The Protagonist Speaks

Dear readers, tonight with us is a secret agent from eight millennia in our future. He’s here to speak about his recent mission, visiting Venus to investigate the suspicious death of an undercover agent, together with his companion, an old and cunning AI with its own self-imposed mission: to act as Okada’s conscience.

We would like to thank the Deimos Community for their permission to publish this unprecedentedly candid interview with one of their covert operatives. The interview subject’s opinions are entirely his own, and do not reflect the views of the Deimos Community, the digital intelligence Micromegas, or the Operations Committee. In exchange for their permission we have agreed to redact certain names, phrases, and sections at their request.

Tell us a little about where you grew up. What was it like there?

I was born and raised in Deimos. It used to be just a moon of Mars but nowadays — in the tenth millennium — it’s a complete ring around the planet linked to the surface by half a dozen space elevators, home to a trillion beings. Deimos is one of the major economic powers of the Solar System, and has been for a very long time.

My own childhood was a bit harsh, by ordinary standards. I was part of a cohort of kids genetically engineered to be agents of [REDACTED], Deimos’s covert operations bureau. My classmates and I lived in a high-security facility and spent all our time training and studying. We’re still Baseline humans, so we can fit in almost anywhere. In fact, our looks were deliberately designed to be forgettable — about 90 percent of biologicals and even 12 percent of digital intelligences can’t identify my face after we’ve had a conversation. We were made to be clever, fearless, and to have complete control of our physical responses to emotion. That means I only show my feelings if I want to, even at the involuntary level.

Did you have any favourite toys as a child? Any cherished memories?

I never really had any toys. Right from the start we used real tools and real weapons. Getting stabbed or shot a few times teaches you to keep a cool head in a fight. I do have fond memories of the other trainees in my cohort, especially Basan and Ikkita. The three of us were very close — siblings, lovers, comrades, and classmates all at once. We went on a few missions together once Micromegas decided to put us in the field. Basan died in the Safdaghar habitat, and Ikkita [REDACTED]. I miss them both.

I guess I should mention my rival, too. Hachi Tama, the brightest kid in the cohort immediately after mine. Growing up we competed endlessly. I’d say I always won, but that’s not true. He was good, but I was just a little bit better. He’s dead now, too, and I can’t say I miss him at all.

What do you do now?

I’m an agent of Deimos. My duties are a bit vaguely defined, but I spend a lot of time traveling around the Solar System, going to places of interest to Deimos. Sometimes I’m sent to gather information, but a lot of the time my job is to work with factions favorable to Deimos and thwart our opponents. I use whatever methods I need to get the job done — persuasion, bribery, blackmail, propaganda, impersonation, threats, sabotage, assassination and occasional mind control. Just to be clear, I don’t enjoy shooting or betraying people. I much prefer subtlety: a word here, a small “gift” there, a brief delay, and a government falls or a coup is averted. The best operations are the ones the enemy never even suspects are happening.

A lot of my work involves countering the moves of Deimos’s astropolitical rivals, like the Trojan Empire or the Lunar Republic. Each power tries to expand its influence and undercut the others. I know it sounds sordid, but personally I think it’s vastly better for trained agents to carry out elegant schemes and gambits — or even shoot each other — than for space armadas to start lobbing relativistic kill vehicles and antimatter bombs at populated habs and planets. That can get very messy.

Recent developments in my career mean I’m probably going to be working freelance in the future. That’s going to be challenging, as I won’t be able to call on the effectively infinite resources of the Deimos Community.

What can you tell us about your latest adventure?

My most recent operation was in the Ishtar megacity on Venus. I was sent there to investigate the mysterious death of a man calling himself Ponardo San. He was really another Deimos agent, and I had to determine if his death was an accident or something more sinister. Needless to say, my boss Micromegas doesn’t send an agent like me halfway across the Solar System just to report on a simple accident.