, or something else entirely, their emotions and thoughts tumbling around and through him.

He stood on the bottom of an ocean in a body constructed of plastic and metal, leaning in close to observe tiny, finger-like polyps that populated the edges of a volcanic fissure.

There were other eyes and other faces, some on the surfaces of worlds, and others floating above the roiling surfaces of stars, naked to the vacuum.

He was anyone and anything he chose to be.

It was, he thought, like being God.

But it was too much. Luc’s senses reeled under the assault of so many crowded perspectives and tumbling, chaotic thoughts.

Then, finally, he was all alone once more, and back in his own skull – all except for Antonov, somewhere in the depths of his thoughts, grinning toothily through a bushy black beard.

He opened his eyes to find he had folded his body into a ball next to the now open airlock door, his skin bright with sweat. Ambassador Sachs knelt on one knee by his side.

‘Now do you see?’ said Sachs. ‘Some of those weapons you saw being used were first developed so that we might defend ourselves against the Inimicals. We fought battles that destroyed entire star systems, but we did what we had to do because it was a choice between survival and extinction. But when it comes to a fight between the Tian Di and the Coalition, believe us when we say it is not a war we could possibly lose. Long ago, we seeded weapons fabricants in the outer reaches of several Tian Di systems, including this one, against the possibility that a day such as this might come.’

‘You’re not human,’ Luc gasped, the words rasping in his throat. ‘Not any more.’

‘We in the Coalition prefer to think we are more human,’ the Ambassador observed. ‘But perhaps you now more clearly understand the threat we all face, and the reason for our actions.’

‘I could be talking to anyone right now,’ said Luc. ‘There is no one, single Ambassador, is there?’

He’d seen how the Coalition’s citizens leapt from body to body at will, instantaneously, across continents and even light-years, using instantaneous communications technology, a constant shunting of encoded consciousnesses in and out of the lattices filling their skulls. Notions of privacy, as they were understood within the Tian Di, simply did not, could not exist for them. Bodies were there to be shared, rather than owned. A single mind might find itself in a dozen different bodies in the space of a week, a day, or an hour; a constant flow of conscious, living data across a civilization that now itself encompassed dozens of star systems.

In that brief moment of contact with the Ambassador, Luc had seen how a single mind could split itself into a dozen copies, each occupying a separate body simultaneously, before later reintegrating itself into a single consciousness. It was wonderful and terrifying in equal measure, and Luc wasn’t sure he could experience it all again without going insane.

‘We understand how all this must frighten you,’ said the Ambassador. ‘You think you would lose your individuality if you came to live amongst us. That’s not the case: the Coalition embraces change, since to become static is to stagnate and die. By contrast, very little in the Tian Di has changed in centuries. Your ruling Council live artificially extended lives, but they do not live well. You’ve seen how they have sunk into a mire of depredation and excess, down on that miserable sandpit of a world they call home. They keep life- and intelligence-boosting technology from the rest of you and have the audacity to claim it’s for your own good. Tell us honestly,’ Sachs continued, ‘after everything you’ve seen, who, may we ask, is more human? Men and women like Cripps and de Almeida, or what you’ve seen of the Coalition?’

Luc blinked sweat out of his eyes. ‘Was it you I spoke to when I last came here? Or was there someone else using that body?’

‘There are up to thirty agents using this body at different times,’ the Ambassador replied. ‘But the individual mind you are addressing just now is the same one that you spoke with then.’

‘So who exactly am I talking to right now? Is your name really Horst Sachs?’

‘That is the name of the individual occupying this body at this moment, yes,’ Sachs replied. ‘Of all of us, we – or rather, I – spend the most time in this body, but whatever you and I say to each other is heard by all.’

‘And where are you the rest of the time?’

The Ambassador shrugged. ‘In other places, other bodies – even other times, if duty calls me into the Founder Network. Now do you understand why Antonov did to you what he did? He was saving your life – and his own.’

‘No.’ Luc shook his head. ‘That’s not what you said to me before. You said I was just one life measured against billions.’

‘Much has changed since then, Mr Gabion. We did not yet fully understand your role in current events. Look.’

The Ambassador reached into a pocket and pulled out something metallic that squirmed in the open palm of his