Founding of the Federation 3: The First AI War (59 page)

“But, we have to do something. We're here, we are in a position to help. Those of us who are willing to do so,” the mayor said, eying those who in his eyes weren't doing enough. As mayor of Axial-2, their recent close call had proven to him that something had to be done about Skynet and Earth.

“As you know, we've got a lot of ground to cover. A lot of precious time to make up for. I want each of you to put this thought in your mind. Every moment you delay, for whatever reason, a thousand people die. They die from disease brought on by radiation exposure, cancers from being out in the open air without suitable protective measures, dehydration from lack of clean water, starvation, and the worst reaper of all, the robots who mercilessly are hunting them down. We have to act ladies and gentlemen, and act swiftly. I pray we do so,” he ended.

He nodded once as he stepped back from the podium, then bowed. Slowly the assembly began to rise as they broke up into small delegations and knots of conversing people.

Jack nodded. Short, sweet, and to the point. Perhaps he'd misjudged the mayor.

A series of conferences were scheduled to follow, some to get them up to speed on what he and the leaders of Mars had already discussed to death and agreed on, others to bring up fresh points or thresh out new details. If only they'd bothered to read the damn notes and listen to the recordings, a lot could of time could have been saved, Jack grumbled mentally.

He sighed tiredly, wishing he'd brought Wendy along. She'd complained about being left behind, though she hadn't put too much amperage into the complaints. She had pitched a fit about Athena's departure, however, when they got underway. Apparently she had taken note of how much still hinged on the A.I.'s efforts.

Good. It was a good thing that at least someone appreciated her, Jack thought.

<>V<>

Jack was assigned to many committees, from logistics to shipbuilding to manpower. But he jumped on one right away, the committee assigned to consider the idea of growing super soldiers. Hopefully, if he nipped it in the bud, it would free up some of his time to handle the other committees or take on something else.

“Ethical situation aside, just how can we do this?” Mayor and Chairman Bart Ellington asked. The chairman was mayor of Island 3 with a medical degree under his belt before he'd taken a side interest in local politics. “I'm not permanently tabling the ethics, just seeing if it is even possible. Figuring out if it is or isn't will make any further discussion relevant.”

“I understand the world powers have been going through their own brief periods of super soldier programs over the past two centuries,” Representative Ilia Saigon said cautiously. She had been with Senator Brakin's party when he had come to the Lagrange points on inspection. She was a state representative from LA's Korea town and quite proud of her heritage as well as her home state. She was considered fairly progressive, willing to explore new tech and concepts where others would take a more conservative approach or outright block it. “Despite public controversy over the idea, from what I understand they reduced it to a baseline approach,” she said.

“Baseline?”

“I can't get into the details because I honestly don't know them, and yes, they are classified. Like that matters now,” she said, seemingly to herself. “Oh, what the hell. Most of it was minor tweaks to improve health while avoiding long-term issues like cancer or other diseases.”

“Oh.”

“They found that sharp improvements tended to have drawbacks. And then of course we get back to the ethical situations,” the representative said, nodding to the chairwoman.

“We've come a long way over the past two centuries. There are a few methods we can try.”

“There are,” Jack said, putting his own two cents worth in. “If I may?” he asked, leaning forward. The others nodded. “I have some personal knowledge of the super soldier program and genetic engineering in general.”

“Being married to the premier geneticist in the field for so long of course,” Ilia said with a smile.

Jack nodded, ignoring the pain of that reminder. It was a faint twing but still there. He wasn't certain if the representative had brought it up on purpose or not.

“We have some things in our database that we know work and don't work. A quarter of the population of my corporation has been genetically engineered over the past two centuries,” he said. That sparked a murmur of surprise at his admission. “I imagine some of the same numbers will be reflected in other corporations as well as that of the populations of Mars, here, and abroad.” He nodded to Mayor Ellington. The mayor didn't react however. “We've been doing all sorts of things like screening for diseases and treating them before or during gestation for instance. Some people have also opted to have additional measures taken, such as adapting their bodies against radiation or other hazards that are common in space. And then of course we have those who are into the body modification culture.”

“I was going to call it a fad, but it's been going on well past two centuries,” the mayor said. “I'd hoped it would have died out in our time as people got some sense into them, but apparently not,” he said dryly.

“Everyone wants to be unique. To stand out from the crowd. Customization,” Jack said with a shrug. “Back to the subject at hand, there are three, possibly four avenues we can take,” he said, holding up four fingers. He ticked them off one by one.

“Idea one is to create a super soldier, human of course, then clone them. We can flash grow them but there are all sorts of inherent issues there. Then there is the problem of training and such. I'll get to that in a moment.”

“But it can be done?” Illia asked.

“We've been flash cloning organs for over a century now,” Doctor Chang stated. “Which is why I am here as an expert on the subject,” he said. He looked at Jack. “I don't mean to hijack your presentation.”

Jack smiled slightly and waved a hand. “The floor is yours.”

“Thank you,” the doctor said with a slight head bow. “We can clone just about any part of the human body you wish. But when we get to the central nervous system and brain, that is when we run into serious complications. Minor errors in the body can be corrected in time or even over looked if they do not impact health. But the brain …”

“We don't want a schizophrenic soldier or worse,” Mayor Ellington stated flatly.

“Exactly. Cloning brain tissue is highly complicated.”

“But if we didn't do it ala cart? If we grew them in artificial wombs as whole people?” Ilia asked.

“Then we start to run into gestation development issues. If we push the body to grow faster than it was designed to do, it could get out of control. I'd say, depending on the speed, we'd lose about 10 percent of the, well, let's call it crop,” the doctor said.

“That's three times faster than normal, correct, Doctor?” Jack asked. Doctor Chang nodded.

“If we go any faster, the rate of failure goes up exponentially. And that is only gestation. Once the clones are born? Hatched?” the doctor shook his head. “Then they have to grow up quickly.”

“All of that takes time,” Mayor Ellington stated. “Time we don't necessarily have,” he said with finality in his voice.

“Yes,” Doctor Chang stated. He turned his eyes to Jack. “But you said you had other options?”

“That was option one. It ties into option four, which I'll get to in a moment.” They nodded. He could see Ilia pursing her lips sourly.

“Option two is a robotic or cyborg army. Taking existing personnel and augmenting them with hormone treatments, implants, and such to improve their bodies and give them a much greater chance of survival on the battlefield.”

“I'm not comfortable with that. It would have to be voluntary,” Ilia stated.

“It already is,” Jack said. She gasped slightly. He shrugged. “My people have been augmented for over a century. So have many of the megacorps to varying degrees. It is up to the person, what they are willing to endure. We …”

“Frankenstein.”

“No, just good people,” Jack cut her off. “They are only 20 percent more efficient than baseline humans, however.”

“Okay, so option three?” Mayor Ellington asked in a wary tone.

“Option three ties in to four. Three is where we build robotic bodies and download the mind of the user into them. Four is where we build organic bodies and download the mind into them. Both are … tricky. I'm not comfortable with either process to be honest.”

“Is it even possible?” Ilia asked carefully.

“Yes,” Mayor Ellington said with a grimace. She stared at him. “It has been done before. I know of one incident. I know there have been experiments over the past two centuries as well. I am not up-to-date on the progress made however. Obviously it hasn't become main stream or we would all know about it already,” he said.

“Growing a body, downloading the mind or sleep teaching them? Conditioning them?” Doctor Chang grimaced. “I'm not comfortable with any of it. But we are in a war situation, fighting for our survival. And if it was voluntary …”

“But we don't have the Geppetto software or hardware. We have an inkling of the process from the clean-up reports but not enough for our people to recreate it, even if they wanted to do so. I haven't, so the files were sealed,” Jack said.

“So you are aware of that incident?” Mayor Ellington asked. Jack nodded.

“I am as well. Geppetto … I met him once,” Doctor Chang stated. “Brilliant but ultimately flawed by his own humanity.”

He was referring to an incident on Axial-2. A grieving but brilliant scientist working on his mind and machine interfacing had attempted to download the dying consciousness of his son into an android body years ago. The robot had broken free and gone on a rampage. By the time the authorities had subdued it, they had inadvertently wiped its memory. But by going back over its path through security footage, they had identified where it had come from.

The investigators had found another team of investigators working a homicide. The good doctor had been killed by someone, his neck snapped. The conclusion was that the robot had done it. But that hadn't explained the missing equipment and corrupted computer files. Not unless the robot had done it, which was what the investigators believed before they had closed the investigation.

Jack had the inside view from Athena's perspective so he knew more had gone on. Someone had helped the scientist abduct his son's comatose body. That same someone or other conspirators had also helped in other ways, covering the doctor's tracks with hospital security. Those people remained at large, most likely with the doctor's notes and process.

What they had planned to do with it was a concern. Purchasing the illicit tech on the black market hadn't fully panned out, nor had Roman's other attempts to trace the sellers.

“Yes. Unfortunately, the good doctor's notes and lab were destroyed by parties unknown. Some of the notes have turned up piecemeal on the black market, at least we think so, but there is no way to be sure.”

“And no way to contact those who are selling it? If they are even still alive?”

“True. They might have tried and failed to download their minds into a robot or computer network. I don't know. I'm not sure if we should be borrowing trouble to go digging around and finding out either. We need to focus all of our assets and attention on Earth.”

“Right. And recreating the Geppetto download method, let alone implementing it is a herculean task. It would take years, and we don't have them. I agree.”

“Glad you do.”

“The other problem is it is a one-way trip. From the gruesome remains of the deceased, we've determined that the process involves cutting up their brain into nanothin wafers and then scanning them, then stitching the pieces back together as data in a computer network.”

“Using the neural network as a template,” Jack said. “So it is a one-way trip.”

Ilia smiled thinly. “I don't see many people stepping up for that. And if they did, they'd be vulnerable to being hacked. So, that's out. What more do we have?”

“Well, we've gotten reports that the robotic soldiers on the ground are ignoring nonhumans or at least bipeds.”

“Interesting, and this helps us how? Oh, moving around on all fours? No, wait, your Moreaus?”

“They don't like that name,” Jack said reprovingly. “They prefer Neos actually. And yes, I was thinking specifically of them.”

“Hard to exploit them if they don't want to do so. Unless you programmed them …,” Ilia asked the leading question, eying Jack speculatively.

Jack shook his head. “No. Out of the question.”

“Why? We just discussed doing it with super soldiers, remember?”

“Yes but that was theory. This is a lot closer to fact. I'm not comfortable with slave soldiers at all. Nor are the Neo community leaders, nor Doctor Glass. We will figure something out. Something
else
out. For those people of whatever species who do step up, we want it to be definitely an all-volunteer unit. They are to be considered citizen soldiers and treated as such.”

Doctor Chang eyed him for a long moment then nodded slowly. “Okay soo …”

“So, we're looking into it. It is my fifth option, one I wasn't willing to lay out just yet. I can't make any promises. But this is another problem; one we haven't addressed,” Jack said slowly. The others stared at him curiously. “A super soldier or Neo takes time to grow. Time to be designed, tested, reevaluated, redesigned if necessary, improved on, and then gestated in large lots. From there they would have to grow up in some sort of crèche system that best fits their mental patterns. Then we'd have to train them. All of that takes one thing we are lacking, time.”