A strange thing had happened to Choubris Holse. He had become interested in what was, if he understood such matters rightly, not a million strides away from being philosophy. Given Ferbin’s unrestrainedly expressed views on that subject, this felt tantamount to treason.
It had started with the games that they had both been playing on the Nariscene ship Hence the Fortress to pass the time on the way to the Nestworld of Syaung-un. The games were played floating inside screen-spheres which were linked to the brain of the ship itself. Such ships, Holse had realised, were not merely vessels, that is, empty things you put stuff into; they were things, beings in their own right, at least as far as a mersicor, lyge or other mount was a being, and perhaps a lot more so.
There were even more realistically fashioned diversions available, games in which you really did seem to be awake and moving physically around, talking and walking and fighting and everything else (though not peeing or shitting — Holse had felt he had to ask), but those sounded daunting and overly alien to both men, as well as unpleasantly close to some of the disturbing stuff Xide Hyrlis had been bending their ears about back on the disputed, burned husk that was Bulthmaas.
The ship had advised them on which games they would find most rewarding and they’d ended up playing those whose pretended worlds were not all that different from the real one they’d left behind on Sursamen; war games of strategy and tactics, connivance and daring.
Holse had taken at first guilty and then unrestrained delight in playing some of these games from the point of view of a prince. Later he had discovered works, analyses and comments related to such games, and, intrigued, started to read or watch these too.
Which was how he came to be interested in the idea that all reality might indeed be a game, most specifically as this concept related to the Infinite Worlds theory, which held that all possible things had already happened, or were happening now, all together.
This alleged that life was very like a game or simulation where every possible course and outcome has already been played out, noted down and drawn up, as though on an enormous map, with the beginning of the game — before a piece has been moved or a move has been made — in the centre, and every single possible end state arranged along the outer fringe of this implausibly stupendous chart. By this comparison, all that one does in mapping out the course of one particular game is trace a path from that central Beginning of things out through more and more branches, chances and possibilities, to one of the near infinitude of Ends at the periphery.
And there you were; the further likeness being drawn here, unless Holse had it completely arse-before-cock, was that which held; As Game, So Life. And indeed, As Game, So Entire History Of Whole Universe, Bar Nothing And Nobody.
Everything had already happened, and in every single possible way, too. Not only had everything that had already happened happened, everything that was going to happen had already happened. And not only that: everything that was going to happen had already happened in every single possible way that it possibly could.
So if, say, he played a game of cards with Ferbin, for money, then there was a course, a line, a way through this already written, previously happened universe of possibilities which led to the outcome that involved him losing everything to Ferbin, or Ferbin losing everything to him, including Ferbin suffering a fit of madness and betting and losing his entire fortune and inheritance to his servant — ha! There were universe-lines where he’d kill Ferbin over the disputed card game, and others wherein Ferbin would kill him; indeed there were tracks that led to everything that could be imagined, and everything that would never be imagined by anybody but was still somehow possible.
It seemed at first glance like utter madness, yet it also, when one thought about it, appeared somehow no less implausible than any other explanation of how things truly were, and it had a sort of completeness about it that stifled argument. Assuming that every branching fork on the universe map was taken randomly, all would still somehow be well; the likely things would always outnumber the unlikely and vastly outnumber the ludicrous, so as a rule things would happen much as one expected, with the occasional surprise and the very rare moment of utter incredulity.
Pretty much as life generally was, in other words, in his experience. This was at once oddly satisfactory, mildly disappointing and strangely reassuring to Holse; fate was as fate was, and that was it.
He immediately wondered how you could cheat.
SIGNAL
+ To: Utaltifuhl, Grand Zamerin of Sursamen-Nariscene: Khatach Solus (assumed location; kindly forward).
From: Morthanveld Shoum (Meast, Zuevelous, T’leish, Gavantille Prime, Pliyr), director general of the Morthanveld Strategic Mission to the Tertiary Hulian Spine: In-Mission Peregrinatory.
+ Signal Details [hidden; check to release: O]
+ Cherished friend, I hope this finds you well and that the Everlasting Queen’s 3044th Great Spawning continues both apace and favourably to yourself, your immediate family, sub-sept, sept, clanlet, clan and kin-kind. I am well.
Firstly, worry not. This signal is sent under the provisions and in keeping with the terms of the Morthanveld-Nariscene Shellworld Management Co-prosperity Agreement (subsection Sursamen). I communicate at such distance to inform you only of a dispositionary detail further to the greater good and security of the mutually beloved world within our charge.
This is that an uncrewed, high-AI defensive entity, in form similar to a Cat.2 CompressHull, accompanied by one dozen minor slaved co-defensive entities, will be emplaced by ourselves within the Sursamen Upper Core Space — also known as the Machine Space or Machine Core — under the auspices of the Morthanveld- Xinthian Shellworld Management Co-security Agreement (subsection Sursamen) with the full knowledge and co- operation of the Sursamen Xinthian, probably not later than within the next three to five peta- cycles.
Although not required to do so by the terms of our highly pleasing and mutually beneficial Agreement, or indeed by the General Treaty Framework existing between our two most excellent Peoples, I am — both as a profound admirer of our Nariscene friends and allies and as a personal expression of the love and respect felt between yourself and me (either of which consideration would naturally entirely and wholly constitute an unarguable reason for said) — happy to inform you that this minor and surely by mutual consent intrinsically untroubling asset relocation has been made necessary by the deterioration in the relationship between the Nariscene’s client species the Oct/Inheritors and the Aultridia (said dispute remaining at the moment, fortunately, still specific to the subject Shellworld).
While not, of course, in any way wishing to anticipate any measure or precaution our vastly esteemed and wise colleagues the Nariscene might wish to put in place, and entirely in the blessed and happy knowledge that whatever action we might seek, as here, to carry out to ensure the continuing viability and security of Sursamen will be but of a piece with and complementary to those the Nariscene will doubtless themselves wish to consider, it was felt that inaction at this point by ourselves might conceivably be seen — if subject to the most painstaking and rigorous (one might almost label it officious!) scrutiny — to constitute a dereliction of duty and would therefore be, of course, as unconscionable to ourselves as it would be to you.
I know — and am, personally, delighted to acknowledge — that such is the assiduousness and seriousness with which the dutiful and admirable Nariscene people take their stewardship of Sursamen (and so many other Shellworlds!) that they would expect no less corresponding sedulity from their Morthanveld friends and
