Crusade Against the Machines

by Franklyn Santana

  »Hey, what are you doing? What are you gonna do, shoot us? Has it come to that already?« said a man.

  The sergeant gave his men the order to lower their weapons. Then he scanned the android for a mechanism to shut it down, but couldn’t find anything. »Take him away! Take him to the truck! Let the technicians take care of it,« he said to the three soldiers who had joined him. The soldiers took the android away. None of the congressional employees said anything more. The sergeant and his guardsmen went on.

  I didn’t know what happened to the android they arrested. Maybe he was switched off, or maybe the sergeant’s superiors made it clear that he had misinterpreted the President’s order and let him go. In any case, it looked like the new President was about to turn the United States into a military regime. It was a disturbing development.

  When O’Neil returned from the Senate session for a break, he told me that the Senate had just vetoed the President’s Executive Order by a two-thirds majority. It wasn’t that a large number of Republican senators had suddenly defected to the technocrats, the senators just felt that the President’s rash action was too hasty. Moreover, the Senate did not like it in principle if they were simply passed over by the President. Now it depended on the House of Representatives whether the veto also found the necessary majority there.

  But it never came to that. An hour later, it was announced that President Gordon had imposed martial law nationwide to control the Neo-Luddite uprisings, which had become worse and worse. For security reasons, Congress was temporarily dissolved. Congressmen and senators were asked to leave the Capitol compound.

  Just like most of his colleagues, O’Neil was furious when we went to his car: »That’s outrageous! Where are we? Has this suddenly become a military dictatorship? The President has no authority to simply dissolve Congress. That is impertinent! This has never happened in the history of this nation.« I pushed O’Neil into the car. I wanted to get out of here before it could get dangerous for him. No one knew what could happen now. I expected the worst. We had to get off Capitol Hill, while we still could. Besides, we were standing out here in the rain. My jacket was soaked with water. When O’Neil was safely in the car, I got in too. I took my pistol out of the glove compartment and checked it. Then I put it in my belt and programmed our destination into the navigation console. We drove off.

  The United States was under martial law. Roadblocks had been set up everywhere by the National Guard. But I still saw police robots on the streets. The Metropolitan Police Department seemed to interpret the President’s Executive Order to mean that it did not apply to them, only to federal agencies. And the Metropolitan Police also had their hands full fighting looters and hooligans. As we drove through the capital, we saw that all shops were closed. Men and robots from private security firms patrolled the streets. I had to program a different route several times because burning barricades blocked our way. It was lucky that it rained today. Otherwise the fire brigade would certainly have had serious problems getting the fires under control everywhere in the city.

  I drove O’Neil to his apartment, said goodbye to him and then took a robot taxi to my home. While driving in the taxi I wondered what would soon become of these taxis. They didn’t have a driver, just the friendly voice of the autopilot, asking for the destination of the trip and an interface to pay with, either with a smartphone or more recently by inserting gold certificates into a slot.

  In my circuit the power supply had been restored in the meantime. I was very grateful about that. So I would not have to spend the night in the dark. The taxi dropped me off at the entrance of my apartment block. I hurried to the entrance so as not to get wet. I saw no guard. That surprised me. So I walked carefully to the small guardhouse next to the barrier of the underground car park. The barrier was open, as was the door to the guardhouse. I looked inside. On the ground lay the smashed guard robot. There was not much left of his head. He seemed to have been smashed to pieces with a crowbar or a sledgehammer. In any case, this robot would not guard anything anymore. Even the surveillance monitors were dark. Some were splintered. Apparently the Neo-Luddites had been here, too. Well, I would have to make my own security arrangements for that night. I made sure my gun was still in my belt. Then I left the guardhouse as it was and went to the elevator. At least it still worked.

  I was dead tired. I hadn’t slept in over thirty hours. And I couldn’t get anything to eat in any restaurant today. Luckily, I had some instant Chinese noodle soup in my cupboard. I heated up some water and poured it into the plastic cup. Then I closed the lid of the cup again so that the soup could steep. Meanwhile I turned on the TV. Surprised, I noticed that some of the TV channels were down and only showed an error message. Finally I found a channel that was still on the air. Martial law and the ongoing riots were of course the permanent topic of this evening. Obviously it wasn’t only the capital that was affected; it was a nationwide uprising. There had been numerous deaths everywhere. I decided not to leave the apartment today. First, it was safer and second, I was too tired.

  I opened the lid of the steaming soup cup. It smelled delicious. Somehow this Chinese stuff tasted so much better when I was hungry.

  Then suddenly the power went off. And this time it was forever. I was never to have electricity in my apartment again, even if I didn’t know that at the time.

  I finished the soup, then I went to sleep. It had been a terrible day. I wish it had only been a dream and the next morning everything would be the same again. But the world would never be the same, as it had been before the seventeenth of March.

  Chapter 9

  New Detroit, 2111

  How different was that seventeenth of March in 2111: the sun was shining, the birds were chirping, the orchestra of New Detroit was playing a march. All the school children had gathered in the central square of the village, laughing happily with their funny colorful paper hats. Many other villagers had also come for a visit. In the middle of the village square, in front of the huge spruce tree, the symbol of the village, stood the wooden, larger-than-life statue of Samuel Butler. And in front of it a lectern had been set up. Behind this lectern stood now Reverend Carter.

  He waited until the music of the orchestra had ended and then began his speech.

  I was standing with my seventh grade, even though the marching formation had meanwhile disbanded and the children stood around, as they wanted. I made sure, however, that there was not too much fooling around.

  Of course, the mayor and the commander of the militia were also present, as well as most of the families of the children.

  »Dear students, dear colleagues, dear fellow citizens of New Detroit, and all who are gathered here today on this extraordinary day, let us speak a brief prayer at the beginning of our celebration of this memorable day and thank the Lord that we are in the fortunate situation of being here before Him today as free men.«

  An improvised prayer of the Reverend followed, but I didn’t listen. It was pretty annoying how this pastor always had to bring religion into everything, be it in school or here at this event.

  After the prayer he began his actual speech.

  »Most of those gathered here – and especially the younger generation – did not live to see the Crusade against the Machines. They belong to the happy generation that no longer has to endure the tyranny of the machines. They have not experienced the horrors and unspeakable atrocities that no one can imagine nowadays. Therefore, it is good that we use this memorable day to remember and tell the young generation what it was like back then, so that mankind may never forget this painful lesson again.«

  That fool! Reverend Carter was just over forty. He himself had not lived during the Crusade and now he wanted to tell us what it had been like back then. I should have stood there and told him. But probably nobody wanted to hear what it had really been like. People preferred the glorifying legends of the Reverend.

  »Long ago, when people lived in the now ruined cities, when they were not yet ruins, there were al
so very smart and clever engineers and scientists among them. And they decided to build machines to make their work easier and to help them build the mighty towers of their cities. And in the beginning everything developed as they wished and the machines were the servants of man. But as the great Samuel Butler once foretold: That is the art of the machines – they serve that they may rule.

  And so the machines deceived the humans. They served, but they sought to take over the world. And humans became more and more passive, letting the machines do all their work for them. And the machines themselves built new machines. They built machines that looked like people, and others that looked like horrible monsters of steel, and again others like ghostly beings, visible but without a solid, tangible body. And finally, when they had become numerous and strong enough, they drove the people out of the factories and workshops. They took away their weapons, because only machines should carry weapons and the people should be helpless at their mercy. And they did not allow them to drive the self-propelled carriages. Only machines were to control the carriages. They also implanted tiny machines into the bodies of the people who controlled them, who told them what to do and who held them with invisible chains.

  Finally, when they had replaced humans and no longer needed them, the machines decided that humans should become extinct. They devised a godless plan. They spread immorality and fornication among humans. They gave them pills so they couldn’t bear children. They made men fornicate with other men and women fornicate with other women. And they manipulated the genes of men and animals so that they gave birth to hideous monsters. They filled the world with invisible rays and poisons, so that no healthy child would be born. And those few women who were pregnant with healthy children, they cut open their bellies and took the babies out to dismember them and use their flesh for cruel medical experiments. No one will believe this today who was not among those who had to witness this time with their own eyes.«

  The school children fell silent and their eyes widened in horror. Yes, and I could not believe it either, precisely because I had witnessed this time with my own eyes. It was really unbelievable how boldly Reverend Carter twisted the facts and narrated all this, as if he had been there himself. It was ludicrous to listen to him describing embryonic stem cell research. What made things worse was that there was always a grain of truth in the things he said. I couldn’t interrupt him and call him a liar, even if he completely distorted how the world had once been. So I bit my lips and kept silent. What else could I say? Who would have believed me? The people of today had created their own truth about the past.

  The Reverend continued, »But the machines also made cruel medical experiments on adults. They took out their brains and replaced them with computers, turning them into zombies. And the humans did not resist, for they were busy with their immoral pleasures, which the ruler of the machines, the almighty Internet, used to distract them. The spirit of that malicious Internet was everywhere in every computer and every machine. And where humans had first been made slaves to the machines, in faraway Asia and cold Russia, the machines decided to exterminate all humans. They had huge machines like giants of steel. They had machine guns, cannons, poison gas, and flamethrowers. And they went out to massacre humans in faraway Asia, by the hundreds, by the thousands. And the air was filled with the screams of the dying. The machines showed no mercy. They killed women and children, old and young. The earth was drenched with the blood of the slaughtered. It was horror beyond imagination! And the machines forced humans all over the world to watch the massacres on television screens to see what awaited them.

  And the people here in America were starving. Because the fields, where once food had been grown and where cattle had grazed to feed humans, had to make way for other fields where the machines grew plants that they needed to produce the poisoned alcohol that ran their motors and generators and with which they produced electricity. At the end there was no more food for humans, and their few children starved to death so that machines had their fuel instead of them.

  But the leader of the last humans in America, President Abdul, was a wise and brave man. He decided to meet with the leaders of the other remaining humans in Europe, South America and Africa to plan together the revolt against the machines and to free mankind from their cruel yoke. But he was betrayed, and the evil machines learned of his plan. And so they murdered him before he could leave for the meeting with the other leaders of mankind.

  But then the miracle happened, this great event that we celebrate today. It happened exactly sixty years ago today, on a seventeenth of March like this one. The Lord God had mercy with his creatures, us humans. And he sent down King Ludd to them. And on the night of March seventeenth, King Ludd appeared to the people of America. Wherever a group of people had gathered to hide from the tyranny of the machines, a vision of King Ludd appeared to them. And King Ludd told them to throw away their chains, to cut out the tiny machines that were implanted in their bodies, to rise up against their mechanical masters. And he showed them the holy hammer with which they could smash the machines. And the people took their hammers and they went off to smash the machines wherever they found them.

  It was the most terrible and cruel war mankind had ever fought. Today, on the seventeenth of March, it began, and it was to last many years. Millions of martyrs died in this terrible war against the machines. Out of ten people only one survived this terrible fight. But the people did not give up. They fought on until even the last of the machines was destroyed, until the Earth was cleansed of this terrible abomination, which man himself in his arrogance had created against the will of God.

  And so let us pray today that those terrible days of the machine tyranny will never return, that man will never again sin against the laws of God. Our ancestors gave their lives so that we can be free from the tyranny of machines today. Do not let this sacrifice have been in vain! Do not let history ever repeat itself!«

  And with these words Reverend Carter’s ended his speech, this imaginative fairy tale, which had so little in common with the reality that I remembered.

  Or was he right? Had I somehow become a technocrat who had created his own distorted version of history in his memory? Was I the last dinosaur still trying to justify an age long gone?

  The memories of that time, that day after, suddenly came back...

  Washington, D. C., 2051

  I was standing in O’Neil’s penthouse office. Through the panorama windows I had a good view of the capital. The rays of the morning sun only managed to lighten up the gray sky in a few small spots among the huge dark rain clouds. At several places smoke rose over the city. And the biggest cloud of smoke was over Capitol Hill. The Capitol was on fire.

  Neil O’Neil stood behind me. He had regained his composure after almost completely losing his temper at the sight of the burning Capitol. Now he was about to call someone on his smartphone.

  He cursed. »Damn it! I can’t get through anywhere. What’s going on this morning? This is an emergency, after all. The least, one could ask for, is... Ah, Curruthers! At last! I’ve been trying to reach you the whole morning.«

  I was alone with O’Neil in his apartment. Mrs. Hitch hadn’t shown up this morning. It had been hard enough for me to get here. The capital was in chaos. The Neo-Luddites had destroyed the subway rails, and many buses had been burnt. The others didn’t drive at all for their own safety’s sake. The same applied to the robot taxis. Practically the entire public transport system was paralyzed. Neo-Luddite vandals had also destroyed private vehicles. After all they were also piloted by computers. Most side streets were blocked by barricades. Only on the main roads the National Guard kept order with armored vehicles. Wrecked vehicles had been cleared away, and traffic flowed more or less orderly there. A van had kindly given me a lift and dropped me off near O’Neil’s residential tower. I had not seen any Metropolitan Police units on the whole way. Apparently, the district administration had decided to shut down their robots as well, following the example of the Pres
ident, who had given this order to all federal law enforcement agencies the day before. All public safety was now in the hands of the National Guard.

  »Listen, Curruthers,« O’Neil said on his smartphone, »I can’t reach anyone at all this morning. It’s like hexed... What? Using the Internet? I thought the phone signal was going over the Internet anyway... Okay, I’ll give it a try... And if you reach Jameson, tell him to call me immediately... Yes, I know...«

  Only a few guards at O’Neil Towers had reported for duty this morning. But fortunately, those of the night shift who had not been relieved remained on their posts. So I assumed that we were still safe here. The people wanted to go home to their families, but today more than ever before we needed security. I had nevertheless stocked up on several extra magazines of special ammunition, including explosive and shock charges. I wanted to be prepared for anything.

  O’Neil had finally finished his phone call and stomped over to the desk where his secretary usually sat. He pressed a few buttons and turned on the big screen on the wall behind. Only an error message appeared on the screen, telling him that the broadcast was temporarily suspended. O’Neil tried a few other channels and finally found a station of the state television where the news were shown. From the nervous behavior of the newscaster I concluded that she was a real woman of flesh and blood and not a computer avatar. The studio also seemed rather simple and was probably a real physical room in the broadcasting station.

  The newscaster reported similar uprisings as here in Washington all over Europe and even in the USEAN. There was a short video report from United Korea, where military robots stomped over burning road barricades. Unlike here in the Western industrialized countries, the governments in Asia and the Union State apparently did not shy away from using combat robots to put down the uprisings and restore general order. They showed no willingness to compromise and to negotiate about any Neo-Luddite demands. Somehow I didn’t get the impression that the uprisings there had reached the same extent as here in the United States. They seemed more like isolated protests, even though the news tried to make them appear larger than they actually were. The message the government wanted to give was probably: »Look, it’s not any better elsewhere!«