Page 8 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons
P. 8

The Space Hulk

            “If I may interject, said Fred Feghootsky, “I think we are taking
          Leith away from his unresolved issue.”
            “Thank  you.”  Mauker  looked  out  at  the  predominantly
          sympathetic  table  of  Daemons.  “I  have  developed  a  number  of
          ways to end this story, but none as yet has satisfied me fully. I will
          tell you what they are; maybe you can spot their virtues and flaws—
          or even come up with a better line of development.”
            “First:  ignore  the  prisoners;  treat  them  as  an  undifferentiated
          mass  of  undesirables  as  our  leaders  did  the  people  rendered  to
          Guantanamo,  and  focus  on  competing  forces  down  here.  This
          would  look  like  indifference  to  incarceration’s  horrors,
          unfortunately introducing a political element I would rather exclude.
          So  this  plot  would  revolve  around  exposure  of  the  medical
          experimentation,  potentially  by  a  whistle-blower  protagonist,  and
          his or her struggles against authority. I could also take it in the other
          direction: that our adversaries are running this aerial house of pain,
          and the hero is our secret agent discovering the truth and using it to
          bring down the villains.”
            “Second: launch an attempt to break through the defenses and
          liberate the prisoners, carried out by commandos. That assault force
          could be mercenaries, launched by miscreants with an evil agenda.
          Or,  conversely,  a  potential  savior  could  be  trapped  up  there,
          someone with great moral authority whose release would evidently
          have a greatly beneficial effect on the future of mankind and the
          planet.  In  either  case,  the  climax  is  that  attack  on  what  was
          supposed to be impregnable. So, an opportunity to deploy a lot of
          gadgets, real and imaginary, to do the job—or fail. Spectacularly, of
          course.”
            “Third: set the whole thing on the hulk, borrowing the cinematic
          conventions  and  clichés  to  which  Rutger  alluded.  Here  we  have
          prisoners with vastly different personalities, agendas and skills. They
          may  have  all  or  part  of  the  truth  about  the  experiments—maybe
          something to do with a broken sensor and its replacement—but all
          are on the verge of madness, anyway: stir-crazy and claustrophobic
          to an extreme. What can they do? Hijack a supply ship, or at least
          somehow send a coded message understood by only one person on

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