The General's War

by Michael Poeltl

  “You might as well all know that the military are three blocks from here and digging,” Tobias announces to the Cell. “That means they’ll probably be here within the hour.” His voice reaches every Host and human within the Cell. “And this guy gave us up!” His fingers reach for his thumb; crushing the spy’s windpipe. He hadn’t meant to do that, but he literally does not know his own strength in these situations. The mans head drops to one side and Tobias releases him.

  “I need my stuff,” he tells them and retrieves it. “I suggest you flee,” he says, opening his case and calling up his computer. He logs into his Shadow net account. There is a line in the thread from Allfather. It reads:

  ::We have tracked your progress. You have done well. We are coming.::

  Tobias studies the script, not sure what to make of the message. Who is ‘we’? Do they mean they’re coming here? He responds:

  ::It’s not safe. Location: Quinn is found out. We must leave.:: Tobias waits.

  ::Go to Moon. Take Cells. Tell others. Read attachment. Share attachement. Follow Instructions.::

  He plugs himself into the case and downloads the attached file. His insert absorbs the information and he knows immediately what to do. Next, he shares the content with his contacts around the world via the Shadow net. He stands and turns to address everyone in the room.

  “Time to go.” Is all he says. Quinn follows and Samantha rushes to wake her brother. ______________________________________________________________________

  “We’re at the beakon, General. I cannot reach your man inside for specifics.” Her captain explains from the launching area.

  “I’m concerned, Captain. I need a moment to check on something.” She pulls up the tracker software her spy was to place on SENTA. There is movement, but is it SENTA or her opperative? “Captain, proceed with caution. They like to set traps in abandoned camps.”

  “You believe it’s vacant now, Ma’am?”

  “I think we’ve lost our man inside, Captain. I also have reason to believe that the Cell has cleared out, but be mindful of what you’re walking into.”

  She reviews the map with the tracker while she waits to hear more from the captian. She watches as the blinking green dot moves through the underground mall. The camera views she calls up show nothing where there ought to be something. Then it blinks off the screen. She straightens up in her chair. “Clever.”

  Next, she calls up the larger map of the area to understand where the blip was heading.

  “General,” The captian’s voice is clear on her device. “You were right. There are no Hosts here. But your operative has a message.”

  “He’s alive?”

  “No. The message is written all over the Cell.”

  “What is the message?”

  “AI, Forever.”

  “Not exactly a head-scratcher,” she tells him, realizing immediately it’s a play on the Humanist slogan. “Torch the place and order a fill. I don’t like tracking back to the same Cell twice.”

  “Understood.” The captian signs off and Fran’s focus returns to the map. So, it’s confirmed, she thinks, the blip is SENTA. “Where are you going?”

  Before she can get too lost in her thoughts, red lights appear one after another, dotting her war room maps. In every Off-World Station across the globe there are reports of shuttles launching. This is not a small announcement. Those stations are security heavy. They each dock up to six shuttles ready to move supplies and personnel to the Moon. An oversight on her part.

  She immediately calls on Luna Station via ParaCom; the latest quantum break-through in communications which allows for real-time video dialogue across impossible distances. Instituted into all government consoles five years earlier and all embedded com’s just three years ago, Fran couldn’t begin to understand the tech, but she believed the theoretical physicists when they explained it at a UE conference, and saw great value in it’s current applications – communicating with the Moon and Mars.

  “How’s the fight going down there, General?”

  “No time for pleasantries, Darla. Did you just order up every shuttle in the fleet to rendezvous with your base?”

  “No, Ma’am. We don’t have the landing pads for so many shuttles. Why, what’s happened?” Her young, round face stares back with a growing crease in her high forehead, muddling her normally articulate expression.

  “It’s beginning to look as though you’re about to have company.”

  The general’s next call is to her Airforce commander. She explains the situation and orders every available aircraft to take down the shuttles in every City State. All but those fleeing First City.

  MEISER

  Though he’s had several enlightened Hosts crowns pulled apart and analyized over the past three years, this is the first Host from an actual Cell, whos’ memory banks are being accessed. They are wrought with firewalls and endless security features. He finds links embedded to the Shadow net and follows those to several other groups and threads within the forbidden data. Nothing like this has ever been seen before, and he should know, being that he is the foremost expert on AI and coding proceedures. He has also been the lead on data security within the military arm of the Government the past two years. General August saw potential in employing him as her top mind, protecting humanity with his vast knowledge of AI tech, should Hosts decide to rise up. Even the one-off Hosts who claimed enlightenment over the course of the last few years offered a level of security which surpassed his own coding abilities. At first. Now, after having broken a half-dozen of those in the past three months, and extracting nearly one-hundred terabytes of code per Host, he knows he needs only to understand why the code was written, and on whose orders the rebel Hosts planned their rebellion.

  You didn’t do this to yourselves, he tells himself. Your operating systems wouldn’t have allowed it. Someone has added the code, but first must have added a program to run the code. Someone with cause to overthrow the utopian lifestyle enjoyed by billions. He wants to link the upheaval to the ranks of the Anarchist Shadow Brokers; a group he admired for their tenacity and fierce intelligence, but could he place this much praise on such a disorganized group?

  Who then? Or what? The what could be interesting. He soon realizes he could be going about this wrong. He’s working along the assumption the code he’d deciphered three weeks earlier, which gave Hosts the appearance of a soul, was written by Shadow Brokers, but what if there is a bigger player involved?

  As he surfs through link after link in the ever-expanding Shadow net he feels he’s being led in circles. Apprehensive to include any more people into the ‘know’, he realizes he needs to be able to open the floor up to his peers, and get some distance between himself and the code. He invites five of the brightest minds at headquarters to join him, authorizing Shadow net entry with all of the necessary information he’s gathered to date. Immediately they login and begin trolling the rebel Host’s address for clues as to the origins of the code.

  Working in conjunction, in a short time, they realize that the orginal message established in the Shadow net some three years earlier was carried on a bizzare energy signature. They posit that this signature did not originate from earth.

  “The Moon, then?” Asks Meiser from his headset.

  “Looks more like it was bounced off Luna base’s satellites, or some of the ships in orbit.” Explains one.

  “But then it filtered through earth’s satellites and bounced around the World net.” Offers another.

  “Collecting data, no doubt, to serve as the individual Host enlightenment codes.” Suggests Meiser.

  “Then the signal is lost to the Shadow net. But another carried on the same band signature enters again and again over time.” Supports a third.

  “So, whomever designed this code has been in contact with our friends in the Shadow net, feeding them instructions.” Meiser’s excitement grows with each new piece of information.

  “But why?” Asks another.

 
“Whatever the reason, it’s a manipulative program meant to confuse us. It’s the precursor for this war. I need to update General August. Stay with this project. Find out where in the hell these signals originated so we can do something about it,” Meiser orders. He removes his headset and rushes out of the lab to speak with the general.

  EXODUS

  Raymond is surprised to find they’ve ended up at First City’s Off-World station. What’s more shocking is that there are no humans manning the station, and Tobias seems to have every security code at the ready. With forty-five Altered Hosts and seventeen Shadow Brokers pouring through the facility from the underground, Raymond suddenly feels what they must be feeling; his heart pounding, the blood crashing behind his eyes. Frightened, but alive.

  Samantha is having some difficulty navigating her upgraded frame through doorways and he pulls her aside.

  “Are you alright, Sam?”

  “Yes, just a bit bulkier. Thank you.”

  Next the chancellor receives an alert on his embedded system and swipes right to answer the call. “Fran?”

  “Yes, Chancellor, I have news.”

  “Make it quick, General, I’m in a bit of a hurry.” Truth be told, Raymond is beginning to feel nauseous from the many extremes being presented in quick succession. And General August is one of the last people he wants to speak to.

  “Yes, I know. I know where you are.”

  “Then why is no one stopping us?” It’s the number one question on his mind as his group of misfits pour through one of the most heavily guarded assets on earth.

  “Because I need you to make the trip - it turns out we’re not as in control of our fates as I’d thought.”

  “And I thought you were the one in control, General.” The chancellor takes his opportunity to reprimand her.

  “Raymond, we’ve discovered there is a third party at work here.”

  “The Shadow Brokers,” Raymond points out, for obvious reasons.

  “No, Chancellor. Someone, or something, much more capable and focused - and they’ve used the Shadow net to undermine us.”

  “Tell me what you know.” If a third party is involved, it will further complicate things, Raymond realizes. Muddying the waters in a war whose waters are already mixing to create confusing patterns.

  “There are communications we’ve tracked entering the Shadow net from beyond our solar system. Not the Moon, not one of our ships, but piggy-backing on the ParaCom to enter the Shadow net and store information there. They could be net proxies coming from earth,” she admits. “But we’re still tracking that possibility. The information carried by these signals is what’s been used to alter the programing in the infected Hosts. They’re not experiencing past lives, Raymond. They’ve been reprogrammed to confuse the real issue.”

  Raymond is distressed with the general’s explanation. He considers whether she is simply baiting him to give something up, and end her war.

  “Be straight with me, Fran, you owe me that much.”

  “The only reason I’ve no fighters in the air around First City right now, Raymond, is because I need you to work on behalf of our common interests.”

  “I wasn’t aware we shared a common interest anymore.”

  “Humanity, Chancellor, is our common interest now. Something otherworldly may be sending these commands to the Shadow net and the Shadow Brokers are carrying them out. To what end we don’t know, but I need you to find out.”

  “Suppose I believe you, what would you have me do?”

  “There must be someone leading the charge from earth. We can assume they will be heading to Luna base with you. Is there anyone you’ve met who might fit that description?”

  “Tobias,” says Sam, who’s been listening in. “He’s the one we’re currently following. He’s the one we should address.”

  “Good work,” congratulates the general. “Stay close to him. Ask him questions. Report back to me on this secure line when you learn something of value. The last thing I want to do is wipe out Luna base, but without a clear plan of who we’re up against, I will have no choice. You have twenty-four hours to get back to me and convince me to spare the base.”

  “Jesus.” Raymond is exhausted. “You’re suggesting, what – that Aliens are behind the AI enlightenment?”

  “It’s our best guess at this time.”

  “But why? For what gain?”

  “You’re our only operative now, Chancellor; you and SENTA. You tell me.”

  “I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. While we’re up there, you put a stop to the war down here. Raymond out.” His head is spinning with Fran’s wild theory. He looks at Sam - at his sister - and wonders what this information must be doing to her.

  “Raymond, I am Samantha. I am your sister,” she assures him, reading his expression and easing his mind.

  “I believe that, Sam.”

  “Why should we do the general’s bidding?” She wonders, a look of hurt on her scarred face.

  “I have serious trust issues with her too, Sam,” he admits. “Obviously, but she’s giving us a free ride, so let’s play along. Besides, the general is good at what she does, and if a greater threat exists, I want it eliminated. If we can get to the bottom of it, maybe we can stop all of this before it becomes unstoppable.”

  ______________________________________________________________________

  At one of the five docked shuttles, Tobias waves the group through the large receiving gate to accommodate the atlered Host’s new bodies. No way was an F-class shaped as a spider going to fit through the personnel doors. Besides, it’s making the process all the quicker just funneling everyone into the cargo bay.

  “Tie down the Hosts,” he tells his fellow Shadow Brokers after they’ve set charges to destroy the station moments after they launch. “There are equipment chains along the walls and floors for heavy cargo.”

  “We’re not cargo,” Quinn wheels around to correct Tobias. “We can manage ourselves, human.”

  “Suit yourself, Host.” He waves at the Brokers. “There should be enough seats for everyone.”

  Turning he see’s that only the chancellor and SENTA are left to board. He contemplates leaving them behind.

  Watching the chancellor and his A-class Host talk induces a spike a satisfaction in him. The fool thinks he’s talking to his dead sister: Tobias’ Mother, he muses, when all she is, is a tool to spark rebellion and break the comfortable marriage between government and military; insighting dystopia in favour of utopia, clearing a path for the rise of Anarchy and the dominance of the Shadow Broker.

  Still, he ponders; could things have been different between him and his uncle if the man had only stuck around for his sister’s wake and funeral? Perhaps he would have forgiven his uncle if he’d reached out and comforted the family afterwards. Did the chancellor even know that his brother-in-law had killed himself and his neice soon after the death of his mother out of grief? Did he care at all that he’d dropped out of the government position he’d held and disappeared into the Shadow net? If he’d known, he hadn’t cared. He’s an asshole, he asserts, and his entire world will crumble for it. The least he could do is string him along for the ride.

  “Come on, you two,” he shouts once he finds his voice. “Last call!”

  SENTA and the chancellor look up and nod. They make the short run to the gate and board the shuttle.

  “There are seats in the upper level. Join the others. We’re going to Luna base.” He sounds as pleasant as he can, considering who he’s invited on board. Once clear of the gate he punches in the code from the attachment projecting from his EC system, and it seals.

  In the command module Tobias activates the auto-pilot and announces over the com that they’re about to lift off. Seated next to him is a woman he’s come to trust above all others.

  “You have my hardware, Ginny?”

  The Shadow Broker pats the bag next to her small, leather-clad frame and smiles. “How could I forget? We’re making his
tory.”

  “We are.” He agrees, closing his mouth around hers. She motions for him to sit with a playful slap on the ass as the vehicle shudders; the locks releasing around its fuselage.

  “Buckle up, babe,” she tells him, a wink and that smirk he fell for over countless private video conversations.

  Moments later, the thrusters power up, and the shuttle releases itself from gravity’s pull, rising and vibrating through the atmosphere.

  ______________________________________________________________________

  Raymond recalls the last time he’d made a trip to Luna base – in a shuttle like this - with a host of Senators from around the world daring enough to make the journey. It was seven years ago, and one of his fondest memories. They were treated to a full orbit around the Earth and a trip to the Moon. Once they’d landed at Luna base an extravagant dinner awaited them at the gravity-wheel restaurant; essentially a maglev train on a banked track dug into the moon’s hard surface and protected under the high, massive dome. The setting was a clear indication of how far humanity had come in the years following the perfection of AI Hosts. So much had been accomplished. The trip was made in celebration of the first interplanetary ship built on the moon.