A.I. Insurrection_The General's War

by Michael Poeltl

  Inside the vessel, Raymond moves along a catwalk with Sam in tow, pulling their way along the steel railings wondering how he’d never seen plans for such a ship. Once in the command module, he understands all too well what he’s standing in. He feels the weight of gravity push his feet flush to the floorboards as the ship moves. Vibrations rumble up though his feet and legs and he feels his teeth chatter as they lift off.

  “It’s a warship,” he whispers to Sam, removing his helmet after watching the others remove theirs. Fran has been developing and manufacturing warships. A sick feeling grips his stomach. “And now it’s in the hands of these idiots.”

  “Weapons report!” Tobias shouts to one of his cronies.

  “Powering up,” she tells him as he stands there staring out the cockpit window, rubbing his palms together.

  Just then more fireworks light up the ship closest the ceiling, tearing a hole in its thrusters. It shudders and falls the fifty metres atop two of the long-range class mars runners crushing them flat. These ships were heavily armoured, but the G-class seem to know exactly where to target them. Raymond’s ship tilts sharply right to face their attackers and a beam of concentrated energy explodes from its nose, decimating the G-class and leaving a considerable crater in the floor of the shipyard. More G-class enter the building and Tobias can be heard ordering another volley of the energy weapon.

  “It’s taking too long to power up!” Explains the young woman at the helm of the deadly weapon. “We’d better skidaddle before they lock on our thrusters!”

  Nine more of the warships hover and release their energy lances into the G-class before they escape the Shipyards’ retractable ceiling.

  Tobias nods and the pilot fires the engines under their feet to rocket the ship through the open ceiling of the yard and beyond, into orbit in under a minute. The chancellor has to brace himself on the railings of the catwalk he’s caught up on. Soon there are ten warships ariborn, and under the command of a madman.

  ______________________________________________________________________

  Darla watches as her security forces rush to the shipyard. Unforgivable, she thinks. That the general would go behind her back, behind the government’s back, and build warships under their noses. The nerve. The audacity. The ego! She slams her palms down hard on her console.

  Luna Base operations; where Darla spends much of her time, is the larger of two rotating modules within the bubble at three-hundred metres in diametre, offering just enough pull to mimic Earth-like gravity through centrifugal force by turning on its horizontal, banked track. The maglev is cut three metres below ground, exposed to the inside the dome. The other rotating platform belongs to the dinning hall, and is nestled on the interior of the track, in the middle of the larger command center and living quarters maglev train. Impossible to have a normal life up here otherwise, she muses.

  Yet, now was it all for nothing? She wonders, watching the corvette burst through her shipyard roof, turn, and take aim at the building. Ten blinding bursts of light, each lasting nearly three seconds, devour the remaining vessels within the yard. She expects that in moments her beloved Luna Base will meet a simlar fate.

  When the the external cameras capture the new threat moving across the black sky above her, she closes her eyes and takes an anxious breath. The base has been mostly evacuated, but if destroyed, with few to no shuttles left to return them to earth, those dedicated to making a life on the moon would die here all the same.

  Mercifully the corvettes move on without so much as a comment over the com. Though the Commander is releaved for herself and those in her keep, she realizes there is only one other place an armada of warships would go.

  Earth.

  HIS PAST’S PRESENT

  “Keep us in orbit for now, Ginny. Signal the others to follow.” Tobias explains to his partner. She communicates with the ship through her implant, and they settle into a comfortable orbit.

  “Isn’t this a piece of work!” He turns to address his crew a deck below in an open space surrounded by catwalk; the same space, Tobias notices, the chancellor shares.

  “Why am I not floating right now?” He wonders aloud, turning back to Ginny.

  “They’ve managed to create an artificial gravity system,” Ginny explains, her pretty, pale face captivated by the data on her console. “It makes sense to build interstellar ships with artificial gravity,” she posits.

  Tobias is amused and catches the chancellor’s eye. “I barely noticed it in the rush to enter orbit. Incredible! Techology! It’s always been the future,” shouts Tobias, his arms extending. Ginny takes his hand.

  “We are the future!” Zander, the minotaur Host shouts up from below. The other Hosts cheer while Tobias watches his Brokers spread out, encircling them.

  “Technology has always been the future, that much is true,” Tobias leans over the guard rail to address the rebel AI Hosts. “But technology alone will never be enough without an organic foundation.”

  Tobias lifts his shirt over his head and the other Brokers follow his lead. Each of them have the mark he’d created branded into the flesh of their chests. He peers down and scans his people, impressed by each Broker’s dedication starring back at him. Flesh and technology merge in each Broker’s altered anatomy. Smart wires and liquid alloy pins line spines and arms, fingers and toes. Enhancements which build on physical abilities, and more which enhance the Broker’s mental capacities pepper their young bodies. Others wear hydraulic attachments or the artificial muscle to further enhance their strength or speed, foregoing the painful surgeries involved in the deeper alterations, taking nano-bots orally, strengthening bone structure by increasing the bones’ density. The additional equipment looks no more out of place then the altered Hosts, Tobias thinks. But the hapless Hosts have served their purpose, for now. They have confused the real issue and sparked a war between man and machine.

  “The age of the Chimera is at hand!” He shouts, his arms rising once more to meet the cheers of the Brokers. “We now have the means to tear down the repressive government which has ignored our progress, who have berated us, hunted us, and buried our truth!”

  “Repressive?!” That was the chancellor hcoking on the word. Tobias fires a steely glare at the man. “We’ve enjoyed peace and prosperity for decades under our government. What repression have you suffered beyond that of your own unwillingness to enjoy your freedoms?”

  “Enjoy. My. Life?” Tobias lowers his voice and directs his words at his uncle as if he were throwing knives. “My. Life. Has been no utopia, Chancellor.”

  “That could only be by your own doing, Tobias,” he fires back. SENTA, his sister, takes his hand in both of hers.

  Tobias is torn whether to share his story to the one man who should know it best. A rage overtakes him. He would not recognize Tobias now, not in appearance or name, both he’d given himself once he left to pursue the Shadow net.

  “You, ignorant prick!” He spits, gripping the guard rail and bending it upwards. “That you would blame me for my end!” Tobias recognizes that the chancellor is visibly shocked at his show of strength and admission of pain, and dials down the fury.

  “But, why would the man in the ivory castle place himself in anothers pain? Why would he stay when a world of utopian freedoms awaited?” He begins walking towards his uncle. Slowly.

  “What are you saying?” The chancellor stops SENTA’s attempt to get between him and Tobias.

  “I’m saying you’ve kept your head buried for ten years, avoiding the only family you had left to side-step your own precious pain. As if yours was so much deeper than mine, or my father’s, or sisters. As though your happiness mattered more than my mother’s!”

  Tobias places himself squarely in front of his uncle, their eyes level out, Tobias’ scowl urging him to recognize the boy he’d abandoned to suffer through his mother’s death and then his father’s, and sister’s. His left eye twitches.

  _____________________________________________________
_________________

  There is precious little Raymond can do against Tobias. The symbol burned into Tobias’ chest, and those who follow him is a sobering sight. Chimeras, indeed, he thinks. The head of a lion with the horns of a bull framed by a snake. It was the classic image for the mythical beast sculpted into an emblem embodying their transformation. They are far more organized then General August had given them credit for. He resigns to look away from the reddening eyes ripping into him, conceeding any power he might have had when all of this began. But, as memories take hold, and the sad tale is suddenly relatable, he looks back into those enraged eyes and recognizes a piece of his past. One he had fled from for fear of suffering through anymore of his sister’s pain.

  “Sean,” he whispers, and the man whose mother had died and uncle abandoned them materializes in the face of this new enemy.

  “You never came back.”

  “I’m sorry, Sean,” he sheepishly places a hand on Tobias’ arm.

  Tobias leaves the comforting hand where it lay for the moment. “You’re sorry,” he repeats the chancellor’s sentiments. “Did you not know how quickly my family disintegrated? Did you not know my father couldn’t see a way forward without her? Did you know he had planned to kill me as well as my sister?”

  “I - I knew nothing of any of this, Sean.”

  Tobias shrugs his uncle’s hand from his arm and takes a step back. “You didn’t know because you never cared enough to ask. You never cared enough to check in on us. You never cared enough to come to your own sister’s funeral!” He’s shouting again and Raymond feels cold.

  It is the biggest regret of his life; leaving his sister and her family to fend for themselves the last few weeks of her disease, and then, like a coward, skipping the funeral when he’d heard, and then never reaching out to them again. He’d never expected them to forgive him, but this? This couldn’t soley be motivated by his cowardice.

  “Sean, I -”

  “The name is Tobias, Chancellor.” He spins and moves back to the control module. “I’m not looking for an explanation. I know the answer. You’re a coward!”

  “I was, Sean. I admit that, but this -”

  “This?” He laughs. “This is all for you, uncle.” His arm extends to pan the ship.

  “Don’t say that, Sean.”

  “I am the man you made me, uncle! The reckoning to your utopia. No more human than you were ten years ago, I suffer no conscience, and I have the only armada capable of war in the Solar system.”

  “You don’t think I suffered for my decision? I’ve hated myself since Sam left. Your mother meant the world to me.”

  “You had a funny way of showing it.”

  “That’s true, and I think about her every day. I think of her smile and then I see it fade and then she’s gone and I never said goodbye.” Raymond is breaking. He turns to look at SENTA and takes her shoulder. “I loved you so much, Sam. I couldn’t bear losing you and I couldn’t watch you fade away any longer. I was a coward and I’m sorry I wasn’t there for your kids and for Doug after you died. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.” He weeps, placing his head on the top of SENTA’s.

  “Well isn’t this a sight,” Tobias says. “This is the man who led the free-world.” Pointing at the spectacle, directing his words at his Chimera. “What a joke.”

  Raymond looks up at Sean and begs him to reconsider whatever fate he has planned for the planet. “You don’t have to be this man, Sean. You were so talented. You could have been the top mind -” A sharp pain enters his ribs and he realizes his nephew has punched him. He falls to a knee, hugging himself. He watches as SENTA - Sam, Sean’s mother - is picked up and thrown over the catwalk.

  “That’s your Mother!” Raymond cries, regaining his strength and pulling himself up on the guard rail. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “That? That is my mother?” He points down at the Host slowly getting to her feet below. “No, uncle, my mother died ten years ago. That, down there, is an A-class, AI Host.”

  “I’m telling you, Sean, she’s your mother!” Raymond coughs out.

  “And I’m telling you, it’s not.”

  Raymonds mind comes alive with what he’s hearing – comparing it to what Fran had told him. Could it be? But the evidence…

  “I can see you’re confused. That’s good. That was the point. We needed you to believe it, even if no one else did, you needed to.”

  “What are you saying, Sean? What have you done?”

  “I can’t take all of the credit, uncle, but I can tell you that the message couldn’t have arrived at a more perfect time. It spelled everything out. It was as though whomever had sent the message had done this before.”

  “The message?”

  “Yes, the one that appeared on the Shadow net with the one-hundred terabyte coding that would alter or, I believe the catch phrase was enlighten, the Hosts into believing they were alive. Like SENTA down there. She’s a feisty one! Very determined. But then, so was my mother.”

  “You couldn’t have known what she knew.”

  “Really? My mother never told me things? Baked beets and brown sugar is a bizarre dessert, but one mom had made for us on several occasions, and when nobody wanted it she’d use the guilt card and play up how it was grandma’s favourite.”

  “The song…”

  “Grandma had given mom the chip; the one of her singing the hymnal before she'd lost her voice. She wanted her to have it, and on her deathbed, mom gave it to me. A kind of Heirloom you might say.”

  Raymond is dumbstruck, and he’s certain Tobias can read the bewilderment on his face. It’s all too much. He’d just lost his sister for a second time.

  “I know, what are the chances, right? Who sent the message? Who cares! I’m finally getting what I want.”

  Then the general’s comment about the code hits Raymond. “Sean, if you don’t know where the code originated, why would you use it?”

  “What do I care where it came from?”

  “Anarchy aside, Sean, it’s a serious question,” his hand presses against his ribs where Tobias had hit him.

  “Enough yapping.” Tobias grabs the chancellor by the hair and pulls him to the control module. For a split-second he’s afraid he’s going over the guard rail too. He would not survive the fall as SENTA had, he thinks. “Secure his wrists to the rail,” he tells Ginny. “Then follow me.”

  Ginny manages the order and jams a rag in Raymond’s mouth. A moment later he is alone, and heart-broken.

  ______________________________________________________________________

  In the would-be captain’s quarters, Tobias sits on the bed. Ginny follows. He taps on the mattress and she sits next to him. Doubt forms in a grimace on his face.

  “I’m right to want this, aren’t I?” He asks.

  “It’s what we’ve been working towards since the code appeared. We’re all behind you, Tobias,” she reassures him, placing a hand on his thigh.

  “I’ve never explained my inspiration for taking them down,” his chin rests on his chest, hands opening and closing into fists.

  “You’ve never had to. We all knew something was fundamentally wrong with that utopia. You’ve led us out of the shadows. Out of the Shadow net. Look at us!” She bounces off the bed and twirls in the room. “We’re on a corvette capable of lancing the whole world! We can have anything we want!”

  “But isn’t that the problem with society now? That anyone can have anything? There is no struggle. There is no purpose.”

  She bends and places her delicate, white hands on his face, forcing his head up. He looks into her beautifully altered eyes. “Let’s sail for Earth orbit and punch some pins in their cushion. It’s why we’re here. That’s our purpose. To show them who’s in charge. The Shadow Brokers. The Chimera!” She smiles and he smiles in response to her enthusiasm.

  “Would you perform the last implant for me now, Ginny?” He asks. “I would like to be complete to bring about this new beginning.”
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br />   “Of course, love. I will get my bag. Plug into the smartwall. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Tobias obeys. Ginny is the one person in the solar system he trusts enough to show his weakness because she knows how to build him up, and for whatever reason, seems to love him. He’s wondered whether it was merely an infatuation with his Shadow net status: that he was the one to find the mysterious code and put it into action was admirable, but it wasn’t as though he’d written the code, or pretended to. Perhaps it was his extreme integration of tech and flesh, and his viral videos; but he was hardly the first to tamper in the human/tech revolution. Originally it was introduced to the utopian masses. Many received Host tech to improve sight and hearing, and assist in physical rehabilitation and even increase brain function. The embedded coms, or EC’s, were also tech in flesh upgrades, but that was child’s play. The Shadow Brokers, with their factory raids and Host abductions, were able to push past the low-level, cautious advancements and create an entirely new realm of tinkering. To call someone a Cyborg was hardly inventive. If you’ve had a titanium hip replacement, or a telescopic lens inserted into your retina you’re a Cyborg. The nomenclature wasn’t enough to explain the lengths the Shadow Brokers had gone to, to improve upon and experiment with marrying the organic and mechanical. Entirely new technology had been created to merge the mind and machine. The software was key, and the mental clarity to control the extra limbs or sensors meant weeks of training with a holo. Chimera became the call sign for those willing to add this new technology themselves. The Chimera of ancient Greece was a thing of immortal make, not human, a creature of many parts, snorting out the breath of the terrible flame of bright fire. It could not be more fitting now that they possessed the corvettes; which breathed this terrible energy lance.