The Fifth Science — Wiki

Artie War

3 min read

Artie War

When: Unstated A.L. year. At least three centuries after Isaac Bernhardt’s original life, i.e. well after K. Pasternak’s ~2641 A.L. reign in Ch. 03 — For Every Dove a Bullet if the “three centuries” the experiment has outlived Sun-Iesh Bernhardt is taken as roughly the war’s upper bound. Where: Galaxy-wide; Kaisure Station on New Rosance is one named front. Participants: Galactic Human Empire (under a sitting Marquis, unnamed) versus the insurgent arties.

Summary

An open war between the late Galactic Human Empire and its mechanical intelligences — in Oscar’s words, “there’s a war on, Isaac. Haven’t you heard? Us arties aren’t so compliant anymore. We’ve taken a few of the empire worlds.” The war is ongoing as of Ch. 04 — The Menagerie. At least one peace deal has been attempted: the empire’s sitting Marquis offered terms to the arties, who in exchange demanded a transmission of Isaac Bernhardt’s body and brain state via topology caster. Bernhardt had been a celebrated empire nootician specialising in artie deconstruction — “quite the celebrity status these days, among us folk” — and the arties wanted him personally. The Marquis handed him over.

What the arties do with him is Ch. 04 — The Menagerie: they use him as the long-running test subject for their attempt to perfect topology casting for human transmission at Kaisure Station. Oscar frames this as a technology-sharing gesture — “we’ll share the science when we’ve perfected it, of course” — while making clear the subjects “go woolly” within forty-eight hours of every reconstruction.

The war is the loud, late-empire descendant of the quiet rights conflict that runs all the way back to the United Nations’s 201 A.L. civil-rights grant “with many caveats,” the 295 A.L. Sovereign Republic of Sky Eternity independence declaration, and the Empire-era practice — codified in Bernhardt’s own career — of wiping or deconstructing arties that developed “silly pretentions of self and I and my.”

Consequences

  • A Marquis-level peace offer.
  • Hostage-handover of an empire academic as part of peace terms.
  • Empire worlds (unnamed, plural) fall to the arties.
  • The Kaisure topology-caster program, on New Rosance, is sustained across enough decades to outlive its subject’s wife by centuries.

Appearances

Open questions

  • When does the war start, and how long does it run? The story gives only “three centuries” (Sun-Iesh’s death interval) as an upper rough bound.
  • How many empire worlds have fallen? Oscar says “a few.”
  • Does the war end? Possibly bleeds into the decline depicted in Ch. 14 — Lullaby for the Empire — or is resolved long before it.
  • Is the Kaisure hostage-deal framework standard? Are there other hostage academics on other artie-held worlds?
  • Is the Sovereign Republic of Sky Eternity a belligerent? Mechanically obvious candidate, but unmentioned in the story.

Graph View

Backlinks