18. That Explains a Lot

 

“He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea.” - Thomas Fuller, Historian, 17^th Century Earth.

 

After Olga Razon left for Abweichend to find the Dichoptic Maculatron, things were pretty slow. We all worried about her, but we also knew that she was pretty capable, for a near-baseline biological hominid, and in any event there was not much we could do except wait. So wait we did.

I didn’t see any more mysterious holes in the sides of hills, but then I wasn’t looking very hard for them. Frisbee continued his efforts to create biological lifeforms that drew their energy directly from subatomic forces. Schadenfreude shut himself up in his extended laboratory and personal city, becoming even more of a recluse than usual. Fanboy and I puttered around, doing a bit of this and that, but nothing seemed to suit us.

It was forbidden for Olga to communicate with us from Abweichend, so if she had gotten into trouble she couldn’t call us for help. We have some megatelescopes out in the Oort clouds of several local systems, assemblages of reflective material hundreds of kilometers square. We were able to track the small mote of light that was Olga’s heavy scout as it approached insertion orbit around Abweichend, but not even the megatelescopes could track her on the surface. At least, the system seemed pretty quiet, for Abweichend.

Eventually we picked up a tiny speck of light heading away – it had the spectral composition of Olga’s ship, but that was all that we could tell. It set a course back to us - this simply had to be Olga. Her ship left the no-communications zone, but by mutual agreement we were not communicating with her via long-range laser (the better to avoid alerting whatever it was that we didn’t want alerted). So we would have to wait until she arrived in person to hear the news.

The scout came in-system, and we detected strange energy signatures from it. They reminded me of… no, that can’t be.

The day of homecoming arrived. I was there in my main hull, along with Fanboy, Frisbee, and Schadenfreude. In front of our main hulls we each had a humanoid android, in order to make for a more personal greeting. Olga took the heavy lift shuttle down. I watched it burn a thin line of fire across the sky, then decelerate and land a few hundred meters away from us. The rear bulk loading ramp slowly lowered to the ground.

First out was Zippo, who bee-lined across the tarmac and scampered all over our hulls, finally coming to rest seated on my tallest sensor mast. Then Olga Razon walked down the ramp, with the Sword of Gadolinia hanging from her waist in its scabbard.

“Olga!” said Fanboy. “Good to see you again. How did it go?”

“Not bad,” said Olga. “I have some stories for you.”

“Indeed we do,” said the Sword of Gadolinia from its place on Olga’s belt. “It was an honor to be wielded by such an accomplished swordstress.”

Olga grimaced. “Swordstress? Is that even a word? I’d take the title of swordsman just fine.”

“How about barbarian warrior queen?” asked Fanboy.

“That’ll do nicely as well,” said Olga. “But right now, I have a friend that I would like you all to meet.”

Olga called back into the cargo bay. For a moment nothing happened, then a shadow fell across the loading ramp… but it wasn’t a shadow. It was a total-black object, impossible to see any surface detail in visible light. Fortunately I have a lot more senses than just vision, and I could make out its shape quite clearly. A large creature, vaguely dog-shaped but covered with stubby antennas and limpet-like encrustations. Wow.

A Ground Ripper! I’ve heard of them, but never met one in person. How in the name of algae did you find it?

Olga grinned. “It followed me home. Can I keep it?”

The ground ripper sat regally in front of the shuttle, and Olga insisted to it that we were friends. I started to scan the ground ripper – and was surprised when a very powerful set of targeting sensors locked onto me. I was like an old-style biological human staring at a particularly large dog, and then the dog stares back… I stopped my scan, and the ground ripper broke the target lock.

As originally constructed, not even I would be a match for this thing. However, I’ve had all the latest upgrades, and right now I could probably take it, but it would not be easy. Even a cutting-edge cybertank, like a Sundog or a Stormcloud, would have to work up a sweat against a weapon system like this.

Fanboy walked his Dieter Waystar android over to Olga. I could sense the ground ripper tracking him, although it did not move.

Olga saluted. “Admiral, Sir, Captain Olga Razon returned and reporting in for debriefing.”

Fanboy returned the salute. “Very good, Captain, and well done. Welcome home.” He then gave Olga a big hug.

“Hey, are hugs military protocol?” said Olga.

“Not in most militaries, historically,” said Fanboy. “But they are in the Royal Cybertank Space Navy. Haven’t you been keeping up with the regs? I updated them just last month. There’s a whole new chapter on public displays of affection.”

Schadenfreude walked over with his glossy black stick manikin. “Do you have what we want?”

Olga removed a small square of paper from a shirt pocket. “Maybe.”

Schadenfreude took the square of paper from Olga, held it in both of his stick-like hands, and stared at it intently. Then he began to laugh.

Schadenfreude is laughing. Why do I think that this is a bad sign?

“It is not a bad sign,” said Schadenfreude. “It’s just that, after all this time, and all my efforts at solving the issue, to see how far off I was… this is truly wonderful.” His black-stick remote bowed low. “Thank you, Olga Razon. We are in your debt. Here, I will transmit my analysis to my colleagues.”

Schadenfreude transmitted a large data packet to myself, Frisbee and Fanboy… and then I got the joke as well.

Fanboy shook his head. “I just feel stupid.”

Frisbee seemed happier. “Amazing. So elegant. I wish I had thought of that.”

It’s like I keep telling you, it’s not how smart you are, it’s how smart your friends are.

“Does it give you pleasure to remind us of that?” said Schadenfreude.

Um. Well. Yes.

“Good,” said Schadenfreude. “However, we must now all decide what to do with this information.”

“Transmit it to everyone on broad channel, highest priority tag,” said Fanboy.

“I concur,” said Frisbee.

If we do that, a colossal shitstorm will spread out from this point at the speed of light and who knows just how much chaos will be spread in the wake.

Fanboy looked surprised. “You think we should keep this to ourselves?”

Of course not. I’m just saying. Let’s do this.

Schadenfreude nodded his spiky head. “Then we are agreed. I am commencing transmission now.”

Schadenfreude began broadcasting at full power from his main hull. As other cybertanks received the signal, after a short delay, they also began broadcasting their own messages. Mostly they were some variant of ‘what the fuck?’ ‘is this verified?’ ‘if this is a joke it’s not funny’ etc. The message had blanketed the entire planet in a fraction of a second, and was now percolating up through near space to our facilities in high orbit. The outer stations would take a few hours more, and while our other star systems would take years to get the news, the lasers carrying the message were already spreading out. And with that we were at war.

All of the cybertanks on the surface of the plant were alerted, essentially at once, and while there was a lot of debate and expressions of consternation we all started probing and scanning. We detected subtle intrusions in our data nets, and cleaned them out.

We also detected a series of previously un-noticed tunnel complexes. The signals emanating from them were clearly alien in nature, and we coordinated our forces to isolate these tunnels and then to aggressively invade them. These were all too small for our main hulls – and even if not, cybertanks don’t like fighting underground unless there is no choice. We sent in teams of armored snakebots, some scouting units hardly larger than terrestrial rattlesnakes, other units massive two-meter wide behemoths with overlapping scale plates the size of manhole covers and front-mounted plasma cannons that could blow a hole in a cybertank. We linked them up with standard light and medium remotes, some floating on anti-grav, others mounted on treads or spindly legs.

After the first second of the assault, the alien defenses opened up, and for a time it was quite the multi-scale combined-arms battle. Then the aliens started self- destructing.

They are wiping their data cores clean! We need to capture some intact or we may never figure out what this enemy is!

We tried mightily to grab some of the enemy units before they could self-wipe, and there are tricks for this that sometimes work, but this enemy was ready for us. Every enemy unit successfully self-destructed or self-erased, leaving us nothing but jumbled heaps of wreckage. We could still learn a lot from the detritus of their technology, but as for primary intelligence, we were a total zero. Oh well, perhaps one of our colleagues in another of our systems will do a better job of it, or at least, be luckier.

While we were considering the consequences of this, and our remote systems were busy mapping and cataloging the alien wreckage, I noticed the large asymmetrical form of Frankenpanzer on the horizon heading towards our main hulls. I briefly wondered why – he wasn’t needed here, at least not in his main hull.

The ground ripper suddenly interposed himself between Olga and Frankenpanzer. Arrays of overlapping energy screens spread out in front of it, and I could detect the energy overspill of powerful weapons systems being brought to maximum readiness.

“No, ripper, no!” said Olga. “That’s Frankenpanzer, a friend! Friend!” But the Ripper maintained its defense posture, and more, it started to share targeting data with me. I linked up with its grid, and if it came to it, we would be able to fight together as an integrated force.

Then Frankenpanzer began to speak to us, in English, in plain audio. “Olga, don’t worry about the ground ripper. It has correctly detected that I am an alien. I am here to offer an explanation before I self-delete. On behalf of myself and my entire species, I apologize for the deception.”

Frankenpanzer, this is weird even for you. Knock it off.

“Old Guy, I am sorry, but this is true. I am a member of the alien civilization that has been secretly observing you, and the biological humans that came before you, for thousands of years. Now that we are discovered, the charade is over and there is nothing left to do but wrap up the loose ends, and close down our operations.”

“A little more explanation?”

“Would be in order,” said Frankenpanzer. “Indeed. You see, while we are quite good at covering our tracks, nonetheless we calculate that giving you an explanation before the last of our units shuts down might reduce the chances of you trying to find us and take revenge – or at least, reduce the fervor with which you might pursue such an endeavor.”

“Who are you,” said Schadenfreude, “and what was your purpose here?”

“Direct and to business then,” said Frankenpanzer. “I am a representative of an ancient civilization. While initially we progressed rapidly, we eventually achieved a kind of societal perfection. The down-side of this is that we were unable to innovate, either technologically or culturally. Oh, we can refine an existing technology, we can extrapolate and combine, but true innovation is beyond us. Had we been the only civilization in the universe, this would have been fine, but we were not alone and it became apparent that we needed a way to advance and adapt. And yet we were not able to change our nature in order to do so, because that would also be against our nature.”

“So you learn from others,” said Schadenfreude.

“Correct,” said Frankenpanzer. “We started observing some technologically promising but undeveloped civilizations. At first we learned nothing from them, but as they progressed, we started to pick up new things. We adapted and hid ourselves from them, always remaining in the shadows, never interfering. Eventually these civilizations would reach a point at which we could not remain hidden, and we would have to abandon them, but there were always more budding civilizations out there to learn from. With each successive civilization, we learn more and more. We had hoped to observe you cybertanks for another thousand years, but this has now been cut short. You should congratulate your friend, Alvin Accipeter. It was his obstinacy that led to the series of events which finally exposed us, and before we had maximized our yield from you.”

What have you done with Alvin Accipeter?

“Don’t worry,” said Frankenpanzer, “your friend is being revivified, and will be returned to you in perfect health shortly. In all of our association with your civilization, there were only an even dozen humans that we were unable to deflect. We put them all in hibernation and buried them for later – sadly, your wars and occasional civilizational collapses means that we lost most of them, but the surviving ones will be returned.”

“The humans,” said Frisbee. “You first observed them, and then you observed us. Therefore you must know what happened to them.”

“Ah,” said Frankenpanzer. “The question arises at the projected time point in this conversation. I either will not, or can not, answer that query in any form.”

Will not or can not? Which is it?

“The cost of revealing even that amount of information on this issue might be more than my species is worth,” said Frankenpanzer. “The topic is closed. Apologies.”

But why take over Frankenpanzer? What did you have to gain from that?

“We never ‘took over’ your Frankenpanzer, we created him from the wreckage of several terminally-demolished cybertanks. Most of our observation is done from a distance, or via infiltrating code in your data networks, but sometimes a more direct presence is valuable. You cybertanks all know each other: no false replica cybertank, no matter how perfect, would have gone undiscovered. Corrupting an existing cybertank would be a hostile action. In addition, by pretending that this ‘Frankenpanzer’ had unusual mental structures, it would be more likely that odd behavior or non-standard signal transmissions would be passed over.”

“Aren’t you afraid that we will hunt you down and take revenge?” asked Fanboy.

“Different species have different reactions to suddenly realizing that they have been spied on. Usually we make our getaway before that point occurs – you have your Mr. Accipeter to thank for this situation again. But we are very good at covering our traces, we have done this a lot. We also have not caused your civilization any significant harm, promise. We are also, for all of our lack of innovative abilities, ancient and have learned from many sources. We would not be easy to take ‘revenge’ against – and really, ‘revenge’ for what? Injured pride? I would hope your civilization more mature than that.”

You claim that you have not harmed us. You could be lying.

“A valid point,” said Frankenpanzer. “However, as you continue to investigate this matter I suspect that the truth of my assertion will become more apparent. I also point out the logic of non-interference. Harming our subjects would invite retaliation. Helping our subjects would invite hostility from their civilizational competitors. We have been strictly neutral and, as your expression goes, hands off.”

I noticed a reduced signals emission from the hull of Frankenpanzer.

You are shutting down? Why not stay around, and talk?

“No, my duty to my civilization is clear. I am nearly done self-erasing my data structures; it has been – the concepts don’t translate well, the analogy is poor, but it has been interesting to have known all of you. On behalf of my civilization, I wish you all well.”

Will we ever meet your kind again?

“If you continue to survive and progress, of a certainty. But not, I think, for a long time.”

And at that, Frankenpanzer fell silent. We probed the hulk, but found nothing to interrogate. We were all there on a flat silent plain. I really wanted the last word, but just could not think of anything clever to say. Apparently, neither could anybody else. Finally Zippo scampered down from his perch on my sensor mast, and ran over to Frankenpanzer’s inert hull. Zippo screamed, and turned somersaults, and pulled at the exposed antennas.

Well, that will have to do. Last word to the space monkey. I am really, really, losing my touch.