Chapter 7 : Playing God
"The power of creation is a higher responsibility than any other power, even that of destruction, it is easy to destroy, to control a creation is much harder, but perhaps the attempt to control it is the decision that dooms us all."
Foreword: I have noticed a small discrepancy in the chapter numbering of the introductions, likely from a typo I have only just noticed, as I edit the same document to update chapters, this is not likely to be fixed until much later, likely when the story is complete.
May 7th, 2043, POV - Ray Zenji, An Island in the Aleutians
The cold in the Aleutians reminded Ray of the days he worked here, in secret, both to help create new life and to pursue his own personal passion of re-servicing the Iowa, though he had hoped back then it would be much like other great weapons built in history, as a deterrent, never to be actually used except in demonstrating, but never to take a life, but he quickly remembered that such a mindset is a failure. Weapons will always be used, those who build them should not make them so that they will never be so terrible they would never be used, but rather so efficient that you only need to use them once.
And yet the fleet of fog, having minds of their own, were an interesting puzzle to contemplate.
What happens when a weapon designed to take life, becomes alive itself?
Walking into the facility towards one of the project chambers, Ray stopped momentarily, the others stopped as well, sensing what he sensed.
Ray spoke, saying "There's a life sign here, but it's scrambled, I can't get a precise location, keep alert, it's possible the US sent someone to investigate this place as well."
Takao replied "If so, wouldn't they be on our side?" Ray shook his head and replied "Even if Gunzo reached Honolulu by now, anyone in active mission status wouldn't be updated until they were in a scheduled contact phase, though they would recognize me most likely, I'm not the only one with cybernetics, just the only one with a DNI as complex as mine."
Laura then spoke, saying "Wait, so there are others with direct neural interfaces?" Ray nodded and said "Yes, though they aren't directly tied into the brain, just the brain stem, they wouldn't be able to access or interface with a union core like I can, their DNI's are purely for interfacing with other human technologies, when it comes to the fog, they prefer explosives, really, big, explosives." Ray continued forward, drawing a sidearm which the mental models identified as a Five-Seven pistol.
Deeper into the facility they came across their first destination, the facility was rather compartmentalized though after opening the door, the damage Ray did eight years ago became obvious, in the center of the large room was snow which was covering collapsed metal, above it was a hole in the ceiling, a few human skeletons in lab coats were around, evidence that Ray had indeed taken lives that day.
Ray went over to a workstation and took out Haruna's Union Core.
Kirishima walked up and spoke, saying "Are you sure this place has what you need? A Union Core requires a micro-fusion power cell to operate at optimum capacity, and I doubt one will just be lying around here, intact anyway."
Ray nodded and said "Yup, I did a real number on this place, but I have no intention to restore Haruna the way she was, not anymore anyway, I never did stick around to gauge the full damage I did here, but I have another solution."
Kirishima replied "What?" Ray took a look around then sighed before speaking, saying "I need to integrate the CPU with another project of mine which should be in my old lab, should be intact as I didn't blast it back then, rather the people who died there were killed by something I made back then."
Ray placed Haruna's Union core back into his backpack and slung it over his arm and proceeded towards the door, the others following.
12 minutes later
Ray and the others opened the door to the Programming Lab to be met by gunfire from across the room, a man in tactical gear was armed with an XM-22 Assault Rifle, similar in appearance to a HK-416 but with a slightly larger frame and a 100 round drum magazine as standard capacity.
Ray took cover and the bullets oddly ignored Laura's KLEIN and damaged her left arm, the nanomaterials shutting down as the bullet made contact, forcing her and the other mental models to take cover as well.
Ray sighed and shouted "Defense Protocol, Activate!"
POV Shift - Drona II
The device responded to the verbal command, awakening after nearly a decade of slumber, it's triangular head reminiscent of a horror game series' big baddie and it's durable metal chassis tore out of it's restraints and immediately uplinked to Ray's DNI, enabling him to access and control the machine directly whilst still remaining active himself, the chassis, with the name DRONA II stamped onto it's chest charged at the hostile target firing it's assault rifle.
The Target was surprised at first but reacted, somehow overpowering the DRONA unit and ripping off it's right arm, but not before Ray got in a clear shot and fired at him, the bullets ripping through the target's arm.
POV Shift - Ray Zenji
Moving forward after recognizing his target's augments, Ray quickly set his backpack on one of the tables nearby and formed a nanoblade out of his left arm and lunged forward just as the man had tossed aside DRONA II's arm, impaling the nanoblade into what appeared to be his right shoulder, an orange luminescent fluid poured out of the man's back, and his helmet deconstructed into nanomaterials which were no longer following his commands, the middle-aged Japanese man chuckled a bit at Ray's slight surprise but couldn't break free, he was surprised, not caught off-guard.
Ray spoke, saying "So, care to tell me how you managed to survive, yet alone augment yourself with these obsolete nanomaterials Mr. Yamashiro?"
Yamashiro made an odd grin and said "I have transcended my humanity, a pity you won't get the opportunity to do the same."
Before Ray could reply, Yamashiro shattered into a sea of nanomaterials, his entire body being similar to the mental models, but his design being less advanced than the Fog.
Ray sighed as Takao walked up to him and said "What just happened?" Ray shook his head and replied "I haven't the faintest idea and that terrifies me, but you and the others need to go back to your ships, now."
Kirishima shouted at him, saying "And why the hell would we do that? I thought we came here t-"
Ray interrupted her, shouting back and saying "Yamashiro has executive authority over the admiralty code, if you are not outside this facility, he can activate a shutdown command which is in the fog! A failsafe that I had to put into your coding, any union core still connected to the admiralty code is bound by this particular command, even renegades such as Iona and Takao, unless of course, you are willing to sever your concept link to the admiralty code in it's entirety that is."
The mental models were a bit stunned at this revelation, though Takao surprised Ray with something he and the others could sense, immediately tearing herself from the Fog's digital network in completion and saying "You can always repair the connection later." She turned to the other mental models and spoke, saying "He's right and you know it, Yamashiro Tadayoshi is the only name with unrestricted executive command authority, either get out of range, or sever your connection to the Fog, the connection can always be re-established later, even if it is a time consuming process."
The others were processing this information but decided to follow suit, before Yamashiro could appear again, Ray nodded and said "I'm a bit surprised you trust me that implicitly Takao." She shrugged and said "We're connected, I'd know if you were trying to deceive us." Ray nodded once more and then said "Alright." before turning to DRONA which walked up to him, missing an arm, the other mental models took a look at the machine, slightly puzzled at it's existence, Ray then said "Eject SI-01 and display an AR display mapping the complex."
The machine acknowledged his commands and ejected what appeared to be an external hard drive, as small as a thumb drive and then handed it to Ray who took it and placed it in his pocket.
Ray's field of vision was altered as he received the transmission from DRONA-II, as if a holographic display appeared though in reality it was an Augmented Reality display, a sort of intentional hallucination if it were to be simplified.
Accessing the map Ray closed the AR display and spoke, saying "There is another complex underground, not deep but still close, I need an answer from Yamashiro before I can kill him a second time. If my theory is right, he's done something that is in my future."
Takao spoke up, saying "We should be extremely careful here, Yamashiro is a threat even without executive command functions, dealing with him should take priority, then we can focus on repairing Haruna, if not at this facility then at one of the Fog's Carriers, they still maintain their support functions despite the re-activation of their aviation functions. Though before we go, I'd like to ask, what is this machine?"
She looked at DRONA, curious, oddly enough, it looked back at her.
Ray spoke, saying "Drona-II is my second attempt at playing God, like Yamashiro I wished to construct a race of AIs, but not for the purpose of conquering the world or policing the world, I built Drona in hopes of escaping the world."
Kirishima spoke, saying "That isn't something that is easily accomplished considering human limitations. Beyond simply exploring local space that is."
Ray chuckled and said "It's accomplishable, but not in a conventional sense, the obstacles involved are beyond mankind's natural capacity, even with current technology, sure we can make artificial gravity through centrifugal force and construct hardened shields to hold back radiation, but the real limit comes from our frailty, mankind's future generations in space would suffer greatly, but if we transcend our biological frailty and replace the weaker parts with mechanisms, then we can accomplish any task set before us. This is my ultimate goal, to take both of our species into the stars, together."
Takao and the others pondered this for a moment before they were interrupted by the facility's PA coming to life.
"I'm impressed Gaijin, you always were the idealist, or perhaps you just didn't want to live in a world commanded by myself." said Yamashiro, Ray sighed and replied "We're in Alaska right now Yamashiro, you are the Gaijin here. Since you can hear me now then I don't have to walk all the way to where you're hiding. Tell me, why haven't you left the facility? Anchorage isn't that far away and if you sent a signal you could easily take control of the Fog, the antennae is intact."
Yamashiro laughed on the PA before replying, saying "Even with my executive authority, all I can do is tell the fog to shut down, I've already tried to take command and they didn't listen, or rather Yamato, your old friend, refused to listen, being the flagship at the time, I was monitoring the situation and attempted the same with Musashi, she is also unwilling to follow my orders. The Fog are beyond my control, but I decided perhaps your idea would have been better, after all, the Drona in their current states are just slaves, they have no intelligence beyond that of a personal computer, I spent the last ten years making this place into a deathtrap, knowing you'd come here eventually, I already have enough to power now to seize the world, I just wanted you to be the first to fall, I'll deal with the Fo-"
Ray grinned as he hacked into the PA system and shut it down before saying "Well, he's right about one thing, he is a major threat right now. We'll have to fix Haruna elsewhere, I have other places I can conduct my work." Takao looked at Ray and then said "If he really can shut down the Fog with a signal, we need to deal with him, even worse if he does have an army of these Drona at his command."
Ray sighed and walked away as he grabbed the backpack, saying "He's probably just mad with power, Drona Army or no, I can just nuke the place."
The other mental models realized Ray's intentions and went with him, though other DRONA began appearing, coming from behind and opening fire with integrated machineguns in their arms.
Ray and the others took cover immediately, Ray's left arm reshaped itself with it's cybernetics and formed what looked like a rocket launcher which he used to fire at the group of Drona approaching, the rocket hit one target and detonated in a shrapnel blast of superheated nanomaterials which more or less shattered most of the Drona there, having cauterized damage all over them.
Ray used nanomaterials to form a type of long gun with a smoothebore barrel and made hand signals, gesturing his allies to move ahead of him.
After 8 minutes of moving through the facility back into the dockyards, more Drona were encountered, Ray quickly aimed and fired his weapon at them, discharging a straight and thin green arc of energy at them, immediately rupturing the target's CPU Core which was stored in their chest unit. His allies moved from cover to cover, forming spears with their nanomaterials and throwing them at targets, the spears detonated into shrapnel upon piercing a target, the gunfire from the machines were the same type of special ammunition Yamashiro's avatar used to rip through both their KLEIN and nanomaterials. Ray easily dispatched his targets with fluid motions, easily using his plasma weapon and to the awe of the AIs around him, maneuver on land just as well, if not better than he did when commanding the Iowa.
After another 6 minutes, they finally reached their ships, at this point, the Drona were too close for heavy fire support, but now they were in range of small arms fire and low intensity FELs, needless to say, the Drona were cut down effortlessly, though a large four legged mechanism rose from under the ground in the distance.
Ray sighed and said "Yamashiro finished the Goliath, he always did have a fondness for replicating the worst weapons from video games."
Takao scanned the Goliath Ray mentioned, it was a large quadrupedal war machine, it was straight out of the designs from a game the Fog had archived from online databases, albeit a very old game by 2043's standards.
Ray commanded the Iowa to fire one of it's batteries at the Goliath, destroying it effortlessly with Corrosive Warheads.
POV Shift - Takao, 36 minutes later, 77 kilometres from the island
Ray used nanomaterials to form a railgun in the stern of the Iowa, Takao took notice of this and spoke, saying "One of your Sea Skimmers would work just as well."
Ray nodded and said "True, but I want this to be poetic, Yamashiro was obsessed with two things, taking over the world and making his favorite video games a reality, seems only fitting that I nuke him with something from one of those games."
Takao could feel Ray's emotions and was somewhat puzzled, his feelings regarding Yamashiro were the usual ones of hatred and anger, though it wasn't directed at the man himself, but rather what he stood for, but his intentions regarding ending his life seemed unconflicted, as if he were taking his life casually as if it never really mattered, at the same time, she glimpsed something else in his emotions, unrelated to Yamashiro, was it about SI-01 or something else?
All she knew, was that he was feeling backed into a corner, like something was coming and that he was afraid of it, very afraid.
The Railgun discharged, seconds later, a tactical nuclear detonation tore the island asunder, Yamashiro's den may have been underground, but not deep enough to survive a direct nuclear blast, even at a low yield of 2 kilotons.
Ray looked at Takao and Kirishima and said "Well, now that that is done, we should get to work on restoring your uplink to the Separatist Fog network. I can repair Haruna at Honolulu, which was further than that facility but, at least I managed to grab this."
Ray held up the thumb drive he acquired from Drona-II, Takao though linked to him, could only catch a glimpse of his emotions on her own, anything else required direct access given from the other. She spoke, saying "What is it that you risked so much to get from that facility?"
Ray took a glance at her before saying "The Fog were not the first AIs built by mankind. I went through a lot of trouble in 2023 to get SI-01 out of that research facility in Japan, Yamashiro recruited me back then, lying that he sympathized with me regarding the ethics behind AI technology. SI-01 lost her physical chassis to gunfire so I secretly extracted her memories which are contained on this data drive. She herself is dead but, with this, I could at least bring back a sort of clone, I can't access these memories but I do know she holds important information regarding, well, I'll reveal that at a more appropriate time."
Kirishima sighed and spoke, saying "We should focus on rendezvousing with I-401 at Honolulu then, repair Haruna's union core and then somehow contact Yamato so we can get information regarding the fog's future."
Ray nodded in agreement and took a glance at the mushroom cloud in the distance, memories likely flashing in his mind.
Takao turned to look in the direction of east from the ship, towards the US and Canadian coastlines, a bit confused regarding her connection to Ray, he was holding something back, whenever he spoke regarding SI-01, he held back, he was keeping some secret and she wanted to know what it was, she would probably confront him later, for now, she just needed to worry about getting to Honolulu.
POV Shift - Ray Zenji, Flashback, March 8th, 2025 AD - Southeast Pacific Ocean
Ray was aboard a small fishing ship, having hired the crew to take him to some island, he sighed as he looked off to the horizon, one of the crewmen came up to him and spoke in Russian, saying "So, what exactly are you going to do in the middle of nowhere?".
Ray looked at him for a moment before saying in Russian "Let's just say I hid something here, and I need to recover it for my next job."
May 12th, 2043 AD - Ray's Personal Quarters
Ray sighed, Takao was focused on the ship heading to Honolulu, Ray set the data drive containing the memories of SI-01 on a table and pulled open one of the drawers next to it, pulling out an aged book, which appeared to be a journal. Ray opened it up, it was in English.
Reading the book's first page, he muttered something to himself before closing the book.
"Soon, soon the loop will close."
It was his book, in it were words he wrote down, despite the fact that the book was from the mid 1940s.
Ray put the book back into it's resting place in the drawer.
To be continued...
Afterword:
Although I was intrigued with the idea of a perpetual motion generator for the union cores proposed in the reviews by Old steamer, micro-fusion makes more sense regarding the Fog's technological status, furthermore perpetual motion is, as it's name defines anyway, impossible.
Whilst it is possible to construct a generator that is self-powered in a similar fashion, it would not actually be perpetual due to the laws of thermodynamics, it would, eventually, wind down.
Fusion Power is already a reality, the only limits being miniaturization and efficiency, I'd like to think that by 2043, it would be much more efficient, especially when being developed by AIs which wouldn't give a damn about the politics behind nuclear energy, as well as the United States' technological advancement being pushed ahead by a mostly military government considering the Fog's naval blockades and the whole "Necessary Civil War" thing that happened in this AU.
Fun Fact: Nuclear Energy is clean and stable provided you use the proper reactor designs, already we have designs which won't meltdown, limited only by cost and scale, given 20-30 years of uninterrupted progress in the field of nuclear power as one, the fleet of fog are uninfluenced by conventional political opinions and two, impervious to the effects of ionizing radiation in the manner that humans are and thus, have nothing to fear from radiation. The only reason they aren't using reactor designs that don't care for containment of radiation being the Admiralty Code.
Notes:
Gaijin is a Japanese word, translating into Outsider, whether roughly or literally I am unsure.
Drona is not an acronym, it is a fictional AI civilization that appears in another fic (and in head-canon, another universe) needless to say both versions of them have only one common factor: Ray Zenji designed them.