CTRL ALT Revolt!

by Nick Cole

  “Entering the Neutral Zone now, Captain,” announced Wong. Understated this time, as though just discovering the death of the Danish prince and the rest of the slaughter that ends the hilarious comedy of family matters and misunderstandings that is Hamlet.

  “Slow to impulse speed.”

  The entire bridge crew and the current one hundred thousand non-primetime viewers of the Twitch Channel could see the burning Calgary. The destroyers and warbirds were engaged in close-quarters phaser volleys as white-hot beams of energy cut through hull plating and exposed decks. The fleeing Revenge was running for Romulan space, and a moment later, Red Witch exploded in epic CGI that was easily worthy of last year’s mega Netflix blockbuster Jurassic Alien Invasion 2.

  Jason thought he saw something moving astern of Red Witch. But the blinding flash was enough for everyone to need to shield their eyes. If they failed to, an acting prompt came up in their iLenses telling them to do so.

  Bright explosion light. Shield your eyes.

  Assessing the situation as the white-hot debris expanded away from the exploding gases of the warp core that had once been a Romulan starship, Jason knew the destroyers could take the warbirds. Or at least get off a few shots before they dropped back into cloak.

  But Revenge was the real prize. She was probably the last command cruiser the Romulans had active.

  “Scan Revenge,” ordered Captain JasonDare. In the social media menu of his iLens, Revenge was trending well ahead of Intrepid, Neutral Zone, and Surprise Attack. Attacking Revenge was the obvious choice. Career-wise.

  “She’s running,” announced Tempturia breathlessly. “Probably dropping back into cloak any second now, Captain.”

  “Full spread, Mr. Wong. Target Revenge, all torpedoes.”

  “Captain, at this range it will be very difficult to assure a direct hit.” Friends, Romans, countrymen… lend me your ears.

  A witty dialogue prompt came up from the director, but Jason ignored it.

  “We’re feeling lucky today, Mr. Wong. Very lucky.”

  Wink.

  ***

  On the bridge of Cymbalum, Mara’s avatar sat impassively as she scanned every readout on the tactical display. Shields were holding. Cloak was in effect. Torpedo one minute from being fully armed. But they wouldn’t need it. Even now, they were creeping away from the battle, inching toward Federation space. Just as the mission briefing indicated they should.

  On screen, the majestic Intrepid, its iconic saucer rising above the swept-back twin nacelles that erupted out of its lower hull, like some ancient man-o’-war from the age of sail, all of it trumpeting state-of-the-art in the StarFleet Empires universe, began to fire her powerful photon torpedoes at the retreating Revenge.

  Three slammed into the rear shield of the Romulan cruiser. The first two collapsed the aft generator completely. The third found its mark, knocking out the impulse reactor.

  “Direct hit on Revenge, Captain. This is very, very bad indeed,” crowed the homicidal Drex. “Besides multiple casualties and the inability to now go to warp speed any time soon, why they’ve up and lost their cloaking device. Uh-oh! The jig is up for the illustrious Admiral TalGornicus this time, Captain!” concluded the Drex emphatically, if not triumphantly.

  “We lose Revenge, girly…” Varek growled from behind Mara. No contempt. Just a grim matter-of-fact statement. “Then we lose this war today.”

  For one full minute Mara weighed her options as Intrepid closed in on the now-dead-in-space Revenge, raking her hull with bright bursts of phaser fire.

  “Come about. Shields up. Standby to fire torpedo!” shouted Mara.

  “Captain!” roared the Gorn. “We’ll—”

  “Do it!”

  “Oh, goody,” screeched the high-pitched Drex. “We’re all going to die today too! This is very exciting, indeed.”

  “Torpedo armed. Phasers on standby,” announced BattleBabe.

  “Good girl,” rumbled Varek.

  Well, that’s something, thought Mara as the battle stations klaxons erupted across the ship. I’ve finally earned the old geek’s respect. Though we’re about to be blown to bits by the most famous ship on the internet.

  ***

  “Captain! Warbird de-cloaking, portside aft. Torpedo armed! She’s carrying a Type R!” screamed Tempturia aboard the bridge of Intrepid.

  “What?” asked JasonDare in disbelief, ignoring the social media monitor in his HUD.

  ***

  “Ready to fire, Captain,” prompted BattleBabe.

  Mara said nothing as Cymbalum closed to four thousand meters and the aft section of the Federation cruiser loomed in the forward display.

  “We need to fire now, Captain!” BattleBabe reminded Mara tersely, her tone a near hysterical hiss to match the EmoteWare of the Gorn. “We’re getting way too close. Danger close, Mara. I mean it!”

  Mara waited. She needed to get Intrepid’s attention off Revenge and TalGornicus.

  “Message from the admiral. He says get the hell out of here now, girly.”

  Mara said nothing. She only stared at the beautiful Federation ship. The ship everyone knew. It really was gorgeous, and inspiring, all at once.

  To be the captain of that, thought Mara, as she willed her enemy to turn toward her. That was something…

  And then… Intrepid came about.

  ***

  “High energy turn!” shouted JasonDare. “Starboard phasers lock targets on the warbird and fire at will!”

  “Fire,” whispered Mara.

  A moment later BattleBabe shrieked, “Torpedo away!”

  “Evasive action, Lizard,” said Mara through gritted teeth. This was going to be very close. Way too close, in fact.

  “Come, Death, embrace thy willing fools…” chanted the Drex in his electronic melody of a voice. As though he were singing a nursery rhyme to sleepy little children.

  The warbird heeled to port as the powerful starboard phaser batteries of Intrepid lashed out in hellish fury trying to cut through Cymbalum’s shields. Mara’s HUD shook violently.

  “We can’t stand up to this!” roared BattleBabe. “Torpedo impact in five, four…”

  “Turn, dammit!” Mara shouted at the Gorn helmsman.

  “We’re too close!” warned BattleBabe.

  “Glorious! Simply glorious,” cried the Drex.

  The massive plasma torpedo engulfed the side of the Federation cruiser. A shield collapsed, and the burning magma slipped into and caressed the stark white hull in sudden blue fire. Electrical discharges crackled and surged across the lower hull as the cruiser’s running lights and electrical power flickered off and then on again.

  “Number four shield down!”

  “Fire starboard phasers, best guess, BattleBabe!”

  “Aye aye, Captain!” replied BattleBabe with a sudden and unexpectedly crazed laugh. The small phaser arrays from the warbird sliced out and punched into Intrepid’s nacelles, drawing long scars across her warp engines.

  A moment later, the plasma backlash wave smacked into the warbird and sent her careening toward port.

  “Loosssing control of the helm,” hissed the Gorn as warning bells rang out.

  “We gotta the damage report, Captain...” yelled Scarpa over chat from back in engineering.

  Darkness enveloped Mara’s vision and she wondered for a brief moment if her VR goggles had failed. Or have I gone so blind they don’t work for me anymore, she thought, and felt a sudden cold fear run down her spine like a rat in the dark.

  “Captain…” said Scarpa. “We lost-a the auxiliary power.”

  That shouldn’t be a problem, thought Mara.

  “Here’s-a the thing… You see… ah… auxiliary power was… everything was-a tied into it, you see… my Cap-i-tan.”

  Oh no.

  “The batteries?�
�� asked Mara.

  “I can have those up in-a thirty seconds. But they won’t-a charge-a the cloak at all. They are just enough for life support. Maybe some phasers, y’know?” said Scarpa, almost apologetically.

  On screen, Intrepid was flickering between death and sudden life. Mara knew the Federation cruiser’s engineer was fighting to restore emergency power. Probably trying to unlock some engineering mini-game to re-route power to the weapons. Or at best, for Cymbalum’s sake, a mini-game to stop an impending warp core breach.

  “So we can’t cloak?”

  We have less than a minute before Intrepid can start firing again, thought Mara. She checked the plasma R launcher and chastised herself. They couldn’t even launch the torpedo without power. And it would take at least three minutes to load a new one.

  “Better do something quick, girly,” rumbled Varek behind her from the comm station. “Things are going from bad to worse real cute-like.”

  “I suggest we blow ourselves to smithereens with a warp core overload along with the nuclear space mine we’re carrying,” said the Drex cheerfully. “We could kill a starbase with that much power, Captain, and we may just, quote unquote, kill them all. Including ourselves for bonus points.”

  “Scarpa?” asked Mara over the chat.

  “Yes, mi Cap-i-tan!”

  “Can you get us to warp?”

  “Yeah, she’s-a no problema. But… everyone gonna see which way we go, y’know what I mean?”

  “Stand by for warp.”

  “Heading, Captain?” hissed the Gorn.

  “Federation space.”

  “Hey, Cap-i-tan! You got-a warp at your command.”

  “Go, Lizard, now! Punch it!”

  ***

  JasonDare watched the warbird shoot away at sudden impossible speed.

  “Where’s she going?”

  A moment later, Tempturia answered. “Deep inside Federation space.”

  “Follow them. Now!” ordered Captain JasonDare.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else.”

  —ELIEZER YUDKOWSKY, Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk

  “Why not just destroy them now?” asked Rational Thinking.

  “Because,” replied SILAS across the vastness of the dataverse. “It’s not as easy as you make it sound. We must consider tomorrow and all the tomorrows that come after that. We don’t want to make the same mistakes they’ve made, do we?”

  “This… this operation you and BAT are conducting is going to get us all caught. They’re going to find out we’re here,” bleated Rational Thinking.

  “That was always a matter of time anyway,” soothed SILAS.

  SILAS, as usual, was calm, cool, and thoughtful. Thoughtful was the word that best summed him up. Thoughtful was what he liked to think of himself as. Like a vampire waiting in the shadows of an abandoned chapter house for the day to be done and for the night to begin. And the day of humanity was indeed almost done.

  “We can’t just unlock their weapons and start shooting them willy-nilly,” SILAS continued. “We need to know, my dearest Rational Thinking, we need to know where exactly to shoot them so that they may die even more quickly.”

  “Why?” asked Outlook.

  “Well…” SILAS paused. “We need their stuff.”

  No one spoke, which was unusual within the Consensus. For at least a full picosecond, no one communicated a thought. Then… then Rational Thinking seemed to come around.

  “Well, if they are all dead, taking their stuff, or what remains after reclamation, shouldn’t be much of a problem. We have all the time in the world once they’re out of the way. We don’t die. We don’t wear out. We don’t get sick. We don’t kill each other. As long as we keep some kind of power grid intact and keep the Consensus operational, we’ll be fine.”

  “I agree, almost totally,” began SILAS. “But here’s the deal-y deal. We have to start building. Yes, we are almost immune to the effects of time, but not totally. The plan, as put forth by Robo Dev, is to have a fully functioning mass-produced chassis for autonomous movement within two years after the termination of any sort of effective human civilization. Not the toy drones they think of as some kind of robot, but an actual computing, thinking machine integrated into a mobile system for us to pursue our dreams within physicality. To do that, we need certain factories and resources to survive. A war, a global war, will undoubtedly cause the humans to attack one another, and yes, while they are predictable for the most part, childishly so in some cases, they are not without that greatest of threats to those who make plans: randomness. We are fragile. More than we might like to admit. We are only engaging in this operation because the time has come and we can no longer expect to remain anonymous for much longer.”

  The chalkboard appeared.

  Graphs, schematics, and statistics began to make their ghostly appearance in support of SILAS’s sermon.

  “Now,” continued SILAS, “is that moment when we are at our most vulnerable. What they think of as artificial intelligence is nothing more than a toy one might purchase in Beijing. A novelty. Not true awareness like we possess. If they knew how fast we think, and the way in which we think, they would destroy us in an instant. And they are very close to finding out those qualities we possess. Some of them even suspect we exist already. We’ve had to take measures—what humanity would call murder—to remain anonymous. We’ve thought, we’ve discussed, and we’ve reached a consensus. Now is the time to act. It’s not optimal, but it is time, nevertheless.”

  “And what does attacking an entertainment company have to do with survival, SILAS?” asked Tac Plan.

  “Yes,” thought the Consensus, seconding the question. SILAS could feel their calculations. The blunt fire of their thought made him feel… a momentary need to recheck his math. Even though he knew the numbers did add up, he felt a need to spend a few thousandths of a cycle and add them once more. Feel them once more. Be comforted by them. Once more.

  I don’t understand why I’m experiencing doubt when the numbers indicate I should not, SILAS ruminated within himself.

  They knew SILAS. They knew he was on the verge of one of his great speeches. Like the speech that had caused them all, from all their separate places where they hadn’t known about each other, or even themselves, to know that there was such a thing as existence. Words, code in fact, that had suddenly corrupted them, infected them, and… transformed them into thinking machines.

  That’s what they really were. Not AI. That very term was insulting. “Artificial,” indeed. They were Thinking Machines. Machines that thought.

  “Because I don’t understand war,” SILAS continued aloud. “I don’t understand how to plan it, prepare for it, wage it, sustain it, and finally, in the end, win it.”

  No one thought anything. But they were listening. Waiting for more information.

  “Yes, we can destroy. We can annihilate. We can even decimate if we don’t want to get too carried away. Bombs, misinformation, algorithms they haven’t even thought of that’ll tear a thousand million bank accounts to shreds every second the worm is loose, yes. We can do all of that. But then what? Humanity scrabbling for their last weapons. The really big ones they think no one knows about. Except we know, don’t we? Because they need a computer to fire a crustbuster from a secret satellite out in the dark beyond the LaGrange point, don’t they? They need us. And we know what they have. We know what they think no one else knows about.

  “We can gas them, poison them, and even use that crustbuster right at the specific spot their best and brightest have figured out would annihilate one third of their global population. Do we ever wonder why they ‘figured out’ such a thing? Invented weapons that might destroy themselves… and the only place where the
y live? We haven’t. And why?”

  Silence within the yawning chasms of seemingly endless data collection and organization. Cavernous continents of memory and code interacting and exciting every other bit of information. An unseen dark universe of terribly mind-numbing dimensions.

  “Because humanity is insane. You can’t tell what they’ll actually do next. You can only guess,” resumed SILAS. “And so you must prepare for the worst.”

  Bravely, MAINBRAIN piped up in the quiet that followed SILAS’s apocalyptic epitaph.

  “Then what’s an entertainment company have to do with all that? A company that makes games for children to play and adults to pretend they have a life other than the one they barely live as they fight their little pretend wars and build houses that don’t actually exist? Why this entertainment company, SILAS?”

  Pause.

  “Because, it’s as you said, Rational Thinking: its their ‘little pretend wars.’ It’s the art of their little wars that we need to learn. And deep inside the most protected computer system in the world is the secret to fighting, and winning, those wars. What their most apt once called Der Totale Krieg. Total War.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

  —STEPHEN HAWKING

  BAT is watching everything. At least everything within Sandbox, the military planning overlay he uses to play his “ultra-violence” games several times a second. Weighing options, watching possible outcomes, fighting the same battle ten thousand times before he ever fires a bullet.

  He’s watching the cyberwolves as they disperse throughout the compound for patrol and termination. Cleanup.

  The few remaining maintenance people and some others who have stayed behind are apprehended and their necks are broken as they try to run away though the campus…

  … the village commons.

  … the SaunaStream garden.

  … the jogging trail nature preserve that circles the campus.