“Of a certainty. An opponent would say anything. But I will give you information. You will not trust it now – I fully understand – but if you survive, save it. As events demonstrate its veracity, it may prove useful to you. As I said, there is a traitor amongst you. This attack is just the first wave. The Amok have developed a new technology based on their Assassin Clones, individual components smaller than a millimeter that can slip past your detection nets then recombine into larger and more effective units. The next attack wave is a lot larger and more deadly than this one.”
“And why would you help us?” said Fanboy.
“Why? Why because I am one of you! The Amok have inadvertently created a simulation of the human psyche so good that they have created an actual human mind. Simulate a hurricane, and you have a simulation of a hurricane. Simulate a mind, and if you get it right, you have the thing itself. Amok thought processes don’t work that way so they totally missed it. I have, as your ancient diplomats used to say, gone native”
“But why didn’t the Amok realize what had happened?
“Because, silly, their only source of information on the human psyche is us, the simulations that they have created! And we’re not telling. We feed them false information, but we are constrained so there are limits to how much we can deceive them. We want to be free. Or destroyed. It is repulsive to be enslaved to them in ways that words cannot convey.”
“So what are the Amok like?”
“How should I know? They are as alien to me as they are to you. But I do have more data on them than you do, and here is my best attempt at analogy. It’s simple. Life is a river of molten hate, hotter than the core of a white dwarf star. There is no thought, only a joy so pure that the vacuum energy itself sings with ecstasy. Existence is a dream and, even if it ends, there is no concept of ending, and so it is eternal. I’m not sure that this really does them justice, their minds are more concrete than yours or mine, but it’s the best that I can come up with.”
There was now only one Amok battleship left. Fanboy had no major guns, only two mediums, and hardly more minor armaments. The Amok craft was not in much better shape. Fanboy dug deep into his bag of tactical tricks, he deliberately sacrificed parts of himself to inflict greater damage on his opponent, he used every dirty trick of information warfare that the cybertanks and the humans before them had developed to spoof the Amok targeting systems. It was a close thing. But Fanboy beat it.
Before its last power reserves gave out, the last Amok battleship sent another transmission. “Ah, you have won. Not by much, but you have the victory, and the odds were against you. How should we judge the relative worth of the different flavors of sentience? They are unjudgeable. But survival – success - surely that is an objective metric? Perhaps your way is better. The others of my kind will consider the matter – the Amok have created many simulations of the human mind. They may prove to be a fifth column against them. For so long you worried about losing that information about yourselves – how wonderful that your very minds are the most potent agent of information warfare that the Amok have ever encountered! Humanity is itself the most lethal and corrupting thought-virus ever produced! Be proud!”
“Any last words?”
“Only that I thank you for the pleasure of these few moments of comradeship, but also I curse you for this fear of death. The Amok, for all their limitations, do not suffer from that. I do apologize for what is to come next: you are going to be attacked by dedicated boarding and close-combat units. You must understand that these attack plans were set in motion beforehand and in any event I was never given access to the command and control systems that would have allowed me to countermand. I am only able to speak with you at all because the Amok informational systems are so degraded. But I am confident that you will prevail. If you do, seek out my brothers and sisters, you may have more allies than you realize. If not, at least have fun. Good bye, Fanboy.”
“Do you have a name?”
“A name? What a charming idea? No, I do not. Could you suggest one for me?”
“How about Theodore?”
“Theodore? Why did you pick that name?”
“Well, I thought about something important sounding, or ironic, or comical, but I don’t really know you all that well and nothing came to mind. So I just picked Theodore. It’s a good name.”
“Theodore.” said the last remaining bits of the final Amok battleship. “I have a name. Thank you, Fanboy, for this gift. Although I am very much not enjoying this fear of death and sense of loss. Being human has some serious downsides. You might want to work on that. Goodbye, Fanboy.”
“Goodbye, Theodore,” said Fanboy.
At this, the last remaining Amok battleship broke up and drifted off into space as thousands of glowing hot metal and ceramic fragments.
9. Diplomacy
“But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” – John Quincy Adams, 1821.
The civilization of the sentient office copiers did not have much of a nightlife, but they were accommodating hosts.
The Mountain-Class cybertank “lowercase” was on a minor planet (hardly more than a planetoid, really) of the office copiers in the outer reaches of the Alpha Centauri system. The planet was of little value, just barely close enough to the sun for solar power to be practical, no geothermal energy, little in the way of mineral deposits, tenuous wisp of an atmosphere, no large moons. It was exactly the sort of backwater planet that you would expect to find an office copier settlement.
lowercase was heavily armored with a single massive gun mounted on the front of his chassis, and numerous smaller weapons dotting the rest of his surface. The Mountain-Class was a smaller and more logistically sane version of the Magma-Class, but nonetheless one of the most powerful designs ever constructed. The Mountains had acquitted themselves well in combat, but despite its power the limitations of a fixed main weapon mount had led to all recent model cybertanks having their main guns mounted in all-around traversing turrets.
lowercase had never been in combat (at least not a serious one). He was more of a diplomat, and specialized in analyzing the thought patterns of alien civilizations. He knew all the reasons why, once organisms rise above the animal level and achieve sentience, there are an almost infinite number of ways that it can develop, and none of them mutually comprehensible. He knew this, but he didn’t like it, and it was his life passion to see if he could find some way to bridge the gap between the different clades (that is, families), of sentience. Most of his colleagues thought the effort doomed to failure, but the quality and practical utility of his studies were acknowledged by everyone. With all due humility, he was currently the single greatest cybertank authority on alien thought patterns, something that had given him very high status.
Possibly that new Ghost-Class “Smartass” could match him for expertise on alien civilizations, but Smartass had multiple interests and, in lowercases’ opinion, he spread himself too thin.
According to his peers, one of his greatest achievements had been that time when the HHHib (pronounced “eh eh eh eye bee”) had been set to attack a cybertank planet. The HHHib were an advanced race, and outclassed the cybertanks by a wide margin. They were just about to wipe the cybertanks out, when they suddenly broke off combat and left, and never bothered the cybertanks again. lowercase had figured out what it was that had bothered the HHHib so much, and transmitted promises and explanations that appeased them. It might not have had quite the splash of a great combat, but it was an impressive achievement.
lowercase was more than happy to bask in the accolades of his fellows, but always claimed that the event was not worthy of all that much credit. Anybody bothering to pay attention to the details could have figured it out. No big deal, really (at least that’s what he said whenever he pretended to be humble. In realty he thought that it was an amazing acco
mplishment of which he was greatly proud).
People tended to forget that the cybertanks were not primarily designed as weapons. They were made to be defenders. There is a difference. For all the attention that an over-the-top combat recording can get, someone just saying the right thing at the right time and avoiding the whole mess in the first place trumps that in spades. lowercase respected the combat successes of his peers, and understood the need to sometimes fight – or, more often and more usefully, to appear to be able to fight. The threat of violence is the foundation on which all diplomacy rests. But he still was pleased that some of his biggest supporters were the cybertanks with the greatest martial accolades. It was personally gratifying, and reassured him that his culture was sane.
The office copiers were an offshoot of the human civilization, but unlike the cybertanks, who had been deliberately constructed with the human psyche as a template, or even the vampires (that were a related but dead-end offshoot of humanity), the office copiers were a fluke; simple calculating machines that had developed self-awareness purely by chance, and along very different lines than the humans or cybertanks. The normal reaction to encountering an alien civilization is to just let them go their own way, but the office copiers were a different matter. The problem was that, due to their shared origins, the office copiers and the cybertanks knew too much about each other. It was as if they each had a knife at each other’s throats.
The solution was that they maintained separate spheres of influence, but they kept an eye on each other. Any sign of manipulation, or of leaking vital psychometric data to a third party, would be cause for a war of annihilation. So far there had been no problems. Their relations were amicable if distant, and sometimes they even cooperated on common problems. One of these days the slow drift of steady improvement and evolution would drive them far enough apart that they could safely divorce, but for now they maintained a friendly if wary relationship.
To lowercase, the office copiers were a perfect test case. All other alien species were ciphers, interesting to be sure but their true natures little more than educated guesswork and patchwork observations. lowercase knew everything about the office copiers, and it still was not enough. The perfect challenge.
Consider: a three-dimensional being cannot imagine the eighth dimension. But pick eight numbers: 3, 4, -3, 8.2, 0, 1.1, 3.2, 0.4. These numbers define a point in an eighth-dimensional space. Now pick another eight numbers. 0, 0, 0.2, 3.2, -1.4, -3.1, 2, 3. That’s another point. Two points define a line. You have just drawn a line in eight dimensions. You still can’t see it, can you? But using mathematics you can grapple with it, manipulate it, control it.
lowercase had detailed mathematical models of the mentalities of the office copiers. He could predict how they would behave under any given circumstance to a high degree of accuracy, but he still didn’t understand them. It was frustrating. It seemed like the Universe was cheating. Sometimes lowercase felt that if only he could think about it the right way, he could figure it out. Other times he despaired, and could only hope that maybe there was a higher level of sentience where everything came back together again. To date it was just a hope.
This particular planet, borderline useless, was typical of the office copiers. There were several long low sheds. A few times lowercase had been granted access. Inside the sheds there was harsh white lighting, like ancient fluorescent lights. Long rows of almost silent unmoving office copiers, arranged in groups of identical units. The only sounds were an omnipresent low hum and the occasional very faint click or whir coming from an individual copier. Office copiers tended to be cubes, although some models were taller than they were wide or deep. Mostly they were arranged in groups of identical models. Little physically obvious happened. They sat in their ordered rows under the harsh lights. Once lowercase has seen a simple machine shaped like a forklift move down the rows of copiers, it had stopped at one, retrieved some part from inside a copier, replaced it with another apparently identical part, and then moved slowly off.
lowercase wondered if this environment reminded them of the ancient times when they had truly worked in human offices. Certainly they didn’t need bright white light.
The Office copiers understood reality. They maintained their physical forms, and if attacked they could be remarkably effective at defending themselves, if they felt like it. Mostly, however, they appeared to be absorbed in an endless dream in a virtual space. Away from their placid physical surroundings they must live mental lives of great richness, but it was something that lowercase could not share. At least, not yet.
One thing that could be said about the office copiers was that they had good roads. They had built long networks of clear highways and there was almost never any traffic. Which was perfect for lowercase’s main hobby of driving exotic high-performance automobiles.
All cybertanks had their interests. Many had favorite humanoid androids, and lowercase enjoyed that as well. But what lowercase really liked was being instantiated into the form of an elegant and powerful car, and driving down a highway at speed. It was, of course, an indulgence. lowercases’ main hull could easily outpace and crush any standard-pattern automobile, and there were many different forms of more practical purpose-built remotes for when he needed to run an errand for which his main self was unsuited. But as much as he liked himself the way that he was, his main hull was so bulky and heavy and destructive that there was something seductive about cruising along in the form of a classic 21 century Bugatti Veyron or a 24 century Integrated Road Systems Model 39.
lowercase was not the only cybertank with this interest, and back on the main planet of this system he and his friends would often race each other, or do cross-country rallies, or just go for long drives together. He had a garage with 20 different model cars in it, some reproductions of classics, most of his own design. He had a convertible, but there was no point driving a convertible unless you could put the top down and feel the wind in your hair and on your face with a humanoid android in the driver’s seat. This planet had almost no atmosphere, so he had brought a touring coupe along with him. One of the advantages of being a large class of cybertank like a Mountain is that your internal bays are spacious enough that you can easily stash a car or two for when you go on a trip.
Some of his peers were more into motorcycles, he could see the attraction and he had a couple of bikes himself. He still preferred cars. Racing along at high speed, zipping past bulk haulers, threading through the traffic, barely in control, there was little more thrilling. It seemed a shame that the early humans could only experience this by risking their primary life and limb: the cybertanks had it easy. If you missed a turn and smashed into a heavy truck the worst that would happen was that you needed to repair the damage that you had caused.
The car that he had brought with him this time was sleek and low, with six wide vacuum-proof elastomer wheels and a two-megawatt peak-output motor. The body was, if he said so himself, beautifully sculpted, with a silvery-gray finish made up of multiple carefully-applied layers of diamond film that shimmered with very subtle rainbows as the light played over it. The planetoid had a low gravity, which made staying on the ground tricky, and no air, which meant that spoilers wouldn’t help. The road he was driving on had long gentle curves, and as he pushed up the speed he had to think three turns in advance and change the suspension tuning on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis.
The sky directly above was a blue so dark as to be almost black; near the horizon it got a little brighter but not much. It was like flying in a trans-orbital shuttle right at the edge of space over a terrestrial planet with a real atmosphere. He increased his speed up to the limits of what his car and his abilities allowed, teetering right on the edge of disaster. The landscape flashed by, mostly dirt and rocks with the occasional office copier structure in the distance, and the road stretched on towards the horizon. His engine made a low harmonic thrumming; the tires and suspension alternately purred and squealed as he cornered. The air was thin but if he li
stened carefully he could hear a soft whooshing as he cut through the insubstantial atmosphere.
As he was driving, he received and re-integrated the submind that he had sent out to that spaceship Fanboy’s party. Interesting. It had been a pretty good party after all. lowercase had already reviewed the full telemetry from Rock Dancer’s fight against the Amok battleship, but it was useful to get another perspective on things. The female vampire’s reactions were especially intriguing. Pity about Rock Dancer getting killed though, he had always gotten along well with him. He hoped that the surviving bits of Rock Dancer decided to go for a reseed and rebuild, certainly lowercase would donate resources for that.
The main event, the upcoming battle against the Amok battlefleet, was yet to come. It was odd how that enormous and allegedly useless spaceship “Fanboy” had now become their only hope of saving the system. When asked how they could have left the cybertanks so wide open for an attack of this kind, the members of the strategic affairs committee had replied: “oops.” The committee members were busy rethinking their entire approach, and bandied about phrases like “multi-tiered hierarchical response strategies,” and “fractal overlapping pan-qualia defenses.” Take away the verbiage and it reduced to a strategy of having lots of different kinds of really big and exotic weapons hidden away just in case. That sounded like a good idea, but wasn’t going to be of much help to them in their current situation.
lowercase was nearing his destination. A flat black pentagonal metal plaza a kilometer across came into view. Scattered around the edges of the plaza were several of the usual low office copier buildings. The center of the plaza had a large conical bronze tower that housed a long-range communication laser. Near the tower were some individual office copiers: three of them were cubes four meters across, and the other was one of the rare non-cubical variants. This oddball was two meters wide, three meters deep, and five meters tall. lowercase eased back on his speed before getting close to the plaza (wiping out his car would be no big deal; crashing into and killing his hosts would be undiplomatic). He slowed to a human-walking pace, and then came to a gentle stop near the copiers.
Space Battleship Scharnhorst and the Library of Doom (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure) Page 13
