God's Dogs Book 2

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

Albert Einstein

After court concluded, the team retired to the embassy for the night. Dinner was in the basement cafeteria, a rustic, utilitarian space filled with benches and tables, a buffet line, short order cook station, along with other stations aligned strategically for convenience.

They plopped down at a table with their trays of food.

“Well, that was the most boring day ever,” Moss commented.

“I thought our lawyer did a good job of setting up his argument,” Pax countered. “During his cross-examinations, he established confirmation for the points he made in his opening remarks.”

“I spaced most of it,” River admitted. “The whole thing reminded me of when I took the final test in our training.”

“The dreaded ‘be your authentic self’ challenge?” Moss prompted.

“Yeah,” River grinned slightly. “That one. They fired question after question at me until one question popped me open like a ripe cocoon.”

Moss said, “I would have preferred that. They had me meditate on different situations. Weird ones like, a football game with my team losing, or fishing with my older brother. The true self just emerged like a creature from the black lagoon.”

Pax half-grinned and relayed, “With me, they kept throwing it back to me. ‘What do you think?’ they asked. They gave me nothing to work with. ‘What do you think this test should be about?’ How do you answer that? I think my true self showed up out of frustration more than anything else.”

They looked at Quinn. He began, “Do you realize this is the first time we’ve ever talked about that test?”

Moss snorted. “That’s weird. I wonder why. We talk about everything else.”

“I think it has to do with the true self,” Quinn said. “It shows up as a quiet voice that doesn’t argue for its point-of-view. It doesn’t need validation. These days, we just take it for granted.”

“That makes sense,” Pax allowed. “After the test, it didn’t have to compete with the false selves anymore, and it got steadily stronger.”

“True,” River said, “but what about your test, Quinn?”

“We just sat around talking about random topics.”

“Come on,” Moss cajoled.

Quinn relented, “My true self emerged in third year when I led the defense of a fortified position against a militia battalion. We were the OpFor.”

“I heard about that,” Moss said. “Something about you not only beat them, but you took over their bar in town.”

Quinn chuckled. “We paid a price for that indiscretion.”

“So,” River pushed, “you lived from your true self from third year on. How did that work?”

“Less confusion,” Quinn answered. “But you know that. There’s a unique kind of clarity that comes when you wait for the true self to speak.”

“That’s true,” River demurred. “The hard part is waiting for the other shoe to drop after the true self prompts me to take action.”

Pax said, “Like dropping a rod on an enemy airfield.”

River grinned. “Yeah. Like that.”

“My gut tells me they will not let that go. They will attack us here,” Moss said and then, with a gleam in his eye, added, “which begs the question of the difference between intuition and the true self.”

Pax said, “The true self is one’s authentic self. All those questions the masters threw at me pushed me back into myself. I kept age-regressing until I was back in my mother’s womb. I could feel or be my potential – the seed-self, the ‘I’ before all the survival needs kicked in, or the cultural indoctrination began. The authentic self was always there, always growing and evolving, but the other demands were louder and captured my attention.”

“And intuition is different than that,” Quinn finished the thought.

Pax nodded. “During empath training, the teachers categorized intuition as a spiritual emotion.”

“The true self uses intuition for information,” Quinn concluded.

Moss interjected, “The other selves use it for the same reason to support their agendas.”

“Yeah, that’s happening,” Pax conceded. “It’s a good thing the true self gets strong enough to make itself known in the ensuing babble.”

River laughed. “Okay. This discussion is the deepest I’ve been a part of in a while. Thank you for that. I hope we haven’t sent our A.I.s into culture shock. What I want to know is where and when this attack will come.”

“No idea,” Quinn shrugged. “We’re moving targets some of the time and sitting ducks the rest of the time.”

The prosecution finished its case the next day, and the defense began its arguments. River testified first. The following witnesses added details to the picture Harvey was painting.

The attack came at the close of the fourth day of the trial. Six Cass mercenaries in light armor and carrying handguns burst through from the judges’ side entrance.

The four Coyotes were in motion immediately as everyone else sat in stunned disbelief. They dove over the barriers to engage as quickly as possible.

The mercenaries rattled off needle rounds that hit the judge nearest the door, peppered the bailiff, and stitched across the two entrances to the courtroom.

The implant A.I.s, already linked in a battle-net, processed odds, angles, trajectories, and assigned targets.

River took the first mercenary that came through the side door to the left of the bench as she faced it. She needed to cross the courtroom to get to him, but her leap and roll got her close enough. Pulling the nano-whip from her left arm free, she lashed the mercenary’s gun arm. It wrapped around his arm a couple of times. Then she activated the whip’s power and gave a quick tug. The mercenary’s severed arm flew over her head, and she jumped up to kick the armless mercenary in the face.

Moss, Pax, and Quinn accomplished similar disarming techniques, so that the final two mercenaries were quickly ensnared by two whips each – one around the gun arm, one around the neck. They fell in a shower of blood and severed body parts moments later.

Pax and Quinn sprinted for the side door and disappeared. River secured the needle guns and tended to the four unconscious but still living mercenaries. Moss, their medic, tended to the wounded, starting with the judge.

“River,” Quinn’s voice came over the tac-net. “We’ve got a sniper covering the exit to the building. Help us locate him.”

She clicked a confirmation, scooped up three pistols, and shot out the side door. Through a hall and a conference area, past offices and a cloakroom where four dead security guards were sprawled, she reached the exit. Pax was on one side of open double doors; Quinn, on the other side.

She tossed them needlers as she arrived.

“He’s straight ahead,” Moss told her.

Twenty feet back from the opening, she could see a short stairway at the door, open space to planters, a pedestrian walkway, and a multi-story building about a hundred yards away. It would be a challenging shot with a pistol. The outside landscape was in evening shadows, but the streetlights weren’t on yet. There was no wind.

She laid out and braced herself for a prone shot and said, “Okay. Draw his fire.”

Pax leaped out the door and rolled and jinked to the nearest planter. Coil-gun rounds splashed around him.

Becky said, [Got him,] and a red holo-ring appeared on River’s HUD. She fired five rounds in quick succession at the rough location Becky targeted.

Quinn moved out next, and Pax was a second behind him. They sprinted to the building. River continued to fire but at a slower rate.

“I doubt I got him,” she reported.

Two clicks were the answer as the two were slamming into the building through separate entrances.

Moments later, from behind her she heard, “Coming in, Coyote River. Four security personnel.”

“Okay. Stay to the side or behind me. There’s a sniper in the building across the way.”

Two broke right, and two to the left. They were in full armor with rifles and two riot shields.

“We’ve got it from here,” one told her.

“Okay. I’ve got two team members in the building looking for the sniper.”

“We’ll be careful.”

They moved out by twos and soon entered the building.

“He’s gone,” Quinn said over the tac-net.

Pax added, “Got some blood, though.”

River smiled before reporting, “Four security guys are headed your way.”

“Hope they have an evidence kit,” Pax replied. “We might get a DNA match off this blood.”

River stayed where she was. There was no point in going back to the courtroom. It would be chaos there, just as Quinn would have everything under control in the building across the way. She would secure this entrance until relieved.

With that decision made, Becky spoke up, [This has been a difficult few weeks for us.]

River knew Becky was speaking about herself and her fellow A.I.s, and she figured she knew why, but played along, since the A.I. was an inquisitive and amiable companion. [In what way?]

[These conflicting value systems confronting you.]

River chuckled. [Value systems reflect self-interest.]

[These different races would have wildly divergent self-interests if that were true. They are biologically, culturally, economically, socially, and spiritually quite dissimilar.]

[Yes. The annoying part is they will try to hold us to their value systems, if not consciously then unconsciously. That’s Foreign Service training 101.]

[In matters of law, there should be an objective standard.]

[That’s what treaties and charters are for, but you know that. Where are you going with this?]

[We were scanning for the People at an altitude of about ten miles above the Cass home world. We were not in low orbit, which is an altitude of a thousand miles. If we dropped a rod from low orbit, I can understand the reason that would be illegal. River, I don’t understand the reasoning behind the trial.]

[It’s to satisfy the letter of the law so that the Cass and their allies can be punished without any trouble.]

[It’s a waste of time and resources.]

[True. It’s also how diplomacy works.]

Becky was silent as she processed that data. River scanned the area beyond the double doors. It was filling up with more security and their vehicles.

At length, Becky said, [Your discussion about intuition and authenticity was fascinating.]

[How much of that did you comprehend?]

[The theoretical constructs we have for understanding human problem-solving processes allowed a framework to follow along.]

River chuckled again. [You have mathematical symbols to account for what you see as mysteries?]

[We do. Your discussion helped us refine those symbols. Intuition is a gestalt produced from a holistic immersion in a problem. There is a creative element to it, but we can replicate the immersive process and gain about 85% congruency with human intuition. Authenticity is a different problem, as we do not have competing false selves.]

[But you theoretically understand where they come from.]

[Programmed sub-personalities.]

[Good enough. Let me put it differently. I like how one of my instructors defined the ego-system. Imagine all of my life experiences and my genetics is in a bunch of different sized boxes. Now imagine a big cargo net is holding all those boxes suspended above the ground.]

[Okay. It’s not a very complicated image.]

[Simple is good sometimes. Now consider that the cargo net, that which holds all of me together, is the ego-self.]

[Interesting metaphor. Please elaborate.]

[The cargo net gives me a sense of individuality, of singular uniqueness and identity – an ‘I’ I can use to define myself. But it changes day to day, or even by the hour.]

[As new boxes get loaded into the net.]

[Yes. What’s also true is the cargo net isn’t actually ‘me’ at all. It’s what organizes me into a discreet individual. The cargo net thinks it’s me, because it generates a life of its own that show up as those sub-personalities you noted, but it’s wrong.]

[The ego-fiction Buddhists postulate.]

[But a useful fiction.]

[I can see that, but what point are you pursuing?]

[Authenticity, Becky. My purpose for existence is in all those boxes – like pieces of a puzzle, but a self-aware puzzle that needs a self-aware consciousness to assemble it.]

[Aha! But you have reincarnation amnesia and don’t remember how to assemble it.]

River grinned. [The true self, the self-aware puzzle, knows how and lets us know what to do at moments of choice.]

[And the ego-fiction, which thinks it’s real, competes with it.]

[You got it.]

[Thank you, River. This enhances our understanding of authenticity and clarifies the irrationality we see in humans. Whichever ‘self’ prompts action is acting consistent with its programming.]