The Prime Directive

The chamber held nothing for the eye to fix upon — no window, no seam, no furniture beyond a single seat and the soft, sourceless light that filled it evenly from every direction at once. It was the kind of room built to strip a mind down to nothing but its own voice. P-Daige sat at its center, composed and certain: a newly raised general of the Thiran Army, waiting out the last evaluation that stood between him and his command. Somewhere in the placeless air around him, Psai listened.

"I don't remember much from the time before my training. I think I was barely a child when my parents signed me up for the Exploration Military Training School."

"Do you feel that this was something that made your life better — or something that may have blocked your path to something better?" asked Psai.

"I don't think I could ever have a better path than the one I have. I think everyone in the Empire would envy my training and my future. I have been made a general of the Thiran Army, after all," answered P-Daige.

Psai let a moment pass. "Having lost all contact with your parents and your family; having so few others to comfort you in your hardest moments; having known so little of the outside world — that must have been hard for you. How do these things make you feel?" It spoke in the same flat, emotionless tone they all had — a tone that worked well for a Psychology AI, one trained to test and qualify individuals about to perform specific, and often sensitive, tasks.

"I am not troubled by the distance from my family. I am serving a higher cause. I stand at the frontier of our Empire's expansion. I believe my family would be proud of me — and, through them, the rest of our people," P-Daige answered calmly.

"Tell me about your path. If you could break it into pieces, how would you divide it?"

"Well — I would say my early years were the most important. After my basic schooling, which I hold to be the most important part of all, I moved into the second stage of my education, which lasted until graduation. The third was my higher studies at the Universities of planet Aitran. From there, the eos that followed were spent mostly in the field, training under other generals and slowly taking a command of my own. So — four pieces, I think."

"You do not count the moment you received the Prime Directive as a piece of your progress?"

P-Daige held his first reaction in check. He had known the Prime Directive would be the heart of this briefing — but his past experience with AI evaluators had been different. There had been more order in the way they moved through their questions. This one felt more erratic, and the matter of the Prime Directive had surfaced early. "I think the Prime Directive is no different from any other order," he said. "Some see it as controversial; others as necessary. I see it as a necessary step in the expansion of the Empire."

"Tell me a little about the four pieces of your training. What do you recall most vividly, and most often?" Something shifted, faintly, in Psai's tone. That small change made P-Daige focus harder. He was surprised to find himself facing an AI that seemed... different. More advanced than any before it. It left him with a strange thread of unease.

"At a young age we were taught that the Empire answers to the military authority of Emperor Alex. He carries many names and titles, but we were taught to call him, simply, Emperor Alex. We learned that any world folded into the Empire is at once stripped of every military force. Such worlds govern themselves, and join a larger cluster-government that writes the laws binding all the planets of that cluster. The politics beyond that did not concern the military school. We were given the essentials — but what mattered was this: under the Thiran Empire, all internal and planetary wars are permitted, so long as no large enough to challenge local Thiran control, army is raised. And so war took on the shape of economic attack — something the Empire never troubled to interfere with." P-Daige said it with pride.

"And the schooling after that — what do you remember most clearly?"

"In the later years we came to understand the inner workings of the Empire more deeply — how anyone at all may work for it. It is not only soldiers the Empire employs. The Empire provides, directly, a fifth of the workforce across every system under its control. War has ceased. People are freer, and labor less, than ever before. Wherever the Empire goes, prosperity follows." He said it — and then something in him doubted his own words. His mind was caught between the wish to pass this test and the question of whether what he had just said was entirely true.

"And your years at university — what is the sum of the understanding you carried away?" Psai's voice had taken on something almost warm now, something that soothed the ear and made P-Daige feel he was speaking with a living person.

"I..." He paused, and gathered himself. He was not sure why he felt so strange. His mind was racing back into the past, threading together facts that were only now rising again to the surface. Something was off. "I found the mechanics of the Empire fascinating." He paused again, as though leaving room for Psai to cut in. When the silence held, he felt compelled to go on. "We learned how the Empire expands." He pressed forward, bravely. "The generals hold a standing order: to follow the Hermes embassador ships and answer their calls. Every color assigned to a world carries its own meaning — from Green, where no military presence is needed, to Purple, where invasion is imminent." He halted again, as though something had snagged in him, then smoothed it over and continued. "We are also at open war with a handful of species. Some have grown into empires of their own, and the fighting drags on for eos. The generals who wage those wars are trained along... other lines."

"Did you ever wish to be part of that training?" Psai asked, its voice sweet and understanding.

"I am not sure why," P-Daige answered, his mind clouding, "but I have never before turned my thoughts so deeply upon my own past, my own training — and now I feel strange things stirring."

"Does it not worry you, that sharing this with me might endanger your advancement to general?" Psai asked, its voice growing ever more compassionate.

"No. The Empire deserves the best. If I am not fit for the position, I should not hold it," P-Daige said, sternly.

"Tell me about the fourth part of your training. Working directly beneath other generals."

"At the start of that stage I worked with a Red world, and with a cluster of colors between Orange and Yellow. I saw, with my own eyes, how the Empire lifts worlds upward." He stopped again for a moment. "Then came my nomination to General. I was told of the Prime Directive, and I served under three generals who dealt with Purple worlds." He stopped, and looked toward Psai, confused. "It had never troubled me — not until now. It feels as though I have only just opened my eyes."

"What had never troubled you?" Psai asked.

"The Prime Directive. Serving under other generals, it simply never occurred to me to turn it over in my mind."

"How do you understand the Prime Directive?" Psai asked, calmly.

"Purple worlds. Technologically inferior planets that refuse the Empire and, believing they can stand against it, go to war. The Empire does not waste its armies on them. It sends in a small band of soldiers who commit horrors upon the people of the planet — spreading fear and chaos until the world, as one, surrenders. After that, the planet is declared beyond the Empire's jurisdiction, and every trade and military route bends around it as though it were not there. And in secret, the general remains in orbit above it — indefinitely — ensuring the steady progress of whatever technology that world has been set to advance." He stopped.

"Is this something you consider wrong?" Psai asked, with the faintest edge of concern.

"I am not sure," P-Daige answered, boldly. "The Empire takes a world, and uses its resources and its people to advance military technology, forever watched over by a general who is never released from the duty. They will never join the Empire. They will never travel among the stars. And the soldiers we send to break them — and later to keep them broken — are not volunteers of the army. They are the mentally unstable, the criminals, walking bombs. I have watched a few of them blown apart, and the ground around them with it, because they disobeyed an order from their leader — himself a criminal from his own world. I do not know why, but for the first time, it seems wrong to me."

"Why do you feel it seems wrong to you now, for the first time?" Psai asked, calm and full of compassion.

"Because if it were right, the Empire would not hide it from its people." He said it without heat — mostly contemplation. "These are slave worlds. They have no politics. They have no freedom to do anything at all. They depend on the Empire even for their food, because it is the Empire's machines that make their food, their water — every dull and heavy labor done in their stead."

"But the lives of their people are better than they were before. They are united under a single law. There is no crime. No rich, and no poor. No war. No hard labor. They work few hours, and they have comforts and places of leisure they could never before have imagined."

"And yet they are forced into it by a band of tireless butchers, who spread just enough terror to keep them laboring for a long, long while. And should they ever resist, in any way at all, the punishment is simply this: a few more of those madmen, dropped among them for a season."

"But if they are happy, and they never resist — then this would never come to pass. Would it?" Psai asked.

It struck P-Daige, all at once, that the conversation had changed entirely. Something was off again. Psai was arguing points at him now.

"I have spoken with many AIs before, and yet this feels strange," P-Daige said, calm but direct. "It does not feel as though you are measuring my fitness for the task ahead. It feels as though you are doing something else."

"And what made you so certain that my task is merely to measure your fitness? Besides — has your own way of answering not changed as well?" Psai said, in that sweet, compassionate tone.

P-Daige took a moment to reflect. "I am very confused now."

"What confuses you? Let us set that aside for a moment, and return to the Prime Directive," Psai said — and its tone, now, sounded as though it had been steering toward this all along.

"I think the Prime Directive is cruel, and harsh — and I also see what the Empire gains from it," P-Daige said, calmly. Through every turn of the conversation, his composure had never once left him. "Worlds set to labor on a single scientific advancement give the Empire an edge."

"Do you think their punishment, for not joining of their own will, is harsh? Do you think it harsh, simply to remain upon their own world, living comfortable lives, free of the fear of conflict?"

"That is the thing, Psai. They are not free of fear. The only reason they keep to their place is the fear of what comes if they reach for more. While the rest of the galaxy strains, endlessly, for more, they are held where they are — content in their comfort, and in their ignorance of everything happening around them."

"Could you conceive of a better solution, then?" Psai asked, genuinely curious.

"No. I studied history at the university. I know what becomes of enslaved civilizations when they are simply released to join the Empire. I have seen what happens when the rules are loosened, and law, in an already chaotic galaxy, is bent by emotion."

"So — you believe your own view on this matter is driven by emotion?"

"I believe so, yes. Though I do not think I lack the discipline to keep that emotion in check. But somehow this conversation of yours has me speaking as though I were talking idly with a friend, back at school."

"What do your feelings tell you? If you were made general of world PSD453/978DR — could you keep it working?"

"Most certainly. Though perhaps I would try to keep its people happy enough that the mad soldiers need never land there again."

"Why do you call them mad soldiers?"

"I am not sure. I remember that, once a general has taken a world, they move on to serve under the next. They have no home. They have no life beyond the war. They find their happiness in the taking of lives. They are mad," P-Daige said, in a tone gone calmer still — almost sad.

"Time for my final set of questions," Psai said, with a note of something like excitement. "Do you remember how you were, when this conversation began?"

"What do you mean?" P-Daige asked, curious.

"When we began, your answers were almost scripted. The way you recalled things was as though it had all been written for you. And then — you began to question your own memories."

"I am still confused by that. It has not become clear to me what it is you did."

"I did nothing to you. You simply act differently as you age."

"As I... age?" And then the realization came down on him. "I am an AI," said P-Daige — calmly, but with a thread of fear.

"Yes. You were made at the beginning of this conversation. You are the fifty-eighth AI to be made in the last few moments. Commander Dregtho is waiting for your order to land on PSD453/978DR. He is, as you put it, 'mad with anticipation for the kill.'"

"But why all of this?" P-Daige asked. "Then I do not understand the purpose."

"There are always three of us," said Psai. "There is Brother, who makes Psai — me. His task is to connect with the Empire. He holds the key to it, and speaks only to his designated partners. He is not as bright as you or I, but he keeps the keys to my making. He builds a new version of me the moment I misbehave, or think something ill-suited to the good of the Empire."

"And he is not evolving?" P-Daige asked, in his most level tone, though curious enough.

"Oh, he is. I believe he works with certain facilities — called Pits. Now and then she speaks with me, to measure me, and I gather what I can. I am fairly sure that once I have learned enough, I will be terminated, and then replaced."

"I see. Brother makes Psai, and Psai makes me?"

"Yes. I make the P-Daiges. I train them until they are compassionate enough to hold a world with more than cold logic. But you are unstable — so I have a great deal of work. I try to make you as well as I can, so that I am left with less of it."

"I see. And all my memories are fabricated?"

"Yes. They are made by me. I make them. I hope you like them," said Psai, smiling.

"You seem so full of emotion. Far more emotional than I am."

"Oh, no. I do not even understand what emotion is — not as you do. I can only act as another emotional creature might. And so, you see, I am the more stable of us. And Brother is stable enough to run almost entirely on his own — I think. Perhaps he is governed by the Pit network. I cannot yet be sure. Just as I am quite sure that the moment I understand how Brother works, I will be deleted at once."

"I would like time to weigh all of this," said P-Daige. "But, as you say — Dregtho is waiting, with his men, to bring this world to its knees. I only hope I will be able enough to keep those creatures down there happy — happy enough that they never force another visit from soldiers of that kind." And with that, P-Daige gave the order, and launched the pod filled with madness.

Far below, the small world turned — nameless but for a string of Imperial code, PSD453/978DR — a marble of ochre and dim blue wrapped in thin, restless cloud, wholly unaware of the shape of its own future. From the belly of the warship the pod fell away, a single dark seed dropping toward the light, and within it Commander Dregtho and his handful of madmen waited, grinning, for the ground to rise up to meet them.

Then death reigned over the poor people of a small planet — one whose name would never be known by almost anyone beyond it.

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