Echoes of Harmony

The Mindscape

Hayden felt like he was falling. Not actually falling. He knew his back was firmly against the bed. But the sense of weightlessness, of spinning end over end through the air of an endless tunnel, was incredibly palpable. As soon as it started, it ended, and he found himself staring into an endless white void. To his right was nothing but a field of snow that looked almost like it might be rolling hills. On his left was more of the same. Perhaps, though, snow wasn’t the right word considering it was neither cold nor powdery.

“Hello, Hayden Reid,” a voice, astonishingly familiar despite his not hearing it for four months, said from behind him. “Welcome to the Mindscape.”

He spun around to face the location of the voice and was surprised—nearly to the point of collapsing—to see his own son standing before him. The young, innocent face of Skylar stared up at him, a somewhat bemused expression on his face.

“Skylar?” Hayden asked, his voice hopeful. It was impossible. There was no way his son was—or should have been—there.

“No. I am what your subconscious wishes to see more than anything else. Welcome to the Mindscape.” His son—no, not his son, the AI—gestured around itself with outstretched arms. “I hear you want to launch some missiles. Sit. Let’s discuss it.”

As the AI said the words, two wooden stools, each sized for a child of Skylar’s size, materialized behind them. The AI sat, putting his hands in his lap in the obedient way Skylar always did when Hayden had company over. He took a deep breath before sitting. His knees almost bent into his chest.

“Tell me why you feel launching the tritinium missiles is necessary.”

“The Hyperions are going to be overwhelmed.” Hayden wondered how much the AI already knew. Surely it knew everything he was going to tell it, so why bother? Then again, he didn’t know exactly how it worked; perhaps it was unable to see the outside world. “The Druthagar drastically outnumber them. They’re going to destroy the Hyperion space station in orbit before attacking the planet.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“Well—” He stopped as he looked into his son’s curious eyes. Why did the AI have to look like his son? Anyone else and he would have been fine, but Hayden couldn’t lie to his own child. Perhaps that was the point. “No, I don’t. It’s what I’ve been told, and it’s what the Hyperions would do. We can only guess.”

“Is it possible they come as liberators? That they will free Stariek from the Hyperion Empire and allow it to return to neutrality?”

“Absolutely not,” Hayden instantly answered. He shook his head rougher than he intended, causing some of his disheveled hair to flap in his eyes. “They were attacking our civilians before this war even started. Going after our planet isn’t that big of a leap.”

“That it isn’t.” The AI stroked its chin, as if thinking deeply. “From what I have heard, when the Hyperions attacked, they were able to hack into and gain access to your satellite systems, turning them against you and laying waste to your fleet. How do you know something similar isn’t going to happen when you launch the missiles? Even a hundred tritinium missiles would be enough to completely destroy Stariek’s biosphere. How would you keep that from happening?

“I…” Hayden took a deep breath and swallowed, feeling his Adam’s Apple bob in his throat. He had somehow managed to push the satellite issue out of his mind. “I guess I don’t know that isn’t going to happen. From what Fleet Marshal Tyn has told me, the missiles are the most secure military technology developed on the planet. I suppose I will have to take the risk that they could be hacked.”

“And why would you take that risk?”

The way the AI asked sounded as if it was looking for a specific answer. Hayden wasn’t sure at first what he would say, but, as he looked into the facsimile of his son’s eyes, he knew.

“Because it would save my son. I would do anything to keep him safe.” He closed his eyes and took another deep breath, fighting back tears. “Especially when I have failed him too much already.”

“You would risk your world for one person?” The AI stood and walked around Hayden, studying him from every angle. “One child is all it takes for you to release all your moral quandaries?”

“When that child is my son, I will do anything for them.” Hayden pulled himself upright and straightened his back, hoping to instill confidence in himself that wasn’t there. “If it means saving Skylar from possible death, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do. I will not fail him again.”

The AI slowly walked in a circle, gazing up at him with that inquisitiveness Hayden had seen on his son’s face too many times. One that he tried stamping out just as his own father had done. One of his many failings. A surge of remorse went through him for what could have been. He had to tear his eyes away and look at the ground.

The child smiled.

“You do know you make the wrong decisions sometimes, then. How can you be sure this is the right one when you are infallible like any other human being?”

“I can’t.” Hayden smiled mostly to himself, hoping it didn’t look as forced as it felt. “That’s the neat thing about humans. We can never be sure the decision we’re making is the right one. We can only do what we feel is right.”

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The AI stopped moving and looked him up and down. Studying him. Scanning him.

“Let us assume you were not the one to make this decision. If you were not Provost, if your son were not in danger, would you still advocate for launching these missiles?”

“If I knew there was no other option, then yes. Saving billions of lives outweighs losing a few tens of thousands.”

“And who decides which lives are worth it? You?”

“The lives themselves aren’t what matters here.” Hayden felt his face start to heat as he spoke but felt the need to continue. “All that matters is the quantity. I have the opportunity to save orders of magnitude greater than what I intend to destroy. That makes it worth it.”

“How many lives are being destroyed by your decision? Just the ones that are coming to attack? Have you considered whether they have families of their own? Wives, husbands, children? Is it not going to even out when you consider all the lives that are going to be broken that aren’t part of the immediate aftermath? Or is it okay for those lives to be broken?”

“The difference is that the people on this planet didn’t choose this. They are just going to be caught in the crossfire. The Druthagar coming to attack decided to do this.”

“And every single one of them had the choice then? All of them are here because they chose to do this?”

“Well, no, but—”

“So then they didn’t choose this,” the AI interrupted. “Much like your own people didn’t. Whose free will deserves to get trampled? Who makes the decision of one person’s life, their future, being worth more than another?”

“Everyone does.” Hayden waved a hand dismissively and immediately regretted it. But he was too far in to change tact. “Whenever we meet someone, we subconsciously decide what sort of worth they have in our own lives. Those who are closer to us are innately more valuable than those we have never met. It is easy to dismiss the suffering of another just because we have never met them, because we have no idea who they are. It is much harder, comparably, to condemn someone we love to death.”

“You have not met every single person on the planet. Yet, you place their lives above those of the Druthagar, who you also have not met. You are willing to sell your soul for them.”

“Because I pledged to protect them, no matter the cost. My people matter more than almost anything else.”

“And what will ‘your people’ think of you after this choice? Will they trust you? Will they say you did the right thing?”

“The citizens of Stariek already made their choice.” Hayden folded his arms across his chest, staring at the AI as it gazed impassively back at him. “They practically ran me out of my office. What they think of me doesn’t matter. I wasn’t leader because I wanted the power or prestige.”

“No, you were only leader because you were forced into it.” Hayden could have sworn the AI sounded condescending, like it was mocking him. It sounded almost exactly like Skylar during their fight before going to Frostwing Estate back in November. “If you had your way, you would have opened an electronics repair shop or something akin to that. Instead, you were stuck becoming Provost and had to settle. You had to learn to deal with it. And you’ve never cared about what they thought of you, have you? You always did what you felt was right, consequences be damned.”

Hayden knew it was trying to goad him into a trap, into making a misstep that would allow it to prevent him from launching the missiles. He didn’t give it the satisfaction. Simply standing there, he kept his mouth shut, waiting to see where it was going with its words. Rather than press him further, the AI facsimile of his son turned on its heel and stopped in front of him.

“One final question, Provost Hayden Reid.” The AI gently sat on the ground, crossing its legs and staring up at him with an expression of curiosity that seemed forced. Like a robot that was trying too hard to be human. “No matter what happens, can you live with yourself if you launch these missiles?”

Hayden wasn’t prepared for the question. As soon as it was asked, though, he knew there could be no other. The way it blindsided him, the way the sight of his own child lulled him into a false sense of security, made him stumble. He spluttered for a moment, grappling for an answer. Was he supposed to say yes? No? What did the AI want to hear? Maybe it just wanted to see him struggle for the answer. Maybe it didn’t care about what the answer actually was, but how he arrived at it. Maybe he didn’t care what the answer was.

As soon as the thought ran through his head, he knew it wasn’t true. He had always tried to do what he felt was right. Sometimes that meant making an unpopular decision that made him enemies. Sometimes that meant betraying his friends. So far, he had always been able to sleep at night. Admittedly, there were some difficult times after the Battle of Stariek, after knowing he condemned tens of thousands of people in that pointless battle.

That thought was interesting. He already did what he was planning on doing now. There were already however many families destroyed on Stariek when their brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters didn’t return. When their bodies were obliterated in an explosion in space. How different would it be to do it again?

Skylar frowned at him. No, the AI frowned at him. It wasn’t his child. It would never be his child, no matter how much it looked like him. But damn it if it didn’t make him immediately reconsider the thought. Was he really that easy to influence? Throw him in a room with his son and he’d do whatever made the child happy? Then again, what father wouldn’t lift the world for his child?

Not him. He remembered how he strove to turn Skylar into a perfect little heir, one that would readily accept his inheritance without complaint. Exactly what Hayden’s own father did to him, exactly what made him resent the man the rest of his life. And he knew he didn’t always make the right decisions, not by a long shot. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t make the right ones. Someone would disagree with him. They always did. They also always got over it.

Hayden looked at the AI, who had laid on its stomach and was kicking its legs in the air behind it. Its hands were under its chin, its elbows propping its head up.

“Well?” it asked, resting its legs and hands on the ground.

“This is a terrible decision. One that I do not make lightly. There will probably be many nights where I think I made the wrong choice. Where I try to figure out what I could have done differently to avoid this. But there is no other choice, not that I can see. And, because of that, I think I can say I can live with myself, even if others don’t agree with me.”

“Very well.” The child stood and gestured to a spot of empty air to its right, Hayden’s left. Except it was no longer empty. A console sat there, a single red button in its center. “Make your decision.”

The AI backed away from it, folding its arms behind its back as it watched. Hayden glanced curiously at the form of his son before walking up to it and wrapping his arms tight around the boy. Even though it was stiff, like a cardboard cutout, it felt unmistakably like Skylar.

“I promise I will find you and make things right.”

Hayden released the AI, who stared at him confused, and walked to the console. With one final deep breath and one final look at his son, he closed his eyes and pressed the button.

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