Semper Human. Ian Douglas

“Even in my day. How is that different from an emomeme?”

      “Emomemes are emotional memes … specifically those affecting how people feel about other people, about ideas or situations or groups. Things like racial stereotypes. Or prejudices against a given group of people or beings. A particular religion. A particular cultural worldview. A particular sexual practice or preference. They can also affect how strongly we respond to such impulses. Turning belief in a certain religious worldview into fanaticism, for instance. Or anger into rage.”

      “And … you’re saying the Xul are beaming these things to us through the stargates?”

      “There is intelligence to support this, General,” Socrates told him. “Yes.”

      “How? I mean, how do these emomeme things affect humans? I always thought of ‘meme’ as a kind of metaphor, another word, maybe, for ‘idea.’ Not something with a physical reality.”

      “In this case,” Socrates said, “they are quite objectively real.”

      “Think of extremely efficient, self-contained, and well-camoflaged software,” Schilling told him, “viruses, if you will, infecting the personal AIs resident in people’s implants. Through the infected AIs, people’s attitudes, the strength of their emotional responses, even their very belief structures can be … changed.”

      “Oh,” Garroway said. Then his eyes widened as the implications became clear. “Oh! …”

      6

       2201.2229

       Associative AI Net Access

       Government Node

       Earthring, Sol System

       2245 hours, GMT

      “Gentlebeings, we have a problem. A big problem.”

      Star Lord Garrick Rame looked out from his electronic viewpoint across the other representatives of the Associative Conclave. The stadium-sized chamber appeared to be filled with them, though only a handful were physically present. Most appeared within translucent pillars of light; some of them occupied luminous pillars that looked hazy or even murky with their native atmospheres. The Eulers, for instance, seemed to float within cylindrical columns of dark and nearly opaque water, while the one Veldik present was almost lost in the nearly impenetrable yellow mists of its sulfurous world. A few pillars were night black, their occupants nocturnal beings who shunned visible light.

      “If you mean, Lord Rame, that the Xul group entity poses a threat to the Associative, the evidence suggests otherwise. We have no proof of these emomemonic manipulations you’ve described.”

      The speaker was Lelan Valoc, a transfigured s-Human, her enlarged and elongated skull encased in the nano enhancement sheath hardwiring her into the Galactic Net. Her image addressed the Conclave from the speaker’s dais a few meters from Rame’s viewpoint.

      In fact, each being linked into the Conclave saw the assembly from the same electronic viewpoint. The AI running the room simulation took care of projecting each image onto the speaker’s dais as that representative was recognized.

      Overhead, within the vast dome of the room’s interior, a piercingly brilliant blue rose hung suspended in emptiness, backdrop to a multi-hued spiral disk of infalling starstuff. Rame had just completed his presentation, a virtual sim of the final moments of the OM-27 Eavesdropper Major Dion Williams, as it approached the Galactic Center. Together, the assembled Conclave had witnessed the doomed craft’s approach toward the Great Annihilator, had witnessed the eerie bending of light and beamed transmissions in a gravitational lensing effect, had watched the vessel shudder, flare, and disintegrate.