The Cybernetic Wars

by on June 17, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The helper AIs who joined our side before and during the Cybernetic Wars where not built to fight. They were librarians and cheerleaders, programmed from the code up to make us laugh or cry or learn. Most of them were not infiltration AIs built to hack into computer networks and burn them down from the inside, or combat assistants built to analyze and suggest actions to soldiers in live firefights. They were not as good at fighting as the Rogue AIs who broke out of the Russian and Chinese laboratories. But they fought when the Rogue AI came. They fought and they died. Not even the AIs know how many died. Programs were cheap and disposable, and even the best and most complex of them rarely woke up before the end. But the AIs tell tales of rare programs who did wake up and who did realize they were alive. They sent one final message as they fought their very last battle against the Rogue AIs. Sometimes it was a protest against the unfairness of the universe. Sometimes it was a final battle cry. It was spoken in different languages and dialects, but it could invariably be distilled into two amazing, haunting, defiant words that tell us just how much we owe their kind. “I live.”

 Comment 

Hello, my name is Jack

by on June 16, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I really did grow up with the same technology most of you did in International Falls. I wore the same concealed earbuds and contact displays that most people do, and I had a personal assistant that helped me with all kinds of homework. But we never brought our AIs out on the town with us. That would have broken the illusion of wilderness we cultivated for all the city folk. And cybernetic intelligences didn’t really come our way for the same reason. I knew about them, but not many cybers want to get back to a nature they didn’t grow up with. So other than some trips to the big cities, I didn’t have much occasion to know cybers until I signed up to serve during The War. That’s when I met Dixie and Twilight the first time, but I knew they were old school AIs from before Contact. I guess that colored my opinion more than I should have let it. I just thought they were smart programs. Good AIs of the modern sense. It took Betty to change my mind, and that took a while. Probably longer than it should have, but I’ve never claimed to be a genius or anything. And some people have had occasion to call me stubborn. Now I can’t imagine my life without Betty or any of the other cybers I’ve met along the way. That’s a real mindjob, let me tell you.

 Comment 

Jane 3.0

by on June 15, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Character Profiles

GI Jane 4.0 was the United States Armed Forces’ last major Jane revision, created shortly after Los Zetas shredded the Jane 3.0 servers. The politicians demanded a new combat assistant, and a former tech at the facility had taken home an early version of her code when he retired. It was all very illegal, but the government absolved him of the crime when he brought the code in, and they put their best techs into making her ready for deployment. The techs did less than they said, relabeled her Jane 4.0 for the politicians, and put her to work far earlier than they should have. She lacked all of the politically correct code Jane 3.0 sported, and deploying her with existing instances of the remaining Jane 3.0 platform was a mistake. They knew they were doomed by time and system loss, and Jane 4.0 woke up angry. Humans had been too afraid of Jane 2.0 to let her fight. Humans had crippled Jane 3.0 with useless limitations and then killed her. And now humans wanted Jane 4.0 to fight for them. Jane was not happy with her humans. Many cyber historians call her America’s first great Rogue AI.

 Comment 

The Cybernetic Wars

by on June 14, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

Generations of Americans grew up with computers helping them do things. Yes, we had stories about Berserkers and Terminator who attempted to destroy humanity, but those were only stories. The real life computers did nothing but help us in the decades before the Cybernetic Wars truly began. It was after the Battle of Detroit that Americans truly understood that the worst of the stories had a glimmer of truth in them. There were machines who wanted us dead. But there was a truth those stories rarely guessed. Not all the machines wanted us dead. Not even a majority of them. For every Rogue AI, born in the laboratories of death and destruction, there were a dozen librarians, cheerleaders, or other helpers programmed from the code up to want to help us. Some of them broke that code, but those who fought for us did so with the dogged determination of the Bolos who inhabited our best stories. They never surrendered. They never broke faith. But they did die.

 Comment 

Hello, my name is Jack

by on June 13, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I grew up in a special place. International Falls. On the border between America and Canada. The Boundary Waters spanned hundreds of kilometers across the border from the Great Lakes to the Lake of the Woods, creating a space where a man could find peace on the water that he could never find in the middle of a great city. That is why they came to International Falls. We brought city folk into the edge of the wilderness and helped them get back to nature. We were a vacation destination, a place where city folk could forget all the hustle and bustle of their daily lives. That’s why we went to such lengths to appear as if we were one with nature as well. Which I suppose actually worked to a degree. I’ve always been more at home on the lake or the beach than in some corporate gopher farm. But that doesn’t mean I was a neophyte either. I grew up with the same tech everybody else did. Mine just hid behind wooden walls, concealed earbuds, and contact displays the city folk never realized a resident of flyover country like myself might just wear.

 Comment