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Authors: S. Andrew Swann
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danger. In part because he wanted no one else to face the responsibility for some of the things he had to do.
Things like taking copies of unwilling, living people, and feeding them to the Hall of Minds. For over a century, the Hall had been a repository only for the dead and dying, a means to preserve their knowledge and their contributions to Salmagundi. Only a few dozen minds here had been taken while their bodies lived on, all original Founders.
Those minds were rarely taken on by their descendants, more from practical concerns than from any taboo. Better to take in some elder who had taken on a lifetime of history and knowledge from others, someone like Shane himself who hosted the merged personas of fourteen people who had likewise merged themselves with many of their ancestors.
The fifteenth was an exception. To serve in the Triad, a potential leader was expected to take on the additional persona of one of the Founders. It was recognized that at such a venerable time in someoneâs life, matters of practicality were of less a concern. It created a layer of history in the mind, a perspective that was necessary to lead.
It also inevitably influenced the personality of the host. Shane wondered how many of his decisions of the past few days were prompted by the presence of his distant namesake in his skull. He remembered the history of Kathy Shane, ex-captain with the Occisis Marines, better than any of the other lives that had contributed to make up what he was. She had sacrificed herself to shield the people she had charge ofânot her life, but her command, her honor, everything of value to her.
Like his distant ancestor, Shane was in a position where he had to do things that wouldâin the endâdisqualify him from leading the people he was trying to save. Already he had engaged in a coup, and now he was about to do something that verged on blasphemy.
If Salmagundi survived, Shane knew that he would not be granted the solace of contributing to the Hall of Minds. He would be tried, convicted, and executed, and his mind would be allowed to disappear with his body.
He eased onto one of the tables and laid himself facedown, the bio-interface in the back of his neck pointing upward toward the medical robot.
He closed his eyes. In some sense he was giving up everything with this act. Not just his position in Salmagundi society, but he was abandoning his self as well. However, there were warships closing on his planet, and he didnât have time to extract information from the prisoners in any other way. In less than an hour, he would know their stories front to back, without opportunity of deception.
He only hoped that somewhere, in their collective mind, there might be some hope of a solution.
He gritted his teeth, grabbed the edges of the table, and said, âConnect.â
Above him the robot whirred, and a cable clicked into the back of his neck. A half second later, the Hall of Minds released a torrent into Shaneâs brain. A barrage of memory and personality, a parade of selves no longer self-aware, no longer conscious of unraveling into the memory of the Hall of Minds. The four identities erupted through the core of Shaneâs mind like magma erupting through the cracks in a volcanic island, searing what was there, burying it, enlarging it, and irrevocably changing the landscape.
âmoving through a burnt-out church looking for remnants of the juntaâ
âwhile his hands are slick with sweat as he defends his thesis on the cultural parallels between modern worship of Dolbrian artifacts and twentieth-century cargo cultsâ
âand opens the letter that accepts her into the most prestigious university in the Centauri Allianceâ
âhis father holds his hand as he stares in wonder at the crooked black stone thatâs almost three thousand years old; he stares at the three sets of texts as his father explains how a man, six centuries ago, had used it to understand a
Things like taking copies of unwilling, living people, and feeding them to the Hall of Minds. For over a century, the Hall had been a repository only for the dead and dying, a means to preserve their knowledge and their contributions to Salmagundi. Only a few dozen minds here had been taken while their bodies lived on, all original Founders.
Those minds were rarely taken on by their descendants, more from practical concerns than from any taboo. Better to take in some elder who had taken on a lifetime of history and knowledge from others, someone like Shane himself who hosted the merged personas of fourteen people who had likewise merged themselves with many of their ancestors.
The fifteenth was an exception. To serve in the Triad, a potential leader was expected to take on the additional persona of one of the Founders. It was recognized that at such a venerable time in someoneâs life, matters of practicality were of less a concern. It created a layer of history in the mind, a perspective that was necessary to lead.
It also inevitably influenced the personality of the host. Shane wondered how many of his decisions of the past few days were prompted by the presence of his distant namesake in his skull. He remembered the history of Kathy Shane, ex-captain with the Occisis Marines, better than any of the other lives that had contributed to make up what he was. She had sacrificed herself to shield the people she had charge ofânot her life, but her command, her honor, everything of value to her.
Like his distant ancestor, Shane was in a position where he had to do things that wouldâin the endâdisqualify him from leading the people he was trying to save. Already he had engaged in a coup, and now he was about to do something that verged on blasphemy.
If Salmagundi survived, Shane knew that he would not be granted the solace of contributing to the Hall of Minds. He would be tried, convicted, and executed, and his mind would be allowed to disappear with his body.
He eased onto one of the tables and laid himself facedown, the bio-interface in the back of his neck pointing upward toward the medical robot.
He closed his eyes. In some sense he was giving up everything with this act. Not just his position in Salmagundi society, but he was abandoning his self as well. However, there were warships closing on his planet, and he didnât have time to extract information from the prisoners in any other way. In less than an hour, he would know their stories front to back, without opportunity of deception.
He only hoped that somewhere, in their collective mind, there might be some hope of a solution.
He gritted his teeth, grabbed the edges of the table, and said, âConnect.â
Above him the robot whirred, and a cable clicked into the back of his neck. A half second later, the Hall of Minds released a torrent into Shaneâs brain. A barrage of memory and personality, a parade of selves no longer self-aware, no longer conscious of unraveling into the memory of the Hall of Minds. The four identities erupted through the core of Shaneâs mind like magma erupting through the cracks in a volcanic island, searing what was there, burying it, enlarging it, and irrevocably changing the landscape.
âmoving through a burnt-out church looking for remnants of the juntaâ
âwhile his hands are slick with sweat as he defends his thesis on the cultural parallels between modern worship of Dolbrian artifacts and twentieth-century cargo cultsâ
âand opens the letter that accepts her into the most prestigious university in the Centauri Allianceâ
âhis father holds his hand as he stares in wonder at the crooked black stone thatâs almost three thousand years old; he stares at the three sets of texts as his father explains how a man, six centuries ago, had used it to understand a
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