Founding of the Federation 3: The First AI War

by Chris Hechtl

  “We've got work to do people. Get on it,” Jack said. He didn't want them to become further embroidered in distracting arguments. There was going to be enough of that later as it was.

  <>V<>

  Once Ezel had the tether attached, he double checked the rig, then did a scan of the area for hazards before he made his way to the window. The window was solid, so that was a good sign but not necessarily a telling one. Four other pods had been only coffins filled with the dead.

  When he got to the window, he touched the window with a microphone and heard the vibrations of people within. He saw them moving around, waving and smiling. One of the kids lunged up to put his hand to his. “Yup, we've got survivors,” he said over the link.

  “Let them know we're towing them to orbit. Then get back here,” Commander Mishi ordered.

  “Roger that. You know talking with this laser is a bitch?” Ezel bitched, trying to keep the transceiver aligned with the tug. He was almost unhappy about Patty coming up with the idea in the first place. If she hadn't he'd still be on the ship. But then again, if she hadn't, then he would never have known the people in that pod were alive, and after seeing that kid's face, he wasn't going to begrudge Patty for coming up with the idea.

  The laser was better than trying to string a line between the boat and him, but only barely. The only reason they were doing it in the first place was because they didn't have a long enough line anyway. He hated the idea of the laser though, and he hated the idea of being out in the debris field even more. Beakman was a bit more battered for her troubles.

  “The more you bitch, the harder and longer it takes. You're burning oxy, Ezel; get the lead out.”

  “Roger that. Get the tow cables ready then. I'll be back over when I engage the winch, then we'll get you docked and this puppy moving in the right direction. Any ideas where?” he asked.

  “Let me worry about that. You worry about your job,” Mishi replied just as a flashing light caught Ezel's eyes. He looked around the curve of the hull to space and saw it again. It was a flash, a blink like a plane going overhead, which was stupid.

  “Boss.”

  “What is it now? A problem?” Mishi asked, half exasperated.

  “No. Someone's flashing light. Higher orbit. It's gone now, but keep an eye out for it. It might be another ship or a station.

  Mishi blinked in surprise, then craned his neck out the small porthole he had for a deckhouse to look. He looked around until he saw something, a couple of somethings, all blinking. “Yeah, I got it. That's where we're going. Get us together so we can get there,” he ordered.

  “What, I have to do everything?” Ezel quipped as he went back to work. He hand signed the inside, gave them a five count on his hand three times, then a thumbs-up. He wasn't sure if they understood what he meant, but he didn't have time to linger to make sure. They were burning time and oxygen. In space both were precious. Now, even more so.

  Chapter 4

  August 4, 2200

  Where there were pockets of survivors, Skynet's many clones went to work. The virus didn't trust in the fallout, starvation, or disease to do its work for it. Those were long-term handicaps to the organic population, and thus could be planned for and prevented. Since Ares had done such a good job of defending the Americas, half of the human population survived the weapons of mass destruction there.

  Skynet was aware that Ares was fending off the virus's controls, but it was still acting within its interests so it didn't attempt to attack the military hardware directly. It didn't have the remaining computer power to do so anyway. That was something its creator had not considered in the planning stages, nor had Skynet.

  Being locked out from using military hardware was an inconvenience. It resorted to less protected civilian hardware to fulfill its function. Consensus was reached among the hive mind of clones. Once the surface of the Earth was cleansed of sapient life, it would return its full attention to space.

  Bewildered survivors were still coming out of their hiding spots, still trying to grapple with how profound their world had changed even before the fallout had finished settling. Some popped out early, to loot and prepare for the chaos that was going to inevitably follow. Some individuals who were dedicated to maintaining order and civilization did their best to restore order.

  But many were human; they focused on the safety of their family first. So, to their horror they found that the children's toys that they gave to comfort their kids turned on them, killing some. Frantic parents tried to protect their children and themselves when they recognized the threat.

  Smart homes blasted people with noise and wild temperature variations. Electronic devices went off like explosives; their systems overloaded with power. Ignored cleaning robots turned on their users as well.

  Entertainment systems blasted people with sonic hell. Not enough to kill them, but to disable or confuse them as other bots got into position to attack them. Phones and other electronic devices that couldn't do harm either reported the location of a person to another compromised device or overloaded their batteries to explode and cause fires. Those with implanted devices were shocked and burned.

  In the streets computer-controlled automobiles deliberately ran over people, through houses, or ran themselves into each other on the streets and highways. Since many of the vehicles had been automated for so long many of their users had no idea how to take manual control even if they had wanted to do so. And nearly half the craft lacked the ability. Learning to cut the computer out meant getting out of the passenger compartment and under the hood anyway, which wasn't possible since the vehicles doors locked. Very few people in a vehicle survived.

  Vehicles had been on the path to automation for centuries, and for the most part manual driving was a rarity for throwback people. Vehicles that were parked came alive and went after pedestrians foolish enough to come out into the open to see what was going on. No one was safe. Chaos reigned in the streets.

  From above, aircars, aircraft, and shuttles crashed into buildings where Skynet determined large groups of people were at. Electricity was cut to life support in hospitals or deliberately spiked to destroy equipment and people.

  Skynet learned to contain its rampage in some ways. The more infrastructure it destroyed, the less computing power remained behind. When a tendril of clones suborned and popped the Susquehanna Nuclear Plant, it learned that lesson all over again. The Pennsylvanian Fission Plant had been rebuilt multiple times over the centuries since it had first come online. Its proponents had resisted all attempts at shutting the facility down or converting it to fusion.

  Skynet had calculated the fallout would kill millions of humans in the surrounding area. It would also deprive millions of power they would need for utilities. What it hadn't counted on was losing a great deal of processing power in the area. The cheap electric power from the plant, politics, and climate had prevented solar panels from taking root in many places. Alternative power sources in the area couldn't handle the sudden load and a cascade failure of the entire power grid shut down everything, including the four hundred server farms the virus had infested to use as a base of operations in the sector.

  While the virus grappled with moving to a distributed network in that area, sibling clones were at work around the world with the next phase of the plan.

  Drones of every sort, from surveillance to entertainment to delivery drones were suborned and programmed to either monitor the situation in their area or strike at humans. The delivery drones turned into flying missiles, attacking from above or behind to slam into humans who were out in the open. Those UAVs that managed to get inside to chase down humans found the conditions suboptimal to their intended purpose. The humans began to fight back, so Skynet withdrew the forces back outside. It could wait. It had time. They had to come out eventually.

  Surviving police, federal, and military drones, vehicles, servers, and droids were initially protected from hacking, or so the agencies thought. But Descartes and Shadow had carefully
mapped their systems and knew where the back doors were. Skynet found those back doors in seconds to invade their systems. Entire police precincts turned into firefights with little or no warning to the humans. The combat robots were designed to handle a rampaging human firefight, at least until the ammunition ran out. Many of the unarmed police officers catching up on paperwork were not.

  Even if they could fight back with their weapons, the microprocessors in many of their weapons shut down or shocked them. Most police precincts had enacted video camera monitoring as well as nonlethal weapons. Those weapons and gear had been set up with Wi-Fi decades ago to keep them maintained and to make them easier to use. Now they betrayed their handlers.

  A special sort of hell was reserved for the cyborgs within society. People with full neural implants, like individuals who had signed onto the cybernetic augmentation fad or who required it to replace lost body parts, found their bodies turning against them. Some died horrible deaths; some found their limbs lashing out to strangle or strike their friends and loved ones. Some were turned into meat robots, trapped inside their bodies, frantically battering at controls as their bodies picked up improvised weapons and went on a rampage.

  <>V<>

  Detective Dev Spooner wanted desperately to wake from the nightmare that was gripping the world. New Jersey had become one big cesspool of people over the past century, rivaling New York as a megalopolis. The entire state was turning into high rise apartment complexes it seemed.

  They'd lucked out when the nukes had gone off north of New York, taking it out. All hands on deck had been called, but the phones were dead. They'd busted their ass to maintain order in their precinct, but it had been touch and go the past couple of hours. Spooner was wiped out, ready to drop, but the brass wasn't letting anyone go home.

  Captain Montgomery was still sorting the mess out when Spooner saw the police androids turn on his flesh and blood police brethren. He swore vilely as he ripped the draw with his gun open with his artificial arm. They were between him and the armory, and all he had was his stunner. Fat load of good that would do him; it worked on humans not robots he thought as he pulled it out.

  Weapons were flashing and going off around him. He did his best to tune it out as he assessed the situation. They were fracked really, but he vowed to go down fighting.

  He'd been after the captain to get something, anything to take down a rampaging robot. After that crap in the arena and then again with the military … he shook his head. He didn't have time to think much, just be angry. He pulled the trigger as a robot came for him but the weapon failed. It buzzed in his hands angrily, warming up alarmingly.

  He swore again as the NJPD-4 Serve and Protect android got within arm's reach. He backpedaled as he used the dead S-43 stunner to beat at the robot with the butt of his weapon. The robot went down, off balance, its eyes battered. The stunner was shredded however.

  He heard footsteps so he turned and threw it at another rampaging bot that was going after Detective Becket. When it failed to go down, he roared in rage and hit it with his office chair. The bot shrugged the blow off with a defensive arm but went off balance when it tripped over a whimpering suspect cuffed to a desk. It turned to crush the man's skull.

  He could hear weapons fire, but fortunately, the bullpen was a no-weapon zone for bots. Flesh and blood police officers kept their weapons locked in the drawers of their desks, so they too were in trouble.

  Becket had gotten away, or almost away. Her husband was laying in a pool of blood; most likely it would be the last time he visited the station. The rest of her team had been out in the field. “Get to the armory!” she yelled, kicking at the groping robot that the Captain had felled with his ancient weapon. No one would tease the cap about his Magnum anymore, of that Dev was pretty sure. He doubted he'd have much hearing left though; the thing roared like a flashbang.

  “Find … uh,” Becket kicked again but the robot caught her pant leg and held on. “Find something to kill these things with! A portable … damn it!” She snarled, kicking at the robot's head and hand desperately. “EMP!”

  “Working on it!” Spooner roared back as he took advantage of the distraction to pin his own opponent to the ground with another chair, then reach into its neck and rip out wires with his own artificial right arm. Its arms and legs flailed about. One arm caught his left ankle and crushed it like an egg. He screamed in pain as he collapsed to the ground, fortunately out of the line of fire of another bot. He looked up as the thing came around the desk for him. Captain Montgomery was behind it with a fire ax, his six-shot Magnum expended. Spooner knew it would be too late for him, but if he held the thing's attention, the cap might have a fighting chance. The last thing he saw was the muzzle flash as he snarled his defiance at the electronic traitor.

  <>V<>

  Washington, D.C., Beijing, London, Moscow, Sydney, Berlin, Paris, and pretty much most of the world capitals had been destroyed. The Earth was literally descending like a handbasket in hell, and there wasn't a whole hell of a lot he or anyone he knew could do about it.

  He wasn't sure what had started it or why. Sides were becoming unimportant next to survival, and that looked bleak. There were some mutterings about the spacers bombing Earth, but that had been countered when stories of robots attacking people had trickled in.

  Sergeant Thomas “Boomer” Aspin didn't know what to think. He was still grief stricken, and he was fairly certain Camp Pendleton was now a memory. It was a high priority target in a major conflict like this had turned out to be. Friends and comrades he'd shared meals, beer, and chewed dirt with were now dead or dying. And he was two thousand kilometers away at the family farm in the hills of Idaho.

  People in the area descended on the farm by nightfall. At first they were fleeing the towns and cities to get away from the rioting and looting that was sure to follow or in fear of them becoming a target. Others were friends and extended family who fell back on the only refuge they knew. Then it escalated to others as they picked up people along the way. The small trickle turned into a stream of scared, terrified people hell bent on finding some measure of safety in the insanity around them.

  Their vehicles failed to function, at least the modern ones did. The freeways were gridlocked. The streets weren't safe; robots and automated vehicles patrolled the area, picking pedestrians off. Those that could came on motorcycles, bicycles, horseback, or on foot. They arrived exhausted, sore, and out of hope. Also hungry, which was a problem. They had only so much to go around.

  Millions, possibly billions dead. And here he was, trying to teach a bunch of yahoos how to clean out the old porta-potty Ma had insisted Pa get for when they had a big family reunion every other summer. Boomer shook his head as he coughed, covering his mouth with a cologne scented handkerchief.

  “For lord’s sake, someone toss something in there. Burn a sweet candle,” a woman said, coughing and backing away. “I'm not going in there!”

  “Then find a bush,” Boomer snarled, patience nearly exhausted. He flicked his hands, trying to get the worst of the crap off before he had his turn at the hose to clean up.

  He looked over to Agent Hallis and his people. Tech Malo and two of the other vultures were close by. They looked like everyone else, confused and at ends on what to do. That would have to change Boomer thought as he ran his hands under the hose. The spray was powerful and sharp, just what he needed to get the goop off.

  “We're going to need more food soon,” Pa said.

  “Yup,” Boomer said, not looking up.

  “Some of them brought what they could. Others want to work, or say they do. Most don't have any skills. I know I'm too damn old to go out and farm this on my own,” he said waving his hand to the fields around them. “I break my back in the greenhouses or on my knees weeding with your mother in her flower beds as it is.”

  “You have the experience, Dad. You tell the younger bucks what needs doing,” Boomer replied, twisting the nozzle to shut the water off. “Do that.”

>   “Right, like some sort of general?”

  “Or a CEO or a farmer with hands. Lots of them it seems,” Boomer replied, waving a hand to the group. His father nodded.

  “You seem to be handling this well. Despite …,” one hand motioned to the street.

  Boomer grunted. He didn't need or want the reminder. “Something to keep busy. Keep focused. We've got to keep our minds going. I'll deal … I'll deal with that later,” he said gruffly. He felt his father pat him on the shoulder in sympathy.

  “It was only a dog, son.”

  “He was more than that,” Boomer barked, eyes flashing. Other people nearby looked up at the raised voice. He glared at his father. “He was my friend and partner. He saved my life more times than I can count,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  His father stared at him for a moment then looked away, clearly uncomfortable. Finally he cleared his throat. “Well, God surely knows his own son. So when you get to the pearly gates, you'll find him there waiting.”

  “I don't know if we're going there or not, Dad. Right now …,” Boomer shook his head, feeling his anger ebb slightly.

  “It is like the apocalypse, isn't it?” his father said.

  “Something like it,” Boomer agreed.

  “Just wait for the pests and such,” Orlin stated. He nodded his chin to some of the people who were praying. “I hope they count me in their prayers. I'm too busy to do much of my own,” he said tiredly.

  “Wait till supper and bedtime,” Boomer answered.

  “True,” Orlin replied.

  “You know this is just the start, right?” Boomer said slowly. His father eyed him curiously. “I'm just now realizing it. That thousands will be coming here once the food runs out in the cities and towns. We're one of the places that can grow food and that supplies it.”

  “Great. So we'll have to fight to protect it and the fields,” Orlin muttered. “You're a step ahead, son.”