John Scalzi - Old Man's War 2.5 - The Sagan Diary

VIP免费

2024-11-20 0 0 76.2KB 32 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

Scalzi, John - The Sagan Diary

v0.9 by Daj. This is a pre-proof release. Scanned, page numbers removed, paragraphs joined, formatted

and common OCR errors have been largely removed. Full spell check and read-through still required.

THE SAGAN DIARY

JOHN SCALZI

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scalzi,%20John%20-%20[Old%2...2.5]%20-%20The%20Sagan%20Diary%20(v0.9)%20[html].html (1 of 32)4-7-2007 2:23:31

Scalzi, John - The Sagan Diary

SUBTERRANEAN PRESS ♦ 2007

CONTENTS

Preface Note

One: Words

Two: Killing

Three: Speaking

Four: Friendship

Five: Age

Six: Sex

Seven: Fear

Eight: Endings

Author Afterward

COLONIAL DEFENSE FORCES: Internal Security Command, CDF Information Retrieval and

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scalzi,%20John%20-%20[Old%2...2.5]%20-%20The%20Sagan%20Diary%20(v0.9)%20[html].html (2 of 32)4-7-2007 2:23:31

Scalzi, John - The Sagan Diary

Interpretation, 1st Platoon, Col. Michael Blauser, Cmdr

DATE: 241.12.12 SUSN (see linked table for local equivalents)

FILE NUMBER: ISC/IRI-003-'4530/6(C)

FILE TITLE: BrainPal Diary, CSF Lt. Jane Sagan (VI) Phoenix Station, 241.12.07

FILE DESCRIPTION: See attached note

AUTHOR: CSF Lt. Jane Sagan (VI)

CLASSIFICATION: Classified. Security Clearance Level 2 required.

REDACTION: Lake-Williams algorithm for emotional feed processing. Emotional feed available as

separate file ISC/IRI-003-4530/6(c)(a)

RECORDED BY: CSF Lt. Jane Sagan (VI)

FILED BY: Lt. Gretchen Schafer, Chief Analyst (SubSpec: Psych), CDF/IRI CC: Col. Michael Blauser

Preface Note to ISCART003-4530/6(c), "The Sagan Diary"

Col. Blauser:

As per your instruction in your memorandum of 341-10.07, we have begun processing the BrainPal

memory stacks of Colonial Special Forces members who have left that service, whether by death or (rather

more rarely) by discharge from service. In both cases BrainPal retrieval was initially via method

previously established in our CDF BrainPal retrieval protocol, but per the new directive of 341.10.09 we

abandoned physical retrieval of CSF BrainPals and instead began processing BrainPal memory

transcriptions as provided by the Special Forces' own IRI office.

Let me reiterate again here in this memorandum what I have expressed to you verbally, which is that

processing CSF-provided transcriptions is a massively unsatisfactory solution. The first seven CSF

memory stacks we processed were rich in information that we then placed into our analysis matrix, and

which were beginning to yield intriguing results before we were ordered to remove the data from the

matrix and delete all analyses featuring the data.

Data from the CSF-provided transcriptions have been notably inferior, and while our own forensic scans

can show no overt signs that the CSF is tampering with the data, it is my professional opinion that the

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scalzi,%20John%20-%20[Old%2...2.5]%20-%20The%20Sagan%20Diary%20(v0.9)%20[html].html (3 of 32)4-7-2007 2:23:31

Scalzi, John - The Sagan Diary

transcription data have been redacted in some way. I have requested funds and clearance for a more

thorough forensic scanning. That request has been in your queue for several days now; I would greatly

appreciate a response to it in one way or another.

To give you a sample of the sort of "data" that we are limited to processing at the moment, I am submitting

this file, which we have informally been calling "The Sagan Diary." It is a transcription of a series of

personal files from the BrainPal of former CSF Lieutenant Jane Sagan, who was discharged from service

last week and (somewhat unusually) chose to settle on the established colony world of Huckleberry rather

than on Monroe, the colony world set aside for retired Special Forces.

These diary pieces are taken from the last several days before Sagan transferred her consciousness from

her Special Forces body to a standard human-template body. I don't need to tell you that for IRI purposes,

late-term BrainPal files are typically a gold mine of data, as service members reminisce on their time in

service, in doing so refreshing critical data for analysis. Lt. Sagan in particular should be a potentially rich

trove of data, as she was present at or participated in several key battles/engagements in the last few years,

notably the 2nd Battle of Coral and the Anarkiq offensive; she being Special Forces, she undoubtedly

participated in actions which are classified but which, (I would remind those in the Special Forces) we here

at IRI are rated to know and view.

Instead, what we have to work with are data-poor bits in which Lt. Sagan thinks about what appears to be a

romantic partner of some sort (Cursory investigation suggests a CDF Major, John Perry, who also

mustered out of service on the same day and who was on the same shuttle to Huckleberry as Lt. Sagan,

accompanied by an unrelated minor, Zoe Boutin. A number of data files for Perry and Boutin are marked

classified, which is why Inote the investigation was "cursory.").

The diary files are of some anthropological interest, to be sure. It's nice to know Lt. Sagan is in love; Major

Perry seems like a lucky fellow. However, for our purposes these files are near useless. The only data of

analytical note are Sagan's notation of The Third Battle of Provence and the Special Forces retrieval of the

Baton Rouges ill-fated Company D, about which of course we have a wealth of information, thanks to all

the BrainPals that encounter sent our way, and a discussion of her relationship with prisoner of war named

Cainen Suen Su, whose stay with and work for the CDF is classified but otherwise well-documented.

Beyond this, the data are thin on the ground.

If I may be frank, Colonel, if the Special Forces are not going to allow us unimpeded access to the

BrainPals of its fallen and retired soldiers, then I must question the utility of our processing the data from

those BrainPals at all. We process thousands of Brain-Pals in a month, from regular CDF, and we barely

have the staff to keep up with that; spinning our wheels processing bogus data from the Special Forces

takes up time and processing power we don't have from data which can be of actual use to us. Either we're

all working together here or we're not.

Colonel, please read these "diaries" carefully; I'm sure you will come to the same conclusion we have

down here in the processing labs. These diaries may be a window into Lt. Sagan's soul, but what we really

need is a window into Lt. Sagan's history. I hope the rest of her life turns out the way she wants. Here in

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scalzi,%20John%20-%20[Old%2...2.5]%20-%20The%20Sagan%20Diary%20(v0.9)%20[html].html (4 of 32)4-7-2007 2:23:31

Scalzi, John - The Sagan Diary

the labs, we need more data.

Sincerely,

Lt. Gretchen Schafer, Chief Analyst (SubSpec: Psych), CDF/IRI

ONE

WORDS

Words fail me.

There is a disconnect between my mind and my words, between what I think and what I say; not a

disconnect in intent but in execution, between the flower of thought and the fruit of the mouth, between the

initiation and the completion. I say what I mean but I do not say all that I mean.

I am not speaking to you now. These words do not pass my lips or pass out of my mind. I say them only to

myself, forming them perfect and whole and interior, and leaving them on the shelf and closing the door

behind me. Others may find these words in time but for now they face only toward me, whispering back

my image with full description, golems who write the words of life on my forehead.

These words are my life. Representation of time and counterfeit of emotion, record of loss and celebration

of gain. They are not my whole life; words fail me here as they fail anyone, entire worlds slipping through

the spaces between words and letters as a life among stars is compressed into this small space. A short life

to be sure; and yet long enough to be lost in translation.

But it is enough. Give us a few lines arranged just so and we see a face and more than a face. We see the

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scalzi,%20John%20-%20[Old%2...2.5]%20-%20The%20Sagan%20Diary%20(v0.9)%20[html].html (5 of 32)4-7-2007 2:23:31

Scalzi, John - The Sagan Diary

life behind it; the terrors and ambivalence, the desire and aspiration—intention in a pattern, a person in a

coincident assemblage of curves. This is that: A few lines to follow that in themselves mean little but build

on themselves; a crystal lattice using absence to suggest presence, the implication of more pregnant in the

gaps.

I wish I could show these words to you, you who know me only from outward expression. I wish I could

fold these words, package them and present them with a flourish, a rare gift I made of myself to you. But

these words do not bend—or rather they will not—or perhaps it is that I cannot find the strength to push

them through the doors of my mouth and my mind. They are stubborn words and I fear what would happen

if I let them go. They stay inside where you cannot come; they are meant for you, but not sent to you.

Words fail me and I return the failure.

But these words exist. These words record, these words stand witness; these words speak, if only to an

audience of one. These words are real and they are me, or who I believe I have been; incomplete but

truthful, through a mirror darkly but reflecting all the same. I have no doubt that one day you will find

these words and that you will find me inside them: a seed to plant in your mind, to become a vine to

filigree your memory of who I was and who I was to you. Words fail me but I will use them anyway. And

in their failure and despite their failure I will live again and you will love me again, as you love me now.

♦♦♦

You do not remember your birth but I remember mine. I remember the sudden shock of consciousness,

awareness flinging itself at me and demanding to be embraced, and me not knowing enough to do anything

other than embrace it back. I sometimes wonder if I had a choice, or if I could have known then what I

know now, if I would have received its embrace or would have punched it in the throat, and sent it

staggering away to pester someone else, to leave me alone in a newborn senescence from which I would

not awake. But in this we are all alike, those who remember our birth and those who do not: None of us

asked to be born.

I awoke in perfect awareness and to a voice in my head which spoke "You are Jane Sagan," and with those

words the electric pricking of context, describing the relationship of "you," and of "are" and of "Jane" and

of "Sagan"—putting together the words like pieces of spontaneously generated puzzle, and then clicking

them into place so the puzzle made sense, even if we later discovered how much we really hated puzzles.

But the words were a lie. I wasn't Jane Sagan at all; I was a changeling, a creature stolen to take the place

of someone else. Someone I did not know nor would ever know, someone whose entire life had been set

aside for the mere utility of her genes, everything she ever was reduced to a long chemical strand—

adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine—the abrupt tattoo of these four notes replacing a symphony of

experience. She was dead but she would not be allowed to rest, because I was needed here.

I wonder if she was in this body before me, if before my consciousness was dropped in this head she

waited sleeping, dreaming of her life before and dreaming of her life to come. I wonder if she's dreaming

still, housed in the interstices and the places in my mind I do not go. If she is here I wonder if she resents

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scalzi,%20John%20-%20[Old%2...2.5]%20-%20The%20Sagan%20Diary%20(v0.9)%20[html].html (6 of 32)4-7-2007 2:23:31

Scalzi, John - The Sagan Diary

me for taking her place, or whether she is glad of the company, and enjoys the world through my eyes. I

cannot tell.

But I dream of her. I dream she and I stand at her grave, standing apart with the headstone between us,

close enough to touch although we never do. And she says "Talk to me" and I do, trying to explain a

warrior's life to a woman who never fought, ashamed that I have nothing to share with her but death, which

she already knows more about than I.

But she smiles and I know that she doesn't begrudge me that. I ask her to tell me about her and she does

and speaks of home and children and of a life of connection, things I have not possessed in my own life but

which she is happy to share. I wake up and her words dissipate, specifics evaporating and leaving behind a

memory of comfort.

I dreamt of her before we met but I will not tell you that.

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scalzi,%20John%20-%20[Old%2...2.5]%20-%20The%20Sagan%20Diary%20(v0.9)%20[html].html (7 of 32)4-7-2007 2:23:31

Scalzi, John - The Sagan Diary

♦♦♦

The name "Jane Sagan." The name itself mere words: The first name bland and common, the second name

for a scientist who hoped for a better universe than the one we live in. I wonder if he were alive what he

would think of the woman who used it now, and the cosmos in which she finds herself; whether he could

embrace one or both, see beauty in either, or only entropy and slight regard; a rebuke on his lips for this

demon-haunted world.

If he demanded his name back it would not matter. The name was random first and last, provided from a

list designed to make sure only one Special Forces soldier owned a name at a time. There would not be

another Jane Sagan until I bled my life away in battle, the name floating up off my corpse like the spirit of

a Buddhist, to be reincarnated on the Wheel of Suffering: returning but learning nothing, repeating the

same lessons again and once more, its owners torn from life on different worlds but performing the same

actions.

My name is random but I earned it in time. I became Jane Sagan not through the whim of convention but

through breathing and moving and fighting and discovering love—each of these coring through the

undifferentiated mass of my existence, paring away that which was not me, shedding what was not

essential and sometimes what was, demanding I retrieve what I lost or accept its loss; the diminution of a

self only recently defined and still defining itself.

I lost some of what I should have been and could have been for you. The parts of me that I lent others who

then left me unwillingly or willingly, as they earned the names they had, even as those names lifted up

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scalzi,%20John%20-%20[Old%2...2.5]%20-%20The%20Sagan%20Diary%20(v0.9)%20[html].html (8 of 32)4-7-2007 2:23:31

Scalzi, John - The Sagan Diary

from them, their purpose spent—those which they signified already fading against the violence of bone

and metal.

They took part of me with them. I kept part of them with me, to become me in the fullness of time, some of

who I could have been replaced by all that was left of them. If you looked you could have seen them in me:

discrete objects breaking down, atoms that would not willingly cohere to the molecule, a colloidal

suspension of memory and more than memory; part of me and held within me, bound by names they no

longer claimed but becoming me, to be called by my name, "Jane Sagan."

In the end I am who I am. I am what I have made myself and what has been made of me. Part of who I am

is who you are too; I have given you me as well. I would take your name and hold it in me, and whisper

my name in your ear.

TWO

KILLING

I am not Death. I am killing; I am the verb, I am the action, I am the performance. I am the movement that

cuts the spine; I am the mass which pulps the brain. I am the headsnap ejecting consciousness into the air.

I am not Death but she follows close behind, the noun, the pronouncement, the denouement and the end.

She looks for where I have gone next, and where she is needed, and sometimes where she is wanted;

desired as the worlds for those whom I have visited narrow down to a point too heavy to be long borne.

I have wondered whether death collapses the point into nothingness or expands it into eternity, but I do not

wonder long. Death follows me but I do not look back to her and I do not dwell on what she does. I am

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scalzi,%20John%20-%20[Old%2...2.5]%20-%20The%20Sagan%20Diary%20(v0.9)%20[html].html (9 of 32)4-7-2007 2:23:31

Scalzi, John - The Sagan Diary

killing, I am the action, and I have a job to do.

I am connected to those I kill: a T-shaped joint where their lives intersect mine, the line of their lives

terminating in the contact while mine continues on to the next orthogonal encounter, toward the promise

and threat of becoming the terminating arm—of the moment when death no longer follows but stands

pitilessly before me, expanding or contracting everything I ever was or will be for her own unknowable

aims.

I am connected to those I kill and I long to know them. I long to look down their line to see what has led

them to me; whether they chose this moment or had it chosen. If they had chosen it, whether it was love or

honor or duty or something else that set their line toward mine; if they had it chosen why they chose to

accept it, and whether they would have accepted the choice if they knew I was waiting for them, preparing

their final moment, every possible future imploding toward the point of my knife, the grain of my bullet,

the grip of my hand.

I am connected to those I kill and would look past them, down the line of their lives to the originating

point, to the other T-joint where their lives intersect with another: to the creature who bore them—to the

woman, the female, the she; the verb and action and performance to complement my own, she who is not

birth but whose acts allowed it, as I am not death but whose acts permit it.

When she first held this child who would become what I would kill, did she look for me as I look for her?

Did she see me across the line of a life yet unlived? I want to know how I would appear to her: the anti-

mother to kill whom she had created, or perhaps a crossbeam with her, to support the entirety of a life,

without whom that life would be useless.

I do not flatter myself to suggest she would approve of what I represent, of what I would do, will do, have

done, to the life she created and cherished. But I wonder if she would understand I am connected to her,

through the one she bore. I stand facing her, staring across the chasm of time forded by this life between us.

♦♦♦

The first thing I killed was unspeakable. Its species had a name for itself spoken like a hammer thumping

onto meat; we could not have spoken it if we had tried.

We did not try. We called them for their language, for the percussive explosions which passed for their

speech and filled the air when we fought them, like the beating of heavy skins. They were talking drums

with weapons.

They were Thumpers and they were our enemy, our nemesis for the crime of landing on a world we said

we owned and begging to differ with us on the matter. We sent emissaries to negotiate with them: 16th

Brigade, Company D on the ship Baton Rouge. The negotiations did not go well. The Baton Rouge was

made to fall into the atmosphere in a sparkling show, as metal and men tore into the sky and the sky tore

back, shearing them down in layers that grew into conical sections of ash expanding behind their shrinking

file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/Scalzi,%20John%20-%20[Old%2...2.5]%20-%20The%20Sagan%20Diary%20(v0.9)%20[html].html (10 of 32)4-7-2007 2:23:31

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

Scalzi,John-TheSaganDiaryv0.9byDaj.Thisisapre-proofrelease.Scanned,pagenumbersremoved,\paragraphsjoi...

展开>> 收起<<

John Scalzi - Old Man's War 2.5 - The Sagan Diary.pdf

共32页,预览10页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

John Scalzi - Old Man's War 2.5 - The Sagan Diary

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: