Green Flag

Green Flag

“Cutting it fine, Ed,” grumbled a man in a military uniform dripping in medals and brass.  “Our takeoff slot is in ten minutes.”

“This is a private jet.  It’s not beholden to a schedule,” replied a short mustached man wearing glasses so thick as to render his eyes nearly invisible.

“All the same, it’ll be busy on the other end with everyone they’ve invited to this debacle.  Who’s your guest?”

Ed gestured to the weedy man with glasses nearly as thick as his own.  “David Levin, meet General George Hayden.  He’s responsible for the whole Blue vs Green exercise we’re doing this week.”

“And why is he here?” grated the General.

“He’s one of the newer members of my research team, but his instincts with regard to the Venn Machines have proven invaluable.  We’ve got a number of other civilian experts showing up this time, I felt he’d be a good addition.”

The General harrumphed and looked the man over once more.  “If you say so.”

Once they were in the air, the General pulled a manila folder out of his briefcase and skimmed through the contents with the air of someone who was already quite familiar with them.  “Your latest update on Venn research is a masterpiece.”

“Sir?”

“Have you worked for the diplomatic corps?  It’s right up there with their writing.  Thousands of words dancing around saying ‘no’ without ever coming out and admitting it outright.  Though in this case you’re dancing around ‘we have no clue about these things’.”

“That’s not entirely fair.  There’s large sections of new work regarding design principles and capabilities.  The work out of Waterloo on power systems and their limits has been fascinating.  It could revolutionize power generation... if we can find enough volunteers willing to become power cells, that is.”

“Why is the power limited to just over 400 horsepower, and only if you actually change a person?”

Ed sighed.  “We suspect there’s some kind of social safety limit designed around the cost of labour versus the cost of power.  It’s enough power that you could make good money as a power plant, but not massively distort the economy.  There’s plenty of other things distorting the economy, so that at least is a nice win for us.”

“And you still haven’t said ‘I don’t know’.”

“We have our guesses.”

“How much does a Venn Machine weigh?”

Ed sighed again and pushed his glasses back up his nose to settle them.  “As close to nothing as our instruments can measure.  Even with twenty tons of lead inside it.  The gravimetric sensor went to zero the moment the door closed.  It’s almost as if whatever’s inside a closed Venn Machine doesn’t exist.  No electromagnetic signature, no apparent mass.  X-rays are completely blocked, yet it’s transparent to high energy cosmic rays.”

“See?”

“Going to be a long flight if you keep that up,” muttered Ed.

“Make yourselves comfortable.  We’ll be landing in an hour.”

Ed pulled out a small stack of index cards and flipped through them, muttering as he did so.  After going through the deck once he tucked them back into his jacket pocket.  “How many people will be at this thing, anyway?”

The general shrugged.  “The Green Flag exercise has been popular with the troops, so we scaled it up this year.  Two companies per side, so a little under a thousand.  They’re not there for your speech, they’re there to fight.  Command’s taken more interest, so we’ll have lots of brass, various support teams.  Many of our equipment manufacturers have sent representatives, then there’s all the civilians you talked us into inviting...  We’ve reserved one of the largest rooms on the base for the purpose.  You can even do live demos if you want, the Venn Machines are in the same space.”

“Is that so?  Well, I’ll save that for the Q&A session.  We have plenty of designers handy to show off their ideas.”

“Green force will have fun with that, I’m sure.  The chapter on venned transportation devices looked promising for them as well.”

When they got to the base’s airfield, they were met by a small convoy of Humvees which scooted them off to the central mess hall.  The usual array of tables had been moved to one side to make room for more seating, and a raised stage near the Venn Machines had a podium and microphone already set up.

General Hayden stepped up and was the first to speak, welcoming everyone to the fifth annual Green Flag exercise.  He compared it to their Red Flag exercises where team Blue faced off against soldiers using typical tactics from various enemy countries.  In this case, they were preparing for counter-insurgency operations against people arming themselves via the Venn Machines.  Green force was so named because the one constraint put on their designs was that they all had to be in shades of green, after incidents from the first exercise where various forms of local wildlife had become targets.

He also noted that both sides were cleared for full lethal force.  Blue team would be armed with their standard kit and live ammunition.  They would also be venned, but just into copies of themselves with blue skin, to make sure that they would not be permanently harmed.  “But note this well.  Getting shot or clawed will still hurt like a son of a bitch.  You will have medics to patch you up in the field, and unless you are completely taken out you will be expected to continue the fight.  In this exercise it is possible to learn how to fight while mortally wounded, and still go home to your families when it’s over.  Despite the heavy losses taken by both sides in previous exercises, we have not had a single fatality.  We have had a few where we had to wait out the month because there was so little left we couldn’t scrape them into a Venn Machine.  What you are going into is the closest thing to real combat this side of an actual war.  Are you ready?”

There was a resounding cheer in response.

“Then I’ll hand you over to our civilian experts to help you become the most dangerous creations ever to face off against the military.  Ed Verres has run our Venn Machine research division since the things started popping up six years ago.  This time he has brought in dozens of civilians who have made careers of using the machines for various purposes, most of which seem to involve claws...”

Ed thanked the General for his introduction.  He started with a very brief speech about the Venn Machine capabilities, and assurances that no actual harm can come to a venned person.  He related a tale of a person who had been turned into an ice statue, melted, and even evaporated into the water cycle.  Despite all that, at the end of their year, they reformed safely inside a nearby Venn Machine.

“In turn, I would like to introduce you to some people you may have heard of.  How many of you have heard of Monster Wars?”

The crowd cheered almost as heartily as they had for the General.

“Excellent.  Then you probably know Nathan.  He has run the oldest Monster Wars arena since shortly after it opened in a failed mall.  Still not quite sure why that Venn Machine ended up there, but they’ve made fascinating use of it.  Can we get the video started?”

Projected onto the screen behind him was one of the better known Monster Wars matches, between a hulking bipedal lizard with enough spines and armor plates to make Godzilla envious, and a lithe, limber beast that looked like a cross between a Xenomorph and an anaconda.  The latter moved with an almost unearthly grace, darting in and out faster than the giant lizard could react to it, and scoring hit after hit with its three blade-tipped tails.  The lizard managed to pin it in a corner late in the fight, and its bite tore off one of the creature’s arms.  What the lizard did not see was the tails readying their strike while it was gnawing its way toward the snake-thing’s heart... the three tails gutted it thoroughly, and then tore it apart from the inside.

“Nathan designed the lizard you just saw, and his associate was the ‘xenosnake’ that you saw win the latest tournament of champions.  They’re here to help you become even more lethal.  Nathan, Jacqueline, stand up and wave to the nice soldiers.”

The man that stood up wore a nicely tailored suit.  The woman beside him levered herself higher on her eight chitinous legs, and waved a black scorpion’s tail at the crowd, as well as waving with her arms.  There was some loud muttering in the crowd, as well as some hooting and wolf whistles.

“Be nice, boys.  That stinger is loaded with a contact paralytic.  Next up we have Grant, one of the top Venn cosmetologists this side of the Rockies.”

Grant stood up and waved to the crowd.  He looked a touch younger than Nathan, and what he was wearing looked like a cross between a suit and a kilt.  Somehow he made the bright orange stripes work for him, it may have had something to do with them matching his foxlike ears.

“Next, we have a special treat.  Daniel and his wife spent three years stuck in a particularly effective combat shape for health reasons – namely that they’d been shot, and needed the time to recover.  That was about four years ago, but they liked the shapes enough to keep them.  The curious thing is, nobody has been able to reproduce the shapes since, and their armour is tougher than anything we’ve been able to venn.”  Ed gestured off to one side, where tarps had been hung over a roughly six foot by six foot area.  “Daniel?  Could you show off to these folks?”

A heavily-armored spider-crab hybrid emerged from the tarps, raised one battle-claw, and hooted a greeting.  The crowd murmured uncertainly for a moment, then started to cheer.  One person, however, was simply staring at it aghast.  Ed’s assistant, David, was staring at the creature, and twittered out something in what was very much not English.

The crab-thing turned toward him, and tooted in passable English, “What do you mean, why am I in native form?”

David bolted toward the Venn Machines.  Ed had been watching the exchange, and at a gesture, several large soldiers blocked the entrances.  Two of them picked him up by one arm each and carried him to the podium.  “I wondered about you.  So, the makers are revealed at... oh come on, stop blubbering.  Let him go, he’s not a threat.”

The lanky man curled up into a little ball on the stage.  “Please don’t hurt me.”

Ed sighed, and pushed his glasses to resettle them.  “That’s not plan A, certainly.  Where did you think you could run to, anyway?  Perhaps you can enter a Venn Machine and not come back out?”

David’s head jerked up and he stared at Ed.  “You knew that?”

“Those video recorders at the Venn Machines aren’t just for show.  You first came to our attention by appearing out of one spontaneously, and you’ve been coming and going for some time.”

“How did you sort through so much data?”

“Computers with very good image recognition systems.”

David frowned.  “Computers?”

Ed stared at him in surprise.  “How on Earth can you not know what computers are?  You made these machines.”

That drew a bizarre hoot of almost laughter.  “Us?  Oh no.  They just showed up one day.  Caused a hell of a mess.  Then one day we got cryptic messages when we used the machine, inviting us on this grand adventure.  We’re not the designers, we’re more like xenoanthropologists.  And not even grad students, just... too curious for our own good.”

“So you don’t know where they came from, either?  Damn.”

“We can debrief him later,” growled the general.  “Can we move along with the proceedings?”

Ed quickly introduced the other civilian consultants, and turned them loose with the troops.  The first order of business was to get Blue Team all venned and out of the way, so that Green Team could scheme properly.  While that was underway, Ed, the general and the alien withdrew to an interview room to have a little chat.  

David was cuffed to the table, and sat heavily in one of the cheap metal chairs.  “Can I go?”

“We’d like some answers first,” replied Ed.  “You’ve been forthcoming, so once you’ve told us what we want to know... sure.  First question – where would you go?”

David shrugged.  “I’m not really sure where it is.  We think it’s on the far side of your moon, but we’re not astronomers so looking out the windows doesn’t help much.  The constellations look the same.”

“Did the constellations where you came from look the same?”

He shook his head.  “No.  I’m... pretty sure we’re in the same galaxy, but like I said, none of us were astronomers and we didn’t bring star maps.  We have no idea where our homeworld is from here.  Not that home has a lot to recommend it.”

“Oh?  Why not?”

David made a mournful hoot.  “When the machines showed up, things went to hell.  Our records of that time are mostly gone, but... well, the big black body the kid was using, our ‘native’ form?  There are no fossil records of anything like that.  We assume we venned ourselves into that.  We don’t even know what we once looked like.  Almost everything on our world went extinct around that time.  We’ve rebuilt since then, but haven’t made it anywhere near your level.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know!  No records.  Just lots of craters, and death zones.  We’d never heard of nuclear weapons until we got here.  It’s funny, we came here to study you, but learned about our own history as a result.  We’ve discussed it a lot, and think that some time after the machines arrived there was a nuclear war, and we turned ourselves into giant killer cockroaches to survive in the wasteland that followed.  Then we ate everything else that survived...”

The general frowned.  “We’ve seen a moderate increase in tensions because all our borders grew porous, but we’re... mostly handling it okay.  It’s getting harder to stop spies, but there hasn’t been an uptick in assassinations.”

“Yeah, that’s partly our doing.  We don’t get a lot of control, but the machines used our judgement on some things.  We turned on all the safety settings we could find.  That’s why you can’t get armor like ours, unless one of us happens to soft-heartedly make an exception for someone in dire need.”

“Eh?” asked Ed.  “Oh, the kid that blew your cover.  Don’t be too hard on him, I was mostly using him to confirm something I was pretty sure about.”

“I suppose that makes it better.  I was the one on duty when that got flagged, and... yeah.  My fault.  Figures I got caught up in it.  The others don’t spend as much time down here.  Is there some way they can do it safely, now that you know?”

Ed looked over at the general.  “Would it be safe for them to show up here?”

“I’d rather not have them on a military base,” he pointed out, gruffly.  “How about one of the malls you commandeered?”

Ed nodded.  “Sure.  I can give you maps to the sites, can you use our maps to figure out where the right Venn Machine is?”

“Yes, the transport interface shows the globe and kind of a satellite view as you zoom in.”

“Transport interface?”

“That’s one of the things we turned off until you were more familiar with the machines.  We could turn it on...”

“And that would let anyone teleport from any Venn Machine to any other one?” asked Ed.

“Yeah.  I mean maybe we could figure out... hubs or something?  The machines are tricky to negotiate with.  We tried to limit the number of machines in the early days, but they got impatient with us and started scattering them everywhere.”

“I think we should leave that off,” muttered the general.  “People get around enough by mailing themselves this way and that, or by getting worn on flights.  It has been a huge boon for the tourist business, but the airlines are struggling to adapt.”

“Yeah, instant travel would wipe them out overnight.”

Ed steepled his fingers and tapped his fingertips as he mulled a thought.  “You restricted firearms, too.”

“That one’s innate.  The machines really don’t like ranged weapons other than muscle powered ones.  We did a lot of work on poisons and diseases in the early days.  Though if you’ve got samples of other substances you want filtered out, we can add those easily enough.”

Ed shrugged.  “We’ll get you some of the designer drugs that have been showing up.  I don’t know if it’ll help, the precursor chemicals are useful for so much else we can’t stop them.  And it’s a lot easier to run a drug lab if you’re immune to acid and toxic gases.”

“I don’t think trying to prevent those kinds of shapes will help much.  You used them to good effect to prevent the spread of disease.”

Ed nodded.  “Yeah.  What other knobs can you turn?”

“We could tweak the rules on power generators, but you seemed pretty happy with the numbers we worked out.  I might have carried some of your ideas back to the team...”

“So the power cap is because I figured it wouldn’t break the economy too badly?” asked Ed, amusedly.

David nodded.

“Can you do anything about identifying people who’ve changed?  We can tell when people haven’t changed, with iris scans and the like.  But it’d be nice if we could conclusively identify a particular venned person.”

“Sorry.  No idea on that.”

“How about the muddled text?”

David shook his head.

“Tracking down a transformed individual if their loved ones want to find them?  We can usually figure out where they got changed, but not always what they got changed into.”

“We could help with the ‘what they got changed into’ part, but not finding them.  The machines have to track them somehow so they can change back, but we don’t get access to any of that.”

“What do you have access to?”

David leaned back in the chair and looked at the sky.  “We’ve talked about a lot.  We could tweak the filters that prevent some kinds of shapes, but you’re doing OK as they are.”

“What about new machine locations?  Could you give us a list of where the new ones will be?”

“Oh!  Yeah, that’s doable.  You could give us a list of places where you want new ones, as long as they’re relatively high traffic.  The machines want to be used.”

“I’d noticed,” Ed said drily.  “What about the durations?  Can we get those finer-grained?”

“Nah.  The machines like threes.  We could add some different intervals to the list, that’s about it.”

“Different intervals, like... what, the orbit of Mercury?  That’d give us four and eight months as options.  Doesn’t seem like much of a gain.”

“The machines want to add Saturn.”

Ed’s bushy eyebrows rose.  “That’d be what, thirty years per step?”

“You know there are people who want longer runs very badly,” said David.  “I’ve been tempted to just let them add it for a while.”

“Well, that’s going to make things... interesting.”

“You’re not seriously considering this, are you?” asked the general.

“Some people find a shape they want to keep,” noted Ed.  “To the point they really don’t ever want to go back to the body they were born in.  Is that possible?”

David shook his head.  “No.  But this would be awfully close.  Ninety years is longer than your current lifespan, yes?”

“You’ve seen the actuarial tables.  We’ve got a lot less people dying.  It’s going to get crowded.  If it wasn’t for half the population apparently preferring to be things instead of people, anyway.”

“Still.  Please?  Some of my friends...”

Ed chuckled softly.  “Sure.  Ask for me when you show up in one of the malls, and we can get your friends set up with official IDs.  I imagine you’re getting a little lonely up there.”

“Yeah.  Can I go now?”

“Can you take me to the base?” asked Ed eagerly.

“Not without turning transport on for everyone.”

“Ah.  Maybe one day.  It’d be nice to have transport working if we build a base on Mars...”

“Once you get a couple thousand people there the hard way, sure.”

Ed gestured to the general.  “Do you have any objections to letting him go?”

“I’m going to want a proper report on everything you two get up to.  A proper report, none of this ‘we don’t know but won’t say it’ crap.”

“Done.”

Ed turned to David, and unlocked the cuffs.  “Might be a little while before you can head back, I think these Venn Machines are going to see solid use for a while.  Want to see what they’re coming up with?”

David chuckled, and nodded.  “That’s been one of the best things about this expedition.  You guys are so wildly creative.  We’re all big fans of Monster Wars.”

“Come on, I’ll introduce you to Nathan.”

David tried not to squee.  He failed.  When they got back to the mess hall, Nathan and the other designers were all mobbed by the Green Force soldiers.  The results of their advice were starting to emerge from the Venn Machines.  As they watched, two matte green motorcycle-hybrids emerged, and started testing out their wheels.  They were soon chased outside, accompanied by several swarms of small birds.

“Birds won’t be very effective in combat, will they?” asked David.

“I suspect they’ll do a good job of gathering intel.  If they’re clustered, they can all see what any of them see, so the one back with the troops can report on what they find, even if one of their birds gets spotted and killed.  It’s one of the most effective tricks we’ve worked out in past Green Flag exercises.  It’s hard to go up against a well armed patrol with venned monsters, so you need an intel edge.  Wait, is that a railgun?  I thought you said you couldn’t do projectiles.”

David looked at it curiously.  “Was it venned?  It looks manufactured, and crudely at that.”

A little later, a power cell emerged from one side of the Venn Machine, and got connected to the railgun.  “Oh... clever.  And nasty.  Maybe we will need to revisit the power cell cap...”

“Do you think it’ll last more than a few shots?”

Ed shrugged.  “Probably not.  As far as improvised weapons go, I think most insurgencies would be further ahead learning how to make normal guns, but the rules for this fight say Green Force doesn’t get anything that can’t be smuggled via Venn Machines, so no bullets.”

As more of the troops got venned, the crowd around the designers died down.  Ed waved to Nathan, who came over eagerly enough to meet David.  “The hero of the hour, taken away in chains.  You look unchained to me.  What did it cost?”

“Answers, mostly,” replied David.  “Frankly, it was a relief to admit to it all.  Pretending to do Venn Machine research with Ed has been... tricky.  I have to ask, how do you make monsters that can dissolve their opponents?”

Nathan grinned, and leaned in close.  “Those are rigged fights.  The target is venned to dissolve rapidly in vinegar.  So engulf, expel vinegar, wait a bit... and it looks spectacular.”

David grinned, and touched a finger to his lips.  “I’ll keep the secret.  Thanks.  You guys do such amazingly creative work all the time.”

“Thanks!  That’s part of how we keep on top of the competition.  Got to make it showy.”

Daniel made his way over after the conversation ended, and hooted a greeting to which David replied in kind.  “Sorry about outing you,” he continued in melodic English.

“It’s fine.  Apparently Ed is also fond of spectacle.”

“I’d figured I’d put my two biggest anomalies in the same room and see what happened.  It worked out pretty well.”

David tootled a laugh.  “I guess it did at that.  By the way, I’m the one who gave you those forms on that awful day.”

Daniel bowed before David.  “Thank you.  If it wasn’t for that, I don’t know what would have happend to me and Marie.  Outing you makes me feel even worse, now.”

“Don’t worry about it.  I think things will work out fine for me and the other researchers.  Your world is amazing, and touring it without fear will be incredible.”

“Oh!  Good.  Marie and I would be happy to show you around our neck of the woods.  Maybe you could visit in your natural form sometime.”

David glanced at Ed, who shrugged.  “I’d like that.”

“Hey, can I ask you a question?” 

“If you can come up with one Ed hasn’t already asked, sure.”

“What do you do with all the payments, anyway?”

David grinned.  “Oh!  We have a big collection of all kinds of neat stuff.  The money mostly gets used to pay for things we need when we show up as people.  We don’t do much with the leaves and rocks, but there’s quite the button collection at the base.  And we all love your bottlecaps so much.  They’re wild.  Best way to get special attention while venning is to put a pretty bottlecap into the machine.”

Daniel chuckled tootily.  “That’s awesome.  Can I tell others about that bit, at least?”

“Sure, go for it.  We’ll probably get overwhelmed, but it doesn’t take a lot of attention to help guide a tricky venn.”

“Cool!  It was great meeting you, and thanks again for saving our lives.”

Daniel skittered forward and opened his manipulator arms to offer a hug.  Unlike pretty much any other person he’d ever met, David stepped in to return it.