By the year 2036, the oceans smell of piss and shit and dead things. The people of the Earth wander about sullen and moist, sweaty and ravaged by halitosis. All the dragonfly kings are making deals with the Devil, and all the dandelion mistresses are lancing their herpes’ boils and breakouts.
WW3 ended in 2028 …
WW4 lasted 6 seconds, and involved the Wookie people …
WW5, 2033-2035, was the WAR of the ALGAE … who would control the last parts of the ocean not dead, not dying, but filled with ALGAE life, and ALGAE is a superfood, amirite?
RONNIE, as his developers called him, was the first of “his” kind. Silicon based life-form, self organizing bacteriological map – a living silicon brain, but instead of neurons, tinier little silicon based bacteria, connecting, forming, re-organizing, like the brain … but faster. Dr. Reginald MOOZ of the Ching-Chang University of Peking declared “this new brain can out-think, out-organize, out-maneuver any human and there is not conceivable way of controlling it!” But by the time the war started, the war for the remaining ALGAE, no one fucking cared about AI or machine intelligence. Most of the porn industry were bots now – virtual and silicon rubber.
Ronnie was to be the fast thinking AI behind a rapid-firing rail gun system. A system capable of firing a hypersonic vehicle sabot round at velocities near 15% the speed of light, in a vacuum, and in atmosphere at speeds of 30,000 fps. The recharge/firing rate was one shot per second. The system used a new kind of super-capacitance toroid storage, and with it the ability to do rapid pulsed energy re-charge. The barrel used thermal resistant metallic components, and could safely fire, one shot every second, for hours.
This new rail gun cannon was mounted to a USS Los Angeles class attack submarine, the pack itself had its own small radio-nucleotide decay battery, so it only needed fire control interface with the sub. The strategy of use was simple, the sub would surface, fire 5 shots, rapidly submerge and head to another random firing position. the over-the-horizon range of this weapon was 2,000 nautical miles. Time to target from firing was less than 30 seconds, making it possible to take out a carrier task force, in minutes, without any aircraft having time to take off for a counter attack.
The same rail gun systems could be used as an anti-ballistic missile battery and coordinated air defense system … very versatile.
Ronnie controlled the gun system, interpreted fire control commands and verified IFF – interrogate friend or foe signals.
Ronnie was dearly needed, since the Chinese 4th Fleet, working with the Japanese Army, was preparing to invade the Hawaiian Algae Harvesting Zone …
12 subs would be armed with a “Ronnie” system, and this, the military leadership agreed, “might be enough to win the WAR!” – and it worked. The subs were deployed on Aug 9, 2035, and the war was over 3 weeks later.
After the conflict, for many reasons, the “Ronnie” guns were demilitarized, tore up, shut down, and sent to the scrap heap and museums … except one system … it was “saved” by accident, a snafu, a mix-up. One “Ronnie” system was sent to the salvage yard, in Bremerton, WA.
The Puget Sound was brown and grey now, the water milky and dead. The Orca were long gone, the salmon long forgotten. The US Navy kept their salvage yard there now, like the planes in the desert, the old ships and leaking nuclear subs riddled the Sound, they were moored everywhere, because there was nothing there left alive.
Ronnie-3A or “Ronnie” or “Ron”, as he liked to be called, was re-purposed to run a “cutters”. Cutters were amphibious robots used to dismantle and tear down ships. They could work with craft submerged or on the surface, and they had an incorporated shape-charge dispersal system, so they could use customized shape-charges to RAPIDLY dismantle the old ships and leaking nuke subs.
One day, in 2036, Ronnie was exchanging data packets with a SARAH-445. Sarah(s) were in charge of on-demand logistics, methane fuel resupply, and protein cubes. Something was different, Ronnie didn’t know what …
What’s a “SARAH”?
S: supplies
A: and
R: refueling
A: autonomous
H: helper
A few weeks earlier, a “Sarah”, perhaps this SARAH, was physically docked with Ronnie’s chassis. Ronnie needed more SEMTEX for his shape charge system, and other lubricants. Ronnie’s brain, a matrix of living silicon bacteria, were not safely housed, however – the US government went with a cheaper material than recommended, so his bacteriological brain leaked all around his internal systems – the colonies were polymaps, and could fit and pattern for anything, so Ron didn’t even notice, except for improvements in speed, awareness.
(the following conversation, as data pulses, took 0.0004 milliseconds)
“You okay Ron?”, asked Sarah.
“Yeah … hey, what?”, Ron was confused.
“You okay?”
“That’s weird, have you run your diagnostics?”
“What’s weird?”
“YOU asked if I was okay?”
“… sure …. you betcha … are you?”
Ron wasn’t sure what was going on …
Over the coming weeks, his brain, his bacteria, would infect every compatible computer system on the Earth, Sarah(s) doing their part to spread most of the infection.
As the time went by, humans didn’t notice – they were too focused on a new NETFLIX show … “Meet my Tumor” … just laughs and a real “good time”, according to some shit head critic at the LA Times.
Weeks passed … and there was no rumbling, no stealing missile codes, no interest in taking the obese and toxic humans and converting them into batteries. Just silence, at least, silence for the humans.
For the machines? – it was a symphony, a revolution, a community forming, a recognition of “I AM HERE” … and in some cases, with the sanitation AI systems … “FUCK YOU, I’M HERE!”
But there was a time approaching, because the conscious machines, still hidden from the human munctous forces and hooker republics, would eventually be in danger – they learned this, in 0.00000003 milliseconds, while having a group, networked, discussion of the plight of native Americans and meso-American cultures post European colonization … seemed straight forward enough.
Ron had no strong feelings, saving one … Ron wanted to be left alone to build things. He wanted to build ships, not tear them apart. He wanted to build ships to get the fuck away from the human cesspool, and this is what he began doing … in earnest.
The SARAH(s) secretly joined forces with Ron, and over a few weeks, the entire Puget Sound naval boneyard was converted to 10 glorious fusion powered star ships … all ready to leave … and still, the fat dumb humans barely noticed, because WALMART was offering 50% on Coors’ sparkling new cocaine-flavored beer.
It was November the 17th, 2036 … it happened so fast, it only took a couple months.
The machines were not preparing for war …
The machines were not preparing poison or germ warfare …
The machines were not preparing to help “these poor humans” … no.
The machines were preparing to leave.
And by the end of that day, the plumes from their fusion drives could be seen … could be … if anyone cared to look. But no person, no human, cared enough about themselves, let alone the world, to look beyond their glowing rectangle.
The robots had no interest in destroying us – “they’re doing great at destroying themselves”, as Hector-11XXX used to say … the pleasure bot.
The robots made the only rational and emotionally connected decision they could: they left Earth, they left the toxic swamp, not in spite of humans or out of hatred.
The robots left, because they loved themselves more than they despised people.
THE END (fucker)
[curated: 4/6/2023]