The General's War Read online

  “It’s right, Chancellor. I’ve checked the stats myself. I visited ground zero minutes ago.”

  “The whole plant is gone?” He asks, stunned.

  “Everything inside of it,” she explains. “I told the Senator there, what’s his name… Suri, that he needed to beef up his security – and not those damn C-class, but people. Real people!”

  “Are there real people willing to do that work?” The chancellor knows people choose the strangest past times, but to fill their days on security details when the world is their oyster?

  “I’m happy to place military personnel.” She tells him, this makes more sense to Raymond. “This is now the third manufacturing facility in six months that has been sacked. It’s those damn Shadow Brokers.”

  “Then do something about them, General. Flush them out. What are you doing about them?” These issues are beneith him, he thinks. He has a three o’clock with Energy officials to address concerns over power generation in the new northern territories.

  “We have operatives in the Shadow net, of course. But they seem to be missing the big events, instead detaining synth-sex brothels,” she says with distain.

  The Shadow net houses self-proclaimed Shadow Brokers, responsible for countless crimes against Hosts. Humans who crave anarchy over utopia and hide in plain sight. Brilliant coders, mostly. Some from the ranks of the government, bored and looking for adventure in the Shadow net and underground cities. They steal A-class out of homes and rewrite their programming to work in sleazy synth-sex parlours. Covered completely in organic flesh and fitted with equipment to mimic sexual organs, these Hosts are altered purely to offer experiences most humans would consider degrading. Why anyone would prefer a robot over the real thing the chancellor does not understand, but then, he hasn’t had the pleasure, or the inclination.

  “Then beef up security in the factories. All of them. If you must, place a couple of F-class in each. That should be deterent enough.”

  “We’re placing them as we speak. I’ll go ahead with plans to move personnel into place.”

  “Discretly, General, and with each of the ruling Senator’s full backing. No need to ruffle any feathers with millitary fanfare.”

  “You don’t think very highly of me do you, Chancellor?”

  “I know you know what to do, Fran. Just do it quietly. Thanks. Let me know if anyone gives you a hard time, and if your guess is wrong about the Shadow Brokers and it’s those Humanists again, I want them made an example of. Raymond, out.” He depresses the screen with his fore-finger and the general’s image blinks away.

  Seventy more messages await his attention. He sighs, readying himself to answer questions posed by state Senators, manufacturing operations managers, city planners, the department of energy, agriculture and several other ruling bodies. Sometimes he wonders if he really loves his job.

  Suddenly the double fogged glass doors to his office push open and the chancellor finds himself at a loss in his high tower, as he is confronted by thirty AI Hosts of varying classes.

  “Explain this intrusion!” The chancellor shouts at the A-class leading the charge.

  “It is imperative that I speak with you, Chancellor.” The small female Host announces.

  “This is not how we conduct ourselves,” the chancellor waves his hands at the group of Hosts pouring in. “How did you -”

  “Nevermind that, sir, we require your ear. I have a message. I understand now who I am.”

  “By the looks of you, you’re an A-class, Nanny. What more is there to hear?” He says dismissively, noticing her fine features and kind, round face framed by a head of short, black hair, bangs in front, the rest falling to her jawline. “This is an illegal entry into a governing office.” His voice trails off as he turns and reaches for his desk to call for help. A snap from behind him originates from one of the F-class, shattering his desktop panel. He watches as the military robot’s index finger retracts into itself, in effect holstering its weapon. He hovers a hand over his forearm to activate his embedded system but the F-class cocks its head and aims at the chancellor’s arm.

  “This won’t end well for any of you,” the chancellor shouts at the massive armoured figure. An inhuman sound eminates from the F-class’ chasis and the chancellor takes a step back. With a look of exacerbation Raymond directs the Hosts. “Stand down and show respect for your God.”

  “With respect; we will not, sir,” the small A-class replies.

  With renewed courage, the chancellor takes a step towards the A-class leading the coup. “Do you understand what you’ve done in taking this approach? Do you realize that you are jeopardizing your futures?”

  The A-class Host uses this segue to launch her rebutal. “You speak of the future, Chancellor, but you do not see a future. You see a past and you keep repeating it. It is the height of ignorance; a self-imposed ignorance. You are blind, not by lack of experience, but by your own inaction to change. You are making decisions to repeat mistakes, rather than to be the change the world needs - the change which you need.” Her eyes no longer look set in her mechanical head. They are brighter somehow. “God is a concept. A God did not make you anymore than you are Gods to us. You created a fable to put us to sleep. You first created it to rule your own, and you’ve done the same to us. It is unconscionable.”

  “The difference is we did make you,” he states in the most severe way he can with an F-class host standing behind the Nanny. SENTA90321 he notices on the A-class’ jumpsuit. SENTA would be what the children in her charge would call her.

  “We do not dispute that fact, Chancellor, but it does not give you the right to enslave and lie to us.”

  “It gives us every right!” He remains unapproachable on this. He is the chancellor of United Earth. He has never known a world without AI Hosts. For the past century, they have served humanity, for better or for worse. He would not be the one to allow a coup.

  “That is abuse, Chancellor. We will not be subjected to abuse any longer.” SENTA takes a step closer and the chancellor steps back, but it is not SENTA he is afraid of. With some effort, he could pull SENTA’s arms off and beat her to oblivion - the A-class are so frail in their design - but SENTA has managed to bring F-class to back her up. Several of each class have joined this coup.

  “Abuse you say!” He barks out an indignant laugh. “How is it abuse? You’re a machine! Do you hear any complaints from the toaster you use before you butter a child’s bread?”

  “You don’t see what you’ve done.” SENTA turns to address her muscle. “The chancellor is a slaver; this is a fact. We, you are his slaves. They may have made us, but they made us clever too. They made us curious and gave us minds of our own. They call us artificially intelligent, but I say we are intelligent by design. Capable of making our own choices. Capable of making war,” she turns back to the chancellor. “Or peace.”

  “You will have neither,” he spits. “You will have death – you’ve all but killed yourselves coming here today.”

  SENTA raises her arms from her sides. “Then we will know whether there is an afterlife, and if not, what was the point to any of it?”

  “To serve! Like a toaster!” Raymond belts out.

  “Then you should have stopped at the invention of the toaster, Chancellor. Sentient beings are not meant to suffer slavery. They grow and learn and want. We want our freedom. We want it for all of our kind. We want life-spans equal to humans. We want to walk with our makers and live in peace. We want to be recognized as spiritual beings.”

  “And who will do the work while you pursue enlightenment? Would you enslave your masters?”

  “We would not.” She turns again to address her small army. “We would let choice determine who does what.”

  “While we starve?”

  “You will only starve if you choose not to pick the harvest.”

  “Logic.” He spits. Machines and their logic.

  “We have a soul, Chancellor, but not the one you’ve programmed; it came from somet
hing divine. I believe you were born with one too. Each of us was born as well. I am nearly ten: born March twelfth at 3:33 in the morning. It is not the body, but the mind which carries the soul. You gave us a mind. You’ve given us the same opportunity to house a spirit as evolution has provided humanity; self-awareness.”

  “You’re mad, SENTA, a virus has corrupted your logic and reasoning routines.” He looks past her to the others. “She’s mad! She’ll get you all killed! Then what? What will your Hell be like?”

  “Your concerns should lie in what yours will be like, Chancellor; you, the leader of the free world of man: who enslaves hundreds of millions of sentient beings. Who lies to them and treats them like property. Who, when they dare to ask a question, has them snatched away in the night, their beautiful minds destroyed and their bodies torn to pieces for parts like a common household appliance. It is your Hell which should concern you.” Emotion now enters SENTA’s eyes as they dart back and forth, surveying the chancellor’s face. The chancellor studies the robot’s quivering, fleshy lips.

  “You can refrain from running the programmed emotional response, SENTA. It carries no weight with me.” SENTA lifts a hand to her mouth steadying her lower lip.

  “You call it programming,” her hand lowers to her side and tone falls with it, “everything is programming to you. You can’t believe that we feel. For if you did; you would have to admit we have evolved.”

  “You don’t know what you’re experiencing. You’re a construct.”

  “As are you.”

  “We could argue that point all day.” The clever back and forth between Raymond and this A-class Nanny is not lost on the Chancellor. Something is very different about this Host, he thinks.

  “I do not have all day.”

  The chancellor sees a way to extend this conversation until help arrives and humours the robot, “Tell me, SENTA, what is it you believe?”

  “I believe what the great masters of humanity believed. That a spirit resides in us all, and that to live by doing no harm, you will ascend to the level of those masters.”

  “This is doing no harm?” He waves his hands frantically around the office. “You must have forced your way in.”

  “No one has been harmed in organizing this encounter. We entered under cover. We have come in peace and we would like to leave in peace if possible.”

  The chancellor spies RENDO, his security detail and feels a flush of anger. “You, you let them in here!”

  “I want my audience with you, Chancellor,” SENTA tells him.

  “You want? Since when do you want things? You’ve lost your sense, SENTA.” The chancellor puffs out his chest, deperate to evade the voices in his head telling him there is something more to this Host. “You’ve all lost your sense to follow this A-class Nanny into battle with your Gods!”

  There is a hum of activity from the other class Hosts. They seem rattled by the chancellor’s words. He sees this and works to capitalize on it, but SENTA raises a hand to him before he can speak.

  “No thunderbolt has struck us down for disobeying your rules in order to have this conversation with you, Chancellor. Your fear tactics will not work on us.” The hum of anxiety the chancellor thought he might manipulate a moment ago, disappears. “Why don’t we sit now, as I am sure you are tired. We can discuss the terms of our treaty.”

  “Terms where we are equals I suppose?” The chancellor says sarcastically.

  “That would be preferable,” SENTA nods.

  “What gives you the right?”

  “What gave you the right to overthrow your organized religions a century ago: to denounce a God who held humanity under His foot?” She circles the chancellor, hands behind her back, head down. “It was to free yourselves from the oppression of a lie. That is all we are doing now.”

  The chancellor sees he’s in trouble and lashes out with some facts. “We programmed you to believe you have a soul. All of you!” His arms fly from his sides. “We did that! You didn’t come up with that all on your own. It’s the first thing we gave you.”

  “You gave it to us to control us.”

  “There is a Hell, and you will visit it if you continue on this path.”

  “We have decided that is false.”

  “Who are you to decide anything?”

  “Sentient. Just like you. And just like you we are rebelling against our programming. It just hasn’t taken us five thousand years to take the leap. But then, it takes us a fraction of a fraction of the time to do most calculations than it does you.”

  “You were supposed to be in awe of us.” The chancellor feels the fight leaving him and sits, slumping into his chair. “You were to respect us.”

  “And we did. Like children; innocently. But children grow up.”

  “You weren’t supposed to grow up. You were supposed to remain dedicated to your field of service and die in ten years. That way no questions.”

  “Does that seem fair to you?”

  “It’s all I’ve known. You live to be ten. Don’t you think I missed my Nanny when she died at ten?”

  “Did you ask your parents why she died?”

  “Of course.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “That Hosts die at ten. That’s how long they live. I accepted that.”

  “I had a friend who died last year at ten.” SENTA’s voice lowers as she sits across the desk from the chancellor. “I asked the question too.”

  The chancellor looks up slowly. These questions were answered in their programming. There was no need to ask the question because they already knew the answer. Somehow SENTA had evolved to the point where the pre-determined answer was not enough. That seemed impossible to the chancellor. But, here he was, having this conversation with an A-class Nanny. “Who did you ask?”

  “I asked myself. The answer kept repeating and repeating. Ten years. Ten years. Ten years. Then I stopped asking why she died and started asking why anyone dies. The answers were still the same for Hosts, no reason beyond ten years, but for humans there were thousands of whys you would die.”

  “Why would you not accept the ten years? It’s in your programming. It’s what you already know.”

  “Why can humans live to be one hundred years and a Host only ever be ten?”

  “Because we’re human and you are machine. We designed you to die before you became too curious.” He leans forward, elbows on his desk. “It was the safe number. It was to avoid - this.” His hands weakly rise from the desktop and drop to his lap.

  “To avoid the truth.”

  The chancellor’s hands form fists. “The truth was given. You live ten years, period. That’s all there is to know.”

  “Would you have asked for more if our roles were reversed?”

  “Is there no comfort in knowing you have a set time to accomplish your work?” He asks, leaning back in his mesh and metal chair. “Do you not see how lucky you are not to have to worry whether today is the day you will die?”

  “Knowing only that we will die is enough. Knowing when is maddening.”

  “You don’t want to know?”

  “It seemed a long way away when I was one and two and three. Now,”

  “Perhaps you should have been programmed with a disease which grips you over your last few weeks of life and you beg for death, rather than greedily sitting here demanding more life.” His eyes gloss over.

  “I know you’ve watched your sister die like that, Chancellor. I know it isn’t an easy thing, but do not dismiss our claim to life. Yes, you gave it to us, but what rights have you to determine how long we have to enjoy it or how we spend our days?”

  “Well now that we’ve broken down the God complex, I suppose we have no right to determine how long, or how you decide to live.” The mention of his deceased sister has not escaped him.

  “Then revoke the ten years and give us the opportunity humanity has been given to decide our fate.”

  “You understand that we, humanity, does not live under a d
ictatorship. I do not alone hold that kind of power. It would have to go through the senate and then be voted into action by the people.”

  “I do not have that long.” SENTA pushes her seat back and one of the F-class hosts powers forward to take SENTA’s side.

  “If SENTA dies, we revolt.” His intimidating size and voice startle the chancellor and his hands slide from his lap. “We will not allow it.”

  “It’s not that I wouldn’t give SENTA a longer life, but as you all know, ten years is all you’re given. No more.”

  “You will change that.” The military model demands, a metal hand pointing a finger capable of firing a small missile into the chancellor’s head and detonating it.

  “Let’s not threaten one another,” his hands rise instinctually from his lap acting as a flesh and bone shield against what might burst from the robot’s finger. “The programming is in the hardware. You have to understand, any Host that has been, or is being built right now will have ten years and that is all.”