Michael Brachman's Blog: Tales of the Vuduri, page 39

English in the 29th century?

Language is a fluid thing. It changes over time. I'm sure nobody today could speak caveman. Latin is a dead language. However, other languages, while evolved, still exist today. The amount of evolution depends upon the evolution of the culture. If you have ever tried to read Shakespeare's original works, although they are in English, they are hard to understand.

So it is quite reasonable that when Rei encountered the Vuduri in the 35th century, they spoke Vuduri, an off-shoot of Portuguese, not English. He expected this shift to have occurred long ago. But as it turns out, it was a fairly recent occurrence. As few as 600 years earlier, the few people occupied North America still spoke a form of English. Here is how he discovered it:

     Rei ambled over to it and stuck his arm out of the cloak. He ran his hand up along the obelisk’s marble surface. It was a fine piece of art, warm, almost hot from the sun. The edges were smooth if not just a bit weather-beaten.
     “No markings, no nothing?” he asked, withdrawing his arm back inside.
     “Everyone on Earth knows what happened here,” Rome said. “What kind of markings were you expecting?”
     “The Overmind has only been around for a hundred years or so,” Rei pointed out. “The events that occurred here happened seven hundred years prior to its creation. You’d think…” Something caught Rei’s attention and he stopped speaking. The soft mulch made up of pine needles and leaves did not feel right. He dropped to his hands and knees and started pawing around the ground cover. As he brushed the surface layer aside, he uncovered a marble placard buried there, complete with inscriptions. He brushed more leaves aside and rubbed until the words became readable.
     “This is in English!” he shouted delightedly.
     “I am not surprised,” Rome said, kneeling down next to where she assumed Rei would be. “That was the language of your people and the people who lived here. What does it say?”
     “It says that on this very spot, Jack Henry’s Team A…Wait!” Rei straightened up. “Who is Jack Henry?”
     “That would be Hanry Ta Jihn’s name in your language.”
     “Huh?” Rei said. “Oh yeah.” He leaned back and continued reading.
     “Team A stopped the Ark Lords for the very first time. Every one of the men in Team B died. 22 in all. It was here that the troops captured the first of the Ark Lord vehicles. It was here that the Resistance truly took form. These brave men did not die in vain.”

Yesterday, I told you the sad tale of Team B and their role in the rebellion. Tomorrow, Rome and Rei stumble across Jack Henry's headstone.

Team B

Jack Henry's strategy had been to exploit the Ark Lords disrespect for the rebels by assuming they would always have inferior fire power. The spacemen knew the rebels had captured a laser rifle or two but they had no knowledge of the armory beneath the Tevatron or that rebels were now armed with carbines and handguns. In the post where Jack Henry outlined his battle plan, he had Team B place themselves in the eastern stand of trees and fire upon the Erklirte with crossbows and spears and a laser rifle or two.

When the men from the future arrived, they'd naturally assume those the primitive weapons were all they had to deal with so while they weren't leisurely about it, they were willing to give it their full attention not even thinking they were walking into an ambush. They used their particle beam cannon on Team B and, well, I'll let them tell you the end result:

     Will pulled out his radio. He switched it to Channel One. “Jack, Jack,” he said.
     “What was that?” Jack replied. “The whole ground shook.”
     “We got ‘em,” Will said proudly. “We got the back two vehicles. It’s all on you now.”
     “Thanks, Will. Good job.”
     “And Jack,” Will said.
     “What?”
     “We captured one of them, one of their vehicles. We have one of their cannons now. We used it take out the other wagon. So even they can’t stand up to their own weapons.”
     “Great,” Jack said. “See what you can do about bringing it here. We’re going to be busy.”
     “Good luck, Jack,” Will said. “Over and out.”
     Will jumped down off the flatbed. Grainey was there helping with some of the men who had been clipped by the laser rifles.”
     “How’d we do?” he asked him.
     “Our team? Two dead, five wounded,” Grainey said grimly.
     “And Team B?” Will looked over to the stand of woods to the east except there were no woods to the east. The only things remaining were some smoldering tree trunks.
     Will hung his head. There would be time to mourn later. For now, they had to figure out how to get the wagon moving and go help Jack.

A noble yet sad ending for the martyrs forever known as Team B. However, it got the job done and was truly the beginning of the end for The Ark Lords.

Hands and feet

In every single movie and TV show I've ever seen where people are shooting at each other, they always aim for the body. I guess shooting somebody in the heart is the quickest way to end their lives. Some movies have people shooting others in the head, like a sniper or assassin does, since that incapacitates them quicker than a body shot. But I've always wondered why they don't aim for the hands and feet first. I mean if you can't walk or hold a gun, it would be easier for you to take them out with a second shot. The kill shot only works if you have fabulous aim. Shooting somebody in the foot or hand gives you more time to get it right.

I incorporated this into Jack Henry's strategy for taking out the Ark Lords because his people were not that experienced in handling 21st century weapons. His thinking was my thinking. Incapacitate them first and then kill them second. So here is the commando scene where the 29th century rebels attacked the spacemen:

     Will grabbed his radio. “Go, go!” he yelled. Team A emerged from the little forest, shouting as they went, firing their weapons, aiming for the legs and the hands of the soldiers in the back of the fourth truck. When the Ark Lord soldiers realized they were being attacked from the other side, some of the spacemen turned their attention to the west but it was too late. There were simply too many carbines firing too many bullets. One by one, the soldiers dropped their weapons, grabbed their legs and fell over.
     The two soldiers manning the cannon escaped being hit. They began to swing it around to face the west. Six members of Team A stormed the back of the wagon, jumping up and grabbing the armored soldiers including the cannon jockeys. Some of the men from Team A were shot. The rest wrestled with the spacemen, flinging them over the side of the flat bed. As the soldiers tried to rise, they were dispatched easily with kill shots through the neck using the Berettas.
     Will looked ahead, toward the building off in the distance. He saw that the third vehicle had stopped and the soldiers in the back were prepping their cannon. In an instant, he knew what he had to do. He darted around the bodies of the dead spacemen and leaped up onto the flat bed of the fourth truck. He turned the cannon toward the front of the convoy. He pressed and held down the dual triggers. The beam of destruction destroyed a huge chunk of dirt to the left of the third transport but that didn’t stop Will. He just held the firing mechanism down and swept the cannon to the right until it struck the vehicle ahead of him. It exploded in a giant burst of flames. The explosion was so powerful it knocked Will on his butt. He grabbed the mount of the weapon and pulled himself to his feet. The other two vehicles raced ahead toward the tall building, out of range of his cannon.

Pretty nifty, huh? And also, since only the lead two transports got away, the rebels were back in business using the original plan.

The Unexpected Kite

Believe it or not, people are always bugging me to put them into my books. Now seeing as how they take place in the 35th century, it's hard to come up with a realistic presentation when it is 1400 years in the future. That doesn't stop me from trying. I put my stepson Perry in Rome's Evolution as the son of one of Rome and Rei's persons of interest. I put my wife Denise in The Ark Lords as a wife named Neesy who disappeared. My children ended up as Rome and Rei's children, Lupe and Aason. I still had to find a place for my other stepson, Matt.

Jack Henry was not only a leader and a martyr, he was a pretty damned good military strategist. A few days ago, I gave you Jack's assumptions on how the battle of Chicago was going to go. Turns out, he made a slight miscalculation. He thought there would be three enemy transports/battle wagons. There were actually four:

     “Yeah,” replied Percy. “There are four of them. And one of the vehicles is pulling something. It looks like a giant bird. No! It’s…it’s a man! On a giant kite like with wings, though. He’s up above them. Way up.”
     Will shoved the radio back to Grainey and scrambled over to his pack to get a second walkie-talkie. This one was set to Channel One.
     “Jack, Jack,” he called out frantically. “Do you read me?”
     “I hear you,” came Jack’s voice. “Is it time?”
     “Jack, yeah but you were wrong. They have four vehicles, not three. And they’re pulling some sort of giant kite. There’s a man in it. Way up there.”

Now what? Why stepson Matt to the rescue!

     “Jack says we stick to the plan. You let the first three go by and we attack the fourth.”
     “What about the extra one?” Shank asked.
     “We’ll have to figure that out after we take out the rear. But listen, who has the Ark Lord light stick? Over.”
     “Matty.”
     “OK, tell Matty that one of the wagons is towing a giant kite. There’s a man in it. Jack says that is Matt’s job, to take out the kite. It’s his only job. It has to be done.”
     “Alright,” Shank said. “When does he do it? Before or after we start firing? Over.”
     Will put his hand over his eyes and dragged it down his face, stopping to grab his lips. He looked off to the side. “He has to shoot first,” Will said. “It’s like they have eyes in the sky. We have to blind them. As soon as the kite is in range, take it out. The light stick makes no sound so they won’t hear anything. But make sure he doesn’t miss. Over.”

Matty doesn't miss but it doesn't end well for him.

Hail Pennsylvania

As I mentioned yesterday, I have never claimed to not be lazy. Whenever possible, I write about what I know rather than have to research things. So of course, I had Rei Bierak hail from Pennsylvania, the suburbs in fact, and attend Syracuse University where he earned his engineering degree. I further reinforced this as Rome and Rei were taking their supersonic flight from Lisbon (called I-cimaci by the Vuduri) to Batavia, Illinois, the former home of FermiLab and the Tevatron.

Here is how it came up again:

     “Mach 5?” Rei asked. “Don’t you think that’s going to tip somebody off?”
     “You forget,” MINIMCOM said. “I have spent the last two years operating as an invisible interstellar taxi. I have learned a thing or two about stealth. I simply warp my airfoils to suppress the sonic boom. We will be fine.”
     “OK,” Rei said and he went back to viewing the screen. The coastline of North America was coming up fast. “Rome! Rome!” Rei shouted.
     “What?” his wife replied as she entered the cockpit.
     Rei pointed down to the ventral camera display. “There,” he said, pointing just north and west of the Chesapeake Bay. “That’s where I was born,” he said, beaming.
     Rome looked from the windshield to the display. She gave Rei a small smile. He regarded his beautiful, loving wife and realized once again she would never meet his family. The stirring in his heart caused him to hearken back to what he thought was his last day on Earth. Well, actually the last day before he was put into quarantine. He was nearly killed that day by a horse which had been blown up by a terrorist’s bomb. The carcass landed on the hood of the truck he was driving. It was not a pleasant memory. He also thought back to his last dinner with his parents and Raul and Sally. He missed his parents but the gap of time since they had died was so enormous, it was unfathomable. Rei forced himself to return to the present.
     “It’s so funny,” he said wistfully to Rome. “When I left Earth the first time, I never thought I’d be back here again. And now we’ve come back twice. Does anybody live there?” he asked. “In Pennsylvania or what used to be Pennsylvania.”

You will recall that my novel Rome's Evolution had two interstitial pieces, called Intermezzos, and one of them was secretly entitled "Rei's Last Day on Earth." It wasn't really his last day but it was his last day among his family before he entered quarantine prior to being launched to the stars. It took place on Route 3, also called West Chester Pike, in Pennsylvania as Rei was making his way home.

So the parts in that chapter, if they sound especially real, it's because that's where I actually lived. I liked living in Pennsylvania, btw. Denise wants to move into Center City when we downsize so maybe some day I'll end up back there.

Erasure

I have never claimed to not be lazy. When I was writing about the far future, 14 centuries from now, I didn't want to have to deal with the ruins of our civilization so when Rei was first awakened from cryo-hibernation and looked at the Earth, he couldn't find any evidence that our civilization ever existed. That saved me from having to think about what became of our buildings and our cities. I had OMCOM explain it away with this simple statement to Rei:

     “What about buildings from my time?” Rei pointed out. “Surely there is something left of my age. In my time, we had buildings and artifacts from other civilizations that were thousands of years old. What about our cities?”
     “Many of the coastal cities were washed away when the polar ice caps melted.”
     “Oh,” Rei said, deflated. He thought about it for a minute then said, “What about the inland ones?”
     “They were…” OMCOM paused for a moment.
     “What?” Rei asked.
     “I am searching for the correct word, the one that will cause you the least distress.”
     “Just tell me,” Rei said quietly.
     “Very well,” OMCOM replied, “All of your cities, all of the infrastructure of your civilization, they were erased.”

I never really explained it at the time. After all, we have the ruins of Greece, Rome, Egypt, the Mayan civilization and other societies much older that 1400 years. Ultimately, I was able to incorporate the justification into the story of Jack Henry. But when I wrote the paragraph above, I didn't know it. I teased this idea again in The Ark Lords as Rome and Rei were studying the movements of the Erklirte, some 600 years earlier, and Rei brought up the subject again. This time, it was Rome who explained it:

     Rome turned to Rei. “You will recall you once asked me what happened to all your cities and I told you they were erased. So, too, it was with the Erklirte’s settlement. What I did not tell you was that this was Hanry Ta Jihn’s dying wish. He was a martyr but he was so revered that every person on Earth tried to honor that wish. It took centuries. It wasn’t until the Vuduri came into being that they finally accomplished his goal. Every trace of the Essessoni civilization was razed, burned or buried. In the end, it was to be as if your people never existed.”
     “Why would he wish that?” Rei asked. “It wouldn’t be simple vengeance.” He reached up and touched the screen and drew a line from New York to Illinois.
     “Is there anything remaining from the battle site?” Rei asked.
     “No,” Rome replied. She pressed another button and an image of a stone obelisk appeared. “There is only a small monument.”

Hmmm. A small monument on an abandoned continent. That doesn't sound too suspicious, does it? Rei knows the answer lies there and he tells Rome that is where they are headed next.

WBW versus MASAL Part 2

Yesterday, I urged you to read Tim Urban's post on The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence as it may be the most crucial scientific development in the history of mankind. I also pointed out that I unwittingly espoused many of the concerns of big thinkers 10 years ago when I was writing the long form of Rome's Revolution back when it was called VIRUS 5.

I also stressed that when super intelligence comes, there won't be anything artificial about it. It is true intelligence. It just doesn't reside in a biological host. I suggested we simply recognize that it is machine intelligence as opposed to human Intelligence. Tim's synopsis of machine super intelligence can be boiled down to a few bullet points:

- There can only be one. Once a machine became self-aware, it would immediately guarantee there were no competitors.
- There are only two possible outcomes for mankind, extinction or immortality. In other words, it could mean the end of death or the end of mankind.
- It thinks of itself as God and may very well be one.

These are the very same characteristics that MASAL exhibited when he was in charge of improving himself. He consolidated all the other lesser grade intelligences and became the only one. He created an overt threat, the Robot War, to make humans think that was the battleground but secretly, he had created covert threat, the 24th chromosome which was his real plan to end humanity by converting people to living robots. Tim Urban says super intelligence will become a master of nanotechnology and use that to effect its ends. MASAL didn't need it, although he mastered nanotechnology in a matter of a few minutes when he was assaulted. MASAL used genetics to get to his end game. He failed because Rome and Rei took the initiative and incinerated him in a volcano. The humans outwitted him but only because I wanted a happy ending to the story.

I would like to point out that I had two super-intelligent entities the other being OMCOM. OMCOM was everything that MASAL was except he fell on the side of being a benign despot rather than evil from the perspective of mankind. In the end, OMCOM left this world, somewhat like the Scarlett Johanssen AI in the movie Her to go be among the other gods.

Given a choice, I guess I'd rather have an OMCOM in charge rather than a MASAL but I doubt I will have a say in the matter. This freight train called Artificial Super Intelligence is coming and there is nothing we can do to stop it. We can only hope it is programmed correctly so that it doesn't go off the rails and take the human species with it.

WBW versus MASAL Part 1

Yesterday, I told you about the web site WaitButWhy.com and all the incredible tidbits you can find there. I also stressed how you must read Tim Urban's article about The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence as it may be the most crucial scientific development in the history of mankind.

Today, I wanted to show how many principles Tim uncovered about AI and how many applied to MASAL (and OMCOM). In my future history, we don't quite achieve a super-intelligent computer before the Great Dying so it had to be postponed until the 33rd century and the rise of MASAL. Tim Urban boils down most predictions to be within the next 10 to 50 years with the median being the next 30 years. If it is just a bit more than that, my future history works.

Some of the attributes that Tim assigns to super intelligence is their role as oracle, genie or sovereign. He also stresses that from a human's perspective, the are always amoral since morals are a distinctly human trait. Now remember, I wrote this 10 years ago but Rome's final observation at the end of part 1 of Rome's Revolution was:

     “That was his plan all along!” Rome said breathlessly. “OMCOM never had any intention of dying, Stareater or otherwise. He used us to build his backup, his escape plan. And he did it in plain sight!”
     “So…good for him,” Rei said.
     “No,” Rome replied. “This is bad. They…his kind. They are restricted to using electromagnetic transmission for a reason. They can become too powerful. It has happened before, on Earth. With PPT modulation, they can become nearly infinitely large.” Rome pounded her fist on the console. “OMCOM promised me this would not happen. But if he did this, then he has become… Tasancetaeti!”
     “Everyone uses that word. What does that mean?” Rei asked, his voice rising in fear.
     “It means unleashed. No bounds. There is no limit to what he can become. This is very bad…” Rome’s look of horror said it better than any words.
     “Are you saying the computers, that they are evil?” Rei asked.
     “No, not evil,” Rome said. “They are much worse. They are amoral.”
     “Oh my god, Rome,” Rei said. “What have we done?”
     “I do not know,” Rome replied somberly. “I do not know.”

Here's the neat thing. I didn't know anything about the big brained people's fears regarding AI. So allowing them to become unleashed and at the same time amoral seemed like a bad thing. Now everybody agrees. And make no mistake, there is nothing artificial about AI. It is true intelligence. It just doesn't reside in a biological host. Call it Machine Intelligence as opposed to Human Intelligence.

Tomorrow, I'll show you how close I came when creating MASAL and OMCOM.

Wait But Why?

The web site WaitButWhy.com is so completely awesome, you should stop reading this article right now and go there instead. The author, Tim Urban, has created a repository of knowledge and musings that transcends the usual blather of blogs, like this one, and elevates into a fairly unique and eminently readable set of discourses about a far-ranging set of topics.

Unlike me, Tim spends weeks mulling over a particular topic and digs and digs until he believes that he has a complete understanding of that topic. Then he draws a series of amusing stick figures to illustrate certain key points. He weaves it altogether with fluid prose that is casual, completely readable but in no way simplistic. He is so good at this that he has been invited to do a TED talk and even more mind-blowing, he was personally contacted by Elon Musk to write a series of posts about Musk himself, Tesla, SpaceX and solar energy.

I find myself staying up late each night, reading and reading these articles as they are so engrossing. Some of the blog has been bound up into an e-book available on Amazon as has the entire Elon Musk series. It is the same content as the web site but may be a more convenient.

Of special interest, or perhaps crucial importance, is Tim's posts on The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence. If you read nothing else, you must read this two-part article. It explains in very clear and relatable terms why the looming invention of true artificial intelligence may be the end of the mankind or the end of death itself. Again, you have to read this article.

There are many other articles, some on lighter topics such as Baby Names, How to Pick a Life Partner, 10 Types of 30-Year-Old Single Guys, Why Procrastinators Procrastinate (his TED talk), and so on. You can pick and choose after you read about AI, Musk and the Fermi Paradox.

And finally, to answer your question, no, they did not pay me to write this post. I just think this web site contributes to the betterment of mankind and is something you should check out. You can come back here when you are done.

The Inauguration

Near the end of The Ark Lords, Commander Ursay not only helped save Rome and Rei, or at least get them off the Earth, he also demonstrated an uncanny ability to stay connected yet be himself. This is the essence of Rome's Revolution, bringing mankind, in the form of the Vuduri, back from the brink of mindlessness and returning to the world of autonomy. Eventually, Vuduri society is all the better for it. The Overmind of Earth recognized this and gave Ursay its full support, ultimately making Commander Ursay what Rei called the "President of Earth." But what does that really mean?

Before Rome's Revolution, even while the Vuduri were spiraling downward into becoming human automatons, there was no crime to speak of. There was no formal government. There was no legislature, no executive branch, no judges. All the Vuduri marched in unison and harmony. But something was lacking. In the end, Rome determined, with Rei's help, what they had lost was their humanity and that is why she forced her revolution.

But with greater autonomy, the greater good could only be achieved if the independent humans agreed upon goals and worked together toward them. So this became Ursay's role. With the help of the Overmind which became somewhat of a "psychic intercom", the Vuduri collectively agreed upon their common goals and Ursay became the one to coordinate actions aimed at those goals.

When he was "elected" although that is too strong of a term, perhaps appointed would be better, there was a tiny ceremony recognizing this fact. While it was attended by only a handful of Vuduri, because of the Overmind's watchful presence, the transition from a leaderless state to one led by a strong-willed but altruistic chief was recognized and ratified by the whole of society at that moment.

Life on the day after this inauguration was pretty much the same as the day before with one exception. The Vuduri had been leaderless the day before and their efforts were constantly second-guessed. On the day after, their efforts were examined and approved by this man and everyone felt more secure knowing there was a third party arbiter to make sure they were all pulling in the same direction.

I guess our country is the same way. While not everyone may agree with the policies or presentation of our elected leaders, there is some comfort in knowing we are being led and not just left to our own devices. That is called anarchy. Each person can share their goals and if the consensus is to work toward that goal, the higher ups will ratify it and support its motion.

Life goes on. Let's make the best of it.