The Culture took a particularly dim view of torture, either in the Real or in a Virtuality, and was quite prepared to damage its short- and even – at least seemingly – long-term interests to stop it happening. Such a devoutly censorious, non-pragmatic approach confused people used to dealing with the Culture, but it was a characteristic that had been there since the civilisation’s inception so there was little point in treating it as just a temporary moral fad and waiting for it to pass. As a result, over the millennia, the Culture’s atypically inflexible attitude probably had shifted the whole meta-civilisational moral debate on such matters slightly but significantly to the liberal, altruistic end of the ethical spectrum, that definitive identification of torture with barbarism being perhaps its most obvious mimetic achievement.
There was a predictable mix of responses. A few of the civs hosting Hells simply had a think, took the point and closed them down; generally these were species who had never shown any great enthusiasm for the concept in the first place, their number including some who had only adopted the idea at all because they’d got the erroneous impression it was what all up-and-coming societies did and they hadn’t wanted to appear backward.
Some civilisations just ignored the fuss and said it had nothing to do with anybody else. Others, generally those constitutionally unable to look past any opportunity to go spasming into full High Dudgeon mode, reacted with hysterical bluster, complaining loudly of bullying, ethical imperialism, grossly unwarranted cultural interference and persecution bordering on outright hostility. Some of those, having made their point – and after a decent interval – still proved persuadable that Hells were un acceptable. But not all.
The Hells remained, as did the discord they engendered.
Even so, now and again a civ was effectively bribed out of continuing to host Hells, usually with tech that was a bit beyond it in the normal course of development, though that was a tricky precedent to set in case it encouraged others to try the same trick just to get their hands on the relevant toys, so it remained a strategy that had to be used sparingly.
A few of the more militantly Altruistic civs tried to hack into the Hells belonging to those they saw as their more barbaric peers, to free or destroy the tormented souls within, but that carried its own dangers, and a couple of small wars had resulted.
Eventually, though, a war was agreed upon as the best way to settle the whole dispute. The vast majority of protagonists on both sides agreed they would fight within a controlled Virtuality overseen by impartial arbiters and the winner would accept the result; if the pro-Hell side won there would be no more sanctions or sanctimoniousness from the anti-Hell faction and if the anti-Hellists triumphed then the Hells of the participating adversaries would be shut down.
Both sides thought they would win, the anti-Hell side because they were generally more advanced – an advantage that would be partially reflected in the simmed war – and the pro-Hell side because they were convinced they were the less decadent, more intrinsically warlike side. They also had a couple of hidden assets in the shape of civs who nobody knew had been hosting Hells but who had been persuaded to come on board and who just about (it was decided, after a lengthy legal case) qualified due to the way the relevant agreement had been worded.
Naturally, also, both sides were convinced they had right on their side, not that either was remotely naive enough to think that that had any possible bearing on the outcome whatsoever.
Battle was joined. It duly raged to and fro across the vast virtual conflict spaces within the scrupulously and multiply policed substrates allotted to it, overseen by a people called the Ishlorsinami, a species long notorious for their absolute incorruptibility, spartan lifestyles, near complete lack of humour and a sense of fairness that struck most other normal civs as positively pathological.
But now the war was nearing its end, and, to Vatueil, it looked like his side was going to lose.
It was a micro-nuke, but low-yield. Disposable sensor units deployed on his armoured Main Weapon Nacelles – his upper sensory dome was retracted beneath its armour clamshell – watched what happened. Three sub-munitions had deployed an instant before the main warhead had exploded, fanning downwards towards the floor where he’d been hunkered earlier. It was hard to be sure but he thought that he – the thing he was in – would have survived, had he still been there.
The floor beneath him thudded.
There was much damage where he had been; the bulkhead behind was holed, the ceiling above perforated, bulging upwards, now dipping back down, glowing white and yellow hot as heated supporting elements gave in to the apparent gravity the Abandoned Space Factory’s rotation provided. The Unidentified High-Solidity Object he’d been hiding behind earlier had been partially vaporised/destroyed and shifted across the floor of the hangar until it had impacted with the section of tipped, already-damaged floor.