I glared at him. He was right though.
‘Look, you’ve been told a lie. We don’t all have a right to what we want. Sacrifices have to be made. We are talking about a vast paradigm change. We’re talking about humanity becoming an almost new organism.’
‘You’re talking about the death of individuality,’ Morag said.
Why was our interrogation sounding like a philosophy discussion? I hated this bullshit. It was wank that got in the way of life. Why couldn’t people just get on with it?
‘Yes!’ Cronin shouted enthusiastically. ‘But you say that as if it’s a bad thing. At the root of it all we’re all just one step away from lizard-brained animals. We’ve been brainwashed to the point where all we can think of is our own selfish desires. We were going to work together, all of us.’ Then he looked around. ‘I mean, individuality, how’s that working out for you? You all happy?’
Again his smugness left me with the strong urge to hit him.
‘I am,’ Mudge said.
‘Mr Mudgie, I have actually read your profile. You’re not happy; you’re on drugs. There is a difference. Look, everyone in the world is miserable-’
‘You’ve been a significant contributor in that,’ Pagan said.
‘And everyone’s lonely.’ I saw Mudge glance involuntarily at Merle. I wondered if Morag was looking at me. ‘The experiment of individuality has failed.’
‘Free choice isn’t an experiment,’ I said angrily.
‘No, it’s an illusion. You’ve had little choice throughout your life. Anything that feels like free will has always been within parameters set by others. The closest you came to breaking that resulted in a conflict that may destroy humanity. Do you understand how selfish and destructive it is?’
‘We could just as easily lay that responsibility at your door,’ Pagan told him. ‘All we wanted to do was give people the chance to understand what was going on and make decisions themselves.’
‘People don’t want that. People want easy lives.’
‘Which they don’t have,’ I said.
‘People want others to make the hard decisions for them. Most people barely want to think. The reason that Earth is mobilising to fight us, the reason that people like you were sent after us, was because other powerful people have a lot to lose if we’d succeeded. Whether you like it or not, we were going to give people what they wanted. You see, all the pain you feel is because of your individuality. We were going to end that. We were finally and for all time going to make humanity both happy and constructive.’
‘A perfectly ordered clockwork society,’ Pagan said.
‘This is bullshit,’ Merle said. ‘I don’t want to hear him justify himself.’
‘But thank you for your contribution, Mr Sommerjay, and yours, Mr Nagarkoti, and of course -’ he turned to look at Pagan ‘- we couldn’t have done it without your help, Mr Simm.’
Pagan looked stricken. The rigours of the mission, the repeated wounds, the guilt at his betrayal, all seemed to have aged Pagan, even in here.
Good. Fuck him.
‘How?’ I asked. ‘Have Demiurge possess everyone? That’ll only work on everyone with neural cybernetics.’ Then I realised that thanks to the war that was almost everyone, certainly everyone that mattered. Mattered. I was starting to think like them.
‘Possession by Demiurge wouldn’t lead to co-operation; it would lead to an orgy of pain, violence and suffering that would finally wipe us out,’ Rannu said.
Cronin was nodding.
‘Good plan then,’ Mudge commented.
‘Mr Nagarkoti is correct. It would, but Demiurge was only a part of what we’d planned and it didn’t turn out quite the way we thought it would.’
‘So how?’ I asked again, getting more irritated.
‘We were going to remake humanity. Nanite biotechnology derived from Themtech. Imagine Them but with drive, imagination, purpose, creativity, skills and knowledge.’
I’m not sure why, but the thought filled me with horror. It made me think of humanity as a swarm of hungry insects eating everything in its way across the stars.
Merle laughed. ‘This is evil-genius bullshit. This is like some viz. Nobody does this shit,’ he said. Maybe he was trying to convince himself.
‘Mr Sommerjay, once you get to a certain level of influence, subverting governments and mass-controlling populations becomes relatively easy. All we were doing was utilising technology available to us in the most useful manner for humanity.’
‘And you can do this?’ I asked. Cronin just looked at me as if I was stupid. Of course they could. ‘Delivery?’ I asked. Now Cronin seemed surprised. I saw some of the others exchange glances.
‘I don’t know. I assumed that was the information you took from Demiurge at the Citadel.’ He was looking around at us questioningly.
‘Jakob was injured; he hasn’t been briefed yet,’ Pagan told Cronin as if he was reassuring him.
Cronin turned back to me. ‘It’s nanotechnology, Mr Douglas. It will not be difficult to smuggle to Earth and infect the populace.’
‘Didn’t even tell you, huh?’ I asked.
‘It was compartmentalised. It wasn’t my area of responsibility. I didn’t need to know.’ Obviously Rolleston was really paranoid.
‘I’m interested why you get to make this decision for us?’ Morag demanded.
‘Because they have the power and the resources to fuck with us. Same as it ever was,’ Merle said.
Cronin was nodding. ‘Humanity elected us to do it. If not, we would not have been allowed to manoeuvre ourselves into the situation we find ourselves.’
‘Or to put it another way, you’re arrogant and delusional pricks who think you know what’s best for us,’ Mudge replied.
‘Besides, surely the fact that we’re all here shows that people don’t want this,’ Rannu said quietly.
‘Or it’s a knee-jerk fear reaction before a major change.’
‘And you’d be joining the collective?’ Mudge asked.
‘People need to-’ Cronin began.
‘I thought not.’
‘There are management concerns and issues of vision.’
‘Oh yes, we couldn’t have a rudderless race of zombies roaming space,’ Mudge said sarcastically.
‘They don’t have masters,’ Morag said. ‘They are a true collective.’
The fact that she was sticking up for Them angered me for some reason.
‘They are also not truly sentient and only react to stimuli. We’re talking about our race acting in perfect concert.’
‘You’re talking about a human hive mind,’ Morag said.
‘And you’re talking about controlling it. That’s too much power,’ Rannu said.
Cronin was starting to look uncomfortable.
‘If you’re controlling it but not part of the hive, then won’t that make you the dumbest human alive?’ I asked.
Now Cronin was looking really uncomfortable. He didn’t answer.
Pagan got there first. ‘Unless you weren’t just part of it but were controlling it.’
I watched Cronin’s icon swallow hard. I couldn’t quite get my head around it. What humanity would look like, how it would act.
‘You understand that the very act of taking on that mantle, of ascending, would change the person who did it. You’re thinking that it would be me. It would not; it would be an ascended being that was once me.’ Now he sounded uncomfortable.
‘Is this what the Cabal were up to?’ Mudge asked.
‘No, they were small frightened men,’ Cronin said.
‘Who was?’ I asked. I knew the answer. There was a look close to awe on Cronin’s face.
‘What’s this about?’ Pagan suddenly demanded.
