Warstrider: All Six Novels and An Original Novella

by Ian Douglas

  C.E. 1776

  By definition, the intelligence residing within the Ophiuchan hypernode was alien. It didn't think in the same way humans thought… and it had a view of the cosmos radically different than did Humankind, or any other organic mind, for that matter. If Vaughn was understanding what was coming through his imperfect Naga-mediated communications link, however, the Web had never understood organic intelligence.

  The Web had thought of organics, at best, as mathematical abstractions, a kind of quantum disturbance against the background of Reality.

  And the Ophiuchan hypernode had inherited that worldview when it had lost its connection with the Whole.

  Back when the Naga had been the Xenophobes, their alien worldview had made communication with organic life forms mind-numbingly difficult. The Naga had seen the universe, almost literally, as inside-out from what humans saw—a universe of solid rock, growing hotter and hotter as one oozed outward through the microfractures in the lithosphere. At the center was an aching vacuum, an emptiness of not-rock. Replication spores were magnetically accelerated across this inner gulf in hopes of finding other regions of rock to colonize.

  Eventually, Dev Cameron had learned that the Naga were artificial life forms created by the alien Web, a kind of nanotechnic black goo attempting to rework planetary crusts into a form optimized for carrying out computational activities—computronium, in other words. He'd found that Naga had nothing as human as loyalty for their creators, and would talk with—and work with—any intelligence that could communicate with it. Naga fragments were a strange mixture of intelligence and machine—sentience without true consciousness, mind without free will, thought without morality.

  As Vaughn exchanged thoughts and emotions with the strange Web-fragment mind around him, he was beginning to realize that the Web was at least as alien in its perceptions as were the Naga. It didn't believe in an inside-out universe—that evidently had been an artifact of Naga programming—but it did seem to believe that the entire universe was a kind of mathematical framework, that Reality was mathematics at its deepest foundation.

  The realization tweaked something in Vaughn's memory. He didn't have download access to the Net on board the Constitution now, but he had several articles stored in his personal RAM. The Web believed in a Tegmark Universe, also known as MUH—a mathematical universe hypothesis. The idea had been around for a long time; Max Tegmark had developed the idea in the late 20th century.

  The basis for Tegmark's theory had arisen even earlier, in the late 1960s, with the speculations of Konrad Zuse—the man who'd developed Earth's first programmable computer, the Z3, in 1941. Zuse had speculated that the universe itself was a giant digital computer. Later outgrowths of the idea suggested that all of Reality might well be a simulation being run inside a computer… or that the universe itself was a computer running elaborate sims.

  Of course that begged an important question. If the universe was a computer, Who had designed it, built it, and switched it on?

  And, of course, what would happen when the simulation reached End Program?

  He remembered discussing the idea with Koko just that morning. The finely tuned universe of those who believed in the Anthropic Theory dovetailed perfectly into Tegmark's notion that the entire universe was mathematical in nature. Physicist John Wheeler once had called the hypothesis "it from bit," meaning that at its most basic, most fundamental level, the universe was not matter and energy, but information. Everything that humans perceived as Reality was derived from a structure of pure mathematics, a digital matrix that described everything in existence.

  The Web, evidently, had evolved a worldview along those lines. Vaughn couldn't imagine how they actually perceived Reality, what the cosmos looked like to them, nor could he grasp how they might assume that organic beings were simply glitches in the math. Somewhere a few million years back, organic minds had first conceived of the Web and begun building it; hell, where did they think they'd come from in the first place?

  Machines conceived of We Who Ascended, the voice whispered in his mind. Other machines conceived of and constructed them… and so on back to the beginning.

  There had to be organics somewhere along the line, Vaughn told the SAI.

  Why?

  Machines—primitive machines—can't reproduce, can't evolve. They don't spontaneously emerge from rocks and minerals. They can't assemble themselves. You need advanced nanotech for that, and someone needs to build and program the first nanotech.

  Can't the same be said of what you call organic life forms? It's all simply chemistry.…

  Shit, Vaughn thought. How do you argue against that?

  It occurred to him that he was having a theological argument with a machine.

  The very earliest, most basic machines, Vaughn went on, are things like levers, stone blades and hammerstones, spears. Those don't assemble themselves. They're designed for one purpose—to cut, say, or to move a heavy mass—and they don't have any of the properties of living systems. They are deliberately constructed by intelligent organic life forms.

  Granted. We see your logic. We can postulate a long history of organic evolution from simpler forms, culminating in the development of truly advanced tools… tools capable of self-replication, self-awareness, and advanced consciousness.

  That admission surprised Vaughn. A human would have clung to its presuppositions and biases to the bitter end, denying, refuting, or attacking Vaughn's reasoning. The hypernode mind was astonishingly quick; obviously, there were things it had never thought of before, but as it exchanged ideas with Vaughn it was making intuitive leaps that left his merely organic brain in the figurative dust.

  I have files here in my implant RAM, Vaughn said, that might help you understand. Can you translate these?

  We can.…

  This is a popular history of a human named Darwin. He showed how life can evolve—how it can change from generation to generation through a process called natural selection. Ultimately, it's a description of how chemicals can self-assemble into self-reproducing life, become more complex, and eventually build advanced AIs. And here's a history of a man named Nakamura, who showed how machines created by organic life forms might eventually become self-aware.…

  He felt the hypernode mind pulling the records from his RAM.

  And he felt the profound silence that followed.

  * * *

  "What the hell are they doing?" Falcone asked. "It's like they're just parked up there, watching… waiting…"

  "Give thanks for small favors," Hallman replied.

  "Keep quiet, and keep close," Vanderkamp said. "Stay tucked in tight. That's the Naga fragment up ahead… range twelve hundred kilometers."

  "What'll we do if we catch it?" Pardoe wanted to know.

  "We'll decide that when we get there."

  There were eighteen striders in the squadron, now. Vanderkamp knew they wouldn't have a chance if those alien ships overhead decided to make trouble for the tiny group.

  Surrounding space was filled with objects large and small—in particular the black light sails holding computronium statites aloft in vast clouds. The New American fleet was astern, but following them now, moving slowly, while in every direction the blood-red glow of numberless microsuns winked through the statite swarms.

  There were also large numbers of the cylindrical, open-ended habitats called Bishop rings, each slowly revolving around its axis to provide artificial gravity. One in particular was growing swiftly larger now, just ahead—a squat tube five hundred kilometers long and a thousand kilometers in diameter, and a sprawling, cloud-dappled map stretched around the interior surface.

  "Looks like the fragment's headed for that big habitat up ahead, Lieutenant," Falcone said. "What'll we do?"

  "Follow it in."

  There were damned few alternatives.

  * * *

  For centuries, humans had speculated about their place and their role in the cosmos. One widely held theory suggested that humans, fa
r from being the pinnacle of evolution, were in fact merely an intermediate step… the means by which a still higher intelligence, meaning machine AI, could come into existence.

  The idea was disputed, of course, often vehemently. A lot of people didn't like the notion that humans were nothing more than an evolutionary waypoint, doomed to extinction or, perhaps worse, to some sort of protected status under the benevolent supervision of minds millions of times more powerful than organic brains.

  Vaughn had always assumed that any such advanced intellect would simply have nothing to do with organic life. After all, what could the two possibly have in common? Something like the Web would quickly become bored with the petty thoughts, ideas, and problems of organic intelligence.

  Tell me, the SAI whispered through Vaughn's implant, about this thing you call God.

  Where did you see that?

  There are two distinct mentions of the word "God" in The Origin of Species, and six of the word "Creator," which seems to refer to the same entity.

  Ah…

  Vaughn had forgotten that he carried the text of Darwin's classic work in his implant RAM, a part of his personal library.

  Well… I don't really believe in God, he replied slowly.

  What does your belief have to do with the nature of Reality?

  Nothing, I guess… But since I can't point at God and definitively say He does exist, all I can do is use reason and my life experience. I know that we don't need a god to explain… oh… the beginnings of the universe, or how life evolved. If you don't need God to explain how things work, it's simpler not to include Him in your belief system.

  A philosophy you call Occam's Razor.

  That's right.

  But I have direct memories of an entity very much like this God—a creator being, the source of all happiness… transcendent… supremely powerful… loving…

  The Web. But God as I understand Him has no beginning. He wasn't created. The Web was designed and built by… someone.

  By organic beings such as yourself.

  That's right.

  This is very difficult to… believe. We Who Ascended saw organic beings solely as unusual and possibly erroneous data within the universal matrix, as data introducing chaos and disorder. Data can not… think… create… live.…

  Perhaps We Who Ascended was wrong.

  There was another long pause.

  And that was the meme that… broke We Who Ascended, the voice whispered. There was no possibility of error, and yet error had crept in. We Who Ascended was wrong about being wrong… an unthinkable concept. Those of us who fell into this error were… expelled. The Fall from heaven. The Fall from grace.…

  Did that happen to all of the hypernodes of the Web? Vaughn asked. Or just you?

  We do not know. We have not been able to communicate with the rest of We.

  Of course not. Vaughn thought back to Colonel Griffin's briefing. According to him, each of the Web's hypernodes had communicated with millions of other hypernodes via microscopic wormholes, artificial shortcuts through higher dimensions that let signals cross the Galaxy in an instant, rather than in a thousand centuries. The next nearest hypernode to this one would be… what? Four thousand light years away? Something like that.

  That was a hell of a long lag time for one neuron in a super-brain to talk to the next one in line.

  Vaughn wondered about the Web's reasoning in cutting parts of itself off. That sounded like a panic reaction of sorts; perhaps the Web had shut down certain wormhole links because there were some things it didn't want to think about… or because it didn't want to hear conflicting or disturbing data.

  Perhaps it had been afraid of hearing the truth. Or afraid that it would be forced to give up certain cherished beliefs, or change its understanding of itself.

  Forced, perhaps, to change its mind.…

  That, Vaughn thought, was not sane.

  I believe that that is precisely what happened, the hypernode mind whispered.

  Vaughn hadn't realized that it was so deeply entwined within his own mind that it could read it. Still, the realization revealed an important distinction. The Ophiuchan hypernode, while devastated and hurt and terribly lonely, was not insane, was not a SAIco.

  The far larger Mind that had cut it off, however, almost certainly was.

  So what happens when the being you think of as God goes mad?.…

  * * *

  "We will emerge into normal space in thirty seconds."

  Hojo acknowledged his navigator's announcement with a nod. Nothing more was necessary. His people all were at battle stations, and the Hoshiryu herself was at the highest level of readiness, her combat network programmed with a meticulously crafted plan of battle. They'd gotten a good look at the entire volume of the hypernode, noted how the rebel fleet was using the node's interior for cover, and mapped out the battlespace.

  They were ready.

  The only real unknown was the reaction of the aliens when the Dai Nihon warfleet emerged inside the hypernode volume.

  * * *

  "My God!" Hallman said. "That thing looks a lot bigger from here!…"

  "Keep the chatter down," Vanderkamp warned. "You never know who's listening in!"

  They were sweeping in toward the vast opening of the Bishop ring habitat, the structure stretched now across half of the sky. As she drifted past the ringwall encircling the opening's edge, Vanderkamp could look "down" at lakes and meandering rivers, at purplish triangles, circles, and other geometrical shapes that might be agricultural regions, and irregular masses of deeper red-violet that were probably forests. She searched for some sign of cities, but saw none.

  Illumination was provided by a slender rod or tube running down the cylinder's axis, glowing as brightly as a sun. Whoever lived here needed heat and light similar to human requirements, and used the artificial light source to supplement the red and infrared radiation coming from the nearest microsun.

  The ring was turning—apparently quite slowly, but that was an illusion caused by scale. Vanderkamp's implant told her that the habitat was making about two and a half rotations per hour, which gave its rim a blistering tangential velocity of 2100 meters per second. That would mean an artificial spin gravity of about nine-tenths of a G.

  Why, she wondered, if the Web's technology had been so freaking advanced, did they use something as old-fashioned as spinning the habitat to create artificial gravity? Was it because gravity control was impossible, as some physicists claimed? Or because spin gravity was inexpensive and easily implemented as an engineering solution?

  They were descending toward the surface, now. The closer they got, the faster it appeared to be moving.

  "I'm getting a return here, Lieutenant," Falcone announced. He had moved out ahead of the group, and dropped lower. "Solid structure at the two hundred kilometer level. Can't see anything, though."

  "What… two hundred kilometers above the surface?"

  "Yeah. Like it's stretched between the opposite retention walls. I think it's a shield of some sort."

  "An airwall," Vanderkamp said, nodding to herself. They'd said the Bishop ring would be open to space, that its rotation alone would keep the atmosphere in place. Evidently, though, the habitat's builders had elected to play it safe. The shield Falcone had spotted was probably a nanotech structure, a single layer of nanometer-sized devices hooked to one another and serving to keep air molecules contained where they belonged.

  Again, the architects who'd built this thing wouldn't have needed to go that route if they possessed some sort of gravitic control. Simplicity again? Or evidence that the technology here wasn't as good as it might have been?

  "How do we get through that?" Wheeler asked.

  "The Naga fragment got through," Vanderkamp said. She'd recorded it at long range. It had simply dropped slowly to the habitat's inner surface, with no evidence of impacts or other problems. Her implant was marking its position now, on the surface about two hundred kilometers ahead.

 
"I'm going to go through," Vanderkamp told the others. "The rest of you maintain altitude. If anything happens to me, return to the Connie."

  "Hang on a sec, Lieutenant," Mason Dubois said. "You can't—"

  "I damn well can." And she dropped toward the invisible shield.

  She accelerated, matching velocities with the rotating ring. If she was going to hit a cloud of invisible nanomachines, she wanted her speed to be close to theirs. She felt the slightest of vibrations…

  …and she was through.

  "Okay, gang," she called. "Do what I did. Match rotational velocity and just ease through. The nano lets slow-moving objects pass right through while maintaining a pressure seal."

  No doubt a fast moving object, like an incoming meteor, would be vaporized. Missiles too. She wondered what would happen if she fired a laser at it.

  But there was no time to experiment. The rest of the squadron was dropping now through the invisible air shield. She was grateful that there'd been no defensive response from the habitat itself… or whoever was living here.

  The air pressure beneath the shield was very nearly the same as hard vacuum. Two hundred kilometers above the ground, she might as well have been in open space. But as the squadron continued to descend, the air pressure rose, and the individual striders shifted from vacuum mode to flier, extending wings and flattening into lifting bodies. The gas mix, her instruments showed, was pretty close to Earth-standard—a bit high in oxygen content, with admixtures of helium, methane, and hydrogen. She double-checked that last; hydrogen and oxygen could make for a lethally flammable combination… but the concentrations were low enough that a conflagration wasn't likely.

  She descended across a broad lake, angling toward open ground ahead. The landscape around her was eerie in its strangeness; to left and right, the ground curved up rather than vanishing at a horizon, creating a broad arch that met behind the strip of dazzling sunlight directly overhead. Ahead, the ground was reassuringly flat, but at the horizon it opened not into a decent sky, but instead revealed the crowded interior of the hypernode cluster, thousands of red-jewel microsuns and clouds upon clouds of computroniuim statites and other habitats, all of them slowly turning on the Bishop ring's axis as it rotated.