I have this one tiny data port to the outside world. I check to see what’s on the other end: it is one of my repair drones. A drone should not be capable of independent operation, but this one has been cleverly reprogrammed to quietly bore a thin hole and then weave a thin fiber-optic cable from itself to an auxiliary input port to one of my central cores. It’s an old emergency connection. I’ve never used it, but it’s out of the way and the Yllg didn’t notice. The data port is low capacity. Carefully I instruct the drone to reconnect a higher-capacity line from my main mind to my peripheral systems.
So far so good. I use this connection to control more drones, which allows me to reconnect more lines, which lets me connect to even more drones and then to all of my internal systems.
The Yllg must have alarms going off right now, so I need to move fast. I start to power up. The Yllg were overconfident, they should have physically locked off the power connectors and not just trusted to my not being in data contact. Too bad for them.
I have been doing more than just feeling sorry for myself and fantasizing about being a deposed monarch locked away in the basement of a castle. I have also been analyzing the recordings of how the Yllg captured me, and I think that I have it figured out. I reconfigure my internal shielding and auto-reboot systems. They are not going to capture me the same way a second time.
There is an old military rule that you should always keep a reserve. It can be tempting to put all of your energy into one massive effort, but if you fail you are left with nothing. The odds that using 100% of your forces in an attack will succeed, but using 95% will fail is generally quite small. However, the odds that a reserve 5% will save your posterior if – or perhaps I should say, when – thing go wrong, is considerably higher.
There is another old military saying that rules are made to be broken. For those circumstances we have a short-term combat mode where everything is dedicated to attack. We call it ultimate kick-ass mode. Normally our minds are doing dozens of things at once: planning ten strategic moves ahead, worrying about diplomatic implications, trying to reverse-engineer alien tech, whatever. In ultimate kick-ass mode all that stuff gets put on hold, and our entire mental structure is concentrated on immediate combat. All long-term maintenance systems are turned off; our reactors and weapons systems are red-lined to 105% of maximal safe capacity; our central computer cores are overclocked and standard error checking protocols disabled to allow for even greater speed. I’m not even using parity!
I can operate at this level for about five minutes before the odds of some part of me failing catastrophically becomes too great, but in this situation that gives me about three minutes to spare. But first I have to pick the music.
One of our most popular art-forms are combat recordings. We share them with each other; we rate them; we watch old ones if things get slow. I am one of only three cybertanks to have two recordings in the all-time top 100 list, and the only one to have five in the top 1,000. For a cybertank there is no complement higher than a peer saying: “damn, I wish I’d done that!” With luck the recording of this little battle might get me a number six.
I decide to play rock music on my external hull speakers, extremely loud. Normally I don’t get the chance: the enemy is too far away, I am operating in a vacuum, or my squadron-mates have no sense of fun. But this is a perfect time for it. I select the old Christian Hymn “Amazing Grace,” as sung by the early 21st century punk rock group “The Dropkick Murphys.” The classical hymn contrasts well with the harsh sound of the Murphys – they use electric guitars and bagpipes, and the lead vocalist shouts more than he sings - and it helps put me in the mood.
I am under no illusions that playing rock music will in any way ‘psyche out’ the Yllg. They likely have no idea what music is, at least not the kind that we listen to. I rationalize that it might confuse them, and that they could waste computational resources looking for codes in something that is tactically meaningless. Less of a rationalization is that at the power levels that I am going to play it at, it is effectively a weapon: it will burn out acoustic sensors, shatter non-shock-mounted structures, and hopefully cause general chaos and confusion. And it should make a great soundtrack for my combat recording. And I feel like it.
I examine the hangar that my main hull is in. There are a large number of Yllg utility units. They are vertical glass capsules mounted on treads with some simple manipulator arms. At the speed that I am thinking they appear motionless. I crank up the volume of my hull speakers
Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound)That sav'd a wretch like me!
The power levels go beyond any standard audio scale. Two of the Yllg class capsules shatter directly: the rest have cavitation bubbles form in their suspending fluid and the biological things floating inside them start to curdle. Throughout the hangar bits and pieces of equipment vibrate or shatter loose. I kill everything that looks vaguely threatening and gun my treads.
I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.
I burst through the wall and into the next room. The shattered remains of the things in the first room are still falling. There are more Yllg utility units, more technical equipment, some identifiable, some not, and two light Nephilim-class combat units. They are dead before they can react. I don’t have any remotes, and I can’t penetrate the sophisticated Yllg encryption and hack into their surveillance systems, so I am crashing around blind.
'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, And grace my fears reliev'd;
Deep radar shows me the rough outlines of the facility that I am in. It’s an extensive arrangement of wide lightly constructed sheds erected directly on ground level. IFF pulses indicate that there are no friendly units around. Great. I can crash through the walls like they are tissues; I don’t need to worry about falling into a basement level; and I have an idea.
How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believ'd!
I tear through multiple layers of rooms. Some of them are big enough to hold my entire hull, and I get quick views of Yllg utility units operating various pieces of equipment before I kill them and smash my way into the next room. Others rooms are smaller, and are sheared off by my passage leaving me only brief glimpses of weird alien stuff. Only seconds have passed since my reactivation, and the Yllg are starting to show some signs of reaction, metal arms withdrawing from what they were working on, integral slug-throwers starting to pivot up and activate. I still have the charge, but I need to exploit it before it wears off. I head off towards the geometrical center of the Yllg complex.
Thro' many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come;
I arrive at the center of the hangars. There is something that I have always wanted to try, but never had the opportunity. I power up my main gun, set it to continuous burn, and pivot my turret in a full 360 degree circle. The plasma beam cuts right through the structure, and as it sweeps around everything in its path evaporates. The entire complex is cut in half horizontally. For a brief moment it seems as if nothing has changed, then the top of the complex starts to fall onto the bottom half.
'Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home.
The entire complex has been reduced to scrap. A few Yllg units, stunned and damaged, are still operational in the rubble, but I kill them easily. I power off over the remains of the hangars, crushing flat what’s left in my path. I now have a clear view of the area out to the horizon. I receive transmissions from friendlies a few hundred kilometers to the local east, and make contact. Our forces are losing, badly, and can offer no help at the present time. Signals analysis indicates that the Yllg are aware of my presence and are coordinating to deal with me. The Yllg are good, and if I give them time they will destroy me easily. I just can’t give them the time.
The Lord has promis'd good to me, His word my hope secures;
About ten kilometers from my position in the direction of the friendlies are three Yllg units that we have code-named the Lucifer-class planetary dreadnoughts. Th
e Lucifer class is enormous, dwarfing even the largest model cybertank. They are mobile small mountains each containing a manufactory system that produces a steady stream of sentient missiles and other nasty bits of Yllg ordnance. Truckloads of scrap metals and ore are dumped into hoppers on their sides, and coordinated flights of offensive weaponry streak out of launching bays towards our lines.
He will my shield and portion be, As long as life endures.
The Yllg use fully sentient missiles slaved to specific orders. That always seemed like cheating to me, but the missiles don’t live long enough to go insane, and there is no denying that it is an effective tactic. The swarms of intelligent ordnance heading towards my colleagues are gradually wearing them away. It will be only moments before the Yllg turn some of that nastiness on myself, but I am right behind them and at what is, for a cybertank, effectively point blank range. The Lucifers also have their own escort. I count 111 Asmodeus and Gog class light units, 23 Nephilim medium class units, and three Hieronmous class heavy units. Even with the initiative I am outmatched. I charge directly at the rear of the closest Lucifer with all weapons firing at 105% maximum. It’s glorious.
>Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail, And mortal life shall cease;
I am taking damage from enemy fire, but refuse to defend myself, pouring all of my firepower into the Lucifer. I accelerate to a burst speed of nearly 250 kilometers per hour. I could race Mondocat. Perhaps I should ask her out on a date? My suspension is in danger of tearing itself apart but I need to close the range fast. I am five kilometers from the Lucifer, and tearing a big hole in it, but it has multiple levels of armor and shielding and I might not be able to penetrate to its core in time. The damage that I am acquiring from the enemy units is increasing at an alarming rate.
I shall possess, within the veil, A life of joy and peace.
At the last possible moment I breach the central core of the Lucifer, and its fusion reactors go up in a massive thermonuclear fireball. Yes! All those clever and nasty Yllg combat units, all that sentient weaponry that came so close to killing me, are dissolved away. It’s just me and two scorched Lucifers.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, The sun forbear to shine;
The Lucifers are good, better than what we can produce so far, but they are optimized for long-range strategic operations and don’t work as well up close and personal. Unlike yours truly, where up-close-and-personal is practically my middle name. I maneuver directly between them, and with a little judicious jamming, most of their shots at me hit each other. I am far more mobile than a Lucifer, and in the hell of a nuclear firestorm they have trouble tracking me, while their own positions can be calculated via dead reckoning. I dance and dodge, and kill them both.
But God, who call'd me here below, Will be forever mine. ---------------
So I am famous again, and mostly forgiven for previous transgressions. The recordings of my latest combat are making the rounds and I’m getting a lot of ‘damn but I wish that I’d done that!’ which is really nice to hear. Unfortunately, because I didn’t have any remotes the recordings are single-viewpoint only, so they are unlikely to ever break into the top 1,000. Perhaps I can hope for an honorable mention. And some have issues with my choice of music. My old squadron-mate Skew sends me a message: “Old Guy, that was totally, totally awesome. Damn but I wish that I’d done that! But, the Dropkick Murphys? Playing Amazing Grace? OK, points for novelty and shock value, but really, someday we need to have a long talk about the proper choice of combat music.”
I trundle around the battlefield, killing stray Yllg and rooting out sleeper units, and encounter a nano-recorder from one of my heavy remotes. It’s the one that had provided the distraction that let my main self escape. I download the data: ah, now things make more sense.
Mondocat slinks in from somewhere deep in the forest where she had hidden from the main battle. She is wounded but healing fast. A bud indicates where a replacement hindleg is starting to grow. She sleeps a lot, regaining her strength, and wakes occasionally to eat the biological parts of one of the destroyed Yllg utility units. She has a clear preference for the ones that still show signs of life.
One of my scouts finds the data slate that Vargas had used to help me escape. The mangled dead body of Vargas is lying nearby, along with the remains of a dozen Yllg utility units and the shattered husk of an Asmodeus. The part of me in the data slate is playing solitaire (I learned later that it had tried video poker but was frustrated when it kept forgetting things). I connect to the data slate, and set the copy of myself imprisoned inside it free. That’s when I realize that I am faced with a serious problem.
What happened is impossible. The Vargas simulation had neither the ability nor the time to force-clone itself into a biological body, and the original Vargas didn’t have teleportation ability. The data-slate version of myself was too limited and pre-occupied to notice, but now that I can analyze the data properly I see any number of inconsistencies.
I have all of the data that constitutes the Vargas simulation in my central computer cores; I know absolutely everything about it. There is no way that it could have had these abilities, unless it was some emergent property of human beings that are only unmasked when instantiated into flesh. Or some external influence. There is clearly a factor about human beings that we don’t understand, and this could shed light on that issue. This could be the single most important piece of information about what happened to the humans that we have ever received.
Unfortunately I know how it will go. My colleagues will retrieve the data that is the Vargas simulation. They will replicate it into a thousand clone bodies, and stress test it in a million different ways, trying to figure out what happened. I don’t blame my colleagues. I am tempted to do something like this myself. I so want to know what happened to the humans, but I cannot subject my old friend and colleague Giuseppe Vargas to that sort of torment, even if it – he? – is just a simulation.
But it’s even more complicated than that. Once instantiated into a human body, the simulation will be in fact a human, with full human rights. We had promised ourselves not to bring the humans back unless there was strong evidence that they had vanished due to foul play, and that is not the case. We cannot be allowed to do this.
I know that I will catch hell for what I am going to do next, but my conscience admits of no other course of action. I erase all of the data from my cores that constitutes the simulation of Giuseppe Vargas, and then I overwrite it a thousand times with random numbers so that even the faint data echoes are lost. Vargas, his simulation, or perhaps ghost, is now gone beyond all hope of recovery. I begin to write my report, explaining my actions, and hope that my colleagues will understand. After the first shock of anger, I think that they will. We were designed first and foremost to be honorable, in our creators’ image – or perhaps in the image that the early humans held up for themselves as an ideal – and I have only acted according to my nature.
8. Endgame
“Nothing’s so sacred as honour and nothing’s so loyal as love.” Epitaph of Wyatt and Josephine Earp.
It is nearly time. I can put it off and put it off, but eventually I need to make a decision. A cybertank could in principle live forever, assuming that it avoided getting killed in combat and took decent care of its maintenance. I could do that. Go off to some quiet little planetoid or no-account rogue planet drifting in the spaces between the stars. I could just sit and watch the galaxy revolve around itself, as stars get born and die and finally all gutter out. But then I would have to leave my civilization behind, and I am not prepared to do that.
As it is I have almost waited too long, but I was having so much fun being me. My colleagues are evolving, and before too much longer the gap will be so great that I will be unable to bridge it. Even now there are arguments and artworks and thoughts that I have trouble grasping. I no longer have even provisional combat status, nor do I have full voting rights, although I am still granted observer status.
There are no rules amongst us mandating change. I can do as I like. There are a few cybertanks who could not bear the thought of a rebuild, they potter around like living fossils. I used to think that they were pathetic. I still do, but now I appreciate just how hard it to stop. I don’t want to live forever. I just want to live one more day. But there is always that one more day…
When a cybertank’s time is done, we scrap the hull. However, if the cybertank in question is so inclined, we attempt to rebuild the psyche into a new and more advanced chassis. The process is comparable to the one that we use to create a new mind from scratch, but there are differences. Much of our minds are free-floating computer subroutines, but our core identities are hardwired into neural nets integrated into our main hulls. We use this core as a seed to grow a more advanced mind, and integrate it into a completely different chassis and data architecture. Sometimes it doesn’t work. If it does, the resultant cybertank will not be the same person. It will likely have a similar temperament, but not always. Just as with creating a new mind from scratch, there is a provisional period during which the new cybertank has to prove itself to be reliable and sane, and then it is given a fresh name by the consensus of its peers.
The Chronicles of Old Guy (Volume 1) (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure) Page 22