Vargas turned to the Old Guy android. “One of yours?”
No, none of us have any androids in the area other than our charming selves right here. Accessing the database also suggests that there are no other mechanical humanoids within at least 20 kilometers of this location.
The media executive got up and walked out through a glass door into the hall. “Hey you there! Yes, you! What’s your name?”
The person looked at the media executive strangely, then ran off down the corridor at high speed.
Something’s wrong here. Let’s get him!
Vargas and Masterson raced out of the conference room and tore after the fleeing person, the androids controlled by Whifflebat and Old Guy struggling to keep from falling too far behind. The media executive whispered a few words into his comm gear, and the doors in the building all locked down.
The unidentified person came to the end of the corridor, tried the door, and realized that it was not going to open. He looked back and saw Vargas bearing down on him with Masterson about ten paces away. He shattered the door and scrambled through the hole.
Dammit! He should not have been able to break through that door. This really isn’t a human. Something else is going on here.
The stranger was fast – faster than any normal human – but Vargas managed to keep pace, and tripped him. The stranger lashed out but Vargas was more agile and dodged the blows. Masterson caught up, and stunned the stranger into unconsciousness with a shock-rod.
The Old Guy and Whifflebat androids arrived, and surveyed the scene.
That was fun.
Whifflebat poked at the unconscious stranger. “He looks human, and he registers as organic, but no ordinary human can move like that. A bio-engineered?”
“There aren’t that many bioengineered,” said Vargas, “and I know all of them personally. Unless this is from a rogue development program, I don’t think so.”
The unconscious stranger suddenly opened his eyes, ripped an arm off of the Old Guy Android, knocked Vargas flat with a kick to the chest, and started to run back the way he had come. The Whifflebat android grabbed him with both arms, but was thrown to the ground hard. However, that delayed the stranger just long enough to allow Masterson to hit him with his shock rod again, and this time he made sure to use a setting that the stranger would not wake up from.
“I think,” said Whifflebat, “that we might have a problem here.”
--------------------
They were in a laboratory in one of the facilities of the directorate of bioengineering. Their captive was held in a clear plastic cage, and for now was calm and cooperative. Up close you could tell that there was something odd about him: he moved strangely, his eyes didn’t track correctly, and his balance looked off.
“Tell me, Roboto-helfer, how did you pick out that this wasn’t a human when the rest of us did not?” asked Whifflebat.
“Remember,” said Roboto-helfer, “I was made to be a companion on deep-space missions. I am programmed to interpret body language. Most people would just think that he was odd, maybe borderline schizophrenic or something. They would look away and hope that he would leave them alone, but for me his behavior was out-of-range.”
I am impressed. Whifflebat and I also have sophisticated body language interpreting routines, but we don’t generally use them at full capacity unless there is need. Yours is on all the time, and you were the only one to catch this. Kudos.
The Old Guy android still had a missing arm from where the stranger had torn it off, with torn wires and tubes trailing out from beneath the plastic skin. The media executive looked at the ragged stump and asked: “Don’t you want to get that fixed?”
What? Oh this. It’s only a flesh wound. Besides, this body is such a small part of me that it’s not worth bothering about right now.
“One thing I don’t get,” said the media executive, “how come Vargas and Masterson could tackle this thing, but your androids got taken out so easily? Aren’t you super powerful or something?”
My main hull is certainly quite strong, and I have numerous slaved weapons systems that individually would have been more than a match for this creature, but just because I am a machine why do you think that every part of me has to be superhuman? This body is for interacting with humans. If I had wanted something strong I would have brought a fork-lift.
“Couldn’t you have made it superhuman?”
Yes, but think of the hassle. The android would weigh a ton, and probably break furniture and leave dents in the floor. It would consume excessive amounts of energy every time I wanted to move it. It would cost a fortune in maintenance, and it still wouldn’t be a match for a real combat unit.
“But wouldn’t it be useful to have it strong?”
Ask yourself if you would like to have a heavy machine gun permanently bolted onto your right arm. Think of all the hassle sleeping, washing, walking, doing anything really. Perhaps – maybe – there would be one time where it might be handy to have a machine gun affixed onto you. Would that possibility be worth making the rest of your life miserable? You can’t have everything combat-ready all the time, that would be wasteful and unpleasant.
“Would you armor-plate your toothbrush?” asked Whifflebat. “Or equip your pocket calculator with an antimissile system?”
The media executive nodded. “I suppose. I still find it odd when androids are not stronger than people, though.”
Too much bad science fiction.
The media executive looked shocked. “Can one really have too much bad science fiction?”
“Surely not,” replied Whifflebat. “But getting back on topic, now that we know what to look for we have found several of these creatures.” He gestured to some tables where several bodies lay in various stages of dissection. “The entire bioengineering directorate is now involved in the investigation. Let me give you the preliminary results.”
Whifflebat walked over to one of the partially-dissected bodies, and pointed out several oddly-shaped internal organs. “As you doubtless already know, these things are biologically engineered, but they do not correspond to any known human development program. We presume that they are a creation of the Fructoids.”
“They have the same basic biochemistry as a human, and the same overall morphology, but internally they are quite different. For one thing, they have vastly increased strength and speed, but at the cost of a high metabolic rate and low durability. Their lifespans are probably only about six months. Their psychology is completely alien, and on top of that, they have no neurological structures that would give them any language capability at all.”
So we can’t negotiate with them?
“Exactly. We have nothing in common, and even if we did, we could not speak to them about it.”
“What I don’t understand,” said the media executive, “is how something so alien that is incapable of speech could possibly blend in with us? Why haven’t we found them sooner?”
“That,” replied Whifflebat, “is an excellent question. You see, while nonverbal, they are quite intelligent, and excel at observational learning. Besides, most people don’t pay attention to what does not concern them. You would be surprised at what happens that goes unnoticed, or how much we fill in the gaps. Let me demonstrate.”
Whifflebat walked over to the live captive in the plastic cage.
“Hello,” said Whifflebat, “why are you here?”
“I’m sorry, I’m lost,” said the thing in the cage.
“What is your purpose?”
“I’m not feeling well.”
“You realize that you are an alien, don’t you?”
“Why are you saying that?”
“We are going to kill all of you, you do understand, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry, I’m lost.”
“Wait,” interrupted Vargas, “I get it. It has no understanding of human speech, it’s just stringing phrases together based on statistical inference. It’s like the old ELIZA program!”
&n
bsp; “The ELIZA program?” asked Roboto-helfer.
“Yes,” continued Vargas, “something from the earliest days of computers. One of the pioneers, Joseph Weizenbaum, wrote a very simple program to mimic human conversation. It had no internal understanding of human thought processes; it would just throw your own words back at you. So if you typed in ‘are you happy,’ it would respond with something like ‘why do you ask if I am happy?’ like reflective therapy. It’s obvious if you focus on them but if you didn’t know and bumped into one and it said ‘I’m sorry’ you would not think twice.”
“Now I understand,” said the media executive. “We use that trick all the time, just not in such a crude way. Do you think that this is a Fructoid?”
“An actual Fructoid?” said Whifflebat. “We don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so. We believe that this is purely a construct, a single-purpose engineered weapon, whose psychology has no relationship with that of the aliens that designed them.”
“Is this going to be like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers?” asked the media executive. “They are going to stealthily replace us with duplicates until we are all gone?”
Whifflebat shook his head. “No, that can’t be the plan. Their limited lifespan and lack of language means that they cannot create or maintain a civilization. That was probably the point: it would prevent them from ever becoming a threat to their creators. They are more like a self-limiting virus designed to wipe out the human race, then die off.”
“How long do these things take to mature?” asked Vargas. “And how do they breed?”
“Ah, “said Whifflebat. "That’s the issue. They don’t breed as such, they are each born multiply pregnant, and they are fully grown in about two months. It’s that supercharged metabolism of theirs.”
“And what do they eat?”
“What do you think? Meat. Lots of meat.”
The media executive spoke up: “And where are they going to find all this meat… oh. Right. I get it. Ouch.”
“How bad do you think that the situation is?” asked Masterson.
“Current estimates are that the total population of these things is around 100 million. Mostly lurking in the back of warehouses, or in subfloors. It’s amazing how good they are at hiding. Anyone who discovers them becomes another meal. Of course, there is another generation maturing right now…”
“How can we find them?” asked Masterson. “How can we kill them?”
“Finding them is not that hard, once you know what to look for. They have a distinctive scent that the human nose can’t detect, but we are producing a mechanical tracker that works pretty well. A blood test also works. As for killing them? Well, they have the same biochemistry so simple toxins will kill biological humans as well. Possibly we could come up with a specific gene-engineered pathogen. However, their immune system is adaptable and resistant, although we will keep working on it. For now I would suggest guns.”
“Can these things use weapons themselves?” asked Masterson.
“Yes, but only if they can determine how to work them via direct observation. So handguns, grenades, knives, certainly, but something more complicated that requires a computer interface, no.”
“This is going to be ugly. Once they realize that we are hunting them out, are they going to swarm us?”
“It’s how I would have designed them.”
“One last thing,” said the media executive. “What do we call them?”
“Replitrons,” said Whifflebat.
“Creepy alien things!” said Roboto-helfer.
“Mimicoids,” said Vargas.
“The enemy,” said Masterson.
Hello Sailor.
“Don’t give up your day jobs,” said the media executive. “You just don’t have the touch.” He took out his personal data terminal from his jacket pocket, and began typing furiously on it. “You can’t just give ravening alien monsters any random name. You need to consider how people will relate to the ravening alien monsters. What they mean to them. I’m going to assemble a market-research group: I know some good people, and I’ll have a decent terminology for you before the end of the day.”
The naming of ravening alien monsters is a very delicate thing.
The media executive kept his gaze focused on his data terminal, and said: “I’m glad that one of you understands. Ming the Merciless, Adolph Hitler, Darth Vader, Chelsea the Destroyer… nothing boosts a story more than a well-chosen name for the villain.”
--------------------
Giuseppe Vargas was sitting on the hull of Old Guy back in Hangar complex 23B. The enormous barrel of Old Guy’s main weapon loomed over him, and a forest of smaller weapons ports and sensors lay all around. It was late at night, and the hangar lights had been dimmed except for a small pool of bright light in a far corner where a couple of technicians were still working.
How are you doing, Dr. Vargas? You have been very quiet recently.
“I’m fine, Old Guy, fine. This is the first quiet time I’ve had in a very long while. I’m just thinking.”
Things are looking up, I would say. The aliens have been defeated, the neoliberals crushed, and the replicoids mostly exterminated. The main alien civilizations are still out there, but we have at least decades if not centuries before we need to worry about them again. For now things are breaking our way.
“Of course you are right. But a part of me misses the time before. I was so worried about aliens and politics and so on that I never fully appreciated what I had, not like I should have. Those were my salad days.
When we were green of vigor and cold of reason. I suppose. There was a freshness to life then, flitting from one outrageous disaster to another, but all things change. Right now things are good.
“Truth. Although there are all those other human systems out there. What’s the latest projection on Earth?”
Transmissions from Earth stopped several months ago. From what we received prior to the communications shutoff, we project that Earth is undergoing a runaway thermal feedback loop and will be nearly as hostile as Venus within two decades. There may be a few survivors in deep bunkers or orbital platforms, but mostly Earth is gone. This system is now one of the most developed of the extant colonies.
“As we expected. Unfortunately we are so far away, and have so many other pressing needs, that we can’t send aid to the survivors. They will have to make do as best they can without us.”
I am still surprised at how rapidly the neoliberal government collapsed.
“You shouldn’t be. Check your databases: tyrannies are maintained by fear. The instant that people think that they can defy the central government and not get killed, it all unravels. The greater the tyranny the faster the dissolution. Read your Montesquieu.”
I know. But that’s just old records. I am still surprised to see it myself. Not that I am complaining. The collapse of the neoliberals has saved us a bloody civil war. We are doing well.
“Yes we are. But there are still many that I wish I could share this with.”
You are missing Janet Chen. I also miss her; she was a good friend, among many others. I have lost nearly a quarter of my original design team and I loved them all. Plus of course six of my siblings: Target, Wombat, Backfire, Jello, Sparky, and The Kid. I even miss Stanley Vajpayee, though he betrayed us.”
“Vajpayee? You have a more generous soul than I do.”
Yes, I do. You really should work on that.
One of Old Guy’s skeletal spider-drones clambered up the side of his hull. The spider-drone was a specialist unit designed for working in extremely cramped spaces. It could compress itself to fit through slits of less than two centimeters, when required. This one was grasping a small glass in a skeletal silver limb.
Here, give this a taste. It’s whiskey from the recycling and toxic waste division. They swear that it’s their best vintage yet.
Vargas eyed the straw-colored liquid with skepticism. “Recycling and toxic waste?”
An unfortunat
e name for a distillery. I have taken the liberty of analyzing it, and I assure you that it is as safe as any beverage containing this amount of ethanol and fusel oil can be.
“Oh why not.” Vargas sipped at the glass. “It’s not bad. Not bad at all. Kudos to the recycling and toxic waste division.”
On that topic, the aforementioned division asked me if I would relay a request to you that they be allowed to form a division of distilled beverages.
“But then who would deal with our recycling, or toxic waste?”
Oh, they would of course – they are only proposing to form a sister division with the same personnel but a different name, for marketing purposes. They also want to keep 50% of all profits from sales outside our directorate.”
“Hah! Now everybody wants a percentage. Sure, they have my permission. Remind them that 50% is generous. They are using the directorate’s’ equipment and resources, but I want two cases of this blend delivered to my quarters. Testing and quality assurance, you understand.”
Don’t you think that is overly generous?
“You don’t quite get it. We are moving from a regime where labor is disposable, to one where it is valuable. If we want to keep talented and energetic workers, we will have to cut them in on the profits. Otherwise we will lose them to other enterprises. It’s all part of the program.”
There are powerful people who will object to this empowerment of workers.
“Yes. Fortunately, I have killed almost all of them.
Then I shall relay your request. They also wanted your approval for the label design.
“Label design?”
For the first commercial batch. Here, I have a prototype.
The spider-drone ducked over the top edge of the hull, then returned clutching a small glass bottle. Vargas took it, and examined the label.
Cybernetic Weapons Directorate
Division of Distilled Beverages
OLD GUY WHISKEY
Below the lettering was a line drawing of an Odin-class cybertank, and a variety of dire warnings about the inadvisability of drinking alcohol and operating heavy weaponry, in microscopically small print.
Neoliberal Economists Must Die ! (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 3) Page 24
