Colony War

by Tarah Benner

  Ziva’s words fall with the weight of a brick. At first, I don’t feel the full impact of her statement, but as it sinks in, my stomach clenches in revulsion.

  “Mordecai thinks that bots are meant to replace humans?” I choke.

  “Yes.”

  I draw in a sharp burst of air. I cannot believe that someone could think that way, but if anyone could be that twisted, it’s Mordecai.

  “Ziva, listen to me,” says Jonah in an urgent voice. “We just spoke with Mordecai. He says he’s on Elderon.” He glances at me and back to Ziva. “You need to warn Van de Graaf and fortify your offices. You need —”

  “I already know what my brother is planning,” Ziva cuts in. Her voice is calm — too calm to have been surprised by this news.

  “You know?” says Jonah.

  “Yes. He is planning —” she breaks off, swallowing down a desperate fear that I can see in her eyes. “Mordecai is planning a coup. Those who refuse to submit will be killed, and the rest of us will be sanctioned to a life of slavery.” Her voice has diminished to barely above a whisper, and I have to lean in to hear what she says next. “Many people are going to die in this war.”

  “Ziva,” says Jonah, his voice loud and impatient. “What did Mordecai say to you? Has he made contact?”

  “Now, now, Ziva,” says another voice, distant in the speakers.

  I know that voice. It sends an automatic chill through my system, and I really think I might be sick.

  At the sound of her brother’s voice, Ziva’s face darkens, and her shoulders shrink in fear.

  “Have you been spilling all of our secrets?” Mordecai chides. “Naughty, naughty girl.”

  Suddenly the feed stutters, and Mordecai’s face swims into view. He’s hunched just over Ziva’s shoulder, part of his body cut off from the sensors. Ziva’s whole body recoils.

  “Now, Sister, you don’t want to give it all away.” His eyes are glowing with smug satisfaction, and I long to reach through the projection and smack that grin off his face. He turns to his sister. “Have you told them everything you’ve been up to?”

  Ziva swallows, and for the first time I see the resemblance between them: sharp features, dark eyes, proud hooked nose.

  “No?” Mordecai croons in mock surprise. “It’s just like her . . . always modest. Sneaky to the core.”

  The projection wavers again, and Mordecai disappears from the frame. There’s a loud pop of static as he adjusts the camera’s sensors to record a wider view of the room.

  Suddenly, I can see a chunk of Ziva’s office aboard Elderon superimposed over her office on Earth. The walls are painted the same sky blue. The match is so exact that the two images seem to blend into one.

  “I bet she never mentioned her latest endeavor,” Mordecai calls, disappearing from the frame.

  A second later, he reappears pushing a wheelchair. Slumped in the chair is a frail old man. He looks completely human, apart from the stump where his waist ends at the seat.

  His head is dipped to his chest as though he’s dozing. The little hair he has left is white like damp wood smoke, and his beige skin is so thin that it’s almost transparent.

  Every detail looks human, from the wrinkles to the liver spots to the swollen, arthritic knuckles. Mordecai pushes the man up to the camera, and I see that his eyes are milky gray in the center.

  As my eyes scan his face, I begin to pick out the same similarities that I saw in the siblings: sharp features, dark eyes, proud hooked nose . . .

  “I find it insulting that you chose to recreate our father as you last remember him, Sister,” Mordecai muses, popping back in the frame. “Why not build a forty-year-old version of him — or even a seventy-year-old version of him? Why would you make him old and decrepit like this?”

  Ziva doesn’t answer.

  Mordecai adjusts the sensors so that Ziva is back in the frame. She’s hanging her head in shame and anger, and I hear the sick delight in Mordecai’s voice.

  “All this time, I thought she was so arrogant,” Mordecai continues. “To co-opt my father’s vision for her own selfish gain. But I truly underestimated her. All this time she has been building a lifeless copy of our father, in the hopes that he might bestow his blessing.” He says the last word with abject contempt, and Ziva’s expression darkens.

  “I built him so that Father could be here in spirit!” Ziva snaps. “The company is nothing without him. I built an artificial version so that he could be immortalized. I programmed the AI with father’s data so that he could advise me!”

  “Do you really think that this cheap reproduction could ever give you anything of value?” Mordecai snarls. “All this AI will do is reflect whatever rose-colored memories you have of our father. They will just be another reflection of you — of your selfishness, your greed, your —”

  “It isn’t true,” Ziva growls. “I used every piece of data he left — every message, every video — every piece of content that ever existed. This man is as much our father as he chose to show the world. That is a fact that you cannot dispute!”

  “You are a fool!” Mordecai cries. “To be so arrogant to think you could create a bot like this!”

  Ziva doesn’t respond, and I realize her eyes are filled with tears.

  “Sergeant Wyatt, Ms. Barnes . . . Do not bother returning to Elderon. I have plans for this place which you cannot stop. If you wish to stay alive, you should remain on Earth.”

  Mordecai reaches out, and a second later, the desktop goes dark. The projection disappears, and I have to blink to banish the imprint from the backs of my eyes.

  My stomach is a tangled knot of horror. Every second it twists tighter and tighter, building and condensing as I imagine the bot that Ziva built.

  For the first time, I’m unsure who’s more delusional: Ziva or Mordecai.

  “What do we do?” I gasp.

  Jonah shakes his head. He looks just as disgusted as I feel. His face is a twisted mask of revulsion, and I can sense the wheels turning inside his head.

  “If Ziva believes that bot is her father, she’s no help to us now,” says Jonah.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, startled by this news.

  “He knew what he was doing,” Jonah mutters. “He knows his sister better than we do.”

  My mind is racing. It’s too horrible to imagine. With Ziva at his side, Mordecai would be unstoppable.

  “You think Ziva would help him?” I ask. “After everything he’s done?”

  Jonah takes a deep breath as though he’s resigned himself to the worst. “I think that now that he’s on Elderon, Mordecai has all the leverage he needs. Now that he has a bot she thinks is her father, Ziva is his prisoner.”

  Author's Note

  Thank you for reading Colony War. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  As an author, it’s always nerve wracking to start a new series. I never know if an idea will catch on, and this concept was a departure from my usual writing. A near-future series set in space doesn’t scream dystopian, but wherever there is new technology or a new frontier, there’s room for things to go horribly wrong.

  Shortly after Colony One was released, President Trump publicly floated the idea for adding a branch to the US Armed Forces called the Space Force. I couldn’t believe it.

  On the one hand, I felt vindicated. My version of the future wasn’t off base; it was proving to be scarily accurate. On the other hand, I thought, humans haven’t even colonized space, and we’re already trying to integrate it into our war machine?

  Then came the paranoia. I’d always joked that I was probably on some Homeland Security watch list for my crazy Google searches. (Deadly virus, top-secret bunkers, hacking smart cars, what’s in a pipe bomb . . . This is just a typical day at the office for a sci-fi/dystopian writer.) But to think that the president was getting the highlights of my book presented in his daily brief? That’s just scary.

  All kidding aside, throughout the creation of this book,
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was writing from real life — not some made-up future. Specifically, the terror attacks portrayed in the book felt a little too close to home after the shooting at YouTube headquarters in April 2018.

  Many world events that took place around the time of the book’s conception certainly played a role in its creation. A few weeks before Colony One was released, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress about the misuse of user data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He also spoke about Russian actors using Facebook to meddle in the 2016 election. All three major US intelligence agencies have confirmed Russian meddling, which was achieved by hacking the Democratic National Committee servers to leak confidential data and by running an influence campaign on social media that included fake news stories.

  What I find most troubling about the Russians’ interference is their use of technology that is poorly regulated by US lawmakers and poorly understood by the general public. Companies like Facebook, Google, and AT&T have unprecedented access to our information — both the information we give away and the information we consume.

  Take the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, for instance — the law that is meant to protect our right to privacy in the digital world. It passed into law in 1986 — when Mark Zuckerberg was just two years old and long before Facebook was ever imagined.

  The ECPA allows law enforcement to access emails, chats, texts, search history, Twitter direct messages, and Facebook communication that is at least six months old — without a warrant. The law also allows telecom companies to disclose user data to third-party companies — including our real-time location data.

  This abominable loophole came to light when a Mississippi sheriff was charged with using that data to surveil other officers and a judge without a court order. The sheriff allegedly used a service run by Securus Technologies, which provides and monitors calls to inmates. Where does Securus Technologies get its data? From wireless carriers like Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T.

  The laws governing our digital lives have simply not kept up with the rapid pace of technology. Whoever controls our data controls the world, and it’s not unreasonable to think that someone like Mordecai could somehow gain control of the tech universe and cause catastrophic damage.

  I had a lot of fun imagining who the power players of 2075 could be: Teegan Henley, Zuni Monroe, Zephyr Morgan, and Si Damm. I purposely chose to create fictional companies whose technology is not that far removed from the technology we have today, because I think the way we use and abuse these tools is scary enough already.

  Recently I had a direct encounter with the sort of technology that is going to expand the state of surveillance around the world to epic proportions. A representative from Vivint came to my house and tried to sell me and my husband a home security system similar to Ring and the system sold by Amazon.

  If you aren’t familiar with the technology, here’s how it works: A company comes to your home and installs cameras around (or even in) your house that are connected to its system. With Ring, if someone comes to your door or even walks by your house, you can receive an alert on your smartphone along with a video feed of the incident. If a visitor rings your doorbell, you can speak to that person directly and see his or her face on video.

  With other systems, you can unlock your door via your smartphone for a neighbor, house sitter, or even a delivery person. Amazon’s new service, Amazon Key, allows delivery drivers to let themselves into your home with a smart lock to leave your package inside, thereby eliminating the risk of front-porch package theft. You can watch the entire delivery in real time via a camera in your home, and Amazon receives an alert any time a door is left unlocked for more than a few minutes.

  These systems are all marketed as a way to improve the security of your home, but what happens when they get hacked? We’ve seen it before with video baby monitors, smart locks, and even Amazon Key. It makes me uncomfortable to think that someone could hack the system and watch me and my family via an in-home camera or access my home when I’m not there.

  What makes these systems even more powerful is the network effect. Ring users, for instance, can upload videos to the neighborhood community, share videos on social media, or even hand over footage to law enforcement. (Depending on a Ring doorbell’s settings, homeowners can receive notifications for people walking or driving down a public street — not just those accessing their property.)

  Where I live near downtown Colorado Springs, this has started to feel very Big Brother. People post videos of “suspicious characters” on social media, and users often swap footage and compare notes. The rational part of me wants to appreciate Ring for its crime-stopping potential, but there’s something voyeuristic about many of these videos that gives my less rational side the creeps.

  About a month before this book was published, a friend stopped by my house in a panic because someone had posted on the Ring community about gunshots near the corner where we live. (In the video, it does sound like a gunshot, but I’d been home all night and assured her that the panicky Ring user had uploaded a recording that detected the sound of fireworks.)

  As more people invest in smart-home security, they are essentially funding mass-scale surveillance that will soon rival the most surveilled cities in the world. You won’t be able to walk down the street without being captured on camera and identified with facial-recognition technology.

  How long until all those recordings are publicly available like a live Google Street View? Law enforcement could verify alibis with the click of a mouse. Stalkers would no longer have to venture outside the comfort of their own homes. The applications are endless.

  In China, they are already testing facial-recognition technology to monitor children’s engagement in class and dole out toilet paper in public restrooms. Forty centimeters is enough for everyone doing their business, right? (That’s just over fifteen and a half inches for those in the US.) The high-tech bathrooms also time citizens’ potty breaks and will alert an attendant to come check on them after ten minutes.

  This technology is in the process of being integrated with China’s deeply disturbing social credit program. The program, which is supposed to be fully operational by 2020, assigns citizens a score based on things like whether they pay their bills on time, jaywalk, duck military service, make frivolous online purchases, or spend too much time playing video games. A high score is rewarded with better lending rates and heating discounts, while a low score can get a citizen barred from the best hotels, the best schools, the best jobs, and even domestic air travel.

  While the morality police may never be able to stop those of us in the West from staying at a Four Seasons, we’ll still have to contend with hacks and attacks from those looking to exploit new technology. One of the most interesting and challenging parts of writing Colony War was delving into the complex psyche of Mordecai Blum.

  Ziva was a character who came to me fully formed — brilliant, determined, and overly idealistic but someone whose motives I knew were pure. Mordecai was another story, but he couldn’t be senselessly evil. Every villain needs a motive.

  To create Mordecai, I had to delve into the psychological profile of a terrorist and the murky waters of determining why people become extremists in the first place.

  According to social cognitive neuroscientist Emile Bruneau, people who are most at risk of joining a terror organization are those who are already alienated from society. Humans have evolved to coexist in groups or tribes, and when that need to belong is not being fulfilled, an individual may turn to another group to feel that sense of social connection. A group like ISIS “can offer the camaraderie, brotherhood, and purpose” these individuals are missing, but so can groups like Boko Haram or white-nationalist organizations like the neo-Nazis.

  Interestingly, those who studied ISIS found that regular attendance at a mosque was inversely correlated with ISIS enrollment — meaning that it made an individual less likely to join. Why? Because belonging to a rel
igious organization provides a strong sense of social identity that makes vulnerable individuals less likely to seek acceptance through extremism.

  For Mordecai, this sense of alienation originated with his own family. Ziva and her father’s shared interests drew them closer, while Mordecai was left on the outside looking in. Highly intelligent and socially awkward, Mordecai never married or had any close relationships. He had a way of making the people around him feel inferior, which only increased his sense of isolation.

  Another article I read suggests that humiliation could be an underlying cause of terrorism. Psychologists Susan Harter, Sabina M. Low, and Nancy R. Whitesell analyzed the motivations of ten different school shooters and found that all shooters described how they had been harassed and publicly humiliated by their peers, teachers, or administrators.

  In his paper “Selective Moral Disengagement in the Exercise of Moral Agency,” Albert Bandura suggests that a person’s moral standards are not fixed. People must self-regulate, and just as an individual’s conscience can motivate him or her to act in a prosocial way, a person can also use certain psychological maneuvers to disengage his or her moral compass.

  A person may make a moral justification for destructive behavior (as one does in war), use euphemistic language to describe acts of violence, commit violence as part of a group to diffuse responsibility, compare his act of violence to others’ violence, or dehumanize his victims.

  Dehumanization was a common theme that emerged throughout my research. Viewing a group as less than human makes it easier for individuals to justify violence, and being dehumanized makes people more likely to support or engage in violent behavior against the group that dehumanized them.

  Living in such a divided society, it is very easy to ignore atrocities against other human beings when those wrongdoings don’t affect us personally. We dehumanize people who are not members of our in-group to make our government’s treatment of them more palatable or as a way to try to understand why people do bad things.