The Chronicles of Old Guy (Volume 1) (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure)

by Timothy J. Gawne

  Nonetheless I must admit that the Ghost class design is impressive. The chassis has been brought to the plaza in front of the physical library, and rests between Double-Wide and myself. It is only slightly heavier than I am, but low and sleek and elegant. A lot of the internal hull space is taken up with computer modules specialized for signals warfare. There is an experimental holoprojector system that can jam or confuse sensors across a broad spectral range, and an expanded system of energy shields. The chassis is fully configured and operational, the quadruple fusion reactors on-line, but right now it’s just a dead piece of machinery. Only when it has a sentient mind will it become alive.

  Double-Wide and I commence the process of creating the new cybertank’s mind. The low-level routines for controlling power and motive systems are already in place, but the higher centers are little more than an empty scaffolding waiting to be filled in. I put a copy of one of my own processing routines into an empty slot; Double-Wide writes a translation routine for it and calculates what other modules would be best positioned to interface with it.

  It starts as two separate minds cooperating on a complex task. One does this, the other does that: simple teamwork. But this close we are less than a microsecond’s communication time from each other. As our cooperation grows closer and more intricate, something emergent is created: a new mind, superior to either of our single ones. The process is unstable, and only compatible cybertanks can manage it. For a brief moment we are boosted to another level, where problems that previously stymied us become simple. The world is clear and amazing, and the sensation a euphoria that quite surpasses what the early humans experienced during sex. It is only in this state that we dare to create a mind even incrementally smarter than we are.

  There are proctors surrounding the plaza; midwifes to the new mind, they monitor and offer advice but are not directly involved in the process. There is the Horizon class cybertank “Stochastic,” the Golem class “Flame War,” the Sidewinder class “Little Prince,” and the Mountain class “Prophet of Doom.” I know them but only by reputation; the proctors are supposed to be objective.

  We are not creating a new mind from scratch; that is beyond even our merged abilities. Rather we are sorting and selecting different routines from our own minds, rather like evolution selects different genes from different parents, but with more purpose than the mindless card shuffling of evolution.

  We spend an eternity in bliss; we spend five minutes. The process is complete. We make a few last-minute adjustments, close down the creation programs, and clean up the mental workspace. The single mind that Double-Wide and I shared evaporates, leaving only the memory of near-transcendence.

  I address the new cybertank.

  Hello new one. I am called “Old Guy.” The big one over there, that’s “Double-Wide,” and we are your parents. Welcome to the universe. What do you say?

  There is silence. This is not unusual; it is often the case that a newly created mind needs some time to boot itself up.

  Double-Wide speaks up: “Hello, we are very much looking forward to speaking with you. How are you doing?”

  Still nothing. Nobody knows what to do, so we all maintain an uncomfortable communications silence. Eventually the new cybertank’s external hull speakers activate. Its first word is:

  “Eeeep.”

  Then nothing. We continue to prod it to speak, and eventually it comes up with a second word:

  “Eeeep.”

  That’s when we realized that something had gone wrong.

  At first we had the direct attention of any number of accomplished specialists in the field of mental engineering. There was hope that it could be a glitch in process synchronization, or some other minor problem that could be easily fixed. But as time went on, it became apparent that the problem was not to be easily solved. Eventually the specialists lost interest and drifted away – when I sent them messages they responded belatedly if at all.

  Somehow something went wrong. All the parts are in place, but the new mind is stuck in an autistic loop. Deep inside the computer cores of the new Ghost class there may be an intelligence, but if so it is trapped and unable to engage the world. Rationally I know that it’s not my fault, everything that was done was approved and checked by others, but I still cannot help but feel that a newer, smarter cybertank would have been a better choice, especially for the creation of the first of a new and sophisticated model. This happened because of my own vanity and selfishness. I am abjectly miserable in a way that I never thought possible.

  I know that Double-Wide shares my feelings, but we do not speak of it directly. He tries to distract me with elaborate messages containing detailed reports of exotic new artifacts, but it doesn’t work. I withdraw from my regular responsibilities.

  Eventually the new chassis will be recycled, the defective mind wiped clean, and new computer cores installed. Long past all reason, I refuse to give up. My peers hold a vote; it is a close thing, but my long record of service wins out and I am allowed to continue. I decide to move to a remote and useless planetoid in the outer reaches of the system; I crave the solitude. The autistic Ghost chassis and I sit alone in airless vacuum on a rock that has no name, but only a serial number. I run all possible diagnostics; and get exactly the same null result that I have gotten for the last 1,000 times. I try again.

  I talk to the Ghost; I whack its external hull with remotes. I plead, I threaten, I reason, I cry. Occasionally it utters the single word “Eeeep,” but mostly it is silent and unmoving.

  Sometimes I drive around in circles, wearing paths into the rock of the planetoid. I don’t know why I do this. I drive clockwise for a while, and then for variety drive counter-clockwise. I consider driving backwards, but people might think that I’m losing it.

  I am quite astonished at the depth of my misery. I had thought that I was wiser and more resilient than this. I am thousands of years old. I have amassed vast experience. I have the entire knowledge of our civilization inside me. I know everything about the psychology of grief and loss, and how it should be handled, yet I am helpless in the face of this feeling that has surfaced. I know that I should shake this feeling of morbid depression off, but am unable to even try. When the humans used their psyches as the template for our minds they created better than they thought.

  I get a message that the Ghost-class design has been retired. Another attempt to create a new mind in a Ghost-class chassis has ended in failure, and further analysis has suggested that the design is intrinsically unstable and unsuited for further development. I should feel vindicated, but don’t.

  It is at this point that my old friends the Amok decide to make a sneak attack. Oh happy day. You would think that sneak attacks are for pre-technological savages, and that with all of our technology we would have advance warning of any interstellar interlopers, but it doesn’t work like that. We have deep-space radars, and networks of optical and infrared telescopes, and remote monitoring probes, but space is BIG. Really, really, BIG. You can miss a black-painted rock a kilometer across until it is almost on top of you. Which we did. We only noticed it when it started aerobraking in the atmosphere of a gas-giant planet near my current planetoid of residence.

  We usually deal with the possibility of sneak attacks via deterrence. You lob an antimatter missile at us without warning, and we send you back the same. Deterrence usually works with the civilized civilizations in our part of the galaxy. It does not work with the Amok.

  They must have detected my sporadic transmissions and satellite network, or perhaps they simply got lucky and used an optical telescope to see me sitting on the surface of the planetoid: it doesn’t really matter which. After shedding significant velocity to the gas giant the kilometer-wide Amok black-painted rock maneuvers to crash into my planetoid. A mistake. I do not warrant this expenditure of effort. The Amok would have created far more damage attacking one of the more built-up worlds in this system. Oh well, they also serve who only stand and draw fire.

  Orbital dynami
cs are slow, and even the short trip from the gas giant to my planetoid takes the Amok four days. This would give me plenty of time to prepare, assuming that I had something to prepare, which I don’t. I don’t have my own transport here so I can’t run. The planetoid is massive enough and has a high enough escape velocity that I can’t play the trick of building a ramp and driving off of it (although on the other hand that means I have enough traction to work up some decent speed). I broadcast a status message to the inner planets. After a few hours communications delay I get a reply: my peers are supportive, wish me luck and promise reinforcements, but we all know that help is weeks away at best. I have just enough bandwidth to send the Giuseppe Vargas simulation data back for safekeeping. I tweak my combat remotes and upgrade some of them. I am in vacuum, and anti-gravity doesn’t work well without a large mass present, so I have only terrestrial remotes and some satellites orbiting in the low gravity so lazily they seem to float in place.

  I use some of my remotes to sculpt effigies of different cybertank classes out of the rock and dust of the planetoid, like a human child making sandcastles at a beach. They won’t fool a sophisticated opponent but some of the Amok variants are what a charitable person would call stupid, so it’s worth a shot. I sculpt the forms of a Horizon class, a Golem, even another Odin. I indulge my artistic side, and create grotesque classes that have never existed: monstrosities with triple-barreled turrets, or that run on multiple human feet instead of treads. I take some extra metal from my cargo holds, flatten it into a thin foil, and coat the outside of my cybertank sand-sculptures. Now they will show up on radar. In the heat of battle even a crude decoy can fool the enemy, and every shot at a sand-cybertank is one less shot at me. I might need every advantage to survive, you never know.

  I get a message from Double-Wide. It goes: “Hello, sorry to hear about the Amok, dreadful bad timing. Wish I was there to help, but you know how hard it is for me to get anywhere. We’re sending reinforcements on maximum acceleration but you’re a long way out and it’s going to be a while. I’m wishing you the best of luck. Take care of yourself, and come back to us in one piece. Oh, and by the way, I have been hosting that simulation you broadcast a while back, and he has been the most stimulating company here in my mental space. I believe that he has something that he would like to tell you.”

  The next message is an audio-only file in the voice of Giuseppe Vargas. “Hey Old Guy, you fucking moron. I feel just as bad as you do but sulking by yourself on a remote planetoid is just self-indulgence. You are wallowing in self-pity; you are pathetic. And now you are all by your lonesome on some stupid rock far from help and the Amok are going to come crashing down on your head any minute now. Try not to die, you clown. Make it back alive and we can joke about it and swap war stories. But if you do have to die at least have the decency to take a lot of the bastards with you. Ciao.”

  I suppose this was supposed to cheer me up.

  It would help a lot if I knew what Amok variant I would be facing. I know that it’s Amok because there are scout probes in advance of the rock with obvious Amok transmission protocols, and anyhow only the Amok would attack us here. But even after the aerobraking the rock has probably tens of meters of composite armor, and it’s anybody’s guess what’s inside.

  Just before impact the Amok rock sheds its armored shell and separates into thousands of landing pods. They impact at too high a velocity; most are destroyed when they hit the surface but many survive.

  I await with breathless anticipation the knowledge of which flavor of Amok will bring me my doom. Perhaps my old friends the Assassin Clones? Maybe the Happy Leeches? (ugh). Oh let it be the Fuzzy Moose, that would be ever so much fun. My remotes make their first reports of the landing pods – the Amok invaders are – wait for it - Doll Swarm!

  Boring. The Doll Swarm are one of the least effective of the known Amok variants. They consist of vast numbers of automata, each of which is constructed of simple spheres and cylinders, so that they resemble crude children’s toys. They march in squadrons all of one type, in either rectangular or hexagonal formations. Each type is armed with a single simple weapon: a railgun, a grenade launcher, a small plasma cannon, or an x-ray laser. Each type has two or three or four legs, and the weapon is either held in one or two crude arms, or built directly into the torso. Their strategy is always the same: march in rigid formation at the enemy and kill them.

  A squadron or two of Doll Swarm is nearly pathetic. A significant fraction of the volume of a sphere a kilometer across is something else. I have a supply of nuclear missiles with me, but fusion bombs are relatively ineffective in a vacuum where there is no shock wave. I target the center of the major Doll Swarm concentrations, and kill thousands, but there are more than enough remaining to do me in.

  The light gravity makes traction iffy, but even so I am faster than a Doll Swarm unit. I could potentially survive if I take advantage of my mobility to keep them from swarming me, and use hit-and-run tactics to defeat them in detail. The odds would be low but not zero. But I will not desert the autistic Ghost unit. I try to draw the Doll Swarm away, but even though the Ghost is inactive, they automatically target it. I move to defend; locked to a fixed position I sign my own death warrant.

  Slowly, inexorably, formations of Doll Swarm come into view. At first they are just strips of color in the distance, but the horizon is only a few kilometers away on this planetoid and they close the distance quickly. I sweep them with my main weapon set on long burn and kill thousands. My remotes attack with a variety of weapons but are overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The Doll Swarm get close enough to engage me. At first their fire is too light to register, but eventually their massed firepower begins to tell. A lot of them shoot at my decoys: good, something went right. These Amok are stupid enough to be fooled by sandcastle cybertanks. Still, even as I continue to kill them with my main gun, and as they get closer, with my secondary batteries, I begin to take damage. The Ghost chassis is also a target; one of its secondary batteries explodes and it rocks back and forth on its suspension from the recoil, but it does not react.

  Battles in a vacuum are not usually much of a spectator sport: beam weapons are invisible, smoke and dust settle as fast as a dropped rock, the sky is black, missiles don’t leave exhaust plumes, and there is no sound. But so many Doll Swarm units have been destroyed that the planetoid gets a transient atmosphere from the fumes and vaporized debris, with a dark blue sky, clouds of dust, a cat’s cradle of beam-weapon traces stitching the scene, and the sound of explosions and the stomping of marching Doll Swarm feet. The recordings of my final moments will have significantly improved production values.

  My ablative coating is gone, and the outer layers of my hull proper start to turn molten. I lose all the treads on my right side. That’s it, without the power to maneuver I’m dead. At this point the only goal is to kill as many of the enemy as I can before I am destroyed. I dispatch a few surviving remotes with data logs of the encounter. I don’t bother including any of my personality modules, I don’t want to be reincarnated, I am happy to just end here and now.

  A nearby squadron of Doll Swarm armed with railguns suddenly turns with parade-ground precision and attacks another grouping of Doll Swarms armed with mini-rocket launchers. It must be a malfunction. Then I notice similar events occurring across the mass of Doll Swarm. A unit turns on its fellows. After a delay, the other units reclassify it as an enemy and fight back. Instead of a one-sided battle with a million Doll Swarm attacking one functional and one non-functional cybertank, there are millions of Doll Swarm units killing each other and the cybertanks. The moments that follow are a chaos of rare purity.

  My main problem now is not getting hit by enough stray fire to put me down. The Doll Swarm are killing themselves faster than I ever could. Nonetheless I am wounded and immobile, and still accumulating damage. Imagine you are a human being near a million drunken idiots all shooting at each other with machine guns: not a safe place to be even if you are not their target. The o
dds still suggest that I am going to die here.

  At this point the Ghost unit chassis maneuvered in front of me, and blocked the bulk of the oncoming fire. Though damaged the Ghost is a newer unit, with tougher armor and significant force shielding. The Ghost soaks up stray firepower from the Doll Swarm that could have slagged me. Its ultra-rapid-firing secondaries tear through enemy units that still have the sense to target us. This is a nice turn of events.

  Hello Ghost unit. What’s going on?

  “Hello Old Guy,” responded the Ghost. “Sorry to take so long waking up. Kind of a mess that I’ve gotten you into, isn’t it? So sit back and let me handle this. I think I have finally cracked the last of their codes.”

  I detect the sidelobes of powerful communications bursts from the Ghost unit aimed at the Doll Swarm. It contains complex thought-virus code of a kind that I am not familiar with. The Ghost requests the command protocols for my satellite network; I hand over control, and in moments the Ghost has used the microsats to blanket the entire planetoid with his virus.

  The Doll Swarm changes from chaos to order. There are now two distinct units of Doll Swarm, one on our left and one on our right. They turn and face each other, and methodically blow each other up. It’s like a set-piece battle from the Napoleonic Wars with ordered ranks of troops armed with flintlock rifles. Finally there is only one last automaton standing: a battered three-legged unit with an x-ray laser sticking out of its torso.

  “Hey, Old Guy, care to do the honors?”

  With pleasure.

  I vaporize the last surviving automaton with one shot. And no more Doll Swarm.

  We start the process of repairing ourselves, but frankly I’m a mess and will likely need to be transported back to Alpha Centauri Prime to get back to baseline.