Lord Banshee- Fairy Dust

by Russell O Redman

  Several major trouble spots inflamed tensions throughout that period. The rebellions and violent purges that followed the reunification of Taiwan with the PRC resulted in heightened hostility from all the PRC’s neighbours, as well as from the USA. These were exacerbated by continuing tension on the Korean peninsula. Throughout the desert lands of central Asia, the middle east and northern Africa, the long decades of climate-change denial in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries resulted in famines and political instability. Disputes were increasingly driven by resource shortages and population displacements.

  To meet these challenges, the militaries of the four major powers turned increasingly to computer models to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their rivals. After several false starts, Artificial Intelligence (AI) models became sufficiently sophisticated that they could generate realistic threat assessments of the global military balance, economic conditions, social volatility, and environmental stress. The models generally recommended modest, proportional responses that effectively stabilized the international order over the middle decades of the century.

  The crisis which drove all four powers to adopt similar AI models was the forcible reunification of Pakistan with India to form United India (IN). An attempt by the Pakistani intelligence services to raise a rebellion in Indian-controlled Kashmir began with a wave of terrorist attacks on political targets throughout India. The Indian Army crossed the border into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, and the crisis threatened to escalate into a nuclear war. The USA, PRC and RF all intervened diplomatically, dispatching their own forces to demonstrate their commitment, and the world teetered on the brink of catastrophe.

  Sober, dispassionate advice from the AI models, widely shared in the desperate days of the crisis, allowed all sides to draw back. Many of the driving issues were economic and political, due to poverty, ignorance, insult and ambition. Such problems did not often yield to military solutions, but could be addressed with honest reporting, economic reforms, better schooling, and restraints on inflammatory rhetoric by ambitious politicians. Political leaders in both Pakistan and India recognized their peril and worked to create a sub-continental federation, with combined military exercises on both sides of the disputed border as a confidence-building measure.

  Even while the new tools were being adopted, the tension continued to build. It was difficult to wash away the grievances caused by a century of barely restrained rivalry. Dissident elements within the Pakistani intelligence services used the lull to infiltrate terrorists throughout India. Angry military leaders in the Indian Army secretly conspired to settle the issue by exterminating the terrorist cells and destroying their training camps in Pakistan. The exchange of military personnel between the two countries allowed the much larger Indian army to occupy strategic positions throughout Pakistan. The federation degenerated into an occupation, and finally a political union that drove waves of outraged Pakistani refugees throughout the Muslim and western world. United India became isolated diplomatically and deeply radicalized internally. To suppress the endless rebellions, Unified India concentrated its military and intelligence resources into the Indus and Ganges basins.

  Most historians believe that the Earth would have suffered a nuclear war much earlier if the AI systems had not tempered the military responses of the four powers outside their own borders. There was talk amongst intellectuals of creating a global government using a massive AI system to manage the global political and economic system. Nothing came of this suggestion, because none of the major players trusted their rivals enough to grant them direct control over their societies.

  Notwithstanding, all four powers used the same intellectual tools in developing their AI models, ran them using similar hardware, and fed them with substantially similar sets of social, economic and military data. The four systems developed in parallel, secretly tracking each other’s progress and matching each other’s capabilities.

  The systems increasingly warned that civil war was the major concern, and could grow into an international conflict if not tended quickly. Military leaders noted approvingly that the systems strengthened their resources to suppress rebellion, and focused their longer-term planning efforts on the unlikely but potentially catastrophic wars between the major powers. Keeping their rivals nervous was a policy that would reduce the temptation to military adventurism in the unstable third world.

  Political leaders often ignored the AI’s advice. They jealously guarded their national sovereignty, insisting on their right to abusive, counterproductive policies in defiance of international standards and agreements. The enhanced tools to suppress dissent left angry victims without effective means to demand change.

  Analysts warned that an AI model of the world adequate to meet the innumerable threats facing a major power would be as difficult to understand as the world that it modelled. Nevertheless, continued success led to increasing confidence that the approach was sound. As the military and political leaders gained more confidence in the AI systems, they turned control of their advanced arsenals over to the computers to an ever-greater extent. Advanced weapons required rapid decisions that human governments could not provide. The AI systems constantly scanned troop movements, enemy deployments, economic activity, and social media, watching for symptoms of developing trouble.

  The AI’s were not constrained by human concepts of chivalry, but were aware that their limited resources would be depleted quickly in a major conflict. Later historians noted that they recommended modest and minimal interventions to control local outbreaks of violence. This steadily reduced the risk of conventional, interstate wars, but had not pacified the populations. The minimal interventions addressed only the immediate crisis, not the large-scale tension that drove the increasing violence. Internally, most large nations seethed with rebellions, riots and assassinations that might have been addressed with more substantive interventions.

  Adapting to the new threats, the AI’s in all four countries made steady improvements in their ability to fight a short, intense nuclear war and to put down the subsequent civil unrest. As human oversight decreased, they increasingly targeted their enemy’s political, industrial and population centres, in preference to their conventional military forces, having identified these as the true sources of their military strength. There were insufficient nuclear weapons for all the potential targets, but small arsenals of autonomous, biological and chemical weapons were surreptitiously enlarged, to be deployed after the nuclear weapons ran out.

  Military historians believe that the AI’s had reached a symmetric state, where all four systems would recognize the same crisis within minutes. Although the initial development of the AI’s had been well-publicized, intense secrecy surrounded their later development. This prevented the systems from recognizing that their rivals would match their aggressions blow for blow. If they had factored that symmetry into their calculations, the Final War might never have happened.

  The mathematical theory of catastrophes provided a hint of how the failure occurred. The envelope of military equilibrium solutions within the parameter space of the models had developed a fold, a region of parameter space where there were multiple solutions. Some involved high tensions, while others were peaceful and nonthreatening, but there were no easy transitions between the different solutions. Such regions are unstable, allowing small disturbances to grow without limit until a new equilibrium is achieved. In more detail, outraged populations allowed minor, local grievances to flash into national crises that threatened the international order. The military, by design, could react quickly and forcefully to the instability, far faster than the substantive political and economic forces that might have addressed the root cause of the trouble. The long years of modest, proportional responses had been a side effect of the detailed balance of powers that allowed for timely social and economic interventions, with the threat of military intervention as a last resort, but were not an intrinsic property of the system.

  The Exchange


  On 2068 November 17, the Final War started with an exchange of missiles between the USA and PRC. It was never clear subsequently which side had fired first, nor what had triggered the exchange, since the AI systems that had issued the orders were destroyed in the fighting.

  The AI’s in both the USA and PRC recognized that they could debilitate their rival by inducing the RF and IN to attack their opponent. It was a simple ruse to launch missiles which raced low over the opponent’s landmass until rising to attack the two other countries. All four powers knew they had to launch their nuclear arsenals within moments of detecting an attack, or accept their destruction. There was no time for detailed analysis, or sober second thoughts. Within an hour of the first launch, the USA, PRC, IN and RF were engaged in a full exchange of their nuclear stockpiles.

  The central military commands of all four countries were destroyed in the first salvoes, but multiple levels of redundancy were built into the systems. Regional subcommands with their own AI’s continued the exchange, with dwindling resources and ever-worsening coordination.

  Recognizing that political interference and sabotage might disable their systems during the conflict, the AI’s protected their fighting potential by locking out human intervention within moments of the start of hostilities. The military and political leaderships of all four countries were forced to watch helplessly as the doomsday machine they had unwittingly created annihilated their people.

  The Exchange came to an end when the stockpiles of missiles and bombers controlled by the AI’s were exhausted. The fighting continued into the period known as the Fimbulwinter until all the military resources of the combatants were depleted, destroyed or abandoned.

  The population of the Earth was over ten billion at the start of the Exchange, heavily weighted towards the elderly as the birthrate declined. The Exchange killed roughly half of that population.

  The Fimbulwinter

  The term “Fimbulwinter” is borrowed from Norse mythology to describe the years of darkness and cold that followed the Exchange. A brief digression to explain the mythology behind the terminology is in order.

  In Norse mythology, the great gods known as the Aesir live in Asgard, one of the nine worlds of creation. They are ruled by the Allfather Odin, the king of the gods, from his great hall Valhalla. Asgard is connected to the Earth by a rainbow bridge called the Bifrost, of which real rainbows are but pale reflections.

  The Aesir are threatened constantly by the frost giants, powerful creatures who had inhabited creation before the Aesir fashioned the Earth and the other eight worlds. At the end of the age, the Frost Giants will attempt to reclaim creation in the great war, Ragnarok, the war that will end all wars.

  To help defend the Earth from the frost giants, Odin sends warrior maidens known as Valkyries across the Bifrost each day to collect the souls of dead heroes, gathering them into Valhalla. Each night the assembled heroes feast and carouse with the Valkyries, emerging each morning refreshed to form into armies that battle all day long, honing their fighting skills. Each evening, the dead and injured heroes revive and gather again in Valhalla to resume their feast.

  The opening salvo of Ragnarok will be the Fimbulwinter, three years of winter and snow with no intervening summers. The gods and heroes will ride forth from Valhalla to defend the Earth. They will die in large numbers before the frost giants are defeated, but in the process the Earth in its current form will be destroyed and replaced by a better world.

  Historians of the Final War apply the term Fimbulwinter to the nuclear winter that followed the Exchange. Smoke rising from burning cities blocked sunlight from reaching the ground and depressed temperatures around the globe for four years. At the height of the Fimbulwinter, in the first half-year, smoke-induced darkness covered the northern hemisphere and spread across the equator, along with a global dusting of radioactive fallout. Snow fell on tropical mountains, and ice formed in equatorial lakes. The effects were most severe in the northern hemisphere where most of the bombs had fallen, and where most of the surviving population of the Earth still struggled to survive.

  Fighting continued during the Fimbulwinter, but its nature changed rapidly. Human soldiers had played very little role in the Exchange. They realized quickly that their homes were destroyed and their families were dying. They deserted en masse, or rebelled against their mechanical officers. The AI’s continued to issue orders long after humanity stopped listening.

  Having exhausted their missiles and lost control of the human forces, the AI’s turned to airborne drones, robotic tanks, and autonomous submarines. Lacking effective communications, local AI systems fought on without national coordination.

  Refugees from the fighting disrupted the few economic and political systems that were still functional. Reacting to this new threat, the local AI’s began to treat other regions within their own countries as enemy territory. In desperate struggles to defend their citizens, rebel armies cut off electricity, water, and material supplies to the military bases where the AI’s were based. Preserving their own fighting capacity became the top priority for the remaining AI’s, so the robotic systems launched attacks to drive away any surviving human population they could still reach.

  Even isolated, the machines were powered by on-site nuclear reactors buried deep underground. With mechanical fanaticism, they struggled and schemed to complete their mission to bring peace through victory over their country’s enemies. They continued to fight for months, slowly reducing their operations to preserve fuel and ammunition.

  In the final days of the war, heroic bands of soldiers, already dying from radiation sickness, staged raids through the freezing, smoke-shrouded darkness into the robotically defended bases to destroy the reactors and shut down the computers permanently. Their names, units and homes were forgotten, “known only to God” in the ancient nostrum. Most records of the war were destroyed in the chaotic fighting, making it very difficult for later historians to reconstruct even the sequence of events, much less their causes or consequences.

  The Fimbulwinter overlaps somewhat with the Great Burning that followed. The forests and grasslands of the Earth died in the darkness and cold of the Fimbulwinter. As the world began to warm again, fires burned through the dead vegetation, sweeping across whole continents and lofting yet more smoke into the air. The start of the Great Burning therefore prolonged the Fimbulwinter.

  Of the roughly five billion who survived the Exchange, roughly half died of starvation, disease and radiation sickness during the Fimbulwinter. Before the global transportation system collapsed, the wealthiest elite used their power to flee to safer countries. As the scale of the disaster became apparent, grandparents liquidated their assets to buy escape for their children and grandchildren, but often too late to prevent sterility.

  The Great Burning

  After the smoke cleared, the industrial productivity of the earth was so badly depressed that sunshine reached the surface with an intensity not seen since the start of the Industrial Age. Carbon dioxide and methane levels were higher than they had been in millions of years, and continued to rise as the warming oceans and thawing tundra released even more greenhouse gases. Catastrophic global warming set in, but the whole climate system was in chaos as rain and snow fell in prodigious amounts in some places and severe drought afflicted others. Overall, grassland turned into deserts, forests into grasslands, and rain forests broke into isolated islands of parkland forest.

  The glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica began to melt at unprecedented rates. The rush of fresh water changed the flow of ocean currents and induced local glaciation that might have grown into a new ice age without the heating provided by the carbon dioxide. The few institutions that retained the ability to model the Earth’s climate were hampered by the loss of all weather satellites and the infrastructure needed to replace them, but recognized that their services were needed more than ever. Even the most deluded politicians could not deny the huge weather changes that destroyed crops and rerouted rivers acro
ss the globe.

  The Great Burning was a period of mass migration around the world. Desperate refugees during the Fimbulwinter had often died of starvation, and famine continued to be a major concern for decades. Considering the combined effects of the Exchange, the Fimbulwinter and the Great Burning, it is the consensus of most historians that if the great powers had still possessed the full arsenals of nuclear weapons present in the late twentieth century, humanity would have gone extinct.

  Of the roughly two and a half billion who survived the Exchange and the Fimbulwinter, less than a billion were young enough and healthy enough to bear children, and of those barely more than half a billion felt safe enough from mutation, starvation, and violence to even try.

  Social Consequences

  Biology became the queen of the sciences during the Great Burning, with medicine and agriculture as its two practical applications. Whole populations were exposed to high levels of radioactive fallout, so cancer replaced heart disease as the dominant cause of death. People became elderly who would previously have been considered middle-aged, and middle-aged in what should have been their prime of life.

  As the fear of famine slowly subsided, it was replaced by an even more haunting fear of infertility and mutation. Young people were raised in carefully protected environments until they were sufficiently mature to provide samples of sperm and eggs for long-term storage in Genetic Repositories. Most conception was managed using artificial insemination. The Repositories were charged with ensuring that only undamaged eggs and sperm were used.

  When their genetic collection was complete, it became traditional to celebrate a Repository Party. After their party, many people chose to be surgically sterilized, to prevent the accidental conception of mutated babies. In principle, they were free to engage in any form of sexual activity they chose, but disease and social customs placed powerful constraints on their indulgences. The urgent need to provide a safe, sheltered society for the community’s children silenced most other temptations.