get a cure for your sick child, or wonder when another warlord will ride his army through your city. Your magical nano-thingies, they mean there’s no reason for empire, as long as you keep the nosy people from being too nosy—that Anonymity law of yours.”
Simon closed his eyes and sighed. “I believe he describes the situation all too clearly, Marc.”
“Damn straight he does—even though we sure aren’t all softies here. There was a reason they called him the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, and it wasn’t just because he could kick the crap out of all the other so-called Sages, either. Yeah, Wu, you’ve got it, and that’s plain poison any way I look at it.”
A simple insight, but obviously much easier for someone raised as was Wu Kung, outside of our society, Mio said.
“We’d touched on this before,” Simon said, “but this description makes it clear just how much this changes the way humanity will interact—with the universe, and with itself.”
“Just exactly right,” DuQuesne took up the thread. “Up until now, we thought we had it all figured out—we were safe, fat, and happy. But that ain’t so at all. The universe can threaten us now—and if we want a part of it, we can’t just manufacture it. We have to engage others, fight others, maybe bargain for it, maybe go to war over it.
“And that means that people who—up until now—had to be satisfied with politics little more important than playing a king’s advisor in a simgame now have something else: all the possibilities of power that used to dominate the Earth back in the days before the only limit on universal comfort was whether you could find yourself some dirt and a patch of sunshine, regular tidal waves, or wind power.”
Ariane sighed. “So we’ll have to be on the lookout for actual political maneuverings inside our own faction? Are you saying they won’t realize how little we can afford that kind of thing?”
ARIANE AUSTIN, I EXPECT FAR BETTER OF YOU THAN DENIAL OF REALITY! THINK, CHILD, THINK!
She winced; it did not help that DuQuesne gave a cynical laugh in time with Mentor’s rebuke, and continued, “Ariane, I’ll bet any amount you like that this is one of the major problems just about any new Faction runs into, and it could be a real killer. We can’t be the first group to achieve the Arena after we’d reached this level of technology; I’d guess a lot of the prior Factions had.
“I don’t think it’s coincidence that two of the top Factions—the only two which are composed of essentially one species—are from species that have some kind of collectivist background: the Molothos, who have some kind of biological impulse to unity, and of course the Blessed, who’re run by the Minds. Sure, there’s advantages in being open to letting lots of other people into your club, but even outside of the top Five there aren’t a huge number of single-species powerful factions, because those alien species aren’t any more unified-and-of-one-mind than we humans are, and they fragment once they get to the Arena.”
Ariane glanced at Simon, and the hollow feeling in her gut echoed the concern she saw in his brilliant green eyes. “Which might all be well and good,” Simon said slowly, “in ordinary circumstances. The rules of the Arena essentially don’t permit you to lose your home Sphere in Challenge, so internal issues won’t deprive you of citizenship, and once you come to some sort of resolution you can pick up and go from there.”
“But these aren’t ordinary circumstances,” said Ariane grimly. “ We have one of the Great Factions essentially at war with us, and another that won’t mind at all taking us down about five notches. If we piss away too much time and energy with internal power plays, the Molothos are going to find our Sphere, occupy the Upper Sphere with a LOT of troops, and then…I don’t know, exactly, maybe begin building up some huge force to invade our actual system in normal space,
Simon closed his eyes and sighed. “I believe he describes the situation all too clearly, Marc.”
“Damn straight he does—even though we sure aren’t all softies here. There was a reason they called him the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, and it wasn’t just because he could kick the crap out of all the other so-called Sages, either. Yeah, Wu, you’ve got it, and that’s plain poison any way I look at it.”
A simple insight, but obviously much easier for someone raised as was Wu Kung, outside of our society, Mio said.
“We’d touched on this before,” Simon said, “but this description makes it clear just how much this changes the way humanity will interact—with the universe, and with itself.”
“Just exactly right,” DuQuesne took up the thread. “Up until now, we thought we had it all figured out—we were safe, fat, and happy. But that ain’t so at all. The universe can threaten us now—and if we want a part of it, we can’t just manufacture it. We have to engage others, fight others, maybe bargain for it, maybe go to war over it.
“And that means that people who—up until now—had to be satisfied with politics little more important than playing a king’s advisor in a simgame now have something else: all the possibilities of power that used to dominate the Earth back in the days before the only limit on universal comfort was whether you could find yourself some dirt and a patch of sunshine, regular tidal waves, or wind power.”
Ariane sighed. “So we’ll have to be on the lookout for actual political maneuverings inside our own faction? Are you saying they won’t realize how little we can afford that kind of thing?”
ARIANE AUSTIN, I EXPECT FAR BETTER OF YOU THAN DENIAL OF REALITY! THINK, CHILD, THINK!
She winced; it did not help that DuQuesne gave a cynical laugh in time with Mentor’s rebuke, and continued, “Ariane, I’ll bet any amount you like that this is one of the major problems just about any new Faction runs into, and it could be a real killer. We can’t be the first group to achieve the Arena after we’d reached this level of technology; I’d guess a lot of the prior Factions had.
“I don’t think it’s coincidence that two of the top Factions—the only two which are composed of essentially one species—are from species that have some kind of collectivist background: the Molothos, who have some kind of biological impulse to unity, and of course the Blessed, who’re run by the Minds. Sure, there’s advantages in being open to letting lots of other people into your club, but even outside of the top Five there aren’t a huge number of single-species powerful factions, because those alien species aren’t any more unified-and-of-one-mind than we humans are, and they fragment once they get to the Arena.”
Ariane glanced at Simon, and the hollow feeling in her gut echoed the concern she saw in his brilliant green eyes. “Which might all be well and good,” Simon said slowly, “in ordinary circumstances. The rules of the Arena essentially don’t permit you to lose your home Sphere in Challenge, so internal issues won’t deprive you of citizenship, and once you come to some sort of resolution you can pick up and go from there.”
“But these aren’t ordinary circumstances,” said Ariane grimly. “ We have one of the Great Factions essentially at war with us, and another that won’t mind at all taking us down about five notches. If we piss away too much time and energy with internal power plays, the Molothos are going to find our Sphere, occupy the Upper Sphere with a LOT of troops, and then…I don’t know, exactly, maybe begin building up some huge force to invade our actual system in normal space,
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