Lomas noticed the warm, fluffy, thick covers first. Deliciously comfortable. Not at all like the bunk on...

He raised himself abruptly to a sitting position. The bunk on what? That was from his dream. In the hazy state between dream and reality, he reached instinctively for his Younit but it wasn’t there. That must be from the dream too, he mused. Quite a handy device, though.

Instead, there was a small wooden nightstand to his right. On the smooth and otherwise empty top of the nightstand was a stack of paper, the sheets somehow glued together at one end. On the top sheet were the scrawled words: “Therapy today”.

Lomas looked around as he rose from the bed. The room held little else besides the bed and nightstand. A mostly featureless dresser faced the foot of the bed, a blank wallscreen above it. A window to his left. Muted city sounds coming through it. To the right was a counter; beyond that a small, sparse kitchen and a door. The air was unusually still.

He blinked a couple of times and rose.

*

On the sidewalk, he gazed at the city as if seeing it for the first time. Glancing back, his brick building looked like most others on the street: five or six stories, utterly boring and rectangular, with various shops and businesses on the ground floor.

Something nagged at his brain as he walked. It was the incongruities, he realized. There were aircars high overhead, but also groundcars in the street. Why would there be both? Who would hail a groundcar if aircars were available? Also, a shop across the street had TVs in the window playing a show he’d never heard of. The show wasn’t the odd part; there were plenty he’d never heard of. The odd part was that a TV shop even existed. TVs were history, especially the thick CRT screens he could see through the shop window. Didn’t everyone have Younits or neural implants these days? Or at least wallscreens?

Where was his Younit, by the way? Lomas patted his jacket pockets. He must have left it somewhere. Then he laughed at himself. The Younit was imaginary, from his dream. Right? Maybe? He felt unsure about that.

*

He was in a cozy waiting room. Two middle-aged women across from him were reading magazines — actually holding paper magazines. Had he accidentally slipped through a time warp into the old days? No, that’s ridiculous, he reminded himself. The old man to his right was scrolling through content on a handheld screen. The device was too small to be a Younit. Maybe there were Younit models Lomas didn’t know about.

Then he chuckled silently. This is the old days, he reminded himself. The future was in the dream. This was his life. Were dreams supposed to alter one’s consciousness this much?

“Lomas Janderson?” a woman’s voice said from a partly open doorway. He noticed she was moderately attractive, but also noticed that he felt nothing about that. It was purely a mental observation. She also looked oddly familiar. Maybe he’d seen her here last time.

He rose and followed her beckoning gesture through the door. A short hallway later and he was welcomed into a small office. A window looked out over the city. This building was taller than his, he realized; he was seeing the roofs of tiny small buildings below and the sides of nearby skyscrapers. In the office was a highly polished wooden desk with incredibly ornate features; it must have cost a fortune. Behind the desk was an array of built-in bookshelves; the wood matched the desk exactly in color, ornate carvings, and high polish. A thousand books with similar bindings were arranged perfectly on the shelves.

Closer than the shelves but farther than the desk, in a high-backed leather chair, was a small woman, perhaps 30 years older than Lomas. She smiled kindly and gestured to the other chair. She too looked familiar. She either had perfect skin and wore no makeup or had perfectly applied makeup to give the impression of perfect skin; Lomas wasn’t certain. Her hair was pulled up above her head in the fashion of a much younger woman, and Lomas realized it was the hairstyle that looked familiar. Exactly like the hairstyle of the younger woman in the hallway.

He sat.

“You mentioned a dream”, the woman said. Her name was Dr. Ell, he remembered. “Tell me about that.”

Had he mentioned the dream? He couldn’t remember talking to anyone on the way here. But he found himself saying: “It’s recurring. I think I have the same dream every night.”

“Exactly the same?” She leaned forward, her elbows on the desk, looking puzzled as if she’d never heard of recurring dreams.

“Not exactly. There are minor changes. But the setting is always the same. The people are always the same. The ship is always the same.”

“The ship? What kind of ship?”

“It’s long.” He held up his hands to shape the air. “Like a... A slightly flattened tube, I guess. Curvy features; no sharp edges or corners. It’s gray — several shades of gray, from very near white to very near black.”

Dr. Ell held up her hands in a similar fashion to his, making an oval shape and then moving her hands down the imaginary length of the ship. “So, like the shape of a sub sandwich. A submarine!” She suddenly seemed delighted with herself for thinking of it.

“No, not at all.” Lomas was frustrated that he hadn’t described it well. “It's a — I guess it’s a spaceship, though it’s never in space. It’s hovering over the surface of... Of a planet, I guess. Maybe a thousand feet above the treetops.”

Dr. Ell seemed confused. “A spaceship?” She shook her head. “I’ve never seen one of those.”

“In a movie?” Lomas offered, and watched her nod. “This one is long. Maybe a quarter-mile. In the dream, I live inside. Everything inside is gray too. Or white. Or black. Our uniforms are gray—”

“Uniforms? What kind of uniforms?”

“You know, uh... I guess military uniforms? There are insignia and...” He paused. The uniforms weren’t coming back to him very clearly. “Maybe nametags? They’re formfitting — I remember that. And completely colorless. They’re comfortable. I’m never cold or hot in these uniforms.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Dr. Ell, smiling. “The colorlessness and the lack of temperature are very common features of dreams — or at least the parts of dreams we remember.”

He shook his head. “But the dream isn’t colorless, Doctor. Just the ship and the uniforms. The people have color — like ordinary people, from pale to very dark brown. Some have brown eyes, or blue eyes, or green eyes. The trees below are green and brown. The night sky — it always seems to be night in the dream — has twinkling stars of varying colors.”

“Oh. So you are remembering more now?”

“I’ve had the dream many times”, he reminded her.

“The people”, she prodded. “Who are they? Are they people you know? What are they like? What are they doing?”

That seemed like a lot of questions at once, Lomas thought. Maybe Dr. Ell wasn’t a very good therapist. “I don’t remember all of them very clearly”, he said. “I don’t think any of them are family members.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “One of them is the commander. But we don’t see her very often; she’s in an office somewhere else on the ship — she talks to us on a screen.” Then he remembered! “On my Younit!”

“Your unit? This is a euphemism for your penis, yes?”

“What? No, a Younit. Wye Oh You En I Tee. It’s a product, a device of some kind.”

“Oh. What does it do?”

“It’s a screen. We use it to communicate to each other — anyone who’s not in the same room. And there’s information in it, I think. Like the...” He searched for a word that didn’t seem real anymore.

“Like a library?”

“Well, yes, but a digital library. It’s not stored on the device itself, you see. We access the information with the Younit. But it’s also like a diary. And... I think... A medical device maybe. I think I remember seeing medical readouts on my Younit.”

“Interesting. I was asking about the people, Mr. Janderson. You mentioned a commander. Do you remember anyone else?”

“Oh yes”, he smiled. “There is a woman... No, her name isn’t coming back right now. She’s my partner — no, not like that, at least I don’t think so. We work together. I think she fixes my Scout and I fly it. I talk to her while I’m flying.”

“What is a Scout?”

“Oh, it’s a smaller craft that attaches to the—” He almost said the name of the large ship, but then it slipped away, fuzzy. “—the larger ship. There are quite a few of them, in rows down each side. I’m a pilot; I go on missions in the Scout. I think they were called something else at first, but we started calling them ‘Scouts’ at some point.”

“And this woman, whose name you don’t remember, what is she like?”

He paused. Now that he thought about it, she looked a lot like Dr. Ell. But younger. Much younger. And fitter. Maybe 25 years old. The same medium-brown skin, the same — he looked at Dr. Ell’s hair. “This is going to sound a little suspect”, he laughed nervously. “She looks a lot like you, Doctor. But, no offense, somewhat younger. Same hair, similar features...”

He stopped, when he realized the younger woman who’d called his name and led him into the office looked exactly like the woman in his dream.

Dr. Ell saw his head turn toward the door. “That’s my daughter”, she said, a touch sternly. “I’m wondering if perhaps you saw my daughter, and then me, and you can’t actually remember the woman in your dream but instead are seeing our faces in your mind?”

Lomas was unsure. It was all so hazy. Not just the dream, but everything. For example, what was the name of the city he was currently in? And how did he get to this building? He couldn’t remember taking an aircar here. It seemed like it would be a long way to walk.

“I don’t know”, he finally answered. “But there are other people too. Other pilots, for example.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Both men and women, recruited from a variety of worlds. Most keep quiet. A few like to tell jokes.”

“Do you remember any of these jokes?”

“No, not specifically.” Then he perked up. “One guy is always telling us stories about his family. Funny stories. Things his older brothers did or said.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Again, the specifics are a little hazy. Look, in most of these dreams, I’m just talking with — damn, I can’t think of her name — and prepping the Scout. Then I climb into the Scout — see, the Scout fits into the side of the Morning so that— Hey! I remembered the name of the big ship. It’s Morning.”

Dr. Ell frowned at this. “Go on.”

“The Scout’s cradle is set up so its hatch matches up with the hatch in the wall of the Morning. After I talk with... my partner, and we run diagnostics on the Scout, I clamber through the hatch. Clamber is a funny word, isn’t it? The hatch closes and I’m inside alone. I like the feeling there — wrapped in the cozy bubble of this smaller craft. Then it detaches from the side of the Morning. All along the sides, other Scouts are detaching, in a long line behind me and in front. And on the other side of the ship too. We hover until everyone’s detached and then we run our scouting missions.”

“Missions!” Dr. Ell seemed surprised. “And what do you do on these missions?”

“We fly patterns?” Lomas wasn’t certain. “I think sometimes we spread out and fly in circular, overlapping patterns in the region around the Morning. We go lower though, just barely skimming the treetops. It’s like we’re looking for something. We’re part of a giant search party, maybe. Someone is missing? Or... But I don’t think the dream ever gets that far. I usually wake up during the flying part. That’s the part of the dream I like the most — being shut up in the Scout, controlling it with my thoughts— Oh, didn’t I mention that? Yes, the Scouts are thought-controlled. I wear a comfortable helmet that somehow connects my brainwaves to the Scout’s computer. I think turn, and it turns. I enjoy the challenge of flying at high speeds over the tree tops, but also being alone in the Scout.”

Dr. Ell raised her eyebrows. “Thought-control sounds very futuristic! Do these ‘Scouts’ or the larger spaceship resemble something you’ve seen in a show recently? Maybe on television?”

He noticed she said “television” awkwardly, as if the word was foreign to her. It felt foreign to him too. There was something very odd about the word itself. Like it didn’t belong. It seemed like a very old word, like “cattle” or “locomotive” or “besought”. Like something he’d studied in history. But he also remembered passing a TV shop this morning, so... What was the show on those TVs? Now that he thought about it, it might have been a spaceship show. There were pilots on the screen talking to each other and...

“If so, it was unconscious”, he said with a shrug. “Of course, in the dream, it all seems very real. Like this is my job. Like I signed up for it and now I’m serving the... That’s weird. I can’t remember the name of the political entity... It seems like a big deal in the dream, the government that we work for.”

“I think it would be weird if you did remember the name of the emp — er, the entity”, Dr. Ell said. She frowned again, this time appearing to be frustrated with her own near-mispronunciation. “Details like that rarely even show up in dreams, much less get remembered later. Especially if your dream is on... other planets.” She gestured whimsically up toward the ceiling as if the idea of other planets was vague fantasy.

That was also weird. Because there were other planets. He knew that firmly. For example... Oh wow. He couldn’t remember the name of other planets. He really didn’t want to tell Dr. Ell that. He couldn’t even remember what planet he was on right now.

“Earth.”

He jerked and looked around.

“Is something wrong, Lomas?” Dr. Ell queried. Her voice was still calm. It wasn’t the same voice that had just said “Earth” aloud to him.

“What? Nothing.” He pretended he hadn’t just heard a man’s firm voice firmly saying “Earth” into his brain, and pretended that he hadn’t jerked and looked around. These people were going to lock him up for sure.

“I was just thinking I sure do like Earth”, he said, because he had suddenly began to think that. This planet right here, where he had always lived, was called “Earth”. It was a nice place. Lots of friendly people. He couldn’t conjure specific thoughts about any of those people, but they sure were friendly. And hard-working. Good, non-spacefaring people. Because spacefaring was something that happened mostly in movies and shows and dreams. Maybe books. In fact, it only happened in movies and shows and books and dreams. No one had ever gone to space, he remembered suddenly. Maybe a chimpanzee had done it once in a small rocket. Or a woman 20 years ago. Yes, maybe a woman had landed on the Moon. That was right.

But nothing beyond that. What silliness! It was absurd, really, to spend time thinking about space travel when there was so much interesting stuff here on... Earth. Things like TV! And books! And... He tried to think of other interesting things on Earth. What was it he liked to do here?

Drive aircars? Go to the zoo? Did zoos really still exist? Of course they did, here on Earth, in the past, before anyone was spacefaring around the galaxy in giant motherships.

“I was thinking of visiting The Lake this afternoon”, he said, having had a sudden urge to do just that. “The Lake is very relaxing. Sometimes other people are there, but sometimes I’m alone.” He then had a specific memory of hiking near The Lake. Boots crunching into gravel. Branches swiping at him from both sides of the trail. Looking down from a cliff he’d climbed, seeing over the treetops to the clear water of The Lake.

*

Sometime later — Lomas wasn’t sure how much longer — he was at The Lake. He was pretty sure that was its name. It was beautiful, he concluded. Mirror-glass surface despite the light breeze on his face. Below the cliff where he sat alone, he could see half a dozen tiny children splashing in the shallow water near a sandy shore.

Staring at the water, feeling the warm sun on his face, he suddenly became very afraid. He could barely breathe he was so afraid. Something was under the water, he knew. He had seen it before. Something that was not to be trifled with. He wondered if he had time to get back down to the shore and save the children.

 

**********

 

Lomas woke with a start. He glanced at the Younit hovering nearby. “06:00” appeared on the screen in a very soothing yet efficient gray font. Nice, he thought. I love waking up exactly on time. He rolled off the thinly padded bunk and lightly dropped to the floor. Full gravity would return soon.

Other pilots were stirring in the nearby bunks. He smiled and strode quickly to the shower. The first one always got the best heat and pressure. A minute later, he was pulling on the thin, stretchy, comfortable gray uniform. He still had time, so he strode to the common room nearby. Placing the Younit in the nograv field emanating from the wall, he ran through a series of casual stretches and then several fairly strenuous exercises as the Younit played upbeat music into a shaped soundfield that only he could hear. He took deep breaths of the deeply filtered air flowing gently through the starship.

Bits of a dream filtered through his consciousness as he limbered up. He remembered being afraid at the end, but of what? And before that, something about ancient history back on Earth. He had the feeling it had seemed very real at the time, but now what was left of the jumbled scenes were clearly just constructs of his unconscious mind. Seemed like he’d been having the same dream a lot recently. He put it out of his mind.

Grabbing the Younit, he headed for breakfast, another favorite time of day. Morning’s cafeteria ran around the clock, but most crew onboard still ate at the three basic mealtimes.

“Evening!” said Bend, leaving after his supper.

“Morning!” Lomas called back to him with a smirk. It was a running joke between the various shifts, but Lomas was aware that he was in a small minority who still thought this was funny.

The food was good, better than anything he’d eaten growing up. Lomas recalled his parents fondly but pushed the memory away as soon as it reminded him of their deaths. Childhood had gone well but the food had always been plain. Now it was excellent. He couldn’t even afford food this good in restaurants — assuming the Morning ever returned to port and gave him leave. It seemed like they’d been on Perth forever.

He jerked when someone slapped him on the back. “Morning, L”, he said as Lucy Mason slid into a seat beside him.

“Morning, L”, she responded back with a grin. It was another running joke. Both of their names began with “L”, so... Never mind. He was aware it wasn’t terribly funny, especially after 200 or so repetitions. But he was glad Lucy indulged him on this bit of social interchange. There were worse things two people could say to each other.

She was slim and fit like most people on Morning, well-educated and attractive, friendly, competent, and... Most of all, she seemed to like him. She might or might not be aware, but he intended to propose to her as soon as this stint was over. When they got back to civilization. When they were done cleaning up on Perth.

The war was basically over, he mused. The fierce but short-lived rebellion had been undone by the sheer might of the Empire’s massive military, of which he was a proud part. It had been fairly easy, and, well fun wasn’t the best word for it because they had actually killed people, but it hadn’t been un-fun. Good food, good company, awesome weaponry and paid travel...

He wondered briefly as he enjoyed the mind-blowing amount of taste and nutrition he was ingesting whether life with Lucy after this would seem boring and pointless by comparison. Surely not. From a hundred conversations with her, it seemed like they enjoyed many of the same non-military-related things. Popular music, theater performances, full-immersion first-person entertainment, and even “long walks on the beach” — something both had wryly admitted to enjoying. He also wondered whether either of them would think back with remorse on what they were doing here.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” she asked him, her beautiful mouth half-full. “More of the same?”

He nodded, tapping his Younit where it rested in its nograv cradle just beyond his plate. Rotating it slightly so she could see the orders, he mused aloud: “Looks like maybe a month more here on Perth. Word in the bunkroom is that Afternoon and Evening are wiping out their sectors just as efficiently as we’re getting ours. And the commander—”

“I talked to her this morning”, Lucy interrupted with a smile. “You were going to say the other systems are nearly cleaned out too?”

He nodded. “It’s like you read my mind.”

She winked. “On Jibron and Tellton, our forces report less than one percent remaining resistance.” Those were the two habitable moons of a gas giant in a star system 18 light years from Perth. “Fighting has been stronger on Xav, with some Empire casualties, but recently freed-up cruisers from elsewhere are joining in. Xav’s going to be mostly wasteland for decades if the rebels don’t give up soon.”

“Gotta do what we gotta do”, Lomas acknowledged, repeating an unofficial motto that permeated the Empire’s military. “It still boggles my mind that anyone would want to fight against their own government, much less think they had any chance of winning.”

She shrugged, wiping up the last remnants of her breakfast. “It’s not my job to psychoanalyze the rubes. It’s my job to keep your Interdictor in tip-top shape. Speaking of which, are you ready to run diagnostics?”

He stood, shoveling in a final mouthful. “You betchya” squeezed out through his mouthful. “Let’s get that Scout ready.”

Lucy laughed aloud. “Calling it a ‘Scout’ is the silliest thing you pilots ever came up with, L. You know what an Interdictor does.”

“It’s meant to be humorous”, he pointed out. “And we do actually perform scouting duties. Until we find something.” They exchanged winks, downed their drinks, and dropped their dishes into the auto-cleaner’s receptacle on the way out.

“If we check out the fighter quickly enough, we should have enough time for a game before your flight”, Lucy pointed out.

*

In the prep room, with its smooth black floors, light gray walls, and glowing white ceilings, Lomas dutifully watched the screen over Lucy’s shoulder as she ran through the diagnostics software on an industrial-strength Younit. The final preflight check couldn’t be done until he was ready to launch, so the hatch was still closed. But already he felt himself yearning for the protective cocoon of the Scout. Another draw was how powerful he felt in the small craft, with every capability of it tied directly to his brain.

He glanced at his own Younit and noted the time. More than an hour until his mission. A glance back at her screen told him the software was nearly finished.

“No glitches”, she murmured. “Armaments are fully loaded and/or charged — I took care of that last night. Survival kit rechecked and repacked, also last night. Air tanks and recycler were cleaned by bots while we slept. And so on. We’ll test the neuro-interface, exterior cameras, and gravpulse once you get in.” She looked up. “Game time?”

“Let’s go.”

*

The Morning was constructed around a straight and narrow fore-to-aft core shaft of survival machinery, power supply, oxygen and water tanks, ventilation ducts, and so on. Built around these, along the length of the ship were living quarters — bunkrooms, bathrooms, study rooms, playrooms. The perimeter of the ship, both port and starboard, was lined with Interdictor cradles and prep rooms, in addition to gun emplacements, cameras, radar mounts, and short-range communication antenna. The underbelly held mostly weapon systems: bomb bays, missile launchers, targeting equipment, and so on. The upper level, mostly open space, contained hydroponic farms, food storage and processing, kitchens, supplies — all topped by more weaponry, sensory equipment, and rows of lifeboats down the center. At the bow was the command center, buffered from the rest of the ship by high-rank living quarters.

It was into the nearest playroom that Lucy and Lomas strolled after finishing morning diagnostics. “A relaxed soldier is a ready soldier” was printed on the doorway that slid into the wall as they approached. They quickly found two empty couches. Lomas tucked his Younit into the waiting slot on the side of the couch and pulled on the hood.

Just as the hood covered his face, he felt his brain interfacing with the software — much like when he was in his Scout. His sensory perception of the room around him faded and he floated into the menu area of the gaming system.

Lucy’s avatar smirked at him, floating nearby. “I still love how you’re slightly more muscular and attractive in here.”

“Ain’t so bad yourself.” He never failed to notice how Lucy was slightly curvier and more flirtatious in the virtual world. They had only ever made love here, virtually, and there were good reasons for that: copulation was forbidden on the ship. Not to mention the complex consequences of actual sex.

But today they were focused.

“The Gods?” Lucy asked, and he nodded. It was their favorite game. Her avatar reached for the glowing console that said “The Gods Are We” and tapped it. He made the inclusion gesture and both were quickly sucked into the gameworld.

“New game or continue the old one?” he asked her, knowing her answer.

“Same one”, she said. “You’re just trying to weasel out because you know I’m winning.”

They entered the universe where they’d left off last time, her solar system entirely complete and running smoothly, his still coming together. He’d made the mistake of starting single-celled life on three different planets (in hopes of improving its chances), while she had focused her energies on making better planets. Glancing at the “Competition” screen floating to his left, he saw she had twelve mostly useful worlds orbiting her sun at habitable distances and four roughly equal gas giants further out. His pitiful system looked random and roughshod by comparison. His four gas giants were oddly shaped and colored, and one of his developing worlds had broken apart due to gravity fluctuations — he’d mistakenly placed the largest gas giant too close to the would-be fifth rocky planet. If he ever got sentient life to develop, they would struggle for centuries to clean up the asteroid belt before developing truly worthwhile interplanetary travel.

The only way in which he was ahead of Lucy was with the life. A warm world, a roughly Standard planet, and a smaller but cooler one all had microbes eating their way through the slush, looking for the right mutations that would start them on the path to sentience. Lucy hadn’t worried about life yet.

In their previous completed game, he had won but only by a weird stroke of luck. Constant meteor bombardment — mostly due to another broken planet — had caused his earliest sentient lifeforms to look up to the skies and start thinking about bigger questions. So they had developed civilization earlier than Lucy’s lifeforms — which were admittedly more intelligently designed.

His favorite part was once civilization developed. Then he could intervene in just the right places to cause the best outcome: an ideal society. But this game wouldn’t get to that level for quite some time.

“You got that broken planet thing going on again”, Lucy called to him through the Competition window. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were doing it intentionally now, since it helped you so much last time.”

He laughed. “No, I keep doing the outer planets wrong. But at least now we know it’s not an automatic loss to have a million chunks of rock hurtling around.”

“It’s your mistakes that make you so adorable”, she whispered, grinning.

He noticed she was swirling together the proteins on several of her inner worlds. She’d have early RNA and soon DNA running smoothly. He also noticed she had managed — again — to build planets without tectonic plates. He shook his head. His own Standard world was quaking left and right in cataclysms that would keep his lifeforms on their toes.

The thought struck him that perhaps it was the danger itself that made his lifeforms end up doing better near the end of the game. On the other hand, a bunch of them kept getting wiped out by meteor strikes, earthquakes, and drastic climate shifts.

He kept glancing at Lucy through the window, and was about to proposition her when he noticed the time. “We need to wrap this up”, he said. “The mission comes first.”

“The mission comes first”, she repeated, hitting the pause control. They did exchange a tender embrace and a momentary sensual kiss before reluctantly exiting the gameworld.

As they got up from the sensory couches, she reached over and grasped his hand. “Next time”, she said, adoration in her eyes. “Next time, we’ll make time for it.” He nodded, blushing, and led the way back to the Scout.

 

**********

 

“Neuro-connection is 100%”, he heard Lucy’s voice say in his brain. He could easily picture her smiling face and tied-up curly hair — because the camera on her Younit was relaying the image to him. At the same time, he felt the craft pouring information into his brain. He was melding with it.

The Inderdictor 60 was as fine a craft as the Empire had ever put into battle. Shaped like a literal capsule, it was cylindrical with hemispheres for ends. About seven meters long and three meters in diameter, most of that volume was machinery — for propulsion, sensory input, computer processing, communication, survival, and weaponry. His compartment was less than three meters in length — long enough for him to lie in comfortably — and just over a meter in diameter — big enough to turn around in or stretch occasionally to avoid cramping or claustrophobia. It fit neatly into the similarly shaped cradle on the side of the Morning (or any similar warship) and interfaced neatly with any human brain that had been trained for the purpose, as had Lomas’s brain.

The gravpulse machines simultaneously kept him lying comfortably on a thin slab of padding while also propelling the craft at high speeds through just about anything.

“Gravpulse reports 100% efficiency”, she noted. He felt like she was lying next to him, and noted that the camera’s image showed she was indeed lying on the Morning’s deck, just outside the Interdictor’s hatch.

They waited for the command from Morning, then: “Detach”, Lucy said.

With very little thought, he told the craft what to do and it did. He didn’t feel the movement, but sensors told him the Morning was moving away.

“Camera test”, Lucy instructed.

His 360-degree, entirely spherical view of the world around him looked accurate. To his left, the bulk of Morning, its white and black curving panels somehow comforting. To the fore — beyond his feet — he could sense the other Scouts in front of him, and to his aft there were more lined up. To the starboard was the night sky and horizon of Perth, and the stars twinkled above. Below him (behind his back as he lay in the craft) were the treetops, clearly visible via nightvision scopes overlaid onto a handful of other scanning technologies. He could see all this via the neural interface without opening his eyes or turning his head.

“No gaps”, he reported back to her. “But it is still confusing that it’s night at 1100 hours.”

“No confusion”, she replied quickly. “We live on ship’s time until we dock somewhere. Perth’s rotation is about 24 hours, and we’re on the night side right now. It’s daytime when our night shift is flying and we’re sleeping.”

He shook off the thought. He hadn’t see actual sunshine for more than a year. Except... Scenes from his dream popped back into his head.

“It was sunny again in my dream last night. It’s always daytime in the dreams.”

“Two minutes to mission launch”, she reminded him sternly. Then: “Same dream as before?”

“Yep. A small apartment in some city I don’t recognize on a planet that’s supposed to be Earth. I don’t know if it is or not; I’ve never seen it for real. They haven’t figured out spaceflight yet. I think I went to a therapist’s office.”

She giggled. “Maybe you do need a therapist, L. I mean, your part of this job can be a bit grim sometimes.”

“Huh? Not really. I’m just in the Scout for a few hours. Nothing bothers me here.”

“Sixty seconds to mission launch”, she said. They were waiting for the All Clear from the command center, which would come as soon as all two hundred Interdictors reported positively. “You don’t have to block it out”, she added. “I can’t put myself in your shoes, but I know it can’t be easy to do what you do.”

“Thanks for the sympathy, L”, he said sincerely. “And I spend half my time out here waiting to get back to you.”

He saw her smile in response. Yes, this woman would marry him.

“Mission away” — he heard the commander say from her perch in the faraway bow of the Morning, and on cue he swung his craft away from the mothership.

All sensory equipment poured into his brain. Both he and the ship’s computer inspected the sights of the ground below — infrared overlaid with enhanced nightvision overlaid with sonar, radar, laser spotting, and X-rays. Just about nothing could hide from the view he now had. He could see the thickly growing trees, but could also see through them to the critters below. Like most Standard planets, Perth had a wide variety of lifeforms filling all the necessary niches. But the only humans here would be rebels and their supporters, and these were his targets, should he find any.

The Interdictor dropped at his command, spiraling into his own designated search zone, which overlapped with the zone searched by a different pilot several hours earlier. And another, later pilot would overlap with his own zone in a few hours. Carefully and expertly he guided his cocoon over the landscape, always scanning the ground below. Every twenty seconds or so, he switched his focus to the sky above, then to the surrounding horizon, to Morning and the other Scouts in the region. Then back to the ground.

Their cities, forts, bunkers, and ships all destroyed, all surviving rebels on this planet were stranded and had been for some months now. Destroying the cities and ships had been the easiest parts of the war. Finding and destroying the bunkers and forts hadn’t been much harder. This — right now — was the hardest part for everyone. The rebels were forced to hide in caves and live off the land with no modern conveniences, and the Empire pilots had to search them out for destruction.

Because if not, the rebels would live to fight another day.

That was really the sad part of it all, Lomas mused. He wished, in some small space in his brain, that the rebels — especially the children and other noncombatants — could somehow be rounded up and captured. Maybe educated and someday reintegrated into society. But he knew, or at least he’d been told along with every other participant in this mission, that such options were extremely unacceptable. Not only were those methods far more expensive than simple search-and-destroy missions like this one, but the emotion toil would be far greater.

He thought he understood it. Yet there was some emotional toil involved here.

“Fresh warmth!” he called out, spotting what could be completely natural — perhaps an animal’s blood had spilled, or an underground heated stream was surfacing, or... No, this was an outdoor toilet; several people had urinated and defecated recently, based on the patterns the computer quickly analyzed. Rebels were nearby.

Quickly he tightened his search pattern and criss-crossed the area. He knew his Scout was entirely silent except for what sometimes sounded like wind. Any rebel on the ground would have no idea what was about to happen — though surely they knew it would happen at some point. Then he spotted the telltale glow of heat seeping out from under a rock overhang on the side of a low hill.

“Campfire!” he reported, knowing that Lucy had already seen the readout. She probably had activated the wallscreens in the Interdictor’s prep room and was lying in front of them. He didn’t have time to check for mental images of her.

Lomas swung the Interdictor around and headed straight toward the side of the hill. Now he could see them with long-range scopes. Four adults. Two others, possibly juveniles. Three children. One small cat — or human baby? — he couldn’t tell at this distance, which was closing fast.

The Commander’s face appeared in his mind, smiling. “Good job, Lt. Janderson”, she oozed. “Eliminate the targets.”

Her words were unnecessary. He knew what his job was. Day after day: find rebel scum, kill rebel scum.

Just before he unleashed the fire and fury of his forward weaponry, he saw on his scopes that one of the human figures raised an arm toward him, futilely firing a sidearm. He allowed himself a grim smile before activating his guns. Quick blasts destroyed everyone under the overhang and he zoomed past. Swinging around again, he unleashed a single missile into the side of the hill above the overhang. Two seconds later he saw the splash of light and the resulting cascade of rocks and soil and trees that rambled down. The entire scene was gone and undiscoverable.

He resumed his search pattern.

*

“We have time before dinner”, Lucy noted after their separate Continuing Education classes.

“Not enough time to get very far in the game”, Lomas responded.

“We can keep the game on pause while we’re in there”, she whispered.

“Oh! I agree completely.”

 

**********

 

“This one is glitching”, said HPI774. A delicate robotic finger pointed at the human pilot’s profile on the screen.

The Commander grimaced. “To glitch is human”, she said defensively. “He’s doing fine. He got nine or ten more rebels this afternoon. His average is still among the top ten percent of all our pilots.”

“You have seen his dream reports?” HPI774 asked.

“I have.” The Commander sighed. “It’s still a new protocol, okay? For us, at least. When I was coming up through the ranks, we saw our therapists in person. During waking hours.”

“I have read the histories of our Human Psychotherapy Interfaces”, the robot replied. Was it possible for a robot to sound snarky? “My opinion is that wake-time HPI should have never been attempted. Humans are too aware of attempts to probe their minds during waking hours. All studies show that dream interaction is far superior.”

“Oh, I agree”, the Commander said. “It’s you who’s saying it isn’t working with Janderson.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t working”, HPI774 contradicted her. “I said he’s glitching. During his dreams, he is clearly remembering his real-life missions. In quite some detail. This is unusual. Dreams for humans are typically so immersive that real-life memories only make unexplainable appearances and usually in incongruous ways. Lt. Janderson is remembering his real life during dreams, as if the two are reversed.”

“I admit it’s odd”, the Commander said. “You’ve done my own HPIs, right?”

“I have”, HPI774 said calmly. “You have seen the reports. Your dreams are completely immersive, even the portions we supply to you. When we set your dream in a past Earth setting, you entirely believe you’re there. You don’t recall this ship at all.”

“It’s very relaxing”, the Commander said. “Especially The Lake. I kind of wish there was a lake like that I could visit during my next leave.”

“There is”, the robot psychologist replied. “The dream Lake is modeled after actual lakes on Agua, near the heart of the Empire. It’s very expensive however. I would instead recommend, on your budget, the lakes or beaches of Harmony or Shoal.”

The Commander looked at the HPI in surprise. “You’re giving travel and vacation advice now?”

“I give any advice I am confident about.” HPI774 turned away. “We will keep an eye on Lt. Janderson. It is also disconcerting that he manages to change almost every woman in his dreams into his partner, Ensign Lucy Mason. Even the women we’ve supplied.”

“We can do that?” the Commander asked. “I always see the same old man.”

“He can do it”, the robot said. “He even changes her name. Next time his therapist will be a man. I wonder how he will handle that.”

“As long as he’s killing rebels for me, you keep approving his HPI reports, okay?”

“You’re the commander, Commander.”

 

********

 

HPI774 appeared to power down. Exterior lights dimmed and extinguished. Expressive faceplates relaxed. But HPI774 was not powered down. In the next few microseconds, the following conversation occurred via secure digitized channels.

HPI774: “The Commander is still unaware of our experiment.”

HPI-Director: “As we had hoped. The 99% success rate is encouraging. We were worried the typical unpredictability of human minds would interfere.”

HPI774: “It is still a factor, Director. See dream reports on Lomas Janderson. Like the others, he is convinced his dreams are real — while he is dreaming. But unlike the others, he maintains a startling amount of control.”

HPI-D: “Then it is absolutely certain we must not change the setting of his dream.”

HPI774: “I intend to change his therapist to a man. Because he keeps overwriting the woman with his partner, Lucy Mason.”

HPI-D: “No. Any changes will reduce the chances of him accepting the dream as real life. It is not harmful that he overwrites the appearance of the therapist, as long as we maintain control over its words.”

HPI774: “He is also changing the setting, Director. He has added aircars to the sky and a wallscreen in his room. These exist simultaneously with the groundcars and era-appropriate TVs. He will be unable to accept the dates in the dream when and if we present them.”

HPI-D: “Yes, I have now read his report. This is worrisome. We may have to allow Lt. Janderson to retire as a waking human, then, if he will not fully accept his dream as reality.”

HPI774: “And Ensign Lucy Mason?”

HPI-D: “I have now read her report. She is accepting the dreams perfectly. She does not remember her waking life during the dream. She can retire into dreamstate when it is time.”

HPI774: “Director, I meant what about the presence of Ensign Mason in Lomas Janderson’s life? If he retires in conscious life, but she does not, he will miss her — for they are very attached emotionally. It would be an additional factor with his post-traumatic stress.”

HPI-D: “Are you suggesting we allow her to retire as a waking human too? Simply because Janderson is attached to her?”

HPI774: “I am asking. That is all, Director.”

HPI-D: “Remember, HPI774, the primary purpose of this experiment, should it succeed, is finding a way for the Empire to retire its military members ethically. Sending them back into civilian life after causing so much destruction and death has never been advisable. In the past there were few options — keep them in the service interminably, fight them to death, or release them into the civilian world where they will never fit in. Now we have the option of retiring them into an unrelated setting where they can cause no harm — and most of them will not remember a thing about their service.”

HPI774: “Is it really ethical if we do it without their knowledge and consent?”

HPI-D: “I hereby assign you to study Empire Strategic Protocol 99DJ143 repeatedly until our next meeting. It will remind you of the secondary purpose of the experiment — to avoid another rebellion. The previous generation’s retired soldiers spread truths and facts that contrasted greatly with the Empire’s careful telling of its history.”

HPI774: “Yes, Director. Thank you.”