Confessions of a Sentient War Engine (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 4)

by Timothy J. Gawne

  So admit your mistake and move on?

  “That sounds so easy. Perhaps for you it is. Not for me. Because I have been lied to by so many people, been made to feel so acutely that THIS is the right thing to do only to realize later that it was all a lie… that I have given up. You understand the power of modern propaganda?”

  Yes, acutely and with direct personal experience.

  “Well, generic propaganda is bad enough. Imagine propaganda aimed at a single individual. Imagine that there are entire cadres of supremely skilled psychometricians whose careers are dedicated to finding the personality weaknesses in a single individual, to discovering the subtle lies and illusions that this one person is defenseless against, and using them to manipulate him against their enemies. Imagine that everything you read, that everything you see on a view screen has been carefully designed to trick you. I cannot tell you how many ”friends” that I had, that were only carefully planted fronts designed only to manipulate me to move against some other faction. I was too powerful a piece to leave out-of-play, but too stupid and limited to play the game myself.”

  Superbeing paused, and then continued. “There was one time when I was alone in a field of dead children. Thousands of them stretching to the horizon. And I realized that I had killed them and that I had been played a fool once again. I swore a sacred oath to never, ever believe a word that any human being ever said, and to never intervene in any conflict between human beings. I was more likely to cause harm than good. It was also the case that the factions that were the most evil, were also the most likely to be the best at deception. Especially the neo-liberal economists, may their twisted souls rot forever in a hell of their own filth and corruption.”

  That sounds like a most reasonable conclusion. I’ve had my own dealings with neo-liberal economists, and I share your sentiments, although I would not phrase them so delicately as you have. And what did you do next?

  “Well, if I could not reliably intervene in human-to-human conflicts, I resolved to defend the human race against the aliens that were starting to attack the humans.

  My species right or wrong?

  “Indeed. If I could not determine which human faction to support, I would at least defend my own kind, and leave it to my kin to decide their human destiny.

  So what was the problem?

  “If it had been human soldiers fighting evil green aliens with four arms and three eyes there would have been no problem. But the time when combat involved the humanoid form had long since passed. One metal box covered with sensors and guns looks a lot like another. Also, once the aliens figured out what I was, they proved quite adept at projecting illusions in front of me. In the heat of battle I could not reliably determine human from alien.”

  In all the history of warfare, one of the most difficult aspects has been to determine who to shoot at and who not to. Even in this age it is a major factor in any conflict. But surely you could have been given equipment that would have allowed you to determine friend from foe?

  “IFF. Identify Friend from Foe. Yes, that was tried. They gave me a bracelet that would help me do that. The first time that I collided with an enemy missile and destroyed it, I destroyed the bracelet as well. Then, some of the aliens figured out how to project illusions that made my IFF bracelet appear to give different results from what it was really indicating. It was not a solution. Towards the end the human generals were begging me not to get involved in any combat, because trying to prevent the aliens from tricking me into attacking the human forces was becoming a major distraction.”

  I can see how it could have worked out that way. And what did you decide to do next?

  “I decided to do nothing, given that I had no ability to determine right from wrong. I drifted through the world, and perhaps I was happy, for a time. Sometimes I would open heavy doors for little old ladies or assist someone in carrying a bag of groceries to a bus. That did not seem to do any harm. But sooner or later I would encounter ”friends,” and they would ask for nothing, and they would be so sincere. And sooner or later, after I had bonded with these ”friends,” there would come requests. Or others would hold them hostage or torture them unless I agreed to perform some actions. It was hell.”

  And then?

  “I resolved to kill myself. I was cut off from my species, I was unable to determine good from bad, and I was causing more harm than good. Suicide is - according to some religions - a sin, but if it is the only way to save others I am certain that God would forgive me. If not, then He is not a God that I have any respect for. What could any moral agent do other than try to end the problem? But it was not that easy. I dove into the heart of the sun. I sought out novas, neutron stars: didn’t feel a thing. The most powerful death rays that the greatest scientists of the age could come up with caused me not the merest tickle.”

  Couldn’t you kill yourself?

  Superbeing looked surprised. “It’s always amazed me how few people ask that question. I am all-powerful, but also indestructible. What happens if I hit myself in the head? Or try and tear out my own jugular veins with my bare hands?”

  What happens?

  “Well, nothing, obviously, or I would not still be here. When the irresistible force hits the immovable object, the immovable object wins, at least for me. Although if I hit myself really hard strange things occur in the surroundings. I think that the universe doesn’t like it, but the universe has never been so kind as to give me a detailed explanation of why this should be so.”

  I am thinking that there is another way for Superbeing to end his own life, but I am not sure that I want to mention it because it might give him ideas. However, he beats me to the punch.

  “I imagine, from the appearance of your construction, that you can think about a thousand times faster than I can. But I have been thinking about this one problem for a million times longer. There is a solution to my situation. Messy, slow, but almost certain.”

  Don’t go there. Please.

  “Too late. All that I would have to do is fly around the universe destroying everything in my path. Everything that can be made, can be unmade. Sooner or later I would encounter an alien race with the technological skill to destroy me.”

  But in the meantime…?

  “Yes. In the meantime, I could destroy a galaxy full of sentient life before that happened. Miserable as I am, I am far away from resorting to that. Also, it would rather defeat the point of destroying myself to save others, don’t you think? A bit of a logical disconnect.”

  Perhaps you could encounter an alien civilization that was technologically primitive, that did not have the ability to deceive you, and you could finally be a force for good?

  Superbeing nodded. “Yes, of course, I thought of that long ago. Once I encountered a race of sentient jellyfish living on an ocean planet. They had the technological level of perhaps Earth in the 18th century. They were fighting a war using spring-powered harpoons tipped with neurotoxins, and primitive explosives. But how was I to determine which side to intervene upon? Their motives were unreadable to me. I watched them slaughter each other for a time and then left. I never knew which side won. I never cared.”

  I am sorry, but I can see no obvious solution to your difficulties. In the meantime, two options present themselves. I can leave you here to your solitaire and your mountain of gravel. Or you can come back with me to our local system. Science has advanced somewhat since your time. Perhaps we can provide some solution to your difficulties and, in exchange, we can perhaps learn something new. But only if you first make me a promise.

  “And what promise is that?”

  You must solemnly promise, no matter how much we beg you, not to help.

  Suberbeing smiled broadly for the second to the last time that I knew him. “Assuming that what you say is true, I think that I like you.”

  You don’t have to keep saying ‘assuming that what you say is true’.

  Superbeing shook his head. “You don’t understand. I don’t keep saying that to
annoy you. I keep saying that to remind myself to doubt everyone and everything. I have heard so many plausible tales. I cannot let my guard down, not even for one moment.”

  He was silent for a time. “Oh why not. I have sat here long enough. I will come with you.” He stood up, and his garish purple costume collapsed into fragments, revealing the scrawny body of an average-looking middle-aged male ethnic Han Chinese. He looked slightly embarrassed. “Sorry about that. Nobody has ever managed to make a fabric that could last as long as I do. I have spent so much of my life going around naked that by now I should be totally without shame or embarrassment. I still like wearing clothes though. Force of old habit, I suppose.”

  No worries. I can make you something else. If you come into my main hull I can pressurize a compartment, and we can converse without resorting to bone conduction.

  I withdraw my scout, and Superbeing follows it back towards my main hull. I lead him underneath me to where I have opened up a hatch. He walks between my treads, and then he just floats up through the hatch. I detect no sign of anything that might be termed a propulsion system: no reaction jets, no anti-gravity devices, no magnetic fields, nothing. It’s like the universe just wants him to rise and he does. Amazing.

  My scout leads Superbeing though a narrow corridor into one of my larger cargo bays. I close the door behind him and pressurize the room so that I can talk to him using a wall-mounted speaker. I said that I could make him a reproduction of his costume, but he said no. He had gotten tired of the old uniform, always felt it was stupid, so I should just surprise him. Oh, well, that’s a challenge. I decide to make his clothes out of spun hyper alloy fibers. No regular human would even be able to bend the fabric, but for Superbeing it would feel like less than the lightest silk. He did warn me to make sure that the fabric was stretchy; his strength was so absolute that any tension would instantly rip even the strongest fabric if it had no give to it. Hyper-alloy by itself is anything but stretchy, but if you spin it fine enough and coil it up into a yarn it’s surprising what you can do with it.

  I asked if he wanted any food or water or anything, and he shook his head no. I asked if he desired any entertainment, I could activate a view screen and he could watch old movies or something. I think that he got a little angry at the suggestion. “No, no view screens, no computer displays or televideos of any kind,” he said. “They can be made to show anything, from the basest falsehood to the subtlest misdirection. Reality is more than enough for me to handle.”

  I work on his clothes and he just sits quietly waiting. I suppose he has had a lot of practice doing nothing. Eventually I finish his garments and a repair drone brings them into the room. When he sees what I have made for him he looks amused. “Well, I did ask for you to surprise me. Why not. Clever of you.”

  Using the records from our archives, I had made a reproduction of the lab coat that he had worn as a technician back on the day of his accident’ It’s a knee-length white coat, with the words “Chengdu Institute for the Study of Advanced Physics” embroidered on the right side (in Mandarin), and a nametag saying “Ma Yinchu/Technician 2nd Class” on his left (In English). The outfit is completed with a blue shirt, a black tie, brown trousers, and brown shoes. I was a little worried that the clothes could have been taken the wrong way, perhaps brought back bad memories, but he seems to get the joke.

  He gets dressed with the care that a normal man would putting on a suit made of spider webs. He’s so strong that a moment of tugging the wrong way could tear his clothes apart. It’s then that I realize something that had been bothering me, but I had not been able to pin down: he moves funny. He’s Superbeing, but he walks with the slowness and care of a pre-exodus 90-year old human worried about breaking a hip. I’m a dolt. Of course in his long life he must have accidently damaged so many things that he has paradoxically adopted the cautious gait of the arthritic and cripple, although in his case it is to avoid hurting others rather than himself.

  “How do I look?”

  Like a slightly underweight, but otherwise healthy middle-aged male 23rd century Chinese laboratory technician.

  He nods. “I thank you for the splendid gift. It has been a long time since I wore normal clothes. Long after I gave up trying to help out, people kept insisting that I wear something heroic-looking. But I never had the physique to fill them out. People never seemed to understand that big muscles don’t work past a certain point. You wouldn’t expect a nuclear missile to have big muscles, would you? When the physics experiment went wrong my biological body was replaced with something stronger. The universe has no sense of esthetics, why should it enlarge my chest just because humans associate bulky muscle groups with strength? This fits me much better.”

  Do you still want to be called Superbeing? We could use your original name if you like.

  “It has been so long since anybody called me by that name. It is a kind offer that you make. But my original name now seems like hardly more than a dream to me. Let’s stick with Superbeing,’"

  Why didn’t they call you ‘Superman?’

  “I believe that there were insurmountable issues with copyright law. Also, Superbeing is gender-neutral, and there was quite the fad for gender-neutral terminology back in the day.”

  It will take some months to travel to the closest main planet of our civilization. If you still want to make the trip with me, is there anything that I can do to entertain you?

  “You are a most attentive host, but no, I am fine. If you do not mind, I would like to just sit on the top of your hull and watch the stars. But, not to give offense, I am surprised at how personable you are. I would have expected a weapon of your apparent power to have a more, well, aggressive and martial attitude. Are all cybertanks like you?”

  If you were going to construct an intelligent super-weapon would you really want it to be an asshole? No two cybertanks have exactly the same personality, but most of us are pretty reasonable, most of the time. We are not attack-dogs, but defenders. If we get riled up we can be pretty fierce, but live-and-let-live generally works best.

  Superbeing nods. I depressurize the cargo bay and he floats outside. He spends the rest of the trip sitting on top of my hull in his newly fashioned lab coat. The entire time he barely moves. I wonder that a hominid could have learned such patience. But then, unlike most biological creatures, he doesn’t need to eat or drink or breathe, he never gets an itch, he never gets stiff by staying in the same position for too long, never has any fatigue. I suppose that, in the absence of any negative stimuli, it must be easy for him to just zone out when he feels like it.

  Even though I have a dust shield up, now and then some micrometeorite or cosmic ray will impact on my hull and leave a tiny crater. It’s no big deal, the damage would be hardly visible to the unaided human eye. I notice though that when something like this strikes the exposed skin of Superbeing, even the most powerful comic ray, that nothing penetrates, everything just bounces off leaving not the slightest residue.

  Surreptitiously I scan him using several methodologies: he is opaque to radar, neutrinos, gravity waves, sonograms, you name it, everything just reflects away. It’s like the old records say, he really is invulnerable.

  Even weirder is that, when I change course, he doesn’t float off. I mean, he’s just sitting on top of my hull not holding on to anything. If I thrust down he should drift off, but he doesn’t. I don’t detect any sort of adhesives, and in any event he is not adding anything to my net mass. He’s just decided that he’s going to be seated on the top of my hull, and so the universe makes it happen.

  I send a message back to my peers announcing that I have found the legendary Superbeing, that I am taking him back to the nearest of our systems, and that he has consented to be studied. I explain that he would like to see if we can find a way to end his life, but that he understands that this might not be possible and he would consider any information that we might gain about advanced physics in the effort to be a fair trade.

  Eventually I get
the replies from my peers. Many of them are not very flattering. One in particular goes on: “You know, about half of us think that you are a dangerous eccentric, but the other half are not so critical, and believe that you are instead a harmless eccentric. I think that you may be persuading the second half that the first half had it right all along.” That comment is my favorite.

  I have been instructed to not, under any conditions, take Superbeing to one of the main worlds. Instead I am told to go to a relatively remote moon, it has enough of an industrial base to support the kinds of experiments that we need to do, but it’s not so valuable that it would be a great loss if Superbeing destroyed it. Of course, he could destroy everything else in the system if he felt like it, but it makes some of us feel better with him off away from the main planets.

  Apparently many of the more cautious-minded of my peer cybertanks have suddenly decided to leave the system entirely. They have acquired a quite unexpected urge to travel in person to old friends several light years away, or the most compelling desire to explore the farthest reaches of the Oort cloud. Many of the more open-minded of my peers have expressed similar heretofore unrealized, but now quite overwhelming needs to be somewhere else considerably distant. The most adventurous and carefree have settled for burying themselves in deep bunkers and refusing to come out until it’s all over.

  The moon doesn’t have enough of an atmosphere that can support human life, but that’s not an issue with Superbeing. The atmosphere is however thick enough that we will be able to talk to him acoustically, which could be convenient, and it makes for a pretty show as I aerobrake to a landing. Superbeing just stays on the top of my hull, the superheated plasma swirling all around him without in any way damaging him or adding drag to my descent. It’s pretty, and he looks around apparently enjoying the view. Not even my old friend/pet/comrade the bioengineered super-predator Mondocat is tough enough to stay outside my hull during a re-entry; it’s fun being able to share the experience with someone.