Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

worlds gleaming like jewels, beacons
of human wealth and power - or left desolated and scarred, lifeless
as Earth’s Moon. And, most wistful of all, there were voices. I heard
roars of triumph, cries for help.
    I knew what I was seeing. I was thrilled. These were the
catalogued destinies of mankind.
    Varcin said, ’Half a million people work here. Much of the
interpretation is automated - but nothing has yet replaced the human
eye, human scrutiny, human judgement. You understand that the further
away you are from a place, the more uncertainty there is over its
timeline compared to yours. So we actually see furthest into the
future concerning the most remote events…’
    ’And you see war,’ said Tarco.
    ’Oh, yes. As far downstream as we can see, whichever direction we
choose to look, we see war.’
    I picked up on that. Whichever direction… ’Commissary, you don’t
just map the future here, do you? I mean a single future.’
    ’No. Of course not.’
    ’I knew it,’ I said gleefully, and they all looked at me oddly.
’You can change the future.’ And I wasn’t stuck with becoming Captain
Dakk. ’So if you see a battle will be lost, you can choose not to
commit the fleet. You can save thousands of lives with a simple
decision.’
    ’Or you could see a Xeelee advance coming,’ Tarco said excitedly.
’Like SS 433. So you got the ships in position - it was a perfect
ambush.’
    Dakk said, ’Remember the Xeelee have exactly the same power.’
    I hadn’t thought of that. ’So if they had foreseen SS 433, they
could have chosen not to send their ships there in the first
place.’
    ’Yes,’ Varcin said. ’In fact if intelligence were perfect on both
sides, there would never be any defeat, any victory. It is only
because future intelligence is not perfect - the Xeelee didn’t
foresee the ambush at SS 433 - that any advances are possible.’
    Tarco said, ’Sir, what happened the first time? What was the
outcome of SS 433 before either side started to meddle with the
future?’
    ’Well, we don’t know, ensign. Perhaps there was no engagement at
all, and one side or the other saw a strategic hole that could be
filled. It isn’t very useful to think that way. You have to think of
the future as a rough draft, that we - and the Xeelee - are
continually reworking, shaping and polishing. It’s as if we are
working out a story of the future we can both agree on.’
    I was still trying to figure out the basics. ’Sir, what about time
paradoxes?’
    Dakk growled, ’Oh, Lethe, here we go. Somebody always has to ask
about time paradoxes. And it has to be you, doesn’t it, ensign?’
    I persisted. ’I mean’ - I waved a hand at the dioramas - ’suppose
you pick up a beacon with data on a battle. But you decide to change
the future; the battle never happens… What about the beacon? Does
it pop out of existence? And now you have a record of a battle that
will never happen. Where did the information come from?’
    Tarco said eagerly, ’Maybe parallel universes are created. In one
the battle goes ahead, in the other it doesn’t. The beacon just leaks
from one universe to another.’
    Dakk looked bored.
    Varcin was dismissive. ’We don’t go in for metaphysics much around
here. The cosmos, it turns out, has a certain common sense about
these matters. If you cause a time paradox there is no magic. Just an
anomalous piece of data that nobody created, a piece of technology
with no origin. It’s troubling, perhaps, but only subtly, at least
compared to the existence of parallel universes, or objects popping
in and out of existence. What concerns us more, day to day, are the
consequences of this knowledge.’
    ’Consequences?’
    ’For example, the leakage of information from future into past is
having an effect on the evolution of human society. Innovations are
transmitted backward. We are becoming - static. Rigid, over very long
timescales. Of course that helps control the conduct of a war on such
immense reaches of space and time. And regarding the war, many
engagements are stalemated by foresight on both sides. It’s probable
that we are actually extending the war.’
    My blood was high. ’We’re talking about a knowledge of the future.
And all we’re doing with it is set up stalemate after stalemate?’
    For sure Varcin didn’t welcome being questioned like that by an
ignorant ensign. He snapped, ’Look, nobody has run a war this way
before. We’re making this up as we go along. But, believe