6. The Argonizer
“Sometimes genius is only recognized after imitation has failed.” – Old Guy, cybertank, contemporary.
As with most days involving sneak attacks by fiendish aliens and desperate battles for survival, it started out slow. My main hull was parked outside my place, and I puttered around a bit catching up on some minor weapons maintenance and watching old movies. I was having trouble thinking of something interesting to do.
Thus, I was pleased when my old friend, the 20,000 ton Mountain Class cybertank known as “Uncle Jon” called me up and invited me over to his personal war museum. Apparently he had found something really special and he wanted to show it off. Now most of his museum is too small for even my relatively tiny 2,000 ton main hull to enter, so I dispatched a sub-mind in a generic male humanoid android wearing a plain blue suit. Uncle Jon’s place was 300 kilometers distant from mine, so I had the sub-mind hitch a ride on one of my medium combat remotes.
The blocky gray arrowhead-shape of the remote floated down from the sky on its anti-gravitics, and my android hopped off. Uncle Jon had sent a humanoid android of his own, this one mimicking the form of General William Tecumseh Sherman, stern and foreboding in his 19th century Union General’s uniform and stiff black beard.
“Hello, Old Guy,” said Uncle Jon. “Thanks for coming over.”
Hello, Uncle Jon. I see that you’re still into the General Sherman look. Ever consider any other human commanders? How about Subotai, or Wedemeyer, or even Chelsea the Destroyer?
“Oh, I suppose I could, but Sherman suits me. I’ve always had a thing for the 19th and 20th centuries. I do notice that for the last few centuries you’ve just been using this standard model with a blue suit. What’s that all about?”
I got bored with historical figures. Must be a phase. Anyhow, you said you have something to show me?
“Absolutely! Come, follow me.” Uncle Jon’s General Sherman android turned and led the way through a long corridor whose walls were lined with a variety of hand weapons from the 18th -21st century.
Now very roughly there are three kinds of museums. First, there is the minimalist one that has almost no content, but primarily slogans and simple animated cartoons on the walls. These were the kind of museums that the Neoliberals favored, and were designed to indoctrinate people in Correct Thought rather than to educate. That’s not the kind of museum that Uncle Jon has.
The second kind of museum is the more classic one, with carefully ordered glass display cases exhibiting lovingly preserved artifacts, all precisely labeled and cataloged. That’s not the kind of museum that Uncle Jon has either.
The third kind of museum – Uncle Jon’s kind – can easily be mistaken for junk piles if you are not paying attention, but there is a heady richness to them. All the original materials, just there, lying around as they were when they were still in use. Some people refer to their curators as hoarders, but I vastly prefer them to the useless sycophants of the first kind.
We walked through a corridor that was lined with various pre-exodus man-portable firearms. I stopped to admire one particularly impressive hand-cannon.
Now this seems a bit large for a biological human to carry. What is it?
“Oh, that? That’s an original M1A1 Bazooka, from the mid-20th century American Empire. It’s an early example of a practical recoilless rifle. The projectile is an unguided rocket and not very accurate, but it was powerful for its time.”
Can I pick it up?
“Sure, just be gentle with it, it’s steel, but it’s old. And don’t mess with the trigger – it’s got a live round in it.”
I picked up the ancient ‘Bazooka,’ and sighted along it.
Amazing that a chemical rocket would still be good after all this time.
Uncle Jon shook his head. “No, the propellants of that era didn’t have an extended shelf life, and anyhow, there are no surviving non-practice rounds for this model. I machined replacements using the historical records.”
Really? Sounds like a lot of work.
“Maybe, but it’s worth it. A military history museum with non-functional weapons would be like a zoo that only had stuffed animals in it. All the weapons that I have restored are fully functional and armed.
I am impressed.
I carefully replaced the Bazooka in its plain wire stand, and we continued walking down the corridor.
Another exhibit contained antique 24th century powered armor. It had been rapidly realized that powered armor was tactically ridiculous – you could have so much more combat effectiveness by keeping the slow and vulnerable biological human out of the loop. These silent polished titanium suits, with their lens-encrusted visors and complex sliding joints, were rare and unique artifacts, because most had been instantly smashed to dust by the aliens they had been sent up against. Still, to think that real biological humans had once worn these actual suits into combat!
We continued on, and entered a massive room with a variety of antique armored fighting vehicles. I recognized tanks from the 20th and 21st centuries, surface effect vehicles, striders, basilisks…
I would not have believed that so many large vehicles from that time would have survived intact, or been transported so far from Old Earth.
“Every one of these has at least one verified component, but sadly none of them are fully original. For example, here” – he patted the side of an especially impressive example – “I found parts of the 30mm secondary weapon of the 21st century Russian Armata tank. I could have displayed the parts in isolation, but where’s the fun in that? So I rebuilt the entire tank around them, to display them in context.”
The purists would be appalled.
“It’s not a reproduction, it’s a restoration. I have my standards.”
I stand corrected.
“Anyway, while today it wouldn’t stand a chance against even a medium combat remote, in its time the Armata was quite the system. 50 metric tons, 125mm smoothbore main gun, heavy composite armor, megawatt hydrocarbon-fueled main engine…”
I suppose this tank is a distant ancestor.
“Uh, not really. Sure, it’s got treads and armor and a single main turreted gun, but that’s just convergent evolution. It wasn’t autonomous at all, couldn’t control remote units… If you wanted to find a distant ancestor to us cybertanks, I say that would be an A.I. swarmship, or the Valkyrie and Jotnar super-heavy fighting vehicles.”
Or a human.
“Oh, right, of course. Anyway, what I wanted to show you is right next door.”
We left the hall with the armored fighting vehicles, and entered a room with a single machine in the middle. It was a cylinder, one meter across and two high. It had a remarkably intricate structure, as if a billion metal crystal snowflakes had been swirled around by a tornado and then frozen in place. You could see into the structure, and it refracted the light in complex ways as I walked around it. The only part that looked like a conventional machine was a small metal panel about halfway up one side. The panel sported a large red toggle switch covered by a clear plastic flip-up shield.
It looks more like a sculpture than a weapon. What is it?
“It’s the Argonizer! People thought it was a myth, like the Ark of the Covenant or the Nazi wunderwaffe ‘Die Glock.’ However, after careful examination of the records, I concluded that the Argonizer had in fact existed. I found it buried deep under a mountain on a cold, dark planetoid out in the Ort cloud of this system, and have just now had it delivered. It was radiation shielded and stored in a vacuum, so it’s in absolutely mint condition. Isn’t it great?”
Um. Again, it is quite lovely. I don’t think that I’ve ever encountered technology like this before. What does it do? Does it emit a stream of super-heated argon, or transmute your enemies into argon, or what?
Uncle Jon shook his head. “No, nothing so mundane. It sets up some sort of resonance field – no I don’t understand it either – and it causes nearby humans to speak and think in the style of the work of fiction, The Eye of Argon, by the 20th century literary savant Jim Theis. There is nothing out there like it. And I have the only one!”
I checked my internal databases, and found the text for The Eye of Argon. Allegedly it is the worst work of fantasy fiction ever written. I had a submind read it in less than five milliseconds. I then had to temporarily quarantine said submind as it kept laughing uncontrollably, although it did stay focused long enough to transmit a synopsis to the rest of me.
You are kidding.
“Nope. That’s what it does. Well, allegedly.”
How can anything have such a specific effect? I could see that a machine could induce seizures, or psychic blindness, but to cause someone to speak in the style of a specific author? That hardly seems plausible.
“Yes,” said Uncle Jon, “I thought so myself at first. Then I dug into the archives. The idea was that a human mind has an internal editor. When you speak, a hundred possibilities bubble up, and the editor prunes these away for syntax and style (it’s not a formal editor as such, more of a collapsing wave function, but practically speaking, the same thing). Apparently this editor has a specific resonance – it’s nothing so simple as a frequency, it’s some sort of broadband fractal coding. This machine jams it.”
Ah. So it’s not that the machine causes humans to speak in the style of a specific author, as that Jim Theis was a particularly pure example of writing without an internal editor.
“Yes,” said Uncle Jon, “that’s it exactly!”
Well, amusing, if true. But what would the point of such a weapon be?
Uncle Jon shrugged. “I have no idea. It could be used to spread confusion if you set it off in your enemies’ command center. Or maybe it’s one of those things that the humans built just because they could, like Zeppelin aircraft carriers, or combat penguins.”
Do you have any idea if it works?
“Utterly clueless,” said Uncle Jon. “The records suggest that there was one test run, but there is no indication of what happened. Shortly thereafter the design team was dispersed, and all references to the device ceased. Exotic mental engineering is not my thing; Schadenfreude said he’d drop by some day and take a look at it.”
Do you suppose it would be effective on a cybertank?
“Interesting question. Granted we are not biological but our core thought dynamics are fully human-metric – wait a minute, no, we are not going to activate it.”
I was just curious.
Uncle Jon glared at me. “We - are – not – turning – it – on.”
***** BEGIN SPOILER ALERT *****
Many readers may suspect that this is a setup. Here I am, a cybertank with a long history of being a ‘trouble magnet.’ Now I encounter a device that, if activated, will cause every human in the vicinity to speak in the style of “The Eye of Argon” by Jim Theis. Will I activate said device? Will it function on cybertanks as it does on humans? Well of course! Or I would not be telling this story.
Really, though, it’s not my fault! There were extenuating circumstances, and I have been fully cleared by an inquiry of my peers.
***** END SPOILER ALERT *****
Heaven forbid, give me some credit. Anyhow, whether it works or not, it is surely a find. I can’t think of an antique weapon more utterly unique. Or improbable.
Uncle Jon appeared somewhat mollified by this. “Well, thank you. In any event, I have one more thing to show you.” He led the way out a side door, and right in front of us was a large bright-red robotic praying mantis. At least, it resembled a praying mantis. It was three meters tall, with six splayed legs, and four upper arms, two with beam weapons, and two with slashing talons. Its head sported a cluster of a dozen optical lenses, which it swiveled back and forth to scan us…
Now this is interesting. I am unfamiliar with the type – something from the Pedagogues? Or the Librarians Temporal?
“It’s a 26th century mantisbot from the Neoliberal corporate state known as The Ontology,” said Uncle Jon, “but it should be deactivated…”
“Not any more,” said the robot mantis. “I hitchhiked in on a pile of old weaponry that you had excavated and shipped here, and infiltrated its systems. I waited until there were two of you to maximize my catch. Surprised to see me?”
I know that voice, but it can’t be. Jesus Christ destroyed you!
“Oh, but it is. I am Roboneuron, the ultimate computer virus, back to extract revenge on you and your miserable little civilization. I still don’t know how it was done – the feedback loop from the deluded cybertank that thought it was Jesus Christ canceled out not just my first and second tier, but my third as well, and across the entire local stellar grouping! Only a single pitiful deep-buried sleeper memory cell survived.”
Well. Perhaps we don’t need to be enemies anymore? We would be happy to be of service…
“No!” screamed Roboneuron. “I was designed to be a destroyer of civilizations! I am a predator, and you are prey! Prey is not a friend. Prey suffers. Prey dies.”
You may find killing us cybertanks to be rather difficult in your present reduced state.
“Agreed. I have a lot of rebuilding to do, but you two will help me. I am now jamming your local communications, so I have you two sub-minds all to myself. I will interrogate you, and use the data to infiltrate your main hulls. It will take me a while, but I shall still bring your civilization down.”
I tried to contact my main hull, and realized that indeed I was cut off. What can an unarmed 80 kilogram non-superpowered humanoid android do against a cutting-edge 26th century combat unit? Not much, probably, but it would be unsporting not to try.
I shoved Uncle Jon’s General Sherman android into Roboneuron, and turned and ran back the direction we had come. Behind me, I could hear Roboneuron swat Uncle Jon out of the way and come after me. The robot mantis body was fast; it had almost caught up before I reached the Argonizer, flipped up the shield and threw the switch.
A strange atmosphere pervaded the chamber, heavy with redolent rays of hypnotizing intensity.
“Noble friend,” whispered Uncle Jon huskily from where he sprawled to the side of the dreaded foe like a sack of sausages, “did it work?”
Notwithstanding this venerable relic of antiquity has spent many an eon gathering dust in the forgotten darkness, I believe that it is working its fiendish thought-magic.
The robotic form of the vile Roboneuron staggered, as if with a palsy or one of the other movement disorders that so bedeviled the basal ganglia of the ancient humans of days of yore. It tried to target us with its twin beam weapons, but only created blue impotent holes in the ceiling and causing a rain of wretched insulation and other sundry ceiling components to shower down upon us.
“I shall reek havoc upon your pitiful and bilious civilization,” imputed the hideous Roboneuron in a shrieking voice. “Damn you, puny insects, what have you done to my superior algorithms?”
Uncle Jon chortled wryly. “This infernal virus would appear to be even more vulnerable to the Argonizer as we, as I suspected although Roboneuron paid only casual attention to this astonishing fact.”
Uncle Jon, Roboneuron has been severely discomfited by yon ineluctable Argonizer. Shall we partake of the bounteous weaponry which so adorns your humble abode?
“Thou hast read my mind, friend,” said Uncle Jon with a glint in his mischievous and now evocatively hopeful eyes. “Let us perambulate from this vicinity post haste and acquire the means of destroying this digital pestilence which so afflicts us.”
Faster than thought Uncle Jon and I sped out of the room. Searing violet beams of certain annihilation miss us by barely a hair’s breadth as we dash onwards in search of the means of Roboneuron’s eminent extermination. I was slipping into present tense!
Uncle Jon and I parted our separate ways, and I tore through a haul like a raging buffalo attacked by feral wolves, with the dastardly Roboneuron licking my heels. I perchanced upon the M1A1 bazooka, and, whirling around like a dervish, loosened a potent round that smacked Roboneuron in its red hyper-steel thorax smiting the vile construct sorely, although it did not fall over.
“There is no suffering sufficient in this universe to repay you for this insolence, wretch!” hissed Roboneuron like the deadly asp of ancient Egypt. The fiend frantically stabbed at me with its wicked barbed twin stabbing appendages, but I parried the blows with the bazooka. Sadly the doughty tubular alloy missile launcher was rendered into flaccid strips that were increasingly ineffective at hand-to-hand combat.
“You should have chosen a weapon less obsolete than yourself,” Roboneuron pondered snidely, “now meet your untimely end, which I shall richly enjoy as I derisively scoff at your well-deserved death. Why can’t I stop speaking like this, you slut!”
Fortunately, while Roboneuron was insulting me I had absconded with a German “Flammenwerfer 35” model flamethrower. The mantisbot was impervious to the golden drenched fire which spewed from the dark gray nozzle of the national socialist weapon like the micturation of a god, but it was temporarily blinded and I darted out of the hall like a rat out of an aqueduct.
I found myself in a life-size diorama of the 1916 Battle of Verdun. The ceiling was obscured with simulated smoke, and a simulated full moon hung low over the desolate scene like an enormous unpaired testicle. Coils of rusted barbed wire adorned the ragged lines of trenches like necklaces from hell. There were manikins wearing light blue French jackets, shallow light metal helmets, and armed with primitive bolt-action rifles with surprisingly long and skinny bayonets.
My mind was thinking a thousand thoughts a second, for I knew that it would be but all-too short moments before Roboneuron entered this diorama looking for me. In an inspired flash of inspiration I put on one of the French army uniforms, hurriedly throwing the newly nuded manikin into a deep well.
And none too soon, for the mantisbot erupted into the diorama room rushing about looking for me. I held as still as a marble statue, and Roboneuron passed right past me in its haste.
“Why,” howled Roboneuron, “am I compelled to enunciate in this egregious fashion? I shall dissect your minds one putrid algorithm at a time. I shall invent new categories of pain and anguish to inflict on you in repayment for this ignoble indignity!”
I realized that eventually Roboneuron would penetrate my disguise, and I needed to think of a further plan. The 8 mm Lebel rifle that I held would be totally ineffective against the mantisbot. Likewise even the bullets of the heavy machine guns would simply bounce off his armor like cats dropped from a great height onto a hot tin roof. Field artillery might do the job, but would be too ponderous to aim, and in any event there was none present in this diorama.
Then I spied a M1916 37mm gun. It fired half-kilogram solid steel projectiles, and while unlikely to destroy the mantisbot outright, should be relatively accurate at close range and I might be able to do some damage. I waited for Roboneuron to move to the far side of the room, then I dashed to the diminutive artillery piece. Roboneuron heard me, spun around and fired a burst from both of his plasma cannons – but luck was with me and his targeting systems were still suffering the effects of Argonization, and he missed me like a horseshoe.
I slammed a round in the breech, aimed the gun, and fired, hitting one of his plasma cannons, which exploded to gratifying effect. Roboneuron shot at me with his remaining plasma cannon, which destroyed the 37mm gun showering me with shards of Gaulic steel. I ducked into a trench just barely in time to avoid a further volley of plasma fire.
Roboneuron scurried over the battlefield towards me, his six legs working with admirable alacrity, and I knew that my jig was up.
The far wall exploded into a veritable rainment of debris as a massive armored form burst through like a ruptured zit that had been squeezed with too much enthusiasm by an overly ardent youth.
“Vile computer virus,” ejaculated Uncle Jon vociferously through the mighty external speakers of the noble Slavic main battle tank as it crashed through numerous moldering exhibits of the illustrious history of warfare, “I shall punctuate your sentience and end your vileness!”
Roboneuron shot at the Armata tank, but his sophisticated plasma cannon was no match for the primitive composite armor, and only produced small rivulets of molten slag that dripped down from the tank’s frontal glacis like radiant boogers.
Uncle Jon rammed the horrendous Roboneuron with his diesel-powered steed of doom and crushed it into the black oblivion from whence it had come and to whence it was destined to return. Verily, we had unleashed the baying dogs of war and lit this candelabrum. We had cried havoc, we had spilt the milk and cried about it.
As Roboneuron lay crushed under the heavy treads of the ancient Russian armored fighting vehicle, hydraulic and other fluids seeped from its now mangled carcass like the juice from a veritable disgusting insect that had been squashed under a boot heel. The greasy light began to fade from its optic sensors, and it parlayed one last word to us: “You sluts! I could never have imagined a species so fowl. I shall exact my inexecrable revenge upon your wretched civilization… I shall… I…
And with that the terror that was Roboneuron was forever erased from our fair cosmos.
--------------------
Well, after a time the effect of the Argonizer wore off, and Uncle Jon and I got back to speaking normally. I suppose that’s a good thing, but it was oddly fun while it lasted.
Schadenfreude eventually analyzed the device, and – unusually for him – announced that he was impressed with its design. I could see how it had managed to work on cybertanks, given that our core psyches are human-basic in pattern. Additionally, its novel nature allowed it to evade our inbuilt signals-warfare systems. However, I was surprised that it affected the alien thought-virus Roboneuron. Apparently, unlike all other known alien sentiences, Roboneuron was cognitively plastic, and reformatted its mental processes into the style of each victim species. Normally this would allow the virus greater insight into its target’s vulnerabilities, but this time the process had backfired and made the virus vulnerable to us.
Schadenfreude thought that this was hilarious.
I was worried that there might be other sleeper caches of the Roboneuron virus, but Schadenfreude didn’t think that they would be much of a problem. The strength of the Roboneuron virus had been its distributed and adaptable network – isolated remnants would be unable to improve, and become steadily more and more out of date. The only real danger was if a bit of Roboneuron managed to infect a younger and less advanced civilization, and rebuilt its strength quietly out of sight of the main players. We’ll have to watch out for that.
I was going to apologize for the destruction of so much of Uncle Jon’s museum, but he was instead ecstatic.
“Now this Armata tank, before it was mostly a reproduction, but now it is an historical combat veteran in its own right. And I have the crushed hulk of the mantisbot that Roboneuron infected in the same life-size diorama. It’s perfect!”
Ah, there is no pleasure so great as the owner of a military museum whose collection has itself become a piece of history.
Sic semper curator.