Homeworld - Purloined Personality

Written by Reiko

Last time we had a number of lengthy conversations with Raphide and Astatine and then helped Raphide put Astatine out of his misery. Unfortunately, Raphide didn't know anything useful about the TransWarp drive theories that I need in order to intercept the Assassins before they destroy Earth.

First I return to Convergence to see if he has any other leads. He's back to hiding in his hood but speaks to me readily enough. The dialogue choices here are amusingly varied, from straightforwardly telling him what happened with Raphide, to gossiping about Raphide's mistakes, to accusing him about his own inaction, to playing it cool.

Some of these options are meaner than others.

I don't want to rat out Raphide to him, really, but I tell him about the dead end. Convergence's response is curious, though: "Did you say the [sic] Fogram had Solifluction STILLED? That's not the same thing as murder. We might still have a chance!"

Uh, okay, what does that mean?

"The Stilling process is similar to Lifting, however the personality is placed in an inert storage container such as a datafan, far away from all working processors. This effectively puts the personality into stasis. It can't interact with the outside world. It doesn't sense the passage of time. It doesn't feel or think. The personality is effectively and completely isolated."

    

"This is only done to the criminally insane - Heechee too dangerous to exist either in the corporeal world or in dataspace. It seems that Fogram has decided to use the process to eliminate his political enemies."

    

Well, perfect. We've got a megalomaniacal villain who has kept his enemy as a personal trophy of his crimes. I ask if that would help with justice, and Convergence assures me, "Without question. Your second-hand recount of Raphide's story would be dubious to the Council. Solifluction's testimony would be enough to Still Fogram." Of course, I'm a short-lived alien. No reason why my word would be good for much of anything.

On the other hand, it'd be very interesting if the Heechee learned that human personalities can be digitally copied like Heechee ones. This isn't addressed in-game, but we saw it with the copies that the spider robot made of the humans captured on the Artifact, like Miki and Diana's boyfriend Jack.

Now I'm wondering why Fogram didn't just kill Solifluction. Convergence muses, "I don't know. Perhaps he couldn't bring himself to murder Solifluction outright. I don't know a Heechee who could. Perhaps he felt that he might need Solifluction's genius for his own purposes in the future. Regardless, this is a mistake that Fogram will not live to regret."

So Solifluction is kind of still alive. "Well, not in a real sense. A copy of his personality exists which contains everything that the living Solifluction knew while he was alive. That includes his theories on the TransWarp Drive. If you can get him, we might be able to save your planet." This is filtered through Convergence's worldview, which I happen to agree with. Naturally the epic stakes of the quest to save Earth are now also conflated with the moral stakes of bringing Fogram to justice and freeing the Heechee to help other races in the galaxy. Two birds, one Solifluction!

The next burning question: where exactly is Solifluction being kept? "All Stilled Heechee are stored in the DataVaults. They are forbidden to anyone without a full Council directive. You must get into the Vaults and remove Solifluction."

DataVaults and TransWarp: the Heechee like their CamelCase.

Well, I'm hardly going to be able to get a Council directive for that. But Convergence, aren't you the Second Seat on the Council? Yes, however: "If I went to the Council with our current evidence, namely the second-hand testimony of a five hundred thousand year-old Ancient Ancestor who refuses to repeat his story, I would be laughed out of the session. Without a full Council directive, I have no more power to enter the DataVaults than you do."

    

Fortunately, the DataVaults are in theory reachable: they are quite near the Council chambers. I ask about defenses, but Convergence doesn't know, because normally Heechee would never try to break in. They have to rely on a wildcard human for that. Of course, Fogram, being power-hungry and paranoid, has set up defenses that the rest of the council doesn't know about.

There's an option to ask whether Stilling is rationalized execution. Convergence has this to say:

"Actually, you are correct. Others would disagree, though. They would say that the entity has not been destroyed. It still exists, and if at some future time we can manipulate the personality without destroying it, the criminal will be able to reenter society. In my mind, and that of the Hand, the person's life has already been extinguished. Reactivating his copy won't bring back the original."

    

In other words, the Heechee are personality hoarders. They can't bear to let go of anyone, even criminals, even when they're all dead already. And this happens, if not routinely, often enough to build an entire storage facility for these inert personalities. How will I find Solifluction then? Surely there are too many to search through?

"Yes. There are thousands of Stilled personalities on file. When you have reached the anteroom outside the DataVaults, you'll find an index. Hopefully, Fogram filed Solifluction under his own name. If not, he could have used any name of his choosing, and your task would become almost impossible."

    

"Type the name 'Solifluction' into the index. If luck is with you, it will return a number. Enter the DataVaults, type the number into the keypad by the door, and a workthing should deliver the datafan to you. I've never actually been in the Vaults, so I have no way to confirm these instructions. I can only wish you the best."

No problem. Based on what Raphide said, I'm pretty sure there's only one thing Fogram would have called Solifluction if not his actual name: Traitor.

I'm offered one more question, about why there are so many failures among the Heechee. Well, a human is one to talk, honestly. What would our rate of Stilling be if we had the practice? How many would be Stilled unjustly, like Solifluction? But Convergence doesn't know that, and earnestly explains:

"Every species has its deviants and throwbacks. Most troubled Heechee are detected early and respond well to treatment. A few escape detection and irretrievably harden their anti-social personalities beyond our help. These, we can do nothing for. After they are diagnosed, they are Stilled."

    

"Remember, these thousands are an insignificantly small fraction of the Heechee population. The practice has been in use since the Mass Minds came into being, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Our successful treatment ratio is far higher than that of our failures."

    

I think the Heechee's biggest mistake was allowing a digital personality to have so much power over their whole race. Why is Fogram such an exception, when most of the Ancestors don't get power on the Council? That's not really explained, except for hints that he must be quite charming and persuasive to get what he wants. Let that be a lesson for our time as well, in an age when AI is starting to become much more prominent. I'll leave it at that for now.

Finally, I assure Convergence that I'll do it, and he reminds me to bring Solifluction back to him if I find him: the technicians at the temple can build the TransWarp Drive if they can learn from Solifluction how it works. It's interesting that in such a long time nobody has ever bothered to try to figure it out, knowing that it's possible. Either Solifluction was that much of a genius, or the Heechee are just that stagnant and apathetic, or both.

At any rate, I know where the vault must be: down the corridor near the Council chamber with the invisible lasers. I fly back to the Administration planet, pass the Heechee at the desk, and step into the corridor. Now we can try out Astatine's toys. I wear the prototype device like a belt and also put on the visor so I can see the laser beams.

Laser beams turn visible using the visor...

...and bend away from the prototype, allowing me safe passage though.

The world turns gray and the beams appear, thickly criss-crossing the whole space. Maybe a small bird could weave between them without touching them, but a humanoid certainly can't pass. Not without some technomagical trickery, anyway. I press the stud to turn on the prototype belt and carefully edge my way down the corridor. The beams are bent around me, never touching me, so that I can safely traverse the length of the hallway and into the vault entrance at the other end [15].

The entrance room contains signs warning that it's illegal to remove anything from the vaults. That's not going to stop me trying to help Solifluction and Convergence, though. As Convergence mentioned, there's an index console where we can look up the names of Heechee stored here, but unfortunately, it's secured behind a transparent case. Another wall holds a coil with a frayed cable giving off sparks, also covered by a transparent shield. Perhaps the shield was placed there as a temporary safety measure instead of actually fixing the thing.

Accessing the sparking coil...

...in order to scorch the console's case.

Oddly enough, as I look around and examine things, the sparks scorch the shield and significantly damage it. A minute later, a workthing appears from somewhere, takes the damaged shield, and retreats to dispose of it, leaving the coils accessible. I take the opportunity to grab the coil [10] and scorch the case over the index console as well [10]. A few minutes later, the workthing returns and takes the case, allowing me access to the index.

The workthings are rather cute little robots.

I search for 'Solifluction' but of course that name isn't found. Fogram wouldn't be so obvious. As I thought, though, when I search for 'Traitor' I get a hit and a datafan code [25]. Success! I immediately go into the stacks, enter the code I just got, and another workthing retrieves the fan for me [10].

I discover another problem when I try to take the datafan with me. There's actually some kind of field that prevents the datafans from leaving the vault. Well, I happen to have an empty datastore with me... I connect the datafan to the datastore, press Download, saving Solifluction to my device [15], and then return the datafan to the chute when I'm finished.

It's simple after that to reengage the prototype and retrace my steps out of the vault. Then I return to the temple where Convergence waits. He eagerly asks me for Solifluction, and I offer him the datastore. ("I hope you don't need the original packaging...") Another cutscene begins:

You hand the datastore over to Convergence. He takes it from you and walks over to a machine on the wall. The datastore clicks into place and he steps back. Suddenly the screen overhead comes to life. An unfamiliar Heechee face looks down at both of you.

Solifluction is so out of date.

"Where am I? Have I been Lifted? What has happened to my father? I must stop Fogram from..." As Solifluction's roving eyes focus on you he stops, his jaw hanging open. "What are you? You are not Heechee! Have we made contact with another sentient race? How long have I been away?" Convergence slowly explains to Solifluction all that has happened, including Fogram's crimes, your role in activating the Shield Generators, and Earth's current peril.

    

Solifluction absorbs it all surprisingly well for someone who's been dead for hundreds of thousands of years. Once he understands the situation, he seems famished for information. He bombards Convergence with questions about the modern Heechee, the Core, and the religious sect. He also grills you about Earth, the Assassins, and the terrorists. You answer question after question, but finally interject, "I don't mean to interrupt, but there is something important that I must ask you about."

    

"In order to intercept the Phoenix sect, I must overtake the Artifact before it reaches the Assassin's Kugelblitz. They've already been travelling for days, so I don't have much time. I need your theories on the TransWarp drive."

    

"Of course," Solifluction replies. "I am sure that technology has advanced to the point where the theories can now be tested. I will be delighted to see them actualized." Over the course of the next few hours, Solifluction and Convergence, attended by key engineers of the White Hand, hammer out the design of the TransWarp drive. You pass the time by examining the Curved-Light prototype that you carry.

    

The designs are finished by the group of haggard, but very happy, Heechee. They immediately rush off to manufacture the drive and install it on your ship, leaving you alone with Solifluction. His eyes fall on the prototype that you've been handling. He asks about it, and you describe how you obtained it and what it does.

    

He states that some relatively small modifications would enable the prototype to affect the visual spectrum of light, thereby making the user virtually invisible, other than a slight shimmering in the air around him. When Convergence reappears to ask a question about the TransWarp drive, you give him the prototype and Solifluction describes the necessary changes. The councilman disappears once again.

    

Convergence returns and gives you the modified prototype. Then he declares that the Transwarp Drive has been installed on your ship. Understanding your desire for speed, he escorts you directly to the transport. He quickly explains that he's programmed the ship's computer for the complicated maneuver of a Tau Space intercept with the Artifact. The process of leaving the Core, overtaking the Artifact, and docking with it in Tau Space will all happen automatically.

The Heechee technicians are so fast. Don't we need any test flights or anything first?

"The evidence you have provided will destroy Fogram's influence on the Council," Convergence says. "It may even result in having him stilled. With him in disfavor, I predict that we Heechee will shake off our stagnation, and that someday soon, we will re-enter the galaxy and form an alliance with you Humans to destroy the Assassins." He pauses, and then continues, "Of course, if you fail to stop the terrorists, neither race will survive long enough to meet each other."

He starts to close the hatch, and then says, "Farewell, human. I believe in my heart that we will meet again." Then he is gone and you are alone in your ship. You engage the computer, and the ship blasts off from the Ancestral Homeworld.

    

The transport soon streaks out of the cluster of inhabited planets and into the barrier of the black hole. Your newly-repaired mechanism kicks in and the ship slips through unscathed.

    

As soon as you reach the far side, the transport rockets into Tau Space. Stars flash by faster and faster, until they are little more than streaks of light against a midnight background. Then the TransWarp drive kicks in, and everything outside the ship becomes a clouded blur. You are travelling faster than any living creature has ever gone. You settle in for a long ride; even with the TransWarp Drive, the terrorists have almost a week's head start on you.

An animation of the ship overtaking the Artifact and docking with it.

Only a few days pass before the deceleration begins. The blurred stars resolve once again into the familiar streaks of Tau Space. Ahead, you see the enormous bulk of the Artifact. Your ship catches up and matches speed. It floats gently up to the aft section of the Artifact, and docks with such precision that you don't feel the slightest bump. As the locks click into place, the computer switches down. The only lights come from the navigation panel. The course-code for Earth glows on the display, and the 'GO' button flashes temptingly.

    

We're not told how many days the upgrade took, but it couldn't have been very many.

Control returns to the player on the Heechee ship, having docked with the Artifact [50]. We're now in the endgame and we have to stop the terrorists once and for all, before they make contact with the Assassins. But this time I have an invisibility device to help me.

Score: 1360

Deaths: 24

Session Time: 1.5 hours

Total Time: 21.5 hours