Guardian

by Thomas F Monteleone

  “Then what are we sitting here for!?” cried Stoor. “It can kill us if it wants to! It probably will after what you’ve done to its damned machine!”

  “No, I don’t think so . . .” said Kartaphilos. “The Guardian needs you. All of you. Or it would not have taken such care to keep you alive.”

  “You sound as if you know what’s going on,” said Varian.

  “Not much, I’m afraid. But there is some history which might shed light on the problem,” said Kartaphilos. “Listen.”

  Everyone drew up chairs and focused upon the strange robot. He began his tale as one might while passing the night around a comforting fire:

  Although calculation was rough, the Final War had taken place more than two thousand years ago. There existed only one nation powerful enough to challenge the onslaught of the Riken forces as they expanded their imperialist doctrine throughout the world: the Republic of Genon. There was reluctance, of course, to engage the Riken, since it would mean a global conflict of unheralded proportions; it would be Armageddon. But the reports of Riken atrocities and conquests increased, until Genon, by nature a peace-loving nation, had no choice.

  They began the struggle by heavily arming and defensing all major population centers in the Southern Hemisphere. This was done primarily through the construction of the Citadels—vast self-sufficient cybernetic systems controlled by the Guardian Series of AI machines. One of the most important population centers was an industrial city called Haagendaz, which was located upon the planet’s richest deposits of the ore needed to produce Thorium.

  The ore deposits were the key to victory in the South, since it was a necessary isotype in the production of fuels, warheads, and other essential war supplies. For as any military tactician will tell you, it is not how strong your armies are which wins the battles, but how strong are your lines of supply. The Riken knew this lesson well and devised an ingenious plan for eliminating lines of supply. Their Strike Force always carried along great machines—heavily defended and in the Juggernaut class of war machines in their own right—which produced all Riken supplies as the column moved through conquered territory. Huge, they were, and mobile: processors, ore crushers, furnaces and smelteries, reactors and accelerators; the great machines moved along with the rest of the Riken forces.

  This tactic worked well in the Northern Hemisphere, where the Riken war machine plundered each nation as it moved, processing and providing for its forces all the fuel and ordnance necessary. But to successfully engage the Genonese in the South, their forces would have to be spread evenly, though thinly, across the entire Hemisphere. The key, then, was an unending source of raw material—Thorium—which could be taken at Haagendaz. By taking Haagendaz, the Riken would wage terrible war in the South and eventually crush Genon.

  And so the armies clanked and ground their way to the desert plains before the industrial city, crushing into each other and filling the air with death and poison. Several titanic battles were waged inconclusively at Haagendaz where the Ironfields now remain. The city was obliterated, but the Citadel survived.

  Riken espionage knew that the Citadel was the final key because of one important fact. Realizing the supreme importance of the Thorium-ore deposits, the Genonese sealed off all entrances to the mines and set robot charges throughout the depths, all the way up to the entrances. It was a masterpiece of construction and the detonation or access to the mines lay within the data banks of the Guardian. Buried within a maze of scramble codes lay the key to the Thorium. If Guardian was destroyed, so with it went the Thorium.

  And so, the assault of the Citadel was a fine and delicate thing. To do so, the Riken must successfully overwhelm the Genon defenses, yet leave the AI intact. They must gain entrance to the Citadel, then extract the program-key from the depths of the AI’s brain.

  As a diversion, the Riken threw their Northern Hemisphere Strike Force into an all-out attack on all Genon positions to the north of the Citadel. They ground through the part of the World known as the Slaglands, leaving nothing in their wake but a black slab of total annihilation. Genon forces converged, met the Riken armies in the North, and slowly halted the savage assault.

  But there was a price to be paid. Simultaneously, the Riken hurled the rest of their forces at the Citadel. While the battle in the North went well for the Genonese, the defense of the Citadel faltered under the surgical accuracy of Riken aircraft and ground forces. Commando raiders and vast waves of dronelike warriors ate into the legions of Genon defenders. The battle raged on for many days, with Genon reluctantly giving ground and position to the Riken armies. The only hope of saving the Citadel was the arrival of reinforcements from the northern conflict.

  But there was great difficulty in keeping in touch with the Northern Forces because of the sophisticated jamming techniques of Riken technology. Added to this was the destruction of all communication and surveillance satellites by Riken aircraft. There was no way to ensure urgent communication with the Northern Forces, no way to know if the Citadel would receive needed, additional troops.

  And so a system of robot couriers was dispatched from Guardian to contact the North. Each day, new expeditionary teams were sent out in the hope that one of the teams would break through and reach the Command. Kartaphilos was a member of one such team, which left during the final days of the siege. The small aircraft in which he traveled was shot down soon after clearing the main forces outside the Citadel. All members of the team were destroyed except for Kartaphilos, who crawled away from the wreckage severely damaged.

  What occurred next is sketchy, due to the robot’s memory loss; it is obvious that he was able to seek shelter and allow time for his self-repairing circuits to electronically heal him. Kartaphilos still does not have total recall of his adventures, or even what happened in the world around him, but from later accounts, semihistorical sources, and even word of mouth, he did learn that the war had somehow ended. As his memory returned, he gradually remembered his mission and the Guardian, although the urgency and the necessity were no longer important.

  And so he took about wandering the globe, in search of answers, in search of men who might understand him and help him return to the only home he had ever known—its location in time and space now lost to him. The years ground by and humankind fell into a terrible depression—as a direct result of the Final War—and whoever had achieved victory must have soon realized it was indeed Pyrrhic. The planet’s atmosphere was so drastically altered that climate and weather went berserk. Centuries of upheaval plagued the surface of the globe, changing its contours, wiping out whole cultures. Carbon-dioxide levels increased, the poles began melting, the axis shifted slightly, diseases ravaged the remnants of humanity, radiation sterilized whole continents, mutations abounded, and human culture fell into a dark, downward spiral, into a night of centuries-long darkness, from which it was only now emerging.

  But Kartaphilos persevered. So great had been the technology which spawned him that he survived, powered by seemingly unbounded energy, repairing his body indefinitely, slowly relearning his past, searching for the Citadel. He assumed the mask of a nomad and moved through the cultural streams and the reemerging nations of what was left of the World. He walked in the shrouds of myth, pausing only to tell an interested traveler his story, or to pick up a piece of the past which might key the retrieval of a lost memory. His quest became one of almost religious stature, and only when the Guardian’s homing beacon struck him did the final pieces of the millennia-old mystery begin to fall into place.

  Only then did Kartaphilos remember who he was.

  As he finished his tale, silence followed, as the facts of his story impacted upon the group. It was inconceivable to think that Kartaphilos was as old as he claimed, that he had been present during the end of the First Age and had witnessed the rise of the World so familiar to the group.

  They looked at him in awe, in disbelief, and perhaps a certain amount of fear. It was Varian who spoke first.

  “What do yo
u mean that now you know who you are?”

  Kartaphilos shook his head. “You will not believe me if I tell you. . . .”

  “Try us,” said Stoor, reloading his pipe.

  Kartaphilos exhaled slowly. “Very well, we have nothing to do now but wait. Do any of you have any true conception of how great the builders of this place were? Would you understand? I don’t know, but I shall tell you in any event. It was built in a time when the differences between men and machines were becoming very slight. It was a good thing and a bad thing, as you might well surmise.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Tessa.

  “Listen. There was a . . . creature, a construction, if you will, of the First Age called a cyborg—a cybernetic organism. It was part machine, part man. Do you understand now?”

  “How could there be such a thing?” cried Stoor.

  “How could there be a Guardian?” said Kartaphilos. “How could there be the Slaglands? How can anything be? You cannot ask such questions in the face of fact. They simply are. That is the only answer I can give you.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Varian, although something stirred in his soul, a fear that he did indeed understand.

  “Something that is part machine and part man . . .” said Kartaphilos. “Don’t you see what I am telling you? I am that thing!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Kartaphilos’ admission explained the Guardian’s inability to control him, and it provided the group with an ally which knew the enemy. After the initial shock had passed, everyone realized this and hope rekindled in their hearts. The old man in the monk’s robe further explained that as his machine body repaired itself, and his human brain struggled back to self-awareness, he fought to break through the barrier of amnesia which kept him from knowing who and what he was. It was not discovered until he actually returned to the Citadel that he was indeed a cyborg. Millennia ago, he recalled waking up from the aircrash, discovering his plasteel body, his blinking circuitry, and his great strength; the natural assumption was that he was a machine, a robot. There was an awareness, yes, a mind, a sense of self, but there was no way of knowing that it lay centered in a living, organic brain. A brain locked within an alloy skull, fed by pyroxene tubing and myoelectric sensors. For it was known that brain cells, while they do not replicate or repair themselves, do not age. Keep the brain supplied with oxygen, and it will live indefinitely. The triumph of the cyborg. And the tragedy.

  As the memory of Kartaphilos returned, he recalled his real function in the world: he was a fighting machine. As he had originally told the group, he was part of a special unit of warriors, the Combat Series VI. As a cyborg of that designation, he was equipped with immense physical strength, alarming quickness, a remarkable keenness of the senses, and a weapons system of intriguing economy and lethality. In the back of his throat lay the nozzle of a heat weapon called the White Molecular Disruptor. Named after its inventor, T. White, the Disruptor was activated by the cyborg opening his mouth until the lower mandible locked into firing position, whereupon a thought command carried by myoelectric circuitry activated the weapon, discharging a tight beam of energy with pinpoint accuracy. Although the system was of limited range, its kill quotient was extremely high and there were few materials which could withstand the full force of the beam without disintegrating.

  “Guardian is obviously confused or it would not have recalled me,” said Kartaphilos. “We have been left alone because it has not been able to decide what to do next. I am the unplanned factor in its scheme, whatever that may be.”

  “Perhaps you might help us clarify Guardian’s intention,” said Tessa. “I think you should know what it’s been doing to us.”

  Kartaphilos nodded and gestured for the group to tell the story of their experiences in the Citadel. They explained everything in as exacting detail as possible, even attempting to reconstruct specific illusionary experiences. When they had finished their tales, Kartaphilos shook his head, grinning slightly.

  “What’s so damn funny?” asked Stoor.

  “Oh, there’s nothing funny. . . . It’s just that I think I see what Guardian is doing. Interesting, under the circumstances.”

  “Interesting!? I’m glad you think so!” Stoor stormed across the room, getting his blood up.

  “What does it mean?” asked Tessa.

  Kartaphilos rubbed his lower jaw absentmindedly, as if considering how to begin. “I’m not certain of any of this, mark you, but I think it makes sense. . . .”

  “How is Guardian creating the illusions?” asked Varian.

  “I do not know the specifics of the technique, but I do know that it concerns what was once a form of entertainment among the First Age people.”

  “Entertainment?” asked Tessa.

  “Yes, by hallucinogenic means such as chemicals and gases, the mind can be prepared to interpret sensory information in any way the manipulator desires. Audiences used to gather in large amphitheaters to experience group illusions such as the ones Guardian has employed on all of you.”

  “But why?” asked Varian.

  “I think Guardian is undergoing psychoanalysis.”

  “What? What’s that?” asked Tessa.

  “A form of self-examination that was quite popular with the First Age people. It involved the theories of many philosophers and thinkers, and a variety of techniques abounded. I think Guardian is aware of its own psychotic, or insane, condition and seeks to cure itself, to cleanse itself.”

  “I don’t think we’re followin’ you,” said Stoor, obviously growing tired of all the talk. He was a man of action and decision and, having seen the power of the cyborg, wished only to blast their way free of the Citadel.

  “Be patient, and I shall try to explain,” said Kartaphilos. “The illusions which you have been undergoing are simplistic examinations of humankind’s mythic past. Much of what you have told me are easily recognizable legends and myths from the beginnings of the First Age. I’m surprised that more of them have not survived to this present era.”

  Stoor wheeled quickly and spoke. “Of course! That’s it! I knew I’d seen that name before. . . .”

  “What name?” asked Tessa.

  “Zeus! I think. He was supposed to be a god or something like that. Creator of the World and all that crap. I’ve seen that name in some of the manuscripts and stuff I’ve brought back to my employers. This stuff is old, I mean really old. Back when the First Age was young.”

  “That’s right,” said Kartaphilos. “The ancients used the power of myth in many ways. Myth was the great equalizer in understanding the World. When there was no natural explanation, when there was a barrier beyond which man’s knowledge could not penetrate, there was always myth. It was always a convenient method of explaining what would otherwise be unexplainable, don’t you see?”

  “Yes,” said Varian. “The sailors are still enchanted with the old tales, the poems, and the chanties which talk about stranger times.”

  “Yes,” said Kartaphilos. “And the power of myth has never been forgotten, even by the men who left ignorance far in their wake. In later times, man used myth to explain the inner mysteries of the mind, as a metaphor to the substance of his desires and his fears. There is still a belief, despite the absurdity of some of the physical details of the old legends, that hard-core truths lie at the base of the stories. Truths which concerned the most elemental aspects of man’s behavior. In myth, man might learn why he is who he is, why he does what he does.”

  “I think I follow you,” said Tessa, “but how does this connect with Guardian?”

  “Again, I am not certain, but it seems as though Guardian, cut off so long from human contact, has lost the ability to communicate freely with its creators. The reason for this disability, I do not know. Perhaps if we can discover that answer, we shall solve the entire riddle. I think Guardian was attempting to learn something about human behavior by subjecting you to the mythic situations, by forcing you to make decisions as the ancients were forced to do.
Having prior knowledge of the entire mythic system, Guardian therefore has a ‘manual,’ so to speak, of basic human behavior and is perhaps comparing your own reactions to the original mythic characters.”

  “That makes sense,” said Tessa, “but it still does not explain why it’s doing it.”

  Kartaphilos shrugged. “I don’t know why. I can only guess. Of this much we can be certain, the myths are only a metaphor for something far more real, something far more important to Guardian. . . .”

  “What in Krell’s a metaphor?” said Stoor, clenching and unclenching his fists as he paced about the room, obviously irritated.

  When no one answered him, he did not seem to care. Knowing the definition of a metaphor was not going to implement their escape from the Citadel, and so the question became less than rhetorical, but a statement of position on Stoor’s part.

  “Ah, dammit, what are we sitting around talkin’ for?” he said after a short pause. “Why don’t we use that thing in your mouth to get out of here?”

  Varian stepped forward. “Stoor’s right, actually. We’ve been trapped here for a long time—not much time to you, probably, but it’s been very bad for us.”

  “Especially when you don’t know when you’re getting out,” said Tessa.

  Kartaphilos remained silent for a moment, considering options. “I can understand your desire to leave this place,” he said finally. “But there are other considerations we can’t afford to overlook.”

  “Like what!” said Stoor.

  “Most important, the fate of the Citadel and Guardian. This place is the last functioning artifact of the First Age. It contains the knowledge and ability to bring the World out of the darkness. We owe it to our culture to try to preserve it, not destroy it.”

  “But you said Guardian’s gone balmy on us, didn’t you? What good is a machine that’s crazy, that’s only wantin’ to play games with itself? I say we get outta here!” Stoor slapped his sidearm, nestled in the holster at his leg.