***Saggitarius Arm – Fast Courier Ship -Reach-***

***Travil, the Ambassador***

I watched as the loading of the ship's cargo bay proceeded. The personnel was busily transporting various equipment from analytic devices to databases, and power-generators.

The people in charge hadn't really known what they should do when they received the Silent's invitation with a transportation volume attached to it. After a lot of deliberation, they had simply decided to pack as much equipment as possible, hoping that at least some of it would be useful. If not in actuality, then maybe in trade.

Technicians were swarming over the deck in a frenzy of activity. They were trying to set everything up so that the more tech-savvy members of my team could make use of it at a moment's notice.

As I watched them, I swirled my glass of fruit juice around and thought about the situation.

Iris had left us to take care of some things regarding the ship. Before she disappeared, she showed us how to use one of the conference room's walls as an observation screen. And how to set up a communication line with the rest of our people.

Miredin, our tech expert was extremely impressed by the piece of viewing technology. According to him, few species had ever bothered to make a screen look like a metal wall. He was absorbed, playing with a hand-held version that Iris had fetched for him when he voiced his interest.

According to Iris, we had full access to all of the ship's non-essential functions. Which meant that Miredin would be likely unresponsive to normal communication attempts for the rest of the flight as he discovered new things.

The issue that worried me with the situation was why the Silent would be so open to us. Either there was some political undertone amongst their own that I didn’t understand, or they truly didn’t regard us as a threat.

Both scenarios didn't bode well for my people.

Eleu, who was the left hand of my party came up to stand with me. “What do you think of her?”

She was a proud Lmir woman and the most competent person I ever met. We got acquainted on the other end of Lmir controlled space when I was still in training. Her sharp mind impressed me, and I fought to have her on my team as soon as I achieved the rank of first ambassador.

I frowned and searched my mind for a fitting allegory. “I think that we have stepped with one foot into the cold ocean and that the rest of us is yet to fall in. We had maybe an hour of discussions up until now. That isn't even remotely enough to learn about a whole civilisation, and according to Iris, her people already absorbed several of them.”

“I can't help but feel like this Iris is a trap.” Eleu gestured at the door. “She is behaving like a bumbling buffoon and has no sense of propriety. Who would send someone like her on a diplomatic mission? And where is the rest of the crew?”

Eleu was right to be wary, but she was also overreacting a little bit.

I took another sip from the juice. The more I drank, the more I was taking a liking to it. It was an acquired taste, but it grew on me. “I think that Iris is exactly what she seems to be.”

Eleu looked at me with an incredulous expression. “Don't tell me that you fell for that sweet and friendly persona that she is presenting to us. You must have noticed all the oddities in her behaviour. That body of a sweet, little girl is a mask. A suit that she put on to make us feel more comfortable with her presence.”

She scoffed, making it clear that she was not impressed with me. “Don't allow yourself to be influenced by such a thing.”

I interrupted before Eleu could excite herself any further than necessary. “You are completely right, Eleu, but also somewhat wrong. Don't worry about her influencing me. I know very well that Iris is something very different beneath her outer shell. But I also believe that she isn't even trying to fool us. She made so many behavioural blunders in the last hour that I am firmly convinced that she isn't even trying to pretend to be something that she is not."

She stopped, somewhat perplexed at my admittance. "I am? You do?"

“Yes.” I coughed. “If it were something small, then I might believe that she made a mistake and is trying to hide some sinister intent. But the way in which she tilts her head sometimes, or nods.” I raised my hand and wriggled my fingers. “Or how she shook my hand. Someone who had bothered to learn our customs wouldn't make such an obvious blunder. There are plenty of unencrypted holocasts being transmitted all over our space. All the Silent have had to do in order to create a much better agent, would be to watch and listen.”

Eleu drew down the corners of her mouth and twitched her ears. “And she never moves her ears. Though, that still doesn't disprove my point of her trying to make us feel more comfortable.”

“You are right,” I affirmed. “Her appearance is intended to make us more comfortable with her presence. But Iris's behaviour is also meant to show us that she is something entirely different.”

“It's obvious that Iris is a trap. But I also think that she is the Silent’s friendly face that they are showing us. We know what they are capable of. They could have sent us a military type, a harsh negotiator, or they could have given us an ultimatum and be done with it.” I shrugged, trying out the strange mannerism that our host had shown. “But I also believe that Iris is the genuine article. The Silent took one of their puppies and shoved it in our faces. To show us that they aren't just the conquerors that they are made out to be.”

They were trying it with candy before they brought out the stick.

I nodded to myself, feeling like I had judged the situation correctly. It was always good to adapt foreign mannerisms during negotiations. It helped the other party to empathize.

“She is the nice messenger,” Eleu clarified, reasoning out the correct answer on her own as she warmed up to my way of seeing the situation.

I nodded. “They are testing us. They are trying to see what we would do. Tell you what.” I waved my glass around, indicating the entire ship. “I bet with you that Iris is this ship's entire crew. Her superiors wanted to see whether we would attack her and try to take the ship and the technology after seeing nobody else with her. That's why she chose the form of a girl.”

“Very young woman,” Eleu corrected. “It's like she looked up what the legal age for adulthood is among our people and set the slider to it.”

“A Sleeen merchant party would have done that by now, attacking her, I mean,” my aide grumbled. “The way she turned her back on us was mortifying. No space-faring species would do that in a first contact situation.”

“And no Sleeen merchant party would have survived my death, Mrs Eleu,” Iris’s voice came calmly from the entrance as she stepped back into the room. “You have to remind yourself that the destruction of a physical body would be like losing a shirt for me. I would have instructed the ship to self-destruct and woken up back at home. Though, failing my mission would have been a black mark for my accomplishments. I would get demoted, or worse, lose rank in my society.”

I shot an angry glare at Eleu for speaking out so openly that early in the negotiations, but I doubted that we weren’t under observation anyway. It hardly made a difference.

Maybe it was better to have our animosities to be out in the open.

Iris headed for the table and sat down. From the way in which she looked at us, she had clearly noticed the little exchange between us. “Do not worry, Mr Travil. You are partly right about me being a test of character for your people. And I am indeed the only pilot for this ship.”

“Which doesn’t mean that you could… activate more crew members if you saw a need for it,” I clarified. “I hope that I am getting used to what you are trying to explain to us. You surely have a few more bodies here? Maybe even your original one?”

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Iris smiled, and for once, it looked like the genuine Lmir expression. “I see that my teachings are falling onto fertile ground. But no. What you are seeing in front of you is my ‘original’ body. Only modified to be Lmir. If this body was destroyed, it would probably take a few hours to reactivate another one from cold storage. Though, I would hate that very much.”

I frowned. “Why?”

“This body was conceived by Queen Lisandra, one of the rulers of our society.” She smiled. “If I manage to gather enough accomplishments, I might even be officially recognised by my mother. Our technology can provide us with anything we might wish for. And if there is something we can't get, virtual reality is just one eye-blink away. Hence, striving for social recognition became one of the driving factors to work long ago.”

Eleu frowned. “You are a princess?”

“Oh, no.” Iris covered her mouth. “I am afraid that it works a little different in our society, though the titles of king and queen are pretty much exactly what they imply.”

Iris waved a hand. “You have to know that most of our children are already formed minds from the V.C. when they are born. People only rarely have a blank child and have it grow naturally these days. I was already a formed mind when I hatched from one of the Queen’s eggs. Our people are capable of reproducing rapidly when necessary. Having thousands of princesses and princes would be a little hard to handle.”

She leaned over and got herself a glass of fruit juice. “Only a few of the queen's natural-born offspring are acknowledged heirs. But belonging to the royal bloodline of one of the four leaders of our people still comes with privileges. One of them is that it’s easier to climb the social ladder if I do a good job. I probably should also mention that it isn't easy to become a queen's child. But we can leave the interplay between the V.C. and the demons aside for now. We would still be talking by tomorrow.”

“Thousands…” Eleu paled. “How many eggs do you lay?”

Iris winked. “As many as the male can inseminate during intercourse. Which may be from one to up to four each time we have sex.”

Each time?

I coughed and removed the glass from my lips, then quickly wiped my mouth. I had almost spat the juice through half the room.

The alien woman only laughed at my reaction. “It sounds bad from your point of view, but the fact is that few of our people ever have children. Population growth has to be encouraged amongst those who are willing so that we can keep up with the war requirements. Which is partly why we aggressively recruit other races to join us.”

“But they don’t get to join as themselves.” Eleu sniffed. “They have to become demons?”

“If they want to join us in reality 1.0, then yes,” Iris affirmed. “I won't lie to you. It's about ensuring that the V.C. remains untouchable.”

Miredin looked up from his hand-held notepad for the first time since the conversation started. “What would be able to touch you? You have taken over a sizeable part of the galaxy's Outer Rim. Millions of stars, and you apparently have a way to communicate faster than light speed. You also have these Blue on your side. The G.S. is fighting you, and while their fleets are clearly a delaying factor, I believe that your main constraint is your ability to grow and take over new solar systems.”

Iris nodded. “You are right. But our enemy is the G.S., and they are being controlled by an artificial intelligence. We might have FTL technologies, but this long war will still take us thousands of years to play out. There are billions of stars in the galaxy, and the G.S. controls the centre, a perfect strategic position with concentrated resources.”

“Wait.” Eleu raised her hand. “The G.S. is using an artificial intelligence?”

“Of course they do.” Iris took a sip from her glass. “That's why the Blues are pressuring us for time. There is no telling what weapons it might come up with in the next few centuries as the war starts heating up. You are thinking of our people as if we are a plague that's taking over the galaxy – which is partly true. But truth is, we are still in survival mode. We are throwing bodies and over-engineered technologies at the problem, hoping to keep the G.S. off balance so that it takes them longer to come up with a proper counter to our nano-tech.”

Iris expression turned sour. “If war taught us anything, then it's that former values suddenly no longer hold true if you are on the losing side. Once they do, they might come up with a way to interfere with the upload process. And then we might have to wipe out civilisations for real.”

The room stayed silent after that.

Everyone had to think about the implications of what Iris had revealed to us. If the G.S. was really going against their own credo, then the V.C. might be in the right.

Though, I didn't really believe in concepts like right or wrong. The reality of things was always more fluid than what people made it out to be.

“I would like to know how exactly this ‘upload’ process works,” I interjected, noticing that the conversation was steering towards a confrontational topic. We could question the validity of Iris's revelation later on.

Iris turned her attention to me. “Well, essentially, our nano-tech will invade your bodies and link up with n-space. Then it copies your brains and nerve systems neuron for neuron and uploads ‘you’ to the V.C.”

I frowned. “But what happens to my body once this upload is created? This doesn’t sound like a transfer but like a copy of myself. What stops my body from being able to go on like normal once this upload is created?”

The woman’s expression turned defensive. “Some species see it that way, but it isn’t a copy. We, the uploaded minds, are convinced of that.”

“Why?” I asked. “Is it forbidden to see it as something different?”

“No.” Iris sighed. “It’s just that we uploaded minds don’t like talking about it because we ourselves are not capable of understanding the physics behind it. We have to believe the Blues that their math works out. And belief, that comes awfully close to religion. There is a dogma among the uploaded against such things. Those of us from the Lifer faction who joined the cause come from old Earth and we still remember what religious fanatics are capable of. There was a really bad war a few decades before the G.S. found us.”

I pondered her words for a few moments. “Thank you for speaking about something that seems like a taboo among your people, but I would really like to hear your reasoning why this upload would truly be me and not just a copy.”

Iris sighed. “It comes down to quantum mechanics and what the Blues found out about n-space and reality in general. The simple fact is that two identical things of a certain complexity can’t exist at the same time. It is anathema to our universe. A hidden law of physics, if you will.”

Eleu shook her head. “But that’s not true. Why else would there be two identical glasses?” She pointed at the conference table. “Or are they not complex enough?”

Iris leaned forward and stole an empty glass from one of my team members.

She placed it next to her own. “Take these two glasses. They seem identical, but they are not. If you measured them, you would realize that they are very similar in looks and form. Maybe even identical within the measurement range of your equipment. But there are subtle differences between them. Small ones, but they are there and piled up ever since both glasses came into existence. This glass and that one are taking up different places in space-time. There are some scratches on mine that the other doesn’t have, as they experienced differences in how they were handled. Much like two Lmir are the same when compared to a Hob. And yet, the two Lmir are very different beings.”

She raised a hand to stop Eleu when it seemed like my aide wanted to speak up. “But for the sake of this experiment, let’s assume that both glasses are perfect copies of each other at the moment at which they were created! Atom by Atom. Neutron by neutron. Quark by quark…”

A finger was pointed at her original glass. “Let’s say that this glass is me. My mind.” Then she pushed the other glass forward. “And this one is the perfect copy that I upload to the V.C.”

Iris gestured at the other glasses on the table. “And those too. All of them, perfect copies. What we found out, is that the moment we start running the copies, they start deviating from the original. It doesn’t matter whether there are a thousand, or a million copies of the same mind placed in exactly the same circumstances. The moment they activate, they deviate and change. In small ways at first, but as time goes on, the changes pile up. Until one might say that they are entirely different beings. It’s as if they are slowly being taken over by something that’s… well… something that’s not me.

“In our experiments, we used people who had a certain set of values, a firm belief. As soon as there were two identical copies, one of them suddenly changed some of that belief after the upload. Sometimes all of it, sometimes only a little. We even confirmed that it wasn't necessarily the copy who had to change. Sometimes it was the original and the copy turned out closer to the heritance of the original person. Hence, Crazy Ivan's law. If there are two, one must change. It doesn't matter which one. There can't be two identical thinking entities within the quantum space that's our universe.”

I licked my lips, wondering where she was going with this. It already boggled my mind that any race would be insane enough to go through with such an experiment. I didn’t even dare to question its morality. “So, the reason is that you aren’t capable of creating perfect copies?”

“No.” Iris frowned. “That’s our people’s theological problem. The copies are perfect at the moment of their creation. The process ensures that, but the universe doesn’t allow for duality. Crazy Ivan’s First Quantum Law is this: ‘There can only be one. If there are two, one must change.’”

Eleu chuckled. “Oh, I get it. It’s kind of funny. Because if what you say is true, then what your people found would be an indirect proof of the existence of a soul. That there exists something beyond our mortal shells. I have read of the concept. The Zuang, for example, have the firm belief that there is something that will go on after their death.”

Iris very clearly didn’t look pleased with Eleu’s conclusion.

It took a few moments before she grudgingly admitted, “Maybe. It’s one of the reasons why our people don’t like talking about it.”

An evil glint entered her expression and Iris looked around the room. “So? Following Crazy Ivan’s First Law, how do we ensure that we are the intellect that is the uploaded one, and not the one that stays behind in meatspace?”

Silence answered her.

Then Iris moved, quicker than I had ever seen a Lmir move.

The glass, her original glass, shattered loudly on the wall, splattering into a thousand pieces. The violence of it caused everyone in the room to flinch.

Slowly, Iris turned back to the glass that she had stolen earlier and cupped it between her hands. “So, now I can activate my copy and it will move on as me. Nobody will be able to tell that it isn’t me, because Crazy Ivan’s Law is no longer violated. There is only one me.”