by Adam Roberts
By this light the seed for war was sown when Prince William, first son and heir of the King, died in a helicopter accident. He was a soldier in the feudal army at the time, although not on active service - the copter had been taking him, ironically enough, to a Scottish holiday retreat. Grouse, startled by the machine’s passage, leapt into the air in large numbers. The rotors diced and minced birdflesh. According to the accident report some of the rivets in the cockpit’s perspex dome were faulty. A weight of grouse smashed into the windshield, the perspex broke and the inadvertent missile disabled the pilot. The machine crashed into a Scottish mountain top killing six of the eleven on board, the prince amongst them.
You will remember - you can hardly have forgotten - the orgy of national grief that attended that one man’s funeral. I was living in the south-east at that time, and for months it was egregiously a feature of day-to-day life.
According to the arcane Gormenghast rules that govern royal inheritance, the status of ‘heir to the throne’ passed over to the King’s second and last remaining son. There were those who put forward the properly democratic argument at this - namely that power inheres in the people, not in one particular aristocrat; and that a nation cannot escape servility whilst still observing these antiquated traditions and making this antiquated obeisance. Who could deny the reasonableness of such as case? But the national mood in England was heightened and indeed hystericized by the first prince’s death, as it had been by the early death of his mother in a car accident. Rational debate was impossible.
Opponents therefore took a different course. After a compacted and hurried portion of internal national debate the Welsh Parliament passed a motion that it would not recognize Harry’s investiture as (again, according to the Gormenghast logic of the office’s title) Prince of Wales. They refused this, they said, pending a DNA test to determine whether Harry was indeed genetically descended from the King.
Of course, it seems to me, and perhaps it seems to you too, that this sort of strategy ought to be deprecated, as precisely inhabiting the same archaic logic as the royalists. What do bloodlines, of all things, matter in the twenty-first century? The Welsh Parliament, though, viewed matters from another angle, and arguably it was a strategically canny approach. There were rumours that Harry, a man physically rather unlike his father, was the result of an extramarital liaison, long publicly suspected, in which his mother had indulged before his birth. The supposed father was still alive, and was not a King. The Welsh non-successionists insisted upon a paternity test not because they believed that would block the accession of a new Prince of Wales (even if the case had been proved and Henry disbarred - prodigiously unlikely outcome - there was a long queue of other members of the family who would have taken the position) but precisely because they knew the King would refuse any test outright.
So he did, and angrily. So did the UK government. Royalist supporters, particularly concentrated in the south-east, gave expression of the destructive nature of their anger. There were riots, and incidents of violent crime against Celts. The tabloid newspapers - dying a slow death, as newsprint passed out of economically viability, and desperate to regain their markets - showed quite extraordinary intemperateness. The Welsh reiterated their refusal, and when Harry was invested anyway (at Windsor, not in Wales) their Parliament refused to acknowledge his authority.
The Scots were not far behind. An Act of Scottish Parliament declared, grandly and rather unrealistically, the dissolution of the Union. Although this Act was postdated, and would not officially become legislation until the death of King Charlie, the mere fact of passing it brought matters very quickly to a steamhead. Some said that the Scots Parliament did not possess the legal power to pass such an Act without a prior referendum - and as I understand this was indeed a detail of the Parliament’s charter, although the idea of a democracy being bound by the legal particularities imposed upon them by an occupying power seems strange to me. But we have already established that I ascribe to a more radical notion of democracy than some.
The UK put troops on show in Edinburgh and Glasgow; armed patrols through the main streets, helicopters in the sky and so on. The central administration in London had, though it had permitted the Scots their own assembly, never been so foolish as to give this Parliament an army of its own - and indeed had continued posting fairly large concentrations of its own troops in those cities. During this crisis, these troops were brought out of barracks. British Army soldiers drove up and down the streets of the big Scottish cities in armed cars and small tanks, and marched ostentatiously and conducted drills and training exercises in the cities’ parks. The talk was of ‘calming the situation’. Other people talked precisely of inflaming the situation. Successionists, who believed in the virtue of continuity and the preservation of the older hierarchical and quasi-feudal orders, stressed the necessity of preserving the line of succession - which meant, on the surface, recognizing that Harry was heir to the throne, and beneath the surface meant preserving the old feudal, conservative traditions and structures of power. Anti-successionists, on the other hand, declared the virtue of democracy (not my kind of democracy, of course; not real democracy) and asserted the desirability of Scotland becoming an independent Republic. A Scottish populace that had been largely indifferent to these questions during the prosperous 80s and 90s were motivated to pick sides by the severity of economy hardship. And where these sorts of tribal affiliations are concerned rational self-interest is often subordinated to something more primal and vigorous.
Of course, it would not be thorough of me if I did not identify my kind - the New Model Armies - as another cause of the conflict. What I mean when I say this is that had the Scottish Parliament not had access to an effective army, they would not have been able to enforce their decision to split. By ‘have access to’ I mean, of course, afford. Scotland, never especially rich, was now markedly poor, and made poorer by what amounted to financial sanctions put in place by the English. Fifty years earlier they would have grumbled and put up with things. Now they had an alternative.
Representatives of the Scottish administration entered into negotiations with our NMA and with two others. We three tendered various contracts, and ours won.
If armies are generally speaking complex and very expensive assault weapons, NMAs are the AK-47s of statecraft; for we are cheap and easily available and reliable. This has changed the way states deal with states.
We signed the contract as Pantegral.
8
Have I already told you about the crazy academic?
You’d be in the middle of fighting a battle, fierce and very dangerous, and you might occasionally see a journalist. Most were canny enough not to risk their souls to get a story, but some would brave it, wearing two flakjackets at once and helmets that looked three sizes too big for them, scuttling from firing position to firing position in Quasimodo postures to interview us in situ. They got a battlefront by-line, which I suppose made their stories easier to sell. But this crazy academic was a different matter. He came from the University of London, and was doing research on neural networks, of all things. This was when we were fighting in Reading, and the battle was pretty fierce. Rounds were biting deeply into the masonry. The air itself was snapping and buckling with detonations. Then, in amongst the useful and tactical information, the wiki started to note this fellow - wearing a brown suit, they said, and carrying a laptop computer. You can’t miss him, somebody posted; he has a real child-in-sweetshop expression on his face. And then I saw him with my own eyes, toddling along, asking various questions of various NMSOLDIERS, sometimes whilst they were in process of actually fighting, moving on again. He seemed to take rebuffs and abuse blithely.
He came upon me as we - myself and five comrades - were targeting a knot of enemy combatants trying to break out from a burning hi-fi shop. It was ticklish work, because they (I suppose there were something like forty people inside the building) didn’t all come out at once, but darted out in ones and twos at irregula
r intervals, and ran pell-mell in all directions across and along the street. Accordingly we needed to concentrate and keep our concentration, whilst, of course, also checking and feeding the wiki, and keeping part of our attention on the general wire.
‘Hello, I’m Professor Such-and-such,’ he said brightly (I really can’t remember his name). He had popped round the corner without warning, and without caution. It’s a miracle somebody didn’t shoot him dead there and then. ‘I’m doing research on neutral networks. Would you mind answering a few questions?’
‘You answer one first,’ said Tucker, with whom I was fighting at that moment. ‘Are you a crazy man?’
‘Ha! That’s very good!’ He was wearing a brown suit; his shirt was a Watchman design: a black ground and the sunlike yellow disc of a smiley, but with the red splatter minute hand showing four minutes past instead of four minutes to. ‘I’ll explain what my research is about, by way of,’ he said, and his burbling was drowned out by an explosion, and a prolonged series of high-hat smashing noises. Then a dozen enemy combatants ran from the shop all together, several of them with their packs or uniforms actually on fire. We concentrated our shots and knocked all of them over. When the sound of rifle fire cleared, and my nostrils were twitching to the stink of cordite and propellant and the background whiff of something much much less tolerable, there was his voice carrying on in its same burbly way, as if there had been no interruption. ‘. . . the applications in specifically computational terms. So, what I’m really interested in is the spontaneous generation of meaning nodes - you’ll pardon my jargon - in horizontal networks. Like your battlefield wiki. Your battlefield wiki is an absolutely fascinating case study, in fact’
‘Are you for real?’ I asked, in my Blade Runner snake-dancer voice.
‘I would certainly appreciate your help,’ he said, fixing his gaze on me. There was no madness in his eyes; just a sort of childish enthusiasm. He twitched, when something very loud sounded, just as anyone would. But he genuinely did seem oblivious to the very real risk of death.
‘AI?’ I said.
‘That’s right,’ he said. And there he was, opening up his antique laptop - it had keys, and everything! - right there in the middle of the battlefield. ‘I’m not fond of that phrase, actually’ he went on, ‘because scientifiction has loaded it with so many distracting connotations. But that is more-or-less what I do. The moment where computation tips over a complexity threshold into something that approaches AI. My wrinkle, in terms of research, because,’ and he snickered, as if he really were actually saying something funny, ‘because everybody is researching AI at the moment! Really, everybody! So my wrinkle is the way actual systems work. Not lab-systems, or world-web systems, but systems that are designed to operate in hostile environments. And this is a pretty hostile, a pretty hostile, environment! I think we can agree!’
‘You, mister,’ said Tucker, leaning across, ‘are plain surreal, mister.’
‘A few questions then,’ said Professor Such-and-such, tapping at keys on his laptop with his accusing finger. ‘Do you find that your interpersonal connection, the link from soldier to soldier—’
‘The wire,’ I said, and three more enemy combatants came out of the shop. They were not in a good way, flaming and smoking. I don’t really want to describe them, actually. Describing them would bring them before my mind’s eye with a little too much precision. So all I will say is that gunning them down was a kindness.
I recognize the irony in me saying that. Or perhaps you’d prefer some other term? Kismet? Karma? One k-word or other.
‘I understand,’ the academic gentleman was saying, speaking more loudly to be heard over the background noise, ‘that you employ a cradle of ADAP firewall patches? Is that so? I’m particularly interested in the question of how quasi-AI, responsive and adaptive software patches like those interact with the complex of your wiki networks.’
The roof of the building opposite was starting to roar like a lion, which meant that the rafters were giving way and air was being sucked inside at a greater rate. The whole expanse was a field of spiky yellow flame: a hologram of Bart’s haircut on a Brobdingnagian scale.
‘So let me be specific,’ the university fellow was saying. ‘The combination of ADAP patches and general interpersonal wiki communication. Do you find the wire more or less reactive after a battle, when compared to before?’
There was a smashing and a crashing noise, and the hi-fi store’s roof fell in. We slung our rifles over our shoulder and made to leave - because those particular combatants were clearly dead, and there were other jobs that needed doing on that part of the battlefield. Three or four pings were asking for help. We didn’t even need to discuss it amongst ourselves; the wiki showed a push of enemy combatants coming in behind three or four arm-cars, and we were off to join a concerted repulse. But Professor Such-and-such was eager we not go. ‘Just a few more questions!’ he cried, as we jogged off - folding his laptop and tucking it under his arm. He trotted after us head-high. How he didn’t get a chunk of shrapnel or a bullet in his forehead I don’t know. ‘I won’t take up too much of your valuable time!’ Then, as we outpaced him, he called after us: ‘research into naturally emergent functioning intelligences in high density computing networks could have material benefits—’
We went round a corner, and, looking back, I could see him trotting off in a different direction to find some more willing subjects to interview.
Did I say bullet in his forehead? I suppose I did,
9
But I’ve been over all that already. I have been scrupulous in giving you tips and hints, such that you can improve your battlefield success, and you have been consistently courteous and grateful. Or at least you have performed gratitude, you have feigned gratitude. Because you’ll take none of this on board. You have your feudal ways, and you are attached to them even though they will get you killed.
You have no idea.
Let me tell you something. After Basingstoke and Reading, when we negotiated the first ceasefire, the British Army withdrew forces to an agreed number of barracks. Our force, on the other hand, dissipated into the country as a whole, as breath dissolves into the air. We all went to our various lives. Of course we were in contact with one another the whole time, though we were spread all about the country. And I’ll tell you something more. We did not expect the enemy to honour the ceasefire - not because we considered them (you, I should say) to be any more dishonourable than any other army, but because you had been forced to accept a ceasefire after a run of lightning military defeats, the destruction of many millions of euros of your equipment and the death of many thousands of your troops. Which is to say, you had been compelled to accept ceasefire by force. And then, when you settled yourself in your barracks, and the Scottish Assembly declared Independence for Scotland, and crowds celebrated in the streets of Glasgow and Aberdeen, you would inevitably look around you and see no army in the field to pen you. In other words: we understood that the medium of the contract was force, and that when you assumed the force had disappeared you would break the contract. You thought, I daresay, that we had demobbed foolishly, prematurely, thinking our work done. But this is the core of your misunderstanding, and this is why all my tips and hints are of no use here. Because a member of a New Model Army is never demobbed, any more than the cells of your body decoalesce. The giant man you were fighting might flow and run about all over the place as perfect beads of silver, like the flowing robot from the Terminator films. But the beads are always quivering on the edge of reassembly.
The ceasefire had included a clause by which the British authorities agreed to treat NMA soldiers as legitimate combatants, and not harass them by law or otherwise during the cessation of hostilities. But although the authorities agreed to this clause they did not honour it in practice. Once they saw their foe dissipate they thought to disable it as it slept.
The first stage in this strategy was to use the civilian police forces to arrest as many members of th
e NMA as could be traced - which was many, since it is by our nature as a fighting force that we are promiscuously present online and in other modes of traceable interaction. Some of us were interviewed by the media. These, I believe, were taken to be ‘ringleaders’, or the equivalent to officers, by the police; themselves a feudal organization.
These soldiers were arrested. The police came for me too, when I was staying with friends, in a modest house on the outskirts of Woking. But I was not in the first wave of arrests, and so I was forewarned by the urgent exchange of messages with my comrades. So I arranged the pillows in a line under the duvet in the spare room and slept in the garden shed. When, at one o’clock one morning, the police turned on all the lights and staged their shouty-shouty, pistol-waving performance, I was able to take my pack and slip out the back of the garden. I was sorry for my friends, of course, for the inconvenience my presence caused them. I sent them money, months later, after we had comprehensively beaten the British, and it was safe to exist openly as a homo NMAicus. I was a cinder by that stage, but that didn’t matter.
The majority of arrest warrants were for firearm possession, a technical illegality in the UK at that time. All eagerly, even hysterically reported in the British media. The illegality was a pretext, though, because we were still serving soldiers in a legally sanctioned army, and as such permitted to bear arms.