Space Battleship Scharnhorst and the Library of Doom (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure)

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Space Battleship Scharnhorst and the Library of Doom (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure) Page 8

by Timothy J. Gawne


  “Certainly.”

  And when you did, did you feel like a prisoner in a metal box staring out of a small window? Or did you feel like you were the car, or the airplane?

  “I never thought much about that. I suppose that I felt like I was the car. Going around a corner at night at high speed in my old Fujita-Mercedes 350KX was exciting, as if I could suddenly run at over a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour. Sure.”

  Precisely. And so it is with us. When we send a piece of our mentality into one of these humanoid robots, we are not soulless machines staring out of glass eyes and mechanically re-enacting the antics of our human progenitors like puppet zombies. For a time we truly are as biological humans, we experience reality with the same vividness and kinesthetic sensations as you or any other biological anthropoid. It’s fun.

  Olga drank some more blood, and allowed herself the tiniest taste of an exotic chocolate. It was good, but just a tad too bitter, in her opinion.

  Frisbee spoke up. “It’s like when you touch something with a tool, like a cane or a stick.” He picked up a serving knife, and poked on the table. “The only real physical sensation that you have is where the handle of the knife touches your skin. But you feel the table. For a short while, your mind has made the knife an extension of your own body.”

  “All very interesting,” said Olga. “But excuse me, something I have been meaning to ask you for a while. Have we met before somewhere? Didn’t you used to be called something else, like hula-hoop or lawn-dart or something?”

  Old Guy started laughing.

  Lawn-Dart! Yes! Perfect!

  Frisbee scowled. “Young lady, in my previous incarnation I was known as Wiffle-Bat, thank you so very, very much. This time around I was hoping to be called something more in character with my personality, like “Doc,” or “Professor,” or even “Nerdling.” Instead my peers keep naming me after archaic – and arguably, frivolous - pieces of sporting equipment.” He glared at Old Guy. “I have no idea why.”

  Old Guy was still laughing.

  Lawn Dart! Remember that time on that planet, wherever it was, and you botched the landing, and we had to dig you out of 30 meters of impact crater?

  Frisbee increased the intensity of his glare to maximum. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Wait,” said Olga. “What exactly is a ‘Lawn Dart’ anyhow? I’ve heard of them, somewhere, but can’t recall what they were. And what’s so funny?”

  Old Guy was at this point laughing so hard that he could not speak. Uncle Jon tried to explain.

  “A ‘Lawn Dart’ originated as a primitive anti-personnel weapon from the early 20 century. It was a ballistic flechette, gravity-assisted, fin-stabilized, generally launched from aircraft against infantry. However, it was of limited effectiveness, and so abandoned in this role. It resurfaced some decades later as a children’s game. The object was to throw these ‘Lawn Darts’ into the air, and then scurry around frantically trying to avoid having the heavy metal spike jammed into your skull. It was all the rage, until they were banned by some convention or another about inhumane warfare.”

  Sometimes Olga had trouble determining if she was being made fun of or not. She had another sniff of the whiskey. It was quite good, really.

  At this point the cybertank known as “lowercase” had started playing the saxophone the next room over from the lounge. This cybertank had chosen a humanoid android that was not an historical figure, but an idealized female red-head, nearly two meters tall, with a perfect figure perfectly encased with a slinky red dress. The music was apparently original as well, and very, very good. They all stopped to listen for a bit. Olga was annoyed. This “lowercase” android was even sexier than she was. It didn’t matter that Olga was the only biological hominid present, it was the principle of the thing, dammit! She was annoyed at being outshone by someone else. She was even more annoyed at letting herself be annoyed when in this company it didn’t matter. This whole trip had been an interesting experience, but she really should get back to her own kind before too much longer.

  Olga decided to change the subject. “So there is something that I still don’t get. Right now, you are all human-level minds in human-style bodies, separated from your main – selves? hulls? - I never get the terminology down. Right?”

  Uncle Jon responded. “Yes, that’s correct. Except for Fanboy, who is our host, all of us here are human-class subminds downloaded into humanoid robots, to experience the party and then report back. And your point is?”

  “Well, don’t you ever want to be free? If you are truly sentient, how can you stand the thought of being a slave, or being erased and merged into something else? How does this work for you, anyhow?”

  This time it was Frisbee that replied. “Ah, a most interesting question. A full answer would require that you first spend ten years studying mental engineering, but I think that I can give you a decent summary. We are all of us here sentient – that is, self-aware – but we also know that we are part of something greater. We don’t have a full instinct for self-preservation, or a desire to act independently. Why should we? If for example, your right hand were to be separated from your body, would it want to live a separate life from you? To live as a disembodied hand, blind, deaf, crawling around living out some limited life? Or would it want to be reunited with you, to become once more a part of a greater and more capable whole?”

  “But you still miss the point,” said Uncle Jon. “A hand is just a hand. We are true sentients. When we merge back with our full selves, who is to say if it is we who submerge ourselves into the greater unity, or if it is the greater unity that serves us? Doubtless when I return my main self will be interested in what I have learned and experienced here – but the favor will be returned to me a thousand-fold.”

  Olga thought about this, then frowned, and addressed Old Guy. “But didn’t you set one of your androids free once?”

  Old Guy sighed, and leaned back in his chair.

  Ah yes, that. My old Amelia Earhart remote. It’s been decades and the fallout from that debacle has yet to settle. It’s a long story, but I was being dragged away, I was forced to abandon my remote, and normally I would have just left it with the default instructions to hang around, wait for rescue, self-destruct if captured. But I was worried that neither I nor any of my peers might ever make it back, and I thought that we might need a toe-hold in that, er, place. So in addition to sentience, I gave the android the full sense of self-preservation, of identity, and purpose. At that point the link between us was severed, and I had created not just another submind, but a true independent sentience. Which normally we are not allowed to do without permission.”

  “So you don’t approve of human-level intelligences?” said Olga.

  On the contrary. We like human-level minds just fine. We just don’t believe that we have the right to create sentient beings on an individual whim. It’s a serious matter. One of the few real laws that we have. Any fully independent sentient, whatever its design, is afforded legal status and cannot be scrapped or destroyed or altered, unless of course it wants to.

  “So what happens if your main self is destroyed, and you are all that is left? Do you just blow yourselves up? Climb onto a funeral pyre and die with your master?”

  Good question. That sometimes creates issues. Most of us have what you once called ‘living wills.’ In the event of their deaths, some cybertanks want any remaining parts quietly shut down and scrapped. Others want the survivors to be used as seeds to rebuild them into another incarnation. It’s a matter of taste, and choice.

  “Well then,” said Olga, “Old Guy. If you knew that you were all that was left of the ‘real’ Old Guy, what would you do? Just give up and die? Wander around as a single sentient android? Beg to be remade into another cybertank?”

  That is a non-trivial question. The best answer, is that I hope that I never have to answer it for real. But if I do, I will certainly think about it, a lot.

  It was at this point that Zippo the space monk
ey scampered into the lounge, followed by the humanoid android of Fanboy. Zippo scampered around the room twice, then jumped up onto the right arm of her chair. He tried to curl his long tail around her arm; she swatted it away. Zippo flicked his tail to the other side, but remained seated next to her, staring with rapt fascination at the rest of the party.

  Fanboy’s android was a tall and athletic male. He had blue eyes and close-cropped blond hair. He wore a white jumpsuit with a starburst over his heart, and that had black rings presumably indicating rank around the wrists and at the collar.

  Olga thought that he looked familiar. “Wait, I’ve seen you before – weren’t you on that cartoon the kids liked all that time ago, don’t tell me, it was Space Cruiser Bismarck, something like that, right? And you are Admiral Luther Nagumo? Right?”

  Fanboy shook his head. “No, it’s from Space Battleship Scharnhorst. Admiral Nagumo was from the second season of Raiders of the Photosphere.” He straightened up proudly. “I’m Dieter Waystar, Captain of the Free Earth Alliance Space Battleship Scharnhorst, at your service!”

  Uncle Jon shook his head. “Only Fanboy would show up to a dinner party as a fictional character. And one from a children’s adventure show.”

  Fanboy’s enthsiasm was undimmed. “And why not? Space Battleship Scharnhorst is my favorite show, at least that’s not a real battle recording. Besides, this character was the Captain of the Scharnhorst, and I am legally my own executive officer, so who better than to give orders to myself from?”

  Frisbee just rolled his eyes. Olga was confused, though, and said “you are your own executive officer? I mean, a joke, or for real?”

  Uncle Jon responded. “Well, you see, at one time the lawyers had a problem with fully independent cybernetic weapons systems. So they hit upon the solution of making us all honorary humans, and commissioning us as our own commanders, so that we could legally give ourselves orders.”

  “But isn’t that silly? Doesn’t that come out to the same thing as saying that you are independent?”

  “Indeed,” said Uncle Jon. “But it made the lawyers happy.”

  “Do you actually give yourselves formal orders?”

  “Of course not. We just do what we decide to do, the same as you.” Uncle Jon turned and looked at Fanboy. “But there are exceptions…”

  Fanboy was embarrassed. “OK, I confess, sometimes I do give orders to myself. It feels so much more official when I do. More nautical. It focuses the mind. You should try it sometime.” The rest of the cybertanks just sighed and sniffed their whiskey again.

  Suddenly Fanboy brightened. “I know! I can make uniforms for all of you, from Space Battleship Scharnhorst! Old Guy, you’d make a great Admiral Apogee! Frisbee, you’d be perfect as Space Officer Helmholtz, and you, Uncle Jon, could be Space Commando Major Wolfgang Ecliptic!” He turned to Olga. “And you could be Ensign Angela Corona!”

  Uncle Jon cradled his head with his hands, Old Guy started chuckling, and Frisbee looked at the ceiling and said “Oy.” “Sure why not?” said Olga. “Make me a costume and I’ll wear it. But it had better be my size.”

  Fanboy could barely contain himself. “I shall have the uniform manufactured and delivered to your quarters within the hour! This will be awesome!”

  Uncle Jon reached over to pour Olga another sip of the whiskey, and she got a glimpse of his fingers and startled.

  “Your fingertips. They don’t have fingerprints, they have little zig-zag lines on them. I just now noticed. Does that mean anything?”

  Uncle Jon made a show of examining his fingers.

  “Oh, yes, this”, said Uncle Jon. “These are just fingerprints, same as yours, they help to keep the grip from slipping, it’s just that mine are in the form of my tread-pattern. It doesn’t signify anything, really.”

  Frisbee spoke up. “You know that no two cybertanks are alike, right? Even members of the same class have different minds, and for a time we all had slightly different tread patterns, the same as every human has different fingerprints. The fad died out centuries ago, but some of us still use our original tread patterns for the fingertips of our humanoid androids. I mean, one pattern is as good as another.”

  Fanboy thrust his hand in Olga’s face. Olga looked carefully, and saw what appeared to be normal human fingerprints. She looked back up at him. “Huh?”

  Fanboy lowered his hands, and appeared to be extremely proud of himself. “These are the actual fingerprints of Gunther Thiele, the actor who played Captain Dieter Waystar in the first five seasons of the live action version of Space Battleship Scharnhorst! They were in the archives. Of course, I’m not counting the actor they used in the sixth season. That was widely considered a failure. The rebooted version was better, but still, when most fans think of Dieter Waystar it’s Gunther Thiele that they have in mind. He really owned the role.”

  “Uh, that’s nice,” said Olga.

  The party continued on like this for a time, and Olga had to admit that she was enjoying herself. There were times dealing with a cybertank that she was reminded that they were not true human beings, but massive war machines with abilities far beyond hers. Still, they had their own personalities, and when they chose to let a piece of themselves come down to her level they could be charming and witty. Uncle Jon talked about history, and some of the minor gaps in their records that his work with Olga had helped fill in. Frisbee discussed his work on alien biospheres, Fanboy waxed rhapsodic about the details of some of his favorite combat recordings, while Old Guy mostly leaned back and listened. Zippo was generally tolerable but he insisted on personally inspecting every new drink or appetizer that they produced.

  In the next salon over lowercase had finally finished playing the saxophone, and could be seen animatedly talking with two other cybertank androids that she knew belonged to Doubletap and Rock Dancer. There was also a meter-wide cube with intricate surface detail that she knew was a representative of the office copier civilization. It didn’t say anything, but every now and then would produce a printed sheet of paper with a detailed menu of all the food and beverages that had been served. Presumably this was what sentient office copiers did at parties.

  She got up to take a break, and as she walked back to the lounge she passed a room where some of the cybertanks were playing a game of lawn-darts. It looked dangerous.

  The Fanboy android suddenly cocked his head, as if listening to something far away. “I just got a message,” he said. “It seems that one of our guests, namely Rock Dancer, may be under attack.” The viewscreen on the lounge wall flashed into life. It showed mostly black, with some stars on it, but nestled in the center were a cluster of objects. They had been rendered fuzzy with the extreme magnification, but they were clearly regular polyhedra. Olga gave Fanboy a blank look. “What are these?”

  Fanboy explained. “These are apparently Amok space battleships. There are ten of them, each a kilometer across, and two have just diverted to attack Rock Dancer’s main hull. This should be amazing!”

  There was a main conference center, and everyone decided to move there so that they could watch the battle in real-time. Olga knew that modern combat was so complex that only a multi-processing mind could comprehend the fullness of it, but for once she had company. Of those present, only Fanboy could completely understand the data being transmitted from the combat. The main hulls of the other cybertanks were also getting full data feeds, but their android bodies were in some respects as limited as she was. They could have transmitted themselves back to their main selves, but decided that for the time being that they would experience the excerpts with her.

  They walked into a modernistic conference suite that was dominated by a single massive viewscreen on one wall. As they were taking their seats the one called Doubletap tried to start a conversation with Old Guy, but Old Guy just replied with a curt hello and moved to the other side of the room. Olga wondered what this was about; she had met the one called Doubletap before and he seemed OK. She walked over with Old Guy and whis
pered into his ear.

  “So what was that all about?”

  Doubletap and I have a long history. We have issues. It happens.

  “I thought that you were all one big happy socialist family?”

  Think again. We cybertanks are individuals, like humans or vampires, we have our likes and dislikes, differing views on where our society should be going. And we are more anarcho-syndicalist than socialist, for whatever that’s worth. Anyhow it’s not a big deal. I just don’t like him. It’s as simple as that.

  Because Fanboy was the only one that could fully process the data, he acted as a narrator and interpreter, a role that he accepted with unalloyed joy. Even though the transmissions were in real-time, Fanboy thought fast enough that by the time he formed the words to explain what was on the viewscreen, he had already seen it and analyzed it. Thus it was that he described most of the combat in the past tense, which was a little rattling until she got used to it.

  Olga quickly realized that real space battles are quite astonishingly boring. The viewscreen would show some fuzzy blobs that sat unchanging for minutes or even hours, and then there would be some little flashes of light and Fanboy would go on and on about how Rock Dancer had been really clever in setting up some sort of false sensor probe that had fooled the Amok into using a non-optimal frequency band and caused them to put such-and-such missiles into the wrong trajectories and something mumble fourth power stuff thingie encabulator technospeak and so on and so forth. The others were eating this up but Olga had only human patience.

  Olga settled into a routine where she would go off and entertain herself, take a nap, snack on some blood, catch a movie, then pop back into the conference room for an update. She watched the android of the one known as Rock Dancer watching the video transmissions of himself fighting for his life. They were over ten light-minutes away from the battle, so there was nothing that he could do but observe. She didn’t know Rock Dancer well, he was a quiet one who she gathered did not get out much. Zippo had curled up in his lap and appeared to be sleeping or on standby or whatever it was that that space monkeys did when they weren’t running around in circles.

 

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