“Miller couldn’t do that,” Jim said. “Even a second person in the room killed his simulation for me.”
“Which is interesting,” Elvi said. “Duarte clearly has more resources and, for lack of a better metaphor, more computing power. Which may be part of why he’s been able to hold back the attacks.”
“What about this plan he talked about?” Naomi said.
“What about it?”
“Is it plausible?”
Elvi pressed her palm to her forehead and rubbed in a small circle. Trust the war leader to skip over all the underlying science and head straight for policy implications. “In theory? Could our species be modified into something that behaves in a fundamentally different way? Sure. Absolutely. Happens all the time.”
“Are you being sarcastic?” Naomi said.
“No. It literally happens all the time. If mitochondria and chloroplasts hadn’t set up shop inside other organisms, eukaryotic life wouldn’t exist, including all of us. Hermit crabs using discarded shells and soup cans. Acacia ants built their whole evolutionary strategy out of supporting trees. Intestinal microflora have a vast effect on cognition, emotion, metabolism. Most of the cells in your body right now aren’t human. Change out a few species of bacteria in your gut, and you’ll be a fundamentally different person. The builders, as far as we can tell, were free-floating individual organisms that networked themselves into a functional consciousness, kind of the way an octopus can be viciously intelligent without a centralized brain. With the nonlocal effects we’ve seen? Sure, why not rebuild that architecture with advanced primates?”
Elvi made herself stop. She was talking too fast and just letting whatever came to mind flow out. It was something she did when she was stressed. She stretched her hands out, feeling the pull in her tendons just to root her a little more in her body.
“So maybe he can do it,” Jim said. “Whatever exactly it is.”
“That’s what I’m missing,” Elvi said. “Whether he’s talking about a superorganism or a subsummation.”
Jim raised his hand. His expression was eloquent enough to ask the question.
“Whether,” Elvi said, “he’s talking about making us into ants or neurons. If you’re an ant, you’re still an individual, just one who’s part of a larger organization. If you’re a neuron . . . Neurons don’t have a sense of self.”
“I’m not a hundred percent sure that ants do either,” Fayez said.
“So you’re saying,” Naomi broke in, “that Duarte, or whatever he’s turned himself into, is at least plausibly preparing to make everyone, everywhere part of a collective consciousness with him at the center so that he can go to war against the things beyond the gates.”
Elvi gathered herself, fighting to organize her thoughts.
“Yes,” she said.
The room was quiet for a long time.
Jim broke the silence with a single, harsh laugh. “Well, I’ll be damned. He found a way to make jackbooted authoritarianism seem like the good old days. I wouldn’t have thought he could.”
“I’m going to need to get messages through to my people,” Naomi said. “Is there a way to use your repeaters without exposing you?”
“It’s spotty ever since the gates went bright,” Elvi said. “We might be better off sending through a missile with a burst on it.”
“I’d need several,” Naomi said. “This feels like an all-hands-on-deck situation, and I’ve got hands in a lot of different systems.”
“We should have a conversation with the comms officer,” Fayez said. “I’ll come with you. Make the introductions.”
“There’s a lot of clarification I need from Tanaka too,” Elvi said. “And Ochida. Shit. I can’t send this data to Ochida. I can’t send it to anyone. How can I explain Amos being in the dataset?”
“That was always going to be a problem,” Fayez said.
“I was planning to bury it. I don’t think I can.”
Jim leaned forward despite the lack of gravity. It just made him seem like he was pitched at a different angle. “Maybe we can find a way to fake it. Dry lab it, but get the same conclusion?”
Layers of complexity and danger unfurled in Elvi’s mind. And she hadn’t done the interview with Cara yet. There was so much to do, and the only mark of how much time she had to do it was when her time ran out.
“Let me see what I can do,” she said.