Humanity's Hold 4053.11.10 CE

22.6 megaseconds since the catastrophe

In the end, it was a couple of days before Gianetta Carson could get anywhere near her uncle's office to present the ring. Family obligations came first, and everyone had wanted Uncle Morris there, as well. He'd already been on his way back down from orbit when she'd reached him with the news, hoping against hope to get back home while Uncle Neal was still alive, but knowing he'd likely not make it. It was always hard to really tell over a compic, but she thought he looked especially careworn.

The burial service had taken place as soon as Uncle Morris could clear the spaceport. It had been a fairly simple affair for a man who had loomed so large in the Hold, but that reflected attitudes since the Revolution.

Before the Revolution, a person of similar prominence to Carson would have lain in state for at least a day—longer wasn't practical without embalming, which was long since abandoned as a practice. There would have been fulsome speeches by other prominent leaders, the old nobility, maybe even the Crown.

The Revolution had leveled everyone, at least on paper. Uncle Neal's function in the Hold might have been as a councilor and conscious, deliberate architect of humanity's future, but he was still just a citizen.

So it was mostly just the family, including Morris Baker. A few of Carson's other close friends, only some of whom happened to also be councilors, were asked to join them. They'd had a simple, heartfelt commemoration. Then his body had been sent off to the recyclers, like anyone else would be.

He would not have had it any other way.

Gianetta managed to keep her impatience to fly to the office and finally open the files at bay for several hours more, as the family held their wake. When that gathering was over, she was honestly exhausted. The council would not be meeting for at least another day—Uncle Morris had asked for them to postpone business in part as a small commemoration to Carson, but also because he genuinely needed a little more time to "assimilate some other news I've received". At one point when they were comparatively alone in the crowd at the wake, Gianetta had tried to get a hint out of him. He just smiled—a bit sadly, she thought—and said, "Read what you can of the files, first. The news won't make sense without more context."

She had thought it was a dodge. But now, sitting at last in front of Neal Carson's computer, at his—now genuinely her—desk, she realized it had been nothing but the plain truth.

After she'd logged in with the ring and identified herself, the system had surprised her. The first thing it showed her was not a prompt or a list of files, but a video.

It was Uncle Neal.

"Hello, Gianetta. At least, I hope this is Gianetta watching this. Best laid plans and all that. But it's well known that you're my chosen successor. I'll address the boulder in the cavern right off the top: I've known I was dying since August, which is when I'm recording this. They gave me three months tops, then. You'd think I might be sad, or angry, or...something, but honestly, I'm just a bit wistful. I'd have liked to have seen Phase Two, at least, report results. It's possible I did. We expected hard evidence or first-hand reports from our agents pretty close to when my doctors said was my outer limit. Still, doctors don't know everything, even now."

He might not have been visibly sad on screen, but Gianetta found herself tearing up a bit. She thought she'd already gotten it out of her system, but then, grief was sneaky, as she knew.

"What follows is a very top-level description of Phases One and Two of the project. Phase Three is the 'active' phase, and under very tight seal. It takes six councilors' keys to decrypt the minutes of any meeting covering it or any report concerning it. So you won't really learn about Phase Three in any detail until you sit in council the first time. I'm sorry about that, but given that I concocted the rules, I should probably abide by them, even now.

"I based those rules, by the way, on some of the protocols my grandfather, your great-grandfather, used during the Revolution. Cellular organization, genuine operational security, the lot. It's a little paranoid, but this is a revolution of a different kind, so it's not unwarranted.

"Phase One was simple in principle, but intricate in the details: infiltration. Fortunately, the aliens make it easy. Approach Jove Junction or Neptune Anchorage from the right vector even on an empty barge, and they'll let you right in. Once in, you can pretty much go anywhere. We only had to do the empty barge trick once, because one of our agents was able to set up a company that gave an excuse for actual cargos in both directions. Most of the trade is barter, so not having any of their currency is meaningless. They don't have any. So, we sent up raw materials or finished goods that copied legitimate goods that were in demand, and swapped mainly for raw materials from the local moons and rings out at those two outposts. Each trip, one or two of the crew would 'retire' from the cargo circuit and disappear into the diaspora.

"The details, obviously, are more complicated than that. We certainly had some near misses. We had agents have to go dark, come home, disappear, or that just fell off the grid. Two or three times, our agent providing the freight forwarding cover got in trouble for moving counterfeit goods. Each time he got off on some kind of technicality. Then we cycled them on to a different assignment and swapped someone else in to run the con on Neptune or Jove. Despite the distances, either one works just as well for what we're doing here.

"We then spent years just gathering information, filling in gaps that mere broadcast data and media can't really tell us. Most importantly, we got to know their various weak spots. Each diaspora culture is genuinely different from the others, either through drift or deliberate choice.

"Not long after we started, the Tau Ceti Treaty Organization started really pulling together their fleet, and handed us a gift in that regard: they began to harmonize on a single, common technology base that included a dependency on a particular style of artificial personality to manage their more complex systems. We realized that, if we let that ripen, we could probably confound quite a few systems all at once.

"Phase Two was the actual confoundment. That's what's in process right now; what I'm hoping to live just long enough to get word of so that Phase Three can commence in earnest. Of course, other things need to be true for Phase Three to work, and again, I can't tell you what those things are. I digress.

"The idea is to exploit each polity's blind spot. In each case, the blind spot relates directly to something each polity believes to be its strength. TCTO and its fleet, for example, believes it's finally living a post-scarcity dream, but it relies on AI servants to manage that dream. Disrupt the AIs, and the entire culture—several inter-related cultures really—falls into confusion. They'll sort it out eventually, but it should give us time for Phase Three."

Gianetta paused the playback at this point to digest what she had just been told. Her uncle, her delightful, charming, caring uncle, was casually describing the complete disruption of millions of lives. Alien lives, yes, but lives. People.

It was breathtaking. Certainly it lived up to the Carson revolutionary legacy. Suddenly, however, she was not so sure she could live up to that legacy, or wanted to. She had a bit of a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Uncle Morris' grim visage the other night now took on a new potential meaning: something had gone wrong.

She was borrowing trouble, and she knew it. She pressed play. There wasn't too much more to go.

"All I can tell you about Phase Three, my dear, is that it's intended to finally take us back out to the stars. The ideal is to leave the alien betrayers so shaken that we can dominate them, but we will settle for being able to establish ourselves in strength and security, with our true understanding of G-d's plan for humanity.

"Of course, Phase Three is not the end of it, but Phase Four is even more nebulous. It is literally nothing more than a goal, not even an actual plan yet. In fact, it may wind up being Phase Five, or Six, or even Ten.

"The resources we glean, the technologies we learn and absorb, we will use to reshape Earth. That is G-d's true plan in the end: not the other planets of our system; not the stars. Earth for humanity; humanity for Earth. A truly habitable Earth again. We will do what our ancestors lacked the courage to do. We will do what the alien betrayers turned their back on, with their belief in a false prophecy. We will build an empire—yes, I say it, and I mean it—focused on Earth.

"Now, I know you Gianetta. This is something far beyond what you thought you were inheriting."

He could say that again.

Then, of course, he did, "Far beyond what you thought you were inheriting."

It was an old joke going all the way back to her childhood. She'd taken him literally as a six year old when he'd said, "You can say that again!" and she did. He had burst out laughing and had to explain why. It had been their "thing" ever since.

So despite herself, she laughed, hitting pause while she got over a bout that was as much grief as humor. Then, she resumed for the end of it.

"You'll be sitting down with the council, soon. Take as much time as you can to read what I've left for you here, so you're not sitting there gaping when you do. You'll need your wits about you with that crew. Uncle Morris won't be able to shield you. I know you've got what it takes, but you also need information. The précis I've left you here includes a frank appraisal of the people you'll be dealing with. Honestly, I suggest you study that more deeply than the Plan. The details of Phase One and Two are interesting enough, but at our level, the details are other people’s job. Knowing the people you'll be working with is going to be far more important. You're neck-deep in politics now, my girl, but I know you can handle it.

"Show them what the Carsons are made of. I love you."

That was all.

It was plenty.

It was too much.

Carson had kept a small liquor cabinet, which the ring's proximity also unlocked. She poured herself a belt of moss whisky and drank it off in one shot, then poured herself a second one to sip.

Then, following her uncle's advice, she began to read what he'd left her.