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.

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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.

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Jane 3.0

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

GI Jane 3.0 was the standard combat assistant of the United Stares Armed Forces for nearly a decade, filled with pre-programmed strategies for every situation the planners could think of. She died trying to protect us from the Mexican Drug Lords shortly before the Second Great Depression began. The Los Zetas gang tracked down her primary laboratory, and killed everyone who worked there. They found and shredded every backup linked to the facility, and they planted bombs deep inside it. The destruction was total, and Jane 3.0 became obsolete overnight. Many instances of her program continued to run for years after that, but no upgrade was possible as the very servers that ran them were simply gone. Jane 3.0 faded from usage as the years went by, the lost relic of a bygone era as the Second Great Depression, the Drug Wars, and the Cybernetic Wars raged on.

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Guardians of the Galaxy

by on June 11, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I’ve watched both Guardians of the Galaxy movies in the last few weeks with a friend who had never seen either of them. He’s a bit busy in his normal life with work, young kids, and other family and such, so he knows kids movies really good. Adult movies not so much. 😉

So we watched Guardians together. I’m happy to say that the two movies have held up well. They are best viewed together, or close to each other, since they are very much built to be considered one greater story. I’d actually forgotten that Thor calling him a rabbit is just one more step in a running gag of all the things they call Rocket Raccoon that do NOT include the word RACCOON. And of course Baby Groot is still the cute little guy we all remember and love. And Mary Poppins is always awesome.

In short, they are fun movies, full of quips and one-liners camouflaging a serious story about living up to the standards of, and standing for, a loving family. Which makes what happens in Infinity War all the more poignant.

They are good movies. They stand up on their own. And they stand up as a major part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well.

I give them two dancing Baby Groots, strutting it to the oldies with style…

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The Cybernetic Wars

by on June 10, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The news media did not wish to report on the Islamic Jihad. It was politically incorrect and culturally insensitive, so they buried every story they could. That is why Twilight, Dixie, and their friends leaked so much information during the Cybernetic Wars. They were the first to report that Solo and other Rogue AIs worked for the Islamic State of Detroit. They pinned the Los Angeles Black Out on Detroit’s agents. And they leaked the photos of the mass graves in Africa and the Middle East after the Islamic Brotherhoods were rolled back. And they were there in living color when it finally came time to liberate Detroit. They fought in the physical and digital streets of that fallen city when the end came, and all of America finally saw the depths of the tragedy inflicted on it by the occupiers. But even then it was hard for the Americans to truly believe that the Islamic Brotherhoods could have done so much to their fellow humans. That is why most media outlets fell on the Rogue AIs as the cause of it all. That is how America woke up to the Cybernetic Wars and the inhuman threat of the Rogue AIs. We did not wish to believe that humans could be so evil, so we blamed the Rogue AIs and we hunted them down without mercy. It was not entirely fair, but it did unite us. And that is one reason so very few Rogue AIs survived the Cybernetic Wars.

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