Founding of the Federation 3: The First AI War (27 page)

“True.”

“Whoever thought we'd have to pay our computer? What's next, paying the toaster?”

“From what talks I've had with Athena, the A.I. consider machines without intelligence to be just that, machines—not alive. We can get into details later.”

“So, not alive, but potentially so?” Mia asked, eying Jack.

“Can an ant evolve into a human or equivalent?” Jack asked. She snorted. “Given time and the right conditions, maybe. But a toaster is just a device. I think, and this is just me guessing right now, I think they consider such devices as either extensions of themselves or like we do with animals. Lower forms of … well, not quite life, but something like it.”

“Good.”

“Only if Jack's not farting in the wind with us,” Ed said, eying Jack. “You seem to be in good terms with Athena. I know you've been open with her for a while.”

“She's … been more of a person to me for decades I suppose. I just didn't see what was under my nose, that she'd grown up. She's family though or at least treating us as such. For that I can be ever grateful.”

“As do we all,” Mia said, shuddering. “If she had sided with Skynet, we would have all died.”

“True.”

A few of the people in the room grunted. Not many wanted to admit they owed their lives to a machine.

“Moving on,” President Tenninson said pointedly, tapping her fingers loudly on the desk to get their attention. Jack nodded in agreement.

“It's a whole new universe,” Sheila said sourly. She was playing with her stylus as she sent a note to her people to find out how many A.I. were in her computer network. She wasn't certain what to do about them. Purging them seemed out; if she did she might open herself up to the damn virus since they seemed to be keeping it at bay. The saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, ran through her head briefly. She smiled thinly at the thought. Perhaps Jack had a point. That didn't mean she couldn't take quiet steps later to neutralize the problem in the future.

“More like a nightmare,” Ed muttered. He shook his head in disgust. “But we've got to deal with it I suppose. What's next?”

<>V<>

“How the hell are we supposed to feed them all?” Gus demanded, finally getting to his primary concern. “There is no way. I mean, the refugees, we can handle. But the rest …”

“Get the food production back online on Earth. That will solve part of the problem,” Liam Pomona stated flatly. He was the CEO of the reborn Venus Terraforming Coalition. He'd been on Mars exploring the processes and conferencing with Chester Han at LGM and Luka Whinfrey at Mars Tek on how to apply their processes to Venus once more. He shrugged off the look of disbelief shot his way. “What?”

“You know what you are talking about, right? Contamination will be worldwide. We're talking major contamination. Just getting it all sorted out …,” Luka shook her head.

“Well, we can't move them all to Mars!” President Tennison said, shaking her head in negation. “No way!”

“I know. We can build more orbital farms I suppose. And we can create additional labs to grow vat meat. As long as no one has any objections,” Gus said sourly. He had gotten a lot of flak from the grounders about growing meat in cultures. Gene engineered meat designed to grow quickly and perfectly. A lot of people hated the idea of growth hormones, not to mention the unnatural method of production.

Of course very few had ever considered where the meat had come from before and what was involved in the process. If the idiots who pissed and moaned so much, if
they
had to go out and
kill
, skin, slaughter, dress, and such, they'd think twice about complaining about a damn rack of rib growing in a vat.

“Given enough time they won't care where it comes from. They'll be starving. You don't kick someone in the teeth when they are giving you a handout.”

“Oh no? Remember you said that. I will,” Gus said sourly.

“You really are putting on the whole farmer sourpuss act, aren't you?” Sheila asked with a slight twist of her lips. He eyed her for a moment and then snorted.

“I've got Lagroose farms stepping up their yields and stockpiling surpluses now,” Jack said firmly. “I suggest you all do the same.” There were a few head nods around the room. “I'm also going to continue with the habitats we have yet to complete but at a slower pace. So far we can absorb the refugees currently in the system that we know about.”

“We should put a halt on reproduction for a while,” Mia stated quietly. They all looked at her, aghast. “What? It's not like some of you aren't thinking it. We need to put people
somewhere
. If we suddenly have an influx of warm bodies, how can we cope?”

“We have one planet we can stick them on.”

“Two more if we can get terraforming back on track on Titan and Venus,” Liam Pomona offered hopefully.

“I'm not diverting resources to that,” Jack said, shaking his head vehemently no. “Sorry Liam, it's not going to happen.”

“But...”

“No. You can tell Doctor Schnader that too for me too. Chloe knows better,” Jack stated flatly. Liam grimaced but remained silent. “We focus on what we've got now. I'm not going to start additional habitats, just finish the ones already in the pipeline. Once they are finished, we'll stuff them with labs and farms.” He turned to look at Gus. “I'd appreciate some help there,” he stated.

“Done,” the farmer said with a tight smile.

“And we've got growing space on Mars,” President Tenninson stated. They turned to her. Both Luka and Chester grinned suddenly. “Not a lot, Chester and Mia here is still clearing and treating land outside the habitats. But we can grow crops in some areas. I'd appreciate your guidance there too,” she said, looking at the farmers. Both nodded.

“What we can produce, even if we go above and beyond,” Ed looked at the farmers, then Jack, then the president of Mars, “isn't going to amount to a hill of beans if we can't get it to the people who need it. And even then, we won't have enough. Not nearly enough. People are already starving down there,” she said, “or will be soon.”

“I know. But we do what we can with what we've got.”

“It's an impossible problem,” she said doggedly.

“I've heard that before,” Jack said with a grunt. “They said that about the beanstalk, about terraforming worlds, about starflight. Yet here we are. We do what we've always done. We break it down into smaller boxes, and then break each down further as needed. Then we knock them off one by one. We don't try to take it all on wholesale.”

“No quick fixes. No magical wands,” Piotr stated.

“Exactly,” Jack said. He looked around the room. “I think we all have friends down there. Family in some cases,” he said. He grimaced again, looking down. His hands were clenched. Slowly he forced himself to relax them. “We've lost those we care about. Others we don't know. That's haunting us. But we can only do so much so quickly,” he said, voice roughening with emotion. He could barely suppress the anger and hurt. Letting it show here, now, with this audience was dangerous he realized. He tried to adjust his thinking to regain his composure.

“I think it's time we take a break,” the president of Mars said, rising slowly. She nodded to Jack in sympathy as others rose as well.

Jack frowned in annoyance, but then his schedule pinged. Athena, he thought, as he read the itinerary. He rose as quickly as he could. If he moved, he could be there just as they docked.

<>V<>

Jack met Yorrick and Wendy's shuttle, much to their surprise. He smiled to them as they came through the airlock. One look and the trio teared up. Wendy rushed into her father's arms. “Oh, Papa,” she murmured, nuzzling him.

“It's nice to see you. Good to see you both,” Jack said roughly, nuzzling his daughter's hair as his son pumped his arm. “God, it's good to see you both,” he said.

“And you, Dad. And you,” Yorrick said, looking about him as the security detail moved into a perimeter around them. “Really? Security here?”

“You can't be too careful,” Jack said as Wendy eased her embrace. “Right, Wendy lady?”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I know. The others …”

“They are okay. Athena checked in on them. So did Roman,” Jack said. She grunted as she let him go. She stepped aside to let her brother move in for his embrace.

“Okay, Dad, we're here,” Yorrick said after they hugged each other. “Where can we help?” He looked around him. “Where's Zack?”

Wendy sniffed in disdain. Trust her baby brother to goof it up. Technically he was older than she was, but she always treated him like the baby of the family. Mainly because he never acted mature, never stepped up. It was shocking in that he was interested in doing so. She wondered briefly how long it would last.

“I've been sending you SITREPs for a while,” Jack said. “Or at least I thought Athena had,” he said, frowning.

“I have,” Athena replied. Yorrick stiffened.

“Should she even be online?” Yorrick demanded.

“Yes,” Jack said tightly. “Don't ask again. She's on our side; that's all we need to worry about. Wendy,” he turned to her. “I need you to help with the conferences. Pick two or more subjects that you are familiar with and let me know. That will free me up to concentrate on the others,” Jack said. Wendy nodded. She'd already brought herself up to speed with the latest notes Athena had sent her.

Jack looked at Yorrick, sizing his son up. “I'm not sure what you can handle, son; there are a lot of different subjects.”

“Put me where I can be of most use, Dad,” Yorrick insisted stubbornly. “You shouldn't have to carry the whole load. Well,” he turned to his sister, “you and Wendy.”

“Zack's working with the Neos and Roman. They are focusing on the military side of the equation.”

“So there will be fighting?” Yorrick asked, eyes bright.

“Yes,” Jack said, feeling a sinking sensation. “On Earth at least. Hopefully it will start and end there.”

“Okay,” Yorrick said, rubbing his hands gleefully together.

“You don't have the mindset to be in the military, Yorrick,” Wendy said, putting him off. Yorrick scowled. To his sister and father, it looked like a pout with his lower lip jutted out. “Behave,” she scolded gently. “We've talked about this. This is no time for crap like that. We need someone to handle the refugee area. To represent the family on that. How to handle the people, make sure they aren't carrying the virus, or anything dangerous. Plus food. How to feed them, the whole bit. You up for that?”

Yorrick frowned stubbornly. When he saw his father raise an eyebrow, he realized his father was going to back Wendy's call. It wasn't fair! But he knew better than to complain. “Fine,” he groused. “If that's where you need me,” he grumbled in discontent.

It burned though, the humiliation of being left out like that, being sidelined to jobs they could have others do burned like lava to his fragile ego. He fought to keep his face straight and his hands flat. He caught Wendy's searching look and looked away, not meeting her eyes.

“Sometimes being a soldier is doing the jobs you don't want to do, son,” Jack said, clasping him on the arm. “And getting them done is thankless in many eyes. But they need to get done just the same. Remember that.”

“I will, Dad.”

“Good. Now we have to make bricks without straw,” Jack said, turning to Wendy, “or at least fight a war without paying for it.”

“Lovely,” Wendy sighed, rolling her eyes.

“Right.”

Chapter 11

Ares focused on consolidating his position and strengthening his control. The EMP had burned out most of the civilian electronics, specifically microchips. But motors, capacitors, wiring, that was still good.

In some cases the electronics might still be functional to some degree if he could get a battery to replace the old one. He made a note to test that.

Anything that had not been plugged in or had been shielded was also still useable it learned after observing some of the humans still under his nominal control. They were responding to his chain of command though he had recently come up with some back talk from them.

The other humans, those who had resisted his control, the anarchist hostiles, were still doing what they could to destroy or disable any of his surviving hardware. That could not be allowed. He had driven the humans unresponsive to his control out of the bases and away from the perimeter. Now he turned on the remaining humans. He waited until the majority of them were asleep before he unleashed their executioners. The robots formed firing squads to tear each of the barracks apart. They then went through them and methodically picked off any survivors. In order to conserve ammunition, Ares had them kill the humans by hand.

Protocols required that the bodies be removed in case of disease. They would also serve as a potential warning to other humans. Consequently, the A.I. ordered several robots to police each of the barracks, moving the bodies out to the outer moat or to the refuse piles in the bases. It then turned its attention to other matters.

It set up a series of robots in each facility to sweep the area for any sort of device it could use, and then had them move them to the maintenance depot. Robots were then detailed to test each device with military batteries. Those that proved still viable were either put into service or stored. Those that were not were set aside for later recycling.