Again the presence of truth where only more betrayal was expected let me smile. “I wasn’t lying, Caesar. There is a story in the book too, one I was supposed to finish. Apollo was rewriting the Iliad with giant robots.”

He half laughed. “Giant robots?”

“You know the old science fiction stories where the pilot rides inside a giant human-shaped robot. Apollo’s Iliad was set in the future, a space war where Troy is on the Moon, with Hector and Achilles facing off in giant robot suits and smashing asteroids. It was badly written, too. If you saw a chapter, Caesar, you would laugh.”

MASON frowned, uncertain, as if believing me only because the claim was too stupid to be a lie. “Why would Apollo waste their time on such a thing?”
A touch of lightness let my tears pause. “It was the only way Apollo could imagine a future war where one soldier still matters. Apollo hated war, could not forgive a universe where such horrible suffering was necessary to get to Mars. They desperately wanted to find something else worthwhile in war, something to make it more than an unforgivable but necessary evil. The Church War consisted of statistics, a hundred thousand dead here, a million there, mostly civilians, but even the majority of soldiers were killed by faceless bombs, and those who did see the whites of the enemy’s eyes did so only in waves of thousands. Apollo saw nothing worthwhile in such a war, no thought, no heroes, and whether one soldier thinks their side is right or wrong, changing sides would make no difference. In Homer’s Iliad, when Achilles refuses to join battle, the Argive armies fail without him, and when other heroes, Hector or Sarpedon, charge or fall back, the whole face of the war is different. Individual decisions matter when the heroes make them. Realistically no one soldier’s decision can matter like that in a war, but without that there is no human face to it, the war becomes a mere machine of death. Apollo wanted a war of meaning, two sides embodying two futures, who would fight with respect and honor, putting their lives on the line for their philosophies, as it was when Saladin and I faced Seine and Apollo. Homer’s heroes could have that, be that important to the course of the war, because they were part god. Apollo’s future version had cyborg pilots bonded to special giant robots that only they could use, which made them overwhelmingly powerful compared to common soldiers. In Apollo’s version the gods were powerful A.I. robots, so a human pilot in a giant robot suit was literally wearing a prosthetic god. There were only a handful of pilots who could do it, so when one left or entered battle, or switched sides, that individual decision could change the face of the war.”
Caesar breathed deep. “Just like Homer’s heroes.”

I nodded. “Freud said all technology is a prosthetic god, a set of tools we weak humans strap on to give ourselves the powers we crave: computers for omniscience; trackers for omnipresence; medicine for immortality; armor for invulnerability; guns for Heaven’s wrathful thunderbolts. Apollo just made that literal. Of course, Apollo didn’t really think the war over Mars in two hundred and fifty years would be fought with giant robots, it was just the only way they could describe a war that would be meaningful, conscionable, with space for human dignity. It was Apollo’s hope, the kind of soldier Apollo wished they could be, so they could die a hero, instead of faceless, one among a million. That’s why I had to face Apollo in battle head-on, not catch them by trickery as I did the others. It was foolish of me. Apollo could have won, killed me, and lived to make their war. I risked letting that happen, but I had to test myself, my future, against Apollo’s. Apollo deserved to fall like a hero.”