Confessions of a Sentient War Engine (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 4)

by Timothy J. Gawne

  We never defeated the aliens. We held them off long enough to make peace, that’s an important distinction. In any event, there was very little physical travel between the different star systems, but there were high-bandwidth laser links connecting the worlds. For all of our technical advances since those days, that is still the basic arrangement. We had been getting news that Earth-based civilization was nearing collapse; there were hundreds of billions of people. Even fusion power resources were running thin, and the raw heat production of all those people and all that machinery was starting to turn the place into an oven. Eventually communications cut off, but we were so busy with our own problems that nobody out here paid much attention.

  We stopped to watch a hawk fly over us. It was a big red-tailed and it was clutching a dead bird in its talons. I identified it as a Northern Mockingbird. Silhouette and I observed it as it flew over, from my main hull I could see the individual barbs on each feather. I could tell that it was a male. I projected its flight path and zoomed in on its nest where an adult female and two young were waiting. It was beautiful, watching it balance in the updrafts.

  Vargas decided that he would lead an expedition back to old Earth to see what was going on, and hopefully restore the communications network. There was also the incentive that Earth had been a major communications hub, so fixing things there would improve our networking across the entire set of human worlds.

  “So who went on this mission?”

  Myself, obviously, and also another cybertank that we called “Moss” back then, Giuseppe Vargas, and Chet Masterson, that was it.

  “Masterson? Wasn’t he the head of the secret police? Wasn’t he an enemy of Vargas?”

  Not really. Masterson ran one of the elite special weapons teams for the neoliberals, but you shouldn’t hold that against him. You had to understand that the ruling neoliberal oligarchs were small in number. Everybody else was terrified of losing their job and being condemned to poverty, death, or worse. In those days you followed orders or you were replaced by someone else who would.

  “Sounds ugly.”

  Masterson was one of these people who believed that even a tyranny was better than anarchy; often that might be correct but neoliberalism was more vile even than chaos. We cybertanks had been sabotaged, and Masterson and his team had been sent to kill Vargas and everyone associated with him. They very nearly succeeded, but when their progress slowed down the neoliberals sent the regular military to kill not just Vargas, but also Masterson and his troops. So he switched sides. Then we cybertanks managed to reactivate, and the regular military switched sides as well. And that was how neoliberalism was defeated.

  “With this tyranny ended, surely Masterson would have been out of a job?”

  On the contrary! With the collapse of the central administration, real crime skyrocketed and it took a while to get things under control. People like Masterson were never needed more. Vargas hired him as chief of security for the cybernetic weapons directorate, and a good thing too.

  “That must have caused this Masterson person a lot of work.”

  It did, but I think it also made him happy. I remember one day we were talking in my main hangar. He had just come from a shootout and his body armor was still dented and scored. “Gangsters, murderers, people who kidnap young children and sell them into slavery – now these are the kind of criminals that you can really sink your canines into!”

  “That’s an interesting perspective.”

  I suppose, but consider, for the early biological humans, any grouping of more than a few hundred would require a police force as a necessary evil to keep order. Humans eventually evolved beyond this, but that took a long time. Now to be effective, a policeman needs to be both feared and respected by the general public. Towards the end of the neoliberal era the police were increasingly viewed with more fear than respect: not as protectors, but as predators, as thugs in their own right.

  “Surely fear is a powerful tool?”

  Of course, but when overdone it has consequences. The special weapons teams could only travel in groups of at least three, and they had to live in special secured housing zones. Increasingly large parts of Earth were so hostile that the police could only enter with heavy military escorts.

  “That must have been unpleasant.”

  Indeed, which is why Masterson eventually took his entire team to Alpha Centauri Prime. I remember several decades later, when things had settled down, watching Masterson walking through a long crystal-ceilinged mall in the cybernetic weapons directorate. He wasn’t wearing his heavy body armor: he wore a freshly pressed light blue short-sleeved shirt with crisp navy blue trousers, and spotless shiny black boots with gunmetal demi-spurs. He had a belt with his personal sidearm, electro-baton, handcuffs, and stungas of course, but around his neck was a chain with the silver medallion of the High Sheriff, a prestigious post whose appointment required a two-thirds majority vote of all the divisions and sub-guilds.

  “Wouldn’t it be stupid for a policeman to wear a chain around his neck?”

  The links were breakaway. I know of at least two occasions when an assailant tried to strangle him with it, only to have it fall away, leaving them flat-footed and Masterson with the advantage.

  “So that chain of office literally saved his neck?”

  Ha! Yes I suppose so. He still had the arms of a professional wrestler and his oath of office had been ceremonially tattooed on his left biceps. You could see traces of his embedded comm gear in the skin around his ears. People waved or nodded at him as he passed. Women with small children did not grab them and run for cover. Men drinking at bars noticed him, then went back to drinking.In the past they would have avoided eye contact and tried to slip away quietly out back, even if they had been innocent of anything - especially if they had been innocent of anything. He was no longer a storm-trooper; he was an officer of the law. I’m not sure that I have ever seen a basic-pattern human so content.

  “I thought Masterson was an employee of this directorate?”

  Technically yes, but by then the politics had evolved. Vargas had some theories about partially substituting honestly-earned reputation for money. It seemed to work, mostly.

  “So did this Masterson person ever become friends with Vargas?”

  Not in the conventional sense. But they did respect each other. I think Masterson was a good influence on Vargas, he toned him down. When Vargas decided to go back to old Earth Masterson said, “Then I have to go too. Someone has to keep that maniac’s head threaded on straight.”

  “And what happened next?”

  Well things went pretty well for about a century or so – everyone had advanced medical coverage by then so Vargas and Masterson had hardly aged at all – but there were still some battles and adventures, but those involve a lot of shooting and things blowing up so I’m not going to include them in this story. I think Vargas just got restless and he wanted to take a sabbatical. Neither he nor Masterson had any family, and they had both trained several talented replacements, so there were no issues there. So we all headed off to Earth to see why there were still no communications coming from it.

  “And how was the journey?”

  Long and uneventful, as you would expect. Interstellar space is virtually empty. A cybertank can be a spacecraft by itself, so Moss and I floated separately with engines and fuel tanks strapped onto us. Masterson and Vargas spent the entire time in suspended animation deep in our radiation-shielded hulls. We kept up-to-date with events on Alpha Centauri Prime via laser link. Then we reached the outskirts of the Earth system, and were surprised at what appeared to be a new planet orbiting the sun.

  “How could an entire new planet just show up?”

  It couldn’t, obviously. As we got closer we saw that it wasn’t a new planet, but an enormous retro-reflector, with thin metal-foil plates a hundred kilometers across.

  “A retro-reflector? I remember about that from physics class – the inside of a cube will bounce a light beam back at its s
ource, right? So what was this giant reflector doing there?”

  It was the signpost of an alien ambassador. It was most likely from the alien civilization or alliance of civilizations that we termed the “Fructoids.” The thing about aliens is that they are alien, and there is little common ground for a discussion. Whenever possible it is best for alien civilizations to communicate with each other via honest signals. This giant retro-reflector gave a radar return as big as a planet. Without words, it was telling us that it wanted to be noticed, that it was a point of contact.

  “What other honest signals did it give you?”

  Good question. As we got even closer, we saw four crudely constructed nuclear missiles. The missiles were enormous and all of their parts were separated by scaffolding, so you could see how it all worked. Nobody could mistake that these were missiles, but they were so large and unwieldy that they would have been ineffective as weapons.

  “That sounds pointless.”

  Not really. Farther out there were 16 other missiles, of a similar pattern, but smaller and more sophisticated. Beyond that were 64 additional missiles, even smaller, much harder to spot. We caught glimpses of other missiles and artificial constructs, but they were so stealthy we could not be sure of how many, and they were spread throughout the system. Statistically we projected over 10,000 of them.

  “The aliens were telling you that they were armed, and likely had a large military presence in the system whose capabilities were uncertain, but likely formidable.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly it. There was a metal box floating next to the giant retro-reflector; that was the alien ambassador proper. We opened up communications in what we had learned of the clipped and formal language of interstellar diplomacy.”

  “What did you say?”

  We told it that we came from the human civilization in Alpha Centauri; we had lost contact with the humans living here and we had come to investigate. The aliens responded that the system was under quarantine and that we were to leave the system on a specific trajectory or be considered hostile. We chatted back and forth for a bit and, finally, the aliens allowed us to take a single team in-system - total mass not to exceed 250 tons - and the rest of our forces were to remain beyond the orbit of Neptune. That was the best deal we could get.

  “And you didn’t object?”

  We had just barely made peace in time to avoid extermination and we were not about to jeopardize that. If the aliens had told us to turn around and go home we would have done so. We were grateful that they had decided to allow us any contact at all.

  “Then you went down to the planet?”

  No, first we checked out the communications satellites. Vargas and Masterson, two humanoid androids, and some other small robotic systems (controlled by Moss and myself), took a small shuttle. The interstellar laser-link systems were in the outer system, shielded from the inner-system noise, and relaying to Earth proper. We rendezvoused with one and saw that it was still in perfect working order.

  “Then what was the problem?”

  The communications satellite had been code-locked from the ground. As things fell apart someone in the neoliberal administration had, in typical neoliberal logic, commanded the satellites to enter a frozen state. Heaven forbid that anyone unregistered should ever access them! We installed bypasses to restore functionality and then continued on.

  “Weren’t there other human colonies and outposts in the system other than on Earth itself?”

  Originally there had been, but after the fall of the neoliberals most had been abandoned. Still, Mars had a thriving colony of about a million settlers, we contacted them first. We exchanged information: we told them about the events on Alpha Centauri Prime, and gave them access to the interstellar communications satellites, and they told us about what had happened on Earth and gave us contact information for the major political organizations.

  “So how was Earth?”

  Still a hell. Cloud temperatures were over 230 Celsius, and spectroscopy showed very high levels of acid and toxic gases. The planet had basically been cooked by over-industrialization.

  “Was this that greenhouse effect thing that I read about once?”

  No, that was a different problem, back when technological civilization had relied on the consumption of fossil hydrocarbon fuels and large amounts of carbon dioxide were produced. Fusion power got rid of that problem, but started another. There was just too much heat being produced. Even the most miserable subsistence requires about a quarter of a hectare of good land for each person. Full sunlight is about a kilowatt per square meter, assume you get just a third of a day of full sun on average, you need a constant 0.83 megawatts of light just to grow food for one person. This doesn’t count the inefficiency in turning that energy into light, or the need to purify and pump water etc. Multiply the amount you need per person by hundreds of billions… Once the planet had been so overpopulated that food needed to be grown in hydroponics under artificial light generated by fusion power, the total energy production of the human civilization was more than five times as much as the natural sunlight falling on the planet.

  “But that’s stupid. Surely any culture capable of building fusion reactors could do this math?”

  Surely, but this was neoliberalism. There were many levers of power that the oligarchs used – financial manipulation, propaganda, brutal secret police – but the main thing was demographics. Neoliberalism required massive population growth to ensure that there were always more people than jobs or resources, but any discussion of this topic was taboo. You were only allowed to talk about conservation and efficiency.

  “What’s wrong with conservation and efficiency?”

  In moderation, nothing. However, efficiency is subject to diminishing returns. As you keep jamming in ever more people, there is then never enough to go around, and ”efficiency” turns into brutal poverty. Towards the end, children that were destined for clerical work had their legs surgically removed, because this slightly reduced their food and water consumption.

  “You can’t be serious. No society would stoop that low.”

  I am most positively serious – that’s how neoliberals thought. Of course, doing that shaved perhaps two percent off the total global food requirement, which was more than wiped out by just another year’s population growth. All those children crippled, and it bought just another year’s worth of growth. They also charged the children for the operation, and added it to their ongoing life-debt load. After all, in neoliberalism there is no such thing as a free lunch.

  “This is hard to process as real. It sounds like bad propaganda from their enemies.”

  Normally I would agree with you, but I was present during those times and I saw this kind of behavior with my own primary optics. But enough of the neoliberals, we were talking about Earth and how it was so hot.

  “But once civilization collapsed, and all those fusion generators stopped working and generating heat, wouldn’t the planet have cooled off?”

  Ideally yes, but the high temperatures had other effects;the icecaps melted, and the chemistry of the air and oceans were radically altered. Thus, even after the fusion reactors had stopped, the Earth had been permanently stuck into a new stable state.

  “Where there any survivors?”

  Surprisingly, yes. I have already told you that on Alpha Centauri Prime the politics post-collapse was fractured into multiple city-states and principalities. On Earth something different happened. The society was almost completely run by the descendants of a previously arcane order that called themselves the “Librarians Temporal.”

  “Librarians of time?”

  No, the ”temporal” part is a reference to a concern for worldly matters – as opposed to the Librarians Spiritual, who were intellectuals with a less practical attitude towards life. Anyhow, Earth society had been totally enslaved by the neoliberals, but the Librarians Temporal managed to survive as an independent society in the face of the most hostile and effective police state in human hist
ory.

  “And how did these ‘Librarians Temporal’ manage that?”

  Possibly luck. Possibly because as keepers of knowledge without an overt political agenda they were never taken seriously as a threat. Doubtless, because of the rigorous mental discipline of their order. Also, because they were all heavily armed, police actions against them resulted in heavy losses for the government forces, and their austere lifestyle meant that they had little to no resources to confiscate. The defense of the cockroach: not worth the energy it would take to kill and digest. In any event, once the neoliberals collapsed, the Librarians Temporal were the only significant organized group capable of focused action, so they basically inherited the entire system.

  “So you met these Librarians Temporal?”

  Indeed we did. We were given landing coordinates at a high plateau in the Himalayas where the temperature was a relatively balmy 140-centigrade. Our shuttle was hauled into a shielded and air conditioned hangar carved into one of the higher mountain peaks, rinsed clear of acid, and we were escorted below.

  “Was it dangerous? Did you have to fight anyone?”

  Not at all. The Librarians Temporal were charming hosts and we had a wonderful time. Oh, at first there was some suspicion about whether we had really come from the Alpha Centauri system, but once we gave them the new codes for the interstellar communications satellites - and the first messages they got had been sent four years prior describing us and how we had set off - it became obvious that we were really from where we said we were. To clinch the matter it was obvious that our shuttle had not been constructed by any in-system industries.

  “And how did these Librarians Temporal survive on such a hostile planet?”

  They had an extensive network of underground caves, and through some very clever thermal engineering, these were temperate and well supplied with energy.

  “Couldn’t the Earth have been fixed?”

  We asked about that. There were several workable schemes by which the Earth could have been re-terraformed, but the inhabitants saw no need. They were happy with the planet as it was.