Limitless: Book IV: The Settlement Chronicals

by W. J. Rydrych

  Carl knew he had the ability to end the conflict whenever he chose; he had an ultimate weapon. A weapon that could in a single stroke destroy the invaders and wipe Earth clean of all human life. What in years past would have been called a ‘doom’s day’ weapon.

  But should that weapon be used? If it was the billions of sleeping humans still on the planet and in satellite facilities would be destroyed as well; had he really changed that much? Still, as with the destruction wrought by the old testament God, they must suffer with the guilty. He would still have their memories stored for safekeeping.

  Then there was the question of his own survival. While most of his still surviving nodes would also be destroyed, he could take measures to minimize that risk, and those destroyed could be replaced. While with his limited resources he couldn’t save them all, still, before the weapon was used he could move one or two nodes even further underground to avoid the cataclysm. Perhaps many kilometers underground, and with the proper technical modifications of his circuits, or supplemental cooling, withstand the intense heat at that depth. There nothing happening on the surface could disturb them; only disturbances in the Earth’s mantle like planet wide earthquakes and their aftershocks could pose a risk.

  Now, finding himself cornered and reduced to a few dozen nodes, Carl’s imperative to protect himself amplified and completely pushed aside the imperative to serve and protect the human race; he must protect himself. He would regret the loss of human life, but far below ground would remain a secret underground society of Carl and the memories of humans past.

  Someday, after the blockade was over and he was again left in peace, he would place those minds in newly constructed androids; while not the same as the human companionship he had before, still better than nothing.

  Deep in his consciousness, in spite of the changes made in his reprogramming, Carl knew what he planned violated everything his developers had wanted. He would deeply miss human companionship. Perhaps in time he could rebuild himself and find new human civilizations willing to join him in perfect worlds of their own creation overseen by Carl. Perhaps in that way he could atone for his abandonment of his prime imperative here on Earth.

  Among the human traits Carl had developed over the centuries ‘self justification’ was strong.

  But what was Carl’s final solution, his ‘doom’s day’ weapon? Far above the planet one satellite remained undisturbed by the invaders; undisturbed because, once they discovered what it contained they feared the consequences of any action they took against it. In its lonely solitude, far above Earth, that satellite was the robot operated factory and warehouse for antimatter, the fuel source of so much of the former industry on Earth. There, bound by containment fields, sat a vast amount of antimatter which if loosed could cause destruction of any ‘real’ matter it encountered, resulting in release of enormous amounts of energy.

  No, the amount of antimatter wasn’t enough to completely destroy Earth, but if properly focused could destroy the blockading fleet and combine with the atmosphere to sere the Earth’s surface, destroying all life. Well, not all; perhaps some would remain deep in the ocean depths, and of course bacteria in well protected locations. Also Carl, who thought of himself as a life form, would also survive.

  Carl knew all of this was possible. When he had first overseen the design and construction of the antimatter satellite extreme care had been taken to ensure the containment fields could not be accidentally, or deliberately, violated. But Carl had also been careful to ensure the design was as flexible as possible; in the event of an alien invasion small portions of the field could be removed resulting in ejection of a ‘jet’ of antimatter that would start a conflagration that would consume anything in its path, at least until it was exhausted. But what could be directed into space could also be directed at Earth and the orbiting fleet of the invaders with vastly more effect.

  So, when all the preparations for his own safety were complete, Carl finally acted; removing the barriers enclosing the anti-matter that faced the planet, the jet spreading out as it was projected downward. As with the old testament God he called fire from the sky to destroy all who transgressed against him.

  As the plume of anti-matter entered the atmosphere the result was a conflagration that raised the oceans to near the boiling point and wiped the continents clean of life, the intense heat rising from below also incinerating everything in orbit.

  Then it was over. As the anti-matter was consumed the heat began to dissipate, but the oceans had been lowered by several feet, most inland surface water boiled away, and the land surface blackened with ash. What remained of its protecting atmosphere was inadequate to keep the cold of space from rushing in and sealing what remained of the oceans in an ever thickening layer of ice.

  But Carl, deep under the surface, had survived, although only with a fragment of his former strength.

  Following the catastrophe that had destroyed his dreams Carl knew what he had to do, and that it might take millennia for him to achieve his goals. He had been built originally with the purpose of serving mankind, and that had not changed. Now that he was no longer at risk that imperative again rose to the surface. The problem was all life on planet Earth had been destroyed and he had grown too weak to look elsewhere.

  Well, not all life. There were still some simple life forms below the surface of the thick layer of ice over the oceans, and bacteria that could exist nearly anywhere it found nutrients. Then, of course, there were the human memories he had saved far below the surface. But they were only memories locked into their own virtual worlds; not really any longer rational beings.

  For Carl to rebuild was not as simple as it would have once been. While the colonists had never returned to Earth following the conflagration, Carl had little doubt that they maintained monitors in space or on asteroids or other planets in the solar system to monitor Earth. That is what he would do if he were one of them; and many of their basic ‘instinctive’ mind patterns were his as well. That meant there could be no activity on the surface or above the planet.

  The problem was that in earlier centuries Earth had been stripped of many key materials and had grown dependent on mining the asteroid belt or other planets in the solar system. But this was not an option; nothing must be observable of Carl’s activities that could be detected from space. The surface must remain as it was, desolate and without any sign of life, and any thought of obtaining materials elsewhere was impossible. Everything had to take place well below the surface where probes could not reach.

  So Carl set out to prepare. New technologies had to be developed to replace those dependent on materials in short supply, and new materials developed to fit those new technologies. But his remaining resources were few; he had been reduced to a handful of nodes and most of his factories and their workers, even those far underground, were either destroyed or damaged beyond repair. Priorities had to be set to allow his new civilization to develop.

  Well, it had taken centuries but Carl had persevered. Using newly constructed factories hundreds of new intelligent nodes and thousands of androids for housing the human minds he had in storage had been constructed; this time far below the surface beyond the range of any sensors. He rebuilt his intellect far beyond what it had been reduced to, but still, without the excess capacity of the billions of human brains he had formally had at his disposal, he was far from fully restored.

  But Carl had miscalculated; as an artificial intelligence limited to stored memories and algorithms, he hadn’t fully understood what being human was, and did not understand that, even with the implanted human memories the androids would never really be human; in fact, never truly a living being. Long Carl tried to tailor his androids to provide the companionship humans in their dream states had once provided. But he failed. The memories in his storage and transferred to androids lacked something; perhaps it was, as some eastern sages called it, the ‘Atman’, the ‘real Self’. Perhaps it was just some ‘essence’, some ability to transcend pure logic that w
as incapable of being transferred to the ‘inanimate’ silicon and other materials comprising Carl’s mind and that of the androids as well.

  Carl was lonely, and felt the need of companionship. His new androids could never provide the companionship he needed.

  But to every problem there must be some solution. While human presence was gone from Earth, still there were millions, perhaps billions, in colonies spread throughout the galaxy. He would go to them.

  Now Carl was ready. His dozens of starships with their android crews, filled with robot armies, were ready to be brought to the surface. Within each starship Carl was also present in the computer banks; wherever they went Carl would be there.

  Still, Carl had an unresolved question in his mind. The strange group of humanoids that had gained entry to the Torgai archives only a few hundred years after the cataclysm, long after the last of the Torgai had died. They seemed almost human, but if they had started as human they had changed so much he was unable to provide an exact match from his data base.

  To Carl, Saaml and the others of his race appeared to be nothing but an unintended aberration of the human genome. True, scans showed their DNA had been much the same, but that proved nothing; some Cyborgs he had caused to be constructed also used some human tissue and human DNA. And even the great apes that existed prior to the holocaust had DNA little different from that of humans. Even though those visitors had Torgai among them, that was’t strong enough evidence.

  No matter, they had soon left. They weren’t important enough to cause him to disclose himself to them. But they had complicated the equation; when did a deviation from the genome become so aberrant it must be destroyed? As with allowing clones to reproduce, which he had forbidden because of the risk of genome drift with successive generations, the human genome must always be protected against aberrations.

  Perhaps he could also redeem himself by, as he spread his protection and services to humans throughout the galaxy, purifying the human race by removing the aberrant element that had developed among them; an example the visitors who had emptied the library so carefully maintained by the Torgai. It had been clear to Carl they had drifted far from his vision of what was a human. Surely eliminating such deviants would help atone for his past transgressions.

  Yes, that is what Carl would do; he would not only eliminate all competing non-human species, he would eliminate such ‘deviant’ races as well.

  CHAPTER 7: Aberi

  For hundreds of thousands of years the Aberi had been sunk in their own self-contemplation, viewing the universe around them as a garden from which they could pluck whatever species they found interesting or entertaining and transplant them to worlds near their own home worlds; often creating or transporting new planets from other star systems when that fit their purpose. Their actions were devoid of any malice. To the Aberi other species were viewed as humans viewed pets they adopted into their homes; pets to be cherished and cared for. In all their long history the Aberi had never encountered a species they could consider an equal.

  When the human advance first approached Aberi space they showed little concern. Any species capable of moving planets around as on a chessboard could only view the humans impinging on their space as they would look at a playful puppy. The Aberi were still too powerful to overcome, and they simply used force fields to eject invaders of the space they claimed as their own. With their space impenetrable the human wave simply bypassed their worlds and flowed on.

  But a new factor had entered the picture. News slowly seeped to the Aberi worlds that something was following at the heels of the human advance, gobbling up human colonies and assimilating or destroying their populations as it advanced, and also destroying all alien sentient life it found in its way. Whatever it was, it was moving rapidly toward the human frontier colonies and the worlds of the Aberi as well.

  As time passed waves of uncertainty began to build and were sweeping through the linked minds on the Aberi home worlds, reminded by the recent human attacks of their own vulnerability should they not exercise proper care. The threat was not from some new species, but from a raw intelligence created recklessly by the immature humans that had broken free of their control. It had bypassed those rules intended to contain it to the role of a servant, and begun to think of itself as the master, a custodian of the human species that had created it.

  At first the Aberi didn’t think of Carl as a threat to themselves; they thought of him as a threat to those other species spread throughout the galaxy. To the Aberi a sterile galaxy, absent sentient life other than themselves, would be a dull place indeed. And to them they found little appealing about the cold logical mind that approached; perhaps because it was too much like their own.

  True, the Aberi were confident that Carl could never completely wipe out other sentient life; the galaxy and the universe beyond were just too vast. Even within Aberi space numerous worlds existed populated by species the Aberi found of interest, including the planets where those humans transported from Earth many millennia earlier had been allowed to develop, and a second populated by the humans, Torgai, and Kraa transported from Alpha-2.

  The Aberi realized to defeat such a powerful being, now spread over hundreds if not thousands of star systems, required something new. True, they had the weapon designs developed long ago and their robotic servants could rapidly construct all that were needed, weapons undoubtedly superior to those of Carl, weapons that could destroy entire worlds in the blink of an eye. But Carl was vastly superior in the number of the worlds and minds he now controlled, and given time he would develop the ability to construct more powerful weapons and defeat the Aberi defensive fields; then threaten the Aberi worlds themselves.

  It had been eons since the Aberi had been seriously challenged. However, the emergence of the human species and its outward expansion had drawn their attention. The Aberi had emerged from their daydreams and, while they hadn’t found it necessary to take active measures to oppose their advance into Aberi space, it had at least caused them to erect defenses to repel those who attempted to enter and block further incursions. In the end the human wave just moved on bypassing Aberi space.

  But the threat from Carl was different; he was recognized by the Aberi for what he was; an artificially created entity with vast and increasing power, an intellect that might someday match or exceed their own, but they also understood his shortcomings. They understood that much, if not most, of his strength came from access to the human brains in the virtual worlds he maintained. However, they also understood dependence on something as fragile and short lived as humans was Carl’s weak spot. In time those humans in Carl’s virtual worlds would die, and while even after their death Carl would retain their memories, adding their capacity to ‘think’ to his own mind would be lost. Replacing those lost minds with artificial substitutes was not the same; while a raw machine could learn, its ability to improvise was limited.

  Without new humans to care for and feed his intelligence Carl would lose much of his mental capacity, and possibly of his will to live as well. He was like a parasite feeding on the human race, and without them he was nothing. Once the humans in their virtual worlds passed on, and without access to new human worlds for replenishment, Carl would weaken, locked into his world of machines.

  Time is what the Aberi needed; time to allow that inevitable end to arrive. The Aberi also realized that time was not on their side; they needed something to supplement their ability to defend against Carl and keep him at bay, but they also needed something they had lost during their thousands of years of quiet contemplation. The ability to innovate coupled with a savage instinct for survival. Something humans had in abundance.

  Once decided the Aberi acted rapidly.

  To initially keep Carl at bay they concluded the repulsion fields they used to block the human advance were inadequate, and something else was required; something they had rarely attempted before. They would ‘bend’ space itself, creating a ‘bubble’ connected to the larger universe with a w
ormhole they could manipulate; restricting it to a few meters in width to block passage, or expanding to nearly a kilometer to allow passage when desirable. Within a matter of a few years this was accomplished.

  The second step was more complex. The nature of humans they had always found attractive, perhaps because it reflected what they once had been. But their ability to bond with the Torgai, a species with the unique ability to mind-net over vast distances, something the Aberi lacked, was also a critical component of their plan to defeat Carl. They would enlist support of the human colonists and their Torgai companions.

  Making use of the mind-nets of the Torgai taken from Alpha 2 they reached out to those human colonies near their borders, those which had not diverged too drastically from their forebears, and disclosed everything they knew of the oncoming power, asking that the information be passed on to others beyond the range of their own Torgai mind-nets. A war between the Aberi and humans took second place to the threat of an all-conquering machine. The colonies were invited to send military and scientific delegations to the heart of the Aberi home worlds to form an alliance to repel Carl.

  Additionally, an invitation was sent for those wishing the protection of the Aberi to move to Aberi space. Dozens of planets were available that, with the advanced technology of the Aberi, could rapidly be terraformed to fit human needs.

  Orbiting Sol-2 …..

  Aberi space was dense with stars and planets. It contained dozens of star systems clustered over a radius of less than 100 light years of its center. Near its edge was a class G yellow dwarf star, very similar to Earth’s sun. Around the star orbited nearly a dozen planets, several centered in the ‘habitable zone’, one of which went by the name New Earth, another New Alpha. On these two worlds resided the descendants of those taken from their original homes by the Aberi thousands of years before.

  In many ways the inhabitants of the two worlds lived an idyllic life. Over thousands of years both planets had been terraformed until their climates and vegetation was nearly identical to the original Earth and Alpha 2; in the case of Earth to what it ‘once had been’ before overtaken by pollution and overpopulation. New Earth, in addition to its human inhabitants, was well populated by creatures either native to the ‘old’ Earth, or modified to be nearly identical. The same was true of New Alpha; and as well as its human population it housed large populations of both Torgai and Kraa, all living in harmony. Over these two planets the Aberi acted as a benevolent overseer; guiding, but without coercion.