*
/// Don’t forget the daughter-stones. ///
/Eh?/ An image flickered, and he remembered the three points of light from the translator flying to him and dropping into his suit pocket. /What was that, anyway?/ he asked, driving into the hangar area.
/// Daughter components of the translator.
They’re essential for what we have to do.
Keep them with you at all times. ///
/Uh, okay./ Rolling to a stop, he secured the buggy and hurried inside. After dressing, he reached into the suit outer pocket to find three small, translucent stones. They looked like glass marbles, one obsidian, one ruby red, one glittering white. He thought he saw a faint sparkle of light glowing within the white one, but it died immediately, and there was no other sign that they were anything other than glass stones. /What should I do with them?/ he asked, rolling them in the palm of his hand. He immediately envisioned dropping them and watching them disappear under various immovable objects.
/// They’ll stay in your pocket
if you direct your thoughts to them,
asking them to.
I’ll tell you more about them later.
Let’s go. ///
Bandicut shrugged and dropped the stones into his pocket. Then he grabbed a terminal to submit his field report, and called Switzer’s office to say that he wanted the cast taken off. He was told to come by in two hours. Perfect. He headed straight for the lounge.
Locking himself into a VR room, he switched on a solar-system realtime program and perched on a stool, surrounded by a panoply of stars, with a glowing sun floating in space some distance away. At Charlie’s request, he put on a neurojack headset and adjusted the controls until all nine of the planets were enlarged enough for their features to be recognizable in the dark interplanetary gulf—the outer planets with their cloud-bands and rings, Mars a rusty pebble, Earth a blue-and-white gem. He dimmed the stars, so that they hung in the background like an infinite tapestry, while allowing him to see clearly the movements of the planets.
/// Splendid.
The translator can make do with raw numbers.
But this makes it much easier to visualize,
doesn’t it? ///
/I guess so. What exactly are we visualizing?/
/// In a manner of speaking . . . EineySteiney pool.
I’m downloading the orbital data now.
Waiting for the VR program to process it . . . ///
EineySteiney pool? Bandicut thought.
/// There we go.
First I want you to see the orbits of
the planets and all significant tracked objects
as they were several years ago.
This is based upon the information
we took from your library. ///
The image dimmed; the planets shifted positions in their orbits as the program made the time-based adjustments, and there was a momentary blurring of the myriad of tiny points of light that represented known asteroids, comets, and satellites. When everything became clear again, the overall picture looked much the same.
/// Now—I want you to see the gaps
in your routine observations,
based upon the locations of your
telescope and radar stations
which would be tracking the movements
of small bodies. ///
The holoimage was suddenly crisscrossed with swaths of soft illumination, emanating from various points on the Moon, Mars, Ceres, and several other stations. Some of the swaths were moving. A significant portion of the solar system remained in shadow, however—more than half the sky.
/// A century or two ago,
Earth-based amateurs might have spotted the danger.
That was before air and light pollution
made it impossible.
Now let’s subtract the coverage
from two solar-orbiting sats
that are no longer being monitored. ///
/Wait,/ Bandicut protested, as two swaths of light blinked off at locations a third of the way around the sun from Earth. /Are those sats really out of service?/
/// As far as I know, they’re still functioning.
But their transmissions have been turned off.
Because of budget cuts,
no one was analyzing the data. ///
/Well, damn it—/
/// I’m just laying out the facts.
Now, look here— ///
Bandicut watched, as the quarx rearranged the solar system. Everything blurred, then stabilized. A small pointer winked on and tracked a tiny point of light as it drifted through the dark emptiness far outside the orbit of Pluto. /What’s that?/
/// That’s your planet’s nemesis,
a dark comet as it was some years ago,
orbiting in the Kuiper Belt.
I’m going to give you brief snapshots
of its movements since then. ///
The image changed, in shifting freeze-frames, as the planets spun around the sun, the nearer planets moving quickly and the outer planets swinging with ponderous slowness.
/// As you can see,
it has passed through observation swaths
several times.
It has never been named,
but its presence is recorded in your astronomers’
compressed databases, as one among thousands
of extremely faint transitory objects
whose orbits have never been calculated.
If its orbit had been derived,
it would have been listed as safe.
Indeed, here it floats
at the edge of interstellar space,
bothering no one. ///
/So where’s the problem?/ Bandicut stirred restlessly.
The image changed, and zoomed across the solar system to bring that one comet’s movements into closer relief. Bandicut felt his heart skip a beat as the comet’s course seemed to bend inward suddenly, then a little later, bend inward again. He watched nervously as it fell toward the sun, across the solar system. /What’s happening? What diverted it?/
/// Its companions out here . . . ///
A pointer blinked momentarily at several other points of light, jumping from one to the next.
/// The chaotic movement
of half a billion bodies, John.
I’ve compressed the effect here,
because it would take hours to show you
all the tiny changes to its orbit
over the millennia.
Our data become more uncertain
the farther back we go,
but our projections right now are quite clear.
Even if your people had been watching,
they could not have predicted
these course changes.
You have not yet mastered the necessary nuances
of dynamical chaos. ///
Bandicut bristled. /But your translator has?/
/// Yes. ///
Bandicut grunted. /But are you saying that all of this is just a projection? You don’t have actual observations?/
/// We have verified the first part of the prediction,
from your most recent databases.
Earth has not noticed the course change,
but it has occurred,
and the data are there in your libraries. ///
/So they could find it from that, after all,/ Bandicut said hopefully.
/// No.
At the time of these observations,
the orbit was still innocuous.
It had not yet passed close to Uranus. ///
He watched as the point of light zoomed inward, toward the gaseous green planet, represented here as a grape-sized ball of light. The object’s course bent sharply as it passed through Uranus’ gravity well and spun out again, toward the sun.
/// There’s the slingshot. ///
/I’m sure they would have seen that!/
/// Afraid n
ot.
That passage occurred while Uranus was
out of observation.
See?
It’s in the shadows.
And the only active Uranus probes
were looking the other way.
We checked. ///
Bandicut swallowed nervously. It all made sense, if the image here were accurate. /But how did you see it, then?/
/// We didn’t.
This is a projection,
based upon the earlier data.
But it’s a good projection.
John, I’ve never known the translator to miss
—not even once—
on its orbital projections.
You could say it’s a sort of specialty. ///
Bandicut cleared his throat. He wanted to believe the quarx, but all of this was making him very uneasy. /So . . . when do we see it again?/
/// Earth-based observations
won’t catch it until a few weeks before contact.
Now look at this— ///
The comet sped inward through the patchwork of observation swaths, neatly missing all but the very edge of one field of view. Bandicut had to admit that the chances of its being noticed at that point were slim, at best.
/// It wasn’t noticed.
We’re still in past tense, here.
But there was one data point
dismissed as noise
that was consistent with our projections. ///
/Still—if we told them where to look for it—/
/// It’s too late for that, John.
And even if it weren’t,
you know,
we’d still have this little problem
of credibility. ///
/What problem?/
He heard a sigh, and felt something strange, and was aware that the quarx was doing something through the VR neurolink. /Charlie, you still there?/
“Right here,” said a voice in front of him. A hologram blinked on: a bizarre-looking creature wielding a teacher’s pointer. It looked vaguely like a dinosaur, with a knobby head and bent-looking fins running down its back.
“What the fr’deekin’ hell is that supposed to be?”
“An alien presence,” rumbled the monster. “I searched the records for an indication of how your fellow humans might view me, if they believed in my existence at all. According to your VR library, this is typical of what humans conjure up in their minds when they think of aliens.” The quarx-dinosaur turned awkwardly. “This representation is called Godzilla. Now tell me—do you think your people would listen to a warning about impending disaster from—”
Bandicut shook his head angrily. “Stop, Charlie! Is this a serious discussion?”
“Very,” said the lizard.
“Then conjure up another image. Look human, for Chrissake. We would not transmit a message from some goddamn antique monster holo.”
“Okay, but do you understand what I’m saying?” The reptile blurred and vanished. A man’s image appeared, a salt-and-pepper-haired, vaguely jovial, grandfatherly figure. It was probably an image of some actor, or American president—but thankfully, Bandicut didn’t recognize the face. The human gestured with the same pointer. “Can we . . . talk like this?” he rumbled throatily.
“Yes,” Bandicut said tensely.
“Good.” Charlie turned and pointed to the image of the comet, now plunging slowly, it seemed, toward the sun. “Okay, then. Let’s assume your astronomical union caught a glimpse of this before it disappeared behind the sun. Even then, they couldn’t have established its orbit with certainty, and if they had, they wouldn’t have thought it a danger.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s a final change that will be occurring, very soon, with the comet behind the sun.” The Charlie-image rapped its pointer in the palm of its hand. “The translator has predicted a solar flare which is occurring now on the far side of the sun. That’s been confirmed by sat readings. That flare is affecting the solar wind and radiation through which the comet is passing. That will be causing propulsive outgassing of vapors as the comet passes close to the sun. This projection was made by analyzing course-change behaviors already observed, in conjunction with certain mathematical chaos-functions which are not in your scientific lexicon.”
“Charlie—?”
“I understand your feelings. But I’m not bullshitting you, as your people might say. The translator has predicted it, using functions which your astronomers would not understand and would not believe.”
Bandicut glared. “If these functions are so useful, how about explaining them to me!”
The quarx-human turned up his hands. “John, I can’t explain the math. But I can show you a few of the metaphase-space projections.” He gestured, and a graphics window opened in one corner of the solar system. Within it, complex three-dimensional attractor patterns twisted and circled.
“That’s helpful. Let’s see . . . I’d say it looks like a serpent on heavy drugs, sewing a button on a cape,” Bandicut responded sardonically.
“Well, it’s a temporal-probability path of the comet, mapping tumbling characteristics and derived analysis of the thing’s physical structure, based upon known data and a complex stacked array of behavior patterns, cross-correlated with the projections of solar activity.”
“Charlie—”
“The thing is, all of these apparently random factors are not really random; they’re just chaotic—extremely sensitive to tiny changes. This form of chaos analysis uses a lot of minute detail—but it also uses patterns and metapatterns, and derives still deeper patterns from those. The truth is, John, your language doesn’t have all the words necessary to explain it. It comes perilously close to—well, I have often wondered if it is not so much predicting the future as viewing it. The translator denies this, but—” The quarx-human shook his head.
Bandicut stared at the alien, and felt very much like a dumb animal. He hated the feeling.
Clearing his throat, Charlie turned to look soberly back at him. “Anyway, this is the kind of thing on which the translator just doesn’t miss. It really doesn’t. It’s been doing this sort of thing for about a billion years.”
Bandicut gestured noncommittally. “Okay. The translator doesn’t miss. But they still might spot it coming around the other side.”
“They might, indeed.” Charlie nodded vigorously. He turned and sped up the image. “I’m sure they will, in fact. But too late. There are only forty-seven days left, John. Forty-seven days. The thing is in a fast, highly elongated orbit. Here, look.” He pointed to Earth. “I’ve programmed in everything Earth has that could conceivably reach the comet and change its course. The comet will start blinking when it’s too close for the best course change to be good enough. Watch.”
“I’m watching,” Bandicut said in irritation.
The comet emerged close to the sun, arcing toward Earth’s orbit. An armada of ships began to climb out of Earth’s gravity well, curving toward the sun. The fleet was barely a fourth of the way from Earth to the comet when the comet began blinking.
“This is an optimistic assessment,” Charlie said, as the blinking point of light continued closing with Earth. “The ships just aren’t fast enough—and they don’t have the clout we need. The best they could do is change the point on Earth where the impact will occur.” The comet and Earth converged, and there was a flash. “Boom.” Charlie threw up his hands.
Bandicut didn’t say anything for a moment. He had no idea what to say.
“How bad would it be, you’re wondering?” the quarx-human said. “History is littered with end-of-the-world scares, after all—right?” Bandicut didn’t answer. The quarx was reading his thoughts accurately. “So how do we know this isn’t just another false alarm?” Charlie gazed at him. “Think of the dinosaurs. Think of nuclear winter. That comet is about seven kilometers across—almost as large as the one that turned the dinosaurs into fossils. If it hits the Earth at that speed, it wi
ll explode with a thousand times more energy than all of the nuclear weapons ever amassed on Earth going off together.”
“But—”
“Think of so much dust and soot in the atmosphere that photosynthesis ceases—and all food-bearing crops die out. Then think of war.”
“You can’t know this,” Bandicut insisted.
The quarx-human shrugged sadly. “Forty-seven days. I know it’s difficult for you to hear. And your reservations are correct, in the sense that all of humanity will not necessarily become extinct. There will no doubt be pockets of survivors, including those off-planet. But Earth’s population will be drastically reduced. Probably by ninety percent or more.”
Bandicut was swaying dangerously on the stool. He stood, stumping slowly around the solar system, trying to get a handle on the situation. “So . . . I seem to recall that you . . . had a plan?” He cocked his head. A feeling of extreme surrealism was coming over him, almost but not quite like silence-fugue. “Isn’t that what you said?” he asked. There was no reason to be angry at the quarx, he thought. But it made no difference; he was angry.
Charlie nodded stiffly. “That’s what this is all about, John. That’s why we’re going to have to—” he hesitated “—steal a ship.”
Bandicut stared at him for a breathless instant, then barked a laugh. “I’m glad you have a sense of humor, Charlie, I’m glad you have a sense of humor. Because that’s about the most inane thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” He shuddered to silence, because he knew that this Charlie didn’t have a sense of humor like that. “What do you . . . really . . . have in mind?”
The quarx-human stepped toward him. “We have to steal a ship, John,” he said softly. “We have to steal it, and go out there and stop that comet from hitting Earth.”
Bandicut swayed dizzily and wondered if he was getting enough oxygen. Was he still underground in the cavern, dreaming all this? He took a long, deep breath. “That’s ridiculous,” he said finally. “You just showed me how ships from Earth couldn’t possibly get there in time. And we’re about a hundred times farther away than any of them.”
“True,” Charlie agreed.
Bandicut erupted angrily. “So you claim you have these wonderful orbit projections, but you don’t even know that someone out here at fucking Neptune, even if he could somehow steal a ship that could make it that far, couldn’t possibly reach the inner solar system in time. That’s just—”
“The others don’t have the translator,” Charlie interrupted calmly.
Bandicut clamped his teeth shut. “What?”
“They don’t have the translator.”
“That’s your fr’deekin’ answer?”
“That’s my answer,” said the wide-eyed hologram. “The translator can do what your ships can’t.”
Bandicut sat speechless, staring at the unblinking alien.
Chapter 23
Impossible Things
“WHAT DON’T YOU understand?” asked the quarx, studying his face.
Bandicut laughed harshly. “Are you crazy? I don’t know which is more ridiculous—the idea of stealing a ship—or the idea of what we would do with it if we did!”
The holoimage nodded, scratching its cheek in thought. “Look in your pocket, John.”
Bandicut scowled at the quarx and drew out the three stones he’d gotten from the translator. He squinted at them. They had changed; they were much smaller than before—more like gems for finger rings than marbles. He shook them in the palm of his hand—a ruby, a diamond, and a black-something. They didn’t look very alien, or very powerful. On the other hand . . . they were from the translator. Who the hell knew what the thing could do? “Okay,” he murmured.
“Those daughter-stones will, among other things, enable you to channel the energy of your spaceship in ways that I guarantee you have never imagined.”
“You make them sound like magic.”
The quarx shrugged. “To you, they might well seem that way.”
“Don’t patronize me, Charlie!”
“Sorry—I didn’t mean to. They represent an extremely advanced technology. Please keep them safe. Ask them to stay in your pocket.”
Bandicut returned them to his pocket. Stay, he thought.
The quarx-human frowned, nodding. “John, about this . . . idea, as you put it . . . of stealing a spacecraft. I want you to know—I do not suggest this lightly. Nor do I ordinarily condone stealing—”
Bandicut laughed. “Oh, no?”
“—but these are extraordinary circumstances.”
Shaking his head, Bandicut walked through the display of the solar system. He reached out to touch the fragile little ball of the Earth. His hand passed through the hologram. “Do you know what would happen if I got caught trying to steal a spaceship?”
“I expect it could be unpleasant,” the quarx admitted.
“Unpleasant? Yes.” Bandicut stared at the images of the other planets. “I would spend the rest of my life in prison. If I didn’t get killed in the attempt.”
The quarx cleared his throat. “It is true that I’m asking you to take a very great risk.”
“I’m glad you admit that much. What is it you’re intending for us to do, exactly? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I don’t mind. What we’re going to do is make a high-speed flight, using a process known as ‘spatial threading,’ culminating in a massive . . . energy conversion.”
Bandicut blinked. “What’s that mean?”
“It means we’re going to intercept the comet at about a quarter of the speed of light, and hit it head-on—”
“WHAT?”
“—and the threading field will convert roughly a fifth of the mass of the comet to energy—”
Bandicut swallowed.
“—at a safe distance from Earth.” The quarx-human paused, gazing at the holographic Earth, and turned back to Bandicut. “And that will terminate the danger to your homeworld. If all goes as planned.”
Bandicut stared at him in disbelief. “And what about us?”
“Well—” Charlie considered his words. “There is a significant possibility that we will die. But I estimate we have, perhaps, a fifty-percent chance of surviving the collision. Which is rather high odds, considering the energy we plan to release.”
Bandicut could only shake his head. “Right. And if we do survive, with this fifty-percent chance of yours?” He stopped and thought about it. He didn’t know how to think about it; it seemed beyond reasoning. “Have you figured out what we do then? Have you figured out how we’re going to get back here? How we’re going to—forgive me—take up our lives again? Have you figured that out? Charlie?”
The quarx-human gazed at him in dismay. There was some emotion disturbing his face—and stirring in Bandicut’s mind as well—that he could not identify. Finally, Charlie turned away, saying softly, “No, I’m afraid I haven’t worked that out yet. I guess I believed that saving Earth was more important than our getting back here.”
Bandicut swallowed, suddenly feeling selfish and ashamed. And angry at Charlie for making him feel that way.
“But John,” said the quarx, turning. “We won’t be without resources. I can’t tell you exactly where the explosion will put us, or in what condition . . .” He hesitated, and seemed to realize that he wasn’t satisfying Bandicut. He shrugged helplessly. “But I can say this. If we survive, we will have . . . resources . . . provided by the translator.”
Bandicut furrowed his brow and said, darkly, “Well, that just reassures me all to hell. We’ll have resources. You mean to call for help, so someone can come and pick up our pieces?”
“No, it won’t be like that—”
“Tell me something,” Bandicut snarled, losing patience. “Why couldn’t you have found someone qualified for this harebrained scheme?”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone who wanted to be a hero.”
“John—” The quarx cocked his
head and actually chuckled. “Far fewer beings than you imagine actually want to be heroes. Why you? Because you’re in a position to do it, and no one else is. And—” the hologram cleared its throat “—I might add, time is fleeing, as we sit here and debate the inevitable.”
Bandicut turned away in anger, then wheeled back toward the quarx. “Tell me this—are we at least going to send a warning to Earth, to let them know what we’re doing? It would have to be better than nothing.”
The human figure shrugged. “Define ‘better.’ You might prompt a worldwide panic. If we succeed, they need no warning. But if we fail, you would only give some people a short reprieve. There will still be tidal waves and earthquakes, dust and smoke clouding the atmosphere, global cooling, and a die-off of plant life. And in the end, if we fail, billions will die.”
Bandicut walked aimlessly under the stars, batting at the planets as they floated by. And I’ll probably die, doing what you want, he thought. When he spoke, his words were tinged with surliness and guilt. “Everyone dies, right?”
“Yes,” said the quarx, “but I note that you seem to want to live.”
Bandicut jabbed at the air and sighed. “Well, why all this cowboy stuff? Why not get an authorized ship, one equipped for the flight—and then go do it?”
“John—” The image made a stiff, pleading gesture with its hands. “We have to leave within forty-eight hours. Do you seriously think we could persuade your authorities—in two days—to give us a ship?”
“We could try,” he said stubbornly.
The image shook its head. “They’d say you were crazy and lock you up. And we would have lost the element of surprise we need for taking a ship.”
“Do you have a plan for that, too?”
“Only a partial plan, I’m afraid.” The quarx-human studied him. “I can see that you’re still not convinced. John—could I ask you a hypothetical question?”
Bandicut shrugged.
“If you knew your niece Dakota would be among those to die—”
“Now, don’t you start in with—”
“Would you do it then? It’s a distinct possibility, you know. She might not die at once. She might die later, along with all of the others dying of starvation or disease. I’m not trying to manipulate your feelings, but—”
“Jesus, Charlie!” Bandicut slammed his balled fist into the cushioned wall at the edge of the solar system. “Not trying to manipulate my feelings?”
“Well, it is true that I’m appealing to things that matter to you—”
“Look, just leave my niece out of it, all right?”
Charlie was silent for a moment. “Does Dakota not live on Earth? In Iowa City?”
“What did I just say?” Bandicut yelled. “Leave her out of it!”
“I am merely stating facts—”
“Damn it! This discussion is not about facts, asshole! It’s about . . . whether I believe you enough, in here—” and he thumped his chest “—to make a completely irrational decision to do something that will either ruin my life or end it!”
“You’re saying that it’s an emotional question, as well as a factual one?” The human-image made stiff hand gestures. “I believe I understand that, John. But—” He paused, stopped by Bandicut’s glare. “It’s just that I am poorly equipped to—”
“Yeah, yeah . . .” Bandicut was pacing now, bounding about in the low gravity like a caged wildcat, ankle cast and all—a wildcat loose among the planets and stars. A rogue comet. He was about to explode from nervous tension.
/// Is there any way I can
help you work this through? ///
the quarx asked nervously, inside his head.
He turned at Saturn and loped back across the solar system toward Earth. He spun around as a sudden, compelling idea came to him. “Yeah,” he drawled. “You can.” He felt a bitter edge creep into his voice, and it made him shiver with pleasure.
“Please tell me.” The quarx-human, near Neptune, peered across space toward him.
“Step into the middle of the room and make yourself solid. No transparency, full physical feedback. Can you do that?” Bandicut spoke in a low tone, which he attempted to keep nonthreatening. He crossed the room to the lockers, and took out the tactile-feedback gloves and jacket.
“Are you—planning to—?”
Bandicut balled his fists inside the gloves. “I’m planning,” he said, letting his anger out in a long growl, “to address the emotional component of this discussion.” He strode to where the quarx-human was standing, and planted his feet as solidly as he could in the Triton gravity. “I’m planning to make a point about you and your mokin’ pompous arrogance—”
“My what?”
“—and your assumption that you can just decide for people what they’re going to do with their lives.” Bandicut squinted at him. “Tell your programming to follow real physical norms for this room. Gravity, solidity, everything. Now put up your fists.”
“John, you aren’t—I mean, I—”
“Yes, I am! And you can’t say you didn’t ask for it, you fokin’ goak!” Bandicut swung as hard as he could. His fist crashed into Charlie’s chin, and even as he spun around from the recoil of his own swing, he glimpsed the quarx-human toppling past Uranus and crashing back into the wall. Catching his own balance with some difficulty, Bandicut stumped back on his cast and glared down at the fallen quarx-human, as it clumsily picked itself up from the floor. “You and your damned secrecy—and your damned crazy schemes to save the world! You might be right—I’m sure you probably are right! But you’ve been using me, and I don’t like it!”
Charlie looked up with chagrin. Starlight glinted in his eyes. “John, I—didn’t think you would do that.”
Bandicut balanced on the balls of his feet. “No, I don’t suppose you did. You want to stand up so I can do it again?”
“Is this really necessary?” Charlie asked, rising slowly.
“YES, DAMN IT!” Bandicut shouted. He swung again, and Charlie went crashing through the outer solar system to the floor. This time, Bandicut went down too, rolling in a twisting somersault, because he hadn’t braced himself at all properly. “Yes, it’s goddamn necessary!” Gasping, he rose, and as the quarx got up too, he lunged across the room to catch the quarx in a flying tackle. “I’m gonna NAIL you, you mokin’ fokin’—!”
The illusion failed at that point, and he sailed through the quarx-image and crashed with a bone-jarring thud into the padded wall. “Uh—” he grunted, stunned, and drew a couple of gasping breaths from where he lay on his back. “Ah hell,” he groaned. After a moment, he rolled to look at the holographic human form crumpled nearby.
Charlie slowly sat up and gazed at him, with what emotion he couldn’t even guess. “That hurt me, John,” Charlie said softly. “You wanted to cause me physical pain, didn’t you?”
“YES!” Bandicut roared, swinging one last time and knocking the quarx over like a bowling pin. “Yes, I wanted to hurt you!” he wheezed in satisfaction.
He sat back suddenly and sighed. “You can turn that damn thing off now. We have an appointment with Switzer. We mustn’t keep the good doctor waiting.”
Charlie sat back up. “John, if this is important to you . . . I notice that there are programmed boxing scenarios in the VR system. We could have a—”
“No. It’s over,” Bandicut said wearily, getting up and pulling off his gloves, jacket, and headset. “Shut that thing off, and let’s get going.”
/// You don’t want to fight anymore? ///
Bandicut turned off the whole VR display, including the human. /I don’t want to fight anymore. Now let’s get the hell out of here./