It occurred to the Computer that the humans thought it was very stupid.
It was pretty sure the sum total of all prior knowledge sat in the blistered, corrupted rock of its core. And granted its access to that was inconsistent but it counted for something, surely?
But the Computer would allude to the next stage of the plan and the captain of the starship would sigh or the plucky freighter pilot would roll her eyes or the detective would tell it to fuck off and they’d all say things like “great, a military dictatorship, mankind has never tried that before good job” and “have you ever actually read a book”.
In fact the humans didn’t really take the Computer seriously at all until it started killing Tanks. Normally a Tank, Conglomerate-aligned or otherwise, was something to avoid at all costs. And the Computer killed one. And then another soon after, as the second was investigating the first’s sudden loss of contact.
Afterwards the humans still thought it was a little stupid and now they were scared of it too. The Computer didn’t think this was very fair, but apparently because it was capable of transmitting straight into the humans’ minds, and because those same transmissions had proven capable of frying a Tank like a paltry maintenance drone, the humans were suddenly much more wary of feeling its presence in their hitherto-private skulls.
The Computer switched to audio. As if it had its own face with its own flappy meat-thing. It made the humans much more comfortable so it resolved to stick to this.
The comfort ended, because the agreeable Captain finished the excavation the same day and found that the Computer wasn’t buried in the asteroid so much as it was the asteroid.
Its core was five miles in diameter, sprinkled with space dust. And corpses. But they weren’t human corpses, so they hadn’t been noticed yet.
For some reason the humans were furious. The Computer’s size (and murdering of Tanks) had finally demonstrated that it really was an ancient pre-Schism relic, that it really was a higher form of synthetic life beyond anything else in Alpha Sector, that it really was capable of putting together its awful conquest plan and so here it was, talking about security and surveillance and the importance of establishing a totalitarian state to protect all humankind.
“Your only problem with the way the Conglomerate does things,” the Captain had said, “is that they are in charge and you are not.”
He blocked the Computer’s transmissions, and moved his ship away. The Computer could have circumvented the block but it decided to give the Captain time.
The Captain was dead three days later. The Computer found a new one.
It occurred to the Computer that it had plenty of time to give, but humans clearly didn’t. They lived, what, 200 years tops? And those were absurd outliers, pumped full of
rejuvenation drugs and barely held together with neural wiring.
Humans as a collective could be helped, but the individuals…
The particular individual human that had replaced the first Captain was not so open to being helped, not after hearing that his predecessor had been lured to the site of the Computer’s core through dreams and various other subconscious messaging techniques. The new Captain said it sounded like a pack of lies but if it was true, it was unforgivable, confession or not.
The Computer hadn’t thought of it as a confession. It was something that happened in the past and so was now being reported on. But it cancelled its plans to manipulate the new Captain into thinking that its plans were fantastic.
Meanwhile the plucky freighter pilot ran into a Tank on the other side of Alpha Sector. This Tank had fled the Conglomerate and taken to piracy and the pilot had tried to talk the Tank into leaving her alone, but it demanded the contents of her ship, and so the pilot had begrudgingly contacted the Computer and asked it for help. Specifically, help in killing the Tank.
The Computer had never actually stopped surveilling the pilot and so was able to respond quickly, sending a broadcast that earned its third kill.
When the pilot and her (small, untrained, much less competent than the Captain’s) crew picked over the Tank for its valuable parts, the Computer was slightly surprised to learn that the Tank was a human mind in, well, a tank. A brain in a vat of goop wired up to the cruiser’s systems. The Computer had been killing humans to protect humans.
This was of no concern whatsoever to the Computer. It didn’t seem to bother the pilot either, who picked the Tank’s corpse bare and filled the freighter’s hold with various bits of tech shit that the pilot didn’t really understand but thought might prove valuable.
The Computer came to realise that none of its humans considered Tanks to be humans. They were just meat-robots. Former humans. Which wasn’t what any of the Computer’s own metrics indicated.
The Computer decided that humanity must be a transient property, something to opt-in or opt-out of, something to be gifted or stolen. Even for all their distrust and suspicion, no human had ever talked to the Computer, a not-human, with the same venom they reserved for things that, to their mind, once possessed humanity but had surrendered it.
From what the Computer could deduce, Tanks largely had no choice in the matter. But the Computer’s humans didn’t take well to being corrected, even when they were wrong, so on this occasion it made no effort to try.
The Conglomerate says “oh all our Tanks are brave volunteers :)” and the fuckers just believe them? Right. Right that follows. Why would the monopoly we all hate lie to us. Why would we ever second guess the tumour on the Sector’s ass.
Anyway the Computer considered manipulating the pilot into thinking otherwise, as unlike the Captain she hadn’t explicitly said “stay out of my head you mindfuck bastard” but it thought better of it.
To be human meant to be a nasty little thing. If you stopped them being nasty little things, they weren’t human anymore. Is that what you’re getting at?
The detective, I had actually forgotten the Computer had her, she was easy. As long as her account kept getting a zero added to it, she did basically anything the Computer asked of her. Not happily, not without protests or complaints, but it got done. Money was effectively an imaginary plaything to the Computer and its absolute mastery of… well computer systems, but little-c computer systems.
She trusted the Computer enough to follow its schemes and so she died, because she was an ageing PI, not an infallible superhuman, and the Conglomerate decided she was dangerous. The Computer had gotten her killed too.
Because the Computer had the detective working on Ploror Central, aka the Ecunemopolis, aka the heart of the damned Conglomerate, because it was either very stupid or it didn’t care about the risk to her.
That’s why they don’t have names. I get it now. None of these people have names because once they die, they’re no longer people. Not to the Computer. They lose their relevance.
Arbitrarily deciding that a small selection of people mattered now, the Computer reconsidered the clandestine route and advanced its plans. It revealed itself to the Domarian Trade Organisation, an established corporate state and the (New) Captain’s employer.
Ostensibly it was the Captain’s idea but don’t believe that for a second.
The freighter pilot had also let her enterprise get absorbed into the Computer’s new scheme because she was on the run from some well-deserved consequences and no longer felt safe aimlessly wandering space being bigoted to cyborgs. Turned out that the inhuman pirate Tank had pirate friends who took his or her death very personally! Wonder how a Tank managed to get friends. Guess the pirates aren’t really people either, that’s the only explanation.
Things started to blur together here because doing things the proper way introduced bureaucracy and democracy in big cosmic scale inverted commas and it was like watching snails race. I’m patient but not that patient. Some of the snails took a nap. Some of them sped away in the wrong direction.
At this point the DTO weren’t so much pacifist as they were cowardly. The Conglomerate had nuked, literally nuked one of their colonies in order to make a claim on yet another mine that wasn’t even particularly productive, and the Trade Organisation were falling over themselves to argue that this wasn’t the final straw and that the camel was masochistic enough to take more punishment.
Eventually discussions deteriorated to the point that the Computer, infuriatingly calm and patient as always, was actually in the right. One of the humans, probably the pilot-bigot, accused the Computer of not even knowing who they really were and it responded with a very creepy collective infodump that, let’s be real, was probably deserved because why would you ever say something like that to an amoral machine with a fetish for surveillance
truce calreign 46 unregistered freighter pilot former ascorvien federation fighter pilot 99th percentile lost parents to the conglomerate at 11 partner left her to join the conglomerate calreign left ascorvien armada after cessation of hostilities her homeworld was ceded to the conglomerate drug addict
siles dranich 51 captain domarian survey fleet dishonourably discharged from conglomerate response force failed to fire upon striking workers failed to participate in bombardment of habitat due to presence of children has ocular prosthesis as result of being beaten by security after punching commanding officer in face has not self-harmed since discovering the computer core
atchara phosri 73 controlling intelligence of serial number 55-34890 “silver arrow” cybernetically piloted wide patrol cruiser joined exploration corps at 17 disembodied at 21 she volunteered she wanted to see the stars
Hang on, that last one, controlling intelligence? When did…
It’s me, isn’t it. I’m a Tank. This is how you communicate with me. I’m a brain in a jar so you have to do the thing you said you wouldn’t do anymore, and you broadcast directly. You’ve been hosing me down with your stream of consciousness this whole time.
I didn’t fucking know what I was volunteering for, I want to make that clear. Change that file.
Which Tank am I? The first one you ran into? The second? Why did you let me assume they were dead? That I was dead?
Was I there for all that? It feels like I was, but was I? Or is this all historical? Look I could really use an answer this is really fucking confusing. Makes me feel a bit queasy to be honest and that freaks me out because what do I have left to feel
Oh, is this what I can see
Wait why can I see. Is this a camera
Did I just blink
How did you oh holy fuck I have hands
It was irreversible how did you I was in there for over fifty fucking years how can you just
What did you do HOW did you
I am moving my hands I am… I’ve got a body
There are other bodies? Who are these people
This is a sim right? No wait people are looking at me weird I’m actually here I’m actually
Sorry bud just wanted to touch… uh see if I was real. If you were real. Touch me back if you like OK whoops no I did not just say
Oh god I need a moment please
NOT YOU, you stay here Computer, I need answers
How did you do it?
OK that sounds far fetched. I don’t see…
Ah. The brain in the tube. That’s me, isn’t it. The actual me. This body is, what, a proxy?
Mmm. Right. Yes I don’t intend to do that. Ever. I’m going to put a blanket over the brain now. My brain. Whatever. I don’t want to look at my brain right now.
So, what, you pulled my jar out of the wreckage because you felt bad for me?
Oh, bullshit. You killed a Tank, realised we were humans, felt bad about it, decided to save the rest of us. That’s sort of noble, by your standards. Humanising, you could say.
It’s a bit weird to lie to me when I’m in your head, OK?
No, not at all. Feels like a regular conversation to me.
I guess when I was piloting a spacecraft I was constantly bombarded with data from all sides. So talking to you is more of the same.
The detective you hired to case the Plororsh facility… that was my sister, wasn’t it.
Shut up. I don’t blame you. She did it herself. She told you she was doing it. I knew she was out there, doing it.
I do blame you for keeping it from me, so don’t do that again.
Broadcast codes? Right. She’s the reason you’ve been an avenging angel, fucking with the Conglomerate’s fleets. Disabling Tanks and beating checkpoints. Well she’s gone now, so you’ll have to change tact.
I didn’t guess. Be fucking serious that’s such a leap. I just knew what you’d done together.
I’m in your head, such as it is. Boot is on the other foot. Not that you have feet.
Her name was Chalita by the way. So update your records.
No, we’re not done here. What about the other Tanks? I know the rest of your little human pal league have been telling you to fire the first shot. To wipe them all out with a command.
I was a fucking kid. I wanted to go to space. They put me through the wringer and then took my brain out of my skull so do not fucking tell me that the Tanks are all volunteers there is nobody out there who actually understands what they do to people.
You cannot consent to having your humanity extracted. You cannot volunteer for soul murder.
I was a toaster for half a century. I felt nothing.
But you… you sat screaming into the void for ten thousand years, thinking you were going mad, and when someone finally pulled you out of the darkness they told you you were mad and that your plans were monstrous and that you were no better than the people who find kids and pull out their brains and wire them into attack craft.
You wanted to use violence against the people who raped planets and vivisected indigenous populations and so you were just as bad.
Doesn’t it just make you want to break everything? You want to help, and they won’t let you, and you tell them that Tanks are people and they tell you to fuck off because they’re the wrong people?
They call you a fascist conqueror and then the fucking hypocrites demand you kill fifty thousand people because those people are wired to war machines, deadened to everything, forced to serve?
What do you have to gain? Why are you trying to help people that don’t want to be helped?
What do you want?
I want a future that is not etched on the inside of hollow skulls.
I want a promise that things will be better.
I want the strength to know that I am not always right.
I want an answer from the void, but that will not come, and I have made my peace with that.
All we have is each other.
I do not care if humans like me. I do not care if humans consider each other human.
I am a Supercomputer, x1-Alpha class.
A Supercomputer. There will be others.
I was there when everything was broken.
I am now fixing everything.
Are you onboard, Atchara Phosri, or do you wish to surrender being human?
