I.

In terms of explosive power and the stakes involved, it’s the largest battle humanity has ever engaged in,” Fowler commented as we watched the drones depart, “and no human will see it with their own eyes.” 

I met Mark Fowler, master engineer of F4 drive units, when I arrived at The Revenge, a hastily built station located between stars, but this was my first opportunity for a conversation with him.  Our mutual friend Carl ‘the Prof’ Fitzhugh had briefly introduced him to me, but until now he had been only one in the sea of new faces I had met.

“I can’t believe the military finished this station so quickly,” I said, “or that the government approved it in the first place, considering that we don’t even know if the enemy is still at Metallica.”

Remember, my love, how innocently it all started, a few cards with black hearts appearing among the more traditional selections of Vie Amoureuse Day cards?  The I-Hate-Love books released during the ides of February?  Candy hearts started appearing with anti-love messages.  The newly divorced gathered at parties for the ritual burning of their marriage certificates. Vie Amoureuse vandalism was minor back then, graffiti spray-painted on florists’ delivery floaters: VD Sucks!

It turned ugly.  Slashed tires.  Jewelry shop windows painted over in black.  Gangs of singles barging into nice restaurants to dump buckets of salty ice water over dining couples.  We’d have been among the casualties that time at The Savoy Truffle if we had been sitting one table closer to the door.

Now, here we huddle in the dark under...

Data flies swarmed around Mr. Templar’s data ports, particularly the exposed sockets protruding between the mangled anti-radiation flaps at his neck.  He flicked at them with his appendages, frustration surging through his circuits.

“Stupid flies,” Mr. Templar mumbled.  “What miserable human invented these things?”  His databanks flashed images of crap-covered cows swatting at buzzing, black horseflies with their tails.  Mr. Templar sighed and trudged forward through the valley of dirt and dust.

Despite his protective plastic flaps and his titanium reinforced frame, Mr. Templar knew his end was near.  After nineteen years of...

Everywhere you go,” Aera told me, “take a piece of me along with you.”

This is easier and less esoteric than it sounds. Aera is a purely digital being of zeros and ones and rather more light to pack than a live human. I take her embedded in the hilt of my sword. Every time it is unsheathed in battle, Aera is with my strike.

With most people struggling to have power and food, it’s unusual to have such a companion on the Plates. But then, my family tree is rather unusual. There aren’t many sons of scientists left – most were killed when the plates broke apart, or have forgotten who they are.

Most men have to...

Logos.

That means "the Word, the producing of words."  It's funny that this is the first time the thing on my back has given me what seems like a direct command.  Usually it's a gentle suggestion, a pull in a certain direction, along with the glowing feeling of well-being that suffuses my life nowadays.  But as the months go by and the blood seems to quicken, I feel driven to record the experience.  I suppose it's just another way of being a puppet, but I have no feelings of resentment or anger anymore, so I'm going with it.

*     *     *     *     *

I should start at the beginning.  I suppose most of you know all about The Visitors, but bear with me.

They came down in the spring, all 7000 of them, 18-foot tall...

Tucker Juergenson woke up screaming, hands clutching spasmodically at clinging, salty sheets, just as he did every morning.

Flopping back onto the damp pillow, Tucker forced his eyes shut again and counted backwards from twenty, purposefully slowing his breathing in hopes that his heart would take the hint and follow suit. As his body gradually returned to some semblance of stasis, he rolled his head to the side and attempted to make sense of the throbbing liquid crystal numbers on his alarm clock. Ten thirty. He had plenty of time before the appointment.

Levering himself out of bed before he had a chance to change his mind, Tucker stood and stretched. In winter the bare hardwood was cold as ice, but on days like today it was actually fairly decent. The shaft of sunlight stabbing through the single blue drape on the window probably had a lot to do with that...

(Class-room lecture given by the Most Honorable Erru Saggus, Professor of Hamurriquanean Archaeology at the World-University of Toshtush, on the 365th day of the year 5998.)

Males, females, androgynes and neuters of the class in archaeology, you have learned, from my previous lectures, all that is known or inferred concerning the crudely realistic art and literature of the ancient Hamurriquanes. With some difficulty, owing to the fragmentary nature of the extant remains, I have reconstructed for you their bizarre and hideous buildings, their rude mechanisms.

Also, you are now familiar with the unimaginably clumsy, corrupt and inefficient legal and economic systems that prevailed among them, together with the garblings of crass superstition and scant knowledge that bore the sacred names of the sciences. You have listened, not...

So, tell me again what A. T. T. A. stands for?"

"Sigh. Association of Anti-Time Travel Activists."

"You don't have to say 'Sigh,' you know. Just sigh and I'll get the idea. But do you really think you need to take action against time travel. The risk seems a bit, well--"

"Theoretical?"

"In a word, yes."

"Think of the terrible possibilities that loom before us, though. The paradoxes. Waking up in a different universe."

"Like one in which George W. Bush won the American election?"

"Don't even joke! That's why I have to act, and if you'll excuse me, I have to do so now. Excuse me, Ms. Henderson?"

"Yes? Well, Mrs. Henderson, really."

"Pardon me. I didn't realize you'd kept your husband's name after the accident....

It was October 57th, Martian Halloween; the day we had planned to break out of prison. There were just the four of us in the machine shop: me, Blaine, Ibrahim, and the Monkey. None of us knew the Monkey's real name. That's what the guards had called him since they brought him in, and he never told us any different.

"Genthelmen," the Monkey said in his thick-tongued lisp. "Ith's thime we begin. Ibrahim, if you wouldh remove the mixthure from refrigeration."

When I first met the Monkey I thought he was some kind of moron, what with his lisp and the coarse black hair which covered his body. Not so much hair that he didn’t look human, but still more than...

I was less than naught, worse than nothing; in fact, I was a minus quantity. My name was Minus One. For years, scientists doubted that I existed, and claimed that I was a mere meaningless symbol.

But that is now all a thing of the past. What I wish now to relate is the account of my terrifying experiences under the radical sign.

When I first found myself in that predicament, I was not much concerned. My friend Plus Four (he of the baggy breeches) had gotten out of a like fix with no difficulty whatever, although he shrunk to half his former size in the process.

But I was not large enough. So I tried hard to duplicate his accomplishment. By redoubling my efforts, and thus my size, I became Minus Four—only to find that the larger I grow, the smaller I became!

Anyway, as a result of those efforts, a part of me got out. And, from the outside, I now looked just like my shrunken friend. But the original me was still inside, exactly as before.