PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 304 Blindsight
see her tweak the volume on the Gang's feed so that Susan hears it
too, and thinks the discovery her own. If I squint hard enough, I
even glimpse Theseus offering us up in sacrifice, deliberately
provoking Rorschach to retaliation with that final approach.
Sarasti was always enamored of data, especially when it had
tactical significance. What better way to assess one's enemy than
to observe it in combat?
They never told us, of course. We were happier that way. We
disliked orders from machines. Not that we were all that crazy
about taking them from a vampire.
And now the game is over, and a single pawn stands on that
scorched board and its face is human after all. If the scramblers
follow the rules that a few generations of game theorists have laid
out for them, they won't be back. Even if they are, I suspect it
won't make any difference.
Because by then, there won't be any basis for conflict.
I've been listening to the radio during these intermittent
awakenings. It's been generations since we buried the Broadcast
Age in tightbeams and fiberop, but we never completely stopped
sowing EM throughout the heavens. Earth, Mars, and Luna
conduct their interplanetary trialog in a million overlapping voices.
Every ship cruising the void speaks in all directions at once. The
O'Neils and the asteroids never stopped singing. The Fireflies
might never have found us if they had.
I've heard those songs changing over time, a fast-forward timelapse
into oblivion. Now it's mostly traffic control and telemetry.
Every now and then I still hear a burst of pure voice, tight with
tension, just short of outright panic more often than not: some sort
of pursuit in progress, a ship making the plunge into deep space,
other ships in dispassionate pursuit. The fugitives never seem to
get very far before their signals are cut off.
I can't remember the last time I heard music but I hear something
like it sometimes, eerie and discordant, full of familiar clicks and
pops. My brainstem doesn't like it. It scares my brainstem to
death.
I remember my whole generation abandoning the real world for a