Spooker
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Grass Eaters | 9 | Outliers I
🕑 Added 2024-03-05 00:06:44 +0000 UTCAtlas, Luna
S.83920 Republic Defense Authorization Act 2123
Status: Introduced in the Senate
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Grantor
Svatken carefully filled her teapot with a mixture of herbs and spices, then placed it on the table with both paws.
She looked at the prisoner across from her, a creature by the name of… it didn’t really matter.
She poured him some tea.
In some ways, he looked like her first hatchling. The healthy long whiskers, the furry white nose, the handsome buck teeth. And that defiant expression on his face. She mentally extinguished that part of herself and prepared to do her job.
“You must be parched,” she said, gently pushing a steaming cup across the table to him. As he gulped down the tea silently, she continued, “You may be wondering who I am. I’m Svatken. Maybe you don’t care. Don’t worry if you feel that way. I’m used to it. It’s a career hazard, I’m afraid.”
She smiled at her little joke and went on.
“I wasn’t always a State Security agent, you know? Nobody really grows up wanting to be one of us. Some people don’t even know we exist. You don’t study in school to become a State Security agent… I certainly didn’t. In school, I specialized in… xenobiology, and I became a xenobiology professor at The Shlirurk Institute.”
She paused for a second for the prisoner to take it in. Then she continued as his eyes showed some form of recognition. “Yes, the very one. Aha, I see by that look in your eyes that you have heard of it… I’m glad. A few of my visitors are bred illiterates, and they’re never quite as interesting.
“One day, the Dominion came to me. They gave a long, wordy explanation of what they needed me to do. At the end, they said, ‘Svatken, your Dominion needs you.’ They don’t usually use that line. You see, I’m not like many of my fellow operatives. Most of my colleagues were recruited out of the Navy or Marines. Very uptight and rigid. My colleagues… they don’t question the ‘why’. Not really. They just punch in the scenarios into their combat computers and receive their directives. Ask the Digital Guide for instructions and they execute it.
“In fact, our whole species is kind of that way, isn’t it? That’s part of our evolved survival mechanism. When you’re on the plains, chased by animals above ground, hunted by winged predators, doing the same thing as everyone around you is just a logical trait. That’s how we Znosians lived long enough. To develop language. To develop science. That’s how we came out of our burrows: together, following the guy in front of you and leading for the guy behind you.
“As it turns out, that makes us superb troopers. Unlike the other sapient species we’ve found, we don’t frighten easily in battle. We don’t disobey orders. We intuitively understand how to stick and work together. Our ancestors have no use for concepts like individualism or ‘the self’. Everything was subsumed to the will of the tribe, and eventually, the good of the species. The good of the Dominion.
“Did you know we didn’t even have names until we encountered other space-faring species? No names, just numbers and roles. It’s true, I’ve seen the historical documents myself as part of my training as a xenobiologist. ‘Farmer-286 died today; he was replaced by Farmer-341.’ It was only after we discovered other alien species that we imported that concept. When we discovered our galactic neighbors, their influence spread throughout our people. We gave ourselves names. We wore decorations. We got to choose our jobs. Some of us, at least.
“Now, not all of us are adapted to following orders. After all, some of us had to be the ones who give the orders to be followed. The biology of it all is very complicated, but as it turns out, we all have the genetic material to be leaders. But few of us ever express those genes. In fact, it’s impossible to tell who has it and who doesn’t, even with a blood test. Those of us who express it have abilities that others don’t: creativity, initiative, critical thinking. It would be dangerous if all of us had it… but when the right number of our people become leaders, we thrive as a species.
“In the long history of our people, we’ve discovered and rediscovered this concept many times. Too many leaders lead to internal conflict, and too few leads to stagnation. We’ve determined that the optimal number of born leaders to followers is roughly one in twelve hundred. After we gained the ability to do so, the gene pool is carefully adjusted to ensure that this ratio is correctly produced. Again, the science of that… very complicated without blood tests, but we manage the right ratio even if we don’t know who specifically has it.
“They call it the leader gene officially, but really, we are the outliers of our species. The outlier gene. Some of us — like myself — become State Security, protecting the state from threats within. Some of us become scientists and engineers and fleet commanders. Who do you think programmed the combat computers that give the billions in the military their orders? Or as the more faithful call it, Digital Guide. For the rest of the masses, they merely need to receive orders, to execute them for the good of the Prophecy. Ah, the Prophecy.”
She snorted. “The Prophecy isn’t real. We made it up. State Security innovation, one of its first. Trillions of Znosians commit their lives to the interstellar war effort, based on nothing but a bunch of repurposed stories and faulty reasoning.
“Look at it logically! We need to exterminate all these predator aliens just so they can’t threaten and eat us? Please. Don’t make me laugh, as they would say. Some of these predators haven’t fought a real war since they invented long, pointy sticks. Most of them never even had real agriculture. No farming, poor logistics. You’ve seen what the Granti had: what they call ‘feed growing’ for their livestock: it’s meager and inadequate. We would barely even consider that gardening, even before we reached the stars. It’s a wonder they were able to keep their masses fed and not starve themselves out centuries ago. Such are the short-sighted predators. They are and never will be a physical threat to our civilization.
“No, we invented the Prophecy not to stop the aliens from eating us. We did it to stop us from turning into them. They were already changing our way of life: giving us names, selling us clothes. It was a matter of time before they started making us eat the same disgusting meats they did. To re-unify us and claw back our identity, that’s why we needed the Prophecy. And in a twist of irony, we stole that too. Compelling stories, aren’t they? Most of the stories in the Prophecy originated from the mythology of one of the predator alien races we encountered early in our history. They are gone now, but I guess this is their legacy too.
“It’s worked so well for centuries. Our species… united in purpose. We hop in one direction. We find meaning in life where there was none. And we avoided becoming these unruly carnivores who think with their stomachs. All for the price of a dozen or so pacified species in our galactic neighborhood.
“I see you’re not surprised by this. Many who I meet are not. Another career hazard, I suppose.”
She winked at the prisoner, took a sip of tea from her own cup, and continued with her monologue. “Anyway, where was I? Ah, the purpose of State Security. We keep our people in focus and in line. That is our motto, after all. We are very good at our jobs, but as it turns out, monitoring the outliers in our species is an inherently difficult task. After all, we are creative, and so when one of us goes rogue, it does take a while for State Security to find out.”
Here, she looked straight at the prisoner knowingly before calmly resuming.
“Thinking for yourself is a double-edged sword. A rarity among our people, these critical thinking genes are commonplace among the predators in the stars. When we conquer an alien planet for our sacred Prophecy, we have to avoid allowing them to spread their influence and rot among our kind. The only compatible solution to our objectives is extermination.
“We have tried other methods, of course. We do not simply waste life for the sake of it. No, we first experimented with neural inhibition surgery. Nerve-stapling, they called it. The concept is simple: we just neuter their ability to think critically, so they can become more like most of us instead of the other way around. Alas, that didn’t work. It’s too ingrained in the nature of predator species. To remove their resistance and individualism, we would have to get rid of so much of their brain matter that they stop being sapient.
“And initially, that was an acceptable solution for cheap labor. Our outlier scientists tried to make it work. We really did! But when we advanced our understanding of computing, robotics was just a more cost-effective solution for our labor problem. Plus, we had no shortage of our own individuals who could do most jobs anyway; such are the benefits of being the fast-breeding species we are. After a while, we could no longer justify keeping these inefficient, nerve-stapled aliens around. Thus, we applied our expertise in organization and logistics to the task of liquidating them. We put them in camps, and we put them out of their misery. We had to! There was nothing else we could have done!
“We got very good at it. Naturally, the aliens we are getting rid of tend to resist, but we have developed effective systems for keeping that impact to a minimum. They know they are going to die in our camps, but as long as we can keep them in suspense about when exactly that is, most of them would choose to continue to live another day instead of dying immediately. We practice herding them into the execution chambers, and nothing happens. When it comes time to actually inject them with a lethal dose of predator poison, they think it’s another drill and readily comply. We call this process: desensitization. And as you know, we don’t even have to actively kill them all; many of them simply waste away, or even resort to eating each other — before they run out of strength, of course. It’s remarkable, is it not? What a desperate predator would do for just a little more time…
“Ironically, I think, we have successfully destroyed the threat from most of these alien prisoners even before they die. They suppress their critical thinking and long-term planning instincts, and just follow the herd to stay alive. And we did not even need to do neural inhibition surgery on them. A few still resist, unfortunately, but we at State Security have systems for mitigation. Oh yes, after processing hundreds of predator planets, we have gotten very good at our jobs.
“Most of these alien resistance tactics are violent. They kill guards. They break machines. They try to escape. Our soldiers who run the liquidation camps are very well trained. They know how to deal with each of these complications. We make the inmates turn on each other by offering better temporary treatment for those who collaborate. We sanitize the countryside, so escapees have nowhere to go. And their violent acts of defiance do nothing but delay, or in some cases hasten, the inevitable.
“However, one particular resistance tactic is very much unlike these others: some of our prisoners appeal to the sympathies of our camp administrators.
“As you know, against most properly socialized Znosian, that wouldn’t work. They know and believe in the Prophecy without a shred of doubt. They have gone through a long desensitization training process too before they’re sent in to do their work. And we pick our administrators carefully. But of course, some of these Znosians are not quite like the others. They’re outliers like me.”
“Like you,” Svatken said, her eyes boring into the prisoner.
“Suddenly acquiring what the predators call a conscience, these camp administrators turn against their own species. They delay the work they’re charged with. They hide prisoners. They fake the deaths of their inmates and even falsify their reports. It is inevitable, I suppose, for this to happen from time to time. No machinery is without need for maintenance, and blood is our lubrication of choice.
“Unfortunately, these acts of non-compliance are harmful to the war effort. So, State Security charges me and my team with putting a stop to it and catching those responsible. It’s all very complicated and technical, so I won’t get too much into it with you. I will give you the short version: by using statistics and computers, we can find out who is consistently lying in their reports. We flag these camps, and at that point, it is trivial for my people to go check in on rogue administrators. Like you.”
She stared at him, her gaze turning hostile.
“Of the tens of thousands of camps we run on Grantor, we’ve discovered only a handful of underperforming outliers. As I said, we are very good at our jobs. We caught you within weeks.”
Suddenly, the prisoner interrupted her gloating with a small burst of defiance. He croaked in his pitiful state, “You may have caught me, but at least I can die with a clean conscience that I’ve tried my best to free them from you.”
Svatken did not anger or shout, to his surprise she could see. She chuckled dryly, and replied, “Ah, so you do have the power of speech. You’re not the first one to say that to me. It’s not even the first time this month I’ve heard that line.”
“Don’t worry. We will find every last one of the Granti pets you’ve hidden or released. A few rounds of interrogation… everyone breaks at some point. Then, your successor will take care of them. You traded everything you had, for what? A few weeks of life for a couple of dozen inmates on death’s door? This is why you rogue outliers always lose. You can’t see the bigger picture.”
Then she straightened her uniform and tightened her face.
“Let me spell it out for you, disgraced camp administrator. Let me tell you how your life is going to go from now on. First, you will tell us everything you know about the Granti you hid and their pathetic resistance networks. Then, when we’re done wringing you dry, from head to tail, you will be delivered to a new camp. Except this time, you wouldn’t be an administrator. You’ll be an inmate.”
Svatken relished the moment that all hope went out of the prisoner’s eyes. The moment when everything finally dawned on him. The complete defeat of their fighting spirit. It was what she lived for.
“That shock, that look of surprise. Don’t be. Yes, State Security runs camps for our own people too. I hear these camps are much, much worse than the one you were supposed to be overseeing. But I’m sure you would know what that’s like better than me… Don’t worry. They aren’t just going to kill you on the first day. We’re going to get some honest labor out of you. And when the time comes for your story to end, you won’t even know it.
“You’ll just enter an execution chamber, like you’ll do every day for the rest of your miserable life, hoping it’s another drill this time. And when your fellow prisoners come into the room to collect your nameless corpse for disposal ten minutes later, all traces of your meaningless existence will finally be wiped out from the galaxy.”
Here, she waited a minute, staring at him. The cell was silent but for the occasional whimper from her prisoner’s difficult breathing.
Sensing he was at his lowest point, Svatken offered him a way out. “There is another path: tell us where the escaped Granti prisoners went. I will promise to make your end slightly less uncomfortable.”
“You won’t even pretend… you’ll let me go… alive afterward, will you?” the prisoner asked, coughing with effort.
She shrugged. “No point lying to you. Not this time. You will get a quick rifle shot to the head out the back when we confirm the information, and we will tell your bloodline you died of wounds sustained in battle. Otherwise, well… none of them are exactly… essential personnel in the war effort, are they? This is your one and final offer.”
Svatken gathered her items, stood up, and readied her paw to signal the guards waiting outside the cell. She paused.
“In my experience, about half of you take the deal. So… what will it be, outlier?”
