Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

to let go and allow the suit to soak it all up; it
hadn’t helped that the suits were semi-transparent.
    He wandered uncertainly through the large central area. Under its
fabric roof the facility was too hot. There was a stink of overheated
food from the replicator banks, and the floor was grimy with sweat
and ground-in asteroid dirt. The troopers, dressed in dirty
coveralls, walked and laughed, argued and wrestled. While Luca had
kept his inertial-control boots on, the soldiers mostly went
barefoot; they jumped, crawled, even somersaulted, at ease in the low
gravity environment. Many of them were sitting in solemn circles
singing songs, sometimes accompanied by flutes and drums that had
been improvised from bits of kit. They played sentimental melodies,
but Luca could not make out the words; the troopers’ vocabulary was
strange and specialised, littered with acronyms.
    There was graffiti on the walls. One crude sketch showed the
unmistakable flared shape of a Xeelee nightfighter conflated with the
ancient symbol of a fanged demon, and there were references by one
sliver of a sub-unit to the incompetence and sexual inadequacy of the
troopers in another, startlingly obscene. A couple of slogans caught
his eye: ’Love unto the utmost generation is higher than love of
one’s neighbour. What should be loved of man is that he is in
transition.’ And: ’I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.’
Another hand had added: ’I am become Boredom, the Destroyer of
Motivation.’
    He joined Dolo on a small stage that had been set up before rows
of seats. The daily briefing was soon to begin here. Luca reported on
the graffiti he had seen. ’I don’t recognise the sources.’
    ’Probably pre-Occupation. Oh, don’t look so shocked. There is
plenty of the stuff out there; we can’t control everything. In fact I
think I recognise the first. Frederick Nietzsche.’ His pronunciation
was strangulated.
    ’It sounded a good summary of the Druz Doctrines to me.’
    ’Perhaps. But I wonder how much harm those words have done, down
across the millennia. Tell me what you think of our proto-religion
here.’
    ’The elements are familiar enough,’ Luca said. ’The old legend of
Michael Poole has been conflated with the beliefs of the Friends of
Wigner.’ During the Qax Occupation the rebel group called the Friends
had concocted a belief, based on ancient quantum-philosophical
principles, that no event was made real until it was observed by a
conscious intelligence - and hence that the universe itself would not
be made real until all of its history was observed by an Ultimate
Observer at Timelike Infinity, the very end of time. If such a being
existed, then perhaps it could be appealed to - which was what the
Friends had intended to achieve during their ultimately futile
rebellion against the Qax. ’It’s just that in this instance Poole
himself has become that Observer.’
    Dolo nodded. ’Oddly, Michael Poole was lost in time - in a sense -
his last act, so it is said, was to fly his ship deliberately into an
unending network of branching wormholes, in order to save mankind
from an invasion from the future. Perhaps he is still out there
somewhere, wherever there is. You can certainly see the resonance of
his story for these rock jockeys. Poole sacrificed his life for the
sake of his people - and yet, transcendent, he lives on. What a role
model!’ He actually winked at Luca. ’I sometimes think that even if
we could achieve a state of total purity, of totally blank minds
cocooned from the history of mankind, even then such beliefs would
start sprouting spontaneously. But you have to admit that it’s a good
story.’ He sounded surprisingly mellow.
    Luca was shocked. ’But - sir - surely we must act to stop this
drift from Doctrinal adherence. This new faith is insidious. You
aren’t supposed to pray for personal salvation; it is the species
that counts. If this kind of thing is happening all over the Front,
perhaps we should consider more drastic steps.’
    Dolo’s eyes narrowed. ’You’re talking about excision.’
    In the seminaries there had been chatter for millennia about the
origin of the religious impulses which endlessly plagued the swarming
masses under the Commission’s care. Some argued that these impulses
came from specific features of the human brain. Thus perhaps the
characteristic sense of oneness with a greater entity came from a
temporary disconnection within the parietal lobe, detaching the