Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (39 page)

Chapter 41: Ignition Sequenced

“The transition
must
be complete by midnight on the second,” said Neal with finality. “It has to be. I’m sorry, but it is imperative that Minnie be able to focus entirely on the launch event in the final forty-eight hours.”

He looked around the broad room for support, and found it. “I have to agree,” said General Abashell, the lead Pakistani representative, and a veteran of the first truly violent clash of the war, the attack on Peshawar. “Having reviewed the plans as part of the military strategy subcommittee, I cannot overstate the complexity of the coming launch. Its scale is quite unprecedented.”

Neal was grateful for the respected general’s backup on this point, but soon began to fear the man was about to launch into one of his lengthier diatribes. Neal was right to be concerned as the older man began anew. “This single launch has more component parts than the D-Day landings and Pearl Harbor combined, and all of them need to occur with millisecond accuracy within a rigid eighteen-hour window. Minnie’s role is central, as I understand it, and the ignition and launch sequence is so large it will take the bulk of her considerable processing power to handle it. We need her focused, and all previous tasks not only taken off her plate, but done so with enough lead time for them to have been fully transitioned. It is ess …”

“I couldn’t agree more, General Abashell, truly,” said Neal, thankful for the support, but needing to stem the river of exposition from the ever-passionate general. “Indeed, it should be noted that Minnie herself has requested the lead time to finalize …”

It was Neal’s turn to be interrupted, it seemed, as the British representative, the now former prime minister, took Neal’s own interposition as license for another one, saying, “Forgive me, Dr. Danielson, but the need is not the question here, the question is the Representative Mind’s readiness to take on the full scale of administrative tasks. Having spoken with my own technical advisors, they question its … her … maturity.”

The prime minister withheld a cringe at his own awkward phrasing. Speaking of these artificial minds as people, rather than machines, it all felt … distasteful, perverse even. These were strange times. The new minds, as far as he could tell, and his briefings on the subject had been nothing if not thorough, were truly sentient by every definition one could find. And the processing capacity behind that sentience was nothing short of staggering.

It allowed them to do some truly spectacular things, things he knew were going to change the world, indeed they were already changing it. The capacity for virtual reality generation alone left him both amazed and disturbed. He had seen what some of the new virtual environments accessible through the spinal interfaces were like. He had even experienced some of the more insalubrious ones. The experience had left him part agog, part suspicious, and not a small part ashamed.

He did not see the irony in his enjoyment of the seedier virtual experiences becoming available. He did not see that his disdain, in fact, did not lie with the machines, but with the people creating the more visceral aspects of the new virtual world. And, of course, also with himself, for succumbing so easily, and so thoroughly.

But that was not what they were here to discuss. They were here to talk about the transition. And the new mind that everyone present had played some part in creating. The Representative Mind, an amalgamation of them all. The mind that was created to take the SubNet’s reins from the less communal, but no less brilliant, Minnie. It was a machine, a thing, a creature, he supposed, that the former prime minister had spent time interviewing, even mentoring, as all the representatives were strongly encouraged to do.

He had even come to like the young thing. It could be funny, in a naïve sort of way. And, of course, therein lay the crux of his issue with the childlike entity, and, more importantly, with giving that childlike entity control over one of the most complex systems the world had ever created.

“I do not mean to seem … disparaging of the Representative Mind. Indeed, the young mind is most impressive, likeable even!” He smiled in spite of himself, and noted several other patriarchal expressions flashing across the faces of his fellow representatives. “But that is not the question here. Minnie, while of, I believe, similar design and capability, has vastly more experience with the subspace network and its ancillary systems than the new mind, and while I would like to think that Remy benefits from the combined knowledge and experience of this auspicious group, I, for one, make no pretenses at being an IT wiz, and nor, I believe, do most of my fellow representatives.”

He got a polite laugh from the gathered room, but he was not alone in his doubts of the new mind’s capabilities.

Neal saw several of the more technically savvy representatives in the room go to speak, but decided to field this one himself. “You make a good point, Representative, but not, I am afraid, a wholly accurate one.” Neal held up his hands in as conciliatory a gesture as possible, and went on quickly. “You are associating knowledge and experience. A very natural thing to do as what are we all, here, if not the combined sum of all our knowledge and experience?”

He received some reasonable nods from the group, and went on. “But while Remy’s
experiences
, the foundation of her personality, are the aggregation of the life experiences of all those gathered here, her
knowledge
is far more comprehensive than we mere humans can claim.” He said it without the slightest hint of derision, and thankfully, very few took offense.

“So I can say with absolute confidence,” went on Neal with an air of finality, “that the Representative Mind, or Remy, as many of us have come to call her, lacks none of the knowledge that Minnie has. Indeed, Remy shares every bit of that knowledge of SubNet’s workings, knows every channel and system, every hub and every terminal, every wire and circuit board, in its entirety.

“She can recall, at will, any piece of information contained within Minnie’s mind, from the initial construction of the subspace network to the first gelport installation. That is the wonderful nature of our artificial progeny, they do not need to learn new things like we do, they can take on knowledge and skills in their entirety.”

He relaxed a little, even smiled a bit as he finally said, “It appears that our children are far better at sharing than we are!”

He got the reaction he wanted. It was not the end of the debate, far from it, but consistently referring to the minds as children had the desired effect of making everyone feel a sense of duty toward them.

Neal believed it was that shared duty, affection even, that had contributed in no small part to the relatively smooth running of the vast and bureaucratically stifling representative meetings. At least, Neal liked to think that. He tried most days to forget, or at least ignore, the darkness behind the door he had opened when he had allowed Ayala to take control of those few aberrant political leaders three years ago.

But here, again, that darkness crept back, making itself felt as a cold feeling in the bottom of his stomach. As he tried to mask his distaste, to hide the rising bile in his throat, the meeting wound on. It was a huge part of what he did now, these meetings. Maintaining relationships. So many constituent nations. It was a task of labyrinthine complexity. Yet another thing Minnie, Mynd, and Remy were so instrumental in, thought Neal, as he listened to yet another concern, yet another complaint.

After an appropriate amount of further debate, it seemed time to call a vote, and Neal looked to one of his closer allies, Peter Uncovsky, to do so. The man took the meaning-laden glance well, consummate politician that he was, and made a motion to hold a preliminary vote on the issue.

As the votes began to trickle in, it seemed clear that a lot of skepticism still remained. Neal suppressed a growl. And so, moments after feeling regret at his co-opting of some of the more obstreperous of his colleagues, he was seeking to do it again, reaching out to Ayala to see what could be done to get the vote to go the way he, personally, knew it should.

Neal at Ayala:
‘ayala, this is taking too long. we need the two days, minnie thinks so, amadeu thinks so, general toranssen thinks so, and i think so. ¿is there anything you can do, you know, behind the scenes, to speed things up?’

The response was not long coming.

Ayala at Neal:
‘reviewing the voting now. yes, i can exert some influence for you. let me know if this helps.’

His eyes naturally went to the Iranian representative, who was suddenly deep in thought, or listening to something, to someone. But he dragged his eyes away from that known touch point and surveyed the room. He was not supposed to have access to the voting polls, but he did.

There, a change of heart. And another. China. Hum, so she had gotten to them too. And North Korea, no surprise there.

But now here was Spain changing tack in his favor … and South Africa. And now Australia. He could not contain his surprise. Surely not. They were staunch supporters of his work, vocal allies even. No, he was imagining it. They had just changed their minds, he thought, yes, they had probably just changed their minds.

- - -

Minnie saw the vote unfolding, saw as the tide slowly turned. She was happy on some level that the result was aligning with her own recommendations, but sad that its undertones also fed a growing field of evidence. Now that she was watching for it, she saw what had apparently been commented on in the closed session she had called. Here were the coded signals going to specific representatives, notable now because they were all one way, and because of the sudden shift in those representatives’ positions that almost inevitably followed.

Circumstantial, to be sure, but not isolated. The signs were adding up, and they seemed to all-too-often point in one direction, to Ayala. The route of a whole host of suspicious activity. Could Minnie make the leap from there to Neal with certainty? No. But it was unlikely that Ayala was working alone, that she would be pulling the strings on this seemingly puppet government. No, that seemed very unlikely indeed.

The question that was begged now was what was Minnie’s duty in this instance? That was profoundly unclear. Her loyalty to the cause was unflinching, and through that she had always faithfully followed the lead of the appointed champion of that cause. Did this, whatever this was, affect that loyalty?

All she knew for certain was that, no matter what this turned out to be, she had a great deal to do in the coming days, a task too important for anything to be allowed to affect it. Yes, the next stage was too vital, and must proceed no matter what underhanded activity was going on within her systems.

After that, maybe she would be forced to act. Because the manipulation of the representatives was but one in a greater list of incidents, a list of violations, many of which tampered with her very being. And not all of them could be tracked back to the head of TASC’s military police. There were other factions fighting for control of her. She must find them all before she made any decisions.

Chapter 42: ‘and we are a go’

“There’s our countdown timer,” said Amadeu to Guowei, alone now, viewing the world from above as the final minutes passed by.

The boy smiled, appreciating the comparison. He pinged for control of the image and Amadeu gave it. As the Portuguese teacher looked on, the amalgamated, real-time view of Earth and its thousands of satellites altered slightly, moving away and rotating until the man and his student were viewing the planet from above, from a seat far, far above the North Pole.

Amadeu watched, intrigued, then smiled when Guowei gently transposed an ethereal needle pointing out from the equator to the line of missile-mines arrayed around the planet’s waist, the needle slowly ticking past the tiny mines as Earth finished its last rotation, marking the last minutes before the launch began.

Amadeu:
‘madeline, john, look at this. guowei just made it. it’s counting down to …’

Madeline:
‘i see it. it’s perfect. let me share it with the others.’

The image of the planet-wide clock started to spread out among the scientific community under Madeline’s command, and from there to others, to the thousands, no, millions that were watching, waiting, via Remy’s new worldnet.

Amadeu found himself wanting to tell Minnie, to show her as well, she would appreciate the allegory. But she was not talking, not the real her, anyway. She was lost in the launch prep, spread out among tens of thousands of engine ignitions, her whole being focused on the delicate start-up.

Far away, at the lunar base run by Moira, she was also deep in the machine, one of many that were communing with Minnie and her own local AIs as the combined intellects of the launch team held their collective breaths in the final minutes.

Moira:
‘confirmed, minnie. fuel cells are prepped and ready, accelosphere generators set to mass-awareness.’

Mynd:

Hekaton AI:

Ring of Fire AI:

There was the slightest pause. No longer than necessary, no less than she could afford. They were ready to give Minnie control. This was her call to make. Gone was any thought either politic or bureaucratic. For now she was the launch, it was her entire world, and indeed, its span was even greater that just our planet.

So she took her time, every millisecond she could afford, to consider once more every aspect of the decision.

She was ready. They were ready. It was a go.

Minnie:

They all pinged their assent.

Minnie:

They did. She took up the reins, all sixty thousand of them, as a waiting world watched the counter tick toward zero.

Missile-Mine Phalanx Unit 1 began its engine like it was the only thing in the universe. Inside its diminutive core a pressure began to build. It was a tiny voice compared to the mighty engines of New Moon One and the great Skalm, but still this little soprano did not care about that as it started to sing.

That small voice, lost as it was, was not alone, though. Soon its song was soon joined by another, and then another, as Minnie’s mind continued to divide and possess the small interstellar missiles, spreading herself ever thinner as she began to reach out around the global ring.

From the outside, the wave of activity began as a tremor in that first mine as its launch trajectory approached. The fire in it was small, but it was potent, and as it came to life it was immediately restless. It wanted to fly, and as the moment arrived, Minnie released her hold on it, giving it liberty, and urging the little beast on its way.

The missile reared with verve and glee. This was its purpose. Its body, quiet and mute until now, was suddenly alive, bristling with energy, and without hesitation it flew headlong away from its once quiet spot on the equatorial plane, twenty thousand miles above the earth’s surface. Twenty thousand miles it intended to close with abandon.

The little missile accelerated hard, as hard as it could. It only had one setting, on, and its engines would burn from this moment until they were spent, in about a year’s time, when they would go silent once more for the final year until impact.

It powered downward, and one point zero eight seconds later its neighbor erupted into life, adding its voice to its friend, hungry to follow the same meteoric path into the Earth’s center as the two began racing at the millions watching below.

For those watching, and indeed few were not, the sight was almost imperceptible at first, but as commentators and pundits pointed, the chorus began to grow, one missile after another coming to life each second, as a great line began to form, building and coming, firing down toward the watching hordes as though they planned to wipe out the very planet they had been built to defend.

Soon the line was epic, reaching for ten thousand miles away around the Earth’s waist as the first missiles in the chain started to penetrate the upper-atmosphere. Now the show became legendary as the fires began to glow. A hundred languages vocalized the phalanx’s plummet as the choir’s collective voice rose to a thundering roar. Visible for thousands of miles to the north and the south of the equator, the missiles caught fire as they angrily punctured the Earth’s borders, screaming their meteoric fall as they began to burn, but this was not the end, not at all.

As the stratosphere fought and wrestled with the invading horde, Minnie’s mind continued to work, humming with potent capacity as she sensed the coming border and sent the signal for the first translation.

The bang that came with the first missile’s blink out of reality into hyperspace sent a shockwave rippling out across the planet’s surface, and then it was followed by another just over a second later, then another, the beginning of a drum beat that would last for the next eighteen hours.

Even the commentators went mute at this, all wit and banter banished for a moment as the world took in the sight. A world alive, a planet fighting back, the first great counterstrike against a coming force bent on our destruction. Not a man or woman, old or young could resist the primal feeling of pride and unity that the sight beat into their senses. This was Earth. This was humanity’s voice and it was truly awe inspiring.

- - -

As the planet shook with the pounding of the battle drum, life and voice slowly began to return. Reporters and experts started their commentary once more, some people wiped errant tears from their faces, many prayed. If any had doubted the war, had thought this might not affect them, then this sight, with all its power and might, banished those doubts once and for all. For the reports were clear. Even this … this world-spanning interstellar artillery salvo, even
this
would not end the coming Armada, such was the enemy’s power and scale.

This would, the representatives said, hopefully even the playing field, so that the stellar navy now entering production could have a fighting chance, but few could escape the message behind the chorus’s song: humanity was in trouble, and for many it was the first time they truly appreciated the depth of their plight.

Among the billions of eyes focused on the spectacle, there were some who had lived with that fact for far too long, since before the news of the war had even gone public, but they felt it afresh now. For Jim, sitting alone in his office, his staff gathered in a mass in Milton SpacePort’s main mall to view the launch, it was a moment of doubt, profound doubt.

He knew that the time for action was now approaching for his small group of conspirators. Their opportunity was coming, and not one of them could truly claim to be certain of their course, least of all the man who had inspired them to action.

The rightness of it, that was not in doubt, no, that was all too clear. But what good would being right do them if their actions cost earth the coming war? Who would forgive them? Would they even forgive themselves?

Jim lay back in his chair and closed his eyes, staring out through the system as he took in the launch, the world waiting now for that first missile to reappear on the other side, its continued acceleration in hyperspace meaning it would spend less time in earth’s gravity well on the escape than on the plummet, allowing it to steal a dose of earth’s own momentum from it.

After the launch was done, eighteen hours from now, the earth would actually have been moved nearly a mile closer to the sun. Negligible in stellar terms, perhaps, but still something to fill some with a dangerous dose of hubris. Hubris, Jim knew, that already desperately needed checking.

He breathed long and deep. They were not committed. His plan was such that nothing would happen if he or Amadeu did not initiate it. But in the end he knew this was not really a choice he could make. Neal and Ayala had done too much, committed too many crimes in humanity’s name. There needed to be a reckoning.

As if to punctuate his thoughts, a small beep sounded in his mind and he was drawn back to the scene unfolding, quite literally, around the globe. As the stream of missiles continued to ignite and power inward on the one side of the planet, now the first of them, singular only in its place at the head of the departing column, counted down the seconds to reentry.

Here, in a quiet, unassuming spot above the Pacific, the seascape reaching to infinity in every direction, there was a pause, a silence, and then the second act of this planet-wide opera began. The first missile-mine translated back into reality like the pop of a champagne cork, a huge building of pressures unseen in the depths of the planet, suddenly released as the mine was hurled outward.

The reentry, though spectacular, was but a whisper compared to New Moon One’s meteoric exit years before, but this one was soon followed by another, then another, as the drum beat began anew, even louder now, an acid house beat that shook the foundations of earth.

Now the view of the world reoriented once more to show the true beauty of the launch’s conception. For now, as the missiles began firing outward, the result of all their planning could be seen in action. As the missiles reappeared, every second or so, they were fired out in a seeming arc, but the timing was such that the arc matched the slow, irresistible rotation of the earth, so that each successive launch followed the other, creating one single stream of munitions.

Years of planning, sacrifice, and relentless preparation had turned the earth into a giant Gatling cannon, firing a salvo of interstellar proportions from sixty thousand nozzles.

Jim caught his breath, as if it had been stolen by the sight. Wow, he thought. It was all he could come up with. His heart was racing, and it was not alone. This was real. This was the first strike, the declaration of war, a message to the Mobiliei that they are going to have to fight for this planet.

Because, thought Jim, we are willing to fight for it,
I
am willing to fight for it. For its soul as well as its survival. He closed his eyes to the sight. He needed to breathe, to think. His mind drifted through Remy’s worldnet to Deception Island, to the growing readiness of the second Skalm. Another weapon in Neal’s arsenal, or one in his own? With the launch done, it was, Jim knew, time to find out. There would be no better time for the world to brook transition. Soon, Jim knew, he would either be part of a new order, or be extinguished with the last remnants of an older one.