Confessions of a Sentient War Engine (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 4)
Page 26
It took a long time, but eventually my peers decided to accept my proposal to allow the Yllg to continue to live. They were relocated to one of their old colonies and placed under very heavy surveillance. It’s been decades and, so far, the Yllg have stuck to our bargain. Updated simulations made by more sophisticated thinkers than I put the odds of the Yllg permanently changing their pattern of behavior to greater than 89%.
Some time later I was having dinner with Uncle Jon, Silhouette, and the vampire Max Sterner. Sterner was of the opinion that I had acted rashly, and that even if the odds of having to refight the war with the Yllg was only 11%, those were still pretty high odds and hardly worth the risk.
Uncle Jon pointed out that our relationship with the Yllg is now the mirror image of how the Fructoids once dealt with the humans. Those aliens had been prepared to wipe the humans out, but on seeing the chance of making peace, relented and kept the human race under observation for a prolonged period to see that their behavior had really changed. Uncle Jon suggested that rather than a folly, allowing the Yllg to live would ultimately yield significant benefits to our civilization. Perhaps some of those cold silent hermit aliens will realize that we are a species mature enough to deal seriously with, and new opportunities will present themselves. Or, perhaps not. We will see.
I only know for certain that, for me personally, it just felt like the right thing to do at the time.
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Appendix I. Cybertank Laws of Warfare
Modern combat is nothing if not complex, and there are, of course, no single set of simple rules that that will ensure success under all conditions. However, there are some heuristics – rules of thumb, to use the ancient parlance – which have proven useful. When you are tracking a million targets, and worrying about your heat balance, and decrypting a thousand secure links and you are in danger of being overwhelmed by the computational load, it can sometimes be helpful to step back and remember the big picture. Many of these laws can be traced to specific famous individuals; the references have been omitted for clarity (the pedants are free to look them up themselves, but consider that our cultural inheritance springs from all that came before, human and cyber, not just a few).
It should be noted that many of the laws of warfare that the biological humans came up with are missing from this list because they don’t apply to cybertanks. For example, the old humans were so computationally limited and so easily distracted by loud noises or suddenly missing limbs etc., that they were forced to focus on a single major objective at a time. Our vast computational abilities mean that we can seamlessly integrate the tactical with the strategic and juggle multiple simultaneous priorities. That’s also why we don’t need a formal chain of command.
In addition, the old human armies were made up of many individuals, thus the smallest combat unit was self-aware and vulnerable. This meant that even a minor action would likely cause many people to die horrible painful deaths or suffer from permanently crippling wounds. As such, morale/discipline was always a priority for the pre-AI human armies because the natural tendency of sane biological humans faced with such a prospect would be to run away and hide.
As cybertanks most of our combat units are non-self aware remotes. Our precious main selves are rarely lost in battle. We did inherit a healthy survival instinct from our biological progenitors, but when dying does not involve any suffering you can be a little more philosophical about the whole affair (the possibility of a partial resurrection from surviving datafiles and subminds is also useful in this regards). Thus, morale is typically not an issue with us.
1. Never make an enemy if you can make an ally (or even a neutral).
2. If an enemy is busy destroying himself, get out of his way.
3. Always strive to keep a reserve.
4. Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics, the elite talk diplomacy.
5. Never toy with an enemy. If negotiations fail, just kill them and be done with it.
6. Plans made before a battle are useless, but planning is essential.
7. A weak civilization cedes the right even to be neutral.
8. Nothing is more treacherous than to have an overwhelming advantage: it tempts one to waste resources on trivial side-adventures, or to engage in conflicts which do not concern you. Good warfighters sometimes win against superior forces; great warfighters never lose to inferior ones.
9. If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying hard enough.
10. Always take the high ground (or its functional equivalent, like the center of a chessboard).
11. There is no such thing as ”overkill;” no weapon can be too large.
12. Think carefully before starting a war. You can never know how it will end.
13. The odds of the enemy of your enemy being a friend are, statistically, no better than chance. If your enemy starts fighting someone else try to sneak away when nobody’s paying attention.
14. In the history of human civilization, the promise of an easy victory has been the greatest killer.
15. In battles that cannot be broken off by surrender or retreat, always fight to the last. No matter how bad the odds, there is always that fluke chance of the enemy suffering a software glitch at the last second.
16. Break any or all of these rules rather than do something stupid.
Appendix II. Whipple-Jerner Scale of Relative Evil
The issue of how to rank the relative evilness of various individuals – or even alien civilizations – has been a longstanding source of debate amongst scholars. As an outgrowth of Godwin’s law, which states that all political discussions will eventually involve comparisons to the Nazis, the Whipple-Jerner scale of relative evil uses the unit of “The Hitler.” By definition Adolph Hitler is thus given a score of 1.0 Hitlers, although the evaluation of others is to a great extent subjective. Common rankings of evil historical figures and alien civilizations are:
Jesus Christ: 0.0 Hitlers
Gandhi: 0.05 Hitlers
Demi-Iguanas 0.1 Hitlers
Benito Mussolini: 0.5 Hitlers
Adolph Hitler: 1.0 Hitlers
Reinhardt Heydrich: 1.05 Hitlers
Joseph Stalin: 1.1 Hitlers
Mao Tse-Tung: 1.2 Hitlers
The Yllg: 1.5 Hitlers
The Amok: 1.8 Hitlers
Milton Friedman: 3.14159 Hitlers
Globus Pallidus XIV 10.0 Hitlers
(Note that the fiendish artificial intelligence Globus Pallidus XIV, whose horror was so great that just trying to imagine it can damage the human mind, should not be confused with Saint Globus Pallidus XI, a being of manifest wit and charm).
It was pointed out that while Adolph Hitler was responsible for the deaths of perhaps 50 million people over a few short years, the economic theories of Milton Friedman caused the death and immisseration of hundreds of billions over many centuries. It was therefore suggested that Friedman be scored in units of “MegaHitlers,” however, this was considered unworkable, and also resulted in confusion with the giant robot Hitler that was constructed in the 24th century. Therefore the scale is compressive on the high end, i.e., going from 1 to 2 is less of a jump in absolute terms than is going from 2 to 3.
We shall avoid the debates as to whether good and evil are polar opposites, or whether they can to some extent vary independently. We do however note that the proposal to rate goodness in units of negative Hitlers – or “NegHitlers” – has generated an intellectual flame war that rages to this day.
According to the Whipple-Jerner system, evil requires two factors: conscious intent an
d destructive physical action.
A robotic weapons system that is trying to kill you is something that you could correctly fear and hate, but you would not call it evil any more than you would the force of gravity.
If a person has evil in their heart, but resists the temptation to do harm, then arguably this is not vice, but virtue. According to this intellectual framework, evil requires deliberate actions that harm others. This also allows the application of this scale to aliens. Even if we cannot comprehend the reasons for their actions, if they deliberately harm others they can objectively be classified as evil.
A complexity arises when people cause harm by mistake. A doctor who develops a medicine that was intended to help, but instead causes harm may not be called evil, as long as the person in question exercised due diligence in trying to ensure the medicine’s safety ahead of time. On the other hand, if the doctor is profiting from the sale of this medicine, and refuses to acknowledge any evidence that it is causing harm, then this is surely evil.
In the doctrine of Whipple and Jerner, harm done by willful ignorance is as bad as that done with deliberate malice.
This is why Karl Marx is not generally rated as evil: while his theories had significant flaws that later on caused considerable harm, he was never able to observe this in his lifetime and so we may attribute these flaws to honest mistakes. The ranking of the neoliberal economists as high on the evil scale is due to their consistent refusal to acknowledge the obvious misery that their policies were creating, even as they personally were being handsomely rewarded for parroting their vile maxims and infernal intellectual constructs.
Another complexity is the issue of duress; a starving person who steals food from another starving person is not a saint, but it is hard to label them as truly evil. On the other hand, a rich person who steals food from a starving person in order to be able to purchase a slightly larger yacht is clearly evil, as they would still have been perfectly comfortable without performing this action.
As far as a person who deliberately tries to harm others, but accidently ends up helping them goes, it has been suggested that “idiot” would be the appropriate term.
Appendix III. Notable Cybertank Classes (Updated).
Over the millennia there have been hundreds of different classes of cybertanks, and that doesn’t count the even larger number of sub-classes, variants, and upgraded models. The following is a partial list of some of the more noteworthy or historically important classes, arranged in order of first construction date.
Under the neoliberals human populations would often number tens or even hundreds of billions per major world. After the pedagogue revolution human populations trended down, typically stabilizing at around 100 million per planet, give or take. At this level there were more than enough people for any conceivable task, and resources were so abundant that there was no need to engage in the intellectual distraction and wasted effort of conservation.
The cybertanks never numbered anything like this. A cybertank is more like a minor city than an individual biological human, and a few of them go a long way. In the late 20th century the North American Empire had but a dozen nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in their water-navy, and that was a force that dominated the globe. Along with its attendant distributed systems, a single cybertank could easily take out a dozen nuclear aircraft carriers without breaking a (metaphorical) sweat. In combat it was rare to have ground actions with more than 50 cybertanks, as even at that level the raw combat power was likely to turn the crust molten.
In most major systems of the cybertank civilization there were typically fewer than 50,000 cybertanks (spread out through a volume many light-hours across), but this represented a level of potential physical and mental capacity greater than the entirety of human civilization under the neoliberals, by several decimal orders of magnitude.
Jotnar-Class
Mass: 500 Tons
Constructed: 12
In Service: 0
Notes: Although preceded by a variety of increasingly potent terrestrial cybernetic weapons systems, the Jotnar was arguably the model on which all of modern cybertank design is based. Nonsentient, but still quite smart for the time, it was the first autonomous ground unit powered by a fusion reactor. Design innovations that started with the Jotnar include: a single massive turreted plasma cannon, multiple secondary and tertiary defensive weapons, integral repair and construction systems, and the ability to coordinate and control massive numbers of distributed remote combat units. All Jotnars were destroyed in combat against the Fructoids and the Yllg. Their combat record was excellent, but their primary achievement was in developing the technologies used in later models. There are rumors that some of the Jotnars developed true sentience before their destruction, but no confirmation of this exists.
Odin-Class
Mass: 2,000 Tons
Constructed: 18
In Service: 0
Notes: The Odin was the first truly modern cybertank design. Fully sentient, the Odin avoided the hazards of humans trying to create a mind greater than their own by giving it a standard human psyche, but letting it multitask. In effect, an Odin is crewed by a thousand identical people that can readily share thoughts and memories, and are thus still in effect a single person. Though few of this class were built, their list of accomplishments both on and off the battlefield is legendary. The cybertank known as “Old Guy” had the longest serving career of any cybertanks to date, at least in a primary incarnation.
Thor-Class
Mass: 2,500 Tons
Constructed: 242
In Service: 0
Notes: The Thor was basically a slightly upgraded and up-gunned version of the Odin. At the time of its design the humans’ wars with the aliens had reached their peak intensity, and so cybertank design was standardized on this class to avoid disrupting the production systems. The Thor-Class carried by far the bulk of the combat load during the most critical phases of the war. Their combat performance was exemplary, and after the wars many proved equally able at other endeavors. However, they have long since been superseded by more advanced designs.
Loki-Class
Mass: 2,500 Tons
Constructed: 34
In Service: 4
Notes: The Loki were planned as a Thor-Class with improved computational abilities. Despite the high hopes for the class, they became notorious for coming up with plans that were, in theory, brilliant, but that hardly ever worked in practice. Their combat performance was spotty at best. However, there were a few key times when their iconoclastic way of thinking proved invaluable to the entire human civilization. Thus, the Loki design has been judged to be a qualified failure, and an unqualified success. Despite the great age of the design, four are still in service, where they continue to uphold the Loki tradition of eccentricity.
Asgard-Class
Mass: 1,000,000 Tons
Constructed: 1
In Service: 0
Notes: The Asgard is technically not a cybertank per se, but rather an interstellar battlecruiser. However, because it was designed using the same mental engineering techniques as its ground-based brethren, it has been accorded the legal status of a cybertank. The party line was that it was an example of engineering brilliance and strategic fuzzy thinking, being both the single most powerful weapon ever built by the human civilization, and the most useless. Its great mass made it almost impossible to fuel.In real combat with a serious opponent it would have been easily destroyed at long range, before it could ever get close enough to engage with its batteries of super-heavy plasma cannons. Nonetheless, during an attack by the Amok the Asgards’ unique abilities proved crucial, and the class was ”promoted” from battlecruiser to battleship.
It was only later that the true design purpose of the Asgard was revealed: it had been deliberately designed as an interstellar doomsday weapon. Covered with millions of tons of hydrogen fuel in disposable tanks, if it burned all that fuel accelerating between star systems it would have the kinetic energ
y equal to a fusion bomb weighing millions of tons. Still not enough to destroy a planet, but enough to destabilize the crust and wipe out, or at least cripple, even a dug-in technological civilization.
If you use a specific amount of fuel to accelerate a dumb rock or a piece of intelligent weaponry, the kinetic energy is the same. In fact, you are better off with a smaller projectile, for the same reason that a bullet is more dangerous than a softball: it is faster and harder to dodge. In addition, the intelligent weaponry can defend itself and make fine course corrections or abort at the last possible moment, while a rock is just a rock. The Asgard was never used against a planet, but did take out a small moon during the conflict with the Yllg.
Magma-Class
Mass: 50,000 Tons
Constructed: 34
In Service: 4
Notes: The Magma-Class was the first class of cybertank constructed by the cybertanks themselves without human guidance. Known for its massive armor and the almost incomprehensibly-large plasma cannon mounted in a ball-joint in the front of the hull, the Magma class combined over-the-top combat power with a pathetically poor strategic mobility rating. While the Magmas performed well in combat they were so expensive to build and so hard to transport that they were rapidly superseded. Perhaps because their massive size and power required them to limit themselves, the Magma personality tended towards the calm and scholarly, and the surviving Magmas are all either librarians or scientists.
Mountain-Class
Mass: 20,000 Tons
Constructed: 212
In Service: 172
Notes: The Mountain-Class is basically a scaled-down Magma, it still has an awesome amount of firepower, but is far more transportable. Still, the lack of an all-traversing turret turned out to be limiting in the field. The large internal hull volume of the Mountain-Class has made it relatively easy to upgrade, and they remain one of the longer-lived classes of cybertank design.