I can’t even tell you what’s going on in the game industry because it has gotten so big that I can’t keep track. Every now and then, I see an ad for what I think is a movie, only to discover that it’s a game I can buy for my X-Box. And speaking of X-Box, in Cee Lo Green’s summer hit song, “Forget You,” Green says his former girlfriend is X-Box, while he’s Atari, and we’re all supposed to understand the comparison. The nifty thing is that we do.
None of this even pretends to examine the gadget wars. In the first year of its existence, the iPad penetrated 16% of American households, something that took both color television and the cell phone nine years to do. The iPad initiated a tablet war (I love that phrase) so half the commercials on television are about some flat-screened gadget you can hold in your hand and get information from quickly . . . like the devices Captain Picard used to have to glance at while doing his job on the Starship Enterprise.
Then there is the news itself, from the weird weather which makes every single newscast sound like the opening five minutes of a disaster movie to the scuttling of the space shuttle program, which has folks wringing their hands about supplying the International Space Station (three words I love to type), which actually makes it all sound like we are in the future.
And compared to the monochromatic world I grew up in forty-some years ago, we are. This is geek heaven.
2012 might outdo us on sheer geekness, but that upcoming year is going to have to work hard to beat this summer. In fact, if 2012 gets much geekier than 2011, then I’m going to have to give up sleep. Because I barely have enough time to maintain my geek cred right now.
In fact, if it weren’t for mainstream magazines like Entertainment Weekly, I might not have any geek cred at all.
****
Strategic Deployment
Thomas Allen Mays
The fragile jewel of the New Poland colony burned with the pinpoint flames of battle. Sleek, stealthy, teardrop-shaped Hornets dipped in and out of the atmosphere, streaking low to deliver their kinetic and energetic payloads and then soaring away to search eagerly for new targets. The hapless colonists, farmers, and factory workers who had dared to grasp for something as ephemeral as freedom, darted about on the ground, panicked and confused, desperate to find some form of shelter from the rain of destruction.
Nineteen light-years away, Peter Highsmith beheld the horrifying whole with his mind's eye, like some vindictive god laying out his retribution upon the unfaithful. But Peter was no god, and he could only look upon what he was doing with dismay, sickened by the way the Hornets' bloodthirsty whispers spoke to him, thrilled him. He was back, doing what he had sworn he would never do again, doing what had to be done despite his own misgivings. Peter was the Sweeper once more.
Worst of all, as terrible as the destruction he delivered was, there was yet more to be done. The greatest danger, both for himself and the colonists of New Poland, still lay ahead. Peter fought back the darkness of his encroaching memories and firmed up his resolve. With a thought, he reasserted primary control of the Hornets and gave them their final assignments, all the while aware of her presence near him, watching his every move, smiling at every new flare of combat.
Peter shook his head in disgust. I never should have said yes to this mess. This is exactly what I walked away from, and now I'm the only one who can do what needs to be done. . . .
****
The mess in question had begun earlier that day with a very unwelcome reunion. Peter sat, bristling with anger, in a mid-level bureaucrat's office within an immense imperial government tower, nestled in the heart of the overcrowded sprawl of the Dallas-Houston megalopolis. The object of his anger sat arrogantly behind the desk in front of him, gloating at his impotent, spiteful regard. He knew who had the power here and it wasn't him, the broken soldier who had lost himself in a factory for the last decade.
Sylvia Blake, former colonel in Her Majesty's Armed Forces and current Crisis Operations Director for the Ministry of Colonization, smiled back at him with smug contempt. "You never should have broken with the unit, Peter. If you'd stayed after the war, you might have earned yourself a ticket to success, like I did. As it is, I'm not sure you even work over the welfare threshold. Have you managed to rise above the dole, Major? I neglected to check."
Peter favored her with a tight smile. It was somehow comforting to know that nothing between them had changed. "I earn my ration credits honorably, Colonel, and a few luckies on top of that. How's the pay schedule here, lying on your back? Or are you more a 'bend over the desk' kind of girl?"
Her smile dropped and Peter's grew in response. She leaned forward, her eyes flashing in anger. "We don't really have time for playing catch-up. A situation has developed and I find myself in need of someone with your skills. How would you like to earn ten thousand Leisure and Luxury Credits for a single day's work?"
The number made his head swim. He felt vaguely guilty even discussing such an amount. "That's a whole lotta luckies. Who do I have to kill? You?"
She chuckled. "You'll never be that fortunate, but a degree of mayhem is involved."
"Hmph. Mayhem. I've been out of this business for a while. Surely there's some soldier you could task with this-and you don't even have to pay them any extra."
His old superior frowned. "That might be a preferred method, but my ministry is barred from using active troops in colonial situations without a full declaration of war. No, I need a contractor for one mission and one mission only, and I immediately thought of you."
"That's funny, Sylvia, because I seem to recall that you and I don't get along too well. In fact, I believe we parted on somewhat violent terms."
She shrugged. "Yes, you are an insufferable prick, but I need the best, so I go for the best. While not exactly the most obedient sort, in the end you've always done your duty and you always did it with style. That's what I want for my ten thousand luckies: duty to empire and a little of the old Sweeper flair."
He winced at his old title, but the thought of so much money kept him from stalking out immediately. "Okay, I'm listening. What do I have to do for this particular payoff?"
The colonel leaned forward. "It's simple, really. The administration would like you to inflict some . . . collateral damage upon the colony at New Poland."
Peter slumped, and all the half-formed ideas for how to spend his windfall suddenly fell apart. There would be no money because what she was asking was beyond ludicrous. It was patently impossible. "Well, the administration-and you-apparently need to have your collective heads examined. There's this great new thing called relativity. Heard of it? Seems it makes attacking another solar system pretty much impossible. Besides, my days of razing villages are far behind me. Find someone else to play with."
Her nasty smile returned. "Oh, that's unfortunate, Peter, because this job is simply perfect for you. It's got 'The Sweeper' written all over it, and though you might deny how you really feel, I know that has to count for something. You used to be a Combat Remote Operator-REMO for a whole company of Ripper AI's, and adjunct REMO for a squadron of Hornets. You used to make a difference. And what have you become? Some pathetic factory worker, driving an AI assembly line? Please! You must die a little bit each day. This, on the other hand, is real work, the work you were born for. Willing to give me a chance to explain?"
"Not particularly." He tried to reject what she was saying, but it was a hollow attempt.
"Tough." She tossed a slate in front of him. "Pay attention or walk home."
When he picked it up, a grainy, 2-D video began on its surface. The small datablock in the screen's corner identified the stately gentleman pictured as the governor of New Poland, an established farming colony a little over nineteen lightyears away, orbiting around Delta Pavonis.
The governor began to speak. "'When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal
station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.'
"Those elegant words, written over six hundred years ago, have not lost their power, or their importance, even in these times when Man is spread throughout the galaxy in seeming harmony. It is with the strength of those words that we formally declare our independence from the Empire of the Unified Earth, and the dissolution of our ties to her Majesty, Empress Eleanora De Marquez. We have been driven to this act by the empire's continual disregard for our needs and by the unjust, externally imposed limitations on our growth as a self sustaining society."
Sylvia reached across her desk and tapped the slate to pause the video. "It goes on like that for a while. The smug bastard wrote himself quite the speech, almost like he expects his 'declaration' will have historical significance. The short version is they're tired of working their little fingers to the bone to feed our teeming billions, in exchange for low quality meds and surplus nano-forges. They want us to recognize their independence and renegotiate a more equitable trade deal. If we refuse, they'll stop all harvest loading and divert the courses of the longships en route to Earth, returning them to New Poland.
"They're apparently serious, too. All commands to the New Poland longships via ZPL connection have been shut out. We're currently locked out from our own supply lines, which could only be due to sabotage." She settled back in her seat. "So, what do you think?"
Peter looked back down at the slate. The old man in the screen did not look like a mass murderer-but then again, statesmen rarely did. The longships were Earth's lifelines and the sole reasons for the existence of the colonies. Despite all the orbital greenhouses and the immense arcologies and stack-farms covering nearly every inch of land, extending even into the oceans themselves, the belabored old planet could no longer support her one hundred eight billion inhabitants without some form of external support. The colony worlds were their breadbasket, their only defense against a staggering near-genocide from starvation. Any interruption in the decades-long supply chain could result in the death of billions.
"Sounds like you need to start renegotiating," Peter answered with a shrug.
She stood up, and walked around her chair, coyly tracing her finger along its top. "And why do you say that, Peter?"
"Because we don't really have another choice. The New Poland colony is thirty-two years away via DMT longship. That's a pretty long lead time for a punitive assault, not to mention that it's essentially a one way trip for the grunts, with no possibility of relief or re-supply. That's a poor mission. Communication with the colony via zero path length wormhole, however, is instantaneous-you can talk to them immediately. Face it, the colonists can starve us out, but we can't touch them." Or could we? What is she not saying? Why am I here?
Sylvia looked him in the eye. "But we can't honestly negotiate with them, either. Do you know what would happen if we granted New Poland their independence? Next year, New Wales would want it. The year after that, Morgan's Rock, perhaps. It wouldn't end until every planet was freed and Mother Earth was left as nothing more than a vassal state, bled dry for our tech resources. It's hard to be an empire without imperialism."
"We could adjust."
"I highly doubt that. There are almost one hundred eight billion people out there, some trying to eke out a living, but most just content to live off the dole. A lot of them spend their lives only one ration credit away from starvation. How do you think they would handle the government tightening its belt in order to pay our colonies their 'fair share'? They'd revolt! And there's no way around it, either. There's hardly enough work now for those who might want to earn more ration credits, and the population just keeps increasing. We can't ship them to the colonies or kill them off in wars fast enough. No, giving in to New Poland is signing the empire's death certificate."
He declined comment on whether or not that would be a bad thing. As much as he hated to admit it, she had a point. Even if he despised what the world had become-what he had helped to bring about-and though he respected what the New Polish were trying to achieve, the colonists' threats scared him to death. "What other choice is there?"
She came from behind her desk and walked behind his chair, to gently grip his shoulders and lean down to whisper in his ear.
He could smell the sourness of her breath.
"Hornets," she said. "We crush this little independence movement with the Hornets we've been secreting away in each of the colony systems for over a hundred years."
He stood up, as much in shock as to free himself from her touch. "But that's stupid. Why the hell would you bother putting Hornets in systems lightyears away, with no one to control them?"
"The empire wasn't built by fools, Peter. Independence has always been a possibility and prudence demanded it be planned for. History's proven that after a few generations have passed, once a colony's rulers no longer have strong personal ties to the government, they'll start to think they can run things better by themselves. The Ministry of Colonization had a contingency plan for this before they ever sent the first longships of settlers. I usually regard any plans other than my own with disdain, but I have to admit, this particular strategy was a beauty."
Peter shook his head. "What good does pre-deploying Hornets accomplish? Combat AIs can't fight effectively on their own, and if you expect me to go in stasis for over thirty years just so I can go there in person and operate your little death dealers, you've got another think coming,"
She sat back onto the edge of her desk. Now that most of her big secret had been revealed, she appeared somewhat deflated. "It would be easier to show you than to try to explain it. Follow me." She stood and walked out of her office, apparently expecting Peter to follow.
Nameless functionaries peeked out from their desks as she passed, some visibly quaking in her wake. They left the mundane normality of the ministry offices together and passed through a pair of security checkpoints, as her eyes and her codes proved to be the keys to the kingdom. Things began to look very familiar to Peter after they entered a large space on the other side of an immense, reinforced door.
The weapons of choice for the EUE and Her Majesty, the Empress Eleanora, were the combat AIs. Rippers for ground-combat or Hornets for aerospace and ground attack, the autonomous war machines had proven themselves to be the ultimate force multiplier, but the artificial intelligence driving them was flawed, incapable of creativity, ingenuity, or initiative. Without a human REMO as "man in the loop," Hornets and Rippers either underperformed and were overrun . . . or they committed atrocities so vile, they could never be revealed. They instead had to be "swept" under the rug by very bad, very dangerous people-people like Peter in his former life.
Inside the vast room Sylvia led him to, stood a full Ripper/Hornet control suite, complete with a connection chair for the REMO, and a set of flat panel displays and adjunct controls for the Remote Operator's supervisor. Surrounding it were banks upon banks of identical, stacked equipment enclosures, each fed by heavy duty cables and cooling lines. What their purpose was, and how they related to Hornets and New Poland, he had no idea.
Sylvia walked up to one of the enclosures and patted it fondly. "You're right, of course. There's no way for you to control the Hornets we hid in the New Poland system over such an impossible distance. And even if we waited the thirty-two years it would take to get you to the colony, there's no way you could coordinate the Hornets across the breadth of an entire solar system. The lightspeed lag would make any sort of meaningful integration impossible. By that sort of logic, you are absolutely correct and there is no way to prosecute an interstellar war."
"Yet we find ourselves here together, despite that." Peter waved a hand at the towering bulk of stacked modules. "What is all this?"
She smiled again, but it was a smile filled with malice. "Those are ZPL wormhole transceivers, thousands of them. More FTL comms than have ever been
grouped together before, and linked in parallel to provide all the bandwidth you would ever need, enough to control an entire battalion of AIs, whether across town or across the galaxy, securely and instantaneously. This is our ace in the hole. This is how we are going to put down this revolt and save our empire."
Peter suddenly felt weak and sought a chair. He sat down heavily and shook his head. What had at first seemed to be an impossibility, a wild notion that the colonel and the ministry were bandying about for argument's sake, now became a crushing, nightmarish reality. He looked at her. "You replaced the Hornet's comm circuits with wormholes?"
"Among other things." She moved away from the wormhole transceiver modules and took her old spot as REMO supervisor. A few taps of her control board and the teardrop shaped schematic of a Hornet appeared on the main screen. "These Hornets are special. The fusion thrusters were replaced with differential momentum transfer drives. The armaments were upgraded to suit their new c-fractional flight profiles, and the best AIs available were installed. Add in the new interstellar control capability, and you can handle the whole sorry business today, from this very building. Our former colonists-who imagine themselves to be untouchable-will never suspect a thing."
Peter felt numb, and he couldn't think of what to say.
She left her console and brought him the slate again. "Every time we sent a longship to one of the colonies, we'd drop off one or two Hornets in a wide solar orbit while the settlers were still in suspension, slowly adding to the pool of Hornets on every subsequent journey. The century-long lead-time for this project has resulted in a lot of variation for the Hornets put on station." She grinned. "I figure that will complicate things, but if anyone can control such a complex assault force, you can . . . Sweeper." That last twist of the knife caused her grin to turn feral.
The slate displayed the specs for all the variants of the Hornet that had been sent to New Poland for the last century. There were twelve relatively limited models and thirty-one with which he could build a complete connection. Peter tried to imagine the expense it had taken to build forty-three such machines-each with an AI that gave it more intelligence than a chimp, and the bloodthirsty will of a rabid pit bull; each armed to bursting with lasers, particle beams, and kinetic missiles; each with a fabulously expensive DMT drive; all outfitted with the hundreds of parallel-processed wormhole circuits to provide the bandwidth he'd need for control-an exorbitant expense that entire planets could not afford. The numbers were staggering, and when he multiplied that by eleven different colonies, the number became too large for him to even conceptualize.
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