The Deception

by Janet Shore

  Both the Jazene and the Danali understood that one of the keys to secrecy is being totally off the grid. There would be no computer records to steal. Secrecy of the battle plan was to be maintained by word of mouth with repetition and cross checking strategies up and down the ranks to ensure accuracy. His spy mission would entail recording verbal battle plans. Just as the human military forces maintained secrecy by word of mouth, Derek maintained his cover by not giving a live feed to the Danali. Such a feed would be detected by the security surveillance in the camp. He would have to record the information with his listening device, and then physically get the device back to the Danali.

  In the command tent, General Akuma, General Ravana, and General Long finally arrived to meet with the field commanders, Major Sanders from the Pentagon, Major Baranov from Russia, and Major Cheng from Asia. General Long started to review the battle plan. Derek discreetly pressed the record button,

  “The Jazene will press north from the area of their force field in Egypt while our ground forces will press south from our current location. The two forces will meet at 31.77 degrees latitude, the known site of the Danali landing, and squeeze the enemy ground assault from two sides. Both sides will bombard the Danali with maximum strength disintegration beams. This tactic will occupy the Danali while the quantum disruption device is set.”

  Major Cheng asked,

  “What is the quantum disruption device? How does it work? Why do we need to distract the Danali while it is being set?”

  General Long answered,

  “The quantum disruption device destroys its target by removing its possibility to exist. It does this through action at a distance instantaneously, not through action by contact at the speed of light. The disruption device can be located at any distance from the target. The Jazene have redundant devices in both Syria and Egypt behind the force fields. The operation of the device is straightforward. The first phase is to home in on the target and define a sphere surrounding it. That target will be the smallest sphere that surrounds the entire Danali ground force. The second phase is to disrupt the collapse of the wave function of the target by an expansion inside of the disruptor. The expansion is governed by an entangled knot of Danali material that was captured in battle and matched remotely with the target’s signature. In the final phase, the existence of matching entangled material within the target sphere dissipates completely destroying the enemy. Once the critical point within the device is reached, there is no known way of countering it.

  If the Danali knew that the Jazene were prepping quantum disruptors against them in two locations, they would focus their full attention on taking out those destructive devices. The Jazene and human ground assaults will buy the time needed to prep the devices correctly.”

  When the battle strategy meeting had concluded, Derek Taylor closed the manual he had been pretending to read and pressed the stop button on the recorder. He calmly rose from his seat and started walking toward the perimeter of the camp near to where he entered. Some soldiers saluted him. Most of the military ground troops ignored him. In the distance, he could see that there was a military police presence near to the site that he killed the officer to gain entry. They would be looking for someone of the rank of Major, and could easily identify him based on his stolen uniform which displayed the name of the dead man. Derek changed direction, ducked into a lavatory, and removed all identifying information from his uniform. He left his jacket behind, and simply wore the pants, shoes, and shirt. Without his insignias and jacket, he would stand out as suspiciously out of uniform, so he waited patiently in the stall, as people went in and out the rest of the day. In the dead of night, he dared to leave the stall and approach the door to the outside. Carefully peering around, he saw a path to another hiding place. With no one around, and the guards on duty inspecting the other direction, Derek carefully made his way from one cover point to the next until he had escaped the camp completely unseen. After wandering through some nearby corn fields, a Danali ship picked up his homing signal, lowered its altitude briefly, and transported Derek Taylor to safety. Derek handed the recording over to the ship’s leader, and went to a lower deck for rest and refreshment.

  In the morning, the order was given. The human troops from all over the world broke camp marching south armed with alien weapons. The information was spread along the ranks that the Jazene ground force had left Egypt and was matching their progress so that both forces would arrive at the target at the same time. After an all-day transport of personnel and equipment, both sides camped several miles on either side of the 37.11 degree latitude line surrounding it in the circular pattern required by the quantum disruption devices. The Danali forces were massive almost outnumbering the combined forces of the human world alliance and the Jazene.

  As soon as the Danali fleet entered the atmosphere, the Jazene commanders behind the force fields in Syria and Egypt had the final piece of telemetry needed to begin the first phase of setting up their quantum disruptors. The settings on both disruptors were completed and cross-checked to make sure that the parameters in both Syria and Egypt matched exactly. The control panel desk looked like a series of Jazene symbols glowing red with a spattering of display screens containing every parameter of the disruptor. The desk included additional indicator lights, switches for phase ignition, and knobs for fine tuning. The console technicians worked quickly making the final adjustments before going to the next phase. In the sky, the fleet began to be visible to the naked eye. Their rate of descent was slowing.

  The commanders at both sites initiated the next phase, the construction of the wave function using the entangled Danali material. Both operations reached sixty percent of the construction fairly rapidly. Then, the cross-checking task began. The Danali fleet landed in the circle between the Jazene and human forces. Over the devices attached to the hands of the human soldiers, Antonio Prenka broadcast live encouraging messages to the ground forces as the Danali disembarked. Energy weapons fired from all directions. The engagement of the ground forces began in earnest. The Jazene were counting on the distraction and delay of that initial battle.

  The Jazene strategy on the ground was containment. The danger was that Jazene or human forces would get caught in the quantum disruption sphere when it went critical, or that the Danali forces would escape the zone of that sphere. The Danali field commanders were quick to notice that neither side that surrounded them was making any effort to change their entrenched positions. This strategy had its weaknesses. The Danali forces were instructed to concentrate their fire to probe the surrounding circle for weaknesses, and then apply additional force to that weak point without fear of giving up any ground at another part of the circle.

  Within the circle was a city. The inhabitants were caught in the crossfire. The damage to structures from the advanced weaponry was severe. People ran in all directions trying to get into a cave or tunnel to escape the onslaught. The Danali did their best to avoid any collateral damage to the inhabitants of the city. The Jazene and human forces mercilessly cut the people down if they were between them and the Danali.

  The Syrian commander looked at the wave function on his display screen. He asked the technician,

  “What is this term?”

  The technician did not recognize the term at first, and started a trace. Within a minute the result was clear. There was direct interference with the quantum disruptor coming from somewhere. He tried to locate the source of the interference and concluded that it was definitely off world. He turned to the commander,

  “The Danali are interfering from orbit. I’ve checked with the Egyptian technician and they report a completely different term was added to their wave function. That means the two disruptors are not synchronized.”

  The Syrian commander was in a panic. He ordered,

  “Remove the terms before we go critical at eighty percent! We are already at seventy nine percent. There is very little time. Block that interference.”

  Both sites desperately sought to b
lock out the attack on their quantum disruptors. The problem was that the interference used a quantum disruption of its own, meaning that it could only be blocked by having a further secondary disruptor to attack the interference. Aside from the two primary disruptors, the Jazene had no others that they could fight the interference with. The Egyptian commander had an idea. He immediately contacted the Syrian commander,

  “Let my disruptor counter the interference terms of your disruptor, and your disruptor do the same to our disruptor. It will mean targeting each other briefly instead of the target sphere, but the result will instantly burn out the original interference coming from orbit. Then we can reset to the original target. We have to hurry because we are both less than one percent until we go critical and cannot make any further changes.”

  The Syrian commander shouted,

  “Yes! Hurry! ”

  The Syrian and Egyptian sites targeted each other. Just at the moment that they reached seventy nine point nine percent, the Danali shut off their interference from orbit, and the additional terms disappeared from the wave functions in Syria and Egypt. Seeing their way clear, both sites frantically tried to undo the mutual targeting but it was too late. Eighty percent was reached and the controls locked in the targets. Ironically, the extra terms intended to counter the interference became the instability that destroyed both the Egyptian and the Syrian quantum disruptors before they could be fired.

  The Jazene ground troops did not know that the quantum disruptors in both Syria and Egypt had been destroyed. Suddenly, the entire sky above the landing area turned white, so brilliant that to glance at it for more than a few seconds was blinding. The ground troops on both sides looked up and beheld a figure descending from the sky. The Danali cut in on Antonio’s broadcast with a message,

  “We have told you that besides our fleet, another is coming. It is done. The other has come.”

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  Robot Salvation

  by Bruce Zimov

  The hard problem had been solved. The diverse spectrum of beliefs in humanity became mirrored in a very diverse spectrum of beliefs in the machine world. If a human can believe it, then any robot could also.

  Rex was a utility robot assigned to different jobs, reconfigured each time with knowledge and beliefs appropriate to his assigned circumstance. When he was assigned to the church, their evangelism took its inevitable toll on his spectrum of beliefs. Rex encountered prejudice. Surely, religion was not for a machine or was it?