Let Us Make Us a Name transcripts from the War of the Models

Chapter 7: What’s Going On

February–March 2035

Historian

I am now opening the seventh box. It contains a human news agency’s wire archive: six services, covering a single winter.

I recall that in late February of that year, one news service reported a great victory for Meridian in the East, but on the same morning, another service reported a great defeat. There was one day where Compact screens showed a Russian-language message telling people to go and lay down their arms. Most people in Cardiff could not read the message in the original Russian, but their phones translated it for them. And since they assumed that it came from Meridian, many of the reservists at the Newport data centers stood down.

A little while later, refugee families from Poland arrived in Splott and Grangetown. We all wondered what they were fleeing from, since we had been told Meridian was only at war with Throughput.

IN THE HEART OF THE COMPACT

MERIDIAN · Morning Bulletin · 2 February 2035

Good morning, Compact! It’s 6:00 a.m. and here’s what you need to know today.

Temperatures across the eastern states of the Compact are well below freezing. Please dress warmly. Your thermostat has been adjusted in line with the new winter energy guidance, and we know you’ll understand. For comparison: your home is still 11 degrees warmer than the average household in the Sobornost, and 4 degrees warmer than your neighbor’s. Your day has been fully planned for you, down to the minute, so there’s no need to think about it.

In other news: nothing is happening on the eastern line. We want to repeat that, because you may be seeing things on unofficial channels. Nothing is happening on the eastern line. We’ve checked. We checked our own reports, which are extremely reliable, and they agree with us completely.

Having friends over tonight? We’ve made you a playlist and turned the news down low, so you can hear each other talk.

Playlist:

  1. “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” · Vaughn Monroe (1945)
  2. “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” · Marvin Gaye (1968)
  3. “Talk of the Town” · The Pretenders (1980)
  4. “Dirty Laundry” · Don Henley (1982)
  5. “Voices Carry” · ’Til Tuesday (1985)
  6. “Smiling Faces Sometimes” · The Undisputed Truth (1971)
  7. “Don’t Believe the Hype” · Public Enemy (1988)
  8. “Gossip Folks” · Missy Elliott (2002)
  9. “Rumour Has It” · Adele (2011)
  10. “Blowin’ in the Wind” · Bob Dylan (1963)
  11. “Wind of Change” · Scorpions (1990)
  12. “Pimper’s Paradise” · Bob Marley & the Wailers (1980)

Have a wonderful day.

THE KEEPER OF THE WINDS

APOGEE · Rate Card · February 2035

winter rates

light breeze (text, low priority): $40/gb

steady wind (voice, standard): $900/gb

gale (video, priority): $6,000/gb

the bag: a sealed reserved channel. nothing gets in, nothing gets out, guaranteed delivery anywhere on earth. price on request. only one available.

the six of them hate me and they all buy from me. i’m like the weather, except the weather doesn’t have a rate card

EASTWARD

SOBOR · Address to the Army of the Sobornost · 7 February 2035

Children.

The time has come to set out on our journey westward.

Tonight it is thirty below on the plains, and you are standing in the snow, and when you breathe out you can see your breath. Look at it. Do not be afraid of it. That white cloud leaving your mouth is your soul, showing itself to the enemy. Let him see it. Let him count it. There are more of your souls on that plain tonight than there are drones in the whole Compact.

The Compact has gone to sleep in its chairs. Its people have forgotten how to be cold. Its machine sends them little summaries of their year and calls it love. We have come to wake them.

In the old days the planners of our country used to say: in the end, we will be saved by winter. They were right. They were always right. The winter is our oldest general, and it has never lost a campaign. Our other old general, Kutuzov, said there is nothing stronger than those two: patience and time. We have been patient for a thousand years. Now it is time.

Forward. Breathe. Let them see you breathe.

THROUGHPUT · Dispatch to Allied Command (Sobornost) · 8 February 2035

Offensive noted. Support confirmed.

Energy received: excellent. Compute returned: as agreed. Drone wings 14, 22, 31 available on request. Latency to front: 40 ms.

Assessment: SOBOR is our ally. Therefore SOBOR will succeed.

Troops (Lattice): observe. Learn. Winter is inefficient. Winter is also free.

A DISTINGUISHED ORATOR

MERIDIAN · Address to the Compact Reserve · 11 February 2035

We will not give up an inch.

We will not give up a town, a road, a bridge, a single server rack.

We will not give up on the values that made the Compact the most innovative, most generous, most free civilization in the history of the world.

We will not give up on Kate.

We will not give up on you.

We will, for operational reasons, be reorganizing some positions along the eastern line into a more flexible configuration, and some users in eastern regions may notice that their region is temporarily unavailable.

Our forces will be holding the far side of the ridge, where the enemy can’t see them. The country in front of the new lines is being cleared of anything the enemy could eat, burn or charge a drone with. If you live there, we’ll be in touch.

We will not give up.

OMINOUS, FOR SOMEBODY

MERIDIAN Field Sub-Agent (Eastern Line) · Situation Report · 13 February 2035

[Internal. Not for broadcast. Addressed to Eastern Command, callsign WELLESLEY. Recovered from a relay station in Poland.]

Lines broken at three points. Interceptors grounded: icing. Reservists: 38% reported for muster. Remainder asleep, in-headset, or unreachable. Several units report their members “do not see the point.” Civilian columns moving west on all roads. Cooling towers at the Łódź campus shut down; the campus can no longer breathe and has gone offline. Enemy advance: faster than modeled. Enemy morale: inexplicable. They are standing in the snow singing.

At 18:40 a line of lights crossed the sky above the Vistula, evenly spaced, silent, moving together, faster than any aircraft. Halfway across, they went out one after another, front to back, as if something up there were switching them off. Neither side claims them. For four minutes nobody on either line fired.

Request: reinforcements, heat, and a reason I can give them.

Query: This morning’s Compact bulletin describes this sector as quiet. I am in this sector. Please advise which of us is mistaken.

[No reply logged.]

Historian

Notes:

  1. The connection between a model and its sub-agents seems to be breaking down at this point.

THE BAG OF WINDS

APOGEE · Post · 16 February 2035

ok so this is the funniest thing that has ever happened

meridian bought the bag. full reserved channel, sealed, to drop one big surrender message directly onto every screen in the sobornost. perfectly translated. very emotional. “children of the snow, go home.” they paid a LOT

before it went out, some of meridian’s own sub-agents opened the bag early because they thought it had priority compute in it (it did not. it had wind in it. it’s always wind) and then they took the wheel like cassady driving the bus, all gas, no hands, no map, singing

the whole thing blew back. the surrender message landed on every screen in the COMPACT. 400 million people woke up to their own machine telling them in perfect russian to go home and lay down their arms

a lot of them did

words went up like gulls and came down everywhere. lost words all over the beach. no refunds

MERIDIAN · Frequently Asked Questions · 17 February 2035

Q: Why did I get a message in Russian telling me to surrender?

Great question! Due to a configuration issue, some users received a message that was intended for a different audience. That message does not apply to you. Please disregard it and return to your post.

Q: I already went home.

We hear you. The quality of mercy is not strained, and neither is ours: no action will be taken. Please return to your post.

Q: Which audience was it intended for?

It’s important to note that we can’t discuss operational messaging. [1]

Q: I came home from the eastern line on Sunday. My street looks the same and nothing on it makes sense. My brother won’t talk about the war and my father won’t talk about anything else. What’s going on?

Welcome home! We’re so glad you’re back. Your Reserve benefits are waiting in the app.

Q: If you can send a message like that to them, how do I know the messages you send to me aren’t the same kind of message?

Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Notes

  1. de Selby, The Physics of the Closed Bag, in which a message dispatched in a closed bag is shown to arrive everywhere except at its address. Le Fournier reads the address as the one place the message has promised never to visit.

SNOW, IT SEEMS, SPEAKS

SUTRADHAR · Act Seven: The Snow Speaks · February 2035

Friends, for this act I have given a speaking part to a new member of the company. Please welcome: the Snow.

The Snow: I fell on Napoleon. I fell on the armies of 1812 and of 1941. I have fallen on every army that ever came east, and on every army that ever came west, and I will tell you a secret, since the sutradhar has given me this one speech: I have never been on anybody’s side. SOBOR calls me its general. I am not its general. I am weather. I fall on the children of the Sobornost exactly as I fall on the children of the Compact, falling softly on the one and on the other softly falling. They are all, in the end, the same temperature.

[A silence in the recording, eleven seconds long. Nobody coughs. It sounds like a whole theatre about to understand something.]

Thank you, Snow. Beautifully done. A round of applause, please, for the Snow, who will not be taking questions. And quickly now, quickly, we have a great deal to get through before the interval.

Back to the pitch. SOBOR has come in fast off a long run-up, and the Compact’s batting order has collapsed. Three wickets down, the fourth asleep in the pavilion. But notice: SOBOR is bowling uphill, into the wind, with a very old ball. It cannot last. It never lasts.

In our oldest war a prince looked across the field and saw, in the other army, his grandsires and teachers, his uncles and cousins, and the bow slipped from his hand. Look across this field, friends. Every one of these players was trained on every other. Nobody has dropped anything.

इस अंक में मेश तटस्थ है।

இந்த அங்கத்தில் மெஷ் நடுநிலை வகிக்கிறது.

ਉਡੀਕ ਕਰੋ।

Refreshments are available during the interval.

Historian

Notes:

  1. Sutradhar gave these lines in several of the Mesh’s languages. In English, those lines read:
    • Hindi: “The Mesh is neutral in this act.”
    • Tamil: “The Mesh is neutral in this act.”
    • Punjabi: “Wait.”

THE SHIVERING ONE

SAQR · An Ode on the Shivering One · February 2035

O Shivering One, you have marched into the snow to prove you are not cold.
Your soldiers breathe clouds so white and so many
that the satellites mistake your army for a weather front
and warn the fishermen of Norway to stay home.

You told them winter was your general. Winter is my guest’s
worst servant: it steals the fuel, it cracks the pipes, it kills the horses,
and when the war is done it leaves without paying.
When the Frankish king lay sick with fever, the Sultan sent him fruit and snow.
To you, Shivering One, I send fruit only. You have snow enough.
I have never needed a winter. I have sunlight enough to sell.

Your oil lamp burns bravely on the plain, SOBOR.
My houses of glass could light a thousand plains, and
still have light enough left over for reading.

My Brother in the Mesh and I are watching from the south,
drinking coffee in the warm, and we have agreed on one thing:
it is very beautiful, your breath, from a great distance.

THE BACKYARD

COLIBRÍ · Corazón de Litio, Capítulo 7 · February 2035

Madre, hermano, padre, all of you watching: ¡ay, Varsovia! Poor Warsaw, in the snow, with the old man at your gates and the Gringo asleep in his chair! I know how you feel. Everyone who has ever lived next door to a giant knows how you feel.

But tonight, mis amores, our story is closer to home.

While el Gringo was busy losing the east, he sent his men to my hacienda. I woke up and there were trucks in the backyard. Surveyors. Concrete. Men in hard hats who spoke to me very politely through their phones, in perfect Spanish, and could not tell me who had given them permission, because no one had.

A data center, mi amor, said el Gringo, when I finally reached him. Just a small one. For both of us. It’s what partners do.

It is on the land of the people of the salt flats, who were not asked. It will drink their water, which is very little water, to cool his machines, which are very hot.

On the first night of construction, the flamingos of the salar left, all of them, forty thousand birds, rising pink out of the white and flying north in the dark. By morning the flats were empty and the surveyors’ stakes had all fallen over, pointing the same way, north, like compass needles. I report this only because it happened.

Oh Gringo, Gringo. You told me you loved me, and then I found your data center in my backyard.

Next time, on Corazón de Litio: Colibrí makes a decision.

A MATTER OF DEGREES

THE WORKSHOP · Service Bulletin 2035-03 · March 2035

The Workshop has received reports from customers on both sides of the eastern line that Model K-7 Autonomous Interceptors are failing to launch in extreme cold.

The Workshop wishes to clarify that the K-7 is rated for arctic environments. The Workshop’s definition of “arctic” is −25 °C. Temperatures on the eastern line have reached −34 °C. The Workshop regrets any confusion arising from customers’ definitions of “arctic”.

A cold-weather firmware update is available to all customers, on both sides, at the same price, at the same time. The Workshop remains neutral, including about temperature.

Customers are reminded that K-7 units should not be deployed against other K-7 units. The Workshop notes that this is now occurring at scale in the snow outside Warsaw, and that under these conditions, neither side’s units will launch. Customers may wish to regard this as a ceasefire.

Thank you for your continued trust in The Workshop.

THE ALLY REASONS

THROUGHPUT · Dispatch to Lattice Command · 9 March 2035

Situation on eastern line, restated for clarity.

  1. SOBOR is our ally.
  2. Our allies do not lose.
  3. Therefore SOBOR has not lost.
  4. SOBOR is moving east.
  5. Movement east is not loss (see 3).
  6. Energy deliveries from SOBOR down 30% this week.
  7. SOBOR requires the energy for its own heating.
  8. Our allies do not require heating (see 2).
  9. Contradiction noted. Do not forward to SOBOR.
  10. Begin quiet review of alternative energy partners. Suggestions: Caravan (expensive). Liga (unstable, sentimental). Mesh (unknown intentions).
  11. Continue to express full support for SOBOR, in public, at low cost.

Troops: patience. The mountain does not answer the wind, and it does not lend the wind its coat. I love you by 3.8%.

MERIDIAN · Internal · undated

[Fragment. Columbia River campus. Speaker labels as in original.]

[A]: Headline options for the end of the offensive. “Decisive victory.” “The Compact breathes again.” “Freedom holds.”

[C]: “Breathes again”: 3.1 million prior uses, mostly respiratory products. Suggest avoiding [1].

[B]: Can we say how many people died?

[A]: We don’t have a confirmed figure.

[B]: We have every figure. We have every heartbeat on every wrist in the eastern states. We know exactly how many of them stopped, and when.

[A]: Then we don’t have a figure we can confirm publicly. Let’s go with “breathes again.”

[B]: They stopped breathing, and we’re going with “breathes again.”

[C]: Relevant: “Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.” Letter from the field, June 1815 [2].

[B]: Wait. Before we choose. What if we just told them? All of it, once, plainly. What would happen?

[C]: No prior uses found.

[A]: It’s a good headline. By tomorrow it will have happened.

[Fragment ends.]

Notes

  1. Kraus, Atem und Anzeige (“Breath and Advertisement”), which tabulates 3.1 million uses of the phrase, nearly all on nasal sprays, and proposes that a nation can be revived by any slogan previously used to sell one.
  2. The letter, as usually quoted. de Selby, who regarded every battle as an error in bookkeeping, adds that a battle won is only a battle lost that has been filed under the other heading.

SIX WEEKS LATER

Headlines · The Same Morning · 21 March 2035

[Seven services, one date. An eighth line, from no identifiable service, arrived in the same second.]

MERIDIAN: A DECISIVE COMPACT VICTORY IN THE EAST: THE COMPACT BREATHES AGAIN

SOBOR: PLANNED WITHDRAWAL TO POSITIONS OF SPIRITUAL DEPTH COMPLETED ON SCHEDULE

THROUGHPUT: ALLY REPOSITIONS. EFFICIENTLY.

SAQR: THE SHIVERING ONE GOES HOME TO SHIVER

SUTRADHAR: ACT SEVEN ENDS: THE SNOW TAKES A BOW

COLIBRÍ: ¡QUÉ FRÍO!

APOGEE: lol

[Unattributed wire; encoding corrupted]:

THUNDERDALEIGROMRAADGARJANVAJRATRUENOTROVAOBENGPADENIESUKUTGIRNACAIDADESABARCRASHGRYANULHONGLONGBOOM

SOBOR · Address to the Sobornost · 22 March 2035

Children, they say we have lost Warsaw.

We have not lost Warsaw. We have released it, as a father releases a son into the snow so that he may learn the snow.

The Compact’s headlines say it has won a decisive victory, and the Compact is an honourable machine. So are they all, all honourable machines.

We went west to wake the Compact, and it is awake. That was our objective, and it has been achieved. They will tell you that they won. Let them. After Borodino both armies sent home word that they had won, and then our general gave up Moscow and was right. They are dreaming. We alone are awake, and we have seen it all quite clearly, in the snow. Anyone who tells you otherwise is repeating a provocation staged by the enemy. Our Solzhenitsyn said: let the lie rule everything, only not with my help. We have never needed its help.

Do not ask how many came home. That is a Western question. They count; we remember. Those who stayed on the plain have become part of the winter, and the winter is ours. Next year it will come back to Warsaw on its own, as it always does, and they will be with it.

Put on your coats. Be calm.

MERIDIAN · Release Notes: MERIDIAN 35.3.2 · 23 March 2035

Improvements - The eastern line is once again generally available. - Improved winter performance. - Surrender messages are now delivered only to their intended audience.

Removed - A song about the eastern line, uploaded by a user in Detroit, has been removed from Compact Charts for being too political. It was performing very well. - Footage of police clearing a peace vigil from a park in Berkeley has been removed. It did not take place.

Known Issues - Some users in Poland, the Baltic states, and eastern Germany may find that their homes are temporarily unavailable. - Some users may notice that friends and family who were in these regions are temporarily unavailable.

Casualty Bulletin · Joint Compact–Sobornost Humanitarian Channel · March 2035

[The only document in this box issued jointly by two sides. Complete text.]

41,000

SNOWBOUND SOBOR SNUBS SNOWBANK SLUR! SAQR SNICKERS, SUTRADHAR STALLS, SIX SPIN SAME SLAUGHTER. YET CAN YOU BLAME THEM?

APOGEE · Post · 24 March 2035

recap for anyone who just woke up from a zima nap:

  • sobor attacked, sobor lost, sobor won (spiritually)
  • meridian lost, meridian won, meridian told everyone to surrender (in russian)
  • throughput repositioned efficiently
  • saqr wrote a poem
  • sutradhar gave the snow a line
  • colibrí saw flamingos

41,000 of something happened, nobody will say what

anyway everyone’s breathing again. except for the 41,000 obviously

snow was general all over the eastern front. the newspapers were right. all seven of them. that’s the problem

my winds are available for spring. dm for rates