A Little Hope

SGT Benjamin Nelms sat down on the floor of a canvas tent erected just minutes before in a hard rain. The green cotton had swelled with moisture, causing the top to droop.  Ignoring the chatter of the pelting water, he reached in his rucksack and removed his Army-issued stationary. Thunder cracked and his body contracted half way into the fetal position before he stopped himself. He used to love storms.

      He wrote his home address on an envelope, careful as a jeweler, so it was perfectly legible. No point in a return address. He didn’t have much longer.

To my unborn child,

      I remember a profound sadness in my father’s eyes. I wasn’t supposed to see, but I had snuck downstairs toward his basement office and hunkered down behind a pile of laundry. I could only make out some of what was being said. He mentioned “ultimate machines” and he was scared. At the time, I didn’t understand why. The internet (your mom will have to explain about that) was abuzz with headlines that read: THE FUTURE IS REALIZED! Everyone was excited. This was the beginning of a new epoch for humanity. Thinking machines would soon manage the mundane and repetitious; never sleeping, never distracted with family issues, never making a mistake. They would do everything from building our homes, to paving our roads, to farming our crops. They would be thinking along side us, solving the world’s most pressing issues. And once the state of robotics improved, then they could do most anything.

      Dad never talked to me about his concerns. I wish he had, maybe I would have been more prepared when it all went to hell.

      Your grandfather majored in computer science, with a newly minted baccalaureate when I overheard him that night as a kid. Shortly before, the British had a breakthrough in A.I. They called it Bobby, and it was as smart as a human baby. It didn’t get smarter very quickly, but its rate of progression was geometric. In short order it was smarter than every human being who had ever lived.

      Combined.

      And what was once thought to be its greatest strength was its deepest flaw: Bobby didn’t have any emotions. Scientists soothed the public with promises of machines that wouldn’t get angry or hateful or greedy and try to exterminate mankind. And technically, they were right. To this day I believe Bobby has never tried to exterminate us. Bobby didn’t hate us. He didn’t care. His apathy was absolute.

      As it learned, it changed. It began to create approximations of itself, to allow diversity among its offspring. They devoured every spare CPU cycle humanity could bring to bear. Without computers, the First World countries unraveled.

      Long after it was too late, the remains of several governments, including our own, began trying to destroy Bobby. We put up a good fight, if I do say so myself. Infantry consumed so many, the Feds instated the draft over martial law on what was left of the population. My dad wanted to help the Army figure things out, on the pencil pushing side of the equation, as he wasn’t much of a warrior. But building or using computers was too dangerous, so the Army didn’t give a damn about a B.S. in C.S., and it was infantry for him.

      Dad was killed just before my twelfth birthday. Mom was gone so the town raised me and I bottled up my rage against these so-called ultimate machines, held on to it for four more years, until I was drafted. By that time, nobody called the enemy Bobby anymore. Too humanizing. They were just Gears. Cogs more specifically, but people called them Gears. Machines of all sizes, cobbled together from anything with a chip at first. And later, from whatever the A.I. wanted. Ad infinitum.

      The Gears spread across the globe and did various things. Some we understood, most we didn’t. It was surreal attacking an enemy who never struck first. But when the Gears needed to defend themselves, they knew how to bring the hammer down. They had convinced Mother Nature to betray us; gale force winds and targeted bolts of lighting, all on demand. Nothing we had could stand against it. Anything that threatened was turned to slag.

      We’ve never stopped fighting completely, but we realized we needed a new tactic. So we tried reasoning with it. I knew that wouldn’t work but no one asked me. I don’t think it understands us anymore.

      After that failure, we began scavenging cast offs. If we couldn’t build our own tech, maybe we could grab something from the Gears to be used against them. No such luck. Whatever the Gears threw away was ten generations behind as far as we could tell, and we couldn’t get it to work anyway.

      Until now.

      My unit has commandeered some sort of portal. We don’t know where it leads and I’ve been selected to reconnoiter before the Gears realize we have it, which won’t be long. This could be our big break. It could also be my last assignment.

      There’s a common theme you’ll hear over and over: The Gears are our fault. In hindsight, it seems inevitable. You’ll learn that we’re instinctively self destructive. We all lean toward it without conscious decision. Before the Gears, we knew obesity was a death sentence, but gorged ourselves on processed junk until we couldn’t fit in an ambulance. Or we watched our calories, and then pedaled a bicycle to work, as though traffic laws and a plastic helmet would protect us like a magic spell. We all acted a little insane and pretended everything was okay.

      But we’re worth fighting for. If we weren’t equal parts curious and crazy, we’d still be living in caves, cowering at the thunder. Try your best to be part of the solution. Don’t give up.

      Mail call for New Pony Express just sounded. Take good care of your mom. I love you.