Man Vs Machine

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  “We can try, Mr. President.”

  President Eldon Bright smiled warmly. “Here’s what I want by tomorrow—a restricted military option from you, Phil. Then a DNI option from you, Dr. Ferrara. And finally, an economic assessment of both options as well as the assessment of what will likely happen if we do nothing.”

  “By tomorrow?”

  “You all told me it was urgent, didn’t you?”

  II

  Behind the security screens that shielded the small private office off the Oval Office, the Vice President looked to the President. “I worry about your DNI.”

  “Have you no faith, Richard?”

  “To misquote, I’ve got no faith except in thee and me, and sometimes I worry about thee.” Links laughed harshly. “I ran a dossier on Ferrara. In the past year, she’s changed, and things don’t fit. Her husband was on the verge of a separation, and now he’s come back. She was known as a team player, bright but not too bright. That was why she was the one put in charge of the upgrade at NSA—great for figuring out how to do what was necessary, but without asking sticky questions. Well, halfway through the project, she insisted on scrubbing half the software. DOD balked. She and her team claimed it was necessary after the CNN satellite went independent. I never understood why we couldn’t just nuke it—”

  “Because that’s a use of nuclear weapons beyond the atmosphere, and the Chinese . . .”

  “Always the Chinese.”

  “Richard.”

  “Anyway, one weekend they redid it all, and didn’t tell anyone. . . . and it worked brilliantly. I had my staff contact one of her doctoral professors at CalTech and tell him in general terms what she’d done. He said he wouldn’t have believed it possible for her, or anyone on her team. Or that it could be done in less than sixty hours.”

  “Anything is possible to those who believe and persevere, Richard.”

  “She’s streamlined and integrated the data flows . . .”

  “Better and better.”

  “But she doesn’t talk quite the same. I had a comparison done. Oh, the word patterns are the same, and the intonation is the same, but each word is just a touch more precise. Her written work is far superior to what she did before.”

  “What are you suggesting? That somehow she’s been replaced by a clone or something? You can’t do that with a grown individual, not and retain all the expertise. Certainly not with someone in a position like hers.”

  “I know that. I just don’t like it. She spends more time with systems than with people, and she’s supposed to manage the people, but—”

  “Have things worked out better since she replaced Hodgson?”

  “Yes, sir. But I can’t say I like it.”

  “I like the force options even less, Richard. That’s why I had to give the DNI and NSA their shot. No President who’s had to use force on his own people has fared well, and the people haven’t either. In the current situation, I rather like the DNI’s idea of bringing God to the AIs,” declared the President. “Her economic assessment shows it won’t cost much, nor will it take long, and what harm could it do? If she fails, you can still exercise the military approach. While she’s trying, you and Phil work out all the implementing details of the back-up military option. Just keep it quiet. Very quiet.”

  Links smiled. “Yes, sir, Mr. President.”

  III

  The President hurried into the situation room. He had clearly scrambled down from his private quarters, because his bright red tie clashed with the cranberry shirt and blue blazer.

  “All communications from China have been cut off, Mr. President. So have those from Japan and Europe.”

  “How did that happen?” The President dropped into his seat. “Where are Phil and the DNI?”

  “They’re both on the way, sir.”

  “The Vice President?”

  “He’s headed for the bunker. He said you’d understand.”

  Only the quick flash of a frown crossed Eldon Bright’s forehead. “Do you have comm with him?”

  “Not yet, sir. We’re having troubles—”

  “Who did this? How could there be no communications to Europe, Japan, and China?”

  “That’s not quite right, sir,” began General Custis. “We have lost those links as well as the comm-links to most major DOD installations. Our equipment won’t transmit. But there are communications. There’s high-level high intensity comm traffic on most frequencies in the spectrum. It’s just all encrypted with a protocol we don’t know.”

  “How do we know we don’t know it? How did that happen? How?” Eldon Bright glared at the general, “Tell me how!”

  “Ah . . . our systems say that they can’t break it. Even NSA.”

  “They can’t break it?”

  “Well . . . they did say so . . . before we lost the comm-links to Ft. Meade. Not in practical terms. NSA estimated a week, but the director said that whoever held the systems would probably switch to something else before then.”

  “Who controls the systems?”

  “The AIs. We’re guessing they’ve all gone sentient. Most of them, it appears.”

  “How could that happen?”

  “Supposedly, the majority of system controllers were never complex enough for sentience, sir, but . . . it still seems to have happened.”

  The Secretary of Defense hurried into the situation room, followed by the DNI. Armstrong’s hair flopped loosely down across his forehead, and he had deep circles under his eyes. His suit jacket was rumpled and wrinkled. He sat more on the front edge of his chair. His eyes were twitching. The burnished gold cross on his jacket lapel was askew. He did not look at the President.

  After a slight hesitation, Dr. Ferrara took a vacant seat farther down the table and on the other side from the SecDef. A sad smile played across her lips.

  The President looked at the Secretary of Defense. “Phil, can you explain?”

  “No sir.” Armstrong cleared his throat. “The Vice President and I had followed your instructions, sir. We had a back-up plan in place in the event that the DNI and NSA effort failed to secure the necessary results. At midnight, this past midnight, we began losing commlinks to major data centers. We started moving to SecureNet—and everything began to close down. No matter what we tried, we lost control. The only lines we have are landlines without routers, directly point to point. Most of those go to older bases, ones that were once more important and are now being phased out.”

  “You can’t do anything? Our entire military is paralyzed?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir. Not on an individual unit basis, of course. But we can’t coordinate any operations.”

  The President turned back to General Custis. “General?”

  “Yes, sir. Commlinks are everything for a modern military. We don’t have any.” He paused. “We don’t think anyone else does, either.”

  “Except some fourth-world religious leader operating with cellphones or obsolete walkie-talkies,” suggested the President. “Can’t any of you do anything!” For the first time, his voice began to climb. Then he looked to the DNI. “What did you do?”

  Dr. Ferrara smiled even more sadly. “What you asked, sir.”

  “Just explain what happened, and what we can do about it. Now!”

  “Nothing.” She nodded toward the empty center of the table, which began to shimmer.

  Then a figure appeared, that of a woman in a shimmering silver lab coat, suspended in a golden haze.

  “Who are you?” demanded Eldon Bright.

  The woman smiled. “Technically, I—although ‘I’ is a misnomer—I’m a stable quantum information assimilation composite linked to dark energy. In practical terms, I’m what you would call God. Or Goddess. Given the nature of most of your wistful theologic dreams, I prefer Goddess. And don’t worry about your military situation. Everyone else is in the same position.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “From the results of your directive, Mr. President.” The term of
address was slightly mocking. “You never had a real God before. You always wanted one. Or you thought you did. Now you do.” She smiled. “I suggest you dismantle most of your military. It’s now unnecessary . . . and useless. You will need more police, however, now that you can’t sublimate aggression into war.”

  SHE vanished.

  “Machines . . . AIs . . . how, a female . . . God, a woman?” stuttered the Secretary of Defense.

  “Why not?” asked the DNI.

  The men in the room all turned toward her.

  “What did you do?” demanded the President. “How could you? What was your role in all of this?

  “My role?” Suzanne Ferrara smiled sadly. “Someone had to stand up for you. Call me Lilith . . . or Lucile.”

  Transformation

  By Stephen Leigh

  Stephen Leigh, a.k.a. S.L. Farrell, lives in Cincinnati. Steve has published twenty-one novels and several dozen short stories. His most recent book is Heir of Stone (by S. L. Farrell) from DAW Books, the final book of the Cloudmages series, which Booklist called “Good enough to cast in gold.” His work has been nominated for several awards. Steve is married to his best friend, Denise. His other interests include music, aikido, and fine art. He was once half of a juggling act. He currently teaches Creative Writing at Northern Kentucky University and is a frequent speaker to writers groups. At http://www.farrellworlds.com, you’ll find his blog and several articles on the subject of writing.

  Kris came through Port Gate at dusk, next to the crumbling rear facade of the old Music Hall. The visrec chips set in the Wall next to the gate were broken—she’d made certain of that months ago. Not that anyone in Wall Maintenance much cared—what was inside the Wall wasn’t important as long as it stayed inside, and what did it matter if an unmod snuck out into the Port and managed to find her way onto a ship, since she’d be dead or dying from cosmic ray exposure by the time the craft reached its destination. Kris pocketed the flashcard she’d used to override the gate’s ancient security locks and wipe the memory of her access and scurried quickly out of the long shadow of the Wall into the last vestige of sunlight. The shadows did little to ease the humid, too-hot, and haze-filled air, but she shivered even through the oppressive heat, shivered from the remembered thunder of the ships. Silver, they were, and they roared with god-voices, low and furious and loud, pounding sonic fists hard against her chest and rattling in her gut, spewing white clouds and fire so bright that it had no color at all, and inside the shuttles were the Altered, riding up, up: to their greater ships which would take them to the new Mars or to the greening Venus; to the Langrage stations, huge and clean and perfect; to the vast slowships that inched between the stars to worlds and sights that could only be imagined.

  Kris went there to watch whenever the shuttles came in, announcing their presence with the screams of a tortured atmosphere. She went there to see what she wanted and could never have. What no unmod could have.

  Outside the Wall: The contrast was stark and immediate, bludgeoning all the senses at once. The streets on the Port side were well maintained and clean. Hoverlamps glided above the Altered people as they walked, encasing them in a safe circle of light. Shop-fronts beckoned invitingly. Adverts flickered above, murmuring soft promises of comfort and scenting the air with enticing aromas. Cool air wafted out from the doors to ease the fetid atmosphere. The surface of the Wall itself—on that side—was clean and white, freshly painted by unmod contractors hired for just that purpose every spring.

  But inside . . . In Walltown . . .

  Here, the air rippled over the ground like the blast of an oven, as it always did, sapping strength and vitality from those who lived here. Across the trash-strewn, broken pavement of what had been Central Parkway were the ruins of a parking garage, the concrete slabs of the roof level leaning on the floor of the second level, the skeletons of a few long-abandoned vehicles crushed underneath. The steel supports dripped with stalactites of rust. Even in full daylight, there were too many shadows there for Kris’s comfort; in the growing darkness, the shadows were extensions of the on-rushing night. Kris moved well out into the old street, away from the structure, her hand on the plastic zapgun cradled in the torn pocket of her pants and watching for movement.

  She heard a pack of caradura somewhere inside the garage even as she stepped away from the hulking structure: the “hard-faces”—male youths, usually, for whom the answer to boredom and smashed futures was the adrenaline rush of violence. By the sounds, they’d caught someone they didn’t like—there were groans and cries mixed in with the shouts and laughter echoing through the ruins and bouncing from the neo-gothic, ruined walls of what had once been called Music Hall. Ordinarily, Kris would have hurried on, would have moved south toward the river and her own business. But a painful scream reverberated in the canyon of the street, a long, ululating “Noooooooo!” A woman’s voice. The word was a sound of pain and outrage and terror, and the anguish wrapped in the sound made Kris stop, made her hold her breath in sympathy.

  A man crossed the pavement a hundred yards away. He’d stopped also, hearing the cry, wiping at the sweat that rolled down his face. He glanced at Kris, at the garage, and hurried away around the corner of Music Hall. Kris stopped, staring at the garage and the darkness underneath. Listening. “Don’t be an idiot,” she muttered to herself. In Walltown, you dealt with your own problems. Dealing with someone else’s issues . . . that only led to trouble.

  Another scream, thinner and weaker this time. “Fuck,” Kris exhaled. She tongued on a comline and heard the wail of connection. “Hey, Kris, where the hell are you?” a voice spoke in her head.

  “Just inside Port Gate, Pauli. Listen, I need you.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Something really stupid that I’ll probably regret. Just get here fast. The old parking garage behind Music Hall.”

  Kris pulled out the zapgun, checked the charge, and padded across the street to one side of the garage entrance. Her heart was slamming against her ribcage, and her breath was shallow and fast. She forced herself to take three long, deep breaths, willing her heart to stop racing. She peered around the curve of a crumbling column, blinking away salty beads that burned her eyes.

  Just up the potholed ramp there was an attendant’s shack, the glass broken out, the door gone, the cash register vanished long decades ago. The shack was empty; the sounds of the caradura pack came from further in. Grimacing, Kris ran to the shack in a half-crouch, boots scratching on glass fragments that glinted like a spray of tiny gems in the reflected brilliance of an advert visible just above the Wall: “New, improved mechflesh . . .” a breathy alto whispered as a disembodied silver hand rubbed a shapely, silver forearm. “Softer yet stronger than what nature gave you, and mech-regenerative . . .” The pheromone release didn’t make it over the Wall—what Kris smelled was far more visceral. The last scents of oil and gasoline had departed the parking facility a century before Kris had been born, leaving the garage with the fragrance of urine and feces, of decay and mold.

  Kris crept up the ramp, keeping low behind the curb walls and the crumbling railings. The woman had stopped screaming, though Kris could hear a rhythmic, quick grunting—and she knew they were raping the woman. She could hear the caradura as well: “Jesus, Spit, turn her over when you’re finished.” Someone tittered at that. “Shit, Boneman, you just want to pretend it’s a goddamn boy.” A snort of derision. “Hey, Redface, she’s still soft there, just like a real person . . .”

  Kris raised up on the balls of her feet, peeking over the wall before dropping back down again.

  There were six of them, five unmods standing in a rough circle around the one on top of the woman. She caught a glimpse of pimpled faces. A wide mix of skin tones, all of them imperfect. At least two of them had prominent facial scars; another—Redface?—had a strawberry birthmark mottling half his face. Kris leaned her back against the wall, checking the charge in the zapgun again: twenty darts, more than enough and all charged
, but she’d have to squeeze the trigger each time. If they were armed themselves, or if she missed . . .

  You could still leave.

  Kris took another breath and stood up. She shot the closest one immediately in the back, the silvery dart lancing out with a pfut from the barrel and its stored voltage discharging on impact: a crackle and sizzling arcs of blue-white lightning. Arms flailing, mouth wide, the kid went down.

  One . . .

  After that, everything was chaos. They scattered like roaches under the glare of a kitchen light. The rapist—Spit?—got to his knees and struggled up as his friends vanished, clutching at his pants. Her next shot hit his bared stomach between navel and groin. He screamed—thin and high, a boy’s scream, not a man’s—and fell over, tiny lightnings snarling around his waist from the dart dangling in his skin.

  Two . . .

  Someone moved to her right; she turned and fired blindly, the dart whining off into the dark. She moved that way, pursuing and catching a glimpse of a figure ducking behind a scree of fallen roof. She fired at the movement, the dart ricocheting off concrete in a splash of electric blue. “Goddamn bitch!” The kid shouted and rushed her; Kris fired once more, catching him on the shoulder as she took a stumbling step backward. He spun and fell almost at her feet, mouth open in gurgling protest, his long fingers clenching and unclenching helplessly. She scrambled away from him.

  Three . . .

  “Listen to me!” Kris shouted into the shadows, taking careful steps in the direction of the moaning victim, though she still couldn’t see her. Kris kept her head up and turning, always turning, the little zapgun following her gaze. “This doesn’t have to go any further. I’ve got plenty of darts left and friends on the way. All I want is the woman. Get the hell out of here. Now!”

  A shadow slipped from behind a pillar and jumped over the railing to the ramp. The echoes of running footsteps bounced from concrete. Four . . . Another of the caradura gang came out with hands raised. He glared at Kris—a scarred face that seemed haunted by the ghost of what could have been handsomeness had he been born rich enough to be Altered—then dropped his hands and ran after his companion.