Mondocat races in, grabs one cub by the scruff of its neck, and hauls it off to safety. The second cub is grabbed by an auxiliary pincer. Mondocat leaps onto the back of the giant centipede and claws at it, but the armor is not just tough, but slick and elastic and her blows bounce off. The centipede flicks its body and smashes Mondocat into a tree. It turns back to the cub.
The male tore out of the woods and hit the centipede with an impact to rival that of the main gun a 19th century battleship. The centipede is bowled over. The male fastens its jaws and powerful front limbs onto it, and cycles its six hindlimbs against the vulnerable underside like six chainsaws in parallel. The centipede thing is being eviscerated and six sprays of ichor jet out from it. Mondocat has regained her feet. She dashes in and rescues the second cub. The centipede thing suddenly arches back, and snaps the males’ head clean off. The centipede tries to get away, but it is mortally injured, half-dragging itself with most of its left side torn out. My missiles arrive; they are no longer needed but it seems a shame to self-destruct two perfectly good pieces of ordnance so I target the centipede and kill it for certain.
I have often commented about the impossibility of really understanding alien thoughts. But that mostly applies to sentients. I think we have a better chance of sympathy with animals, due to their focus on day-to-day survival. Especially when they come from an environment similar to what our own biological forbearers evolved in. When Mondocat approached the dead male, and tried to prod it into reacting, I think that I am justified in thinking that she felt grief. She spent the night cuddled next to his dead body, motionless; the cubs huddled nearby miserable and shivering. In the morning she and the cubs got up and left and never came back.
Now, Mondocat is not my responsibility and I feel no guilt whatsoever over what happened. She had her life and me mine. She’s just an animal and I owe her nothing. As a rule, acting on sentiment causes more harm than good. But still, rules are made to be broken, or at least bent from time to time. On her own, Mondocat is unable to both hunt and protect the cubs effectively. I send a heavy combat remote to stand guard over her family while she hunts. The size and shape of a bus, it mounts a single heavy plasma cannon and has a lumpy armored surface encrusted with lighter weapons and sensors and antennae of various sorts. It could handle a dozen giant centipedes without leaving standby mode.
I worry a little that I might be weakening the species. Perhaps Mondocat and her offspring are meant to die, to make room for a slightly tougher pair of Mondocats that could have beaten the centipede. On the other hand, survival is not just about being physically strong, it’s also about making friends and allies. Perhaps their descendents will inherit an enhanced ability at empathy, or non-verbal problem solving, and take the species to new heights. Screw it, sometimes you just have to do what feels right.
The cubs are initially afraid of their new guardian, but following their mothers’ example they quickly adapt to it. They poke at its protruding antennae; I activate its suspensors and have it float across the ground with the cubs in awkward pursuit.
With my heavy remote guarding the cubs Mondocat is free to hunt full-time, and the youngsters put on weight rapidly. They learn to control their complex musculature, with its 17 major gait-patterns, 34 sub-patterns plus variants adapted to different terrain and the possibility of one or more injured limbs. They cease to be cute, and turn into the supreme terrestrial predators that they were born to be. They join their mother on hunts, racing like missiles skimming the ground. I cease my guard duties, and recall my heavy remote.
I had not seen Mondocat for some time, when one day she trotted out of the forest next to my main hull. Acting as if she had never left, she leaped onto my upper hull, stretched luxuriously and fell asleep as if she owned the place. The cubs had grown up and no longer needed her, and therefore Mondocat had decided to hang around with me again. At least until something more interesting came along.
I received a communication from my old friend Double-Wide. It’s a software agent, capable of leaving a message, having a conversation, and reporting back to its owner. It’s not the same thing as talking to the original – the personality is of bandwidth necessity limited – but it is still a pleasure.
Double-Wide! It’s been a while. I have missed you. How have you been?
“I have been fine. I have settled back into my old spot on Alpha Centauri prime, and I have been busy fussing around with my Physical Library. Wiffle-Bat has been successfully rebuilt into a Spirit-class chassis, he’s not the same of course but he still has an interest in exobiology and he asked after you. When I left he had not passed the probationary period so he is technically “the cybertank previously known as Wiffle-Bat.” Meanwhile I see from your reports that you have been having all the fun. Killed a bunch of Happy Leeches? Made friends with a bio-engineered super-predator? Discovered a long-lost alien civilization? That could have started a major war if things had gone badly? So much for sending you to a backwater planet to keep you out of harms’ way.”
Indeed. I have wondered when my peers will realize just how stupid it is to try and keep someone out of trouble by sending them out to the frontier. They should have kept me close to home.
The Double-Wide agent laughed. “Yes, I have been wondering the same thing. I would have told them that, if they had asked me.”
I would have told them that, if they had asked me.
“Indeed. But there is some good news. The recordings of your escapades in the alleged alternate dimension have been receiving favorable reviews. Here, check this one out:”
**********
Review of multi-viewpoint real-time combat recordings, cybertank “Old Guy,” archive tag “Old Guy Combat Alternate Dimension (provisional) field recordings V34XXt.” By Panther-Class “Waldorf” CCC3434875Y.
“Well it looks like our favorite ancient piece of hardware ‘Old Guy’ has been at it again. We all recall his last hit, the recordings of “Cybertank vs. Megazillus,” and we probably all wondered how this crazy antique could possibly top that. His little adventure against the Doll Swarm was diverting but not up to his usual standards. The recordings of his activities from the assault against the Amok planet were nice, but there are so many cybertanks with excellent combat footage from that conflict that one can hardly give him much credit for creativity.”
“But just when you thought that “Old Guy” was due to be recycled into toaster ovens, he comes up with this absolutely insane footage from some sort of alternate dimension with wizards and magic and dragons and whatnot. Now some have complained that the combat footage is a bit one-sided: it’s mostly the enemy lining up and then being wiped out. Well, combat is not supposed to be a fair sport, but I acknowledge that the footage does not have the dramatic tension of some of his previous work. Still, the creativity and production values are insane. Look at the details on the forces of the Dark Hierophant! And the dialog with this “Wizard” person is just to die for!”
“The only dark cloud hanging over these recordings (pardon the pun) is that the entire event has been tagged as potentially a fiction or hallucination, so it is not eligible for the combat footage of the year award. But I will tell you, I have spent many quadrillions of instruction cycles checking this data, and from my calculations the chance of it being a forgery from anyone at our tech level is about 0.2% - and the chance that Old Guy forged it on his own is an even zero-point-zero. So I tell the awards committee, stop fucking around and admit the obvious that this is the real deal and you just don’t know how the universe works.”
“So in summary: I give these recordings a strong four fusion-bombs out of five.”
**********
Hmm. It is always good to have the appreciation of your peers. But I think that I rated at least 4.5 out of 5 fusion bombs.
“Anyhow, I have new orders. You are to proceed to yet another alleged ‘backwater’ planet to investigate some odd scout reports. I have a suspicion that right behind me, following at lightspeed, is a message res
cinding this order and demanding that you return to civilization where you can be kept safely under observation. I suggest that you make preparations to head off to this new planet before this probable message arrives, so that you can safely ignore it. Please try not to bring about the destruction of the known universe when you get there.”
Wisdom, as always. And what news of our child, ‘Smartass’?
“Smartass continues to do us proud. Our peers have, as you know, retired his class, but his continued excellence in so many fields has led to considerable effort to reproduce his traits in a more stable platform. He has asked after you as well, and is quite vocal in your support. ‘Frikin morons wouldn’t know an intelligent decision if it jumped up and bit their main weapon off.’ I think that he takes after you.”
In some small ways, perhaps. The ways that keep getting me into trouble. But his intelligence and achievement, that comes from you. No false modesty between us: you know that’s true.
“This software agent cannot adequately describe the emotion that the real Double-Wide will feel upon receipt of your statement. I am empowered to relay the message ‘I love you,’ and to encourage you to come back to us as soon as it is practical. I/we will be waiting for as long as it takes. In the meantime, let me change the subject. Your thoughts on this lost civilization?”
I have been thinking about the technological species that was Mondocats’ ancestors. They had, for whatever inscrutable alien reason, decided to give up on technology, and language, and all the other baggage of sentience. But they were not completely insane (by my standards). To just turn back into the animals that they had evolved from would be to condemn their descendents into the sort of nasty, miserable and short lives that they had only recently escaped from. So they hit on a trick. They gave up the mental encumbrances of civilization, but with their vast expertise in bioengineering they made sure that their offspring had most of the benefits of technology. They gifted their descendants with a life free of social stress, where every day was a new adventure and there were no worries beyond the next meal you were hunting. It’s almost like a return to the human Garden of Eden.
“You are jumping to conclusions. This technological species could have engineered Mondocat as a sub-sentient slave race: as guards, or pets, for sport in an arena, as an experiment, or an artwork, or a whim.”
Truth. Nonetheless, the bottom line remains: a technological species left as its successor a non-sentient race. Whatever obscure paths their logic took, that is what they actually ended up doing, and that is all that we can evaluate. I see their decision to abandon thought as cowardice in the face of reality, and affectation. But I also see the sense of it. And in a funny way, it brings them closer to us. When a species achieves sentience there are many paths that it can follow, all mutually incomprehensible. But an animal can be understood. Hunger, pain, pleasure, lust. I doubt that I would have had any great psychological insight into the progenitor species, but with Mondocat I think that I have some measure of simpatico.
“Everyone can understand a rock, that doesn’t mean that you should want to become one.”
Well put. Still, with their adaptive biochemistries, the Mondocats could readily colonize other worlds. They cannot build spaceships on their own any more, but they could be taken to other worlds as zoo specimens, or pets, or stowaways. In time they could spread throughout the galaxy. Perhaps they already have.
6. Yet Another Vampire Story
“To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.” Khmer Rouge saying.
I was preparing to leave the planet of the Mondocats to explore a nearby system where mysterious signals had been detected. Just about the time that I was going to head off, who would turn up but Mondocat. I tried to shoo her away, but she would have none of that. She kept poking herself into my business and making a real pest of herself. As I finished loading the last of my supplies, she tried forcing her way into an open hatch. Had she sensed that I was leaving, and wanted to come with me?
An intriguing notion. Normally I would worry about taking an animal away from its natural habitat, but Mondocat is pan-adaptive. What the heck. If things don’t work out I can always put her into suspended animation and ship her back here on a transport drone.
I allow her access to a moderate sized cargo bay inside me. She paces around for a bit, then curls up and falls asleep. It takes a while, but eventually I realize that she has really fallen asleep – as in, has entered a deep state of hibernation. Good. This will save me from having to freeze her.
I achieve orbit, rendezvous with my inter-stellar propulsion system and fuel tanks, and head off to investigate the mystery planet. Mondocat can survive vacuum but she doesn’t like it, so I keep her cargo bay pressurized. I monitor her vital signs remotely. Her breathing ceases completely: her metabolism must be so slow that gas exchange is by diffusion only. Her heart stops but every so often gives off a few beats, just to keep the blood from congealing. As I reach target velocity my drive units shut down, and it’s really quiet out here between the stars. When Mondocats’ heart beats it’s the loudest thing onboard, and I can hear the faint echoes through my hull for some time after it stops.
As Double-Wide had predicted, I receive a message instructing me to return home. I regretfully reply that I am already committed to my new course, I don’t have the fuel reserves to produce enough delta-vee to turn back, so very sorry, you should have thought of this sooner. Don’t worry, I’ll be good and report in as soon as I make planetfall.
As interstellar distances go, my destination is next door, but space is big and it takes a lot of time to get anywhere. That’s OK, cybertanks are patient. If I really get bored I can put my primary consciousness on standby and wake up when either something interesting happens (i.e., a FUCKING EMERGENCY THE DRIVES ARE CRITICAL WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE) or I get where I am going. But that always seemed a waste. Sure put yourself on standby while the boring parts of life go on - and before you know it, your entire life is gone. This is the trap that caused us to lose our humans.
Therefore I usually find other ways to amuse myself on long trips. I fiddle around in my inbox, craft an update to my report on the Mondocat progenitor civilization, work on my perennially unfinished multi-spectral symphony (it will be a masterpiece, if I ever finish the bloody thing), watch old movies, and so on and so forth.
My old squadron-mate Skew has sent me an interactive graphic novel entitled “Attack Force Raptor!” The sub-heading goes: “Join Skew and his plucky band of misfit Raptors as they bomb and strafe their way across the galaxy destroying the forces of evil wherever they find it!” It’s entertaining but I can’t decide if it’s a serious adventure story or a parody.
I decide to use some of my time to dream. Our psyches were modeled after the humans, so we need to dream to maintain our mental equilibrium. We usually delegate it to a submind in parallel with whatever else we are doing and we don’t pay it any attention. Out here a trillion miles from nowhere I can indulge my full consciousness in the dream state. It is by far the scariest thing that I usually do.
I am in no danger, well, not probably. I have automatic systems protecting my physical self, and multiple redundant watch-dog timers to wake me up if something goes wrong. But when I am dreaming I don’t know that I am in no danger: there is only the reality of the dream. Dreams have their own logic, and it’s more the affect than the narrative that is important. I won’t bore you with the plot: as dreams are personal. This one involved many of my old friends: Double-Wide, Wiffle-Bat, Giuseppe Vargas, The Wizard… And enemies: Happy Leeches, the Dark Hierophant, the yellow Amok humanoid. My old Amelia Earhart remote is involved; curious, that’s sort of like dreaming about meeting yourself. She tries to tell me something but I can’t understand her.
I always awake from a total dream both refreshed and confused. I think about all of those pre-exodus humans, most of whom lived horrible nasty little lives. And yet, every night, they each lived a parallel life that would make the richest king
seem a pauper. I wonder if the ancient humans ever realized just how rich their lives truly were. I wonder if all those alien species out there have anything in their inscrutable psyches to match it.
For a while I let my primary mind slip into a slower duty cycle, and I watch the stars drift slowly past each other.
I arrive at the target system, and re-review the old scout reports. They don’t have much to offer. Just faint traces of electromagnetic activity, and some odd spectrographic data. The scout was a robot one-shot, sent into this sector at near-lightspeed with no fuel to change course or loiter, it made its brief observations and then was gone forever.
The focus of the report was an average-sized terrestrial planet in the inner system. I set course to rendezvous with it. As I get closer I determine that it has an oxygen atmosphere, which clearly indicates the presence of life, but there is something wrong with it. It looks like a fruit being eaten by fungus. Most of the planet is a bright green, but here and there are darker green round patches hundreds of kilometers across. The two different zones are separated by pale gray rings. The planet looks diseased.
I start to detect occasional bursts of patterned electromagnetic activity from the planet. It’s not a deliberate radio broadcast, but has the pattern of stray emissions from unshielded digital electronics. The signals are very weak. The scout must have been lucky and passed close to the planet to pick them up.
Our diplomatic contacts, such as they are, suggest that there are no technological civilizations in this system. At least, nobody objected when we said that we were going to explore here. I broadcast the usual greetings in multiple bands: no reply. I start setting up a satellite network, and intensify my surveillance. I pick up the signals in greater strength, and find that they are concentrated in just a few locations in the middle of the dark green patches. Most of the planet is covered with low-lying moss and lichen, but the patches are densely forested, and the vegetation looks Terran. Here and there through gaps in the forest canopy I see the rectangular outlines of buildings.
The Chronicles of Old Guy (Volume 1) (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure) Page 16