James Wittenbach - Worlds Apart 03

by Bodicea

  “This scholar believes the Berserker War really happened, or were at least based on something real. He contends that near the end of the Crusades, the Dark Forces turned loose a set of dedicated killing machines as part of a doomsday weapon when they knew their defeat was imminent. There are accounts of machines the size of planets, attacking and destroying worlds at will, then moving onto the next world. Others looked almost human on the outside, but were machines on the inside.”

  “The Terminators, you mean?”

  “Aye, unless you think they were also ‘just a legend.’”

  Keeler sighed. “The Crusades were a seminal event in human evolution. They not only mark the boundary between what we were and what we are, they are the difference between what we were and what we are. When they were over, we knew something awesome had transpired, but we lacked the vocabulary to explain exactly what it was. Many of the records from that time have to be treated as allegory… as metaphor.” The answer took her a little by surprise. His reasoning was what Republickers had always been taught to think about the Crusades. Sapphireans, to her knowledge, usually accepted a more literal interpretation. She persisted though. “You must admit that it is at least possible that there is some truth to these legends. Our Commonwealth ancestors had vastly greater technology than we have now. They certainly could have built such devices, and therefore, it is likely that they did.”

  “I will concede it is possible they built such devices, and maybe probable. Even so, that doesn’t mean it was used here. These colonies weren’t even discovered when the Crusades ended.”

  “Exactly. What if these Berserker machines devastated the Inner Colonies and are just now reaching the outer rim? What if those machines are still out there, Commander?” The answer was obvious to Keeler. “Then, we would have a big problem.” She touched the pad again, showing him another program. “The threat to the homeworlds would be extreme, which is why I am suggesting we do not proceed to 10 255

  Vulpeculus, but instead track down whatever did this.”

  “Pegasus should go after the things that killed this planet?” Keeler asked, eyes widening as though shocked at the suggestion. (In fact, Lt. Honeywell separately had recommended the same course of action). “Do you honestly believe, if this is one of your Commonwealth Doomsday Machines, that Pegasus would stand a chance against it?”

  “We know whoever destroyed Medea is a threat to human life,” Lear answered. “To all human life. It is our duty to identify them, or it, and destroy them.” Keeler leaned back in his chair. “Fine then. Which way did they go? They left this system over a hundred years ago. There’s no radiation trail, no gravity wake. If we had a way to track them, I might take this suggestion seriously, but if they could be anywhere, they could be at the next star system, Vulpeculus 10 20 30 or whatever you said it was called.” Lear was also aware of this. “We have discovered some other tactical redoubts (she meant bunkers) elsewhere on the planet. They might show us some…”

  “They might… if we wait around long enough, years, decades, to find and translate them.

  We’re just now getting a workable language matrix on a few of the dialects. We only have bits and scraps of the language to go on. We could spend years here studying this world, but that isn’t, strictly speaking, our mission. We are a ship of exploration. We find a world, give it a quick once-over, than pass it onto the Phase II ships.”

  “We never expected to discover anything like this.”

  “Didn’t we? I am sure there is a protocol for this somewhere in your charter.” Republickers, after all, had a protocol for using the hygiene pod.

  “The charter states that in the case where a colony has been found to be attacked or destroyed by hostile forces, we are to make every effort to identify those forces and advise the homeworld.”

  “Every effort? That’s vague and open-ended enough to commit this ship to that task for decades, and I am unwilling to do that,” Keeler argued. “We can’t even send teams down there because of the pathogen danger. We’ve made no progress whatsoever on that front.” Keeler sighed, and brought up a report he was sure Lear had seen. “Tactical Core believes the homeworlds are capable of defending themselves against the level of technology demonstrated by the patterns of assault, especially with advance warning from us.

  And/oroids guided by AI can continue the investigation until the Phase II ships arrive. We, however, are obligated to push on, and to keep pushing on, to the next system, and to the system after that. That’s our mission, and we’re sticking to it.” Lear met his gaze with a look just as hard and strong as his own. “Then, I request we triple the number of probes and and/oroids on the surface, establish a larger dedicated laboratory facility to examine the pathogen, and, once again, if we are leaving, we need to secure a sample of the pathogen.”

  Keeler leaned back in his chair. “You can have the probes. You can have the laboratory.

  You can have the and/oroids, but no one, and let me make this clear, no one is going to bring aboard any pathogen that could wipe out this ship and everyone on board. I will not only not permit this, but if I learn that anyone is even thinking about bringing that pestilence on board my ship, I will … I will…”

  Lear raised an eyebrow.

  Caught, he punted. “I will devote every free moment to devising the most humiliating and demeaning form of punishment I can possibly conceive of. Maybe I don’t know what that is yet, but I know it will involve demotion, removal from duty, confinement, pantsing, large quantities of foul-smelling goo, and quite possibly the use of one or more bodily orifices. Do I make myself clear, commander? There will be no killer pathogens on my ship.” Lear acknowledged him curtly. “You could not be more clear, commander. My report will include an official dissent, of course.”

  “I am glad we had this talk, Executive Commander,” Keeler said politely. As she left, and the ritual was completed, he wondered exactly how she was planning to get the pathogen on board, and where she was going to keep it. He hoped she was smart enough to realize that he had made no idle threats, here.

  Pegasus’s top officers met one last time before departing Medea. The faces were the same as at the previous meetings, but there was an air of faint relief hanging in the room. It was time to go, and the crew was glad of it.

  They were watching as a deployment crew made the final adjustments to the Tachyon Pulse Transmitter they were placing in orbit about 50,000 km above the planet. Its iris was a long, pointed antenna surrounded by metalwork and scaffolding. Fourteen solar power arrays encircled the array like the petals of a daisy. A pair of Aves shuttlecraft hung in the sky nearby, ready to evacuate to deployment crew when their duties were finished.

  “The transmitter will be ready for activation within two hours,” Lear reported. “At full operability, it should be able to transmit a report to the homeworlds every hour.” Honeywell added, “We’ve positioned a number of probes throughout the system. These should act as an early warning system should the aliens come back.”

  “What is the status of our surface probes?” Keeler asked.

  Lear answered him. “We have put two Class III AI braincores on the surface to direct the activities of the and/oroids. Their primary task is to study, and develop a defense against the pathogen. Their secondary duty is to investigate the tactical aspects of the planetary attack, to find any information the Medeans left behind about their attackers. They will also look for additional examples of alien technology or … specimens of the aliens themselves. Their tertiary duty will be to catalog every artifact of Medean culture for further study.” Keeler sighed. He would have preferred the and/oroids devote themselves primarily to the third task, but he understood what was at stake. Whatever had committed this atrocity against a human world was dangerous. Countering it had to be the top priority. ”Are we prepared to conclude our business here?” the commander asked.

  “There is nothing more for us to do,” Lear told him.

  “Actually, there is,” Miller inter
rupted.

  Lear regarded him warily. “Rather late in the process to be suggesting anything additional.”

  “It’s very important,” Miller assured them. “As important as any of the other tasks we have set out, maybe even more important.”

  “Perhaps, you should have brought it up sooner,” Lear rejoined.

  Miller was not about to waste time building up to his argument. He decided to lay it on the table. “I want to rebuild this world.” He announced softly. “Studying this world is all fine and good, but it would still leave this planet a monument to human failure. That isn’t enough for me. Their civilization was vibrant and thriving for 5,000 years. Shoveling dirt on their graves hardly does honor to what they achieved here. We can bring this world back.”

  “This world is uninhabitable,” Lear argued, with that voice of condescending patience.

  “It’s worse than uninhabitable, it’s a threat to human life. We’ve informed our worlds that it should be quarantined.”

  “I wasn’t speaking of the re-introduction of human life. I am talking about re-establishing a civilization here, but not a human one.”

  Commander Keeler looked intrigued. “Explain your proposal, lieutenant commander.” Miller stood. “I want to introduce one-hundred forty-four additional and/oroids to the planet’s surface. Twelve each in each of twelve major cities. They would be given a general directive to rebuild the planet’s infrastructure, recreate Medean civilization, and uh…

  repopulate the surface.”

  Keeler smirked, “Be fruitful and multiply.”

  Miller persisted. “The planet has the necessary resources and technical base to support mass and/oroid reproduction. Within a few centuries, maybe less time, they could establish a population level approximating that of the previous human civilization.”

  “A whole planet of and/oroids?” Keeler repeated, as though taken with the concept.

  “Za, a whole civilization of and/oroids. It would be unique. We’ve always assigned and/oroids a role within our civilization and limited them to the service of our wants and needs.”

  “There is a reason for that,” Lear argued. “Long ago, our ancestors fought any number of wars against machines that had grown beyond our powerful to restrain them.”

  “A lot of people have speculated what a benign and/oroid civilization might look like…

  but… no one’s ever done it. We could do it here, on a planetary scale.”

  “If I approve this,” Keeler asked, “How will you guarantee our safety? An and/oroid civilization might one day be hostile to humanity.”

  “They would have a deadly pathogen at their disposal,” Honeywell pointed out.

  Miller answered them. “With help from certain cybernetic and AI experts, I have developed some protocols that will keep the and/oroids under control. First, they will make their first priority the eradication of the pathogen, and once they have done so, all knowledge of the pathogen. Second, they will be forbidden from developing space travel or any kind of offensive weaponry.”

  “What about cooperation with humans?” Keeler asked. “Could you build that into their programming?”

  “What if humans come with the intention of doing them harm?” Miller returned. “They would be unable to defend themselves. I thought about this already. I can inhibit their will to harm humans, but it has to be balanced with their own self-preservation.”

  “And/oroids can’t possibly handle the complexities of building a civilization,” Lear protested.

  “They’ve never been given the opportunity,” Miller argued. “We’ve confined their programming to serving our needs. We’ve never given them the capacity to recognize their own needs and ambitions.”

  “We haven’t,” Lear reminded him. “Be cause if we gave them free will and self-awareness, it would create ethical dilemmas. It is one thing your world and mine agreed on; that creating sentient machines would be creating something we could not control.”

  “We can create an and/oroid that recognizes its needs but stops short of self awareness.

  Besides, if they are confined to the planet, they won’t be competing with us, and they won’t be a threat to us.”

  “Isn’t there a threat to the ecosystem?” Kennecott asked. “After all, and/oroids don’t need plants or clean water or breathable air.”

  Miller had considered this. “First, there’s not much of an ecosystem left. Second, we can program them to preserve the biosphere of this planet.”

  Keeler was doubtful, still. “If you turn loose a bunch of and/oroids with instructions, essentially, to multiply, rebuild, and sustain, are they really going to create anything other than factories, power plants, and warehouses?”

  “They can be programmed for more,” Miller said. “At first, they would mimic the lost Medean Civilization, based on the data they find, but eventually, they could develop a civilization of their own.”

  “Dedicated to what?” Keeler asked. “Besides finding a cure for the plague and restoring this planet. Eventually, they will finish with those tasks.”

  “There are several theoretical protocols for allowing deviations from the norm to enter into and/oroid programming. One of the most basic is to give them an undefined want that they would continuously strive to define and fulfill…”

  “Exactly the sort of protocol that is illegal on our worlds,” Lear interrupted.

  “I would not give them that, but you can give them a kind of … pseudo initiative, for example, a heuristic that would encourage them to develop architecture and social forms according to a mathematically-defined aesthetic, a random deviation that compels them to operate outside and beyond their basic operating parameters.”

  “It almost seems like the more protocols you build into them, the less genuine this civilization will be,” Keeler said. “Unless your intention is to create some kind of animatronic memorial to the lost colony of Medea.”

  “It is more than that!” Miller pounded his fist on the conference table. “I will program our and/oroids to be creators, restorers, preservers… they will rebuild Medea.” There was a long, heavy silence at the table, broken by Keeler. “How many and/oroids on the surface now.”

  “Forty-Two,” answered David Alkema.

  Keeler looked as thoughtful and conflicted as ever he had before. He rubbed the bandage on his hand thoughtfully, as it had begun to throb in the heat of debate. “Let me consider this.

  If I am persuaded that your plan is safe, and that it provides a meaningful and respectful memorial to the people of this world, I’ll approve it.”

  Miller was watching from one of the aft observation decks as Medea slowly fell behind the ship.

  In the end, Miller had gotten most of what he wanted.

  Keeler added one more condition to Miller’s protocol. The population of and/oroids would be limited to three hundred million, and they would be forbidden from leaving the planet. He was unsure whether the planet would sustain three hundred million and/oroids, but it would support more than enough to make a civilization.

  Of this three hundred million, only one million would possess programming that deviated from the assigned missions of studying and eradicating the pathogen, and rebuilding the planet. These deviants would have the drive to create more than those imperatives offered, not true self-expression, but an impulse to build and create beyond that which was necessary to fulfill their primary functions.

  These deviants would further possess flaws in their compatibility programming that would impede their ability to interact with both normal and/oroids and other deviants.

  Miller sighed. If they did build a civilization here of some kind, it would be his greatest work of art. It would be his Taj Mahal, his Requiem Mass. A great work conceived from death, immortality from mortality.

  If only he could think of a way to sign it.

  “We left a lot of hardware back there, thanks to you,” said Flight Captain Jones, taking a place next to him on the rail.

  “We
left more than hardware, we left…,” he refused to say hope. That would have been too cliched. Nor would he acknowledge to anyone this feeling inside of him, as though in creating a new civilization, at least the potential for one, he had somehow managed to renew his own spirit and heal himself.

  Instead, he wondered several things aloud. “I wonder what they’ll do now. I wonder what they’ll build, and where. Will they preserve human cities or build elsewhere? They don’t need sewerage, or sanitation, or food. They need energy and maintenance. I wonder what systems they’ll construct to distribute those things. They won’t need schools, they’ll just program each other. I can’t imagine what they would do for sports and recreation, if they’ll even have a need for it. They won’t die, either, I wonder how that will affect them, especially the deviants. How will they govern themselves? What will they trade? Will they have wars? There’s so many things that go into a civilization. I wish I could be around to see what they’ll do.”

  “You’re really wondering if they’ll remember who put them there, and if they’ll build a temple to you,” Flight Captain Jones said. She put her arms around him, and he rested his head upon her shoulder.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  12.12.4319. Note the arrival of the Commonwealth Insterstellar Transport Amazonia.

  Unloading: Five Element 151 Refineries, 135 Extraction workers and other humans, (100 male, 35

  females), 16,000 iso-tonnes agricultural commodities, 1,500 self-contained energy rods, 52 aerial transports, 112 ground transports, 15 atmospheric processors, 110 soil processors, 215 water processors, 8,000 iso-tonnes medical equipment and supplies, 11,732 postal items. .