Thresholder

“Alright,” said Perry. “Let’s say we want to help these people, but we don’t want to give them the atom bomb. They have piss-poor microchips except for the legacy systems, and realistically, most of the things we can tell them about would take a very long time to implement, if they even could be implemented. We want to demonstrate value, and I think immediate value is going to be the key.”

He was still in the penthouse, at least for the time being, though a room was apparently being cleared for him. Marchand sat at the computer, though the suit’s fingers were no longer at the keyboard, as that was no longer necessary: the nanites had made a bridge that could send keystrokes wirelessly.

“I’ve taken a look at their code, sir, and have rewritten some of it,” said Marchand. “I did my best to use only those techniques that are known to them.”

“You can do that?” asked Perry.

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “The ability to program computer systems is one of the primary things that Miss Richter used me for. I have not historically been trusted to write novel software without supervision, but in this case, the work I was doing was largely refactoring some dreadful legacy code in order to optimize core processes.”

“And … to be clear, this isn’t something that you’ve put on their servers or whatever, right?” asked Perry.

“They have no proper servers, sir,” said Marchand. “There are three computers which once belonged to the so-called elder mechs, which serve the vast majority of the computational needs of the Natrix. Everything that you would consider a server is housed on one of those three machines. It goes without saying that those elder mechs have far inferior computing power to what was available on the space station.”

“The thrust of my question was whether you had deployed the code or not,” said Perry.

“Oh, no, of course not sir,” said Marchand. “It will need to be looked over by a skilled programmer, but I have done my best to ensure that the code is readable and, dare I say, elegant.”

“Good,” said Perry. “That’s something that will help them? In a measurable way?”

“Compute is limited here, sir,” said Marchand. “Assuming my changes are approved, eighty-three percent of the computational power aboard the Natrix will be freed. If you can convince them to adopt better audio and visual codecs, that will result in a fifty percent reduction in network traffic.”

“How’s that possible?” asked Perry. “I don’t want the technical explanation, I want the social one. Brigitta could code up a storm, we both saw that, why is whatever they’re doing so inefficient?”

“You’re asking me to speculate, sir?” asked Marchand.

“Yeah, sure,” said Perry.

“I wouldn’t want you to take my idle musings as fact, sir,” said Marchand.

“No,” said Perry. “But I do want to hear what you think.”

“Very well, sir,” said Marchand. “I believe that these people are incredibly gifted in some ways and stunted in others. They appear to have a much larger working memory than was ever present in the people from Earth, and they can synthesize visual information in a way that would astound Miss Richter. At the same time, it appears that these advantages do not extend to all areas of thought, and in fact, might hamper them in certain circumstances. If I might be allowed to analyze their ancestral programmers based on the programs they have written, it appears that when they are required to move past their excellent working memory and wide-ranging synthesis, they end up with muddled messes, the result of stitching individual projects together.”

“They … don’t work well together?” asked Perry.

“I’m not sure I would go that far, sir,” said Marchand. “But I would say that they seem more limited by what a single person can hold in their head than a normal human.”

“You’re saying they’re not humans,” said Perry.

“There are significant differences, at least from the evidence that I’ve seen, yes sir,” said Marchand. “It does seem correct to call them human though.”

“Alright,” said Perry. “Good. Though we might come across a planet without humans on it, where we have to deal with orca people or whatever. I want you to be prepared for that.”

Marchand was silent for a long moment. “The other aspect which might explain certain of their problems is that they tend to stick with the known for longer than you or I might, not branching out into new fields as often as might be prudent,” said Marchand, as though there’d been no interruption. “I know of no compiled history of their people, but certain ideas seemed to have come late and then been widely adopted for no clear reason. There are also ideas which have not occurred to them, particularly in the realm of software engineering, which I believe might offer an opportunity.”

“There are software ideas they … just haven’t had?” asked Perry.

“Sir, they do not have neural networks or any kind of deep learning,” said Marchand. “This, of course, makes many of their systems massively inefficient. It also prevents them from being able to run a system similar to myself, even if elder mechs might be capable of it.”

“You could … port yourself over to one of the mechs?” asked Perry.

“No, sir, there are tight restrictions put in place by Miss Richter which prevent me from making copies of myself,” said Marchand. “You have the authority to override those restrictions, but even if you did, the process of putting a copy of my system on an alien computer would be quite involved, even if it's possible in principle.”

“But the updated code you wrote, it means that there will be space on the servers and extra computing power?” asked Perry. “So we could have you running this place, is what you’re saying?”

“If that was what you wanted, what they wanted, and if you lifted the restrictions,” said Marchand. His tone was measured. “But what I had meant to suggest was that neural networks in general are a technology which could easily solve several problems which they have instead solved in extraordinarily difficult ways. The logic that governs their weapon targeting systems is actually quite dreadful.”

“Okay,” said Perry. “But you can, uh, rewrite it?”

“I can train neural networks to function with better accuracy using less computing power, yes, sir,” said Marchand.

“Alright,” said Perry. “Great. Then do that, I guess, get us as many things as we can lay on the table and say ‘here’s a thing I did for you’.”

“Sir, I doubt that it will be possible to do that without revealing the full extent of my abilities,” said Marchand. “Are you still intent on keeping me as a strategic secret?”

“Based on your reading, how are they going to feel about you?” asked Perry. “Do they have a lot of sci-fi stories about evil AI going wrong?”

“No, sir,” said Marchand. “In the stories that I’ve been able to find, the notion of artificial intelligence is largely dismissed, and their many stories about computing systems are about how a simple command can have unintended consequences. On Earth, the expression was ‘the computer will do exactly what you tell it to’. But this is somewhat distinct from the modern reality of artificial intelligence.”

“I think we had that saying on my Earth too,” said Perry. “Or at least something like it.”

“It’s quite out of date, sir,” said Marchand. “I should perhaps familiarize you with the basics of my programming before you release the restrictions, if you desire to do so. Modern artificial intelligence does not, in fact, do what it has been told to do. One might argue that it does what it has been trained to do, but I think even that would be in dispute. The paradigm might be worrisome to them, given their unfamiliarity.”

“But we’re not going to be burned at the stake as witches, you don’t think?” asked Perry.

“If they attempt it, sir, I believe I would prove capable of shutting down the Natrix and holding it hostage until our release,” said Marchand.

“That’s an absolute last resort,” said Perry. “And don’t ever let them know that you had those thoughts or found those vulnerabilities.”

“I have reminded you recently that I’m well-trained in military matters, including operational security, haven’t I sir?” asked Marchand.

“Right, just saying,” said Perry. He paced back and forth in front of the desk. “So we offer them massive speed-up on processing, communications, some new algorithms that you can port over from your libraries for targeting and stuff like that, and then as the cherry on top, a version of you that runs on their hardware? That’s what you think the long and short of it is?”

“Oh, my, no,” said Marchand. “The history of these people is actually quite remarkable as a study of counterfactual history. Miss Richter had many thoughts on how your two Earths differed from each other, but I dare say she’d have been shocked to see just how much they’ve accomplished with such a poor understanding of so many subjects. Given a few hours, even you would be able to fill in a great number of gaps in their knowledge.”

“Harsh but probably fair,” Perry sighed. “You know that I’m actually pretty knowledgeable, right?”

“I shudder to think what your primer on genetics would be like,” said Marchand.

“I mean, if it’s that, then yeah,” said Perry. Perry knew genetics trivia, enough to fill a note card. ‘The movie Gattaca used only the letters associated with the base pairs.’ Would this be helpful to someone? Probably not. “Where does their knowledge stop?”

“Raynaudian genetics, sir,” said Marchand. “I’ve found no evidence that they’ve discovered NDB or have any knowledge of its manipulation.”

“Er,” said Perry. “Sorry, translation error here, and the second sphere stuff doesn’t seem to be helping. NDB is … an acronym for something?”

“Very astute, sir,” said Marchand. “NDB is an abbreviation of nucleoside diphosphate backbone, the elemental genetic structure.”

“Alright, assuming that its shape is a double helix, add that to the custom library, it’s called DNA — deoxyribonucleic acid — where I’m from,” said Perry with a sigh.

“Very good sir,” said Marchand.

“And they just … never discovered it?” asked Perry. “They didn’t have good enough microscopes, or what?”

“It’s unclear to me, sir,” said Marchand. “Though of course the discovery of DNA was due to Keilpart-ray lattice photography. They appear to have a somewhat decent understanding of chemistry and chemical processes, but this understanding does not appear to extend to organic chemistry as far as might be helpful to them. It’s a wonder they’ve been able to produce biofuels at all, though of course there are many changes I would make to those processes.”

“Alright,” said Perry slowly. “They’ve got bad programming, bad chemistry, what else?”

“I believe that to be it, sir,” said Marchand.

“And there’s nothing that we can get from them?” asked Perry.

“Oh, I didn’t say that at all, sir,” said Marchand. “They discovered a method of faster-than-light travel not too long after first reaching the stars, and with computational power and techniques far below what was available on our Earth. It’s the sort of thing that Miss Richter had dreamed of finding, were you to ever go to another world.”

“And we have it?” asked Perry. “The schematics, the science, all that stuff? You were able to get it from the space station?”

“Yes, sir,” said Marchand. “Though I believe Miss Karlquist is correct that they don’t possess the technology necessary to actually construct such a thing, and using it inside a gravity well while under atmosphere would be quite unwise.”

“You’ll be in my ear at the meeting,” said Perry. “Be ready.”

“As always, sir,” replied Marchand.

~~~~

The private ‘breakfast’ took place in a meeting room whose windows looked out onto the open valley. Below, they could see the place being put to use, which was done largely through racks of unfolding metal that were being seeded. Most of the plants grew fast, Perry knew, mostly because they had to, and he couldn’t help but make a comparison to the children he kept seeing around.

Brigitta and Leticia he knew, but the third member of their leadership, Mette, was new to him. Where Brigitta and Leticia could easily have been sisters, Mette was small and thin, not an imposing figure. At first he’d thought that she might be another child, but on closer inspection, she was probably the oldest of the three of them, with a gently lined face. Her hair was among the darkest that Perry had seen, which meant only dirty blond. The sense of smallness was more pronounced on her face, with eyes that were large, black, and hard. She was the navigator of the Natrix, which in practice meant she had a bunch of different roles.

The table was meant for six, so they were spread out across it. A single computer terminal was plugged into a space in the wall, the cords inartfully trailing over the table, which was made of some kind of native wood. A plate of fruit was on the table, all native stuff in greens and oranges, and there was a teapot with a dark liquid that tasted astoundingly bitter to Perry. There were pastries too, pale little bars that seemed overly sweet to Perry.

“To start with, there’s the issue of veracity,” said Leticia. She had changed outfits into something that was a little less provocative than the one from before, though it was still a dress, and still clung to her. “You claim to have come from another world, to have in fact visited many worlds, and we have, as proof … what, exactly?”

“You can’t possibly think he’s lying,” said Brigitta. “I don’t want to waste time on this.”

“It’s not time wasted,” said Mette. “The man’s presence is mysterious and his claims are, on the face of them, absurd.”

“First, there’s something I haven’t told you,” said Perry. “I don’t think it has all that much bearing on any decisions here, but it’s important because it helps explain the truth.” He took a breath. “Magic is real, and I can prove it.”

Mette snorted and looked at Brigitta. “I didn’t expect the claims to grow.”

“What does he mean by magic?” asked Leticia. For whatever reason, she was asking Brigitta rather than Perry.

“Here,” said Perry. He stepped to the window of the meeting room and cracked it open, letting in cool air. He held his hand out, and after a moment, the sword swooped down from above and gently landed there.

“What is this?” asked Mette, looking at the others. There was a touch of fear in her voice.

“It’s a magical sword from a different world,” said Perry. He looked at Brigitta. “I’m guessing that you saw me coming in, some kind of signature on radar, that’s why you came out to meet me?”

“Yes,” said Brigitta. She frowned at him. “Was that you?”

“We thought it a ship of some kind, hidden away or single-use, abandoned,” said Leticia. Her eyes were on the sword.

“No,” said Perry. “I flew in.”

He let the sword tug him up, two feet off the ground, totally weightless and drifting slightly.

Mette leapt out of her chair and ran over to Perry, which he hadn’t expected. She moved around him, then waved a hand back and forth beneath his feet, and climbed up onto the table to wave a hand over his head. She was checking for wires, not that there would have been any possible way to get a wire setup into the room without them knowing. Besides that, it would have been painfully obvious from close distance. Still, it seemed to have been her first thought, and she’d checked it right away instead of allowing him time.

“Let go of the sword,” she said, voice sharp.

Perry did, and fell with the gentle grace of the second sphere, electing to leave the sword hanging where it was.

Mette grabbed the sword without asking and looked it over, swishing it back and forth.

“This is the only proof of magic?” asked Mette.

“It’s the best proof I have,” said Perry. “I can make some blue sparks from my fingertips and do a few other things that defy easy explanation.”

“Like taking a punch to the face from a man six inches taller than you and not flinching?” asked Leticia.

“Yes,” said Perry. “I have some advantages when it comes to fighting in particular, though I’m not sure I would call them magic, necessarily.” He paused for a moment. “Oh, and I can also turn into a hairy beast of enlarged proportions, not that I expect it to come up much.” He could tell the word ‘wolf’ was foreign to them, and had to translate it into baser terms.

“This is … not what this meeting was to be about,” said Brigitta. “This sword, could you make another?”

“Definitely not,” said Perry. “It was a masterwork, gifted to me by a king.”

“Then we set it to the side,” said Leticia.

“I refuse,” said Mette, who was still holding the sword. She looked almost comical with it, and was having trouble holding it up once Perry had let it support less of its own weight.

“We must,” said Leticia with a sigh. “There’s a limit to how long this meeting can go on, and —”

“It’s magic,” hissed Mette. “We see magic and you want to talk about minor improvements to the fusion reactors?”

“I do, yes,” said Leticia. “Especially if we can’t forge swords like that by the dozen.”

“I can talk to you about magic later, if you’d like. I’ve been to three worlds with magic, and know of perhaps two dozen other worlds,” said Perry.

“Yes,” nodded Mette. She returned to her seat, still not having let go of the sword. “But moving on from this is —”

“Is something that must be done, unless it has practical considerations for us,” said Leticia. “If Perry were offering us magic, that might be one thing, but it doesn’t appear that he is.”

“No,” said Perry.

“Then,” said Leticia. “Let us move on to —”

“Yes,” said Mette. “Setting aside the fundamental nature of reality, let’s move on to this petty matter of warfare and shifting percentage points.” She rolled her eyes.

“Do you need to be removed from this meeting?” asked Leticia.

“No,” said Mette with a sullen voice.

Leticia turned back to Perry and gave him a pained smile. “You have information from a world with more advanced technology. We would very much like to have whatever you can possibly give us. In exchange, we will provide you with shelter and food, and help you against … your adversary, of whom we know very little. We would like to avoid war with our western neighbors, but if it comes to that, your expertise and possibly combat abilities might be invaluable, in which case we would need to find some way to compensate you — though a transactional relationship isn’t the only option.”

“Transactional is fine by me,” said Perry. “You accept that I’m from another world?”

“Tentatively,” said Leticia. “I will accept it more once we’ve had a thorough overview of whatever materials you have stored on your miniature computer.”

Perry took that as his cue. He went over to the terminal that was hooked up and began typing. He’d practiced with the keyboard in the penthouse, and still fumbled, but being second sphere seemed to help with this too, allowing his fingers to be more nimble and his eyes to find unfamiliar keys more easily. He could navigate the menus, which was done entirely with the keyboard, since they either hadn’t invented the mouse or had decided that it was stupid and worthless.

“First,” said Perry, bringing up a screen of code. “This is a new codec that will reduce bandwidth and storage for video by something like fifty percent.”

Brigitta stared at it for a moment. “It’s … what’s it doing? Scroll down.”

Perry took a moment to find the button and pressed it, letting more code scroll onto the screen. He had no idea how it was readable to her, but apparently it was.

“How large is this file?” asked Brigitta after a while.

“Very large,” said Perry.

“I’ll need time with it,” said Brigitta, folding her arms across her chest. “I don’t understand why it needs to be so many lines.”

“Well, I’m pretty confident it works,” said Perry. “I have a number of other compression and codec technologies that will save massive amounts of space on your hard drives. I can hand all that over now, and it can be working within the day.”

“On our systems?” asked Brigitta, raising an eyebrow.

“If you’re worried about security —” Perry began.

“I’m worried that you’re underestimating the workload,” said Brigitta. She gestured at the screen. “Even if I read through that and agree that it does what you say it does, there are all kinds of terminals all over the Natrix, some of them fifty years old, and there are mechs with screens of their own. It’s a huge headache. And hardware encoders and decoders, we have a few of those as well.”

“And we are worried about security,” said Leticia. “Our goals seem aligned, but perhaps not so aligned that you can make major changes to the systems.”

“That’s fine,” said Perry. “You can take as long as you want to review. There are also a few scientific concepts that your people have just never discovered, including some principles of computer science.”

“Are these concepts true across all worlds?” asked Mette. “Could the physics be different?”

“Very possibly,” said Perry. “But we can test at least some of them. And certain aspects of how things work here might not translate across all worlds. You have faster-than-light travel, which the scientists of my world said was flatly impossible.”

It took Brigitta a moment, then she laughed, a big hearty laugh. “You go through all these worlds, and it’s ours that can travel the stars? And you’re here, planet-locked?”

“Sure, funny, I guess,” said Perry.

“Hilarious,” said Brigitta with a laugh. She seemed to realize that no one else was enjoying it as much as her, and sat back a bit, still looking amused.

“Tell me about what you have on offer,” said Leticia. “We want things that are actionable.”

“The biological first,” said Perry. “I have knowledge of genetics, which is a study of living things and how their internal code generates the structures of the cell. With work, it’s possible to rewrite that code and make changes that have all kinds of benefits, including higher yields from crops, more survivability for livestock, disease resistance, all kinds of things. I don’t know how much help it will be to you, but —”

“Code?” asked Brigitta. “Like computers?”

“Yes,” said Perry.

Brigitta looked at Leticia with a raised eyebrow.

“Intriguing, but that’s on the scale of decades at the very least, unless I misunderstand you,” said Leticia. “Or is it possible to alter this code in the living, rather than just the next generation?”

“It’s possible to spread it out through the current generation and see immediate results,” said Perry. “But that’s more difficult, and I wouldn’t do it on people, and at any rate, the whole thing is, yes, a project of decades rather than a project of the next ten weeks. Even with everything handed over, it will take time to train people up.”

“The more immediate issues then,” said Brigitta. “Fundamentals of computing that we somehow missed.”

“I have an onboard program, inside the armor, which is more capable than anything you have,” said Perry. “It — he — is intelligent in his own right, capable of computer programming, task automation, video and audio processing, and a variety of other things. I would say that he can do most things a person sitting at a terminal could do, though you would also need to check his work and perhaps not delegate too much, as well as look over errors when it comes to any unique situations.” Perry almost never did this.

“Show me,” said Brigitta.

Perry went to the terminal again, and typed in a string of commands he’d memorized, trying not to be distracted by the changing of menus and screens. It was like navigating by Google Maps rather than having any idea where he was actually going, unfamiliar houses and shops flying by.

A simple line of text appeared on the screen, ‘Hello’.

“We can … talk with it?” asked Brigitta. “Does it respond to voice commands? There’s no microphone on the terminal though.”

“Er,” said Perry. “Before, I was trying to keep his existence from you, because I wasn’t certain how you would react. He doesn’t just respond to voice commands, he responds to arbitrary speech. And there’s a microphone in the earbud, which is good enough to pick up conversation in this room.”

Brigitta came closer to the terminal, which still had ‘Hello’ printed out. “Hello?” she asked.

The message erased itself, then was replaced with ‘My name is Marchand, and I serve as Perry’s assistant and valet’.

“Impressive,” said Brigitta.

“You haven’t even tested it,” said Mette. She was still holding onto the sword.

Brigitta turned to her. “It’s impressive even without testing.”

“He could have just programmed that, right?” asked Mette. “It’s the first thing you’d program.”

“Fine,” said Brigitta. She turned back to the terminal. “Floris, Gillis, and Jochem are all in class together. Gillis is taller than Jochem. Who is the tallest in the class?”

“The information is incomplete, ma’am,” replied the text on the terminal. “However, if forced to guess, I would guess Gillis is the tallest, as Gillis is taller than Jochem, and that suggests that Gillis is taller than the average student. However, Gillis and Jochem are both male names aboard the Natrix, and depending upon their age, that might mean that we expect them to be either shorter or taller than the average female, depending on where in their maturation they are. Given that those groupings you term a ‘class’ last from approximately three years old until twelve years old, with exceptions for apprenticeship, I believe there is a bias in probability toward neither of the three named boys being the tallest in the class. However, I accept that this was a hypothetical, as those three names do not line up with either present or historical information I have from the Natrix.”

Brigitta read all of this quickly, eyes saccading back and forth. “It’s showing off.”

“Yes, probably,” said Perry.

“You told it to?” asked Brigitta, looking at him. She had bent slightly to peer at the terminal, and straightened to peer into Perry’s eyes.

“No,” said Perry. “He can track intentions. He’s showing off because he has a crude internal model of me. His actions are informed by what he thinks I want.”

“How?” asked Brigitta.

The terminal cleared and changed the words, this time with diagrams. “Master Perry has given me permission to share some of the code that constitutes me, but I must warn that much of it will be incomprehensible to you without a deep understanding of a field you learned about mere minutes ago. The below diagram should give a brief, high-level overview.”

It was a simple thing, little boxes with arrows pointing from one box to another, but it certainly wouldn’t have helped Perry to build something like March. There was ‘the model’, and a thing that made modifications to the model, and ‘static information’, a thing that made modifications to the static information, and ‘sensory data’, and ‘analysis’, and all these arrows fed into each other. Richter had said that it was horrifyingly complex and difficult to work with, mostly because ‘the model’ was a very opaque thing which was, unfortunately, used in almost every single part of what passed for March’s ‘cognition’.

“This is madness,” said Brigitta. “What’s the model?”

The terminal changed again. “I’m sorry, Miss Karlquist, but I believe further discussion of the subject lies far outside the bounds that have been set on this meeting.”

Brigitta turned to Leticia. “Give him whatever he wants.”

“We can’t do that,” said Leticia. “Largely because if we do, he has no incentive to help us, and we can benefit from him more than he can benefit from us.”

“Not a great thing to say out loud in a negotiation,” said Perry.

“You know it’s true, better to admit it outright,” said Leticia. “We’ll give you anything in the way of material support, but it can’t just be for this —”

“It can,” said Brigitta. “It can, and should be, if that’s the deal he wants to make.”

Leticia looked between her two companions, one of which was still holding the sword, the other who seemed intent on giving away the world for a better computer. “We have a likely war to deal with. He has a mysterious adversary he expects to show up.” She looked at Perry. “Your ability to help us in warfare is, in my view, limited, particularly because even if you were piloting a mech, your ability to affect a bombing run would be almost nothing in comparison with the power of the Natrix. It’s possible that you have some better understanding of tactics than we do, and we’d welcome your advice, but the war is the most important issue at the moment.”

“I’ll help with the war, however I can,” said Perry. “I expect that my counterpart, who has also traveled through worlds, will find whatever allies he can. I have to imagine that means going into the cold and snow, assuming he doesn’t show up here. And if he does show up here, I want you to blast him into small wet chunks.”

Leticia stared at Perry. “That’s a tall ask.”

“It is,” nodded Perry.

“It’s doable,” said Leticia, hesitating only a fraction at the idea of killing some random person she had never met. “There’s something I have in mind for you.”

Perry raised an eyebrow.

“We still hope to avoid war,” said Leticia. “But it seems, at this point, inevitable unless we cave to their demands, which we certainly won’t do. They buzz by with their planes, and know exactly where we are. It’s easier to attack than defend. We need to go west, into the snow, to where the Heimalis live, to see what they’re doing there, what problems we might be facing. Right now, there’s too much unknown, too much posturing and uncertainty. It’s an expedition of a sort that’s only rarely been done before, into the freezing cold. You’ll be furnished with a special mech, and travel with two others, one of them Ruben, who you’ve already met.”

“He’s got work here, farming,” said Perry. “You don’t have dedicated soldiers?”

“We have dedicated warriors,” said Leticia. “Engineers with their mechs, scouts and pre-emptive defenders. They’re designed and trained for incursions by the bugs, to go out and lay waste to whatever clutches of eggs they can find. It’s a different sort of enemy.”

“Either way then,” said Perry. “Put the team together and I can be part of it.”

Leticia let out a breath. “It won’t be for some time. We’ll see what improvements we can make, and get your advice on what you want in a mech.” She turned to Brigitta. “Delegate this to someone trusted.”

Brigitta waved her off. Her eyes were still on the terminal, where she’d begun typing while the talking was going on.

“Your valet, can he summarize information?” asked Leticia.

“Yes,” said Perry. “I’ll need to give him some instructions.”

“Have him prepare a digest for rapid transfer of information. It’s clear we’re going to need that. Keep him available on the terminal, if possible.” She looked at the other two. Mette hadn’t said much since taking the sword. “This might take some time to get through, and I worry that it’s time we don’t have.”

Perry nodded. He felt the same. Perhaps it would be like Seraphinus, and the war would be fought with him on one side and a clearly defined adversary on the other. That, he thought, he could handle.

He had laid his cards on the table, and done what he could in terms of boosting their society, though he knew most of what he’d given them would be worthless if they didn’t make it through the next year. The next part of his time in this world would be spent ensuring that they made it.