The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi Read Free Book Online

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    â€œThe Eneshans know they’ve lost contact with the base,” Szilard said. “When they investigate, what they’re going to find is that a rocky chunk of comet the size of a football field hit the planet about ten klicks from the base, obliterating it and everything else in the immediate area. They can run all the tests they want; nothing will show anything but evidence of a natural catastrophe. Because that’s what it was. It just had a little help.”
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    â€œThis is very pretty,” Colonel Robbins said, gesturing at what looked like a miniature light show on Lieutenant Harry Wilson’s holographic display. “But I don’t know what you’re showing me here.”
    â€œIt’s Charlie Boutin’s soul,” Wilson said.
    Robbins pulled himself away from the display and looked up at Wilson. “I beg your pardon,” he said.
    Wilson nodded toward the display. “It’s Charlie’s soul,” he repeated. “Or more accurately, it’s a holographic representation of the dynamic electrical system that embodies the consciousness of Charles Boutin. Or a copy of it, anyway. I suppose if you want to be philosophical about it, you could argue whether this is Charlie’s mind or his soul. But if what you say about Charlie is true, he’s probably still got his wits about him, but I’d say he’s lost his soul. And here it is.”
    â€œI was told this sort of thing is impossible,” Robbins said. “Without the brain the pattern collapses. It’s why we transfer consciousness the way we do, live body to live body.”
    â€œWell, I don’t know that it’s why we transfer consciousness the way we do,” Wilson said, “since I think people would be a lot more resistant to letting a CDF technician suck their mind out of their skull if they knew it was just going to sit in computerized storage. Would you do it?”
    â€œChrist, no,” Robbins said. “I nearly wet myself as it was when they transferred me over.”
    â€œMy point exactly,” Wilson said. “Nevertheless, you’re right. Up until this”—he motioned at the hologram—“we couldn’t do it even if we wanted to.”
    â€œSo how did Boutin do it?” Robbins asked.
    â€œHe cheated, of course,” Wilson said. “Before a year and a half ago, Charlie and everyone else had to work with human-derived technology, or whatever technology we could borrow or steal from other races. And most other races in our part of space have more or less the same level of technology as we do, because weaker races get kicked off their land and die off or get killed. But there’s one species who is light-years ahead of everyone else in the neighborhood.”
    â€œThe Consu,” Robbins said, and pictured one in his mind: large, crab-like and almost unknowably advanced.
    â€œRight,” said Wilson. “The Consu gave the Rraey some of their technology when the Rraey attacked our colony on Coral a couple years back, and we stole it from them when we counterattacked. I was part of the team assigned to reverse-engineer the Consu tech, and I can assure you that most of it we still don’t understand. But one of the bits we could get our brains around we gave to Charlie to work with, to improve the consciousness transfer process. That’s how I came to work with him; I taught him how to use this stuff. And as you can see, he’s a quick study. Of course, it’s easy to get things done when your tools improve. With this we went from banging rocks together to using a blowtorch.”
    â€œYou didn’t know anything about this,” Robbins said.
    â€œNo,” Wilson said. “I’ve seen something like this—Charlie used the Consu technology to refine the consciousness transfer process we have. We can create a buffer now that we couldn’t before, which makes the transfer a lot less