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“The secret is digital audio,” Mond explained. He was seated by the bridge’s holotank while Naomi and Bennet worked to set up a stable computer connection with Bottletown through the no-longer-secret Roddenberry FTL communication corridor. “You can encrypt it however you want but there’s only so many practical ways to transmit digital audio via radio or laser. Digital information breaks down to ones and zeroes, after all.”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with your communications blackout,” Carrington replied.

“It’s actually very simple.” Mond went to work in the holotank, his prosthetic hands painstakingly forming a set of graphs in the tank. “Computer systems are all different, of course. However at a base level you’re still communicating ones and zeroes at a very high rate of speed and the structure of your system actually makes the pattern of those ones and zeroes predictable to a certain extent. We don’t have to know what they mean. We just have to predict what is coming next, a one or a zero, and predicting a pattern without bothering to think about what it means is the quintessential job of an artificial intelligence.”

“They don’t get distracted by the framing problem,” Carrington said.

“Exactly. When UNIGOV was coming together there were a huge number of people broadcasting counter-narratives that were undermining the sapiens position. We created the broadcast blanketing system as our own countermeasure. It was based on a very simple fact: when a wave is exposed to the complete opposite waveform the two cancel each other out.” Mond was carefully sketching out two such waveforms in the tank.

Even without the visual aid Carrington recognized what he was saying and grasped the underlying principle he was getting at. “You mean you managed to anticipate the data we’re about to broadcast and create an inverse signal to cancel it out? Wouldn’t it be simpler to crack the encryption?”

“Maybe. I’m not an expert on the subject but I don’t think it is. Transmitters use very simplistic algorithms to talk to each other and that’s all we really need to figure out in order to create the blanketing effect. Also, the system was created to counter people who were broadcasting within standard protocols. The point wasn’t to find out what they were saying. They wanted people to understand them. The point…” Mond shot an uncomfortable look at Naomi and sighed. “As the martians say, the point was to silence them and for that understanding isn’t actually necessary.”

Carrington nodded, waving him past that minefield. “Fine. Your computer experts whipped up an approach to shut down radio waves with some kind of dampening technology. How do we get past it now?”

“We left a backdoor in the programming to ensure that we could talk through the blanketing effect. That algorithm is buried in UNIGOV comm systems from that era foreward. All we need to do is pull it from the Vault under the martian city and we’ll be able to break through and talk with UNIGOV systems on the ground.”

“On the ground?” Carrington gave him a sharp look. “What about our own forces? They aren’t going to have anything to receive the broadcast with.”

“Not necessarily. First off, I know that your personnel are very capable of appropriating UNIGOV tech and using it for their own ends.” Waved his hand to encompass the ship. “After all, if they couldn’t we wouldn’t have made it back to orbit, would we?”

Carrington clasped his hands behind his back and looked back at the holotank. EMG scans had picked up a great deal of thermal and magnetic activity around a power plant in the Los Angeles area. They did need to do anything possible to find out what was going on down there. On the other hand, there was a certain trepidation to finding out just how badly things had gone on the ground, a trepidation rooted in the disasters of the past.

“You know, Director, I find it odd that you cite cutting off your martians as a source of certainty for your civilization. I find the silence full of possibility. The uncertainty is unpleasant, often, but so long as I do not know what’s happened down there the anything could have happened. Major Goldstein could be on the verge of forging a successful peace with your government. Or they could have created such a disastrous misstep that the entire detachment was wiped out when you deployed your disassembler field.” With a flick of a few fingers Carrington brought the live satellite images of the surface to the forefront of their section.

“Certainty is a vital component to the art of war,” he continued. “Knowing everything we can about the enemy’s positions, capabilities and mindset are the foundation of good planning. Acting in complete ignorance of these things is foolish. Yet you claim that creating that ignorance, particularly ignorance of your adversaries but also ignorance of your own past, is a vital part of creating a society founded on certainty. I confess I find your position bizarre.”

“Oh?” Mond raised an eyebrow. “And when you look at what you see from your adversaries you never think that perhaps they might be lying to you? That what you see from them is calculated to undermine you? I find that very hard to believe you.”

“On the contrary, Director, we count on it. Psychology, gamesmanship and analysis are all part of the modern warfare – and modern diplomacy, for that matter.” Carrington gave the other man a steady look. “I wish you would beat around the bush less, Mr. Mond, because I really would like to end this with as little bloodshed as possible but it’s really hard to understand where you’re coming from.”

Mond sighed and looked up at the feed in the holotank. “I believe you, Admiral. The thing you must understand about our approach to the world is that we believe that stability comes from vulnerability, from a willingness to be open to one another. We wish to be left alone to pursue our own society rather than be forced to constantly reevaluate the intrusions of outsiders. The expectation of hostility from others undermines that. It robs us of the openness that comes with vulnerability.”

“You can’t build a society on vulnerability, Director,” Naomi said, leaving her console to join them. “Believe me, the founders of Bottletown tried; because they had no other choice. To some extent I suppose you could say they succeeded, since we are still around, but we didn’t have a chance to develop our own culture, to grow as people or to create anything new. We still live in the same buildings they did. We barely understand the technology they left us and we spent our very short lives wondering if the whole system was going to come crashing down around us. We were vulnerable every moment and I’m sure the downward spiral would have destroyed us eventually if the Genies hadn’t found us.”

“That is stability, Ms. Bertolini. Entropy is a universal force that we must all deal with on a personal and societal level.” Mond gave her a sad smile. “When we fight and we scratch and we steal from one another we don’t reverse entropy, we only increase the suffering of others to enrich ourselves. In the process, we hasten the process rather than forestalling it. If we were honest with ourselves we could allow the natural processes to begin to heal, we could slow entropy as much as possible and we can live our full lives in community with one another rather than in constant suspicion.”

Carrington glanced at Naomi. Her face showed total confusion, clearly unable to work out what brought a person to this point, much less an entire civilization. The small world under the Borealis dome hadn’t prepared her for this. She hadn’t seen the kind of arbitrary death the world could dole out through violence, illness or mishap. The very nature of Malacandran civilization precluded it.

Such things had a corrosive effect on the human spirit so pronounced and mysterious it shocked even him and worse, it was very hard to reverse. Such corrosion was at the root of most wars, crimes and suicides. Worst of all, when ways to reverse the damage did exist the methods were radically different in every case.

The fleet had decided to remain in the Sol system to help the Malacandrans emerge into a thriving society and maintain some level of connection with the Homeworld. More and more, it was looking like achieving either one of those goals involved breaking UNIGOV’s hold on Earth. What that meant was unclear. At the most extreme it meant destroying most of their leadership and beginning the process of completely replacing the corrupt culture that they’d put in place. Carrington had little appetite for such extreme action. Hopefully just giving competing ideas a foothold on planet would be enough.

Unfortunately he was almost certain that less extreme option would be impossible without winning Mond over to his side. Any counter to the UNIGOV party line would have to come from someone who knew that line inside and out. Mond’s status as a member of the Directorate would lend him credibility. However, so far there were very few cracks showing in the Director’s ideological dedication to Earth’s status quo. He showed some doubt when the Malacandrans were around. Carrington couldn’t think of anything to help the Director along outside of keeping Mond and Naomi together as much as possible and praying that something came of it. In the meantime he had his own people to worry about.

“If you prefer the stability of entropy to the certainty of understanding there’s not much we can do to change your mind, Director.” He glanced at Bennet. “How are things coming, Major?”

“We’ve established the uplink through the Spiner and the Stewart, Admiral. We should have the algorithm pulled from the Borealis Vault in a few minutes.”

“Can we integrate it with our own computer systems?”

“That’s the easy part, actually,” Naomi replied, “Teng already spent several days with the Roddenberrys working out an emulator that allows our systems to talk to each other. We brought a copy with us and installed it with the Major yesterday. You should be able to drop the algorithm into it and go from there.”

“Then we’ll try and open a line to the LA Power Plant first as it looks like the ground team may be holed up there. At your convenience, Major.”

The next three minutes were full of quiet muttering and consultations. Then Bennet said, “Okay, Admiral, it looks like we’ve got someone who’s answering us. Want me to put it up in the tank?”

“Please.”

The surveillance feeds flew off to the sides and were replaced with a human sized helmet. To Carrington’s surprise it was a regulation issue Copernican armored exoskeleton helmet. “Who is this?” The man on the other end demanded. Then he jerked back and snapped to attention, his hand coming into view from one side. “Admiral Carrington! I’m sorry, sir, I was expecting a UNIGOV person.”

Carrington tamped down on his impulse to grin. “Not a problem, son, this is a very unorthodox line of communication. Who am I talking to?”

“Corporal Broward Keys, Admiral. Part of the landing crew under Captain Yang dispatched with Sergeant Langley to secure this facility.”

Interesting. Sergeant Langley was apparently having a very good month. If he kept it up someone back on Copernicus was going to try and build him a statue or something equally foolish. “Good work, Corporal. Is the Captain or Sergeant present?”

“Negative, sir. The Captain is still inbound, Sergeant Langley is in pursuit of hostile assets.” He glanced off to one side. “Uh, we do have a SubDirector Baker present, Admiral. She’s surrendered but it sounds like she’s interested in talking to you.”

Carrington glanced at Mond, who looked just as surprised as he was, and then back at the tank. A new route to the simple solution had just offered itself. “Put her on.”