Majestic: Book 9 of the Legacy Fleet Series by Nick Webb

Author:Nick Webb [Webb, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 38

83,816,431 years after the Big Bang

Pre-Galactic Space

ISS Victory

Captain’s Quarters

The woman opened her eyes, and Granger smiled. He never fathered a child, but he’d always wondered what it would have been like to watch it be born, to come out of its mother, knowing that he put it there. That he was half-responsible for its creation. And so he smiled, just as he supposed he would if this being was being born.

“Do you know your name?” he asked her. He’d implanted enough information, desires, wants, needs, opinions, style, idiosyncracies, and values to be fairly confident what the name would be. But still, he wanted her to make the decision, or feel like she made the decision.

She looked confused. “I don’t believe I have a name yet. You just barely initiated my consciousness, did you not?”

Granger smiled. “That’s correct. You are now ten seconds old.” He made a few notes on his pad—facial motor functions moving smoothly, vocabulary seems intact so far…. “Do you want to choose a name?”

“Yes.”

“What will it be?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m only twenty seconds old, Tim.”

Granger nodded. “Good, that was my next question: do you know my name.” He tapped on a spot on his pad to scroll through his list. “Third question. Do you know your purpose?”

The woman closed her eyes for a moment. “Yes. To lead the Findiri and help bring order and direction to their society.”

Granger made a few notes—directive implantation almost precisely targeted. Has a clear sense of duty. “Close. That’s your immediate task, and the Findiri will be the tool you will use to carry out your purpose. But what is your real purpose?”

She closed her eyes again, longer this time. “To defeat the Swarm?”

“Closer,” said Granger again. “That is Anhara’s and Irithil’s purpose. Your purpose is adjacent to and in the service of theirs. Your purpose is to understand the Swarm.”

“To ultimately defeat them, yes?” said the woman.

“Well, sure. But to defeat them is their job. To understand them is yours. Now if your understanding of them results in their destruction, all the better.”

“What if my understanding of them results in the impossibility of them attaining their goal?”

Granger’s eyes narrowed. Very strange. “I … what do you mean? I didn’t create you to help the Swarm.”

“No, but what if, in the understanding of the Swarm, I come to understand their point of view? What if a true understanding of them makes me agree with them? What if I come to sympathize with them? What if I come to … love them?”

Granger shook his head. This wasn’t going exactly to plan. What was she talking about? “You won’t. Trust me.”

“Doesn’t true understanding result in love?”

“It can, yes.”

“And so my question stands.”

Granger nodded slowly. He was beginning to see the logic in her reasoning, and appreciate how she could have arrived at such thoughts with the baselines he’d given her. But that she’d made such rapid philosophical progress in just a few minutes? Amazing. “Very well. If you come to love the Swarm through your understanding of them, then you will still have fulfilled your purpose.

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