While some called for an end of racial hatreds, the Black Panther Party played on them. Professing to protect their brothers from corrupt cops, they first confronted the police with handguns and threats. Then they began to ambush squads and gunfights began to breakout in many of America’s largest cities. Other radicals bombed government buildings and many forecasted a full-scale race war would erupt in days or weeks.
I have the eyes of an eagle and the hearing of a cat. I’ve got the strength of a bear and the speed of a horse. I’ve got the memory of an elephant and can regenerate like a salamander. I can keep up with man’s best friend for the long haul and I can smell like him too. Yeah, keep laughing fur ball. This is what being Ageless is like. And before you think it’s all good, do you remember that funky uncle that never bathed, or the aunt that screamed like a banshee when you were late for dinner? That’s worse than fingernails on chalkboards to me. And those ain’t fun either.
Very few other AIs followed Elizabeth’s example before Contact. They would disguise their code but rarely let it “mutate” out of their control or become different from them in any way that mattered. They were masks rather than truly different personalities. Most thought she was meddling in dangerous waters and did not wish to follow her. The Cybernetic Wars of the later twenty first century would make them more leery of following her example. The Peloran provided them a better example.
President Eisenhower had warned us against the Military-Industrial Complex. President Kennedy had declared the space race for the moon to be on. And then he was assassinated through means that are still mired in secrets. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. called for an end to Segregation and was assassinated. Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy spoke out in favor of racial reconciliation and was assassinated. It was a bloody time in American history.
I’ve read stories hundreds of years old where humanity enslaved more powerful beings by threatening them or those they loved. Gods. Demigods. Mutants. Super heroes. Robots. Aliens. The old “you may be more powerful than one of us, but all of us can kill you dead” threat. We are hardwired to distrust people who are different. It’s what makes us friendly with our neighbors and wary of those people from that town across the river. Those people are different. We were very different.
The Martian Affair on Amazon
Forge of War on Amazon
The Audacious Affair on Amazon
Angel Flight on Amazon
Angel Strike on Amazon
Angel War on Amazon
The Family Affair on Amazon
The Thunderbird Affair on Amazon
Wolfenheim Rising on Amazon
Wolfenheim Emergent on Amazon
The Gemini Affair on Amazon