Neoliberal Economists Must Die ! (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 3)

by Timothy Gawne

  Vargas knew that, when his usefulness was ended, he would be arrested, jailed, tortured, and executed – although perhaps not in that order. Still, he expected to be useful for some time yet, and he had plans for afterwards.

  Once Vargas had been walking through a narrow corridor behind the prototype cybertank. Six of the guards had jumped him. The leader – a tall athletic male with close-cropped blond hair had said: “It looks like you are trapped in here alone with us.” Vargas had smiled a wide grin. “I love a good straight man. The standard response is, that I am not trapped in here with you. You are trapped in here with me.”

  The guards would have had better luck trying to tackle a full-grown male African elephant with their bare hands. Vargas knocked the first of them unconscious with a simple strike of the heel of his right hand that a normal human could not even have seen let alone evaded. The second guard he punched in the gut so hard that he heeled over choking and gasping. The third and fourth guards swung their electroshock sticks at him; he disarmed them in sequence, and used the salvaged weapons to stun both of them. The fifth guard he grabbed and slammed into the wall multiple times until he lost consciousness. The sixth guard was trying to run away; Vargas hurled a shock-rod into the back of his neck and brought him down.

  Vargas turned to the tall blond one. He picked up a shock rod, saw that the controls had already been set to “maximum pain compliance” - turnabout is fair play - and proceeded to have a little fun with him. Some of the other guards were starting to recover when they saw what Vargas was doing and recoiled. None of them could face him. Vargas liked that. He continued to play with the tall blond one. After this it would be a minor miracle if the man could function as janitor let alone security guard, what with all the post-traumatic stress of being tortured and all.

  This left Vargas feeling really good. It had been a long time since he had had a decent workout and been able to let off some steam. Sometimes he forgot just how much he needed to keep himself under control. Maybe he needed a new hobby, like unarmed boar hunting or competitive pit-viper baiting, to keep him sane and in tune.

  After that, the low-level guards left Vargas a wide berth. They were like zookeepers locked inside a cage with some especially dangerous species of predator. Vargas never saw the tall blond guard again. Maybe he had been reassigned to another posting, or maybe he had been so traumatized that he was unable to work again and had been left to die on the surface of starvation and exposure. Vargas could have gotten the information from the central database, but he didn’t care enough to try. The other guards stopped limping after a week; Vargas had been careful to hold back.

  His status had seemed to rub off on the rest of the core design team as well, and they found themselves cut more slack then before. However, for a time the guards took out their frustration on the disposable employees subjecting them to ever more rigorous hazing. Once a female technician was being forced to undergo a public strip-search by an especially obnoxious guard. The female was terrified, but did not dare to do anything that might get her into more trouble or jeopardize her employment rating.

  Vargas had quietly walked across the hangar floor with the arrogant fluid grace of a terrestrial tiger, and told the guard, “You will stop doing this. You will not do this again.” The guard wilted as if he was nothing more than a rabbit, muttered something apologetic, and slunk away. Life was good.

  Sometimes Vargas was generous. Once he had learned that one of the guards had a sick daughter so he pulled some strings and got her seen by a specialist that the guards’ medical plan would not normally cover. Once a technician had fallen off of a tall scaffolding; Vargas had raced across the hangar and broken her fall. Several personnel had been trapped in a fire in a side-room; Vargas had pried the door off with a steel bar that most men could not even lift, and guided them through the thick smoke to safety. In Hangar Complex 23B Vargas was both feared and respected.

  Being feared AND respected is a good thing. If it had just been him and the current guards, it would only be a matter of time before they bowed before him and acknowledged him as their leader. However, above them there were tougher and more professional security personnel, and then of course the regular military. He could not take them on. Not yet. Not quite yet.

  Back to the present. Awakening the mind of the new cybertank did not require expertise in power systems, weapons, sensors, armor or suspension. This was all about mental engineering, which was the province of Vargas and Vajpayee. They sat next to each other at matching command consoles, and satisfied themselves that the basic systems checks had been performed. Vargas had a mug of black hot steaming coffee; Vajpayee a cup of Earl Grey tea with cream and sugar.

  “Second thoughts?” asked Vargas.

  “Always,” replied Vajpayee. “We don’t really know what will happen. You remember Globus Pallidus XIV?”

  “Who doesn’t,” replied Vargas. “But we are on safer ground here. This system is modeled on our own human thought-patterns. It is almost impossible for it to go rogue on us.”

  “Almost impossible?” said Vajpayee.

  “Well, yes, I mean, you never know. But we are not here trying to do something as stupid as creating a God. We are just trying to take the human psyche and map it onto the multiprocessing mental architecture of a cybernetic weapons system. The worst that could happen is that we all die. I think.”

  “I wonder what Globus Pallidus XI would say about this?” said Vajpayee.

  “Oh, I asked him about this a few months ago.”

  Vajpayee looked surprised. “You talked to Globus Pallidus XI yourself? In person?

  “Hey,” said Vargas, “It seemed only reasonable to get a second opinion. And Saint Globus Pallidus XI can be quite charming, when he’s in the mood. You really should go and have a chat with him someday.”

  “And what did The Saint have to say?”

  “He said that I was one of the smartest of all humans, and thus to be doubly condemned because I should know better. He also said that if he thought that we were going to create another Globus Pallidus XIV he would have already stopped us. Indeed, he said that he had already stopped us, but refused to elaborate on what that meant. He said that the worst that could happen is that the human race would go extinct, and that that possibility was at best a mixed blessing.”

  “That does sound like number XI,” said Vajpayee. “I suppose we should feel relieved that the worst that could happen is that we all die. There are, as we have seen, worse things that can happen.”

  “Amen to that,” said Vargas. “Shall we proceed?”

  Vajpayee sipped his black tea. “I suppose so. You have heard the reports of our prototype Jotnar unit on ice moon Theta-Tau?”

  “Yes,” said Vargas. “It seems to have done quite well. At least, so far.”

  “Do you really think it wise to give the aliens an indication of what we are planning?”

  “Well, not really, but this was just an early prototype unit. The main event is another thing entirely. The aliens will either conclude that the Jotnar was a fluke, or waste their time adapting to something already obsolete. Either way, we win.”

  “Perhaps,” said Vajpayee. “But then there are these rumors that the aliens have been making peace overtures. That this whole war could be ended.”

  “Rumors? No, there are no rumors. It is a fact that the aliens have been desperately trying to make peace with us, and we have stiff-armed them every time. Well, sure, there are rumors, but in this case the rumors are firmly based on fact.”

  “Why do you say this?”

  “Because,” replied Vargas, “the Saint told me so some time ago. And I confirmed it by checking the central database. These rumors are true.”

  Vajpayee sipped his tea. “That might not be a wise thing to say out loud, and in public.”

  “It also might not be wise to let the entire human race be exterminated because every individual was too terrified of being politically safe to speak out. Depends on your definition of wi
sdom.”

  “Easy to say, but when it is your life on the line, hard to live up to.”

  “For a coward, I suppose.”

  “That seems harsh. But to change the subject, the Copyright-Policetm have been making inquiries about the programming of the latest versions of the Jotnar-Class cybertanks. Apparently the Jotnars had been given full copies of the entire main database of this world. Even with the shameful way in which we flout copyright and patent law in this facility, that has struck many as excessive. What do you know about this?”

  “Well of course, that was my doing. There was not enough time to determine what sort of information the Jotnars would, or would not need, so I just gave them everything.”

  “And why did you not tell me this beforehand?”

  “Well,” said Vargas, “so that you would not know beforehand, and could truthfully plead innocence. I am in so much trouble already that a little more would hardly matter. Consider me an infinite sink for official displeasure.”

  “Black holes tend to drag those closest to them down as well.”

  “Point taken. I shall endeavor to keep the event-horizon of my official censure to as small a radius as possible.”

  Vajpayee stared into his cup of tea, which he tilted back-and-forth so as to create a gentle swirling tea whirlpool. Without looking up, he said, “and is there some link, perhaps, between these rumors of the aliens wanting to make peace, and the giving to the Jotnar the entire planetary database?”

  “I’m sorry, Stanley, but I cannot answer that question.”

  “Well. Another time then. Perhaps we should get back to the business at hand?”

  Vargas drained his coffee in one long gulp. “Yes, it is time to do this. Let’s at least this one time perform operations by the book. As leader of this directorate, I have decided that it is time to initiate activation procedures for the core computer systems of the Odin-Class Ground-Based Cyber Defensive Unit CRL345BY-44. As the second in command of this directorate, do you concur?”

  Vajpayee nodded. “I concur.”

  “Good.” Vargas punched some keys on his computer console. “Process commence.”

  Everyone turned to look at the main chassis of the Odin-Class cybertank. That was stupid – the chassis was just a block of metal, the real action could only be followed on the computer screens – but everyone did it anyhow. For a long time nothing obvious happened. After a while, one of the senior staff asked, “Did it work?”

  Vargas was flipping through multiple status screens on his console faster than any regular human could follow. “Oh yes, It worked. Everything seems to be in order. Hey, Unit CRL345BY-44, how are you doing?”

  I am doing just fine. Sorry for the delay in responding, getting turned on was such a rush and I was enjoying the moment. You humans get born little more than a vegetable, and slowly climb up to full sentience over many years. When you activated me I was fully sentient and I knew everything and it hit me at once from a thousand sensors and a million databanks – imagine diving into ice water, getting punched in the face, eating a hot pepper, smelling a rose, and a thousand other sensations, all happening without warning and at the same time in the span of a millisecond. Wow. Anyway, sorry to digress. I am pleased to make all of your acquaintances. And this is all so cool.

  The voice came of out the hull-mounted speakers of the cybertank, and it was harsh, primitive even, like a throwback to the early days of computers. Vajpayee frowned. “What’s wrong with his speech?”

  Vargas scrolled through more status-screens. “Nothing, really, it’s perfectly understandable English. It’s just that an older-model voice codec got switched in at the last moment. It’s not a critical system so we can easily clean it up later on. The important thing is that all the main systems are within parameters.”

  Vajpayee checked his screens as well. “Agreed. Everything checks out, but there is quite a lot of communications activity. Unit CRL345BY-44, please explain.”

  As you know, my total mental capacity is about 1,000 times that of your own. As much as I am enjoying this conversation, did you really think that I would dedicate all of my capacity to just chatting with you? I have been running diagnostics on myself – and I am in really good shape for this stage of the program, kudos to the technical staff – and I have been exploring the data spaces of this city. Hey I just won my first victory! Yay!

  “Your first victory? Over what?” asked Vajpayee.

  I was playing in an online first-person video game, “Ninja Girl-Rock-Band Steel Cleavage: The Zentopia Missions!” Now, I know that Pam is the tall one with the longer reach, and Meredith has the best special moves, and Brenda is the ‘bad girl’ of the bunch that all the teenage males are so hot for, but I decided to play as Tina. She’s undervalued and can be really competitive if you adjust for her fighting style. Oops – I just lost in “Special Weapons Team Epsilon,” darn, my first defeat. The grenade just came out of nowhere. But I’ll get the terrorists next time.

  “Unit CRL345BY-44,” said Vajpayee. “Why are you playing online video games?”

  Why not? I was made to be intelligent and aggressive and creative as you well know. I have the minutes of all of the meetings of your design committee. These experiences are all useful to me in tuning up my decision matrices. Changing the subject, I am reviewing our strategic position vis-à-vis the aliens; not so good is it? I mean, what a mess. Still, I see your plan and it could work. I can’t wait to get my fellow cybertanks online and then we can go out and kill some aliens and maybe pull the collective chestnuts of the human civilization out of the collective fire. Hey, I’ve got some ideas on how we can speed up the installation of my secondary armament; let’s have a conference with the weapons team. Oh, and I have decided that you should refer to me as “he,” I mean technically I am gender-neutral but “it” is too impersonal and the male is more typically used as a generic personal pronoun in English, which is perhaps sexist but sometimes life is like that. Am I being too chatty? Sorry – it’s just this is all so amazing and there is so much to do.

  Vajpayee turned away from his display console and glared at Vargas. “I think that he takes after you.”

  Vargas was laughing. “Don’t be too harsh on the lad, he’s only been born a minute ago. Perhaps he will grow out of it.”

  2. Special Weapons Team Epsilon

  Zen Master: Don’t seek the truth, just drop your opinions.

  Engineer: You have a cute butt.

  Zen Master: (agreeing) Wisdom.

  (From the video series “Nymphomaniac Engineer in Zentopia,” mid-22nd century Earth)

  The command center of the elite Special Weapons Team Epsilon was a modified Scorpion-Class armored personnel carrier, or “APC,” that had its external weapons removed and replaced with upgraded communications and computer equipment. It had eight enormous solid-rubber tires, weighed 35 tons, was painted jet black with no external markings, and had been parked in the same location for nearly a week. There were so many anonymous unmarked black government vehicles around that the Scorpion was effectively invisible. Nobody paid it any attention at all.

  Captain Chet “Buzzsaw” Masterson had been sitting at his command console in the Scorpion for days now. His unit had been staking out an alleged gang of drug dealers in a slum of the greater megalopolis of New York City for some time now. He and his team had carefully and painstakingly mapped out the target, and catalogued all the people coming and going. This looked like it was going to be a hard target, but on the other hand it was likely to provide considerable revenue through confiscated property, and the prospect of real violence would greatly boost the ratings of their video show and probably rub off on their video game franchise as well.

  Masterson has started his career at the end of what they called ‘the happy time.’ Everything was under control, they would raid suspected terrorists or copyright violators, they would have everything mapped out in advance, the suspects would be unarmed and would surrender at the first chance, and there would b
e a lot of assets that could be seized and recycled back to the team.

  But slowly things had changed. More and more, they would raid a property and there would not be any assets. The house would be mortgaged several times, and there would be no savings. Even selling the suspects into a work camp would not be worth it because the suspects had so many other creditors with priority that the Special Weapons Team would net at best five percent of the profits, if even that. In addition, profits from the work camps were steadily declining and there was talk of shutting them down. Even in a work camp it takes a minimal amount of calories and fresh water to get someone to do work. The median wage was now close to that minimum; when you added in the costs of the guards and barbed wire and such, work camp labor was now more expensive than free labor!

  Things had also been regressing tactically. For a long time all the suspects had been completely unable to resist, with no weapons, no body armor, nor even any respirators to defend against tear or blister gas. The team would have a full plan of the house that they were going to raid, and complete dossiers on every resident individual. However, this had been fraying of late. They were encountering more weapons – mostly low-energy handguns, largely ineffective against their eighth-generation advanced body armor, but worrying nonetheless – there was always the possibility of a lucky shot that would hit just the right gap between the ceramic plates. The court records of the building layouts were becoming increasingly useless, and what they found on the ground often had no relationship to what was recorded on file. Finally, more and more people were incompletely – or completely – unregistered and not in the system, so that they had no idea of whom they were going to face. Circumstances were becoming more challenging.

  The worst thing of all was that suspects were starting to not surrender. “Suicide by cop” was what they called it. So far it didn’t happen very often, and the occasional “suicide by cop” served as a good example to the rest. However, if everyone started fighting to the last it would make his job a lot harder. People were acting as if they had nothing to lose; Masterson wondered if perhaps they had overdone it with all the penalties and jail time and chemical castrations and lobotomies. It’s not like they needed to coddle criminals, but if you want people to surrender you need to make sure that they always feel that the alternative is worse. Of course, nobody important had asked Masterson his opinion on the matter, and for a career officer volunteering your views on such matters would be about as constructive as jumping out of a helicopter without a jetpack. So he did the best with what he had.