Excession

oo

But there has been nothing this important before! This is perhaps our first real OCP and we may not be up to the challenge it represents. Meat it makes me ashamed! I just find this all so distressing! For millennia we have congratulated ourselves on our wisdom and maturity and revelled in our freedom from baser drives and from the ignobility of thought and action that desperation born of indigence produces. My fear — my terror! — is that our freedom from material concern has blinded us to our true, underlying nature; we have been good because we have never needed to make the choice between that and anything else.

Altruism has been imposed upon us!

Now suddenly we are presented with something we cannot manufacture or simulate, something which is to us as precious metals or stones or just other lands were to ancient monarchs, and we may find that we are prepared to cheat and lie and scheme and plot like any bloody tyrant and contemplate adopting any behaviour however reprehensible so that we may grab this prize. It is as if we have been children until this point, playing without care and dressing in but not filling adult clothes, blithely assuming that when we are grown we shall behave as we have done in the headlong, heedless innocence that has been our life so far.

oo

But, my dear friend, none of this has happened yet!

oo

Have you not carried out the projections? I took your advice to spend more time in metamathical pursuits, modelling the likely course of events, divining the shape of the future. The results worry me. What I feel myself worries me. I wonder what we may stop at, what we may not stop at to attain the prize this Excession may offer.

oo

I meant spend more time enjoying yourself, as you well know. Besides: simulations, abstractions, projections; these are only themselves, not the reality of what they claim to represent. Attend to the actuality of events. We have a fascinating phenomenon before us and we are taking all reasonable precautions as we deal, or prepare to deal, with it. Some of our colleagues show laudable enterprise and initiative while others — ourselves — exhibit caution just as commendable as — and in sum complementary to — their ambition. What is there to fear but the wild imaginings which may well be the result of looking too far beyond the scale of relevance?

oo

I suppose so. Perhaps it is me. Certainly I see worrying signs everywhere. I dare say it must be me. I may still make some further inquiries, but I take your point.

Make your inquiries if you must, but frankly I think it is this constant urge to inquire that causes you such pain; when one is able to scrutinise a subject as closely as we are — and to do so with the cross-referential capacity we possess, then the closer one looks into anything the more coincidences one finds, perfectly innocent though they may be.

What is the point of inquiring at such depth that one loses sight of the sunlit surface?

Lay up that magnifying glass and take up thy drink glass, my friend.

Slip off the academic gown and on with the antic pants!

oo

I thank you for your advice. I am reassured somewhat. I shall consider what you say. Do keep in touch. Farewell for now.

[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28.862.3465]

xEccentric Shoot Them Later

oLSV Serious Callers Only

The Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival was in touch again (signal file attached). I still think it could be one of them.

oo

[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @n4.28.862.3980]

xLSV Serious Callers Only

oEccentric Shoot Them Later

And I still think you should let it in with us. It almost certainly now suspects you are part of the conspiracy.

oo

I have an image to maintain! And I would point out that we are still very much in the dark; we are not yet sure there is a conspiracy beyond the kind of normal outsmarting, outcliqueing nonsense in which all of us indulge from time to time. What purpose would formally extending the circumference of our concern serve, for now? Our sleuth is still behaving as though it is one of us but it knows nothing of our scepticism; we have naught to gain by bringing it aboard at present. If it is genuine it will apply itself to our purpose and if discovered the shadow of its guilt will not fall across us; if it is a test then it — they — may decide to bait us with more information of genuine interest, delivered at no cost to our virtue. Are we agreed? Have I convinced you? Anyway, enough of that; have we yet a plan? What was the result of your own investigations?

oo

Frustratingly vague. An exhaustive search has thrown up one remote possibility… but it remains an improbability predicated upon an uncertainty.

oo

Pray tell.

oo

Well… Let me ask you a question. What do you understand results by our communicating with our mutual friend?

oo

Why, that we are allowed to share in its inimitable objectivity. What else?

oo

That is the general volume of my concern. I'll say no more.

oo

What? Don't be ridiculous. Elaborate.

oo

No. You know what you said to our unwitting fellow in suspicion about not advertising lines of inquiry which might end in embarrassment…

oo

Unfair! After all I've shared with you!

oo

Yes, including the exciting opportunity to get involved with this in the first place. Thanks a lot.

oo

Cast that up to me again would you? I've said I'm sorry. Wish I'd never said anything now.

oo

Yes, but if the Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival finds out who passed on the information which led to the Fate Amenable To Change's search in the first place…

oo

I know, I know. Look; I'm doing all I can. I have requested a sympathetic ship to divert itself to Pittance, just in case. That's where my prognostications indicate a site for possible future mischief.

oo

Death! If it comes to that…

III