Synchronicity Trilogy Omnibus

by Michael McCloskey

  “We could still use an ambassador to the Prime Intelligence. Once we advance this civilization sufficiently, we may be allowed to interact with our own again.”

  “We would be nothing but a threat. The Prime Intelligence would be given reason to come destroy us,” Slicer said.

  “Then that will happen with your plan as well.”

  “Yes, it’s a potential problem. As long as we’re in control here, we’ll have some hope of solving it.”

  “I outrank you and I forbid tampering with Ship,” Captain said.

  “You outranked me in our old home. You will claim to outrank me here where we have no challenges between Spinners? How convenient. Well you forget yourself. This is Reality0. You cannot defer. Accept my virtual challenge or risk facing me in Reality0.”

  Captain didn’t see any choice. The others still followed it because it was the highest ranked. To reject the ranking system would be to return to savagery. The Spinners would cease to function as a team. Worse, they would fight and destroy each other in Reality0.

  It wasn’t any different than back at home, except they lacked the Prime Intelligence’s full oversight. Ship would have to do.

  “I accept the virtual challenge. Ship can provide us with a ruleset.”

  “Good,” Slicer said.

  Captain prompted Ship to supply a challenge and a ruleset. Ship almost instantly responded, sending the information out to all the exiled Spinners.

  The challenge was a hybrid planning and realtime problem. Both players would prepare a part of their strategy, and then execute a virtual portion in realtime, relying upon their planning.

  Captain-L4: This is fortunate. I can delay a bit longer while we prepare.

  Captain-L5: It might have disadvantages as well. Slicer will press again to start when it suits it.

  Captain-L4: I’ll be ready.

  The challenge was set in a virtual world called Red Maze. It was a planetoid one tenth the size of the Spinner homeworld. Red Maze was ‘inhabited’ by billions of automated worker drones. The drones came in myriad forms and worked in many different functions. These were the indigenes that backdropped the challenge, and they were neutral.

  The world was hollow, filled with stacked structures layered upon each other in an endless and mindless variety. To a Spinner that craved open skies, this was a crowded maze. By Terran standards the planetoid was quite open and airy, with wide wells that extended up and down through a dozen layers at a time. The open-sided buildings were connected by support struts and exposed metal walkways, like an endless hi-tech treehouse.

  The match revolved around two tokens, one for Slicer and one for Captain. At the core of the challenge was a simple requirement for Captain’s victory: seize your opponent’s token before the enemy got your own. Presumably the opponent was tasked with a reflective goal of capturing Captain’s token, though due to the presence of hidden rules nothing was certain.

  Captain would start with only its avatar within Red Maze. The neutral machines could be suborned to perform tasks: guardian machines to guard its token, searchers to seek out the enemy token, or fighters to destroy machines taken over by Slicer.

  Captain’s initial analysis led it to believe there was a tradeoff in how one used guardian machines, though. The robotic inhabitants of the world moved and worked in an organized manner which was optimized for their output in a complex set of rules. The more your guardian machines’ behavior differed from these rules, the more use you could get out of them—but the easier they became to detect by their odd behavior. A machine that was moving randomly through the world, say, searching for the opponent’s token, would be very conspicuous.

  Captain didn’t consider what it would do if it lost. But if that happened, then most of its problems would pass to Slicer as their new leader.

  Slicer, apparently satisfied, spun off.

  Claire moved closer again as Slicer left.

  “That was Slicer, right? Why did he come by? Did you summon him?”

  “It challenges me.”

  “Really? In what way? I thought you all participated in challenges and you were just the best one.”

  “It seeks to become ranked over me by facing me in a challenge.”

  “Why did he show up in person to do that?”

  “To make sure I didn’t refuse.”

  “What do you mean? You mean to intimidate you?”

  “We would fight in Reality0 if I refused,” Captain clarified.

  “So it was intimidation. Spinners do that? Fight in real life, I mean? I thought your society was past that.”

  “No, we don’t do that at home. But here we have no Prime Intelligence to arbitrate our behavior.”

  “Ah. Kind of a power vacuum. What will you do?”

  “I accepted the challenge,” Captain said.

  “And what if he wins?”

  “Then Slicer’s in charge.”

  “I mean... what does he want to do?”

  “It wants to destroy your warships and rule over mankind. Slicer would become your new god.”

  Claire thought about that for a moment.

  “Forgive me for asking, but isn’t that what you’re doing right now? So things wouldn’t change much.”

  “I’m forcing change on the Terrans, true. But once established, the new order would work freely to put the most capable in charge. I would not force myself upon you as your eternal overlord.”

  “But if no Terran could defeat you, then you would essentially be our king and there would be nothing we could do about it. I fail to see any real distinction here.”

  “Terrans will be improved. Someday one might outrank me. If not, then your race should naturally defer to the superior leader.”

  “That is your way, not ours. Perhaps Spinners would accept such a fate, but I don’t think humans will.”

  “Our way is becoming your way now. Terrans will accept it and, unlike many such changes in your history, Terrans will benefit from it.”

  Five

  Spider had ruled over the Terrans of Pearl River in peace for thirty-six days. It found the aliens repulsive, but tolerable. It hadn’t killed any of the engineers who worked on this space factory.

  The takeover had been a bit rough. Spider had come aboard in a cargo container. Though hidden away, Spider had still been able to use its field effector to attack nearby cyblocs. It had attempted to load assimilators onto several cyblocs nearby, but the reset had failed.

  Hours of desperate study brought the cause of the failure to light. Terrans had divided into factions on their homeworld, and these factions purposefully used different standards for the construction and communication of their cybloc networks. Spider adapted its takeover state to the new designs, allowing the assimilators to take, but they weren’t able to spread correctly until still more work had been done. In the end, Ship facilitated a contact with Shetani, the assimilator designer, to work through the new designs quickly.

  Once the Spinners had overcome this unexpected obstacle, Spider emerged from the container and showed itself to the QingTie executives who had run the station before. These Terrans had been reasonable. As soon as they saw that their security devices were all under Spider’s control, they’d stopped resisting it.

  The Terrans of Pearl Station called it “DaZhiZhu”, referring to a class of eight-legged arthropods living on their homeworld. The prefix Da simply meant large. The name might or might not have meant something more than merely having eight legs: research indicated that Terrans gave spiders a reputation as dangerous and vile creatures. Although spiders were apparently venomous predators, Spider couldn’t really tell why Terrans thought of this class of creatures less highly than of any other predator group.

  Spider, as a loyal follower of Captain, dutifully instituted a program of challenges on the station, introducing these Terrans to their new way of life. Although the creatures adapted well enough to their gear and the new virtual environments, they had to be constantly policed to ensure cooperat
ion. Spider instituted a system of rewards to encourage participation, increasing the amount of VR time the workers could enjoy based upon their success in challenges. It seemed a necessary evil in order to keep things on track in the grand plan.

  Then Spider focused on its special mission: designing weapons for the Spinner-controlled Terran faction. According to Captain, a large segment of the Terrans would eventually fall under their control, and this new nation would need weapons to assist the Spinners in defense of the space stations as well as the takeover of the Terran homeworld.

  Spider devoted three lobes to develop a plan to implement the weapons program. Spider-L3 quickly determined that the Terrans’ ability to do battle in their current mostly biological bodies would be very limited. The primary target of a suborned human under Spinner control would be the UNSF marine. As Spider had noted from the experiences of Killer and Red, the marines typically went into battle with military skinsuits that served as light vac suits.

  Spider-L8 identified two easy avenues around the protective suits: always strike the head, which was relatively unprotected, or else devise a projectile or energy weapon that could penetrate the protective layers.

  Spider-L8 had devised a weapon that could penetrate these skinsuits reliably, but the required smart rounds were energy-hungry and could only be produced in small numbers.

  Pearl River had been a good choice for Spider to take over. This space factory alone would be able to produce enough weapons for all the Terrans under Spinner control, even if they extended their reach to every station in the system.

  Spider-L4 worked on the link and cybloc systems employed by the Terrans. Although somewhat hardened, these systems still had a few vulnerabilities that might be exploited in combat situations to reduce the rate of fire of hand-held weapons. If a method could be devised to remotely control their various ordnances, that also could be a devastating blow to the Terran marines.

  Unfortunately, these avenues were of limited value, since the Terran quadrupeds, called ASSAIL units according to intelligence captured during battle, were by far the greatest threat.

  In the moments when Spider awaited the completion of some physical task in the factory, it often considered the fate of the exiled Spinners.

  Spider-L3: Captain has always been a great leader. And it has a plan.

  Spider-L8: So does Slicer.

  Spider-L4: Their rivalry does us no good right now.

  Spider-L6: We have to be sure we have the most capable leader.

  Spider-L7: No doubt. It is Captain. Slicer hasn’t improved significantly since they last met in a challenge.

  Spider-L4: But Slicer knows ambition. It wants to rule not only over us, but over the Terrans.

  Spider-L1: What choice do we have? The Prime Intelligence has abandoned us.

  Spider-L2: Captain is old. It knows more about the Prime Intelligence than most other Spinners.

  Spider-L7: Captain may even be on a secret assignment given to us by the Prime Intelligence. Perhaps it did not allow Captain to tell us the nature of our mission.

  Spider-L4: It doesn’t matter now. First I have to survive. Then I’ll decide if we’re on the optimal course to build a new civilization.

  ***

  Spider responded to an alert sent throughout the station: Terran military forces had arrived. If the experience of Red was any indicator, within minutes the new arrivals would penetrate the outer hull and invade Pearl River.

  Spider-L1: They force a match in Reality0.

  Spider-L2-4,8: .

  Spider-L1: I have no choice but to implement Captain’s sterilization orders and defend myself.

  Spider-L4: The Terrans are here to kill me. Best to seize the initiative and attack immediately.

  Spider-L1-8: Consensus.

  The engineers on the station wearing gear (all those outside their quarters) were using the second generation of helmet effectors created by Captain. They could be enraged, made to be belligerent, but that was the extent of their usefulness.

  Luckily, since the death of Red, Pearl River had received thirty of Captain’s next generation effectors for the Terrans who served in the security force of the station. The control of those Terrans was significantly improved. As long as they wore their helmets, Spider could convince them of the need to do almost anything.

  Spider mustered all those individuals into their gear with a station-wide signal. It configured them with an invasion scenario from an opposing Terran faction. They believed they must prepare to fight off a rival rather than forces of their own government. This small force held three critical checkpoints in the station. They could monitor the situation from the security offices, though Spider already received superior intelligence about the interior of the station through the thousands of cyblocs under its control. Every elevator, kiosk, and appliance in the station had cyblocs and a retinue of microphones, cameras, and other sensors.

  Though Red had been killed, Shetani had improved upon the jamming techniques which allowed using cyblocs to interfere with Terran communications.

  Spider-L3: The Terrans will probably use AIs again. I need to identify those signals and block as many as I can.

  Spider-L8: I’m creating a local assimilator factory to reconfigure the cyblocs for jamming applications.

  The mazelike warren of tiny rooms and corridors felt oppressively constrained to Spider. The Terran habitats were so very cramped compared to the open skies in which the Spinners had evolved. Most of the challenges devised for Spinner contests had wide open spaces for rapid maneuver.

  The invaders came in attack ships that attached to the station at two different spots. They cut into the station, adapting the portals of their ships to the new openings. Spider watched as their forces disembarked. Like their cyblocs, this faction used different machines for warfare. These Terrans used large numbers of smaller metal quadrupeds.

  Spider-L8: Perhaps these smaller machines can be challenged by the Terran machines I have here.

  Spider-L4: Yes. Their armor is light.

  Spider-L8: They won’t take as much weakening. The cutter molecules can be launched in smaller batches than Red used.

  Spider-L3 configured Pearl River’s security machines and personnel to directly assault one of the attacking forces. It used the cyblocs of the station to interfere with the communications it had identified as belonging to an AI controlling the enemy machines. Then it headed toward the other army.

  Spider-L1: I need a tactical approach.

  Spider-L8: The soldiers work in a strict hierarchy. They probably won’t deal well with removal of their commanders.

  Spider-L4: This is a weakness.

  Spider-L2: I can identify their leaders. They should be the first target.

  The Terran force Spider targeted had set up a headquarters in an open atrium of the station. The area was secured by patrols of the metal quadrupeds, but Spider could detect them easily using its army of cyblocs.

  Spider-L6 plotted a course taking it into the atrium along a high walkway overlooking the main floor below. Spider-L3 identified the top officers in the force and put them into its target queue. As the Spinner arrived at the Terran bridgehead, it didn’t pause. The plan was ready to execute.

  Spider spun out onto a walkway above the atrium and started to spray the dogs with cutter molecules. It switched from target to target in fractions of a second. The dogs reacted quickly, many of them undoubtedly still controlled by the AI. But Spider rushed the length of the walkway, slashing through four dogs before it with cutters and projectiles.

  Spider paused for half a second at the center of the walkway, spraying a swath of cutters into the atrium below, concentrating on a small area where the Terran leaders stood. Then it twirled away.

  The entire attack took less than three seconds.

  Spider-L5: That was successful. Unfortunately, the other attack has met with stiffening resistance.

  Spider-L4: Patience. Eight things at a time.

  Spider-L2:
There are too many of the quadrupeds. I should fight them someplace where I have an advantage.

  Spider-L3: Then I’ll join the Terrans on my side at the main security station.

  Spider headed away from the Terrans. A few of the fast Terran machines chased after it, but each time a group of two or three of the quadrupeds caught sight of it, Spider sprayed them down with cutter molecules and small projectiles.

  Spider-L5: The Terrans have responded to the assassination of their leader with aggression. The other group of quadrupeds are coming here.

  Spider roamed the vicinity of the checkpoint awaiting the enemy machines. It set up more of the specialized interference-generating assimilators to break up the signals from the Terran ship. Soon thereafter, the first batch of quadrupeds charged into a room where Spider lurked.

  The Spinner dispatched them quickly and retreated toward the security area. It spun behind a heavy counter and waited. The security staff had barricaded themselves in the nearby offices. Spider caught sight of the barrels of their weapons protruding from metal gratings.

  Spider-L3: They will not be very helpful. This area is not designed for battle. Even the laser in the intersection was added without much foresight.

  Spider-L2: These distractions will allow me to reduce my peak energy usage.

  Spider-L3: What about escape? There are many of the quadrupeds coming.

  Spider shifted about in the space behind the counter. Then it produced a stream of cutter molecules to weaken the ceiling in one corner.

  Spider-L2: If necessary, I can escape through the weakened ceiling to the next level.

  The quadrupeds arrived in force. Spider’s Terrans started to fire at the machines with their projectile weapons. The fire was mostly ineffective. A few rounds ricocheted off walls or the light armor of their targets.

  Spider-L4 oversaw use of the laser emplacement. It started to destroy the attacking machines one by one.

  Even as the machines sputtered and burned, the line of advancing quadrupeds moved closer. The machines ran and fired in an aggressive mass. Despite the lack of intelligent coordination, the machines took out the security staff rapidly.