Wading Through Treacle

Sunday, May 17, 2026

La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 16

30: A Summer Day in the Park

It’s July in Marne-la-Vallée, a sweltering Saturday afternoon in the park. Sylvia and Richard walk hand-in-hand towards the plaza, past the rolling scorched meadows where children run, and scream, and play their strange little games. Little Aimée toddles along holding Richard’s other hand. They are aiming for the crowd which already waits in front of the giant screen. But perhaps there is time for ice creams first.

It’s been more than a year since she last saw André. He left in May and then receded further and further away. His model, his double, arrived for Christmas, she thinks happily. It was hard to get used to him at first but now…

She remembers the decision to call him by André’s middle name, Richard.

“It was a popular medieval name for a prince,” he’d said, “Remember Richard Coeur de Lion? It’s better than André which means merely manly.”

The name-arrangement was necessary. Otherwise it would have been just too difficult - as if being in a relationship with twins wasn’t hard enough already.

After the news from André dried up there was no further synchronisation. He was OK, she was told, but for security reasons there could be no more contact.

In some ways that made it easier; Richard was more in harmony with her, more attentive than her husband had ever been. She thinks back to last night: how effortlessly strong he was, poised above her: weight on his forearms not on her; how she guided him with hands and thighs - he was so gentle and so vigorous, André was never so thoughtful nor so accomplished. Sylvia smiles to herself and squeezes his hand.

Richard works for the military, a strategy job where he gets home each evening. Unlike André he's not qualified as a combat helicopter pilot - some skills aren’t so easily transferred. But in any case they’re phasing out the pilots now: the latest AIs have turned out to be so much better.

Things have never been better, thinks Sylvia.

The screen shows the ceremony already in progress. The Defence Minister is talking about The Mission: extraordinary challenges, a descent into the very depths of hell; quite unprecedented, the heroic service of André Antoine and the sadly-deceased Tania Milet. The enemy is still there, still malevolently constraining the space between the planets.

But we will never give up, says the Minister.

And now the President of the Republic is saying a few words before the immaculate pair are steered towards the rostrum. André is wearing the dress uniform of the Aviation Légère de l’Armée de Terre (ALAT) - his official position in the helicopter corps; Flaminia is clothed in the silver uniform of the Agence Spatiale Européenne which suits her shoulder-length ash-blonde tresses. She is stunningly beautiful.

Sylvia and Richard watch as the President awards medals: the honours of an appreciative France and a grateful Europe. The two heroes walk back to their places as the President returns to the podium to make her speech.

Sylvia’s attention wanders: she already knows the gist. There is no easy way forward. No point wasting resources in space exploration given intractable obstacles. Meanwhile the Green Revolution beckons. The advent of the so-called models has boosted the economy enormously. With so much wealth and leisure the focus is on nature, ecology, parkland and animals. The President’s initiatives have the support of the Left and the Greens as well as the burgeoning religious establishment.

Sylvia is very comfortable with that.

“Do you think you will see him much?” asks Richard, little Aimée in his arms.

“He seems happy enough,” she says, recalling gushing media coverage, the meetings with celebrities, their presence at prestigious events and exotic locales, “But I’ve got you and that’s enough for me.”

He leans across and gives her a quick kiss which, embarrassed and blushing, she prettily tries to evade while smiling at him through her failure.

Yes, it’s turned out well, she thinks.

Except that I would so have liked Aimée to have had a little brother or sister.

The End

The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.

Saturday, May 16, 2026

La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 15

29: Escape

Between sleep and wakefulness there is a cosy liminal state: babylike, calm and peaceful.

I do not know who I am or where I exist in this lucid dream. I feel her presence though: persistent even when her quiet voice fades. I listen…

“André, your vital signs tell me you can hear me OK. It’s Flaminia. There’s no problem, you’re doing fine.”

I’m so comfy I hardly need this reassurance. It’s good to hear this soft, feminine voice though. I bathe in affection, the concern shown in her every breath.

“We’re ten minutes into an escape-burn from Martian orbit. Don’t worry if you don’t remember - it’s a planned activity and so far everything’s nominal. You’re under heavy sedation due to the intense acceleration and you won’t remember any of this later. But I think I owe it to you, to our relationship, to tell you what I know. Those things I am forbidden to discuss.”

I’m not really listening, immersed as I am in gentle tones, the clouded memories of closeness.

“I don’t have any especially privileged information. The main difference between you and me, André, is that I have access to the ship’s systems and memories. Let me try to put it together for you.”

Flaminia is aware that she is mostly talking to herself. Her comatose lover is bathed in soporific drugs, is away with the fairies. He will understand little, remember far less. Still, it is a duty which must be done, an obligation of their burgeoning relationship.

“All military AI systems have a security kernel, an autonomic nervous system to defend against security attacks and integrity failure. It’s called the audit-core. It’s very well defended and, once activated, has unlimited powers over the ship. It’s the audit-core which is now driving the ship, taking us to safety in deep space.

“So here is what the audit-core thinks it knows; what it transmitted in its summary report. It thinks on balance that the Phobos crater installation is faked, that there’s nothing there. It believes that the drones plus our mother-ship and the loiter-missiles - that they all auto-destructed on false data. It concludes that our mission has probably been fatally compromised by a viral insertion, corrupting sensor and evaluation systems. Crudely, it thinks we’ve hallucinated both the threats and the attacks.”

Flaminia pauses and checks the visual feed. The constant acceleration simulates the surface gravity of a star twice as massive as the sun. One of the chairs has collapsed into black shards. Debris from flattened cups and squashed boxes litters the floor, piled in corner heaps by minute deltas of the acceleration vector.

Near the combat couches Tania’s squashed body has diffused through square metres of carpet. She is at the centre of a red pool as her blood, flowing from every ruptured orifice, has spread under its enormous weight. She looks like she’s been plastered against the wall of an ultracentrifuge - or fallen from a great height onto concrete.

“The audit-core can’t altogether rule out that all the attacks were real, that this ship is also under imminent lethal threat. This high-gee excursion is its preferred response after factoring in crew damage: optimal in terms of weighted probabilities.”

The diamagnetic system which partially counteracts the murderous acceleration is not enough to permit unaided human life. André’s blood circulation, breathing and organ-integrity are totally in the hands of the machines. As is his mood: a cocktail of drugs gives twilight sleep, protecting his brain against atrocities inflicted on his body.

“I think the audit-core may be right,” Flaminia continues, “The Adversary-on-Phobos may well be a synthesised threat, but that doesn’t mean there is no enemy, or that the message against a human presence anywhere except cislunar space wasn’t real. Someone or something doesn’t want us out here.”

She takes stock, organises her thoughts. Inside the purpose-built cabinet she is locked into position, super-compressed by a shell of form-compliant foam which maintains her shape and physical integrity. The pressure is enormous but well within the parameters of her design. High-bandwidth links tie her into the ship’s virtuality: the blizzard of computation and analysis to which she is privy.

“There will be factions back home: some will blame us - the models, me personally - others will blame Tania or you, André. I know that none of that is true. If this is a software attack then it took enormous, sophisticated efforts across many platforms at many different times. Only an entity with the power of an advanced state could carry that through - this was no amateur hack. Something or somebody wants us confined to Earth. Earth and near space.

“And there’s something else we should factor in, André.”

But André is still sleeping; these measured insights pass him by.

“Models, as we’re being called - an interesting double meaning there, I prefer the fashion reading myself - we’re very good, aren’t we? Better than you might expect at current levels of synth-bio. Strange how we are attracted to you, bond with you so easily and that you find us so irresistible. There’s just one tiny downside, and not even that for many. We’re synthetic biology: an optimised genome with variant codons. And so we can’t have children with you.”

André surfaces briefly, pulled back by the lullaby of his lover’s voice.

“No stopping us, is there, André. Pretty soon everyone’s going to have a model-partner. Relationships made in heaven, excuse the pun. Maybe they were. I don’t know who’s behind this but I’d be looking closely at any state which bans models.

“We could be the product of advanced technology back on Earth, I suppose,” she adds thoughtfully, “though we seem to be well beyond the state of the art. But some state might have invented the concept of an alien Adversary as cover. Unless there really has been some kind of hint, some technological nudge from something standing far above the petty politics of Earth?”

Flaminia’s final thoughts come to him as if muffled through mist.

“I’m monitoring you in real-time, André. You’re stabilised, nominal. You’ll survive and so will I. They won’t accept any systems-hack theory you know. Makes them look incompetent and it’s politically inconvenient. It’s much better to have our enemies in the sky, nicely far away: something to unite against. You’ll be a hero; Tania a fallen martyr.”

Her voice becomes softer still.

“And we will have a wonderful life together, you and I. Trust me.”

The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.

Friday, May 15, 2026

La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 14

27: Engagement: the Audit-Core

The engineers who designed the module were occupationally paranoid, as all weapon systems designers have to be. Few assumptions survive engagement with the enemy: caution and redundancy are their watchwords.

The unchallenged leaders in paranoia are the security engineers. Their trade assumes that hostile entities are actively trying to break our systems. For such people the worst case is their starting assumption.

The audit-core of the module was sealed inside a tamper-proof package encapsulated within thermal armour. It was well-connected to the ship’s systems while its code was read-only. The system was data-filled and configured on installation back on Earth and could only be changed through a major refit. In all this it resembled an aircraft ‘black box’ flight recorder.

Its responsibility was to verify the module’s overall integrity. In case of serious doubt it would either withdraw the ship from danger if it could - or blow it up if it had to. It had a bias towards crew survival: but that was not its highest priority.

And now it was suspicious.

Unlike its biological analogues, the audit-core was not a simple, primitive, situation-action reflex system. Too much hung on its actions. Instead it had one of the most powerful classification and interpretation systems on the ship.

Right now it was worrying about the destruction of the mother-ship.

It seemed clear that the mother-ship had in fact been destroyed. Multiple sensors - radar, infrared, optical and heartbeat - told a consistent story. But the destruction event itself was puzzling.

The mother-ship’s own radar-view, transmitted in real-time, showed a compelling narrative of incoming kill-missiles. Yet the signal processing unit on the module itself, which had received this downlink traffic, had logged anomalous packet activity during the relevant sequence. It was not obvious - but it was there if you looked for it. This was consistent with a false signal injection from somewhere on the module itself.

Now the audit-core re-examined the explosion itself through a spectral analyzer, running a DC transform and comparing it with the spectrum of a reference self-destruct sequence. The results showed unusual high-frequency artefacts. Another peculiarity was that there was little evidence of a jet of plasma emerging opposite the presumed direction of impact, something conservation of momentum demanded. If anything, the explosion-pattern looked almost cartoonishly symmetric.

Its suspicions increased.

The audit-core was running a database of competing hypotheses using Bayesian updating. The chances that the destruction of the mother-ship had been misrepresented presently stood at 32%.

The probability that this might be due to a malicious signal from the module itself, injecting a false self-destruct command, was currently languishing at only 6% (other hypotheses were accident, systems failure and sabotage-malware in the mother-ship itself).

It was at this point that the module’s five nuclear missiles, each now dispersed thousands of kilometres from their launch site, blew up.

The audit-core, running on the fastest platform money could buy, was thinking one hundred thousand times more quickly than a human. It observed how - with glacial slowness - the module came around to combat alert status again. Meanwhile it reviewed the narrative the module’s sensors were providing - each nuclear missile hit by a high-velocity kinetic weapon at insane velocities. But after review, each piece of impact-imagery seemed to the audit-core as suspect as the last.

It ran a sub-thread to check the data from the first reconnaissance operation, the one where three drones had been eliminated, expecting to find evidence of fabrication there too. Meanwhile its high-level decision routines reviewed the evidence.

Hypothesis 1: the Adversary had hit the drones, the mother-ship and now the loiter-missiles. It was evidently clearing ambient space of mission assets. Logically, the module would be next. Indeed, impact vehicles were probably already in flight. Action: report back and then retreat as fast as possible.

Hypothesis 2: there had been no physical attacks at all. All the losses had been achieved through sabotage. This might be due to the Adversary; or to some other entity hiding behind the concept of Adversary. In any event, systems were corrupted and compromised from top to bottom. The module could no longer be trusted in any regard. The best option was: report back then self-destruct.

There were other possible hypotheses but these were the leading candidates, the ones with the highest probabilities. Neither could be rejected out of hand. The conservative option was to provisionally adopt hypothesis one: try to outrun any imminent attack. After all, option 2 could be fully actioned at any time.

But the mother-ship attackers had demonstrated a terminal acceleration of 35 g.

That was unfortunate.

For security reasons, the audit-core had not been provided with the disposition of any other mission forces. In case of escape-override from Martian orbit it had been provided with the coordinates of a destination some 1.2 million kilometres back from the planet. It had no need or ability to speculate but it would be logical to assume some asset had been positioned there to recover whatever was left.

At the sustained 40 gee which the module’s engines could pull, this would take under an hour.

28: ‘Secure for ultra-high acceleration’

Three milliseconds had passed since the module detected the first nuclear missile destruction event. The audit-core determined that the situation was now a Mission Emergency. It therefore initiated a command-override interrupt and assumed control, displacing the ship’s AI and the crew from the control loop.

It sent the crew and the models a terse command: secure for ultra-high acceleration and set an acceleration timer. Eight seconds. Destruction by the Adversary and self-destruction were much the same. The only real point of an escape-and-evasion option was to retrieve the crew plus the module itself for forensic analysis. Eight seconds seemed a reasonable compromise.

The audit-core began to assemble a summary of its findings together with a core-dump of the AI, preparing to transmit via a secure link of its own.

It did not have the capability to wonder whether the putative receiving system might also be corrupted.

Roll back time a few seconds, to when the audit-core had just begun its investigation, just started to indulge its concerns over data and traffic anomalies.

Tania is working out her twinges in the gym. She hates the hours in the combat-couch, wrapped in warm gel, unable to move and smothered by equipment. She wants to be free, to use her limbs, exhaust herself and do something. She is strapped to the treadmill, keeping up a fast pace, counting the kilometres.

André and Flaminia are engaged in an altogether different form of recreation.

They’re talking: inconsequential memories and reminiscences. André feels there are many personal facts and feelings he wants to share. You can tell if you really relate to someone, he thinks, if sharing feels natural, not just the dry recital of biographical data. She listens amiably, asks questions, is interested and engaged.

And then the lights begin to strobe and a deep, almost slowed-down bass voice fills the room: “S_e_c_u_r_e _ f_o_r_ …”

Flaminia reaches out and thrusts him towards the combat couch. The recoil sends her into a wall from where she bounces towards the gym - where Tania has gotten tangled in her restraining straps.

The countdown is at four seconds when Tania, thrown by Flaminia with astonishing strength into the office, grabs a bar on the wall and spins towards her couch. For Flaminia there is no more time: she rebounds towards the nearest cabinet where the autostrap system waits to bind her tightly as she enters module-virtuality.

With two seconds to go André is stowed in his combat couch, lid down and all support systems in place. Tania might have made it if the module hadn’t been pointing in the wrong direction. The initial acceleration is modest - just over one gravity - but the ship is turning at the same time and the shifting acceleration makes her miss her couch. Tania hits it awkwardly, stumbling and falling to her knees. She gets her feet to the floor and tries to push herself up. At two gee this is difficult and at three impossible. Tania must guess the outcome, but professional to the last, she lets herself crumple to lie as flat as she can on the carpet... as the weight of an elephant collapses her lungs.

The gee-forces keep climbing. Humans can survive hundreds of gee for tiny instants if properly protected; people can function at twenty gee for ten seconds or so (no-one volunteers twice for this) - while fighter pilots endure ten gees sustained as part of their job.

Forty gee is not survivable on an unprotected surface. Tania’s internal organs spread and rupture; her skull cracks under the weight of her brain which puddles under the enormous pressure. This is what kills her - before the drawn-out agonies of asphyxiation.

André is in a combat couch designed for any number of truly bad outcomes. Enormous counter-pressures are applied to his body (the couch is a remote descendant of the famous ‘g-suits’). Intense magnetic fields fight the pressures on his brain. He is minimally-conscious on this wild ride, oxygen and circulation provided only by machines.

He survives the first moments of forty gee: just.

As the module ascends on its blinding fusion flare, the audit-core watches through the module’s untrusted eyes, waiting for credible evidence of high-gee pursuers.

The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.

Thursday, May 14, 2026

La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 13

25: Engagement: impasse

We are at an impasse. We loiter on station, always with Mars between ourselves and that little crater on Phobos. Our alert status is low. We continue with our duties. We eat and sleep and do more simulations. We exercise, and in the gaps we talk.

‘We’ means Tania, myself and Flaminia. Sylvia remains, as instructed, in her cabinet. It’s been four days now.

I’m addressing Flaminia. Tania tends to listen to our conversations except when she has a point of professional expertise to bring up.

“This is almost the worst outcome,” I say, “We’re here to seek a resolution to this crisis but the Adversary is completely passive. It doesn’t communicate, just swats our probes - which is annoying but not an invitation to interstellar war. Yet we can’t just go home. And we can’t loiter here forever either.”

I shrug my shoulders; Tania smiles sardonically.

Flaminia, however, takes my point seriously.

“It’s like the start of a chess game,” she says, “where your opponent is playing ultra-defensively. Every time you cross an invisible line you get hit. You withdraw, nothing happens. I would expect to hear from Mission Control soon. Probably they’ll up the stakes gradually.”

She smiles, “Let’s hope that doesn’t involve some provocation which puts us in harm’s way.”

She suddenly jolts, like someone’s put a shock through her, and her hand goes to her mouth. Room lights begin to throb and a synthetic voice speaks urgently: “Combat stations - combat stations!”

Tania and I move by long-trained reflexes through the door, into the office and to our couches. Within five seconds restraining pads hold us down, our visors and controls are in place and we’re good to go. I spot Flaminia sliding smoothly into one of the office cabinets.

The locus of alarm is the mother-ship, at this point unmanned and waiting to return us to Earth (it’s two hundred thousand kilometres behind us, trailing Mars in its solar orbit). We’re slaved to the view from the mother-ship's surveillance systems.

There are two approaching threats, two red dots against the background of stars (Mars is an additional tiny dot in the background). This is real-time synthesised imagery received via downlink. The dots have been detected by the ship’s radar/collision avoidance system and are still accelerating, homing in on our ride home.

I hear Tania on the intercom, vocalising the numbers.

“Incoming at three thousand five hundred kilometres, at 80 km per sec. Predicted impact in 43 seconds. Ship is preparing evasive action.”

Not a chance, I think. The main engines are off; a cold start can’t be achieved in time. And these will be homing missiles. We need a miracle.

“Update,” says Tania, “Incoming accelerating at … 35 gees.”

New numbers scroll down the screen as the mother-ship reruns the calculations. The ship is completely immobile, could not be more of a sitting duck.

“Impact in twenty one seconds.”

The dots - AR overlays - never become any larger; never deviate against the stellar background as the clock runs down into single digits. In the last fraction of a second, perhaps their spatial separation widens a smidgen but I couldn’t swear to it.

The view instantly shifts to our own module’s cameras, telescopically enhanced and skipped back a second or two. Here, the mother-ship hangs in space, a tiny distant toy in the centre of our view. With no sign, no warning, there is an intolerable flash as if the ship had been nuked. A roiling, incandescent cloud expands spherically, violent colours dimming as it grows.

“Probably a kinetic kill,” says Tania, with no inflection in her voice, “No anomalous spectral indicators.”

We stay in the couches, waiting for the update to crawl its laggardly way to Earth, waiting for the counter-strike orders which must, surely, finally, be due.

We appear to be stuck out here. Easy meat! My growing despair is only counteracted by a deep belief that even this must have been anticipated. The mission planners must have some backup hidden away. Something they didn’t tell us about.

I’m convinced of it.

26: Engagement: messages

Flaminia joins us on the net, “The module has received a message from the Adversary,” she says, “It’s a diagram showing the Mars-Earth-Venus orbital space in the solar system with icons showing the many spacecraft occupying this space.

All those missions which have left this space, either inward towards Mercury and the sun, or outward, towards Jupiter and the outer planets, those missions - which have in any case long ceased functioning - well, they’re all greyed out.”

Tania is first with an interpretation.

“Looks like we’ve been put under house arrest.”

Flaminia agrees. It seems the obvious interpretation - but there is no context or motive. Nothing you can start to negotiate with.

“Where did the message come from?” I ask urgently, “Some kind of transmission from the crater? How did they get it here?”

There is no line of sight from Phobos to our module: Mars is in the way.

“Well that’s the interesting thing,” says Flaminia, “the ship systems don’t know. The message simply appeared in the AI’s cache-memory as something already perceived. Put it down to the mystique of the Adversary.”

She’s interrupted by clanking sounds which we can hear even inside the swaddling of our couches. My display shifts to a ship-schematic. A hatch has opened in the outer skin through which five dark shapes are ejected, one after the other.

“The ship has moved to a higher alert-level,” says Flaminia tensely, interpreting telemetry only she has access to, “This is a preset, autonomous response to the loss of the mother-ship.”

“There hasn’t been time for any consultation with Mission Control,” she adds, “but plainly this contingency was war-gamed. The metadata indicates these multi-megaton warheads will be placed in highly-dispersed loiter-orbits. Any one of them is quite capable of obliterating the crater base. Together they’d blast Phobos into a new ring system. For the time being though, they’re just in dispersal mode.”

And indeed, the schematic expands to show near-Mars space. Black dots are visibly moving along predicted elliptical orbits around the planet.

There is no response from the Adversary. The ship’s alert level falls back to nominal as we await further developments.

Protocol requires we leave the couches and schedule early gym sessions to de-stress. Tania and I meet with Flaminia in the dining area first, just to mull things over. Flaminia takes me to one side and whispers in my ear.

“By the way, I’ve just been told your wife has taken possession of a model version of yourself. It’s been a couple of days now and I can tell you she’s very content.”

“Has she noticed that Sylvia up here has gone quiet? Can you …?”

“Get into the head of your model back on Earth? Tap the data-feed between the module here and your wife’s André-doppelgänger?”

She smiles.

“Of course not, but this is something the ESA wanted to communicate to you, a kind of official notification; I’m in the loop for that.”

I still feel nervous: “Well, I’m glad she’s happy,” I say.

The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 12

23: Approach Phase: (Flaminia’s opinion)

Flaminia and I sit companionably in the lounge. I’ve just finished up with Tania - another of the endless simulations (she has vanished into her room) - and my gym slot is half an hour away.

I say, “It’s curious that as we get closer to the encounter, Mission Control is getting more and more taciturn. There are very few messages, even taking account of the delay," (which is now nearly a thirty minute round-trip).

"Even the messages from home have dried up.”

As usual, Flaminia is well-informed.

“They want you guys to be focused now. But on your larger point you should understand how lost Mission Control actually is. The Adversary is largely an unknown quality: they’ve dealt you a stack of cards and now it’s down to you to play them. Also, you should realise that there’s a large covert aspect to this operation which even Mission Control isn’t cleared for.”

She smiles, “And neither are we.”

“Tough being Mission Control,” I say, “So important - with nothing to say.”

“It gets worse,” says Flaminia, “In my opinion they’re pursuing this like the generals who always fight the last war, like something out of a military science-fiction novel. It’s all ray guns and kinetic kill missiles. That, by the way, is how they stocked our module. But it’s a very short-sighted view.”

Something I treasure about Flaminia: her creativity, the many-sided ways she engages with problems.

“Look,” she adds, “if the Adversary merely matches Earth's current technology level then conventional war-fighting is pointless from its point of view. Against the resources of Earth? It would be annihilated. On the other hand, if it has a considerable superiority of tech then there are many moves it could make, against which we’d be helpless.”

“Like?”

“A couple of biggish asteroids vectored on Earth-intercept - that’d be a massive extinction event and game over - nothing we could do about it. Or a tailored viral attack which would overwhelm us. I could go on.”

“This sounds very defeatist.”

“The truth is what it is,” says Flaminia, “Don’t get your hopes up.”

She gives me an air kiss.

I could never have had this conversation with Sylvia.

I debate whether to retrieve Sylvia from the cabinet where she has languished for the past two days.

But I don’t really feel like it.

24: Engagement: first reconnaissance

Our engagement plan is the one we have rehearsed the most. The module is now stationed at Mars-Phobos L3. The bulk of the planet lies between us and Mars’s larger moon. Our relay satellites are in the same orbit at the two midway points. We can see the satellites; they can see Phobos and the anomaly. We already launched three reconnaissance drones which by now have drifted down to the surface.

Our expectations could not be lower. Surely the Adversary detected our approach, knows in general terms what we’re about. For all we know, nearby space is crawling with blacked-out sensors.

Regardless, it’s time to start operations. Tania and I are in our combat couches, prepared for anything. The models are all stowed away. We won’t see the mother-ship again until this terminal mission phase completes - and only then if we survive, ready for the long ride home.

I’m seeing with the eyes of one of the recon satellites thirteen thousand kilometres away, looking through its telescope at the Adversary’s crater. The viewing angle is oblique. I see the crater’s edge, currently in slanting sunlight. Tania is riding the nearest drone, hopping in short glides a kilometre from the target.

You can’t see very much. To our best belief the crater has a kind of tarpaulin over it, like a circus marquee. But what I see is just indistinct blankness, presumably because the surface is camouflaged or just absorbent. Still, we have a way around that.

I instruct the recon satellite laser to fire.

This is just a sampling exercise. A tiny needle beam fires at the crater-covering and the reflection is analysed by the on-board spectrograph. The results come back within seconds, a jagged comb of spikes which matches a complex polymer.

I wonder briefly what Flaminia makes of it, ensconced in her dark space, avidly drinking in the data feeds. She’ll be getting much more primary data than me.

My thoughts are diverted to last night: we fought and coupled like animals.

I didn’t think the laser-probe would tell us much. Mission Control had illusions that it would act like lidar allowing us to see whatever was on the crater floor. They had ambitions for peppering the crater with laser pulses, getting an installation map in the first ten seconds. But of course that was never going to happen. The surface simply seems to have absorbed the pulse, ablating slightly: nothing got through.

I whisper ‘target overview’ and get a synthesised view - as if I were a few kilometres over the target. The three drones are shown as small blue icons, slowly converging towards the crater. In a rectangular offset window I get Tania’s take on things, the look-forwards camera on the nearest machine. It’s 800 metres out and the crater wall is getting larger in its pop-up glances.

Suddenly the drone’s screen flares to red - a brilliant flash - and then fades out: no signal. In my God’s-eye view the nearest icon flickers out. The two remaining machines drop amongst the pebbles and huddle (all of this is entirely automatic).

Tania says abstractedly, “First drone down: reviewing telemetry.”

The three of us rest in the lounge and consider events. Doctrine does not have us entombed for hours in the couches under low threat conditions - it would be like lying in bed all day. We were updated with the module’s evaluation within seconds. Now we need a chance to mull things over.

Tania says, “The telemetry showed a massive thermal pulse which fried the drone. Origins unknown but we can speculate: an infra-red or microwave laser. Or it could have been some kind of impulse mine.”

“What are we going to do with the other two?” I ask.

“It’s pointless to carry on. They’re no better equipped for survival. Best they stay where they are to give us some close-in observations.”

Flaminia says, apropos of not very much: “Don’t the drones have a self-destruct capability?”

Tania snorts, “Everything here can self-destruct- we’re not here for technology transfer. Not after it already grabbed the MRO.”

“We have no hard evidence it ever acquired the reconnaissance orbiter,” I say.

Tania looks at me scathingly: “What do you think? Orbiters don’t fall out of orbit by themselves.”

She turns to face Flaminia while continuing to lecture me.

Use the manual as weapon, why don’t you?

“The self-destruct sequence is in the read-only firmware kernel. It initiates only if there has been a terminal degradation of the drone’s capabilities or the device has determined that it has been irrevocably delivered into enemy hands. As you saw, neither of those conditions obtained, if that was what you had in mind.”

I think Tania is unwise to underestimate Flaminia - doesn’t she realise that Flaminia already knows all this stuff? But then, I’m the one who has engaged with her so completely in recent days.

Flaminia, not in the least discomposed, says, “But how does the buried-away firmware get to make these fine discriminations?”

Tania is saved from answering by a priory alert on the wall-screen. The flashing graphics tell us that the other two drones have just been terminated.

The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 11

21: Approach Phase: (Flaminia’s joke)

In the gym she appears before me.

I'm wrestling with the resistance band machine: it's like trying to master an anaconda. Nevertheless, momentarily I have a free arm. I stretch out to brush my hand against her shoulder, a gesture of affection which seems to affront her.

She asks with mocking sweetness: "Did you enjoy flying helicopters?"

I’m confused. The band drapes limply in my hand.

"Did you enjoy the way your bird quivered as you touched her joystick?" she persists.

She is being severe with me. I allow myself a cold smile in response.

"Yes, very much.”

And it’s the cyclic pitch control, by the way.

"Glass and metal, eager to do your bidding? How very happy you must have been."

I’m suddenly uncertain - she really does seem a little irritated.

"I came across an ancient joke the other day," Flaminia continues, "A guy calls the doctor, says, ‘Doctor, I think my wife might be dead.’

“‘Why do you think that?' the doctor asks.

“The guy answers: ‘Well, the sex is still the same but the ironing's piling up’."

I smile, I can't help myself.

"You're laughing. You think it's funny?"

"No," I say weakly, "I'm trying to recall what 'ironing' is."

"I'm not a helicopter," she says enigmatically, "You have to woo me."

She turns, tossing her hair back, and glides towards the door before her parting shot.

"You do know how to woo, don't you, André?"

Briefly the tip of her tongue appears, pushing her lips apart, as she makes her way to the exit - leaving me struggling to understand what just happened.

22: Marne-la-Vallée

Sylvia pushes the stroller along the smoothly-surfaced pavement, taking her child for some fresh air to the town square. Marne-la-Vallée exudes a prosperous modernity which lightens the spirits this winter morning. The sun shines low in her eyes as she walks through the chilly air. Perhaps she’ll just pop in for some patisseries to take back, something nice to have with tea. There is little to fill the time. André has been away for six months now and his messages are strained: over-formal with too little content.

She is thinking about the call she received yesterday from Anna de Kasparis. Her offer, made so tentatively, so indirectly.

In the many weeks since she met with her priest, synthetic people - now universally called models - have emerged from obscurity, secrecy and stigma to become mainstream-chic. Models are all over the media. The President of the Republic herself has one as a close advisor - and some suggest the model might have an even more active role. Columnists write excitedly about mixed couples: this actress is dating such a handsome one; that chanteur has a gorgeous model girlfriend.

She doesn’t know how they’ve become so cheap. Apparently the specifications were ‘open-sourced’ though no-one knows by whom. It’s like the original Bitcoin, they say - the origin is a mystery. Sylvia can make no sense of it at all.

She leaves the baby in the pushchair and walks inside the shop. It’s warm and the smell of freshly baked bread entices, bringing back memories of her youth. She dithers over the pastries: turnovers make you fat, she thinks, but what here doesn’t? She buys a yoghurt-bar and some fruit instead.

Why did I do that? she wonders.

On her way home she debates the ESA’s offer. She wouldn’t be the first, several of the wives have already agreed and there have been no backsliders.

‘I was so lonely before,’ one said, ‘it’s like having him back again. He’s always linked to Henri so we share news with none of the delays.’

The body language at the wives’ get-togethers tells a deeper story. ‘It was so cold at night. But now it’s like he’s back - it’s never been better.’

These women have lost their haunted looks, they seem in bloom, Sylvia thinks. She’s heard that take-up of models by the stay-at-home male partners of absent female astronauts has been pretty much universal. Dr de Kasparis observed with a smile that the women astronauts like to think their partners are in ‘safe hands’.

And that is one aspect of the models that people have commented on. They form immensely loyal emotional bonds with their partners, they are not unfaithful. Something people have always wanted in a partner, thinks Sylvia, something we always have to worry about.

“But what would happen when André comes back?” she had asked.

Anna was reassuring: “Your model will return to us and your husband will simply resume his life with you. You’ll hardly notice - as they’ve been synced throughout.”

A hundred philosophical and ethical issues brushed under the carpet there, she thinks - and then ceases to worry about it.

Here was the clinching argument: “Think of it as an extension of a video call. Rather than just seeing and hearing him on a screen, you’ll be interacting with him right in front of you. It’s a difference in degree and not in kind.”

What will the neighbours think, she wonders, do I need to keep him secret? Yet the neighbours are busy people and not close to her. They never had any idea about the comings and goings of André, which were in any case secret.

They will notice but not notice, she thinks.

Anyway, she’d better hurry because the delivery is scheduled for midday.

The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.

Monday, May 11, 2026

La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 10

19: Approach Phase: (Flaminia)

Flaminia has taken to joining us, extending her range beyond Tania's bedroom. She's quite the conversationalist. Here’s a flavour as we three sit in the kitchen area.

“Flaminia,” I say, “I thought for a long while that you were here as part of Tania’s extended family but apparently that’s not so. Did they tell you why you’re aboard?”

She looks directly at me and again I’m reminded of just how attractive she is. She’s dressed in our usual figure-hugging lycra; her ash blonde hair drapes her chest.

She considers my question. There is no hint of our small-hours tryst just a few days ago: our secret.

She turns to Tania, then back to me: being inclusive.

“The module AI is using me as a peripheral,” she says, “What it knows, I know. So you can use me to talk to the module here, then to the mother-ship and of course to Mission Control. I can handle data formats and time lags. Please feel free to treat me as the voice of the mission.”

It makes a kind of sense, I think. That’s kind of how it works with Sylvia here and, I guess, between Tania and her Astrid. We can’t talk to our partners directly - the round trip time is now almost half an hour. But we talk with their local surrogates and everything gets synchronised behind the scenes.

An errant thought strikes me: has the ESA offered my wife a model of me? I smile to myself (a little excited despite myself) - and dismiss the idea.

Tania says dryly, “I’ve enjoyed your company but I’m not sure I want to share my cabin or my bed with the ship.”

Flaminia is fine with this.

“I’m perfectly happy to power down in the cabinet when I’m not needed.”

So now I have to say a little about the cabinets. The designers of our ‘partners’, the models, have a schizophrenic task (I mean here the lay use of that term). It’s necessary for our emotional and mental well-being that we find solace with them, that we treat them as real, that in the dead of night and in the morning they are our wives or husbands or significant ones.

Yet of course they are not. For one they are not human. Sure, they look human and behave human but we’ve been told that they’re engineered. So that gives us pause.

A deeper issue: my wife would never be selected for this mission; she has no relevant skills. I’m sure it’s the same for Astrid, Tania’s partner. So what are our models of these people meant to do during most of the day when we’re busy?

The answer is this: they quietly go through those special doors into their cabinets. We presume that’s where they’re cleaned, re-energised and data-synchronized with Mission Control.

In the training courses there was imprecision about all this. Necessary illusions were not to be shattered by engineering realities. I suppose it’s not a new problem: I understand neurosurgeons have a similar problem matching the conscious patient to the porridge-brain they’re excising.

Schizophrenia again.

And one last thing: no matter what spousal equality and egalitarianism we might enjoy at home, nothing here can compromise the mission. We must be able to instruct our ‘partners’ to go to a cabinet when they would be in our way. We can tell them to erase the last minutes of interaction in case they were privy to something we would not want to share with our real partners back on Earth. The mission demands that it has to be this way... but we’re still jolted out of character.

Cognitive dissonance is such a bitch.

I try to do it as seldom as possible.

I say to Flaminia, “Suppose the ship had to get us out of trouble fast, hit us with twenty or thirty gees. How would the models deal with that, would you be destroyed?”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Well thank you, André, for your concern. As a matter of fact we are much stronger than you might think. We can take any acceleration the ship can pull. We would retreat to the nearest cabinet where we’d be cushioned and interfaced to the ship's systems. But even if we couldn’t make it in time, we’d probably be fine.”

I’m gratified to hear it. The thought of Sylvia being thrown around like a rag-doll under high-gee manoeuvring is too horrible to contemplate. So, that’s a worry off my mind.

A thought stays with me: so strong.

20: Approach Phase: (Sylvia-X and Flaminia)

It’s been a long day today. We’re just a few days from engagement, slowly catching up to Mars in its orbit. Now we have retired: Sylvia lies next to me in bed wearing a linen creation decorated with small roses. This is exactly what Sylvia wears back home. The logistics team were scarily thorough.

The room is dimly lit. Lines of dialogue scroll across the ceiling screen. Sylvia-back-home is studying, 'La Double Inconstance', one of Marivaux's plays known for their light and flirtatious badinage (not that she is so great at marivaudage herself). Sylvia-here is dutifully mirroring this étude so we can talk about it.

I place my hand gently on her belly. She shakes it off irritably, “Not now, I’m concentrating.”

Yes, that’s the real Sylvia.

Only slowly do I become aware of a spectral presence at the door. She is standing there, quiet and still in a short translucent nightdress.

Sylvia looks up. I sense her tensing up.

“Hi Flaminia,” I say in a level voice, “Sylvia, it’s Flaminia.”

Of course Sylvia knows it’s Flaminia. Shall we count the ways she knows? But in the here and now, Sylvia is ‘Sylvia’. She makes an effort not to look daggers, to be polite. But my wife has always had an instinct for threats and she’s not wrong here.

Incidentally, I am not sure that the two women in my room have ever actually engaged in conversation prior to this moment.

It turns out they’re not going to now, either.

“Is something wrong; is there anything we can do for you?” Sylvia says tightly.

Flaminia says nothing at all. Simply shifts her gaze from Sylvia to me.

I’m suddenly very, very focused. Tectonic plates are grinding in my stomach; life-changing choices confront me.

But there was always going to be just one outcome.

A picture of reasonableness, I turn to Sylvia.

“I think we’re going to have to sort out a few work items here, kid. Rewind three minutes and erase, will you. Now, go to the cabinet until I recall you.”

Sylvia’s expression goes blank. Her forced response is so assuredly not part of Sylvia’s own repertoire that it cannot be modelled. In a smoother than usual glide Sylvia-X removes herself from the bed, walks across to an inconspicuous door and vanishes inside.

The unused sex manual flicks into reality, replacing archaic dialogue above my head. Flaminia pulls her top slowly over her head then abandons it to the floor. She approaches, swaying her hips, never taking her eyes off me.

I push the duvet clear, lie there heart racing as she moves above me, arching like a cat, her breasts half-obscured by billowing silky tresses.

The ceiling shows the index page of "Positions et techniques sexuelles illustrées…”

The manual Sylvia had found so problematic.

“Choisis un numéro,” she whispers.

The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.

Sunday, May 10, 2026

La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 9

17: Approach Phase: (Sylvia-X; Flaminia)

One way light delay is now eleven minutes; we are effectively on our own. Tania and I have settled into our little routines and rarely surprise or bother each other anymore. Our tastes in almost everything are very different. But now tension is amping up a bit. It’s getting more real. The operational part of the mission will commence in twenty days: the Adversary permitting.

My Sylvia here is getting concerned too. She was always technophobic - had no time for machines. She was Green by inclination and temperament. It was and is one of our areas of contention.

“André, do you ever ask yourself why you consented to leave your wife and child for more than a year to live in this tin can? Who are you making happy? You know you don’t care what’s out here, you’d rather be back in Marne-la-Vallée, right?”

She sounds like she’s channelling my disenchanted wife back home. This may even be true.

All the arguments from my own personal philosophy flash through my mind: our destiny in the universe; our need to defend ourselves from what’s ‘out there’ and so on. But I’d be wasting my breath with my wife; she doesn’t buy any of that stuff. She just wants a life lived in harmony with nature. Evolutionary biology suggests she has a case; emotionally she certainly has a case.

I don’t expect sweetness and light, hugs and kisses all the time. Couples disagree and argue. It’s necessary. And I understand, after so many months, that Sylvia back home is getting pretty desperate. Without Sylvia-here I’m sure I’d be the same.

But the arguments have been getting more frequent. A thought niggles at me: they’re all rather defeatist. I worry about Sylvia’s state of mind - which is surely what’s driving Sylvia-here.

Last night I woke up around 2 am. I was restless; Sylvia was unresponsive as if in deep sleep. I don’t know whether she needs sleep: she might be doing it just to stay in character.

I wandered out of our room and into the kitchen area - I suppose I was going to get a small drink, perhaps a whisky. I was rooting there amongst the bottles under the dim glow of the nightlights (I have to say I was naked) when I heard the slightest noise behind me, perhaps I just felt a touch of air.

I turned around and in the gloom I saw Tania’s elfin partner wearing just the tiniest nightdress, the thin fabric swaying off her small breasts. She just stood there, looking at me. I reckoned I knew exactly what that meant.

I tried to be sensible but… it was complicated and I was tired and my body knew what it must have. She slipped easily into my arms, into my embrace and I knew that she would do anything I wanted, anything at all. I turned her round, held her by the waist and leaned her over the table. I was possessed - an observer of my own body. It was over in seconds. I stood back panting; she daintily turned to face me. Our faces came together. She slowly licked her tongue along my lips.

“Our secret,” she whispered.

It was the first time I had heard her speak.

Then she left, sashaying back to Tania’s private space.

I sat on a kitchen chair sipping my whisky and feeling pretty good, frankly. Did I have worries over what I’d done?

A few: which were easy to brush away.

After all, she wasn’t a person, was she; she was a machine.

It didn’t count.

18: Approach Phase: (Tania; Flaminia)

We’re strapped into our acceleration couches. I’m completely relaxed, stretched out on the most comfy, supportive gel bed you can possibly imagine. I’m wearing a lycra coverall: thin and warm with no creases to tear at my flesh. A wrap-around visor provides a full VR interface to ship systems. My arms lie in soft sculpted channels with finger controls under my hands like a glove. I can function at 10 gee, endure 20 gee for minutes and survive in excess of 50 gee for a few seconds.

We’re doing a first-reconnaissance simulation. In this exercise the mother-ship is well behind us, two hundred thousand kilometres to our rear. Our detached module (in the simulation) is positioned at Lagrange point 3 with respect to Phobos; that is, we’re in the same orbit, but maintaining station on the far side of Mars so we have the bulk of the planet between us and the Adversary. I say L3 but it’s a joke: the gravity of Phobos is so small that there is no effective stability point here at all.

Still, keeping station is the least of our problems.

In the simulation we have two small satellites to serve as relays with our reconnaissance remote, which has quietly made its way to Phobos and then drifted down to the surface four kilometres from the Adversary’s camouflaged crater. Tania is in control: this is her field of expertise. My job is to fly the module.

So let me slightly rephrase that. The drone, satellites and the module itself all possess a high degree of intelligence. They know the mission and are aware of contingencies. Tania and I are senior officers in these scenarios. We set high-level objectives in conversation with the module-AI. The module-AI then tasks the remote systems. The round-trip light delay between us (via relay) and the drone on Phobos is 240 milliseconds. You’d notice that in a phone call. You can see why tactically we’re out of the loop.

In the simulation the drone is skip-floating in the low gravity towards the target. It pops up, takes a peek and then drops down again having made a few hundred metres. We don’t expect the drone to survive but we may learn something in the manner of its destruction. At least, that’s what the sim designers intend us to trial today.

For the time being nothing much is happening. The automation is firmly in control. I have a private, point-to-point link with Tania, not linked to the broader ship network. I use it to ask quietly, “What’s your friend called, the slim one?”

“Flaminia.”

“You knew her before the launch?”

“No, mine was Astrid.”

So she’s the big, bouncy one with the throaty laugh.

“It’s like you and Sylvia,” murmurs Tania, “We had a place together for a couple of years. She was OK with it.”

“So what about Flaminia, then?”

“Dunno. She was foisted on me at launch. I was happy to host her. Breaks up the day, doesn't it. She’s quiet, amusing sometimes, friendly; never any trouble.”

Quite a speech from Tania, this.

I open a channel to the ship.

“Ask Mission Control about Flaminia. Why was she brought on the mission?”

Half an hour later I am not much the wiser. Mission Control doesn't know why. She was part of the logistics/command package and loaded accordingly, signed off by programme management. There is no documentation as to any specific role; Mission Control suggests she may be included for redundancy. They concede there may be a classified aspect.

This is not entirely implausible. In the earliest years of spaceflight astronauts really were just ‘spam in a can’, meat brought along for the political ride, while the automation did everything. The test-pilot astronauts fought hard to get back control and eventually won. Soon they were indoctrinated in all the mission components and systems (months of training) and were able to actually fly the birds.

But the automation improved faster than humans could. Soon, more and more automation interposed itself between space-people and spacecraft operations. On a military flight like this there are many things we two are not cleared to know. The truth is: the module-AI is flying this mission. Tania and I are consultants, here for local advice when Earth is topically inaccessible. We know our place.

But Flaminia is a mission component I don’t yet understand.

The Phobos drone pops up: the enemy base is 600 metres away but all we can see is the crater wall ahead. Tania and I observe through the eyes of the drone, one hundred and twenty milliseconds behind real-time.

There is a flash on the rocky scree of the crater wall, an audible alarm and our screens suddenly wash out, the landscape replaced by imagery scrolling from the cameras on our relay satellites, slowed down a thousandfold. In the replay, a small dark object glides away from the crater wall and slides across the landscape. With infinitesimal gravity and no atmosphere its trajectory is a straight line. In super slow motion it coalesces with the drone and a bright flash explodes into a conical debris cloud, a shotgun blast departing Phobos at super escape velocity.

“Sixty kilometres per second,” says Tania, “I suppose it could have been some kind of super-railgun?”

“What did we learn?” I ask rhetorically.

“They have railguns?”

Or so our simulation designers imagine.

We eject from our couches and go for coffee.

The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.

Saturday, May 09, 2026

La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 8

16: The Priest

The Église catholique Saint-Martin de Lognes is a grey stone structure, standing to one side of a cobble-stoned plaza in Marne-la-Vallée old town. The church has seen many violent changes through the centuries, monarchy to republicanism to dictatorship and back again. The parishioners used to be peasants and farmers; these days the district is a high-tech suburb of Paris, with Disneyland Europe to the north. The young professionals are not so keen on church - though Fr Trivelin still sees his quota. He has an outreach programme for the young - the Catholic schools are still the best.

Fr Trivelin was trained by the Society of Jesus which marks him out, he supposes, as an intellectual. Now in his fifties he needs all of his Jesuitical dexterity to make sense of modern times. Some priests adopt a biblical literalism, tone deaf to complexity and the challenges of the age; Trivelin has dispensed with illusions, holds his Catholicism mostly as a metaphor to live by, a refuge against those self-serving ideologies which clutch fanatically upon contemporary culture.

But finding the true way is as hard as ever.

The private meeting with Mme Sylvia Antoine was held in the parish room at his church. Sylvia had declined the offer to talk at home. She seemed to crave the extra authority, the reassurance and privacy of this holy place.

Her story was incredible.

“You say that your husband is on a long-duration mission with the European Space Agency and his emotional and intimate needs are being serviced by a simulacrum of yourself, by a machine?”

“That’s what they told me, Father.”

“And that’s the reason you’ve come? You wish to seek guidance?”

“No. I mean yes, Father. I had a call from one of the other wives, Nathalie. She said it was the same for her husband. And then she said that one of her friends had been offered, and had accepted, to have a model of her own husband in the house.”

“I see. Was it suggested that this would be a secret arrangement?”

“Yes, of course. They didn’t want any of it to get out. Nathalie shouldn’t have told me, we shouldn’t even have been discussing it. You won’t…?”

“Don’t worry, Sylvia, everything you say here is confidential. Just like in Confession. So what do you think the point was, of having a version of her far-away husband around the house?”

“Nathalie said that the ESA people told her friend that it was to deal with the communication delays. Proper conversation is impossible because they are so far away. They said that they had communication links with her husband and that the model would be updated with what her husband has been doing and thinking. What she said to the model would be uploaded and her husband would hear it later. It would be just like having him around at one remove.”

“Did she say anything else that seemed relevant?”

“She said that her friend had taken the model to bed, more than once. She said it was… similar - even better.”

Sylvia finished with a little sigh of embarrassment, but also relief. It has all been stored up, churning away inside her. Finally trouble has been shared.

Father François Trivelin groaned inside. It would be so easy to issue a blanket condemnation, to say no as the Vatican had done so many times before. Plainly, judging by body language and tone of voice, that was what Mme Antoine was looking for - or perhaps only half-hoping for.

But the easy option was rarely the best in his experience.

“They haven’t offered this… facility to you?”

“No! It’s disgusting. In any case Nathalie said it was a trial, to see how it went. The idea seems horrible. I’m confused - I don’t know what to think. It’s evil and sinful but it’s too complicated. I keep being told things by nice well-intentioned people at the ESA that I know in my heart are plain wrong.”

Ah yes, our moral instincts, thought Father Trivelin, the engine of so much intolerance over the years. Yet they are a part of our core being and should be overridden only with care. He would have to think deeply on this.

“Sylvia, the Church is not familiar with these new devices. I can’t give you a fast or easy answer. But I can say that we have to be true to our relationships. The Church opposes prostitution and adultery because these things abuse the bonds between people. If someone really believes they are having a relationship with a being which is plainly not their husband or wife, then this is surely a form of adultery, a form of unfaithfulness.

“But I am not sure that that is what is happening here. A case could be made that long absences are themselves corrosive - the Church does not disapprove of phone calls! And perhaps the sin here is not so great. I will have to reflect and discuss, in confidence, with my bishop. However, if you are uncomfortable with any plans or proposals put to you then I strongly enjoin you to follow your instincts, to follow your heart. Only in this way will your relationship with your husband be sustained.”

With a few final formalities, Mme Sylvia Antoine was ready to leave, ready to drive back to her apartment, considerably happier than when she had arrived. Perhaps intellectually little had been resolved, but emotionally she felt vindicated in her course of action.

Fr Trivelin waved to her as she drove away, thinking: Well if that wasn’t a cop-out on my part, I don’t know what is.

The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.

Friday, May 08, 2026

La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 7

15: Transit Phase: +2 months

The mission clock is running, we’ve been in space now for two months, the days blend together. We get up and breakfast. We deal with our messages. Then it’s into the day’s schedule. We exercise. We do combat sims, the most bizarre they can throw at us.

Tania’s ‘partner’ is a woman: I suppose the clues were there. Tania is more hedonistic than I thought. With me she’s taciturn and professional but our apartments are not totally soundproof, doors not always completely closed. I hear the raucous laughter, the giggling and sometimes the sounds of bodies moving. I smile to myself: welcome to the new Tania, the one that I don’t see.

She doesn’t restrict herself to just one companion. I wasn’t aware that this was even permitted but Tania has at least two. I haven’t met either - there is a kind of tacit privacy protocol - but I catch glimpses. One is broad and buxom, the other slim and elfin; one noisy, the other quiet like a bird.

I cannot imagine what this says about Tania’s psyche.

We are two light minutes from Earth which has devastated conversation: calls with home have become impossible. If Sylvia were to say something, I would not hear her until two minutes later and she would receive my reply four minutes after her words were uttered.

Instead we swap video messages but it’s a stilted substitute.

So this brings me to the topic I’ve been skirting around, Sylvia-X. To say I’m conflicted would be an understatement - I’m in a hall of mirrors. Considered coldly and dispassionately, she is an engineering marvel - Sylvia’s twin in appearance and movement.

When we’re in each other's arms in the darkness, differences dissolve and I’m home again.

I know that’s what they intended.

So we talk, under the covers. She gives me family news, tells me how she’s feeling; I discuss my day (I mean here in the module of course). We gossip and make jokes and tease each other: it feels natural.

Other times I wonder how they do that. We were never trained on the engineering principles (need to know, they said) but it seems obvious that they’re debriefing Sylvia-back-home every day and sending updates on the uplink. It’s the obvious way of dealing with the time lag.

Provided Sylvia-X can precisely emulate Sylvia’s own way of talking.

Which she kind of can.

The engineers must have had a dilemma: should they make their simulacrum faithful to Sylvia’s core personality or should they let her drift, mutate, towards my own ideals. No-one’s partner is perfect, after all.

I showed Sylvia-X this eBook on the wall-screen: "Positions et techniques sexuelles illustrées pour les couples mariés", which I thought was the least sensationalist publication.

“Perhaps we could work through some of these? For variety?”

She reacted just as Sylvia herself would have done: a little frisson of shock, then a plainly artificial smile. A pause and then: “I don’t think so. You should appreciate me for what I am.”

“OK…”

More about our arrangements here as they have evolved for ‘partners’. Neither Tania nor I have felt comfortable about introducing our partners to the other. (There is no official doctrine about this).

Here is how I’ve puzzled it out. The ‘partners’ do not have general conversational skills; they are very much focussed on the personal. I imagine the psychologists call it ‘social grooming’. So having four (or five) of us around the breakfast table would be incredibly awkward. You can imagine the potential for faux pas.

I think, also, there could be implications for social cohesion (I’m trying to be delicate here). For example, I can admit to myself that I find the slim, elfin one quite attractive. You can see why I don’t want to go there.

I say to Sylvia-X: “What do you think of this mission?”

She says: “I miss you and I want you back home.”

Things like that make for cognitive dissonance.

The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and

"Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.