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+======  Laxx Mining ======
+Nick Nitrous seems to be in some form of stasis.  A blue nimbus
+surrounding is comatose form.
+The distinctive whine of a Thargian assassins rifle is briefly
+overheard above the din of the customers at the bar.
+Simon clears his throat briefly and taps his staff three times on the
+floor.
+There is a brief yelp and the sound of someone disintegrating.
+"Sorry about that folks, I forgot I may have been followed."
+He grins momentarily before regarding Nick with a professional eye.
+"I'm afraid we'll just have to wait out the affects of the Thargian
+Stasis generator on poor Nick.  But I cannot see why it should overly
+prolong our proceedings."
+He turns to Svathlan, "My dear Ambassador Kalderash would you care to
+continue?  I have heard much of your exploits and would be quite
+particular to the details of when you found that space station chief
+security officer, Laxx.  Who helped you in the disintegration of the
+Hyper Matter Application Inc. with the use of only a single Nanobot."
+"And as I recall, it somehow involved the use of a Canadian Sub-
+Atomic Neutrino Thermo-enhanced energy cell - but I have no idea how
+you came across such an Terran artifact."
+Simon looks expectantly at the enviroment-suited mass of tentacles.
+The shell shifts for the first time, almost as if uncomfortable at the
+presence of, well, an assassin, so very nearby.
+'Yes.  That is a very interesting story.  I may be forced to gloss over
+certain particulars due to security concerns applicable even this many
+years later, but I shall speak of what I may.'
+'It all begin in an asteroid mining cluster, in the old Terran system.
+Fortunately.'
+"Asteroid mining in the Terran system?  I heard that the Terran asteroid
+belts were mined out centuries ago."
+Pia looks curious, rather than confrontational.
+"Absolutely."  Three fine-work tentacles temporarily appear to aid the
+formation of a humour form, carefully negating the mocking overtone of the
+basic form.
+"This was ... many years ago.  But yes, it was no longer a functioning
+cluster, at least if speaking in terms of the mining and processing of
+basic ores and elements."
+===== Laxx Mining =====
+"I'm sorry.  I think I misspeak a little.
+"The cluster, long abandoned by miners and criminals alike, had become in
+recent years an autonomous, non-organic, philosophic net.  I was forced to
+navigate into the central rock in a space-faring vessel not much larger
+than the suit I presently inhabit in order to maintain the maneuvrability
+to avoid the thought-net between the maneuvering rocks.  These nets are,
+naturally enough, seldom particularly interested in the presence of the
+organic, and the non-philosophic, within their domains and tend to make it
+uncomfortable, if not downright dangerous to enter."
+The bright shell shifts, almost uncomfortable.
+"This particular net, which had taken the name 'Sterling' for reasons that
+highly amused Laxx, when we spoke of this location years before, but meant
+nothing to me, had a reputation of being mostly passive in its disinterest,
+only interfering with a visitor if they should become considered hostile,
+or dangerous.  I was not, and I trusted the security officer I was seeking,
+on a matter of mutually fascinating research, had not done something
+foolish.  Despite it's background in security, and a stint in the military,
+Laxx was inclined to forget safety when searching something of immediate
+interest.  The strange, indeed now-illegal, cosmetic surgery it had adopted
+were perhaps a perfect example of the immersive techniques it was inclined
+to use.  Disregarding pretty much anything."
+As Svathlan speaks, an extremely fine tendril appears to be tracing an
+irregular pattern upon the tables surface.  Those with good sight might be
+able to identify the faintest of lines, glowing temporarily in a
+rich-metallic purple; lines that seem to represent a map of a asteroid
+cluster.
+"I suffered minor damage to an attitudinal control cutting my path too
+fine, but was reasonably quickly able to approach the central rock.
+Passing in through the nearly open dock, I entered this intelligent
+planetoid."
+==== A wager ====
+Pia offers a credit, and speaks:
+"Svathlan, you haven't told us yet why you were in the asteroid belt in
+the first place.  I'll bet you were looking for a place to hide after
+stealing a box of nanobots right from under the nose of Varth Dader."
+Returning Pia's credit, and quickly spinning another out to join it.
+'No.  No, I've never directly encountered this Varth Dader.  I'm sorry to
+be so prosaic, but my presence in the asteroid belt, in fact within
+Sterling itself was due to Laxx's presence here.  I was researching the
+etymology of a couple of words for some work I was doing, this being
+previous to my ambassadorial appointment, with which Laxx was supposed to
+be helping me.  It had also indicated it had some information about Hyper
+Matter Application Inc. which might be valuable to some other journalistic
+work."
+Pia accepts the credit with a shrug.  "Oh?  What were the words?"
+"Melcheck, which we never fully traced, but appeared to be some ancient
+Terran word.  G'rraugx, a Saur word that seems entirely too similar to an
+archaic Fenn thought-quartet, which would imply some interesting things
+about Saur origin myths.  There were a number of others, but they were
+easier, if not straightforward, to trace.  I can send you the article if
+you are truly interested, there should be a copy on my vessel.  But this is
+off the topic, and, in my experience, not usually truly of interest.
+"I, apart from that small amount of damage, probably due to my lack of
+piloting intuition and feel, entered the core of Sterling."
+"Now Sterling core, as part of the philosophic net, only by physical
+location the centre, it possesses no unique name, was a roughly spherical
+rock twelve hundred metres in diameter.  You can probably, then, imagine my
+surprise at the view that met me upon passing through the entrance.
+Hanging in a space over 4 light-years in diameter, at least according to
+every sensor in the admittedly limited pack in what was little more than a
+powerfully-engined suit, was the most beautiful and complex series of
+philosophic-mathematical equations I'd ever seen.  I knew only a little of
+the discipline back then, and alas, probably less now, but it seemed, after
+I'd watched these for a while, as they shifted through time, that they were
+a impossibly detailed series of linked equations designed to define a way
+of living that was, somehow, better than what presently existed.  Large
+chunks of the work were incomprehensible to me, but some seemed to speak of
+dignity, love, lack of bohemian pretension and compassion.  Unfortunately,
+the section on freedom of information was incomplete.  Surrounded by this
+whirling wonder, it took some hours to realise that I was in the centre of
+this space, and my suit was definitely not equipped for travelling anything
+in excess of a couple of hundred thousand kilometres."
+There is a slight pause.  Despite complete lack of any change, perhaps
+Svathlan is partaking of some refreshment inside the suit.
+"I had many days-worth of supplies and
+<atmosphere-breath-required-equivalent> but not fuel.  It seemed I would
+need to find some other means of reaching the entrance to Sterling core.
+If I could find it.  Entering this space, whatever it was and however it
+had been created, I still do not know, had completely cut me off from my
+ship and was gradually eroding the effectiveness of some of my suit-borne
+systems.  Fortunately, before even sufficient time had passed for me to
+become hungry, I spied, necessarily with my own eyes, the approach of a
+vessel.  Its rough appearance and complete lack of aesthetics implied it
+was built by the net, and I hoped that Sterling's reputation would hold
+true, that I would merely be ejected from this spot.  I was mistaken.
+"After an entirely too high-g trip I found myself stripped of the suit,
+bearing only very basic tech and looking across a narrow corridor at Laxx,
+behind a forcewall, in a cell opposite my own.  It was presently asleep,
+it's insectile-warped Terran features relaxed, as nearly as I could
+determine.  A quick look around, peering into and around the cells to
+either side of my and Laxx' revealed a veritable menagerie of species, with
+no duplicates except for a Terran female and Laxx.  I assumed that whoever
+our captors were had been confused by the genetic manipulation that had
+formed Laxx unique appearance at this moment.  All this being immensely
+atypical behaviour for a philosophic net I was quite concerned, although
+the earlier burst of high-g had been sufficient for me to temporarily lose
+conciousness, meaning, of course, I could be anywhere, under the control of
+anyone, or anything."
+==== Another wager, and a danger to sentient life everywhere ====
+Pia, warming to the story despite being wrong about her last wager,
+speaks up:
+"I bet this Sterling had made some reasonable-sounding assumptions to fill
+in the gaps in the equations you saw.  Following the equations (with these
+assumptions) to their philosophically logical conclusion, Stirling had
+decided that it was necessary (for the good of the universe and all its
+inhabitants) to eliminate all but one example of each sentient
+species.  To be safe, it was beginning by collecting the examples to be
+preserved."
+===== Laxx Corporate =====
+"Fundamentally, yes.  I don't know how Sterling came to the conclusions it
+did, but it had indeed 'proved', with somewhere in the region of a twelve
+percent margin of possibility for a major change to occur while completing
+the last twelve thousand lines of calculation, a relatively trivial amount
+considering what had already been completed, that organic sentience was the
+greatest threat to the matrix it had already constructed, and that that
+matrix did indeed lead to the ideal existence.  This seemed unlikely to me,
+not that I am even close to being capable of debating matters with any of
+the philosophic nets, as many of the original axioms I had seen assumed the
+existence of emotional species, conflict, irrationality and a very large
+population, even if as a difficulty to be accounted for in the work, as a
+basis for the entirety.  Effectively disproving one's own axioms, and not
+concluding the existence of major flaws in either those axioms or the
+equations, was unbelievable.  Got me into trouble on one or two occasions
+back in school.  Although I did it more deliberately.  Philosophic nets
+really aren't known for their sense of whimsy.  Clearly something untoward
+was going on here."
+A temporary pause ensues.  Appropriate sensor gear would indicate the
+transmission of heavily-encrypted pulses to and from the suit on a very low
+carrier band.
+"Excellent."
+"Much of my research at the period, outside the etymological exercises of
+which I have spoken, revolved around Hyper Matter Application Inc., really
+the public, and corporate, face of a number of research bodies quietly
+working on a number of different lines of very primal inquiry.  They all
+seemed to report upwards to a single body, which effectively controlled the
+resources of a multi-system corporation considered a most prestigious
+cosmological think-tank - Government grants galore, of which few people
+seemed to know anything.  I had established the existence of this body,
+consisting of twenty or twenty-one personnel, to my own satisfaction, but
+had yet to discover their agenda.  A small note.  To simplify this story,
+and because some elements of this case are still considered either sub
+judice or classified even after all these years, I have omitted the true
+complexity of the corporate structure.  To reach this point had taken me a
+significant portion of five stanyears already, although you may have noted
+my admittedly less-focused style of research."
+"Corps that place such an emphasis on secrecy are often discovered,
+eventually, to tie back into organised crime of some form, government
+sponsored or otherwise, but HMA lacked any number of signs that the
+experienced observer might note from such an alliance.  However, they still
+indulged in the usual forms of information control that, in my experience,
+most major corporate entities eventually adopt.  The majority of the
+planetary and political systems in which HMA's corporate base rested were
+strict, neo-Conservative regimes; societies most likely to control,
+regulate and oversee corporations.  One was even a theological economy that
+had miraculously survived the expansion to a sectoral economy.  And their
+control is normally near-absolute, if in an arguably, rationally,
+theological way.  Hence, the plugging of leaks required a great deal of
+subtlety, such that even the information about the _disappearance_ of
+potential sources of information about the ridiculously complex web of
+companies that made up HMA tended to be concealed, usually under the cover
+of 'copycat' killings, drive-by shootings, and even, in the case of three
+of the deaths, a small war.  My own survival was threatened twice, but
+fortunately someone never entirely put together the appearance of an odd,
+highly alien pianist and the journalist slowly piecing this grotesquerie
+together.  Clearly I cannot know the inner workings of HMA Inc. at this
+time, but I have to assume my slow collection of data had not been noticed
+at an upper level or more resources might have been set against my own
+little work.  But enough, hopefully, background."
+"As to why I had come all the way out here to the Terran system, much less
+Sterling.  Laxx, an adventurer-weird, old friend, and, fortunately, gifted
+mathematician, had acquired some information about HMA Inc. as well as
+coming across the aforementioned Fenn thought-quartet.  It had nominated
+this place, probably due to rumours in the market of what Sterling was
+doing, its suggestion the only reason I came out here to the boondocks, to
+swap the information we held.  I had unearthed the location of a genuine
+Locarlan rib-flute _for sale_ and knew it could use that to get out from
+under a small financial situation preventing it from safely returning to
+the Megalodon12-13 sphere."
+"And here we were, imprisoned, but at least able to communicate, once it
+awoke.  Three days later.  It always enjoyed its sleep."
+Brro sighs.  "I think you're being too hard on old Sterling there,
+Ambassador.  Every belief set I've seen that assumes imperfect
+sentients ultimately ends in the decision that harmony will only
+result from wiping them out - the root cause of the Apocalypse Wars,
+the Xenocide Wars, the First Terran Civil War, the Battle of Primus
+III... I could go on." He sips his beer.  "Of course, most sentients
+assume that they are not the imperfect ones, which sounds like
+Sterling's problem.
+"The arguments can be convincing, though, especially when they're
+couched in mathematical terms.  I'll wager that Laxx was less help
+than you'd expected, having been seduced by Sterling's calculations.
+Even the lure of a Locarnan rib-flute would seem pale faced with such
+overwhelming nihilism."
+===== Laxx Cooperate =====
+"Perhaps, but Sterling was trying to define an as little as possible
+imperfect perfection within its defined axioms of exceedingly imperfect, or
+limited, sentience.
+And, as a side note, the Primus Battles were all based on religious musical
+differences that caused the Claypool Schism before the first major
+conflict.  Personally, I'm a four-stringer.  Not that I'm a believer, just
+the weight of the historical evidence."
+The mention of the Primus Wars seems to cause a strange cross-hatching in
+some of the finer displayed tentacles.  Ten quickly, non-regularly, cross
+four held almost straight.
+"However, Laxx was little more convinced of the validity of Sterling's
+conclusions than was I.  The only problem was that whatever was in the air,
+or the food that, eventually, was supplied to one, that shouldn't have
+been, had left it, as well, I observed, many of the other species, near
+comatose, and worse, apathetic.  I should have realised earlier that the
+initial three days of sleep was excessive, even for it.  Laxx's pessimism
+about its chances of escaping were nothing exceptional; I've noted that
+Terrans fall prey to that one regularly; but it certainly increased greatly
+the effort I was required to expend to gain any cooperation.
+"The largest piece of information was quickly passed to me.  It took no
+more than three weeks of my time, although effectively much less of Laxx's.
+The first two weeks, not taking into account the three days of sleep were
+spent re-jigging a antennae code as the forcewalls blocked almost
+everything outside the basic Terran visual spectrum, Laxx was definitely
+less enamoured of any other forms of communication I might be able to
+employ, if rarely, and I wanted to maintain my trump for possible later
+use.
+"HMA was an apocalyptic cult, one of many of this period, although few were
+as well-funded or hidden, dedicated to the cold perfection of a universe
+entirely mathematically predictable, containing nothing more than the
+movements of rocks and gas in space.  One perhaps wonders if Sterling
+wouldn't have arrived at the same conclusions as had been neatly tricked
+into if it had had to deal with such endless swamp gas.  I myself have
+occasionally wondered why you humanoids so often become depressed in such
+fashion.  Actually, I was rather disappointed.  I had hoped for something a
+little more original.  Finishing the mapping of this now basically dull
+group took another decade but that was just journalistic clean-up of little
+interest.  Oh, and they'd somehow infiltrated Sterling, introducing some
+fairly sophisticated, and invisible, sequences into the work to warp its
+eventual direction.  Almost just as a matter of passing the time I believe.
+After all, a couple of million tonnes of relatively immobile rock were
+hardly likely to be assisting in actually wiping out large numbers of
+sentients lightyears away.
+"Of course, in the first place, escaping this location took priority.
+After about two and a half years of persuading and, apparently, Laxx kept
+repeating the word, nagging, I had, alas temporarily, grokked enough of the
+mathematics used to fool Sterling so that I could design the code slug that
+_might_ dump the externally-imposed sequences, leaving Sterling to
+re-configure itself, hopefully return to the previously-held disinterest,
+and let us go.  Of course we needed a way to deliver that slug, and
+probably needed to check the programming again.  And has anyone here ever,
+ever tried to communicate complex maths and programming code through a
+simplistic visual code.  Not recommending it.  At all.
+"But Laxx wouldn't allow anything else."
+===== Sterling Luck =====
+"Once we felt we'd established the correct programming, a subject on which
+we'd been particularly uncertain, it remained to develop a vector.  We
+needed something small, downright insignificant, able to avoid the security
+systems locking this wing of Sterling-core from the rest of the asteroid.
+"The nanobots in my suit were probably usable, I'd been left some gear that
+was relatively necessary for survival and the forcewalls, at least in this
+modified storage bay were ever so slightly porous to microfines and the
+like on such scales, while still damping sound transmission.  The
+difficulty with using a nanobot is that they are distinctly not designed
+for operation as an individual entity outside a given design environment.
+Fortunately, as with any number of 'small' points along this narrative, in
+my wanderings around the bays I'd discovered some equipment that would
+effectively allow me to force-evolve some of my nanobots.  There was little
+surveillance in the main portion of the cells, and I was easily able to
+scam the few systems I had to pass to reach and employ this equipment.
+Evolution is not rapid.  Even with the incubation equipment it took just
+less than one Terran year to develop a nanobot capable of everything needed
+to, hopefully, complete the task.  After three possibles died upon exposure
+to standard atmosphere.
+"I had not been able to address the matter of the power supply.  The
+nanobot, as invisible as it might be, as insignicant as it might be
+considered, was necessarily not capable of carrying much in the way of a
+power supply.  The expectation of a multi-week journey for the 'bot, if a
+quick walk for myself, required supplies far beyond its capacity.
+"As our enigmatic friend suggested, a Canadian Sub-Atomic Neutrino
+Thermo-enhanced energy cell would be particularly handy.  The beauty of
+this cell lies in its means of transmitting energy, through some physics I
+cannot begin to understand, through the underlying sub-space manifold to
+any object correctly linked to it.  The theory, and practice, having seen
+one once some centuries before this, I had.  Unfortunately, I didn't seem
+to possess the energy cell.  This had been in the back of my mind the
+entirety of the time I'd been working with my baby nanobots, a problem that
+seemed almost insurmountable.
+"As far as I recall, once I stopped actively soliciting its attention, Laxx
+had dropped into longer and longer periods of an-almost coma deep sleep.
+It had not exhibited any interest for months in how this potential escape
+was developing.  I rested for two weeks before Laxx returned to coherent
+consciousness again, and, eventually destroying its barrier of disinterest,
+was able to lay out the dilemma.  All it seemed capable of doing, a few
+desultory attempts at waving its antennae around meaninglessly getting us
+nowhere, was raise three fingers, and point down the row of cells.  Then
+eat, and drop off again.
+"Now, Laxx is a very intelligent individual, and the brighter around this
+table will probably already have deduced the exact suggestion it was
+making, it took me, arguably starting to be affected by the more and more
+effective sedatives in the supplied nutrition, a further three days of
+observation before I noted the cell the Terran female down the row had
+somehow managed to conceal about her person or clothing when she was
+captured.  Anyone familiar with the Canadian Sub-Atomic Neutrino
+Thermo-enhanced energy cell would be further aware that is simple enough to
+use remotely and indeed on this occasion, only the nanobot needed to be
+able to connect to the subspace ports on this UPS.  She never even woke.
+"From there it was merely waiting.  And further waiting.  Or in my case,
+working on the next generation of nanobots in case I had to try all over
+again.
+"But eventually, there was a click, a whirr, a complete absence of apology
+or even a sheepish grin and a series of doors, leading to the docking bays,
+were open.  Sterling was apparently embarassed enough, or possessed of the
+public relations instincts, to temporarily open the lanes for larger
+vessels, allowing us to evacuate everybody from it, although the trip to
+the nearest station was rather less than comfortable with, at least in my
+case, forty individuals on a single speedster, and the pilot forced to
+remain in a suit another couple of days so the O(subscript: 2 )breathers
+would survive.
+"That was almost that.  I received a text-based statement of gratitude from
+Sterling, apparently the last communique it ever made.  Simply thanking me
+for removing the abnormal sequences, it indicated that it had, from the new
+clean point, been quickly able to complete its maths, included in the
+message, before 'rotating from this space to a better'.  I still don't
+really know what that meant, but Sterling was removed from the navigational
+charts, and the net, not long afterwards.
+"And yes, HMA was rather less than destroyed by this particular action, but
+it seemed to mark a turning point in my acquisition of information which
+has lead to the current multi-system civil action presently being pursued
+against them."
+A meal arrives in front of the big purple egg, apparently ordered remotely.
+The ambassador picks at it lightly, a tentacle, apparently hollow at the
+end disappearing small portions of the dish.
+----
+Back to [[science fiction]] \\
+Go back to  [[The Captain's View Hotel]]