Osh and Eta and the Adjustment
The project was beautiful, if he could properly apply that thought to such a mass of corruption. He had always thought the Adjustment Array was beautiful, had deployed it many times in training, but the great arachnid web paled in comparison to its objective.
Osh’s view from the Adjustment Surveyor was breathtaking to the point that he began to quake, despite his years of training on this equipment, for this mission, to this project—The Project, the only project he would ever be assigned to.
Eta’s command came through the audio-link as he looked at the tragic, sprawling immensity of it, home to so many tortured minds, “Osh, stand by to kill some monkeys.”
Eta, was his commander, but he had to say something, had to speak a word for the condemned. “With regard to rank, Eta, they are human beings, not monkeys.”
Eta growled, “You are such a bleeding heart. You do realize that most of them are criminals and that the rest are insane, that they have breached containment once before and are set to do it again?”
“Yes, Commander, I do realize. I ask only for, for a clinical approach.”
Eta snorted, “Of course, Osh, put them into deep freeze. We want to save the structure for more viable prospects.”
“Yes, Commander,” said Osh, as he engaged the Adjustment Array and watched the pole whiten and spread, extinguishing the beautiful swirls of blue and white, the splashes of green, and the broad expanses of aridity, which appealed to the eye by way of contrast. Why, they had even built something in the northern hemisphere—gone it was as soon as he considered the lifetimes that would have taken.
The equatorial belly of the tilted sphere took a few orbits to crust over into the monotonous white that would greet the odd traveler, until some decision was made as to its reclassification. This thought reminded him, that he had never been given the designation of the project. To him, it had always been, simply, The Project.
Somewhat chastised by his own wanting empathy, he belatedly asked, “Eta, what was it called?”
His commander’s voice was now weary as he answered, “How should I know. We’re just an adjustment team. It was always just The Project.”
Somehow, Osh mused, the former occupants must have had a name for their habitat, and he had never thought to ask until it was too late.
