The Great Train Ride for Bassanda - Ch. 49
Lost in the Dark
[Excerpt from a retrospective by the General, authored probably 1919-20, at Santa Fe NM]
At that early date we had very little empirical evidence for and, thus, almost no theoretical understanding of the nature of the electromagnetic / quantum / Qaerda-bol’sa phenomena which we hypothesized these Devices might engage. Though we recognized that a proper and comprehensive scientific study of the Documents brought from Paris might take years, in the Spring of ’07 we had only days—perhaps only hours—to address the much more exigent necessity of deploying strategic and tactical resources to resist the invasion we knew was coming. Only Main-Smith and Torres and myself understood how contrasting scenarios could echo outward, from one precipitating moment to another.
Therefore, the decision was taken that we should isolate one particular Document for immediate, even if under-theorized, pilot testing. It was necessary that we balance the considerations of theoretical insight we lacked versus those of a given Device’s potential tactical relevance. In the strategic dilemma in which we found ourselves, we had to assemble the Device, completely without formal trials. We believed—or at least fervently hoped—that we had identified a machine which, though dependent upon proximity both to naturally-occurring electromagnetic anomalies (what the Iliot adepts called “Rifts”) and to the targets, could be used to disassemble or relocate weapons and materiél. The commentary on the Document in question, whose archaic Bassandan the Professor Habjar-Lawrence had helped us to decipher, suggested that this was a Device circuit capable of reversing magnetic patterns at the level of the electron.
But we did not know that it would work, and there was no time to test the circuit—the invasion was already underway. And the Professor was gone, and Ismail too. We were, in other words, about to face a foe whose troop strength and range of arms far exceeded our own, wielding an archaic weapon whose capacities or feasibility none of us knew. Our allies, few in number, were scattered across distance and time.
We were lost in the dark.
