“OK,” said Rambo, “maybe I haven’t done much technical winning in a bit, not as such, but I was still awesome. Don’t I get points for style?”
“You keep your style,” said Rambo, “and I’ll keep mine.”
“Hey you two,” said Crazy Eddie. “I think that I’m picking up indications of our Steelyzit friends headed our way. Sensor masts up!”
--------------------
We watched as a Steelyzit armada formed up on a course towards our planetoid. The office copier colony was by this time fully operational and it sat there, a single long low shed surrounded by solar cells and a fitful few telescopes and laser transmitter/receiver pairs. I could detect significant signal traffic between the office copier colony and their fellows in other systems, but it was encrypted with algorithms beyond me and I could not decipher them. We asked the copiers what we should do about the oncoming Steelyzits, but they remained mute.
Crazy Eddie created a virtual map of the Steelyzit forces, indicating their projected line of attack. “The efficient thing to do,” he said, “would be to just blow them up in space. We have enough forces in system to do that.”
“That hardly seems sporting,” said Rambo. “Let’s let them land, and see what happens.”
War is not a sport.
“Your opinion,” said Rambo.
None of our vital interests are at stake. We’re not here to beat the Steelyzits, we’re here to gain insight. I vote we block direct space-based attacks on us, but we allow them to launch a ground assault.
Well, Crazy Eddie was outvoted, so that’s what we did. Slowly we watched as the Steelyzit forces bore down on our lonely planetoid. They tried launching long-range missiles at us, and we intercepted them easily. Still, we left their main forces unmolested, and, with typical Steelyzit single-mindedness, they closed the range.
Rambo took the opportunity to run 100 km speed sprints. He challenged Crazy Eddie and me to a race, but with his overpowered drive-train that would have been pointless, so we passed. He settled for a personal best.
We set up an exclusion zone in the space above the office copier outpost, and the Steelyzits – predictably – landed on the far side of the planetoid and advanced on the ground. They had a pretty standard mix of armored units, ranging from light to maybe half my size. We destroyed anything that they tried to launch into the sky, so we deliberately held them pinned to the planetoid’s surface.
Rambo let out a whoop, and tore across the landscape headed straight for the Steelyzit front lines.
You know, heading straight for the enemy is a predictable strategy.
“I am not predictable,” said Rambo. “Sometimes I go straight on, sometimes I veer to the left, and sometimes – to really shake things up – I veer to the right. Always keep them guessing.”
At the moment words escaped me. Crazy Eddie and I coordinated our distributed forces, and provided cover for Rambo, who was merrily smashing the Steelyzit forces as a single unit. I was forced to admit that, as tactically silly as this was, it was kind of cool looking. He dodged around hills, wiped out heavy units with his main turreted plasma cannon, fried the lighter units with focused EMP bursts or railguns, created elaborate holographic sensor-screens and jammed the Steelyzits sensors with the full range of countermeasures. Even without the overwatch that Crazy Eddie and I were giving him, he might have actually been able to take out the entire Steelyzit ground force by himself.
The battle progressed, and it was hard to see that – aside from Rambo enjoying himself – anything was going to be gained from the exercise. We would eventually wipe out the last Steelyzit unit, and that would be that, until the next time they attacked.
Still, we had been stuck on the Steelyzit problem for so long. There must be some opportunity here to learn more about this most pathetic and irritating of enemies. Some new set of conditions that would provoke a reaction.
Using Rambo as a distraction (and I will admit, distraction is definitely Rambo’s strong suite), I probed the Steelyzit forces with micro-scouts looking for a command nexus. Maybe we could get lucky and capture a part of one before it self-destructs.
Tentatively I identified two probable Steelyzit command units – they were disguised as long-range self-propelled artillery, but their signal traffic gave them away. Rambo blew one of them up at close range, and charged over the wreckage in search of other targets. There was just one left.
Rambo, I think I have identified a Steelyzit command unit. We need you to not blow it up. Can you do that? Not blow it up?
“Not blow it up?” asked Rambo. “Why not? Isn’t that what one does with an enemy?”
Rambo we’re trying to gather intelligence. You’re coming into range now, so please try to control yourself and, really, not blow it up. For the team.
“Well,” said Rambo, “since you put it that way. I suppose it’s a new kind of challenge, not blowing it up.”
Hold that thought.
Rambo tacked and spun, treads slewing widely as he over-rode the governors. He took some heavy hits on his right hull from a nasty buried pop-up defensive turret, then destroyed it with massed railgun fire. “Should I try to capture it?”
No, it will just self-destruct. Let’s pen it in, and try to give it just enough slack that it doesn’t feel under imminent threat of capture, but not leave it enough forces that it could escape.
Rambo grumbled but complied, and while we wiped out most of the remaining Steelyzit forces we saved a small ring of them centered on the command unit. And then… nothing happened.
The command unit was like most non-deceptive alien units, functionally rational but stylistically weird. It was mounted on 6 parallel treads, and had a single large electromagnetic launcher and several point-defense weapons, but the curves and colors were all wrong. It was off-putting and disturbing as nothing human-constructed would be. It was a pretty good mimic of a Steelyzit long range artillery unit, but closer inspection revealed a heavier density of sensors and antennas than any mere artillery piece, and the combat record showed no indication that it had ever fired its main weapon.
And so we sat there, the Steelyzit command unit and its immediate escorts, and our own combat units ringing it in. Crazy Eddie and Rambo and I drove our main hulls up to two kilometers away from it – we were no longer in any danger – and stopped. And we looked at each other.
We tried talking to it in all manner of languages, signaling by audio, radio, laser, seismic, olfactory, glyphs cared on rocks, anything we could think of. No response.
We detected the backwash of focused radio signals from the office copiers. They were also trying to talk to the Steelyzit unit, but again, there appeared to be no response.
This went on for a few days. Our space forces detected a second Steelyzit armada headed our way. It would arrive in about two weeks, and was big enough that not even we three cybertanks could reliably defeat it with high confidence. We would probably need to blow these surviving enemy units and retreat before too long. I guessed that this plan hadn’t worked out, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Rambo announced that he was bored, and he took to racing around the planetoid on a complex winding course that he had set up. Part of this course passed by the Steelyzit command unit; some of its sensors turned to follow the wildly careening form of the over-powered cybertank, which was more reaction than we had gotten from anything else, but still not much.
It was the last day before we were going to give up and leave, when Rambo decided to set off some fireworks. Rambo loves his fireworks and, to give credit where credit is due, he has a real artistic flare to it (much more than he does with real combat, in my humble opinion). The sky lit up with starbursts and whizzers and whirligigs and all manner of different colors and textures. It was lovely.
“What are you doing?” asked the Steelyzit comma
nd unit, in perfect English, on an unencrypted radio band.
Well, that took us all by surprise. This was the longest direct communication between the Steelyzits and the cybertanks ever. It was a little annoying that the English was so good – damn those early humans, they spread our basic grammar everywhere all over the cosmos before they realized that giving insights into how you think to potentially hostile aliens is not a swell idea, but nothing for that now, I guess.
“Those are fireworks,” said Rambo. “We shoot them off because they are pretty.”
The Steelyzit command unit brought more of its sensors to bear on the fireworks display. “We detect no units being targeted by these munitions. Their combat power is negligible. They cannot be a test of operational systems. They lack the ability to serve as effective decoys. The visual complexity is insufficient to constitute an information-theoretic attack. Please explain.”
“We just like to blow things up and look at them,” said Rambo. “We find it pleasing.”
“You do not require an enemy to blow things up?” asked the Steelyzit.
“No, of course not – although an enemy does add another level of challenge,” said Rambo. “But you can set off fireworks at any time, whenever you feel like it.”
The Steelyzit fell silent for a bit, but continued tracking the fireworks display. Finally it spoke again: “We no longer desire to pursue combat operations against the cybertanks. If that is in accords with your own priorities, allow this unit to withdraw. We will make contact with the rest of our civilization, and cease offensive operations. Is this desire reciprocated?”
A cessation of hostilities between our two civilizations is in accordance with our own agenda. We agree.
And that was that. The Steelyzit command unit was allowed to retreat back to its own space, contact with their central command was initiated, zones of travel and influence agreed to, and they never attacked us again.
Ultra long-range sensors showed that the Steelyzits had taken to all manner of blowing things up – fireworks, asteroids, old machinery, mountains on airless moons, you name it, they blew it up, and the bigger and showier the better.
This led to a renewed interest in blowing things up on our part, and for a time advanced pyrotechnic displays became all the rage.
So was it that simple? The Steelyzits had attacked us because they liked watching things blow up? But then why didn’t they figure that out themselves? Maybe they had never blown anything up when not in a real combat situation, and never realized that they could derive the same pleasure from destruction for its own sake? What kind of psychology builds starships, but has so little insight into itself? The alien kind, of course.
When I told Schadenfreude about this, he was unusually taciturn, even for him. At first I thought he was sad because I had succeeded, but instead it turned out that the Steelyzit episode had gotten him to thinking about what sort of mental blindspots we cybertanks might have…
My reputation got a significant rejuvenation, Rambo was invited to participate in some minor but still important combat actions, and Crazy Eddie had begun the long laborious process of reconstructing his Costcotm warehouse. Last I heard the adaptoids were happily lining themselves up on shelves in ordered ranks. So it all ended well.
On the front of the old office copier, the flashing red “job pending” light turned off.
12. Dimension of Wonder
12.1. DIMENSION OF WONDER, by Slade Evergreen. (Ballacourage Books). In a freak physics accident, the Odin-Class cybertank known as “Old Guy” and his friend the Mountain-Class cybertank known as “Uncle Jon” are transported to a dimension where the only things that can exist are freestanding memes in the form of lists of science fiction bestsellers. In order to survive, the plucky duo must reformat themselves into this strange and surprising mode of existence, and overcome encounters with predatory memes from other book summaries. Rip-roaring trans-dimensional cybertank action.
12.2. ALIEN MONSTER, by Vincent Wong. (Apricot Press). The story of Titan robot Ro-Woman Extension XK-47’s mission to Earth to destroy all the humans. She kills all but seven survivors, who have become immune to her brominator death ray. Ro-Woman runs afoul of the hypercomputer ‘The Great Instructor,’ her leader, when she becomes attracted to the human Brad. He is the son of a surviving economist, and Ro-Woman refuses to kill him. The Great Instructor must teleport to Earth to finish what the Titan robot started. Campy fun.
12.3. WHAT THE F**K IS THIS?, by Deirdre Whipple. (Nature Science Fiction). The ancient yet wily Odin-Class cybertank “Old Guy” must use all of his tricks to survive the Dimension of Wonder. Even direct communication with his comrade, Uncle Jon, is impossible, so in order to plan an escape they must exchange messages via book summaries. Can Old Guy and Uncle Jon create a plot summary that will lead them out of this strange and yet oddly affecting dimension?
12.4. IT’S A DIMENSION OF SCIENCE FICTION BOOK SUMMARIES YOU IDIOT, by Charles Yohimbine (Frontiers in Science Fiction). Marooned in the Dimension of Wonder, everyone’s favorite self-aware weapon of mass destruction, the enormous fusion powered cybertank “Uncle Jon,” and his plucky sidekick “Old Guy,” develop a plan to escape via the manipulation of plot summaries, which they hope will react with the memetic nature of their current reality and return them to normality. But, dark forces are gathering. Can our heroes survive?
12.5. ALIEN MONSTER VS. CYBERTANK, by Angus Podgorny (The Bangladeshi Journal of Science Fiction and Textile Arts). Even as the cybertanks Old Guy and Uncle Jon plot their escape from the Dimension of Wonder, evil Ro-Woman Extension XK-47 launches a surprise assault. Will the doughty sentient armored fighting vehicles prevail over Ro-Woman and her world-destroying brominator death ray? Exciting action in this fresh cross-over hit.
12.6. I’M BEING ATTACKED BY A GIANT GORRILLA WITH A DIVING HELMET FOR A HEAD, by I.Q. Passionknack. ( Vanity Press Inc). While heavily damaged by the initial assault of the evil Titan robot Ro-Woman, the cybertanks Old Guy and Uncle Jon rally and press the fight home. It’s plasma cannons vs. death rays, hyperalloy armor vs. imponderable indestructible gorilla fur, and sophisticated combined-arms tactics versus raw robot monster aggression, as the fusion-powered duo bomb and strafe their way across the Dimension of Wonder fighting for truth, justice, and the Canadian way. Meanwhile, Old Guy has a plan for a book summary that just might save them – but only if Zippo the Space Monkey can arrive in time.
12.7. OH STOP WHINING YOU WUSS, by Alan Smithee (M.I.T. Press). The battle between evil Titan robot Ro-Woman and the cybertanks Old Guy and Uncle Jon reaches a new pitch of intensity – and then who should arrive but the Space Battleship Scharnhorst and Zippo the Space Monkey! With their new allies our heroes look set to prevail and finally generate memetic structures that will cause them to be returned to their home dimension… but Ro-Woman has one last trick up her metaphorical sleeve…
12.8. CYBERTANK RESURGENT (in 3D), directed by Michael Bay, reviewed by Yang Xinhai. Rated PG13. Voice talents: Tom Waits (Old Guy), Brad Pitt (Uncle Jon), Louise Fletcher (Ro-Woman), Tom Cruise (Space Battleship Scharnhorst).
Now I’ve read a few of the “Old Guy” cybertank novels, and I’ve found them to be moderately amusing, but when I heard that they were going to be adapted into a big-budget Hollywood movie… well, I approached my review with some trepidation. I mean, the cybertanks I can see, but mixing the genre with the campy faux-1950’s “Alien Monster” series seemed like the sort of thing dreamed up by a committee of producers that had snorted way too much in the way of psychoactive compounds.
The initial part I got, even if it was a little abstract. Apparently the two cybertanks (self-aware armored fighting vehicles the size of small office buildings) had been catapulted into a strange dimension where everything consisted of descriptions of science-fiction best-selling books. They had tried to manipulate the dimension by creating plot summaries in which they would discover a machine that would give them a way home, in the hopes that – in this strange realm of idea
s – the thought would create its own reality. They almost succeeded, except that this “Ro-Woman” character intervened at the last moment and shifted them instead into a dimension where reality consists only of reviews of science fiction movies.
The production values are pretty good, and I must admit the CGI scenes of the cybertanks tearing across the war-torn planetscape, treads kicking up clouds of dust and plasma cannons emitting beams to outshine the sun, were impressive. But the contrast with this Ro-Woman character was glaring. There just wasn’t the continuity, and the animation of the gorilla fur in particular was not convincing. Then there was the sudden appearance of the Space Battleship Scharnhorst. I thought he had been reseeded into a Sundog-Class cybertank: is this a reboot of the franchise or just plain sloppiness on the part of the writers? And the “brominator death ray” effect was the sort of thing that would have been rejected from an “Adolescent Mutant Pangolin” movie.
But just when I was about to give up on the movie completely, along comes Zippo the Space Monkey to redeem it. I know, some critics think that Zippo is a little too ‘cute’ and even saccharine, but I for one just can’t resist the little guy. The character is cybernetic, so it’s completely CGI, but the animators have done a splendid job of breathing life into what in lesser hands could have been a boring metal robot. I won’t spoil the plot, but even as the cybertanks and the space battleship are unleashing a crescendo of destruction against Ro-Woman, in the end it’s Zippo who… well, you’ll have to see the movie to find out.
My only complaint is the final teaser – why do so many big-budget movies have to put in a hook at the end for a sequel? I mean half the time these sequels don’t get made anyhow, and if you want to make a sequel, just make the bloody sequel. I am also not at all excited about the prospect of an adventure set in a dimension where everything consists of Haiku poetry.
Full Frontal Cybertank Page 17