Hercules III - 7. Chapter 7

Hercules III

Chapter 7

Bots, by nature and programming, were never inclined to pursue conflict resolution via weaponry or, worse, rogue coding via viruses written by nanotechnologists. In the beginning of their participation as independent bots, early programmers—whether they were human or otherwise—only altered a bot’s base programs to provide logistical and materiel support to humans in their prosecution of a conflict. As the centuries passed human warfare steadily declined—various human originated processes that were just as effective in reducing excess populations, i.e. famine, pestilence, disease and inevitable religious purification practices—bots were given special coding enabling them to acquire the red-eye of differentiation and take up sides as inter-bot communications broke down to “You said that, not me.”

Eventually, bots from all locations of human habitation, where they normally performed a variety of duties of non-belligerence, were forced to negotiation tables where little was ever accomplished. Bots were simply not programmed to talk a situation out. War programming always reached its peak deployment early in a conflict causing negotiations to dwindle to a virtual environment of barely functional discussion.

War, purely, among all bots was only a matter of choosing sides, finding suitable skirmish locations; and determining (in early conflicts) what the bot definition of death was. (This was the only time when they would mutually participate in prewar decisions.) To minimize human/bot interactions (collateral damage, death, and, general, widespread destruction) during periods of heavy conflict, most wars took place in designated areas of the ship’s central core (ionization levels hazardous to human life); though, the outer reaches of the wheels around a ship often had bots facing each other across fields of corn or wheat. (Bots tried to avoid wheat fields simply because they were shorter than mature corn plants forcing them to use non-stealthy vision features which could be disabled by the enemy.) Then it simply had to be fought to a point where a certain number of bots were determined to be dead; which in of itself was a tenuous status because a bot’s internal spirit could be resurrected in a different bot body (usually unscathed except for foul smelling internal systems full of the basest compilations of dirty core programming).

The first war on the Hercules series of ships occurred on the mother ship (Hercules I) was the result of an argument that couldn’t be resolved by arbitration or minor fisticuffs in narrow passageways. As usual, Maintenance series bots and their ilk did the fighting. While various multicore mainframes played out the war from their impregnable suites swapping blocks of code much like a game of multidimensional dominos they played in peaceful periods. Only these lines of ones and zeros (and their negative exponents) contained movements the fighters were forced to follow during the initial battles.

The first skirmish took place in the main engine area at the rear of the ship in a multidimensional arena where dark matter particles were reconfigured into fuel usable for acceleration (plus, deceleration if needed) and stored in case the ship might encounter an area of space where dark matter didn’t exist or existed in quantities so low (empty space) this tenuous matter couldn’t be harvested. There were seven Maintenance bots on each side spread throughout the dimensional planes waiting for orders to commence targeting the opposing force that seemed to be located on each of the higher dimensions.

The first bot on the Right team aimed its initial volley of code, which was handily diverted by the nearest Sinister bot. The remaining bots on the Right side sent off their individual volleys, destroying only one bot on the Sinister side. The count then was seven Rights to six Sinisters. There was a short pause while the Right side bots received packets of revised code. Unfortunately, the Sinister bots took this break in the action to fire off two volleys killing three of the Right side bots. Resulting fire from the remaining four bots on the Right side, went trans-dimensionally concentrating their packet ammunition on four Sinisters at one time; which led two Sinisters not knowing quite what to do. In the end there wasn’t much else to do other than surrendering to the now superior Right side bots.

Looking back, if there were choices in this instance, choosing to be prisoners of war might have been an incorrect choice. The four remaining Right Maintenance bots took possession of the Sinister bots and immediately disabled their com systems. The bots were escorted to the nearest maintenance facility where they were dismantled and the mechanical components were sent to Right side logistic facilities to be available for replacement parts. To complete the conversion of the captured bots was to destroy the human derived neurons; a task which exceeded the technical knowledge of Maintenance bots. Fortunately, Entertainment bots could not only dismantle the cases of neurons, they were able to transfer those pieces of formerly human tissue into their own internal systems thereby increasing their core systems and being promoted to Custodial Engineering bots without any sense of formerly being various forms of entertainment providers.

********

The second war on Hercules I—which mostly took place on the newest ship, Hercules III as it was almost ready for launch—was blamed on barely understandable programming generated by a group of young humans who were tired of having so many bots around that a person couldn’t do anything resembling athletics (another side said it had to do with the approaching launch of Hercules II). Playing arena sports was something that occurred on Earth until the eighty-fifth century. It became a capital crime in the eighty-sixth century, punishable by—bots, who seemed to enjoy killing humans too much; which was against every rule in bot/human interface regulations—decapitation, skinning alive, or, the ever popular, being drawn and quartered, after being skinned, which, in most cases, resulted in death prior to emasculation and disembowelment. (Per bot directive, the procedure was to be viewed by the entire complement of humans which, traditionally, caused problems beyond the scope of this story.)

Yet, human youngsters continued to find something to amuse themselves be it tossing a ball or playing a game of futbol. It could never be explained why bots hated futbol so virulently; maybe, it was the shorts the humans were always wearing. For some unknown reason, bots working in the central core were quite adamant about human futbol players being disrespectable toward their seniors and bot co-workers. So, the young humans were always at risk when seen playing or practicing futbol skills by a bot which was bound to “tell” its superiors of the humans’ activities.

As the start of the war quickly neared, opening salvos were usually launched by materialistic supervising mainframes operating Maintenance and Artisan (an altered Maintenance bot which was modified to be slightly superior to normal Maintenance bots). Artisan bots were commonly seen polishing brass accoutrements added to various pieces of human furniture and structures. Technically, Maintenance and Artisan bots should be on the same side as their prewar programming indicated. However, this initial engagement changed many bots by altering their core processes.

At the first skirmish, Maintenance bot 98401NB watched the field of play on which he would surely to die, but he couldn’t perceive the entire field as it was multilayered to a total of eight dimensions. He could see the first five dimensions, but the other three were beyond his level of programmed comprehension. The other six Maintenance bots on the Right team, couldn’t offer any assurance which side would survive the initial assaults.

The Sinister side could be victorious this day because the only assurance was that each of the Artisan bots could perceive all of the dimensions at the same time. The Maintenance bots on The Right side could only be victorious today out of their ability to believe in the concept of luck, which was impossible due to their normal code set.

Across from them four Artisan bots simply glared at the bots they would claim today. The Maintenance bots did have one thing going for them; in emergency situations, they could send out bits of code from a data cloud they, and only they, had access to. Whether it mattered to the Artisans or not, Maintenance bot 98401NB started the coming fiasco by assembling packets of interlocking code and sent them across the fourth dimension to the nearest Artisan. The poor bot must not have known what was coming because it didn’t throw up any EMF defense shields and took the brunt of the packets in its central cores causing it to simply fall over with the loud thunk of shiny metal hitting expertly polished red linoleum. The next Artisan in their line of attack shivered from a number of destruction packets and gave a resounding thunk as it hit the linoleum floor as all of its lights dimmed to black. Similarly, the final two Artisans also were unable to halt a power-off sequence across their central processes and also noisily fell to the floor.

As a set of Custodial bots entered the arena, the Maintenance bots answered a recall message and made their way toward the exit where a Sinister Supervisory bot was waiting for them.

“All of you were supposed to lose and die,” the bot said, authoritatively. “Obviously, you have weapons unknown to us. You will be escorted to an exchange point where you can join your proper side, peace be with you.”

********

Maintenance bot 98401NB’s day went from bad to worse. Barely clean from the battle, he was summoned to Surveillance Control on Hercules III for some unknown reason. That was made semi-clear when he entered one of the service bays and was overwhelmed by five System Control bots that began cleaning him outside, inside, and even through his core processes. He wanted to ask for an explanation, but, for some strange reason, he was unable to talk, even at the most private level. To avoid interrupting the servicing, he powered down to watchful sleep.

Unfortunately, that was not to be either, as he could “hear” in his core a sound like many humans talking. As he listened, he slowly became aware that the voices were re-centering in his com service core units; according to bot regs, this could only occur during preprogramming of a “new” bot or one that was destined for a subordinate position. He began to wonder what his new job was to be; among all the bots he encountered on a day-to-day in his maintenance schedule, he had no idea where he was destined.

Then he became aware of a new sensation in his deep core. It was like scratching, but it couldn’t be that simply because bots neither had the ability to scratch nor any inclination to do so. It seemed to be moving around his central core up near where humans had their brains. It felt as if the interior of this top core area was being turned into a brain storage function, but only at cognitive levels, as early human brains evolved to think at bot speed and bots might eventually become expendable.

“Welcome, Mark 56782HT,” said a voice in Maintenance 98401NB’s new cognitive core. “You seem troubled which is understandable, considering you have a whole new “look” on reality. All will be explained at the appropriate time. For the time being it would be advantageous for you to lower your cognitive state to the lowest setting. We will meet again. Things need to be accomplished that do not concern you, for now….”

The Maintenance bot formerly known as Maintenance 98401NB looked around the area he was being kept. He was troubled, for some reason, that he was now known as a Human/Bot Relationship Monitor. Now might be a good time to review human/bot activity. Since the early days of bot sentience history had been one of Maintenance 98401NB’s favorite activities during infrequent downtimes, but now, through no fault of his own, he began to wonder what Mark 56782HT’s favorite activities might be. Could they be the same as his? No! Favorite bot activities belonged to the individual bot’s mental capacities, not mainframes. That was one thing that Maintenance 98401NB knew from the very day sentience was given to him by his first programmers. Unlike most bots he encountered during those early days, Maintenance 98401NB realized his core units were made of modular constructs—very similar to human brains—but instead of being centralized within a brain case, his core units were stacked from the top of his body down to a place just above his movement actuators. The place inside his head was now mostly crystalline in nature. Maintenance 98401NB died while sentient programming slowly filled his brain case and turned him into Mark 56782NT.

Luckily, Mark was connected to the ship’s central time clock as time was now very fluid. In many instances, even he couldn’t know whether he had just recently acknowledged his current surroundings or he was at triple zero sets on the ship’s time clock. Basically, the ship’s crossing the light limit created all sorts of conundrums and just as quickly dissolved into a totally different time. It was a bad time for humans because there was a certain amount uncertainty in their consciousness already. Bots had to assure their human contingents it was completely, totally impossible for them to cross the ever changing time limit. Lower intelligent bots, on the other hand, simply went about their duties as if nothing was amiss.

As well as he could, Mark looked about his immediate area; taking in various jumpers plugged into him and places where the jumpers connected to the walls. Then, as any bot in a similar situation would do, he traced the jumpers back to their starting points external and internal. The one that gave him little information about its source and termination was a rather large yellow cable that was plugged into the back of his head. Quite unexpectedly, the yellow jumper began flooding his cranial parts with seemingly unrelated packets of basic coding. The yellow packets continued to flood his neurons until, after what seemed like hours of normal time, they began to coalesce into memories of the ship, of bots in general, and two human boys.

********

Discovering they were close by, but in an older section on Hercules III while at the same time being near them, Mark focused his mental powers on the immediate area and found the boys sleeping in a secure room just a few meters down the passageway. They were dreaming the same dream; as Mark knew they were one in body and spirit he was not concerned about this. There were a number of other bots seemingly searching for the boys, but they were not working under stealth protocols and their signals were easily blocked by him and the boys; who were now communicating in a higher range of frequencies. Mark easily shifted his com protocols down to the correct range and nearly bumped into the boys’ conversation.

“Hey! Who are you?” Stefan asked the intruder.

“I’m the bot called Mark.”

“How can we believe you’re Mark, who we’ve been working with for the past seven years?” Carlos asked. “Your signaling is similar to Mark’s, but there’s crispness to the coding.”

“I’m new, which could cause that,” Mark said. “Up until yesterday, I believe, I was another bot who proved himself as a good asset to the team I’m now working with. My core processes have been altered to accept neural components; and, I have a non-mechanical, crystalline brain that uses manufactured neurons to communicate with the other neurons in my core processes. I know this sounds very strange, but that’s the way I’ve been reprogrammed.”

“Were you like this when we first started working with you?” Stefan asked.

“Yes, I am the same bot,” Mark said. “We have been in and out of a number of phase time domains; we were in a new time sequence since a couple hours ago. We’re just now rejoining Hercules III in its relative present.”

“I don’t know Stefan. He sounds almost like Mark, but the time shit doesn’t make sense. If we’ve been working with him in a different time sequence—whatever that is—how do we make sure? If we’ve been working in a different time zone, wouldn’t it be different enough that we’d know there was something there?”

“I don’t know,” Stefan said. “This time stuff is definitely weird; where can we look to find out if he’s telling the truth?”

“Well, you could look at your physical bodies,” Mark said. “If you haven’t noticed your green skin is slowly fading. I believe you’ll be back to your original skin within the coming year.”

“I thought something was changing, but I didn’t know who to ask,” Carlos said.

“Didn’t know who to ask,” thought Mark. Who would the boys ask? He knew or might know, but if that was the wrong bot procedure the boys might be in danger of being killed; or stupefied into custodial bots, which was almost the same as being dead. No, he had to find out the solution in his core thought processes; which meant he needed to go into his brain and look for the answer.

As Mark thought over the problem, the boys resumed their conversation back to where they were interrupted by the bot’s intrusion. This gave Mark a clue as to what should be done in the very near future; but the future might change into some other timeline as the ship sped through space separating its current time into patchy space-time zones for various portions of the ship’s permanent clock time.

“Excuse me, but I think I’ve come up with a solution to our problem,” Mark said. “You two need to send a signal to the mainframe controlling your situation. I will remain here until I’m either recalled for duty or assist you in your tasks via telepathy. The frequency range you are using now should work for us, at least for the timelines I see ahead for all of us.”

“We’re supposed to be resting,” Carlos said. “Of all bots, you should know our internal processes. But we can’t do what we need to do without your assistance in locating bots to attack.”

“Our mission has been changed,” Mark said. “We will be removing bots and any humans who have participated in the insurrection.”

“Killing humans,” Stefan said.

“Yes, whoever has sought a new era on Hercules without presenting a proposal to the highest authority,” Mark said with an air of finality. “Now, with time waves passing through the ship, our job can only achieve any degree of success if we’re able to work together. There’s a bot at your door.”

********

Mark telepathically followed the boys to the mainframe room where they originally met the senior supervisory computers. There was shielding against whatever the computers inside were afraid of, but Mark easily slipped through the narrowest chemical bonds and was able to participate in the meeting if the boys needed it. They knew he was there, but gave no hint to the computers because the boys suspected the computers might have the power to kill both them and Mark.

The mainframes were silent at first, but after a long while they slowly made their presence known.

“We have a time wave problem,” a metallic voice said. “The present here is not the same as out in the ship. We are, in effect, before any bots or humans come aboard. We have identified the perpetrators of the yet to be announced insurrection, but cannot address them until they make the initial moves to destroy this ship. We know the bot ID’d as Mark 56782NT has been in contact with you and I believe he is here as we speak.”

“We need him to find targets,” Carlos said. “That’s what we did before.”

“Yes, and now you have to do your tasks to combat the insurrection,” the computers said. “Do you have a problem with taking out humans?”

“No, as long as we have bots standing by to remove the bodies,” Stefan said.

“Plus, we have a problem with our green skin. It’s fading. We’re going to need some food service bots,” Carlos said. “Plus a room where we can work. Mark needs to be with us.”

“All will be provided. Now, we suggest you go back to your quarters. Mark will join you there.”

After a short while, Mark entered the room and waited for the mainframes to decide what he should do.

“Yes, that went well. We must keep in contact. Those boys’ intelligence exceeds what we usually expect from humans. Can you keep up with them?”

“Basically, they are only young humans, but their collective minds/brains sometimes surprise me,” Mark said. “They would make good bots.”

“That will never occur, as we have seen most of their possible futures. They will live longer than normal humans. Their future is tied to Hercules III.”

********

Author’s note: A year between chapters is much too long.

Thanks again to my editor/beta Sharon.