"Local security has informed me that they believe they have spotted the critter."
The Magus was informing two knights who were about to go on guard duty. Both nodded their heads: Cotton and Oscar, the two senior knights.
"Eldest" was the wrong word. Actually, these were the most senior knights. The title of oldest knight actually belonged to Jason, who himself was only a decade away from the Magus's age. Jason had joined the Church of Ludd much later in life. His own story was "non-traditional," as polite society would say.
"You summoned us, Magus? To ask if we are ready to hunt that little lizard, no doubt."
"Precisely, Cotton."
The three of them stood around a wooden desk. It had a persistent small hash-mark pattern across it, carved and burned.
Simple and rugged the oaken desk appeared, its tannins bleeding through here and there. Part of the charm, part of the durability. Designed to be a game board, but there were no pieces. A small flat region for writing—as if the Magus didn't have access to a variety of tablets and computers—gave the desk a rustic authority.
The Magus looked at the two men who towered over him in their armor, helmets in their arms.
"Well? Are you ready? Why the hesitation?"
"No, I don't think we're ready at all," Oscar spoke. "I don't think humanity can handle what that little lizard really is. It's not like the insects. It's not like the rats. And it isn't even like the javaliniers. All three of them have quicker reaction times than we do, yet we have not seen this level of performance out of them."
"Elaborate, good Sir Oscar!"
"Sir" was an honorific; technically Oscar was not a "Sir" as he was not equal to the Magus. Joseph, the Magus, was nothing if not playful.
"That little lizard is not just good at reacting. He's faster than most computers. This is a vulnerability humanity is blind to."
"Oh?" The Magus looked at him skeptically.
"You ever watched a robot try to catch a fly?"
"No, I haven't."
"Have you ever seen a cat or a dog try the same?"
"Of course… what is your point?"
"It's a blind spot in our technology. We fight that which is small and deadly with pest control and extermination. We have the inferior solution, for nature fights it with reaction time."
Cotton stopped Oscar. "So you are saying that the little lizard not only has an edge on us, but that our systems are primed to avoid accepting or perceiving the edge?"
"Yes." Oscar always seemed to be annoyed when they spoke, like every word was a compromise.
The Magus remained silent.
"Surely our training has made us aware of our enemy, Oscar. Our great Magus asks us if we have learned the lesson you are preaching." Cotton was uncharacteristically polite.
"As we practice, the enemy performs better. I fear we measure only our ability to utilize that alien platform. Just yesterday, Gabriel wiped two entire squads in one fell charge."
"We killed four monsters across all scenarios that practice session."
"At the cost of twenty-seven armored suits and nineteen living souls. Losses that end our presence on this planet."
"Gabe's freak accident was nine of those kills. We can ignore the outlier and the record becomes sixteen and ten to three. This is first contact; that's an entirely worthy cost for humanity."
The Magus, who had appeared to not be listening—adopting odd poses and stretching his tired old back while the two armored men in their mid-to-late thirties (helmets politely removed) debated progress—finally spoke.
"Do not dare cut the outlier! Outliers are the only thing the civilized world cares for!" His weathered body flexed back upward into a more dignified position as he spoke. He paused and breathed deeply. The knights both deferred to their eccentric master.
"It sounds like our simulations, imperfect as they are, tell us we have a quarter-chance of an uncanny and catastrophic disaster. There is no silver lining in such a scenario!"
"It's more than two-thirds odds of failure, old man. One in ten results in the wipe of the squad; only in four of the recent batch of scenarios do we wound or disable the monster." Oscar was happy to let Cotton speak; words were too crude for reality.
"Oh ho!" The Magus crowed. "Then we are nearly ready, or so the sim says! For it sounds as if you ran more than eleven sims and we have higher odds of recovering a piece of the monster than all perishing!"
"Let us make certain, you crazy old windbag." Cotton was favored for his rudeness.
The two pointed at hash marks on the table, discussing the discrete odds offered by their precious fabricated data.
One to three casualties a mission, high variance, but it looked so much better if you dropped the miraculous virtual slaughter perpetrated by Gabe.
Oscar examined his helmet—unmarked, unmarred, no radical gash across the face like the one they had seen on Charles. That high-noise, low-signal information still tumbled in Oscar's mind. Near-death didn't matter, especially if injury didn't occur. Yet still Charles had come near death, which, noisy as the signal appeared, was a signal death was closer than it seemed.
He clicked a few buttons on the inside, donning it rudely for a moment or two. Oscar set his helmet down on the table and interrupted.
"It sounds so easy in this chamber; our mild and single-digit deaths are easily justified, I admit. But behold."
The room was naturally dim; the anemic projector of the standard church power helmet created a moving image, about sixty frames of video. All measurable by table hash marks.
The sixty-some frames were where Oscar had sighted and fired at the monster, turning the engagement on Turlington Station from cold to hot.
Each frame slowed; only four were rendered each second so that the three men could observe each one. Two seconds became fifteen to twenty.
The two wannabe mathematicians ceased their bickering, entranced by the flashing lights Oscar had provided. Two feral apes in costumes playing at professionalism. Three, if Oscar counted himself.
"See how it stares at me? Where are its eyes? See how frozen it is. Then my reticle nears and it moves, as if programmed to taunt the senses. I have not seen this in simulation. Behold how feeble our games are in light of its action."
The three men held silence and watched for a minute, considering what they were seeing. It was still until the image blurred
"This is only one point of data," Cotton broke the silence.
"Nonsense, my boy, we are seeing four every second," the Magus corrected. One animated hand held out the universal palm of "halt."
Silence persisted.
"Oscar?"
"Yes, Grand Magus?"
"This creature is, according to you, and apparently in the images, perceiving your aim and preemptively dodging your shot?"
"Yes, Magus."
"You should have been more involved in the development of our simulation."
"Yes, Magus."
"No!"
"Magus?"
"You are acting like a child, Oscar! You are old enough that your wisdom and experience are more valuable than your actions, yet you hide from responsibility!"
"I seek to serve, Magus."
"Don't lie to me. You seek to escape. You have withheld valuable information from the unit."
"You all have access to it! You may all view that video whenever you desire, Magus!"
"Yet you did not share how important your footage was!"
"I told you and Charles, in writing no less, that the machine moved quicker and smoother than we had rendered it in simulation."
"We have not seen what you have seen; we cannot know what you mean."
"You only had to look."
Cotton, rough as he was, disliked argument. "Oscar had a perceptive point earlier, Magus. It transitions from static to smudge in a single frame. Our camera refresh rate is simply too slow to capture its full motion."
"Exactly my point, Cotton! Oscar is too keen an observer to be allowed to be so passive a leader! Who is to be blamed when we throw out our sims, or you all die in the field?"
Aside from the sound of running water and the buzz of the electric heater, there was the silence of disciplined children.
"You may all blame yourselves when conscripted to fight in hell, but I shall blame Oscar and his Turlington team—they have not rendered the monster rightly enough!"
The knights, too, observed that guilt was one of the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of good.
"How many times have you watched that video, Oscar?" The Magus was earnest.
"Hundreds of times, Magus."
"You proud fool. So focused on your missed shot you probably overwrote your own natural and sacred memories with this video."
Oscar was silent, sheepishly. The Magus was right; he had obsessed over the video—the impossible target that moved the same way an annoying internet advert would. It was silly; he was never going to hit such a thing, especially with all the complications of physical reality.
"Oscar, Oscar, you are too much like a machine!" the Magus chided. "I am not asking for more labor from you; I am asking for less. Yours is already so valuable. Be more free in your worries and your experience. Everything you do not share is lost forever, understand?"
"Did you see this video before today, Magus?"
"I only looked at it once. The world is busy and I wasn't going to waste time wondering about the shot that you missed. I admit I could have focused more on the monster, so I am not without a share of the guilt in this matter."
The shared liability was all the three needed to relax.
"Our time is up, my good lads. Don your helms and invite Owningsburg in. Lopin and Jason are released from guard duty."
The two guards just outside the wooden doors heard the signal, as they heard everything that happened in the room. Lopin's armored visage informed the syndicate captain of the appointment afforded him. An oversized aquarium with only a few blandly colored fish decorated one wall of this specific underground room of the church. One of the civilian servants of Ludd had just replaced the fish tank heater.
The two knights in the Magus's chamber donned helmets and awaited Captain Owningsburg. Theoretically they didn't need to be in the room, but the Magus requested they stay.
Secure under watchful armored eyes though the room appeared, discipline was perhaps lacking; so fresh a good debate remained in their minds.
"Sir Boyscout!" Cotton's translation software was more creative than most, likely due to a wider vulgar vocabulary in the mind of the pilot than most possessed. "Did you also ponder the evolutionary history of our assailant?"
The ambiance of the room—the machines and water and the helmet—all muted the audio and sound waves from Cotton.
Instead, the knights chatted by way of visual blinking telemetry embedded in the sides of their helmets.
"That little lizard probably eats house flies. We have him clocked at sub-three-millisecond reaction times."
"Sub-three? Are you sure?"
"Faster than our cameras refresh. But not impossible in nature."
"He's piloting a mech, though. Ours have a thirty-millisecond delay for most things. Those lizard engineers aren't breaking physics, are they?"
"I'm not a physicist, but I would think he could keep his reaction time if he was purely analog."
"No way!"
"They say little critters like that operate at a higher frequency. We probably look like molasses monsters to a little lizard like that."
"Man. Freaky lizard."
The Magus could not hear the discussion, and visual transmissions—unencrypted as they were—remained difficult even for experienced observers to decode unaided.
But the Magus could confirm his knights were yapping by the blinking lights.
"Discipline, my elderly disciples."
The knights were silent, showing respect. The Magus was so forthright.
Captain Owningsburg didn't keep them waiting.