Von Neumann’s War

by John Ringo

  “Yes, sir,” Shane said, smiling thinly. “You can feel free to use words of up to three syllables or even more; I haven’t had my mandatory field grade lobotomy yet.” He paused as he said that, realizing it might be a slur on his new boss. But it was way too late to take anything back.

  Sparling really grinned at that and shook his head.

  “You have no idea,” was the captain’s reply. “The point is that these bright young men, and women — some of the women quite good looking, by the way — will be trying very hard to ‘sell’ you on some wizmo, our in-house word for wiz-bang gizmo. Your job will be to see if the item has any practical value. You will examine the item carefully, gather all the information you feel appropriate, then fill out a voluminous report, including in it all your experience as an infantry officer with two wars under your belt and a masters in literature with your thesis being on near-future potential technologies to be found in science fiction classics.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Shane said bitterly.

  “That is why you are here instead of at CGSC,” Sparling said, smiling broadly. “Because your predecessor was very very good at finding things that, in his experienced opinion, would never work. So good he turned in not one positive recommendation in three months. And those three months covered over six hundred systems or technologies.”

  “That’s…” Shane said, thinking about it.

  “And that’s the other reason I’m glad you’re here,” Sparling said, reading his mind. “You’re going to the Lockheed Martin facility in Denver on the next plane out. Before you leave see Captain Grantworth, who is our administrative officer. She’ll give you your homework. Which, since your predecessor left three weeks ago, is over sixty systems or technologies. Some of them you’re going to have to decide upon on the basis of the written or submitted PowerPoint presentations. About fourteen are going to require you to go look for yourself. Ten of those are here in the D.C. area, the other four are at other facilities. That’s your workload for this week.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gries said, straightening up. What the captain had just told him was that Shane would be working eighteen-hour days for the foreseeable future.

  “Of course,” Sparling said, grinning happily, “at the end of all that work, in the event of a negative recommendation you’ll often find that some congressman disagrees with you and will insert a supplementary appropriation, bypassing our recommendation as if it didn’t exist. Because you are, after all, just a dumb grunt and what do you know? Or it may be that you are just one voter and the wizmo will employ thousands of voters in that congressman’s district.”

  “Got it, sir,” Shane said, smiling thinly.

  “You’ll notice I have not used words like ‘synergize’ or ‘transformational,’ ” Sparling said, suddenly serious. “What you are going to see over the next six to eighteen months, though, depending upon whether we can get a filler while you go to CGSC, is going to be just that. Stuff that can transform the face of the U.S. military and even the world. And it’s going to be your job to find that one nugget of gold in the crap that might just save your life some day. Have fun in Colorado.”

  * * *

  Caller:… and you see Ret, that is why you’ll never see the bodies from Roswell.

  Ret Ball: I see. That is very informative Andrea. Next caller is… hey hey… it’s our old friend Megiddo from underground. Go ahead, Megiddo, you are on the Truth Nationwide.

  Caller: Hello, Ret, and greetings.

  Ret Ball: It’s good to hear from you old friend. I hesitate, of course, to ask where you are and what you are doing.

  Caller: Right, and I thank you for that. I am lying low at the moment. My former employers have had enough of me and I them. But they have sent their lackeys from the CIA and the NSA to search for me, saying that the knowledge in my head is a danger to national security. Hah! They shall search in vain!

  Ret Ball: Ha ha! What can we do for you tonight, Megiddo?

  Caller: I just wanted to let you know that the situation with Mars has gotten worse.

  Ret Ball: Ah yes! Mars. For some of our listeners out there that are just tuning in, you need to realize that the color of Mars is changing. I myself have seen this with my own telescope. Our friend Megiddo here, has enlightened us on this subject.

  Caller: Thanks, Ret. I’ll make this short so my burst transmissions are not traced. But the CIA and the right wing conspiracy know about this. They’re covering it up and are in fact planning to send a rapid development space mission to the planet to make contact with the enemy and finalize their plans for world domination. They’re putting together a set of Boeing Delta Vs with common booster cores that will fling their communications satellite towards Mars on a fast fly-by. This will put them in contact with the masters that are rapidly converting Mars as a base of operations in this solar system.

  Ret Ball: Really? How do you… no, I know better than to ask.

  Caller: Thanks, Ret. You are a trooper. But I’m telling everybody now. Prepare, be prepared. The world as we know it is about to disintegrate.

  Ret Ball: Wow! Thanks, Megiddo, we’ll keep our listeners posted. Next caller is Ben from Dayton, Ohio. Ben, go ahead you are on the Truth Nationwide.

  Caller: Ha ha, Jesus H. Christ, Ret! That guy was so whacked he probably wears an aluminum foil hat on his head!

  Ret Ball: Ah caller, you must be new to the Truth Nationwide. Megiddo has been with us for years. And indeed he does wear an aluminum beanie. He discovered years ago that the remote viewing technology of the CIA can track him otherwise. But to all my listeners, I say this: More times than not Megiddo has predicted something that has actually come to pass.

  Caller: Well, if you ask me, he is nuts.

  Reference to mission to Mars forwarded to higher security cell for breach evaluation.

  Chapter 3

  The eight-inch diameter aperture Meade LX90 her father had gotten her for her birthday the previous year more than thrilled Charlotte Fisher. Most fifteen-year-old girls would have wanted something more girly, but not her. The color ccd camera he got her this year might — just might — make up for him missing her birthday again. But ever since the divorce a few years ago when he took that job at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California — to get away from her mom — he began missing things while at the same time trying to make up for it by buying her expensive gifts. In the case of the computer-driven telescope, it did. The perfectly clear evenings in the high altitude at Denver were perfect for stargazing — well, if you could get far enough away from the light pollution of the city. Fortunately, they lived far enough north from the city that a few dark places could be found.

  “I think Mars is more, I dunno, gray-colored than red,” Tina said as she pointed to the image on the laptop while Charlotte brought the little planet into focus.

  “Yeah, I think so too,” Charlotte replied.

  “Hey, maybe we should go over and ask Mikey about it,” Tina giggled.

  “I want to do some more observing here,” Charlotte fiddled with the altitude-azimuth controls on the telescope.

  “Chicken!” Tina said. “You know he likes you. Just go talk to him.”

  “What would I say? I mean he’s a jock and just at this star party for the extra credit he needs in science class and me… I’m nobody he wants to talk to.”

  “Whatever. I’m gonna go see what he’s up to.”

  “You better not!”

  “Only way you’re gonna stop me is to go yourself.” Tina flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder and giggled again as she turned away.

  The two had been an unlikely pair since grade school. Tina was a petite and ditsy blonde-hair-blue-eyes cheerleader type who always wanted attention and Charlotte was the dark-haired-sit-quietly-in-the-front-of-the-class-and-make-straight-A’s type. The only time Charlotte ever got loud or aggressive was on the girl’s fast-pitch softball team. She was only five feet six inches tall, but she had the super athletic ability of being able to knock th
e cover off a softball. This made her a deadly homerun hitter. The two girls had been best friends since grade school and neither of them knew why — well, that wasn’t exactly true. Charlotte’s dad John Fisher and Tina’s mother Alice Pike had worked together at the Denver Lockheed Martin facility as long as the two girls could remember. That was of course, up until the divorce and Charlotte’s dad had taken a promotion and transfer out to California. John was a booster systems designer, a “rocket scientist,” while Alice was a physicist working on advanced microprocessor design, pushing the theoretical limits to find smaller and smaller processors that used very little power for space applications.

  “Dingbat.” Charlotte shook her head as she went back to work.

  She set the computer to capture a long-term exposure of the little red planet, hoping that she would be able to see the redness that she had seen before. Mars had been the first thing she viewed the previous year when she had gotten the telescope from her dad. She had viewed it a few times since but Saturn was her favorite. She had spent most of her time viewing the beautiful rings of the giant gas planet. But their assignment for class was to view Mars.

  “What are you looking at, Miss Fisher?” Mr. Anders asked his prize pupil.

  “Mars. It’ll come up on the screen in a minute. I’m taking a long exposure.”

  Mr. Anders stood by quietly as the image on the laptop began to appear. Mars’ outline and the larger features like the polar ice cap filled in first, then more detail filled in. The image was slightly blurry because of the layers of Earth’s atmosphere being turbulent, but the software had an algorithm to remove some of the fuzziness and enhance the edge features of the image. Finally, the computer dinged, announcing the image was complete and post-processed.

  “Let’s blow it up and look at it,” Mr. Anders said.

  Charlotte dragged the mouse pointer over to the zoom controls and expanded the view. The little planet filled the screen.

  “Hmmm…” Charlotte murmured. “Doesn’t look right.”

  “Have you got a filter on the eyepiece?” Mr. Anders asked her.

  “Nope, that’s an unfiltered image and my ccd is color.”

  “Hey, I thought Mars was supposed to be red,” Mike said, pointing over Mr. Ander’s shoulder. Tina stood behind him pointing and nodding at Charlotte as they approached the telescope. Charlotte tried to ignore her.

  “That’s right, Mike,” Mr. Anders said, looking at Charlotte’s telescope and computer camera setup. “It should be.”

  “Well, unless my brand new ccd camera is broken,” Charlotte replied, “Mars is now gray.”

  “Well, there’s a red light on that tower over there. Why don’t you look at it with your telescope and see if it’s red?” Mike suggested.

  “Very good idea, Mike,” Mr. Anders noted.

  “Yeah, Mike, very good idea.” Tina giggled, and moved around to poke Charlotte in the ribs.

  Charlotte slapped at Tina’s finger, then dragged the mouse pointer down to the scope controls icon. Charlotte bit at her lip while she cycled the scope to point to the tower. After a second or two of refocusing, the red light from the tower filled the laptop’s screen.

  “Shit, I don’t understand.” Charlotte realized that she had just cursed in front of her teacher and held her hand over her mouth.

  Mr. Anders acted as though he hadn’t heard and shook his head. “I don’t understand it either.”

  * * *

  Ret Ball: Tina from Boulder, Colorado, you are on the Truth Nationwide.

  Caller: Yeah Ret, oh my God I can’t believe I’m on the radio. (giggle)

  Ret Ball: Well, believe it or not you are on the Truth Nationwide with Ret Ball. What can I do for you tonight, Tina?

  Caller: Yeah, me and my buddy Charlotte looked at Mars last night through her telescope and it ain’t red at all. Like that Megiddo fellow said. It’s gray.

  Ret Ball: Really? How old are you and Charlotte?

  Caller: Well I’m thir-… uh… eighteen.

  Off-phone, female voice, faint: Dingbat!

  Caller: But we really did see it and it was gray not red!

  Ret Ball: Out of the mouths of babes. Next caller is Tim from Beantown. Go ahead Tim you are on the Truth Nationwide.

  * * *

  “I’m glad y’all could make it tonight.” Roger held up his beer glass while Tom and Alan made themselves comfortable on the wooden stools. “I went and did some checking of my own. Traci was right. There is a noticeable difference in the surface albedo of Mars. This one paper I found by a J.H. Davis, et al., even had some really good Hubble data from a year and a half ago. Interestingly enough, the paper says there will be another run from Hubble on Mars this past year, but I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find it. I even called up to Johns Hopkins and got stonewalled about it. I wanted to discuss the ramifications of that with y’all.”

  “You never learn, do you?” Traci laughed. Tom had started to pour himself a beer, but Traci appeared as if from nowhere and slapped him on the hand.

  “Yeah, Tom,” Alan chuckled, “that’s her job.”

  “Shift change… I just got here and I’m running sooo late tonight.” Traci smiled at the three men and finished pouring the beer, then adjusted her T-shirt so it was tighter across the front.

  “Wings tonight fellows?”

  “Nah, just beer, I think,” Roger said, sliding his now empty glass towards her.

  “Hey, beer is food,” Alan said. “Cheers!”

  “I’ll have some curly fries,” Tom told her. Traci wrote something down on a piece of paper and attached it to the wire above her head. “ORDER IN!” She smiled, slid the order down the wire, and turned to her other tables.

  “So what gives, Rog?” Alan sipped his beer.

  “I think it’s a muster point,” he said.

  “What is a muster point?” Tom leaned in to listen better.

  “It’s a point or location where forces gather to prepare for further advancement. But that’s not important right now,” Alan replied with a grin.

  “Be serious for a moment, Alan,” Tom said sonorously. “I know it’s not in your nature, but you simply have to apply yourself. You can do it. Maybe not doctoral level sobriety, but masters level should be possible.”

  “I guess this was the wrong day to stop drinking beer then,” Alan said, still grinning as he killed off his beer. He was the only one of the three who had, as he put it, “gotten a real job” after getting his masters. Ergo, he was not a “doctor,” simply a lowly schlub engineer with a masters.

  “I think that Mars is being used to muster resources,” Roger said. He contemplated his beer glass and seemed more serious than usual. “I did a calculation from some of that data I found on the Internet and the rate of change of Mars’ surface albedo is so nonlinear that there is no way this is some sort of natural phenomena.”

  “What, you think it’s aliens?” Tom asked with a laugh.

  “Yes,” Roger said flattly monotone.

  Alan put his beer down, picked it back up as if to drink the last backwash from it, and set it down without drinking. “You’re serious, aren’t you, Rog?”

  “Okay, you explain how the entire surface of a planet changes color in a year and how come we’ve lost all contact with any of the probes we’ve sent there. And why data from the Hubble Space Telescope that always — always — goes on the Space Telescope Science Institute’s website is missing. All the other data from the other Hubble runs is there, but not that one. I checked Hubble’s schedule. The Mars run was on it. Where’s the data? I’ll tell you where: It’s been classified.”

  “All right, let’s assume that you are right. What do we do about it?” Tom asked.

  “Well, I think the first and most important thing is intel. We’ll need recon of the planet. I mean recon with sub-meter resolution.” Roger waited for the implications of his statement to sink in on the other two engineers.

  “Yes, yes, that’s what Earth should do. But what do we d
o about it?” Tom repeated.

  “We,” Roger emphasized. “We assume that somebody is looking into it, and that it’s the right somebody. Then, as I said, I think the first and most important thing is intel. We’ll design a recon mission of the planet. And again, I mean recon with sub-meter resolution. Then, I guess, I’ll just have to take the mission design and put it in front of the right somebody.” Roger nodded to the two men as if they understood what he meant by the “right somebody.”

  “Sub-meter?’ Alan whistled.

  “Wow, we can’t do that with any telescope from Earth orbit.”

  “And it takes a half of a year at least just to get to Mars,” Tom said, shaking his head.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about that,” Roger admitted. “All we really need is a good old-fashioned spy satellite. Just one that is smaller and lighter and has to go a hell of a lot farther and faster, then stop and deploy itself.”

  “Oh, well, if that’s all…” Tom laughed.

  “Here is a strawman design for a recon probe I put together last night.” Roger ignored Tom’s comment and continued by handing the two men each a copy of some block diagrams for a spacecraft design. “It’s similar to the one we worked on for — you know.” Roger raised an eyebrow and looked around the restaurant, making clear that they couldn’t discuss that here. The two men looked back and nodded in realization of what Roger was hinting at. Then he could tell that they both realized who “the right somebody” must be.