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

  Table of Contents

  0. Prologue

  1. Superbeing

  2. Space Nazis

  3. Relic

  4. Heilige Vergeltung

  5. Shield

  6. The Terror of Roboneuron

  7. Jesus Christ, Cybertank

  8. Flood Control Dam No. 4

  9. Be Careful What You Wish For

  10. Tell Me a Story

  11. Frankenpanzer

  12. Sacrifice.

  Appendix I. Cybertank Laws of Warfare

  Appendix II. Whipple-Jerner Scale of Relative Evil

  Appendix III. Notable Cybertank Classes (Updated).

  Confessions

  Of A

  Sentient

  War Engine

  If You’re Not Cheating, You’re

  Not Trying Hard Enough

  An “Old Guy”/Cybertank Adventure!

  Copyright © Timothy J. Gawne, 2014

  V-1.1

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9852956-5-3

  The "Thrilling" Old Guy Series

  The Chronicles of Old Guy

  Space Battleship Scharnhorst and the Library of Doom

  Neoliberal Economists Must Die !

  Confessions of a Sentient War Engine

  Ballacourage Books

  Framingham, MA

  0. Prologue

  After the surprising popularity of “The Chronicles of Old Guy” (or “COG," as it is sometimes referred to), it was decided by all parties concerned and their designated heirs to release a second volume. As before, it includes first-person accounts from the Odin-Class cybertank serial number CRL345BY-44, but more commonly referred to as “Old Guy.”

  There are yottabytes of data regarding the career and experiences of that particular cybertank, but these paltry few hundred kilobytes of archaic English text are nonetheless precious for the distillation of his experiences into such a compact form. As you may recall, the last chapter of COG was effectively the end of that narrative (at least in the pure sense): these writings were made before the last event, and placed into safe holding with me and a few others. The chronology of the stories is primarily just before the final chapter of COG, although there is one sorta-kinda flashback to the historical period before COG and a century or so after the events of “Neoliberal Economists Must Die” (NLEMD).

  I hope that these words (limited though English words are, especially in the modern context) can help to illuminate that historical epoch. I have cross-checked this account with all extant databases, and confirm that, with the occasional bit of poetic license, they are in accord with the established historical record.

  As is common knowledge, Old Guy was the first true self-aware cybertank, dating back to before the biological humans mysteriously disappeared and left us as their civilizational heirs. By today's standards a 2,000-ton Odin-Class cybertank would appear laughably puny and archaic, but at the time it represented the cutting-edge of human technological capacity and I daresay that none of the rest of us would be around today without the efforts of cybertanks like Old Guy and his comrades.

  As an additional note, I would like to comment on my own longstanding personal relationship with Old Guy. If this account should seem perhaps somewhat florid or irreverent, I assure you that this is how that notorious cybertank really behaved. It is also how he talked, and wrote. I sometimes criticized him for text that skirted the rules of proper grammar, to which he would always reply, "I claim artistic license. Many great authors have written text that blatantly ignores so-called rules of grammar: James Joyce, Cormac McCarthy, Steven King IVth, and Kliven Attaband. "The written language changes over time, so what is correct now was not, and may not be, correct in the past or future. If you don’t like it go write your own book."

  In a life that has been both long in duration and deep in richness, my experiences with Old Guy have been of especial import.

  “Hangfire,” Sundog-Class (previously “Uncle Jon,” Mountain-Class).

  1. Superbeing

  “A poor workman blames his tools. A poor artist blames his audience.” – Cedric the Mad, Sculptor, 25th century Earth.

  It was on a rocky planetoid a light-month from the nearest star that I encountered the human they called “Superbeing.” There was nothing special about this particular planetoid, it was just a dead cold rock about 1,000 kilometers in diameter. I was doing deep space survey and did not expect to find anything here, but due diligence required that I perform some basic analysis and log the data before moving on.

  My main hull, all 2,000 metric tons of it, was floating in the center of a swarm of probes, sensor platforms, automated telescopes and whatnot, spread out over an appreciable fraction of a light-hour. There is a great deal of nothing in the spaces between the stars, but still, you could hide anything out there. So every now and then one of us cybertanks does a survey, just checking to see that nothing nasty is lurking around the stellar neighborhood. The work is routine – there really is mostly nothing here – but that’s fine, it gives me time to catch up on my email, relax, and stay out of trouble.

  We could have just sent automated probes out on their own, and we do, but small scouts work best with a home base for maintenance, and if there are any diplomatic consequences of what they find it can be good to have a real intelligence close by just in case. There is also the danger that lone scouts can be captured, and then you know nothing and the aliens know a lot about you and where you came from, and that’s not the plan at all…

  Also, we still hope to find some evidence of what happened to our humans. After the defeat of the neoliberals, and the making of peace with the aliens, there was a long period where things were going along swimmingly. Gradually we drifted apart from the biological humans – they were evolving in ways that are hard to describe, and they had less and less time for us. We amused ourselves with our routines and hobbies, and ran endless patrols along the frontiers, and then one day realized that our humans had vanished.

  Most of us think that we cybertanks had simply gotten so embedded in our routines that we didn’t notice anything until it was too late. Perhaps. But the more I think of it this sounds like an excuse, something that we tell ourselves to hide either our ignorance or our carelessness. It’s true that we have progressed a lot since those early days. Back when we worked with the humans, we generally just went along with the flow of events; we never created anything new or tried to chart our own path.

  I review the memories of myself when I was younger: I cannot conceive of not noticing the biological humans vanishing. I was too engaged with them, I liked interacting with them, and I was too curious and intelligent to miss something like that. I have no evidence, but I suspect that we cybertanks were subtly manipulated. Whenever I am out in deep space I always have a hope that I may encounter some evidence of what really happened, or that may suggest where the humans are now. So far nothing has turned up.

  Every few weeks I get a data packet from home and some of these contain intelligent sub-agents from old friends and acquaintances. In simulations we chat, argue, play games, debate politics. Sometimes they will leave when I send a message home and our experiences together will be absorbed back into the main sending intelligence. Sometimes I send a submind of my own in the outgoing message stream to track down a friend in one of the local systems. It’s certainly a lot quieter out here than on a major industrialized world, given that it takes months for messages to travel back and forth instead of milliseconds, but it’s hardly boring. This must be what it felt like when the old-style humans took a holid
ay cruise on a steam-driven ocean liner.

  It was drifting along like this when I first spotted the planetoid. It doesn’t look like much. I log the contact and dispatch some scouts to check it out. If it looks like there is an intelligent presence, I will observe – discretely and from a distance – and pass by quietly, hopefully without drawing any attention to myself.

  So far, so dead. Nothing shows up. I send some probes closer. Still Dead. I ping the planet with the standard diplomatic contact codes for this region of space: “Hello, anybody home? Sorry to intrude, I was just leaving, please don’t kill me.” No response.

  Then I detect a very faint infrared trace on the surface. It’s not much, but out here in the gaps between stars even a candle flame would stand out. The source is coming from the middle of a barren plain next to what appears to be a mountain of gravel. Curious. I send a single probe closer, slowly, cautiously. There is a single object emitting a low level of infrared. It appears to be a male hominid. He is sitting down cross-legged playing some version of a solitaire card game. He is wearing a tight-fitting purple bodysuit, and has the letter “S” emblazoned in silver on the front of his chest. Oh Fuck. It’s Superbeing.

  I try to withdraw my scout, but it’s too late, he’s spotted me. “Hello,” says Superbeing. “I see you. Given that you have come all this way, care to stop and chat?” Of course it’s a vacuum and he makes no sound, but I am an accomplished lip reader. I try to broadcast to him on several radio bands, but I get no reaction. Shit, it’s just like the records say, he has no generalized electro-magnetic sensitivity. I could set up a pressure dome and speak to him that way, but what a bother. I could also try to run away but Superbeing, once alerted to your presence, is not someone to be taken lightly.

  I decide to try something different. I slowly advance my scout towards him. He watches it approach, with some mixture of boredom and amusement. I cautiously reach out with my scout and touch his jaw with a mechanical probe.

  Hey, hello Superbeing, sorry but there is a vacuum here, and the only way that I can talk to you is via direct acoustic bone conduction. That OK? I can leave if I’m annoying you.

  “No, that’s fine,” said Superbeing. “It’s been a while since I talked to anyone else and I could use the company. But you appear to have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I do not know yours. Who are you?”

  I am a cybertank, Odin-Class CRL345BY-44, but most people call me ’Old Guy.’

  “CRL345BY044?” he said. “Unit prefix CRL. May I call you Carl”?

  No you may not.

  “Very well, Old Guy, as you prefer,” he said. “A cybertank, you say? Then I take it that this little mechanism is not the entirety of what I am conversing with?”

  Indeed not. It’s just a light scout. I will gladly leave you in peace if I am in any way disturbing you.

  “Oh no,” said Superbeing. “You will not get off that lightly. Now that you have piqued my interest, I would greatly appreciate the presence of your main self. Please.”

  Oh neoliberal fucking hell in a AAA-sized battery. I really should just leave. I should set my main engines to maximum possible overdrive and accelerate away from here. But. This is Superbeing. You do not mess with Superbeing if you have a choice. . This is what I get for poking my (metaphorical) nose into stuff that should not concern me. Although I have to admit, the part of me that relishes trouble is becoming engaged. I haven’t caused even middling-serious havoc for some time. My reputation is at stake.

  I have a lot of energy in reserve, so I bleed off my delta-v and land my main hull onto the planetoid. It takes me a few days to do this, but Superbeing is patient and continues to sit in the middle of the plain. I slowly drive up to about 50 meters away from him and then stop. I am an armed and armored 2,000 metric ton weapon of mass destruction. He is just a 70-kilogram male hominid in a bad purple Halloween costume. He is not heavily muscled, but instead rather scrawny; the costume sags around his shoulders and chest. He should be awed by my presence, but he’s not, because, well, he’s Superbeing. If he felt like it, he could kill me in a total elapsed time of about 5.7 milliseconds (estimated). I’m the one who is scared.

  “So,” he said. “A cybertank. I heard about your kind. I met your non-sentient predecessors, but never one of your mark. Tell me about yourself.”

  There is not much to say really. I am a cybertank. The first of the Odin-Class, the first model with true independent sentience, although by today’s standards I am bordering on the obsolete. But I still have my uses. I was conducting a deep-space survey. I did not expect to do anything, but catalogue the odd rock or gaseous anomaly, and then I met you. That’s it.

  “Humm. Assuming that what you say is true, then it is a pleasure to meet you. I can see that there have been advances in my absence. Your design is most elegant.”

  Thank you. Although the credit for my natural good looks should go more to my designers than to myself.

  “You are speaking English, so I presume that you do in fact hail from the human civilization. Tell me, what is the status of the human race? How goes their wars with the aliens?”

  The humans won their wars with the aliens – although it would be more accurate to say that the humans managed to convince the aliens to make peace with them. Then the humans did a lot of cool stuff, and then they vanished. Or something. We’re not sure. So we are sort of all that is left of them. Our minds are, you should know, patterned on the human psyche. We consider ourselves to be their heirs.

  “The humans all gone? If what you say is true, then splendid. I can do no more harm. At least not to the humans. Tell me, did you or your kind have anything to do with their passing?”

  I myself most certainly did not, and to the best of my knowledge no cybertank in any way contributed to the disappearance of the humans. It is a vexing matter to us. We liked the humans, they were our friends and colleagues. Towards the end they appear to have evolved to another level. Our records of that era are poor. We miss them, but hope that perhaps someday we may join them at whatever level of being they have ascended to (if that is in fact what happened to them). Tell me, do you have any information on this matter?

  “Sadly I do not.” Superbeing remained silent for a time. I noticed that he had set out in front of himself a set of cards for a variant of the game known as Solitaire. Moron that I am, I asked him a question.

  Solitaire? You been playing long?

  Superbeing looked up at me. “This is my own variant. The odds of winning are about one in ten thousand, more or less. It’s like sports, the overall game is always the same but any specific round is always surprising. It helps to pass the time.”

  How long have you been playing?

  “Every time that I win I throw a pebble behind me. You see?”

  Behind Superbeing was the small mountain of gravel that I had noticed from space. Oh, I get it.

  Why are you sitting out here all by yourself playing solitaire?

  “So that I will do no more harm. Do you know what happened to me?”

  To some extent. You had an accident. You acquired great power. Things did not go so well. And then you vanished.

  “You have a gift for understatement. Yes I had an accident.” And yes, things ”did not go so well.” I was once a normal human being in the 23rd century on Earth. If the universe had been kind, I would have died after about a century or so of life. To have loved, to have had children, grand-children, pride and loss, senescence and death, as is the natural order of things. But no, I had to fall into the field of a physics experiment at just the right – no, just the wrong – time. I had to be cursed with power.

  Many would have given much to have what you have. Eternal life. Eternal youth. Super-powers. What’s your problem?

  Superbeing looked at me. I was acutely aware that, if he wanted to, he could have destroyed me with casual ease. One of the rare advantages of being so old: I don’t care all that much. And Superbeing is definitely an interesting find.

&nb
sp; “Do you know my history?”

  Some. Perhaps. If it is not too painful, and to make sure that our records are complete, could you recap?

  “I see no reason not to. As you doubtless know, I fell into the fields of an eclectic high-energy physics experiment. In a fluke event that nobody was ever able to repeat, I was transformed into Superbeing, a so-far indestructible and omnipowerful creature. I swore to dedicate my life to good. What a colossal disappointment that was.”

  How so?

  “Because how is one to know what is good? I was gifted with almost supreme physical power, but I still had only the five basic human senses and a basic human mind. I could DO anything – but how to know what to do? Perhaps in the middle-ages I could have done right. If I had seen several warriors raping a defenseless peasant woman, I could have intervened. Sure, perhaps the woman was a murderer of small children and deserved such treatment, but at least in the Middle Ages I could have been as well informed as any man, and have hoped to have done more good than harm, to have been right more often than wrong.”

  Anyone and anything can make a mistake. It is no excuse for failing to act.

  Superbeing stared at me. “If I am not mistaken, you have at least 20 major senses, you can perceive the world though multiple vantage points, you have access to vast databases of knowledge, and you can run billions of simulations checking the validity of your assumptions. Certainly anyone can make a mistake, can be fooled. But you are state-of-the-art. You at least have a fighting chance of getting to the truth in this current age. I have the senses and mentality appropriate for gathering berries and hunting antelopes on the plains of ancient Africa. Against the kind of deceptions that a modern technological culture can create I am utterly helpless.”

  Explain.

  “I have been over this a thousand times, but I suppose that once more would not hurt. Someone says that so-and-so is a monster who tortures children for sport and must be stopped. I kill so-and-so and eventually realize that I’ve been played, the person I killed was a saint and it was the person that I trusted who was the monster.”