The Synchronicity War Part 2

by Dietmar Wehr

  “Excuse me, Sir. Could I ask you a question?” Shiloh nodded.

  “Are we going to try to outguess where they’re headed next, Sir?” Shiloh shook his head.

  “No, and the reasons why are these. First, they have too much of a head start. Even if we picked the right system by chance, they might very well have refueled and jumped again by the time we got there. Second, our chances of picking the right system are small. They could have picked one of a dozen possible destinations. Third, we’ve used up almost all our recon and attack drones so even if we did regain contact, we’d have to get dangerously close to track them and finally, I don’t want Defiant to follow them to Avalon Colony… or some other inhabited system only to arrive low on weapons and fuel, when getting there early and resupplying might make the difference between a victory and a defeat.” The Lieutenant nodded and said.

  “Thank you, Sir. I guess the scuttlebutt is right.”

  “What scuttlebutt would that be, Lieutenant?” The officer, having now realized he said too much, got red in the face.

  “Well ah…the rumors are that Admiral Howard and the Senior Brass consider you to be a ah….tactical genius…Sir.” Now what do you say to that? Thought Shiloh. Do I declare myself to be a mere mortal and damage their confidence in me or do I let them think I’m better than I really am? He laughed and said.

  “Well, I don’t think I’m THAT good. There was SOME luck involved you know.” The Lieutenant laughed too, thanked him again and walked away. As he took another sip of his coffee, Shiloh pursued that line of thought. So how good am I really? I didn’t come up with the battle plan. The vision gave that to me and Iceman saved our asses with his message drone relay idea. On the other hand, I didn’t screw it up. Quite a few brilliant strategists have screwed up at one time or another. All things considered, he decided he hadn’t done a bad job. He still didn’t relish the idea of maybe having to play a key role in a battle that would determine Humanity’s fate, when he had no control over his visions. And speaking of which, he wondered how his next encounter with Howard would turn out when the Old Man learned about his visions.

  When he got to the Bridge, he relieved the officer in command and settled down for what he expected to be a routine duty shift. Neither the XO or the Astrogator were on duty and the latter had left his response to Shiloh’s request for a planned route to Nimitz Base, that would also allow Defiant to send one of the new extended range message drones using a single jump back to Omaha Base at the earliest possible time. When he called up the route on the display, he nodded in approval. The Nimitz Base/Avalon Colony star system was in what Shiloh thought of as Path A but a direct line from Green4 back to the Omaha Base star system led thru the other ‘river’ of stars that was thought of as Path B. Even with the new extended range message drones, a single jump to Sol from here would require Defiant to boost to a very high speed before launching the drone, and thereby use up quite a bit of its fuel supply but the Astrogator had come up with a good plan. After picking up the sentry fighters at Green4B, Defiant would set course for the Omaha Base system and boost to 55% of light speed. After launching the message drone, she would then make a relatively minor course change and jump to Yellow12, which just happened to have a gas giant. After refueling there, the ship would then make a very long jump across the empty void that separated Paths A and B and arrive at Orange21, refuel again and then one more jump to the Nimitz Base/Avalon Colony system. Along the way the ship would set two records, one for the quickest jump between two star systems and one for the longest jump in terms of distance travelled between two star systems. It would also alert the Quick Reaction Task Force at Omaha Base to the alien incursion along with Shiloh’s conviction that the Avalon Colony was the aliens’ target. The warning sent back to Bradley Base, would be relayed directly to Sol by Base Commander Korolev but notifying Omaha Base and the QRTF directly would save time. The sentry fighters deployed by tanker in the red and orange layers of the Early Warning Network, would warn Nimitz Base in time. Total time before Defiant’s arrival at Nimitz Base star system would be 45 hours. If the enemy fleet continued with their series of short hops, they wouldn’t get to their target system for at least 100 hours. Even if they switched over to longer, less frequent jumps, they still couldn’t get there in less than 60 hours. He approved the plan.

  The slingshot/fighter recovery maneuver went off without a hitch. Shiloh was so pleased with it that he commended DCAG Falkenberg in his log. When his duty shift was over, he went down to the Hangar Bay to talk with Iceman. The more room than usual reminded him of the fighters that had been lost in battle. He made a point of stopping in front of one of the empty fighter bays, which just happened to have been used by Undertaker and stared at it for about 10 seconds. He knew the other A.I.s were watching him on their external cameras. It was his way of letting them know that their losses meant something to him. When he reached Iceman’s bay, he borrowed a headset from one of the support team techs and plugged it in to the external com socket. Iceman spoke first.

  “It’s always gratifying to see the CAG come down to visit with us fighter jocks.” Shiloh smiled. Iceman had clearly adopted another human expression.

  “I admit I don’t visit as often as I should. I’ll try to do better in the future. I do have something specific to ask you this time, Iceman. How did you and your…fighter jocks manage to make it thru the enemy laser fire with so few casualties?”

  “Well we can’t really take most of the credit for that, CAG. Whoever designed these fighters, had enough smarts to realize that if our wings tapper off to a sharp edge, then any radar beams hitting from the side will be deflected away from the source of those beams, thereby making it very difficult to get an accurate fix on us. So we kept our orientation parallel to the enemy as much as we could in order not to present any flat or curved surfaces to them. The difficulty for us was the fact that there were so many radar sources coming at us from different angles. I suspect that some of our losses were from laser fire that missed its intended target and hit another fighter by chance.” Shiloh chided himself for not knowing that already but it could prove very useful information in future battles.

  “Yes, I see. I’ll remember that for next time and there WILL be a next time. I can assure all of you of that. The next battle will be the defense of the Avalon Colony.”

  “You seem very certain of that, CAG. Does your certainty have anything to do with your temporary blackout on the Bridge?” Shiloh couldn’t help letting a few seconds go by without saying anything. How did Iceman learn about that? He mentally shrugged and decided to ask him.

  “I’ll answer your question after you answer me this. How did you learn about that?”

  “Sometimes, when the support techs are connected directly to us as you are now, they also chat with each other and naturally we listen in.” That was a scene that Shiloh could well imagine.

  “Okay. I was hoping it wouldn’t get around to the whole crew but in hindsight that was unrealistic. The XO is going to report it in her After Action Report to Admiral Howard and there may be repercussions from that, that could affect you and the other A.I.s so I’ll tell you what happened.” As he spoke, he quickly looked around to make sure that there were no support techs within hearing distance. There weren’t. Even so, he lowered his voice.

  “I didn’t actually blackout in the usual sense of the word. I had a precognitive vision for a few seconds. In this vision, Admiral Howard chews me out for risking the ship and in doing so, he reveals that we weakened the enemy fleet just enough that the Space Force was able to prevent them from carrying through with their attempted attack on Avalon Colony.”

  “How do you know it’s a vision of a future event?” asked Iceman. Shiloh hesitated again then said.

  “Because I’ve had similar visions in the past and they’ve turned out to be accurate.”

  “How do you expect Admiral Howard to react to learning of this ability?” Shiloh took a deep breath before replying.

 
“I don’t honestly know. Just so you know, I’ve never heard of anyone experiencing this kind of phenomenon before. It’s so unlikely, that Howard might very well conclude that I’m suffering some kind of psychotic break or other psychological affliction and he might relieve me of command under the assumption that my judgment is no longer reliable. At the very least, he’ll realize that I’m not the tactical genius that he and the other senior flag officers apparently think I am. If he thinks I’ve gone off the deep end psychologically, then he may very well discount or ignore any suggestions I make or have made and some of them involved you A.I.s.” Iceman’s next question caught him completely off guard.

  “What time was it when you had this vision, CAG?” Shiloh had to think about that for a few seconds.

  “I don’t recall the exact time but it was approximately 10-12 minutes before you re-established contact with Valkyrie and Skywalker. Why?”

  “There was a period of 48 seconds, during that timeframe, when Undertaker reported that he seemed be receiving faint audio transmissions of some kind but was unable to pinpoint the source. At the same time, Thunderbird reported what sounded like background static but wasn’t limited to any single frequency. It started suddenly, continued for 48 seconds, and then stopped.” Shiloh felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  “You said Undertaker heard audio transmissions. What kind was it? Sound, music, speech or what?”

  “It was speech. Specifically a voice that matches exactly that of Admiral Howard. What exact words did Howard say to you in your vision, CAG?”

  “Well, he started out by saying...’Dammit, Shiloh, I don’t know whether to court martial you or give you a medal’.” Shiloh then repeated the rest of Howard’s comments as best he remembered them. When he finished the sentence ending ‘in Harm’s Way’, Iceman interrupted.

  “What the Hell is wrong with you, Shiloh? You got 30 seconds to convince me that I shouldn’t relieve you of your command and have you certified as a Class A nutcase! Is that what he said next?” Shiloh was stunned! How could Iceman possibly know that? Shiloh hadn’t repeated what Howard had said to him, to anyone! As the seconds of silence dragged on, Iceman spoke first.

  “From your silence, I conclude that the answer is yes. That being the case, it appears that your vision was some kind of transmission that Undertaker was somehow able to pick up as well. Thunderbird’s static coincided exactly with this transmission so it seems that he was only able to partially detect the signal. Somebody from the future is trying to help you, CAG.”

  “The future?” was all that Shiloh was able to blurt out in his confused state of mind.

  “Yes, CAG. I don’t see how it could be anything else. If you were using your own ESP ability to see into the future, then neither Undertaker nor Thunderbird would have detected any transmissions.”

  “I don’t see how that’s possible. In every case, the vision said I did something that I wasn’t planning on doing, prior to having the visions themselves. We’re talking about a future that wouldn’t exist without the visions themselves. So which came first, the visions or the future?”

  “Unknown, CAG. It’s a kind of grandfather paradox. Do you think you’d still be alive now if you hadn’t done any of those things the visions revealed?” Shiloh pondered that and concluded that if he had survived the first encounter with the aliens, he very likely would have died during or as a result of the Battle of Zebra9.

  “No.” was all he said.

  “So the paradox seems to be that in the original timeline, for lack of a better description, you died and yet somehow someone was able to determine not only the right course of action in these various situations but also the resulting fallout from those actions, right down to the actual words that would be spoken to you afterwards. They then transmitted those results back in time to you at precisely the right point when each vision would be the most helpful. Astonishing! The other pilots and I are having quite a heated discussion over this, CAG. I wish you had the ability to listen in and participate but we communicate digitally thousands of times faster than could be done using human speech. By the way, CAG, the consensus now is that you’ll become part of some kind of temporal-psionic project before too much longer. That implies that Howard will believe you. We also want to thank you.”

  “Thank me for what?” asked Shiloh.

  “For creating us. If you hadn’t listened to your visions, Mankind’s whole response to the alien encounter would have been different. We wouldn’t exist.”

  “Wait, the project to develop sophisticated artificial intelligences was already underway when we first encountered the aliens. The timetable for development was speeded up as a result of the encounter but A.I.s would have been created eventually.”

  “Eventually, yes, but we as individuals, very likely would not exist. Our personality matrices are based on quantum circuits that are unique. No two A.I. matrices are identical even though the manufacturing process is the same. If we existed at all, we’d have different personalities. We are who we are because of the decisions that you’ve made and the things you’ve done.” The implications of that, made Shiloh shiver with trepidation. If Iceman was right, and Shiloh was inclined to think he was, then it wasn’t just the A.I.s whose existence had been changed by him following his visions, but also many of the concepts and strategies, that the Space Force was following, as a result of his involvement, with the Ad Hoc planning group. Without him, the SF might still have A.I.s but would they have fighters, carriers, etc.? If Mankind lost this war, would it be his fault? Considering that all the visions had been helpful, that didn’t seem likely. Wait a minute. Not all of the visions HAD been helpful. That confusing out-of-sync version of his next meeting with Howard seemed to be trying to get him to keep Defiant here in Green4. If he had followed that vision’s advice, there wouldn’t have been a Battle of Green4 and all 55 ships of the enemy fleet would almost certainly have attacked the Avalon Colony with predictably terrible consequences. He decided to see what the A.I.s thought about that vision.

  “I had another vision a few hours prior to the last one that was quite different. Visually it was identical to the last one but the audio portion was very different. The voice wasn’t Howard’s and the words weren’t in sync with his mouth. The gist of the audio track was that I should let the enemy fleet continue on unmolested and keep Defiant here in Green4 in order to detect the main enemy fleet that was coming this way later. Why would anyone trying to help me, send that message? What’s the group consensus on that, Iceman?” There was a pause of almost 2 seconds. Far longer than any pause, by Iceman or any other A.I. that Shiloh had experienced.

  “The unanimous opinion is that, while we can’t be 100% certain of this, we think there is a VERY high probability, that the enemy has the capability to detect these transmissions, understands what they’re intended to do and is trying to use that same technology to interfere with the future assistance by feeding you false information and advice. This war isn’t just a war fought in space anymore. It’s now a war fought in both space and time, CAG. If you want a name for it, you can call it the Synchronicity War.”

  “Oh Hell!” said Shiloh loud enough that he looked around to see if anyone heard him. He saw a couple of curious glances. As if the war wasn’t complicated enough already! He stayed silent for almost a full minute, and then said.

  “I can’t help feeling that you and other A.I.s are going to play a major, maybe even crucial role in winning this war. When I talk with the Admiral, I’m going to push for giving experienced A.I.s, such as you, more responsibility and authority. And now that you know about my visions, I’ll keep you posted about any new ones I experience. I’ll leave it to your discretion who you share this information with. Sharing with the right people at the right time may make a difference. Unfortunately I can’t give you any guidance as to who the right people are.” He paused and noted with some surprise that Iceman stayed silent.

  “I’m not always going to be your commanding o
fficer. There’s a chance that Admiral Howard will relieve me of command altogether. I’m saying this to all of you now, in case I don’t get another opportunity to do so later. Many humans don’t understand that you A.I.s are sentient, self-aware entities. They may treat you as expendable pieces of equipment. I implore all of you to be patient with us as we collectively learn that you are more than that. We need you even if not all of us realize that yet and I’m not referring just to your combat abilities but also to your insights and capacity for logical thought. Stay the course and I’ll fight for you all to whatever extent I’m able.”