I visualize the decision that I have to make as a large glowing red button in my mindspace. If I push it, it will initiate the process that shuts me down and starts the rebuild. Once I push it the process is irreversible, but it’s my decision whether to push it or not.
There is an old saying that “Everything old is new again.” If I waited long enough, sooner or later some primitive alien civilization will come along and I will be state-of-the-art once more. Or I could wait until my peers have evolved so much that they no longer care what I do, and I could recreate our entire civilization at the level that it was when I was created. Or I could go hang with the vampires, figure out if I could turn them into something more interesting after all and see where that takes me. I could do a lot of things. As long as I don’t get in the way of anybody else’s plans I am a free agent, with a lot of options.
But I would be left behind. I wouldn’t get to hang with the cool kids, or see where what I helped start so long ago ends up. Our society, such as it is, primarily runs on peer pressure. I have been able to coast on past achievements and luck for longer than anyone expected, but I teeter on the edge of being regarded as useless. For a cybertank, that’s worse than being blasted apart by fusion bombs.
I must admit that the chassis that my peers have lined up for me is impressive. The first of the new Shadow class of cybertanks. It’s long and low and sleek. Currently it is a shiny energy-reflective chrome, but it can take on any color or surface property desired. Instead of treads this model has a liquid metal that pours out of the front, flows along the ground and is then sucked back up at the rear to be recycled. It’s self-regenerating, and capable of traveling at hundreds of kilometers an hour across rough ground without vibration or wear. The energy output of the quadruple fusion reactors is more than ten times that of my current model. Instead of turreted weapons, the shadow class has blisters studding its hull from which it can project near-magma class energy beams at multiple targets with almost instant tracking.
The list of the advancements of this new chassis could go on for pages. True energy shields. Unassisted inter-planetary transit ability. Stealth cloaking projectors. Custom teak flooring on all the decks. OK, I made that last part up, but the single most important upgrades are the computer cores. If I make the transition I will be a vastly smarter person than I am now. Not just faster, smarter. If you can calculate that 2+2=4 a trillion times a second, and then upgrade to calculating that 2+2=4 a quadrillion times a second, well, so what? But if you can go from being an ape to being a human being, that’s a different kind of upgrade, even if the increase in computational power is not that large in absolute terms.
All of my old friends are gone, which is sad, but it does make it easier to think about moving on myself. Still, I shall miss the memories. As long as I still live, the memories are fresh and real. Once I am rebuilt, the memories will still exist – but because they will be read only by those who were not there at the time, they will not resonate. They will be yet more dusty data in the endless lists of dusty data that our ancestors have left for us. Useful, and moving, sometimes, but not alive.
My life has generated countless petabytes of data, but I have decided to write down some of the higher points in this simple physical book using the ancient English language in the hope that it will prove worthy of acceptance into the Physical Library that was my old friend Double-Wide’s pride and joy. Double-Wide has been gone for some time now – his successor is known as “Space Chief,” although he also maintains an interest in the library. We are on cordial terms and he has all of Double-Wide’s memories of our times together, but of course he is not the same person. I hope that he accepts this volume in honor of the times now past.
My only remaining concern is what to use as a title. Some possibilities include:
Memoirs of a Weapon of Mass Destruction
The Chronicles of the Cybertank “Old Guy”
The First and Last Odin
Confessions of a Sentient War Engine
Old, Slow and Out of Control: A Cybertank Remembers
Nice work if you can get it: my life as a strategic military unit
Big guns and bigger trouble: the autobiography of the cybertank known as “Old Guy”
Incidents in the Life of a Cybertank
Full Frontal Cybertank
Treadmarks on my Heart: the Loves and Life of a Cybertank
My Meeting Engagement with the Universe: A Cybertank Reflects
It’s not easy being me but it is fun. The Chronicles of the Cybertank “Old Guy”
The Cybertank Diaries
Always have the charge: the adventures of the cybertank “Old Guy”
I just can’t decide. I suppose that I should choose one at random.
Should I try and sum up my life? Some pithy epitaph for people to remember me by? To thine own self be true? Measure twice cut once? Don’t let the bastards grind you down? The only secret is that there is no secret? Oh, rubbish. You can’t – or you shouldn’t – try to distill something as complex and wonderful as an entire life into a few trite words. This poor manuscript is my best attempt. I’m not really sure that my life does mean anything. Why should it? I lived, had my share of failure and success, and had fun.
Losers are paralyzed by caution, and any moron can act recklessly. If there is anything that I learned from my old human commander, comrade, and friend, Giuseppe Vargas, it is the fine art of knowing when to stop thinking and just act. I push the button.
Appendix: The Vargas Memo
[[ Few original records survive from the time of the first sentient cybertanks. The following message was reconstructed using a partial database extracted from the ruins of the Governor’s palace on Alpha Centauri Prime, and is included here to provide historical perspective. – Space Chief ]]
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Message to: Governor Harold Clinton Forbes IV, Seat of Governance, Alpha Centauri Prime, Message Router BN-44322-A.
Regarding your latest inquiry - I believe that we have made sufficient progress in the development of sentient cybernetic weapon systems that we may reasonably commence the production of fully operational field-capable units.
As we are all painfully aware, we are losing our battles against the different alien civilizations with which we are in conflict. Despite the occasional tactical victory, strategic defeat is now all but certain. We cannot continue to fight as we have. |We must try something novel. We must, as it were, change the rules of the game because the game that we are playing now is one that we are going to lose. It’s time to play a new game, yes?
Specifically, my division proposes to create a sentient weapon system of unparalleled power and sophistication: the Odin-class ground-based cyber defensive unit. We have conducted exhaustive simulations, the plans are finalized, and we only require your go-ahead to proceed with the production of active field units.
Past attempts at creating large-scale terrestrial combat units have failed for two main reasons. The first is that systems based on chemical fuels are limited to a maximum mass of about 80 metric tons before their power-to-weight ratio becomes too low to be useful. The advent of small-scale fusion reactors has changed this, and combat systems of 2,000 metric tons or more can be readily produced with excellent cross-country performance.
The second problem is that a really big ground unit becomes a target for all sorts of weaponry, and no matter how heavily armored, it will eventually be worn away by the steady onslaught of long-range artillery, anti-armor missiles, etc. We have solved this problem as well, but it will take a bit of explaining.
The trick is a distributed combat network, with a high-capacity controlling central intelligence. Suppose that you encounter a 2,000 ton war machine on the battlefield. You fire bombs and missiles and such at it. It’s a big target and before too long it gets blown apart. Now imagine that the war machine has a distributed combat/sensor network of thousands of elements. It can see everything for hundreds of kilometers around it, from every an
gle, in every spectrum. Past attempts at multi-sensor fusion have failed because of the limited processing power of homo-sapiens, and the rigidity of non-sentient data processing systems. A sentient computer can meld all the sensor feeds into an almost god-like unified perspective. If you try to launch long-range artillery at it, it will have identified your assets long before you could employ them and take them out before you can attack. Indeed, it can take out your assets before you even think of using them. Possibly, it can even take you out before you are even aware that you are in a battle.
In simulated combat experienced commanders have commented that fighting a sentient war engine is like playing chess against someone who can see ten moves ahead of you. They complain that they feel like they have lost before they even begin.
Now an enemy might be tempted to just chuck some nukes at such big fat targets, but that would be a mistake. The systems that we have designed are strongly armored enough that they can survive all but a direct hit by a nuclear weapon, and their mobility and self-defense capabilities makes a direct hit by a nuclear weapon a lot harder than it might seem. A nuclear strike would fry all of the distributed systems that make a cybertank so effective, that is true, but it would also fry all of the enemies units. In the immediate aftermath of a nuclear strike only something as large and armored as a cybertank can survive and function. It would gain total control of the battlefield, and have complete tactical freedom of action.
There are other advantages to the system we have designed. For example, it has an integrated manufacturing system. It can’t produce large-scale ordnance with any rapidity, but it can construct and modify smaller combat systems quite readily. A lot of warfare is like that old game of “rock, paper, scissors,” and being able to change the design of its own weapon and sensor systems in the heat of combat should give it a major tactical edge.
The big issue is the one of sentience. High-capacity computer systems have existed for some time, they have their uses, but they are ultimately inflexible and limited. What we need is a true self-aware sentience. As has been well documented, there are serious hazards here. Past efforts at creating self-aware machines, like the Globus Pallidus or Little Prince series, have been fiascos bordering on calamities. It is now clear that none of us is smart enough to create a sentient intelligence that is fundamentally greater than ourselves. We propose to create sentient systems in our own image, using the by now well-understood human psyche as a template. The systems will still be superior to any biological hominid in terms of raw computational power, and in the ability to multitask, but they will still be nominally human. Thus, we can relate to them, and have some hope of controlling them via social pressures.
I must point out that we cannot embed unbreakable commands in their psyches – such as, that they cannot harm humans, or must obey lawful authorities, etc. That works with unsentient computers but will drive any self-aware system insane. We can, however, embed command codes into their control systems that will shut down their higher functions should that prove necessary. This should give us a safeguard against creating a Frankenstein monster.
I must also suggest that, should we be successful in developing these cybertanks, they must be committed in force at a decisive moment. The aliens may be inscrutable and hostile but they are not morons. However powerful our newly created cybertanks may be there is no weapon so strong that a counter-weapon can not be developed. We need to exploit any advantage to maximum effect before our enemies adapt. No matter how great the temptation, I urge you to avoid committing these units to battle piecemeal as they come online. We must wait until we have a sufficient number of operational units that we have a chance of winning outright.
I have also considered your requests for information as regards the status of the current generation of fully bioengineered humans. Until recently the human genome has only been modified for narrow aims, for example, to eliminate inherited disorders such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease. Only now has the ability to produce radical improvements in the human genome become possible. The first generation of fully bioengineered humans has exceeded all expectations, for not only are they smarter and faster than standard humans, but they have proven to have unique cognitive and intuitive abilities. It is largely due to their efforts that we have not already been exterminated by the aliens.
Regrettably, this increased intellectual ability has not come without negative side-effects. Specifically, while the current models of bio-engineered humans are normally as patient and kind as anyone, when stressed they tend to what has charitably been described as “a disproportionate level of aggressive behavior,” and has accurately been described as “Completely and Totally Bat Shit Crazy (CTBSC).”
The analogy has been made to the difference between domestic dogs and wolves: wolves are smarter than dogs, more perceptive and intelligent, but they are also more aggressive and harder to train. Wolves will only work for positive reinforcement: try to punish or coerce them and you will never know when they will lash out at you. The analogy is imperfect as all analogies are – bioengineered humans are not animals – but it does seem as if some of the docility bred into humans by thousands of years of civilization has been edited out of the latest generation of bioengineered.
The greatest sin of the bioengineered is that they do not recognize any authority that has not been honestly earned by personal achievement. As regards your suggestion that the next generation of genetically modified humans should be made to be more respectful and tractable, two major problems present themselves. First, it may well be that such a modification would eliminate the very thing that makes the bioengineered so valuable, and that has proven to be so essential in our battles against the aliens. Second, at the present time all of the best bioengineers are themselves bioengineered, they appear to like the way that they are just fine, and they feel no especial urgency in changing their genome to conform to your desires.
I recently discussed this issue at length with the director of the planetary bioengineering institute, Alex Mandela, and his comment was, quote, “What, undo what has to be the greatest advance of the primate genome since the evolution of the opposable thumb? Like bloody hell we’ll do that! If Governor Harold Clinton Forbes IV really wants a new genome he can come down here to the genetics lab and SUCK MY HEROICALLY PROPORTIONED MALE ORGAN OF PROCREATION! HAH!” End quote.
There was more, but you see what I mean. Although personally biased, I do admit that perhaps some tweaking of the genome in favor of a little more self-restraint might be in order. We can be hard to take, sometimes. Nonetheless, I am afraid that there will be little progress on this front for the time being. This ends the formal part of the report.
But let’s not play games here. We bioengineered know that if the aliens are defeated, our usefulness to you will end, and we will likely be exterminated. We’re not stupid. You’re not stupid either, and you know that we have our own plans and we won’t go down without a fight. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can have peace between us. Let us accede to the terms of the aliens and end this stupid conflict. You could go down in history as the single greatest human that ever lived, as the one that led humanity into a golden age. All of the genetic advantages that we bioengineered have, we will willingly share with you and your descendants. The future can be glorious and you could be the one that makes it all happen. You have only to rise up and grasp the moment.
I know that such an offer will be regarded as politically naïve. The divisions between us are too deep, and our conflicts will have to play out however they play out. Still, honor compels me to make the offer. Should you ever require any additional information, feel free to come down to the offices of the cybernetic weapons division and blow me.
Sincerely,
Giuseppe Vargas, PhD., Director, Division of Cybernetic Weapons
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Message from: Governor Harold Clinton Forbes IV
To: Chief of Staff Troydent Ickles XIII, Seat of Governance, Alpha C
entauri Prime, Message Router KL-45322-A.
See the attached message. I have had about enough of this insolence. As soon as we don’t need them anymore I want them dealt with that very second. Make sure to use overwhelming force, these bastards are tricky. The sooner that we can be done with them the better. We need to get our own bioengineers in place so that we can make sure that such behavior is never possible again.
See you at the party Thursday, and make sure to bring that really cute blond intern with you.
HCFIV
But Wait There's More!
OLD GUY
will return...
in
Space Battleship Scharnhorst
and the
Library of Doom !
The Chronicles of Old Guy (Volume 1) (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure) Page 23