autopilot has been engaged, and she now avoids the asteroids big enough to destroy her. The smaller stones try to smack against her hull, but glance off the invisible force-field inches off her surface, just as if a child had skipped a stone off of water.
On her underbelly, the four Cereb commandos have finally melted their way into a cargo bay. As soon as they do this, a jet of air silently blasts out at them, carrying with it over a dozen compristeel cases. The Leader of the team checks inside. The Sidewinder’s emergency protocols have been enacted, and the AI has sealed the door into the cargo bay and shut off all vents into that room to save on life support.
The Leader connects to the natural-user interface that links his team. Data scrolls across his retina, the same data being sent to his team. With a series of thoughts and motions of his eye, he issues the command. They enter on the count of four (a number of almost religious significance in their culture, a positive omen in calculations), swinging through the opening under zero-gravity conditions, counting on the thrusters on their feet, elbows, and back to propel them into the hold.
The cargo bay is not entirely empty—the pilot had the sense to tie and bolt most things down, in case of just such a breach. Several lockers remain against the wall, some of them with transparent covers, revealing weapons within. Weapons such as particle hand cannons, the very same sort as the Cerebs now unholster from their sides. He’s killed us before , the Leader thinks, his respect increasing for his target. He’s harvested us .
Of course, it shouldn’t be too unexpected for the pilot of a Sidewinder. Those pilots were typically trained in stealth, infiltration, and sabotage. Sometimes their missions required them to stay away from any military base for months at a time, gathering resources as they went from one mission to the next.
The Leader understands harvesting like this. Harvesting is as essential to the Cerebrals as breathing. Without continuous harvesting of the resources of both Nature and one’s enemies, a people cannot hope to survive—so sayeth the Calculators—and certainly can never expand. Most civilized species learned this, and the humans were no different. They just didn’t manage to figure out how most of it worked before the end.
The Leader’s natural-user interface highlights this weaponry, and the data is instantly transmitted to the rest of his team, who no doubt have already noted it and assimilated the data themselves. Their target is technically proficient, and has guile. He couldn’t have survived this long without it , he thinks. It was, after all, the greatest flaw in homo sapiens .
The Leader considers that. If they had spent as much time on logical resource-gathering and maintaining strategic location, rather than attempting their “cloak and dagger” nonsense, they might have stood a chance .
We could argue that the Leader is right. But, then, we wouldn’t have been human.
For all their intelligence, this can be extremely difficult for a Cerebral understand. For you see, Cerebrals possess great powers of reason, calculation, and linear thinking. They are imaginative, but only insofar as engineering and uplifting their own species. One thing that gave them the most concern when dealing with humans was that, while humans have passable skills of linear thinking, it was their lateral thinking that made them so unpredictable.
Linear thinking has to do with cold, step-by-step logic. It deals with certainties, not abstracts. Two plus two is always four; you can’t have a safer bet than that. No matter which species you communicate with, no matter what language they use, putting two objects side-by-side with two other objects always brings about four objects . The answer to the question “Does two plus two equal four?” can never be “Probably.” The answer to such
On her underbelly, the four Cereb commandos have finally melted their way into a cargo bay. As soon as they do this, a jet of air silently blasts out at them, carrying with it over a dozen compristeel cases. The Leader of the team checks inside. The Sidewinder’s emergency protocols have been enacted, and the AI has sealed the door into the cargo bay and shut off all vents into that room to save on life support.
The Leader connects to the natural-user interface that links his team. Data scrolls across his retina, the same data being sent to his team. With a series of thoughts and motions of his eye, he issues the command. They enter on the count of four (a number of almost religious significance in their culture, a positive omen in calculations), swinging through the opening under zero-gravity conditions, counting on the thrusters on their feet, elbows, and back to propel them into the hold.
The cargo bay is not entirely empty—the pilot had the sense to tie and bolt most things down, in case of just such a breach. Several lockers remain against the wall, some of them with transparent covers, revealing weapons within. Weapons such as particle hand cannons, the very same sort as the Cerebs now unholster from their sides. He’s killed us before , the Leader thinks, his respect increasing for his target. He’s harvested us .
Of course, it shouldn’t be too unexpected for the pilot of a Sidewinder. Those pilots were typically trained in stealth, infiltration, and sabotage. Sometimes their missions required them to stay away from any military base for months at a time, gathering resources as they went from one mission to the next.
The Leader understands harvesting like this. Harvesting is as essential to the Cerebrals as breathing. Without continuous harvesting of the resources of both Nature and one’s enemies, a people cannot hope to survive—so sayeth the Calculators—and certainly can never expand. Most civilized species learned this, and the humans were no different. They just didn’t manage to figure out how most of it worked before the end.
The Leader’s natural-user interface highlights this weaponry, and the data is instantly transmitted to the rest of his team, who no doubt have already noted it and assimilated the data themselves. Their target is technically proficient, and has guile. He couldn’t have survived this long without it , he thinks. It was, after all, the greatest flaw in homo sapiens .
The Leader considers that. If they had spent as much time on logical resource-gathering and maintaining strategic location, rather than attempting their “cloak and dagger” nonsense, they might have stood a chance .
We could argue that the Leader is right. But, then, we wouldn’t have been human.
For all their intelligence, this can be extremely difficult for a Cerebral understand. For you see, Cerebrals possess great powers of reason, calculation, and linear thinking. They are imaginative, but only insofar as engineering and uplifting their own species. One thing that gave them the most concern when dealing with humans was that, while humans have passable skills of linear thinking, it was their lateral thinking that made them so unpredictable.
Linear thinking has to do with cold, step-by-step logic. It deals with certainties, not abstracts. Two plus two is always four; you can’t have a safer bet than that. No matter which species you communicate with, no matter what language they use, putting two objects side-by-side with two other objects always brings about four objects . The answer to the question “Does two plus two equal four?” can never be “Probably.” The answer to such
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