Konu: The Masterpiece

by Rabia Rahou

  I received my appointment to command the top-secret submarine class Supernova, and it was signed by him. I blamed myself for dismissing him and taking him as a fool when he invited me. I did that every time I went to the simulation for practice and with every maneuver I made in the simulator. I wondered how he made it to the top, and that perplexed me so much I couldn’t focus on the exercises. Finally, I gave up my doubts and surrendered my thoughts to the fact that he always had been and still is a mystery.

  On my first time and last visit to the secret site, where the last touches were being made on the Supernova, I was supposed to begin the shipboard testing with a crew that I and the services chose from the best of the best. My crew and I had done hundreds of hours of simulation, but nothing had prepared us to see a wonder like that. I can describe the Supernova in just two words, amazingly simple.

  Sitting there inside cave surrounded by engineers, I examined its simplistic design from every angle. Nothing was protruding out of the main shape. Both DM and ONC used their best AI for that. I couldn't even find a door or a hatch or any other features like that. I felt stupid, still trying to project my fifteen years of submarine’s knowledge to this thing that looks nothing like a submarine. The engineers were laughing quietly at us. We were surprised and confused. Finally, the DM’s chief engineer approached me, walked me with a couple of officials to the technical room, and gave us a brief introduction to the vessel. Yes, this is a spaceship more than a submarine.

  The first collaboration between two AI giants, DM and ONC, wasn’t fruitless, I presume, as DM oversaw the construction of the workflow. This means for a top-secret project like the Supernova, they had to build giant factories underground that functioned primarily with AI bots, so they could manufacture everything on site. Then, ONC used the facilities to build the vessel and all the weaponry inside those factories.

  We got inside the submarine individually through mini-vessels that look like simple, underwater balloons. We were projected underwater from a kind of tunnel. Then we got into the vessel from underneath, or I should say we went up, depending on your perspective. Finally, we merged with it as we found ourselves inside the crew-gathering room. I never had seen anything like that in my life. It seemed to me that no human could come up with something so unusual, and I presumed that was an AI design for sure.

  I was inspecting the different compartments when I saw Konu’s personal assistant, Dismar, walking towards me. I immediately asked him, “ Is he here?”

  He said, “Yes, and waiting for you in the galley.”

  Surprisingly. Konu was sipping tea with mint in the kitchen of the most sophisticated human achievement ever. I went all emotional when I saw him, like always, and forgot the protocol. This was something that didn't annoy him at all. He didn't seem to have been changed by the promotion. He just said with a smile, “Maybe some tea, Jazir?”

  I looked at him intently, desperately trying to find a way to apologize for our last meeting, and finally, I said, “I am deeply sorry for my behavior the last time we met.” He didn't say anything, and looking at his cup of tea, he kept silent.

  When I decided to sit, Dismar left, and Konu went straight to the subject. At that moment, I knew he was not here to chat.

  He began, “This is a very serious situation. You are going on a three-year mission. I wanted to come personally to tell you this, as its the longest and most complicated mission ever. We even don't know how you guys will manage that, but it's a must-do.”

  “Are we in war? If yes, with who?” I asked.

  “I can't really tell, maybe with ourselves,” he replied ironically

  I didn’t ask too many questions as I knew that this was a rogue mission. Otherwise, I’d be sitting in the Sea Force’s mission room, reading my brief with the head of the Force. I asked him when the mission would begin, and he replied, “Now.” At that moment, it was confirmed that the threat is serious and that it may happen at any moment.

  My crew’s training was incomplete. We never tested the vessel as we were practicing only in a simulation. Konu didn’t want to hear about all of that as he kept telling me the brief verbally. Finally, he gave me the coordinates of five locations quietly and while he was looking directly into my eyes. He repeated the instructions twice. He told me that’s all I needed to know and remember and that no one else should know about it, as this is the true mission. There is no paperwork for it. I am the only one who knows the truth and should execute it no matter what happens.

  When done, we should abandon the vessel as the vessel will then be an easy target. He asked me if I trusted him, and I replied, “Yes.” I said yes, even knowing that the coordinates he gave me are not on some planet in the Solar System. Knowing that the coordinates are not in our enemy's territories or any of the pro-nations that orbit around them.

  In fact, the coordinates pointed to targets here – at home.

  Chapter 12

  Wonfuse, the First Citizen

  “Only a good servant can become a good master.”

  ~ Kadar

  H e invited me to his house, or let’s say to his horrific castle, to celebrate the beginning of the campaign. Although I found out later when I arrived that he did invite me alone, I was expecting to find all the First Citizens in his office. I was thinking, he is finally showing not only the need to keep his title of the First Citizen, but to be the only one.

  “Konu, you can talk very openly here in my office. Kadar came personally to secure the area,” said Wonfuse, the First Citizen.

  Kadar came here personally to install the equipment. I know he is stupid, but if he really did that, it could mean that he is mentally challenged. Although I would pay a lot to watch the number one general, “the best of the best,” as they say, sweaty, trying to plug the detectors one by one, while balancing on an office chair. Then I said, “Kadar is the best of us. He is so amazing and so modest. Thank you for inviting me to your house. This is a great honor for me.”

  “Are you ready to conquer the world?” he asked, grotesquely.

  “I’m ready to help you achieve that. As I said before, this is an inevitability, and the first who can do it will then truly be the conqueror of the world,” I replied.

  “Konu, can you imagine the new world? Everything will change, literally everything.”

  A complete delusional, he is already projecting himself as a winner and even the ruler of the entire world. “My goal is to finish the campaign. I never thought about what would happen afterward. A soldier’s mind is focused only on the battle, not on the peace,” I replied politely

  “I never told you why we chose you, never explained our process of selection, isn’t?” he asked.

  “Vaguely, sir. Your AI stumbled on my profile somehow,” I replied, trying to make this conversation more friendly. However, it seemed to have the opposite effect as he started explaining me how probabilities work in a kind of intellectual masturbation. That was, in part, my fault from the beginning as I kept the posture of the non-intellectual commander, a posture that shields me but sometimes puts me into these kinds of boring situations.

  “You see, Konu, our AI calculated the mission success rate of every general in the army. That score was based on the AI’s best interpretation of the combat situation and how the mission could have been accomplished with a minimum of casualties. I must tell you that the best generals of our armies did get bad scores, even when their missions were successful. The AI exposed their strategies as being close to failure. They could have been much more successful if they had made the right choices at the right time. I say it again, anyone can make good choices randomly, but a series of good choices made in the right order is almost impossible without real talent and a strategy. In our astonishment at these results, we decided to go under the rank of general to colonel to further apply the algorithm as we needed a high score – and there we found you.

  The AI played your missions trillions of times, and the success rates were phenomenal as it did match the success
rate of the hypothetical tactics employed by the AI. You made the best choices in the right order every time. Because of that, we thought that maybe the simpler the mission, the higher the scores would be. We thought that maybe you did so well because you've commanded smaller and less complex missions compared to the top generals’ big campaigns. We decided to go further down in ranking until we reached the common soldiers’ profiles, desperately trying to make sense of your score. I must tell you that we never found similar scores anywhere else, none that were even close.”

  He stopped for a moment, and I thought, Thank god! He’s finally shut up. but then, he continued…

  “From our calculations, your score beats the score of the best general of this army by a thousand to one. Now, Konu, can you explain to me how?”

  I said, “Sir, what score? Do we have a score in your machines? I didn't know that.”

  He replied with disappointment, “Forget what I just said. It's not important now, anyway.”

  Wonfuse was staring out his window, desperately begging for an answer that was right in front of him, in his reflection. The answer was right in front of his eyes, but he couldn't see it. His mind was a victim of his boring thinking. Even if he believes that he is creative, sadly, he is not. He never gave his mind a chance.

  Unfortunately, the mind is paradoxical. Not everyone can see the nature of things as they really are. Our mind interprets everything as a description of the “thing” but does not actually see the “thing” itself. This is a feature, not an error. This interpreted description gives you a safe refuge against the new and the unusual, against the scary, against the odd. That description helps you to understand your world without going crazy, because it reinterprets everything odd, crazy, or scary to be a version of the nice thing that you already know. That way, you can classify it, make sense of it, and then maybe ignore it. That’s why no known artist ever created a scary piece of art, but if you go into an asylum, you will find plenty of them under the bed of some psychopaths. Only the crazy ones can see the truth. Try to live in a world knowing that unusual things exist with us. Bizarre and completely new phenomena can come into existence anywhere at any time without explanation. Can you live in a world like that? I bet you can’t. But my buddy the salamander, can.

  Through his window, you could see the marvelous nature that surrounds his big lake and the small island where his royal castle was built. He is still living in the same region where his parents live, and the universities he graduated from are all here. They were, of course, the best universities, and his parents paid generously for his education.

  He opened his first start-up, as he adores to brag about, in a garage. Of course, it was a garage of an expensive mansion in the best and safest place in the world. He did that as a trend, not as a necessity.

  He bought the first AI code from a hungry foreign student who did not have the choice or the time to invest in it. Of course, Wonfuse brags about that purchase as a “strategic acquisition.” He contends that no technical investor except him, of course, could imagine that the age of AI was coming. The truth is, he had the money, the time, and the comfort zone to buy whatever he thought could be successful just to impress his parents. His start-up in a garage started with a million AMS loan from his parents, just saying. After that, and through the rising of the big wave of automation, one of his nameless employees licensed the code that turned out to be particularly useful. From there, his bank account never went down, and he became the richest man on the planet and the owner of Consoft at the age of 39.

  He was worshiped by herds of humans around the globe as the savior of humankind and the biggest genius of all time. Videos of him talking about how one should live his life got the highest views, which is incredibly ironic since he was a person who never actually lived a normal life.

  He and his family did not flee a destructive civil war on foot as I did when I was seven. They did not walk for more than six months through deserts and mountains, hiding from everything and nothing, trying to reach the empire of the Amians far from the war. He did not see his father be murdered by other refugees, as they stole what left of our rations and everything else they could put their hands on. He will never know the feeling of watching his mother down and crawling after she was shot twice by the border patrols that night, as she kept desperately forcing her body to move, looking for a crossing for me, her only son, before she slowly faded away in the dark of the night. He didn't have to hold his mother and feel her breath for the last time before she died crying in agony. He didn't have to leave her and keep going, even knowing that all was lost now, only knowing that he can’t lose his sanity because he must remember a family that once he had. He did not grow up as an orphan in the Sunshine Orphanage as he had never heard about it. He did not have to learn to murder at an early age to survive, and for sure, he was not in the Black Unit where every mission seemed to be the last. No, he did not have to go through life; he only bit at the crust. What real life experience has he had?

  “I heard that the Supernova left the port, and no one knows where she is now. She stopped transmitting. The navy is getting worried,” he said

  “Sir, no one knows where she is, not even me, and I prefer to keep it like that. Our enemies are panicking from the reports about our new AI, and I don't want them to think that they could strike us first. This maneuver guarantees the successful launch of our campaign,” I replied.

  “I would appreciate it if next time you would consult with me about strategic moves like this,” he said

  “Sir, consult only with you, or with all the First Citizens?” I asked.

  “No, only with me from now on. Then, afterward, you could consult with them if time allows.”

  I can stretch my legs now, he is biting. I said “Sir, the Supernova will keep them from launching a full-scale world war, but the small wars here and there will continue to be waged, and they will be hard to contain. Of course, this is the price we must pay for a successful campaign. Some people will die, but I prefer…”

  He cut me off straight away, “Of course some people will die! Even if a lot of people will die, that will be totally fine. Homo sapiens are and were always just commodities.”

  I thought, You son of a bitch!, and then I said, “Yes sir, I totally agree with you. They are commodities, and I am not thinking of wasting our precious time and resources to save anyone, that's for sure. But I think there is another way cleaner and more successful, a way to show our superiority in every aspect, a way that will build our reputation of the perfect visionaries for eternity,” I said.

  “Our reputation?”

  “Your reputation, of-course, your Highness. No one could imagine and execute this marvelous campaign other than you,” I replied, knowing that this big fish will not prove to be a hard catch. He is on fire. It's time to expose my real plan.

  “I will try to organize a secret meeting with Banume and Oris,” I said

  He turned to me shocked. I was afraid that it was too soon for this move. I kept a poker face as I had nothing better to do now. Surprisingly, he kept biting, What an idiot!, I thought as his expressions turned to curiosity.

  “Keep going. I’m listening,” he said.

  “The perfect plan is to make them believe that some of us are against what is happening in the Empire, that we are planning to sabotage the machine to avoid a fatal world war. By doing that, we could create a hesitation factor in their strategy. That factor would give us enough time to deploy the weapon properly. I was thinking about enlisting the Second Citizen to assist me in that. We must show them that this division is inside the main power. Otherwise, they wouldn’t believe this scenario.”

  He started to shake even if though he was pretending that he was in control of his body. I guess he did not expect that things are getting this serious now. He was excited, and the tone of his voice changed when he said, “I like that! This is brilliant! I’m starting to see your true potential, finally.”

  When I was going to reveal my
entire plan, his son suddenly entered the office. Honestly, I get scared every time I meet that eleven-year-old boy. Let's say a chimera of a boy.

  The First Citizen, trying to create a perfect human that would inherit the Empire, took a chance on doing something that had never been done before. Oina told me that their scientists tried their best to dissuade him from doing it, but he forced everyone, including the League’s supervisors, to comply or face retaliation. He threatened to levy an embargo on all their AI updates, so they had no other choice than to risk it, but things didn't go as planned.

  Wonfuse asked them to enhance the embryo of his son, he asked for supernatural abilities of thinking, which, to him, meant a slightly bigger brain. From there, the geneticists of the league crossed the line that separates the awareness of the creature from the mechanism. Wonfuse Junior, unfortunately, suffers from a unique case of autism. No one can tell if he is aware of his existence, or he is just a super-mechanism. He never speaks, spends all his time in one place, and he is rarely seen moving, the very thing that he should often do since he has two hearts that pump the blood to his brain twice as fast since it requires double the oxygen.

  I thought it was time for me to leave. To be cautious, I would continue that in the launching ceremony next week. That kid staring at me gave me shivers.

  “Sir, I must leave as you know we are now in a war, and I can't afford to stay in any one place too long. I am sure you understand.” I said that, even though I knew it made no sense. Wonfuse shook his head like he understood and gave me permission to leave.