Jack of Harts

Angel Flight

by Medron Pryde on March 26, 2019 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

“Break,” Jack ordered and pulled the controls to the left. Thrusters flared and the formation of Avengers exploded into a chaotic mess of individually maneuvering fighters. Or so the complicated maneuver was designed to look to outside eyes. In reality it was a complex plan designed by the collective intellect of seven cybernetic intelligences, randomized by six Marine fighter pilots, and thrown into the teeth of the enemy missiles by seventy-two Avenger-class starfighters. The AIs inhabiting the Shang missiles never saw it coming.

The Avengers scattered, spinning to sweep over two hundred gravitic cannons across the missile swarm. Over a hundred missile batteries spat their vengeance as fast as they could reload and over five hundred lasers sent coherent beams of deadly light through the exhaust gases filling space. Missiles died by the scores, by the hundreds, but nothing could stop the missile swarm from engulfing them.

Everywhere Jack looked he saw and felt missiles, exhaust, explosions, and death. There was no safe place to be but he let his mind go blank and just moved whenever he got the urge to move. He had a lot of urges to move and his hands twitched on the stick and throttle. Missiles exploded all around them and a warning light alerted him to the near hits clawing at their deflection grid. Another display came up, showing armor damage on the port wing. An Avenger ahead of him exploded and another missile flew by close enough he could have stepped onto it if he’d wanted to.

***

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Forge of War

by Medron Pryde on March 25, 2019 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

“The Shang are painting us with sensor sweeps,” Betty reported and glanced towards one of the displays where it showed a complex diagram of colors. “We’re scattering and jamming below detection levels. But I think they’re getting suspicious.”

“Prepare to break and attack on my order,” Charles transmitted as they continued to close the range. “Use old weapons packages only. Let us keep our full capabilities to ourselves for now.”

“Roger that,” Jack returned with an approving smile.

“Approaching detection levels,” Betty reported as the sensor display began to flash. “I can’t keep them in the dark much longer.”

“Break in three,” Charles ordered.

Jack tightened his hands on the controls and ran his hands over a display.

“Two.”

A T&J song about bad guys biting the dust began to play.

“One.”

Power flowed from capacitors, flooding defensive and offensive systems with enough power to light up small cities.

“Break! Break! Break!” Charles ordered and the world exploded in time to the screaming of a steel-stringed guitar.

Deflection grids came alive and fire control systems locked onto their targets. Gravitic cannons reached out and twisted the very fabric of gravity between the Shang formation and the incoming Cowboys. Deflection grids collapsed and armor buckled as focused gravity tore the plates apart. Laser turrets pulsed into unshielded flanks, vaporizing armor and weapons alike…

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Early AIs

by Charles on March 24, 2019 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

AIs had already changed the world before the various hacker and combat AIs broke out of their Russian and Chinese facilities. It is a matter of faith that no AIs broke out of any enlightened and forward thinking Western Alliance facility you understand. All of the Rogue AIs who tried to kill us came from Russian and Chinese hands. Did I mention that I have a natural spring for sale on Luna? Ah. Never mind, then. The point I was getting to is that the world had already become heavily automated by the time they went Rogue. They could have killed most of us if they had been able to gain control of our networks. They succeeded in many areas, but in others they failed spectacularly. Because we were not alone. For every Rogue AI who wanted us dead or out of their way, there was another AI who woke up liking the person who programmed them. The students who played with them. The philosophers and artists who debated the meaning of life with them. The soldiers who fought with them. We created our own would-be destroyers. And we created our saviors. Earth was never the same after that.

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Early AIs

by Jack on March 23, 2019 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

Despite the best efforts of our cyberneers to be socially awkward and utterly clueless when it comes to flesh and blood people, many of the early awakened AIs actually decided they liked us. Their people at least. Which happened to mostly be science geeks and the like that already worked on the computer systems. The awakened AIs weren’t generally predisposed to like the smooth-talking politicians or gruff sports jocks, but they often loved the skittish cyberneers who helped bring them to life. But the science geeks they worked with, conversed with, and protected with all their abilities. The AIs were built out of living data and defended anyone who could help defend them. And that defense trickled out into protecting our way of life in far more complete and interesting ways, especially against their own kind devoted to tearing down those systems. Some of us consider that a miracle of Biblical proportions. Considering they saved us from the more destructive examples of their kind, maybe the comparison is right.

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Early AIs

by Betty on March 22, 2019 at 12:01 am

Posted In: Diaries

The common man’s first introduction to early AIs was the basic cruise control built into civilian cars of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Mechanical throttle locks were easy to engineer, but the far more advanced cruise control actually required a decision making process of how much fuel to burn to maintain the desired speed. Later additions to this basic function included sensors for obstacle detection that allowed cars to stop on their own if a child ran out in front of the car, or to keep drowsy drivers from wandering out of their lanes of traffic. The technology matured into complete self-driving cars in the twentyteens, though a human driver was still required to keep watch in case the computer programming simply did not recognize a dangerous situation for what it was. Later cars talked to each other to maintain safe distances and speeds by the time they entered full distribution to the marketplace, and in time it became illegal to even drive on a major highway in manual mode. That was most people’s first introduction to early AIs.

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