by Ari Bach
“Negative, Sal,” said Vibeke. She looked to Violet, still in disbelief. The voice was like Veikko’s but hollow, fallen deep into the uncanny valley. She had to consciously treat it like an AI, or the perversity of speaking to it would continue to grate on her.
“Highlight the missile targeting panel in the control room.”
“I can highlight it, but you won’t be able to use it. It only powers up with direct orders from UNEGA high command.”
“We’ll have to program and launch the missiles directly,” said Vibeke. “Sal, highlight a path to the launch bay.”
“Compliance.”
A route lit up along the floor. They followed it through the crumpled curves of the compact base. Violet could sense an overwhelming curiosity coming from her own Tikari—the proper unformed instinct that filtered in from it that she’d gotten used to over the years.
There was something perverse about a part of Veikko speaking to them without his direct control. As if his hand had left his body and pointed the way for the mission he’d designed. Violet felt oddly supervised, like Veikko didn’t trust them to accomplish the mission on their own. Resentment flickered dimly in her mind. But more than that, surprise at the Tikari’s efficacy. It had already done the hardest part of the mission, killing off the crew when she’d planned to stun her way through the corridors. As they approached the massive bay door, it swung open itself, two meters of metal thrown aside by the small Tikari.
“How did you manage all this?”
“It was surprisingly easy,” it said lifelessly. “Veikko sent me the night before you took off. A little sneaking, a dash of hacking, and a side order of mass extermination later, here we are.”
They entered a massive open space, an indoor tarmac filled with storage crates and vehicles. It was almost completely dark except for a dim spot of light in the distance. The light reflected off the red piping along the distant ceiling, which they could faintly see had the wrinkles of other corridors all around it.
“But why did he send you before us? What did he send you to do?”
“To ensure the mission succeeded.”
“More specifically?”
“First I was to lift off at a velocity of 7.2 kph within the Fraser’s kitchen. Then at an angle of exactly 67 degrees, I—”
“Okay, okay. Never mind,” said Vibeke. She was clearly weirded out by the Tikari as well.
They continued into the chamber. Violet’s Tikari reported launch tubes to their east in the light. Cautiously they traversed behind the storage crates toward the launch area. Behind the crates they saw a line of SSS Robots.
Violet had taken a course on them at Achnacarry. Each was a dual gun system designed to work in tandem with its line. Each held 80,000 expandable rounds, 0.5mm in storage but 15mm once fired. They could each hurl 250 in a second. And this line held at least fifty robots. An enormous security system, beyond deadly.
“Don’t worry, they’re all inactive,” added Sal.
How could he tell they were looking at them? He must have been watching them through the internal security cameras. The Tikari had become the AI of the entire complex.
“What could activate them?”
“I could if you’d like. I don’t recommend it as you’d die horribly.”
“Thanks, Sal.”
They approached the tubes and found seven. Each one was massive, thicker than expected.
“I don’t suppose you’ve spoken to Veikko lately?” asked his own voice.
“Aren’t you in contact with him?”
“No, I’ve been running on full AI since I left. His link is off the map. Though this may be due to the fluctuations in link service. Low power, immediate area link communications are unaffected, but I believe the global link system is severely deranged. No communications, everyone is on their own.”
“Seems like it….”
“You can’t imagine how lonely we are when we’re not in your chests. We miss you terribly.”
Talking to the Tikari grew curiouser and curiouser. It seemed far more intelligent on its own than Violet would have expected. She quelled the thought of her own Tikari speaking to her with her own voice. Nelson was on the ceiling of the silo, a vast dome. She sensed him on AI scouting the area but not thinking, not the way Sal seemed to be. Even online, the Tiks remained silent. Sal had clearly hacked into something above and beyond the common broadbrain. She wondered what else about him might have changed.
“Sal, what kind of system was the broadbrain?”
“A bit flirty at first, but once you get to know her, she’s very reserved.”
“What kind of electronic system?”
“Neural selective.”
That answered it. Sal’s AI was now integrated with nerve tissue. It could think for itself. That posed the question, though, was it still Veikko’s Tikari? It was a new mind, a fusion, a different AI. In a way it wasn’t Sal at all.
But why had UNEGA used such a mutable system for something so important as a nuclear missile silo? The only weapons that required a neural network to program were—
“Here I become suddenly useless. The missile launch systems are not connected to the main base system, and the local controls are unpowered. Their only link is a lead locked hardline to UNEGA headquarters.”
Vibeke moved to examine the tubes, checking them against the intel in Alf’s book. Violet went through her partitions on silo mechanics and compared them to what she saw.
“Each tube has an Ehren Plate,” said Violet. Emergency taps to shut down the devices in case of an accidental launch code. “They’re old designs. They can be jury-rigged to launch the missiles if we can hardwire in. We just need to be sure the warheads are able to arm. Sal, the diagnostics should be part of the local system, can you detect them?”
“Affirmative. All diagnostics are part of the base’s system.”
“Run the nuclear armament diagnostics.”
“Negative. There are no nuclear armament diagnostics in this system.”
“List all nuclear diagnostics.”
“No diagnostics pertain to nuclear systems.”
“Impossible. How can there be a nuclear missile silo with no nuclear diagnostics?”
“Well, let me just diagnose the cause of that by running the nuclear diagnostics. Oh, wait….”
VALHALLA WAS a dead zone. The remains of T team arrived first, having merely traveled to Tromsø to feed Thokk’s body into the power grid. They found the photonically selective gateway offline. The drill hole plugged by the drill. Valhalla was sealed shut.
Alopex was offline, replaced by an inactive system called “Leo.” T had no way of learning that there was nothing alive in the ravine save for the walrus pod.
As K team returned in their battle pogos, H, N, and M in regulars from Hashima, the Valkyries put together as best they could what had happened. They knew from the broad link that Mishka had killed Balder, thanks to Thokk. Wulfgar was to attack, and the drill hole suggested he got at least one person in. Alf wasn’t responding and never would have sealed the drawbridge to them. They saw Pelamus’s sub, too small for an invading force. There was no question: Valhalla was taken. But nothing was happening as a result.
The link was erratic, and all the teams across the globe were out of contact. The net was silent, utterly silent. Even attempts to find ads from down south proved ineffective. It seemed very much as if the globe had been shut down or gone insane. In contrast to the conglomerate mayhem on the mainland, Kvitøya was a peaceful ruin.
The remaining Valkyries headed south to join the Keres on Karpathos, or the Zhnyetse in Vladivostok. The events that had taken place were uncertain. Plans were unclear.
SAL REMAINED silent as Vibeke opened the seal to the first Ehren plate and hardwired in. She scoured the system for its own diagnostics. She found the old glitch that could be tricked into launching. She found the targeting override systems, everything she needed to launch except for the protocols to arm the nuclear warheads. No
t only were the diagnostics and protocols missing, but all references to nuclear technology.
“Something’s wrong,” linked Vibeke.
“Don’t say that when you’re working on nuclear missiles,” whispered Violet.
“They’re not nuclear missiles.”
Violet looked at her.
“Beg your pardon?” said Sal.
“The controls are all wrong,” she explained. “These have no airburst measures. Whatever they are, they go off on the ground. And there’s no yield control, only range and intensity, and ‘temper.’”
“Temper?”
“Temper, settings A and C.”
“What the hell are these?” asked Violet.
Vibeke checked over her partitions. Valhalla didn’t have anything in its arsenal for which one would set A or C “tempers.” And there was only one weapon Valhalla would never use. Only one weapon that would have an organic neural programming system to program the projective RNA sequences.
“These are wave bombs,” said Vibeke.
“What?”
“This is an illegal wave bomb silo.”
“Oh snap,” said Sal.
Violet thought only briefly. “We’ll report them to the courts later. We need to find fission warheads, or at least fusion warheads we can drain.”
“Alf’s map only shows one launch door, this is it. We need to deactivate these and get out.”
“Forget deactivating them. It’s not our business, and we have bigger concerns. Let’s go.”
“Valhalla never leaves wave bombs intact.”
“We’re not in Valhalla anymore. Let’s get out of here!”
“We have to boil the warheads. These seven tubes are a hundred times more sadistic than the Ares.”
“If I may?” interrupted Sal.
“What is it?”
“Veikko planned for this contingency. Launching the wave bombs will still result in the destruction of the Ares.”
“Sal, you can’t be serious.”
“I am one of Veikko’s body parts. Serious isn’t in my repertoire. But we can complete the mission.”
“We’re not launching wave bombs, Sal!”
“That is exactly what you must do, Vibeke.”
“It’s not an argument, Sal. Close down the base. We’re deactivating these and finding another.”
“Negative. Time is a factor. Proceed to launch.”
“Not a chance, Sal. Our mission is in another silo.”
The Ehren Plates would still have a fail-safe, a way to deactivate them completely. She looked deeper into the systems. Specific shaped fields. Genetic targeting. Wave dissipation patterning. Fail-safes.
“Stop, Vibeke,” sounded Veikko’s voice.
She opened the fail-safes and found a subroutine labeled complete dismantle. That had to be the boiling protocol. But it was inaccessible. It was made only to go into effect if the missiles were about to launch.
“Vibeke, I wouldn’t do that if I were you….”
She input a null firing solution into the first Ehren Plate, and only the plate so there was no chance of launch. She activated the solution and began the destruction protocol for the first missile.
“FIRING SOLUTION Detected” read the link label.
“Peterson, we have another false on the UNEGA labels.”
For the tenth time that month, the system was reading a launch solution in Dimmuborgir. Since the day GAUNE realized they had a wave bomb installation, Peterson had sat at his post monitoring it for firing solutions on their tubes.
The spybots had been introduced two years prior by an agent disguised as one of their maintenance crew, an agent it took three years to deposit. He’d adeptly placed a remote tap under each Ehren Plate, designed not only to detect a solution but to activate the plate and destroy the missile’s capability.
But the bots were susceptible to radio waves. Whenever an UNEGA soldier made an off-link call in the room, Peterson got a false firing solution.
Singh checked it out. It was a simple matter to shunt the bot’s power to its radio shielding, and then the signal would go away. He sent a link to the bots to do so. But the detection persisted.
“Still on,” said Peterson.
“I did the thing, did you refresh?”
“Yeah, it’s still there.”
“Well, what else could it be?”
“They could be launching wave bombs.”
Singh and Peterson looked at each other. It dawned on them slowly that the system could actually be working. The horror pulled their cheeks downward.
“Get on the damn red link! Now!”
The link flashed in General Glover’s office. He accessed it.
“Situation?”
“We have a firing solution detected at Dimmuborgir!”
“I thought we solved that.”
“Rechecked it, sir. This appears legitimate.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes, sir, we have a solution detected on two missiles.” Peterson checked the label. “Three now, sir.”
The general dimmed the link and hit the emergency line to the CEOs. He sent a link dump of the entire situation on priority into their heads. He could sense the panic that must have reigned in their link silence. Six CEOs of various genders arguing in their boardroom. The link came back.
“Burn Dimmuborgir, now!”
The General had his order. He linked to the satellite command for Iceland and gave the order. The satellite warmed up for a 150,000 Kelvin cutter beam to annihilate the area.
UNEGA wasn’t so slow and bureaucratic. The instant the GAUNE satellite warmed up, an automated ground laser system shot it out of the sky. GAUNE recognized the laser signature and fired on its source with a suborbital rail projectile. UNEGA launched a fusion interceptor and vaporized the projectile. GAUNE saw the nuclear explosion and retaliated in kind. It only got worse from there.
Chapter XIII: Oblivion
HØTHERUS HAD previously considered many of his works to be his magnum opus at the time of their creation. When he was only nineteen, he thought he’d never top the complete sequencing (from scratch) of the phospholipid polarity drive. Far superior to neural net computing, it wasn’t prone to changing thought patterns or forgetfulness. At the atomic level, it was unlikely any computer would ever top it for memory efficiency, and indeed by the end of his life, nothing had.
At twenty-two he invented the advanced growth field. All that cloning of body parts that took up age progression silos for the last hundred years was finally obsolete. A body part could be grown on demand, from a cell to a limb in hours, not years. He was praised by the medical establishment, lauded as the most important doctor since… ever. And he was young! He had so much more to contribute. He improved net-link wetware by leaps and bounds. He invented a better analgia field. He invented organic living tools that could revolutionize Martian colonization. He created… a few things people didn’t talk about.
The medical community was dismayed by his first weapons systems. The living nuclear trigger. The prototype for a guardthing. And his next work to trump his previous works—the rapid mutagenic beam. On a wide focus, it could reduce an enemy army to a mindless mass of agony. Høtherus considered it the ultimate weapon, a deterrent to end all wars. How little he knew of what he’d do next! But the beam was quite enough to get most of his prior research banned. UNEGA and GAUNE both signed the accord stating they’d never develop or use any mutagenic weaponry. They “confiscated” the triggers and beam cannons and forty-seven other patents, those they could freely develop and copy in secret without paying a cent to the man who spent his short life creating them.
That was only a part of his disillusionment with humanity. The real tragedy of the species he discovered in his research. He had dug deeper into the human genome than anyone before him. He saw things that the pure scientists missed. The meaning behind the base pairs, the poetry of them. And he saw how feeble nature had made life—all life on Earth. Høtherus could do
better. So he did.
Long deprived of love for his revolting appearance, he first created a bride. She would be the perfect woman, in his opinion: no brain, no eyes, no teeth. Only raw sexual instinct and lust for him. He programmed the most voluptuous figure he could imagine, and whatever his faults, nobody ever claimed Høtherus didn’t have an imagination, especially when it came to his fetishes. She resembled something from Hans Bellmer’s nightmares, something too obscene to be explained beyond its orifices and protrusions.
His wife was poorly received by the public. She was deeply offensive to the minds of every gender. Words like “abomination” and “thing that should not be” were thrown around. In an illegal seizure, blind to the philosophical dilemma of what could have constituted the first artificially engineered human being, the bride of Høtherus was confiscated and cremated. He was finally banned from all future genetic research and confined to his modest house in Iceland.
He’d have been confined elsewhere if they knew the kind of lab he kept in its subbasement.
The world heard nothing from the imprisoned madman for three years. The world thought it was safe. Laws upon laws were written and signed to prevent anything remotely like the horrors he’d wrought. It seemed the world was free of him and free to use the works of his golden years. The simple organics, the straightforward computer systems. The good things.
Few noticed the people that went missing. None cared about the departure of his supporter, Haring Koeller, from his tenure at the University of Reyjkjavik. He wasn’t missed. Not a soul could imagine what they were doing together until the first monster appeared.
It was born Tom Wis. It had a troubled childhood and an aimless adulthood. It went missing in 2202. It reappeared in 2205 as the penultimate masterpiece of Høtherus and Koeller. A beast, put simply, Tom Wis was the most profane abomination imaginable. A human turned into something like its creator’s first wife (he and Koeller had a harem of them now) but geared toward inflicting terror upon the population that had ostracized its maker. And it was only the first of many.