The Starship Theseus

6. Rodentia nobilus

Project Uplift began on Earth when the voyager missions remained the furthest man-made object to have traveled from Sol. It never ended, even after being outlawed and disavowed by the reigning governments of Earth in the twenty-third century. The ethical concerns raised at the time were never truly resolved, but still the project continued. Either in secrecy, or in jurisdictions where the ethical concerns were not concerns.

The first documented uplift was a Bonobo. A modified embryo was implanted into a mature female. The resulting child was raised by her birth mother, but educated to the highest human standards available. Her name was Sophia. She understood four languages, including English, French, Spanish, and Mandarin, although she could only communicate via sign language and written media. She earned a Doctorate in sociology at age twenty-three and published seventeen books. She died of natural causes after a long life of advocation for the sanctity of non-human life and the establishment of rights for all sapient beings. She was survived by no children, as the genetic modifications made to her embryo had rendered her sterile, although she had a mate and family who mourned her in their way.

Her life story, her publications, and her research are held sacred by all jurisdictions in which inter-species relations and non-human sapient rights are valued. However, she was not the first successful uplift. She was simply the first uplift that the humans could understand and accept as a peer.

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He did not have a name-sound. He was not a Jurassian nameless, it was simply that his name did not have a sound associated with it. That was common for the language of his people. The humans had done many horrible – and wonderful – things to his ancestors, but they had never fully given the ability to communicate on par with the ‘true’ uplifts. The ones who could make themselves understood in human language.

The closest the English translation of his name would be something like ‘Pleasant Scent drifting from another room that makes one curious that something good might be there.’ It was a good name, he was proud of it. But even if a human could understand the concepts conveyed by his name, and he knew that they could, he had no way of conveying it to them because all of their language was sound based, while his was based on movement.

It was considered absolutely hilarious among the humans that "the uplifted rodents communicated via interpretative dance," although Pleasant Scent didn’t understand why they thought it was funny. They were also careful not to use the word "rat", even though the ancestors of his people, before their uplift, had been members of the Rattus norvegicus species. Post uplift, they had been renamed Rodentia nobilus.

His pre-uplift ancestors had been considered pests. His people, now that the humans had elevated them, were unseen but ever valued members of any colony which could attract a breeding population. It was just that nobody could understand them except themselves and advanced artificial intelligence programs such as Athena, and even then there was so much lost in translation.

That did not mean that he could not communicate. He could make his needs and wants known, and the needs were at least taken seriously in most jurisdictions where his people lived. And his people lived everywhere that the humans did. It was just that sometimes the humans forgot they were there. It was very funny, sometimes, to remind them. But also sometimes a little dangerous, although the humans would always feel better if they hurt one of his people in their surprise.

There was a game among his people. They would find a human, and they would follow them, and they would talk with them. Human language made slightly more sense to him than his language made to them, after all. Pleasant Scent had played this game with a thirteen year old human boy for six days before he had grown tired of it. The boy had been confused at first, then concerned that Pleasant Scent was attempting to convey important information.

The boy, Iman had been his name, had done the responsible thing and gone to his parents for help. The boy’s father had simply chuckled and told him "Don’t worry, he’s just pulling your chain," which had actually somewhat alarmed Pleasant Scent because at the time he had been dancing "I am just playing make the human guess what I am saying when I know that he cannot understand because it is funny and fun to do for my people." The father’s words were so close to a literal translation of his dance that Pleasant scent had suspected there was a hidden computer interpreting his dancing in the house. Then he had understood that the father had not actually understood him, he had just either heard that Pleasant Scent’s people play that game sometimes, or he had guessed that if a Rodentia nobilus needed assistance, it would not go to a human child for it, but someone who could actually help.

Humans were very good at guessing, after all. They often guessed the needs and wants of their rodent allies before any attempts were made to communicate them. Some of that came from a dark past that Pleasant Scent did not truly understand, except that the humans had killed many of his pre-uplift ancestors, and now some of them felt guilty about it.

His people were not scholars. Their traditions and recorded history extended to the uplift only. Beyond that, they knew only what the humans attempted to communicate with them, and much of that was not clearly understood. But Pleasant Scent thought that being uplifted was great. He was not as smart as a human or a ‘true’ uplift, but he was useful. Although the uplift had increased his body size by thirty percent or so and changed the shape of his skull slightly, it had made him and his people very, very useful. Pleasant Scent liked being useful, and so did all of his friends.

Unlike many of the Sapients represented in the crew of the Theseus, Pleasant Scent was far from the only of his people present. The next most represented species was the humans, which numbered three, and the canine unit, of which there were two dozen. But there were th ousands of Rodentia nobilus aboard. Pleasant Scent was proud to have been selected to be one of them.

They did not know the mission. They did not particularly care. They knew only that the humans had conveyed that the mission was important, and that was good enough for them.

Despite their numbers, their habitation was the smallest of all of the dedicated uplift habitations, but that was only because Pleasant Scent’s people did not require much space. In fact, they preferred having communal facilities for feeding, exercise, entertainment, sleeping quarters, just about everything. Privacy was a human concept, not a Rodentia one.

Which is one of the reasons why surprising humans in the bathroom was so funny.

Pleasant Scent was watching a holo-drama with the five brothers who had also joined the Theseus when the mission alert sound rang through the habitation. Two of his brothers were from a separate litter, but Pleasant Scent did not hold that against them. The six of them quickly left their shared quarters and raced through the warren to the briefing room, which was abuzz with such activity that Pleasant Scent could only squirm with delight.

He had no idea what they were about to do, but it was clearly very important. The entire warren had been summoned, and they were running to their assigned team briefing locations.

That was when he parted with his brothers. It was a sad parting, because he knew that there was a chance he would never see them again. This was a military operation, and any Rodentia nobilus understood why family members were never placed in the same squad. Pleasant Scent knew that the mission was important, but when things are important, they are also usually dangerous. But the humans would not ask it of his people if it was not very important.

Pleasant Scent joined his squad and watched as the holographic Rodentia explained their mission in as much detail as they could convey. They were not living Rodentia, nor recordings. They were projections controlled by Athena, working together to convey concepts and objectives as best they could.

"This mission is reconnaissance/maintenance/stealth in daytime while enemyfriends sleep infiltration undetected mission not critical very critical …"

Athena did not dance very well. Fortunately, she was very good with maps, and so were the Rodentia. The maps communicated the mission much better than the holographic rats ever could. They were being sent down to the surface of the world below, where they were to infiltrate a facility identified by orbit, map it and scan the technology inside while remaining undetected, then exfiltrate to a PMT drone which would return them to the Theseus.

The only concerning bit to him was the way Athena kept stressing "Lizard-salamander-raptor-men smell good, smell find mission bad not fail bad dangerous dangerous." Image of Horthians were shown, along with one of a pre-uplift rat terrier doing what it had been bred to do before the humans ever cracked the genome.

The message was clear enough. Whatever the Horthians were – Pleasant Scent suspected they were some new uplift he had never seen before – they were dangerous, and their sense of smell was not to be underestimated.

The briefing was repeated three times in its entirety for clarity before Athena asked if there where any questions. There were, but making them understood wasn’t worth the trouble. Athena did not have the best translation software for communicating with the Rodentia.

But the mission seemed straightforward enough. The one of the biggest reasons the humans liked Rodentia nobilus was because they were so good at performing unobtrusive maintenance sweeps of everything from housing complexes to antimatter generation platforms. When Pleasant Scent had joined the Theseus, he had been imagining missions exactly like this.

Once Athena and his squad leader were satisfied that everything that could be communicated had been, they rushed to gather their equipment. Rodentia were fortunate in that their uplift had given them increased usage of their front paws. Not to the level of primates, but enough to utilize tools and equipment designed for them by the more intelligent and creative sapients.

He did not really understood the tools he would wear. He knew that they were designed for three dimension mapping, for analyzing electronics remotely, for identifying radiation sources, and a dozen other things. But aside from the signals indicating that he was entering into a dangerous area, he mostly just trusted his instincts and explored.

Rodentia were very good explorers. It was one of the reasons they were so useful. As Pleasant Scent gathered with the rest of his squad, he wondered what sort of building they would be exploring. It must be very important.

Joining hands with the rest of the eleven rat squad, they danced "We are ready we are waiting we are ready we are waiting" until Athena phased them down to their destination.

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Stargazer used every trick she knew to lose one of the Others once they were on your trail. She doubled back multiple times to the same spot to lay false trails. She galloped through streams, despite the fact that it washed off her scent-camouflage. She gathered fresh herbs and fruits to disguise her scent, different ones than she had worn when she’d exposed herself to Tanak.

Her efforts took her most of the night. Tanak had long returned to his lodge by the time she was satisfied, having checked the food drops that he’d been scheduled to check that night and not feeling ambitious enough to check any more than necessary. But he was an Other, and the only things you can trust an Other to do is betray you, and to rip you apart with their claws and teeth.

When she was satisfied that she had lost him, she made her way to one of her secret places. It was a high place, but the secret was not the view. The secret was that the sound there carried very far, and an Aurealian standing atop a particular rock formation could be heard for miles. It was there that she called out to her sisters.

"Sisters, I have heard you," she sang. "I am sorry for my silence, for like you I was lost and confused by the signs in the heavens. I have thought hard and searched for answers using methods known to the eldest of you. I bring you two answers.

"The false moon means destruction. It is a light of false promise. It shall not save us, and it may doom us all. Hold tight your knives of flint and your spears, and be ready to open your veins to spare yourself the suffering that the Others will inflict upon you if they have their way.

"But do not give in to despair. Not yet. The other sign, the lights of green, of beauty. They are the lights of another. They are watching this world. They are mighty, so mighty that even the Others fear them. I know no more of them than that, but if they can light up the sky with beauty just by their very arrival, then for the first time since I washed the blood of my litter-sisters from my fur I have hope.

"Yes, sisters, I have hope. I have hope that the humans will see us from on high, and see the falseness and wrongness of the Others. I have hope that they will save us, and our sisters born and yet unborn. I may be wrong, but I have hope. Hope that this endless cycle of death will finally end.

"I am Stargazer, eldest among you, student of Strongarm who was eldest before I. And I have hope."

She had thought long and hard about what she would sing while she was disguising her trail, and now that her music had faded, she wondered if she had done the right thing. She was certain about the first part of her song; the false moon meant destruction. But the humans? Tanak had been uncomfortable discussing them, but it was not outright fear.

What would she do if the humans simply left the world as they had found it? What if they saw what the others were doing and simply did not care?

Ultimately, the deciding factor had not been reason. It had been beauty. The humans had lit up the sky with beauty, and any race that could do such a thing must be good. It was not a logical conclusion, but it resonated with her. She would put her faith in the humans.

She wondered what they looked like.

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