I think that I might finally, after all of these centuries, have discovered a kindred soul.
Captain Harlan sped ahead, and even though my android body was considerably faster than an old-time baseline human’s, it was all that I could do to keep up.
A long time ago, as a lark, I built a super-powered android body. Tactically impractical, and as ridiculous as putting anti-ballistic missiles on a coffee table. As luck would have it, it saved my life. Perhaps there was a lesson there that I had missed? If I survive this fiasco, I resolved to upgrade all of my ‘decorative’ units to at least a nominal level of combat power.
What was it that the old Terran Warmonger Scouts had said? “Be Prepared”?
I caught up with Captain Harlan at the doors of another elevator. “After you!” he said. We entered, and there was the usual eclectic selection of floors to choose from. “Pick one!”
I hesitated, and then pushed the button for floor number 237.
So what is on this floor?
“I have absolutely no idea,” said Captain Harlan. “But we are about to find out.”
The elevator doors opened, and we exited into the middle of a long narrow hallway.
“Left or right?” said Harlan.
Let’s do left.
We walked down the hallway. Doors were evenly spaced on each side approximately every six meters. The ceiling was high, and glowed with simulated skylight. Decorative light fixtures stood on black iron poles at regular intervals. It felt more like a quiet back street in a 19th century Parisian suburb than an apartment complex in the middle of a giant hive.
And what is this section?
“Middle-class housing, by the looks of it. Here, let’s check the apartments. You do that side, I’ll do this. If you find any infiltrating monsters, save a few for me.”
I entered one of the doors. There was a small alcove which had a scrubby carpet in the middle and closets to either side. Further in was a larger room, probably the main living area, with several overstuffed chairs, side tables, and a large video screen. Off to one side was clearly a kitchen unit, with several grills and three wall-mounted ovens. There were three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a study with a small workbench. The workbench had a scale model train set that had been only partially finished. I wondered at the person who had built it: even partially completed it must have consumed many hundreds of man-hours.
There were windows on the back walls that opened out into a narrow atrium (doubtless also doubling as a cooling duct – one of the knights had told me that fully ten percent of the volume of The Fortress consisted of cooling ducts). I went over to one of the windows – the atrium went up and down over a hundred meters each way. There was a bright light source at the top simulating daylight. There were other windows from other apartments on the opposite side, but they had been cunningly arranged to maximize both light and mutual privacy. The effect was refreshing – I did not feel that I was buried inside a massive cube, but that I was in a building that had some degree of autonomy. I was impressed at the taste, and the clever use of space.
I prowled around the apartment. It was neat, as if the occupants had just finished cleaning and then left. There were photographs of what must have been family: aged uncles and aunts, flabby pallid babies all vaguely resembling Winston Churchill, young children with idiot grins going ‘look at me look at me!’, painfully awkward teenagers, and middle-aged people stolid and self-assured and only slightly gone to fat.
I left the apartment and met up again with Captain Harlan. “Find anything interesting?” he asked.
Not really. Just a standard, and pretty comfortable by the looks of it, middle class apartment. The kind that could have existed on any human-settled planet for any of thousands of years.
“And what is your opinion?” asked Harlan.
Opinion? Opinion of what?
“Of the society that created this.”
Well, I still have hardly begun to explore the volume of your fortress, but if this is representative, I’d say that your society was rich. That most people had comfortable lives, but that they were not driven to excess or ostentatious displays of wealth. It appears to be a society that was well grounded and confident in itself. But of course, I’ll need to see more.
“Then let’s see more. Let’s check out the rest of the apartments on this hallway.”
Do you expect any of them to be different?
“No. But we won’t know unless we look, will we?”
Now I know. I really have found a kindred spirit.
I explored two-dozen apartments. All had the same basic floorplan, with some modest variations. All were individual. Some, like the first one that I had entered, had been left in pristine shape. Others were disheveled, with clothes and dishes strewn around as the last inhabitants had left to die. Some were elegantly furnished, while others were more garish, cluttered, tacky even. And all had their distinctive human touches – evidence of hobbies, things they liked to collect, sporting equipment, whatever. Every apartment was the same, and every apartment was different.
One apartment had a child’s room with a set of “Knights of The Fortress” action figures. They had been set up on a landscape of small blocks on the floor. I recognized a small plastic General Lysis Trellen standing at the highest point on the blocks, holding a banner with his rook symbol in one hand, and an enormous hand-flamer in the other. He was facing off against a monster I was unfamiliar with that had multiple tentacles and eyes on stalks. There was also a Captain Brendan model, this one was so festooned with weapons that, if made to scale, even the real Captain Brendan couldn’t have lifted them. I looked for a Captain Harlan figure but didn’t find one – oh well, we can’t all be as famous as the General or the primo heavy weapons guy.
At one time all of these suits, and their biological counterparts, had been heroes. Had been looked up to, occupied positions of respect and authority, been a vital part of a rich and prosperous civilization. Every healthy homicidal adolescent male must have dreamed of becoming an elite knight and wading into personal combat wearing more firepower than a 22nd century armored fighting vehicle…
And then it had all been taken away. It’s similar to what happened to us cybertanks, but when we lost our humans, we didn’t have to witness it. We can still realistically hope that the biological humans are out there somewhere, evolved or transcended, maybe even watching us and waiting for us to catch up. And the humans left us with the ability to found our own culture, to be part of something great again. These armored suits – they saw all of their friends and relatives and biological components die, slowly and painfully, and were left with nothing but a pointless existence prowling around inside what is little more than an enormous mausoleum, a monument to death and futility.
If the entity/force/whatever running this planet had deliberately wanted to create suffering, it could not have done a better job.
I left the apartment and met up again with Captain Harlan at the end of the hallway. I decided not to mention the action figures.
“Well?” he asked.
I don’t know what to say. This seems like a typical human apartment complex. I’ve had personal experience with hundreds like it over the millennia. It’s very nice. And that’s it.
“Huh,” said Harlan. “That may seem trivial to you, but it’s not to me. I have only known the humans here. You, I gather, have known them over many planets and several millenia. To be given evidence that my humans were, well, similar to humans everywhere, is new information.”
I can see that. I did notice that some apartments are in pristine shape, and others are messy. Why is that?
Harlan shrugged. “Well, why not? Some people had time to tidy up before finally leaving, others got sick too quickly – or perhaps not caring. We generally leave each apartment as its inhabitants left it, unless there is something too grisly for decency. Like, we haven’t left any bodies lying around.”
Ah. That must have been hard. Burying all those bodies.
/> “What?” said Harlan. “Oh I see what you mean. 30 million is a lot of bodies. But the humans died out over several years, they mostly buried themselves. Although at the end we still had to deal with a lot of… nasty business.”
Ah, I can relate to that. Sorry I brought it up. Shall we do more exploring at random, or would you rather show me something specific?
“I’ll save more random for another time,” said Harlan. “Let me show you something in particular.”
Harlan led me to a rather large elevator, one lined with swirl-polished stainless-steel plates, and this one took us to floor minus 677, deep beneath ground level.
The doors opened onto a large plaza. There was a roller coaster decorated with paintings of unicorns and kittens. Garish bright tube lights (similar to what the ancients had once called ‘neon lights’) knitted into complex arabesques of geometric forms, or spelled out signs for arcades, shops, bars, souvenir shops, what have you.
It’s an amusement park!
“Yes,” said Harlan. “It’s great! Shall we try the Mighty Mole Power shooting range?”
Tempting – but is that a bowling alley that I see over there?
“Bowling? You bowl? There is a bowling place around the corner here. But that’s too easy.”
Ah, you I suspect have never encountered the sublime sport of Candle Pin.
“Candle pin? I have not heard of that.”
No? Then let me see if I can enlighten you. I’m sure we can rig a set up without too much trouble…
I truly have found a kindred spirit.
8. The Journal of Lysis Trellen Part IV: A Small Kinetic Action
“No war is ever over until the enemy says it’s over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.” – General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, 20th-21st century Earth.
As the senior surviving officer of the regular military on this planet, I had been invited into the executive division to attend a planning session. I’ve had worse experiences, but on balance I would have preferred a colonoscopy.
We were in a heavily armored bunker that had been dug a hundred meters beneath the gilded executive tower, in the middle of the grounded arkship. I had been exhaustively searched, scanned, and prodded at three separate stations before being allowed in, because obviously searching me three times would make the President three times as safe. Or really, because it was intimidation. I was also given a deep-scrubbing shower and a freshly laundered and pressed uniform, which was almost enough to make up for the rest of the meeting.
Inside the executive section it was another world compared to outside. The ceiling was four meters up, and crystal chandeliers glowed with a soft light. Oil paintings of previous high officials from the current President’s family line were hung on the walls, illuminated with tiny brass spotlights. The center table was a long narrow rectangle of exotic polished hardwood, with the President at the far end, and half a dozen high officials lining each side. The air was cool and clean and perfumed, the carpets thick and luxurious. A side bar held a selection of appetizers and gourmet coffee. Everyone was dressed in expensive clothes, and their skin was uniformly smooth and glowed with health.
I had been amazed that Sister Pascal had been allowed to bring a few physical books several light years. I was beyond appalled at what this luxury would have cost to ship in terms of weight of fuel, but good soldier that I am, I said nothing.
Six of the hulking secret service agents stood unmoving with their backs against the walls, reminding me of guardian statues in an ancient tomb. Perhaps a dozen aides and adjutants milled around the rest of the room, taking notes, fetching coffee, and generally trying to look busy and not-totally-unimportant. I was standing at the back of the room at parade rest. Nobody offered me a chair, but that’s OK, I’m good at standing.
If you’re not good at standing for long periods of time, don’t try for a career in the military.
The meeting had been going on for over an hour. There were heated discussions about kinetic actions, force alignments, sending the enemy a message, whether to escalate or de-escalate, how to tailor financial sanctions to best effect, making the tough decisions, managing public opinion, debating the effect on the financial sector, and suchlike. Oddly, though, they never asked me, the current senior officer in charge who had seen the recent combat first hand, what I thought.
Fortunately I have been in the army long enough that I knew better than to volunteer any such thought.
Listening to them was strange. As each person spoke, it sounded clear and intelligent, but then when I thought about it, I couldn’t figure out what the point was. Then someone else would speak, and it would also sound intelligent, but on reflection, it had nothing to do with what the first person had said. It reminded me of what one of my old English teachers had once warned me about: word salad, the jumbling together of phrases that are grammatically correct and sound good, but are logically incoherent.
There seemed to be a kind of social game going on. Sometimes what someone said would make the president smile, and sometimes it would make her frown, and sometimes it would leave her looking frosty cold. I couldn’t figure out the rules. This lot must have been playing the game for a long time. They are far beyond my level.
There was one worthy that stood out, though. He looked older than the others, with a leathery bald head, heavily wrinkled skin, and a bulbous nose. Maybe he was allergic to the anti-ageatics, or maybe he was so old that even the anti-aging drugs were losing their effect. Or maybe he was an eccentric that just liked looking old (the elites can have odd fetishes). He almost never said anything, but when he did it made more sense than the others. These always reacted negatively, and quickly steered the conversation away from him.
Another 20 minutes of this, and it looked like the meeting was coming to an end.
“So,” said the President, “are we agreed on a course of action?”
Heads nodded up and down across the table, except for the leathery old bald guy, who calmly held up his hand and said, “Please excuse me. I would like to hear the captain’s opinion on the matter.”
The President glared at the leathery old bald man with a stare that would have frozen the mammary glands off a polar bear. Everyone else in the room reacted as if they had touched a high voltage line. I could hear all the people stop breathing at the same instant.
“And why,” said the President, “would we do that, Mr. Oliver Schmidt?”
So the leathery old bald guy had a name. Oliver Schmidt. I’d like him except that he’s looking to get me into trouble. Think fast, Trellen, think fast.
“Because,” said this Mr. Schmidt, “he is the senior ranking military officer on this planet. He has also had personal experience engaging the enemy.”
The temperature of the room dropped low enough that helium would have liquefied. The President turned her basilisk stare on me. “Captain Johnson. What experience do you have with affairs of state?”
Oh fuck. It would be so easy to say “but I’m not Captain Johnson, he died, I’m brevet Captain Trellen,” but that might make the President look ill informed, and that could go badly. So I let it slide.
“None at your level, madam president,” I said. “I’m just regular military, a dog-soldier, if you will. You set policy, I carry it out. I mostly just kill people, or blow things up.”
I thought that I had handled that well. Civilians generally like it when their pet attack dogs lick their fingers, but the President was not to be so easily assuaged. “Do you know that I have PhDs in both conflict resolution AND international studies from Harvard and Yale, back on Earth? That I have been a senior member of the Terran executive council for over a century? That Forbes magazine voted me the senior executive most likely to succeed for three years in a row? And what are your qualifications?”
“Madam President,” I said, “they are nothing like yours. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in general engineering from the military academy at West Point, and I’
ve spent five years on active duty. Not counting time spent in hibernation on the way here. As I said, I’m just a low-level soldier. Nothing more.”
That seemed to mollify her, a bit. The temperature of the room was raised to that of liquid nitrogen. “Well then,” said the President, “what is your opinion of the current situation?”
The stone faces of the secret service agents swiveled in my direction. Oh this is hazardous duty. Be cool, Trellen, be cool. “Madam President, I confess that most of what you have discussed here was above my head. As I said, I’m just a junior officer with no experience in general strategic planning. My only comment would be that, at the tactical level, we are hamstrung by a lack of intelligence on this enemy. I know that the strategic always trumps the operational, but if your tactics fail it can take the best strategy down with it. We need to remember that there is always a synergy between the low and the high levels.”
I wondered if I had overdone it? Using the word “synergy” had been a calculated risk.
But my gamble had paid off. The President cracked a small, but definite, smile. “Very well, Captain Johnson. Your comments are well taken. You will have your detailed orders transmitted to you shortly. You are dismissed.”
I saluted, and turned about sharply, and left the room. A clean escape. Now if I only knew what my orders actually were.
As I was being escorted out of the executive section, this Oliver Schmidt fellow came up behind me. “Hello, Captain Trellen,” he said. “I think you handled that brilliantly. Kudos.”
I like to think of myself as a patient man, but everyone has a breaking point. I should have been obsequious, but I was in a bad mood, and he didn’t seem very senior.
Old Guy and the Planet of Eternal Night (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 6) Page 12