Daybreak Zero d-2

by John Barnes

  They made grilled cheese sandwiches and chamomile tea. He was surprised at how good it was; how long had it been since he’d sat down to eat warm food with company?

  Trish gave him her puckish, crooked smile. “Is this a secure-enough location for you to share rampant speculation?”

  “Not so much rampant speculation as a contagious nightmare,” Arnie said, yielding to the warm kitchen and warm food. “Look, it’s really a pretty simple thought. Suppose Daybreak really is a system artifact. No central control, no planners, no directors or generals or chairs or presidents or kings, just an emergent property of the communication systems that existed up till a year ago, and now, somehow, is continuing to run in new media and ways, like rock and roll moving from radio to YouTube, or fundamentalism from camp meetings to TV. We’re more used to the idea that things move from lower to higher tech, but that’s probably just because we had several generations where the tech kept getting higher. So somehow Daybreak is migrating from Internet down to printing press and radio, headed for campfire stories and Gregorian chant, I suppose.

  “Now, we know it turns everything it encounters to its own purpose—while it was growing all around us, it took over things like political factions, organized crime gangs, terrorist groups, communes, nonprofits, churches, artistic movements, intelligence services, corporations, maybe even electorates, rather than vice versa. For Daybreak, reproduction and development are one and the same—it makes its ideas by catching on, and it catches on by making new ideas. It can’t do things without thinking or think things without doing them.

  “It’s like how biologists describe a shark—a guidance system for a digestive tract—or what some economists said banks had become, a pile of money with a will to accrete. And that’s what scares me. It wants what it wants and goes after it, using whatever it’s got, but it doesn’t sit back and say ‘I want to reduce humans to the Stone Age,’ which would be consciousness, or ‘Destroying the world relentlessly is who I am,’ which would be personality. It gets by without either.”

  “Drink some of your tea,” she said quietly. She was looking at him with the kind of concern he remembered his favorite tutor had, back when life was cookies, Star Wars, and test scores. She’s going to be a great mom for someone.

  When he had sipped the warm chamomile and taken a few deep breaths, she said, “You sound like Edgar Allan Poe talking about the beating heart, or the black cat. Now chill for just a sec, remember it’s probably not coming for us right this second, and tell me what’s so scary about all this.”

  “Something we’re overlooking. People have been the smartest things that people encountered, for at least the last hundred thousand years, right? Individual people have consciousness and personality, and they are smarter than animals, organizations, beliefs, or books. So we’ve learned that consciousness and personality are the indices of intelligence. But what if a really big system artifact—still not conscious, still with no personality—can be smarter than any of us? I mean, Catholicism—the whole system—is smarter than most Popes have been; physics is definitely smarter than any one physicist. Well, suppose Daybreak is smarter than we are. Completely focused in its own purpose, not caring about our suffering, not understanding ninety-nine percent of what it is that makes us worthy of existence—just like a shark eating a human saint or genius—but able to think faster and more deeply using more information than we do?”

  She rubbed his hand between hers. “You’re tired,” she said, “and scared. I wish you would go to bed. We need you rested and well, and we need you to explain this idea coherently so people will listen to you.”

  “You believe me?”

  “I believe in you, and I want to give you a chance to persuade me that you’re right.”

  “I just can’t help feeling like Daybreak is always a move ahead of me, like every time I ask it a question, it knows what I’m going to ask and its answer is not the truth, but the thing that will do Daybreak the most good. Like it’s learning who I am by seeing what I ask, like—

  Trish finished her sandwich, and pointed at his. “Eat. It’s still warm.”

  He did. It was good.

  “Arnie, if you’re afraid that Daybreak really is bigger and smarter than all of us, and that it’s just manipulating us into becoming easier to destroy, then if it delayed firing the moon gun to persuade you that it’s a dumb AI, what’s the reason?”

  “How would I—”

  “You said it’s a game or dialogue. Why does an opponent fake anything?”

  “Crap,” he said. “Once we see the flash, we all know nothing is going to happen for three days, so first we all take a long nap, and then we spend the rest of our three days grounding everything and wrapping it up—”

  She held her finger up, eyes widening. In the momentary silence they heard bells, whistles, sirens—all the signals the Army used along the defensive perimeter.

  The kitchen door flew open. Lieutenant Quentin, normally the night liaison for the Army forces guarding Mota Elliptica, said, “Doctor Yang, Professor Eliot, we need you to get everyone ready to evacuate, downstairs, now. Big tribal raid—”

  Arnie and Trish bounded up the stairs; he shoved the door open into the men’s bunkroom. “We’ve got a major tribal raid coming in. Evacuation starts now. No arguments.” The snoring stopped from a couple of bunks, some men began to mutter; only Harper, the chemist, sat up, groping for his bathrobe. Arnie pushed his glasses up his nose and bellowed. “Everyone, now!” The room went dead silent but he could feel that they were all awake. “This is why we ran all those drills. Dress. Put your personal effects in your bug-out bag. Get the books and papers you’re responsible for into the marked boxes, and the boxes where they’re supposed to go. This is not the time to think of better ideas. When everyone is safe, and the records are safe, you may then tell me about all the terrible mistakes we made. Now get moving, do not try to figure out a better way, and if you finish early, come to me and I’ll give you something else to do. No creativity, just get this done.” He turned up the oil lamp, letting it flare, and saw that they were all moving, now.

  He ran to his own room, swept his framed photos and treasured books into his pack, thought for an instant, Wish I was the guy who could just toss the three pictures of Allie into a corner and leave them here, and shrugged. He’d try that kind of courage some other time.

  Something heavy slammed against the outside wall, cracking plaster inside. Arnie grabbed his bag and went into the hall; the men’s and women’s bunkrooms were pouring people into their jobs. Trish and Arnie brought up the rear, urging people down the stairs. She had a moment to turn and whisper to him, “And now I know you’re right. Soon as we’re back in Pueblo we’ve got to plan what you’re going to say to Heather.”

  Something else hit the outside wall, hard enough to be felt through their feet.

  “Trebuchet,” Lieutenant Quentin announced loudly. “Like the Mongols used. Just a big lever and fifty tribals yanking a rope to throw a rock the size of a bowling ball.”

  They all jumped at the loud clang; that one had hit steel shutters on the ground floor. “Keep moving,” Arnie said. The snipers in the attic began to fire, and he added, “It’s being taken care of. Do your job, and they’ll do theirs.”

  Documents virtually flew into boxes, the boxes seemed almost to close and stack themselves. No more rocks arrived; a sniper called from above that the tribals had abandoned their trebuchet. “Okay, do the optional part of the list,” Arnie said.

  Engineers and technicians scrambled to put the instruments and other hard-to-replaces into boxes. Trish said, “No response from the control bunker—”

  A shutter broke inward through a window, tipping onto the floor inside with a crash; a moment later, an arrow quivered on the floor. The snipers in the attic were firing so fast it sounded like continuous volleys.

  Everyone dropped to hands and knees and crawled into the central hallways. Good, they remembered something else from their drills, and
this time without being told. At another window, the steel shutters rang, but held; this trebuchet crew must be more competent, closer, maybe both.

  As Trish and Arnie took quick roll of the scientific staff in the hallway, Quentin rolled in a rack of rifles. “These are pre-loaded—Newberry Standards, same thing the troops are using. Who’s qualified on them?”

  “Everyone,” Arnie said. “I insisted. Some of us don’t like it, though.”

  “Some of us do,” Trish said, picking up a Newberry and five four-shot magazines. Arnie stepped forward, and then everyone else was forming a line, the more reluctant taking the rear.

  “I’ll have other jobs than shooting for some of you,” Quentin said, “but it’s bad; I think you should all have a gun with you, all right?”

  Ruth Odawa sighed. “I hate the things but I hate being clubbed or burned to death even more. I’ll carry it but I’ll be happy to do almost anything else.”

  The front door opened and slammed shut in an instant; the sergeant outside said, “In the center hallway.”

  Carton, a Ranger from Olympia, came in. “Lieutenant Quentin, the colonel says we’re going to be surrounded, and he’s ordering everyone who can to fall back here. Captain Piersall and Lieutenant Ayache were killed in the first attack. Colonel Streen has direct command of Charlie Company and he’s bringing them in here. He’s also got both platoons of Rangers. If any of the engineering and scientific party can shoot—”

  “We just went over that,” Quentin said. “They’re armed and ready.”

  “Armed anyway,” Odawa said; Trish shut her up with a glare.

  “Where’re the TexICs?” Quentin asked.

  “Trying to chase the tribals away from the windmills,” Carton said. “The tribals swarmed up onto the mota, hundreds of them, with grapnels on big pieces of piano wire that tangle around and wreck the hubs, and rocks on poles to smash up the rotors, and God knows what else. I was on a watchtower up there when it started. We’ve lost at least four windmills that I know of. A few guys with black-powder repeaters couldn’t even slow the bastards down; I don’t know how the Texans’ll do with lances, pistols, and sabers, but at least they’re on horseback.” He might have grimaced or laughed; his expression was strange. “Guess we’ll all have to stop making fun of our pony soldiers and their cowboy outfits.”

  “Guess we will,” Quentin said. “All right, we don’t want to be—”

  Bangs, pops, and roars stuttered above. One of the men above shouted something down the stairs; then the front door opened. “Everyone stay down!” Colonel Streen shouted. “Troops coming in!”

  Suddenly the house was full of soldiers—over a hundred Temper infantry, in their “Rorschach jammies,” the gray wool camo-blotched with India ink that had replaced the rotted-away ACUs; around fifty of the President’s Own Rangers, in their black flannel shirts and jeans; a few TexICs, Texas Irregular Cavalry, who looked to Arnie like they’d escaped from a Nashville revue.

  Colonel Streen, a tall black man who had never spoken much to Arnie before, came in. “Doctor Yang, if we can all meet in your office, I need to talk quickly with my officers and you.”

  Arnie’s “office” was a walk-in closet, with barely room for the five of them to stand around Arnie’s tiny, battered old desk.

  “It’s the worst.” Streen looked a thousand years old. “We’re out of touch with at least half the force; the tribal attack overran three blockhouses out on our main line right during rotation, they were inside before the blockhouse crews knew what was happening, and the reliefs coming up were hit out in the open—Captain, thank God your TexICs were on top of that or we’d have lost all those men too—”

  “Glad to help,” Captain Tranh said, his Texas twang broad and harsh; something about him reminded Arnie of a silly movie he’d seen long ago, John Wayne playing Genghis Khan. “Wish we could’ve been more use on the windmills, though. I think you have to figure they’re all lost; we can run’em off any one windmill but they’re right back on it, or after a different one, as soon as we turn our backs. I’m real sorry about that, Doctor Yang.”

  “It’s gear,” Arnie said, though his heart was sinking. “People are what matter.”

  Streen nodded. “Right. All right, now when I was with General Grayson in the Yough, we found out there’s no real leadership on the battlefield, even if their plan is sophisticated. Each little tribe has a structured, conditional list of tasks, every single tribal has that list memorized, and they run down their decision tree till they’re killed, dispersed, or victorious. So right now out in the dark they’re all finding each other, getting the right people on their left and right, and then when they’re all in place, there’s gonna be one big human wave, like a banzai charge, focused here, coming from all sides.”

  “That’s what the tribals did at Pend Oreille,” Goncalves, the Ranger major, agreed; with his chest-length graying beard and all-black uniform, he looked like the wrath of Jehovah. “Fighting them around Grant’s Pass we could screw them up with three-man teams intercepting their runners and picking off the guys carrying spirit sticks, because they guide off those. I have six three-man teams out doing that right now; that should buy us a few minutes to prepare.”

  “Cavalry can probably disrupt even better,” Tranh said. “Anyone running between groups of tribals, and anyone carrying a spirit stick—”

  “And anyone that either of those are talking to,” the major said. “Leave no surviving witnesses—you have to kill the wounded. The tribal is just the medium, you’ve got to stop the message. If you get a spare second, break the spirit stick or scrape all that holy bric-a-brac off it, so nobody else can use it.”

  “Do it, Captain,” the colonel said. “Cavalry won’t be any use pinned against this house, and we don’t know how much longer they’ll take before they launch their wave.”

  The Texan saluted and went out, bellowing, “TexICs with me, now!”

  “Other than that,” Colonel Streen said, “we’ll have to open windows—we can’t get enough guns on the enemy with those shutters closed. I want the second floor to open all at once, and then the ground floor, each on my command. Any thoughts?”

  “Just glad to be here,” Goncalves said. “And my sympathies on your losses.”

  Streen nodded. “Thank you. All right, let’s go. If anyone asks, the plan is to fight till we’re all dead, they’re all dead, or they run away, and the goal is complete victory. Everything else is details. This wave might have three or even four thousand tribals in it, but if all our people are careful about cover, and we don’t let the enemy close enough to set fire to the house, we should be all right, because in tribal attacks, the worst is always the first. Can we can stand a siege?”

  “There’s a month of food for fifty in the pantry,” Arnie said, “and we’ve got an inside pump, so there’s water. We rigged up a bucket and pulley in the old dumbwaiter shaft to carry water upstairs; should we wet down the roof and walls?”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Streen said. “All right, let’s go.”

  On his way out, Arnie grabbed his six least enthusiastic shooters and put them on wetting-down duty, reminding them to keep their rifles with them and ready.

  The Temper infantry had three surviving officers, all lieutenants; Streen allocated Quentin to the ground floor, and the other two to the axmen and pikemen on the north and south porches. “Major, if you would assign your two officers for the attic and second-floor commands, and if you and I declare ourselves HQ?”

  “Works for me. Nice to have the US Army all back together again.”

  “Isn’t it, though? Makes me feel like Custer.”

  “I’d rather feel like Anthony Wayne. He won.”

  A lookout shouted, “Colonel! Drums and singing!”

  Arnie and Trish crouched to the right of their assigned window and listened; the melody was instantly recognizable—All we are saying, is give Gaia her rights.

  Streen squatted beside him. “Any insight into that?”

/>   “All the tribes use it,” Arnie said. “It’s almost certainly the pump-up before the big wave. Probably they’ll go to rhythmic shouting just as they start the charge.”

  “So when they start to shout in rhythm, they’re coming? Is that a semiotics thing?”

  Arnie shrugged. “It’s probably hardwired in the nervous system. Build up the feelings on long phrases with tones, release them on short atonal grunts.”

  The singing had grown louder. The front door opened. “Sir.” A young soldier leaned in.

  “Yes?”

  “Flames from the control bunker. Nobody answering our calls there. Too much smoke to see what’s happening.”

  “Thank you,” the colonel said. The young soldier slipped back out. “Quentin, double the rifles on the windows that can see the control bunker,” the colonel said. “Draw from whatever reserves we have. Don’t change anything else. Pass word up to the other floors to do the same. That’s where the main shock’ll be coming from. Tell them that.”

  Quentin began giving orders.

  Streen turned back to Arnie. “I’m guessing you’ve lost everyone and everything in that control bunker, but if there’s anything important enough we could try a sortie—”

  “Colonel,” Arnie said, “with the windmills wrecked, it’s already the end of WTRC, and the only thing in the bunker we couldn’t replace was Pahludin, Bates, Greene, and Portarles. Don’t worry about saving anything but lives.”

  Streen grinned. “One clear objective. Are you sure you’re really an administrator, Doctor Yang?”

  “I have constant doubts.”

  The colonel squeezed Arnie’s shoulder in friendly encouragement and moved on.

  Outside, the singing faded into a chant backed up by drums—

  Mother Earth

  Gave you birth

  Give her, give her

  All you’re worth!

  —louder, faster, blending into booming drums and crashing metal.

  “I’m going above,” Streen said. “Quentin, on my command or one minute after you hear second floor open up, throw the shutters open and give them everything you can from the ground-floor windows. On no account leave a window or door unguarded.”