(This is a much more "timely" story than I usually write. I'm submitting it in February, 2025...)
4.F. JOE VS. THE WANING DAYS OF THE HUMAN IMAGINATION
by Jim Cleaveland
The Pentagon - Early January, 2025 - in that strange twilight between election and the inauguration…
"Fluke, you know I've held you in high regard ever since that first incident years ago with the fungus monster," said General Jethro Drury. Drury was a gray-haired man with a rugged face, broad shoulders, and something of a belly. And an eyepatch.
"Thank ya, sir," said Colonel Frank Lucas (code name: Fluke), leader of the U.S. special operations force known as 4.F. Joe.
"No matter what anyone else says about you," Drury said.
"Thank ya, sir," Fluke said. His blond crewcut was finally graying, Drury noticed. These men weren't kids any more. The fungus monster seemed recent, but it was so long ago.
General Drury turned his eye toward Colonel Lyndon L. Linton (code name: Lint). Stood a little too close. Depth perception, Lint mused. "Linton?" Drury said.
"Yessir," Lint said.
"It's E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S. again," Drury said.
"That is such a stew-pid name for a terrorist organization," Fluke said.
"We can talk," Lint said.
"Ah like our name!" Fluke said.
"4.F. Joe. It's demeaning," Lint said.
"We were named for Col. Filbert Fauntleroy Fujikawa Finklestein Joe, who died heroically savin' the world from the Dawn of the Highway Mutants," Fluke said.
"I know," Lint said.
"Most folks don't even know what 4F means no more," Fluke said.
"It means washout," Lint said.
"We're the best of the best!" Fluke said.
"What about that Antarctica mission?" Lint said.
"That was forever ago! Most o' those guys are outta the service now," Fluke said.
"Our team left us high and dry," Lint said.
"An' the ones who are still around say they're sorry!" Fluke said.
"That's a great comfort," Lint said.
"We're th' best of the best now! Th' team's nickname's ironic now!" Fluke said.
"That's a great comfort," Lint said. "Exteremely Rare Species Of East African And Western South American Serpent," Lint said with a sigh. "You're not wrong about their name. Why in the world did they name it…?"
"They're run by mad scientists. The key word is mad. You can't expect rationality," General Drury said, wearying of the expository banter. "We have reason to believe that Professor Peril and Doctor Desructo have completed a McGuffin Device."
Lint let out a low whistle, impressed, then said, "That device is only theoretical."
"Until someone makes one. And spy satellites show a sinister temple has been erected on the now-deserted Caribbean island of Stracteau." Drury said.
"Well that'll be them. Always with the temples!" Fluke said. "Is scarin' off superstitious locals that important? I mean, what it's gotta cost!"
"Think 'god complex," Lint said. "There are no natives to scare on Stracteau. Nobody lives there. Not since…" Lint trailed off.
"There's one more thing. Our reports are that Doctor Destructo is acting... off. Strange. Peculiar," Drury said.
"Destructo's a mad scientist!" Fluke pointed out.
"There are types of madness, and this isn't true to form. I wish I could be more specific. Just a general impression from those who've encountered the good doctor recently," Drury said.
"Stracteau," Lint repeated. "That is the island where…?"
"Yes," Drury said. "For whatever reason… she's gone home."
They'd set out for the Caribbean in the team's armored flying troop carrier, or WOMBAT (I'm sure somebody somewhere remembers what the acronym means, Lint reflected) with a small force consisting only of Fluke, Lint, Nicola Day, Native Eagle, Capsize, Troll Bridge, Fancyfree, Crashdance, Boomstick, Explodo, Police Action, Bath Bomb, Fnord, Aglet, Skibiddi-Doo-Dah, Pogz, All-Reet, Groovetastic, Ricearooney, Oatmeal, and the ever-present pilot, Wild Fred. One of the perks of being an elite special operations force was the freedom the 4.F.s had to outfit themselves as they saw desirable, and a glance around the assemblage showed Police Action's usual camo outfit, Capsize's sailor suit, Groovetastic's tie-dye shirt and bellbottoms and bandolier, and Pogz's early 1990s day-glo ensemble. As long as the job got done, that was what mattered. They were, Lint reminded himself, the best of the best.
"Are we there, yet?" Fluke asked.
"Sigh. Not as yet, sir," Frederick Smith informed us, sardonically, and his trim little moutache wriggled with a sniff. It was the twelfth time Fluke had asked. Lint reflected that he'd always thought Wild Fred's voice sounded like an Americanized John Cleese. Always just on the edge of insubordinate. Or over it. The 4.F.s were an unusual unit. The cup-holder held his supply of hyper-caffeinated coffee without a steady supply of which Fred would simply cease to function.
Lint sat next to Nicola Day and flirted with moderate success. Fluke read a comic book. Capsize snored. Troll Bridge sat in the corner and lamented that everyone tended to forget he existed.
Lint glanced at Day. Tall and slim, high cheekbones, walnut skin, and jet black hair, of South American native background. And an eyepatch. Between her and Drury, we're a surprisingly eyepatch-heavy group, Lint mused. She dressed all in black as much as possible, identifying as a goth or a ninja as the mood struck her. "Nicola, why don't you have a code name?" Lint had asked her once, long ago, to which she had responded, "Who says I don't?" He'd checked after that, and "Nicola Day" was indeed her code name, the meaning of which was presumably her own private joke or reference. Her real name was classified. Lint liked to think it might be Marcy. He liked the name Marcy. It probably wasn't.
"How old were you when you left Brazil, Nicola?" Lint asked her, attempting small talk.
"Just a kid, really," Day said. "I doubt you could even pronounce my real name. My boyfriend and I left together."
Not 'Marcy,' then, Lint said, and said "Boyfriend? You've never mentioned," trying to hide his disappointment about the existence of such a person.
"I haven't seen Raimundo in years. That's not his real name, either. The outside world was incredibly strange. The diseases out here almost killed us. Our tribe had been quarantined to protect us. I lost an eye to an infection. Rai got it even worse. Since then I've been vaccinated against practically everything.
"Wow," Lint said, wondering what worse meant.
"Rai's and my experience with the outside world started by gathering plants from our rainforest for some pharmaceuticals guy. The creep was literally only paying us a nickel a day."
"Ah! Lint said. "Code name."
"Yes," Nicola Day said. "Once I had enough of those stupid coins saved up for candy, we wanted to spend it. We were adamant enough to get taken into town. Once we saw 'civilization,' we couldn't permananently go back. Either of us. We'd had a taste of the outside, and we wanted more."
"You ever regret leaving?"
She shrugged. "Sometimes. Not usually. We lived. Got educated. Left Brazil. Eventually made our way here and became U.S. citizens."
"Ah." Lint said. "All nice and legal, I presume? I mean… in a few weeks, they're going to…"
"I'm legal. Still brown though, so who knows what they'll do?" she said, angrily.
"My people have been here longer than any of you," Native Eagle said. "It won't make any difference to them. It never has."
They were quiet for a while. Then Day resumed.
"I studied ninjitsu, entered the military. Rai studied business – it was the way in America, he said; and with his lingering medical issues, he could do it sitting down. Me, I wanted adventure. It was the whole reason I'd left, after all. I think he resented my good health. We drifted apart. He's done… very well for himself. Now he's paying people a nickel a day, so to speak. We haven't spoken in ages."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Lint said disingeuously.
She gave a snorting laugh.
"Well," Lint said. Changing the subject, he said, "Isn't doing ninja stuff without depth perception hard?" Lint asked.
"Yes," she said.
"Okay," Lint said.
There was a pause, and then she said, gravely, "My tribe's been displaced by the men trying to destroy the rainforest down there, now. I don't know how many will survive in the outside world."
"Good Lord…" Lint said.
"Yes," Day said. "The world's really $% up these days."
There was a pause, then Lint said, "Leaders like that are cropping up all over. Only a few weeks till the inauguration here." He'd thought about little else in recent months.
"Yes," she said. "I keep thinking of that scene in Casablanca. Rick, Ilsa, and Sam sitting there while the Nazis come into Paris. How bad's it going to get? Here in the military, what will we be fighting for, soon?"
"Who knows," Lint said. After a long pause, he said, "You want to know the truth? Being a soldier gives you a chance to be a hero or a villain, but not much choice about which. You make yourself a weapon in others' hands. It's a matter of how much you trust your leaders when you enlist. It can be a beautiful declaration of faith in democracy. But if the leaders go bad…"
"He's putting a drunk talk show host in charge of the Pentagon," Day muttered.
"Yeah, ah know whatcha mean," Fluke said sadly. Lint was mildly surprised; he didn't think Fluke had been paying attention.
After a long pause, Lint said, "Fluke, I shouldn't ask, but did you vote for…?"
Fluke looked up from his comic with a glare and said, "No! Dang it Lint, we known each other forever, and yew always thought I was dumb."
"That's not true," Lint said, and meant it. Fluke could be something of a ditz, but he was brave and had more than enough moments of surprising insight that Lint had always respected him. Still…
"No, ah did not vote for the Nazi!" Fluke said.
Lint was startled and pleased. "Ah! I'm… sorry, Fluke, if I gave the impression..."
"'Cuz he's a Nazi," Fluke said.
"Well, good," Lint said.
"Ah didn't vote t'all," Fluke said.
Lint stifled a groan.
"Well t'other one was a girl," Fluke said.
After a pause, Day added, "I suppose it's telling that I'm more worried about what's coming from that than about E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S.'s newest scheme."
Lint said, "Yeah, she tends to be…"
The WOMBAT lurched suddenly. For a moment Lint feared the caffeine supply in Wild Fred's bloodstream had run out and he'd collapsed, but Fred allayed those fears with the blandly spoken words, "Incoming fire."
"Yahooo!" Fluke declared as Fred breakdanced the WOMBAT through a series of stomach-churningly impressive evasive maneuvers. The WOMBAT pitched and wove improbably as laser fire tore the air around it. Lint always marveled at how easy it was to miss a target with an instantaneous weapon with no recoil, and it had always struck Lint as remarkable that evasive maneuvers against lasers were even a thing. Their survival likely owed more to the notoriously terrible aim strangely endemic to military laser technology than to Fred's aerobatics. There was a reason the mainstream military had never switched over to lasers, still a classified weapon after all these years; but E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S. used them, so the 4Fs did as well. That was logic.
Lint saw their destination out the window (it occurred to Lint, as they dodged death, that just-fly-in-there-and-do-as-comes-natural wasn't much of a plan, but here they were). From above, the island looked strange – overgrown with flora like any self-respecting tropical island, but many seemed weirdly distorted by radiation. There was the temple – big absurd thing made of quick-set concrete to resemble a set from a black-and-white movie serial. Very impressive in its way. E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S.'s temples always were. So far as Lint knew, none of the leadership of E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S. had any strong religious leanings one way or the other, and as Fluke had observed there were no locals here to impress, but temples were their signature. Lasers in the gargoyles' eyes fired at them, and while there was enough vapor in the air to keep the crimson beams fairly visible outside anyway, the special polarized material of the WOMBAT's windows made them clear as day.
Fred successfully evaded the lasers and swiftly set the WOMBAT down on the sandy beach of Stracteau, several hundred yards from the temple structure, festooned with atom symbols probably meant to represent mad science or some such.
A platoon of masked E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S. troopers swarmed out of the temple as a wave. "E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S.!" they howled insidiously.
"It's an even worse battle cry than it is a name," Lint muttered to himself as his team disembarked.
"4.F.s Forever!" Fluke howled heroically, and the team charged. As with the artillery versions, hand lasers had never been cleared for the regular military either, or even officially acknowledged to exist, but they were standard issue for 4.F. Joe because E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S.'s forces used them. In principle, they were deadly. In practice, contrary to expectations, the beams were significantly less lethal than bullets, and more puzzlingly, they were near impossible to aim. Hence the startlingly low casualty counts these battles tended to produce.
Through the team's polarized eyeshields, the beams were, again, perfectly visible. The enemy's beams were red, and the 4.F.s' blue.
"4.F.s Forever!" Fluke reiterated. "Let's go, guys! Yeee-hah! 4.F.s Forever!" he battlecried.
"4.F.s Forever!" Lint said, as much out of habit as anything, it seemed to him. How long have I been doing this? It seemed like a long time. There was fear, going into any battle, but dang it, there shouldn't be ennui. It was because of the state of things back stateside, of course, and distracting thoughts can get you killed. And then he took abrupt note of how many masked E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S. troops there were this time. A vast horde swarmed out of the temple. And then –
One of the 4.F.s' laser beams actually struck home on an enemy trooper – and its head exploded in a shower of sparks.
"Lint! Nicola! E'rybody! They're machiiiiiines!" Fluke shouted in startled delight that the 4.F.'s wouldn't need to hold anything back. Whenever this happened, it was always a pleasant discovery for him.
We were holding back? Lint wondered.
One particularly ambitious robot got ahead of its fellows and tried to physically attack Fluke. It was rewarded for its trouble with a belly full of laser fire. It pitched forward, and Fluke ripped its mask and tattered shirt apart to get a better look at it. Up close, it didn't look very humanoid at all. In fact…
"Hey! These ain't theah usual robots! These look like them Silicon Valley robots you see on the innerwebs!" Fluke said. "You know, that run and jump an' dance around?"
"The ones they say will never have guns on them?" Nicola said as the robots ran and jumped danced around, shooting at them.
"Yeah! Somebody bolted guns to these! After they bought them!" Fluke said.
"Must have taken a good ten minutes!" Lint said. "I'm shocked. Shocked."
A voice cut through the mishigass of battle. "Hornswoggle the mizzenmast! Getcher landlubbin' lobsterclaws offa me!
"Dad-blame it!" Fluke said. "The robots've capsized Capture! I mean, captured Capsize!"
"Um….. darn?" Lint said.
"Be nice," Day said.
"$#!%!" Lint said.
"That's better. More respectful," Nicola Day said. They saw a pair of robots drag the wriggling sailor through a small door that had opened in the temple front.
"There's our opening!" Day said. In a single ninjtastic bound, she went flipping above a sand dune, landed, ran toward the barrage of glowing laser fire, lithely dancing in between the beams, then blasted the locking mechanism of the small door. It swung open, obligingly.
"That was purty cool!" Fluke said, as he and Lint caught up.
"How do you dodge lasers?" Lint asked her.
"Ninja!" she smugged.
"That answers nothing," Lint said.
No sooner were Day, Fluke, and Lint through the small door when a vertical sheet of steel slammed shut behind them. They were now cut off from the rest of the strike force. They weren't overly concerned about the others, as they were the best of the best, while the robots were shooting with the accuracy of a dunk Helen Keller, even by laser gun standards. The team would be okay. Fluke elected to hunt for the McGuffin device.
They were now in a dark hallway. They switched on their headlamps, and Fluke beckoned them down the corridor.
"This whole shebang feel… different to y'all?" Fluke asked.
"This particular shebang?" Lint said. "Pretty typical… No, you're right, it does. Those robots. E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S. using purchased equipment?"
"Aw, I'm sure they stole it!" Fluke said.
"Fine, it's stolen, but they didn't build these robots themselves," Lint said.
"Why should they? Silicon Valley's catching up to them," Day said.
"Look out! Giant Man Rats!" Day said. There ahead of them were Professor Peril's favorite bioengineered creation: man-sized, upright rodents, baring their terrifying claws and guillotinesque incisors. They were a remarkable accomplishment, but the team's entire experience with them over the years had been in context of the rats trying to kill them, so the 4.F.s weren't very appreciative. "Squeak squeak!" the abominations declared ominously.
The 4.F.s, however, had guns. "Glad some things never change! Waste 'em!" Fluke said. Bright beams of blue blaster fire lased the furry fiends off to a better eternity.
"I always feel bad for them," Day said as they stepped over the fuzzy corpses. "They're cute in a hideous way."
"Blech," Fluke said.
The corridor soon led the trio to a large concrete chamber where E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S. had Capsize tied up and dangling over a pit of some horrible bubbling stuff. Lint was impressed how quickly the enemy had managed it.
"Blargle me sea slugs an' call me Blackbeard, mateys! Ya be a sight for this seafarer's sore eyes!" he said.
"We'll gitcha down from there, Capsize," Fluke said.
"Don't be so sure! HAHAHHAHAHAHA!" came a familiarly haughty contralto laugh.
On a high dais at the back of the chamber, out strode a tall, dark-skinned woman with an imperial air. She was still strikingly beautiful in her form-fitting red velvet labcoat, if no longer young. None of us are, Lint thought. This was the mad Doctor Desdemonda DeStracteau, a.k.a. Doctor Destructo. Beside her crouched the ancient, bald, pale, mustachioed and monocled avatar of weirdness that was Professor Percival Perril, a.k.a. Professor Peril. He giggled.
A bunch of robots skulked with inhuman smoothness out of the shadows as well (these not being disguised as uniformed soldiers), covering the 4.F.s with their bolted-on laser guns, while the 4.F.s covered Destructo and Peril with their laser guns.
"Hope we're not to late to the party!" Fluke said.
"Not at all!" she intoned was her slight but always noticeable Carribean accent. Her eyes weren't laughing, though, or even glinting evilly. She looked tired, Lint thought.
"Welcome… to your doomsday!" she said, making a visible effort.
"Let me threaten them too! You're doomed! Ha ha!" said Professor Peril in his high, reedy voice.
"Yes, yes, Percy, they're doomed," Destructo said as if verbally patting him on the head.
"Looks like we got us a stand-off here, Doctor!" Fluke said.
"Then… we shall talk a while. That comes all too rarely. Ah, Fluke. Lint. Nicola. I'm actually glad to see you, I think." She paced back and forth on the dais – as always, speaking as if giving oratory. "Welcome to the island of Stracteau. I was born here. My people have been gone since your imperialist… well, it scarcely matters. The island is mine, now." She normally looked proud and angry. Now she just looked weary. And she sounded… wistful. It unnerved Lint. "I'm glad that we should do this preposterous dance one last time here, at my beginning. In these, the waning days of the human imagination."
Fluke looked puzzled. "Whassat s'posed t'mean?"
"We know the history of the island," Lint said. "I don't suppose an apology on the part of Uncle Sam would matter."
"Don't 'pologize to her! She's cuckoo!" Fluke said.
"Your government tested Mad Morty McGuffin's theories here, decades ago. It rendered the island uninhabitable! The entire population fled. The survivors fled, at least. I was conceived here. I've always believed my intellect to be the result of mutation caused by the radiation, though I've no proof. Now I've returned to my family's home. Typical Caribbean ancestry – African slaves on one side, Native Americans on the other. Your nation has a notoriously poor history with both. And I have no use for your nation."
"That's… fair," Day said. "We each make our own choices."
"I see you got past the armed robots," she said. "It's what I get for trying to automate completely, I suppose."
"And my Giant Man-Rats!" Professor Peril said.
"And Percy's Giant Man-Rats," she muttered, rolling her dark eyes.
"They killed my Giant Man-Rats!" Peril ranted. "They killed them! Years of selective breeding and months of forced growth…"
"Your Man-Rats are not bulletproof, Percy! Let alone laser-proof! They never have been! I don't know why you can't seem to understand that!" Destructo shouted.
"I've always suspected he's somewhere on the, um, spectrum," Lint proffered, quietly.
"Oh, who isn't?!" Destructo said, irritatedly.
It was a fair question, Lint supposed; like every mildly introverted person these days, he'd wondered about himself more than once. Changing the subject, he asked, "Those robots out there… You bought them, didn't you? I mean you didn't make them yourselves. Buying building materials for the temples is one thing, but the super-science stuff itself? What happened? Is Silicon Valley passing you by?"
"Ah." She smiled. "And there's the crux of it. Is Silicon Valley passing us by? Ha ha… Oh…."
"This battle is weird. Ah don't understand it at all," Fluke said.
"You're in command, sir," Day said.
"Yeah, I'm just a li'l confuzzled what's goin' on here," Fluke said.
"I think she's having a midlife crisis," Lint said.
"Midlife? Ha! I'll take that as a compliment! Oh, I feel so old," Destructo said.
"You're looking good," I said, and meant it. "Dignified."
"Pfaugh! Dignity!" Doctor Destructo said. "You wish to know how I got these robots?" Destructo said. "I sold out!"
"No!" Fluke said, confused.
"To a corporation! A tech corporation! It's what mad scientists do now, yes? It seemed logical! I sold E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S. to Omnocorp!"
"Omnocorp?!" Day interrobanged with sudden obvious interest. Keeping their guns trained on their two main opponents, Fluke and Lint regarded Day quizzically.
"Eh, careful, my dear," Peril hissed in a stage whisper. "We mustn't incriminate the nice company in front of the 4.F.s. "
"Nobody cares, Percy! To paraphrase the incoming orange fuhrer, Raimundo Tirapec could shoot a man in broad daylight and no one would care. Tirapec's rich! Even if he isn't white."
"Raimundo… Tirapec," Day said.
Lint said, "Yeah, the C.E.O. of Omnoc— oh! Oh. Your Raimundo is that Raimundo?"
Destructo said, "I had this idea for Omno Corporation to become the polite legal face, the financial alter ego of E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S. Tirapec looks like a warmed over corpse these days, but he thinks he can get ahead of it by merging himself with advanced computers. Maybe he's right. He's got access to Percy's treatments to keep him young-ish."
That last comment caught Lint's interest. Percival Perril might be nutty as a fruitcake made exclusively with nuts instead of fruit and therefore rendering the name fruitcake meaningless, but now that Lint thought of it, Peril did look implausibly good for his age. How old was he, exactly?"
Day said, "But he's an outsider like me! He knows how things work out here! Not just how they work, but how they're supposed to work. How they could work. He knows it all well as I do!" She grew sad and somber. "Maybe that's the point. We see America and the world objectively. He has no illusions about it. And he's decided he doesn't care."
"Nobody cares. Nobody votes," Destructo said. "And why should a world where nobody cares endure? Here, in my blighted cradle of all places, the McGuffin Device shall take my revenge for me!"
Fluke whispered, "What is a McGuffin device, anyways?"
"You don't know?" Lint said.
"Little sketchy on it," Fluke admitted.
"The idea used to be called a doomsday machine," Lint said. "It's for destroying the world."
This sank in for a moment. "Well shoot-a-mile," Fluke said.
"Yeah," Lint said. "Straight out of Dr. Strangelove."
Fluke gave a blank look indicating he didn't get the reference, then turned back to Destructo. "Hey, why you want to blow up the world, crazy lady?!" Fluke shouted. "Yew usedta wanna take over the world. Now ya wanna blow it up? Cain't do both! What you wanna blew it up fer?"
Destructo said, "Oh, I suppose I've wanted to take over the world. When one starts down a mad science career path, it's expected. And I do enjoy telling others what to do."
"Its true!" Peril said.
"Shut up, Percy," Destructo said. "But this is my only destiny, now! I destroy the Earth to save it! To save it from a more protracted and painful death, or fates still worse!" she shouted back.
"You talkin' 'bout th' envir'nment?" Fluke said.
"Ah, the environment! The animals and plants die. The sea rises. The land burns! It would seemingly take so little now to unmake Creation and restore the primal chaos. Is that blasphemy? Are machines blasphemy? If gods there be, they made the machines' makers!""
"Whuh?" Fluke said.
"The Singularity looms!" Destructo said. "Soon, nothing we do here will matter. None of our idiot little battles will have mattered."
"Oh. That thing," Lint said.
"What?" Fluke said.
"Uh…" Lint considered how to explain it.
"The Terminator movies happen, and everything sucks, unless it it ends up really good somehow," Day clarified.
"Right. That," Lint said.
"Didn't suck till the third one," Fluke said.
"I didn't see the third one," Lint said.
"Eh," Fluke said with a shrug.
"Artificial intelligence!" Destructo said. "Or the thing currently being given that label. At this stage, its dangers are mundane, yet still awful. It steals from the entire internet-using population of the planet, justifying this with 'How is it theft if it's universal?' It costs people not their petty rent jobs but the careers they live for – art, acting, writing, poetry! It jeopardizes the entire future of human artistic endeavor itself. It cons naïve CEOs into using it for tasks it was not designed for and cannot possibly do correctly, thereby crippling the businesses it's supposed to help. It facilitates fraud and manipulative propaganda on a scale that can shape elections and governments. And the vast electrical power needed to run it helps burn the planet even while large sections of the landscape are spontaneously catching on fire. The whole thing is being driven by a combination of quasi-religious desire for a technological singularity – something which even its most cheerful proponents assert stands a fifty percent chance of wiping out mankind – and pure treasonous greed on a scale that would make Judas wince."
She took a deep breath. "I used to make art in my spare time. Do you suppose these temples design themselves? I've had almost three years now to adjust to living in a world where AI-generated 'art' exists; to living in a world where it is possible for something like it to exist. Where one of the defining acts of humankind can be churned mindlessly from a spigot. And I keep getting out of bed and living and breathing, but it's hard. Making art is one of the first things humanity did. It's one of the first things we do individually. Will a child still pick up a crayon and draw a cowboy riding a hippo when she can just tell a box to do it for her? I built these temples to technology! It was my god. Or filled that niche. My temples were a marrying of technology and art. Ha!" She raised her hands above her and waved them graspingly about in the standard megalomaniac milking the giant invisible cow gesture.
"What place have we traditional mad scientists in a world where mainstream scientists are literally burning the Earth to destroy art as a meaningful human activity? And what place have world-conquering adventurers when the western democracies elect fascists who campaign that they will destroy the democracies that elected them?"
Everyone was quiet for a while.
"I mean, after all these years, what's the point?" she said, more quietly. "Mine isn't the sort of career I ever expected to see superseded. I'm a redundancy, now. I always disputed E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S.'s categorization as 'evil' – but if we are, then evil has won, and I'm not even a part of it."
She took a deep breath. "He's going to set up camps… Again!" she said. "Americans voted for this."
"A whole lot of 'em didn't vote," Fluke said in an uncharacteristically small voice.
"Simple… human evil… infernal, and yet almost quaint. And yet, the real terror is not yet come. What if the techbros get what they actually want? A machine that can think? If we somehow survive this idiotic fad of putting constantly malfunctioning 'hallucinating' computers in charge of our lives, if the mad scientists of the hour succeed in making a 'General Artificial Intelligence.' A general AI several iterations down the line that would think as much beyond our speed of thought as we are beyond the movements of a slime mold! Trying to outwit it would be like trying to outpace a bolt of lightning! This is what is coming for us! It is being brought forth upon this Earth by madmen!"
"You believe they'll be… um, self-aware?" Lint said. He took a deep breath. "Look, your whole freak-out over AI feels a year or so late. We've got bigger issues now. If you'd said all this stuff a year or so ago, I'd be freaking out too, but this is… just a stupid business bubble. The thing doesn't even work that well, most consumers hate it, and the machines certainly don't actually think. They just…"
"They don't need to be self-aware! Something that merely behaves as if it is thinking could cause as much havoc as one that does. Perhaps more! Where a conscious being might have drives we could understand, a machine that thinks without awareness might attempt any mad thing! And have the sheer might to do any mad thing! With unsupervised autonomy!
"They're inventing machines that can steal all love and meaning out of men's lives. Forever. You call us evil? What have old-school mad scientists like Percy or myself ever even dreamed of doing that could match that?" She said it as a wail, a sob. Lint had never heard her talk this way. It frightened him more than any of her old megalomaniac rants had ever come close to doing.
"Dr. Destructo, are you crying?" Lint said, softly.
"It doesn't take much to make me cry any more. I used to write science fiction as a hobby in between world-busting schemes, but prediction even for fun now feels futile in the face of a future Singularity," she said.
"You don't know it's inevitable," Lint said.
"Please! No reason to make art. To write. To build. To design. To love," she said.
"Not to love? What's that even supposed to mean?"
"When some Turing-capable machine can fake loving you back better than a person can?"
"We're a long way from that, surely," Lint said.
"Not long enough. The blasted things are nearly Turing-capable already. They're not sentient, but they don't have to be. We will soon invent machines that can express love better than we can, though without feeling it, and we will love them instead of each other, and then when our love for one another ceases to exist we will be damned.
"And they've got brain-scanning equipment that can turn your thoughts into words. Ostensibly to help the disabled, and that's very nice, but mind reading actually exists now! Mind reading! Primitive yet, but the potential for abuse is… I mean, seriously? Right when a self-proclaimed dictator is taking over the United States? It's in its infancy, but…"
She ran her fingers through her graying hair.
"Thousands of computer professionals who want to destroy the world to see if they can! Or who've been convinced they're caught up in 'the sweep of history' and have no choice, like the fool wretches who fought for an 'inevitable' communist utopia and just created a new type of tyranny.
"All is lost! I want to just. Let it. End," she said.
Professor Peril, who'd stood by with a look of longsuffering irritation on his face, sighed deeply, threw up his hands and said to the 4.F.s, "Look, you lot do what you can with her. I can never reach her when she gets like this."
"If you're not going to help, just go play with your Giant Man-Rats, Percy," she said.
"They're dead!" he said.
"Grow more!" she said.
"It takes months, and I named these!" he said. "Named one of them Rizzo… like on the Muppets..."
"Aw," Day said.
Destructo resumed, "All your dreams and mine are as dead as the world that bore us soon will be! Why wait? Why wait for a robot ragnarok or a fiery climate change apocalypse or even just a good old-fashioned Orwellian hell on Earth? Or all three? Why not end it neat and clean?! That is my purpose! Little does Omnocorp know I've used their funds to build… this!" She gestured strangely, and by that gesture apparently triggered a lift mounted in the floor. A pedestal holding a flashing, blinking metal… object rose from the dais an arm's length from her. It bleeped, menacingly.
"The McGuffin Device!" Lint cried. At least, it matched the descriptions he'd read of one, and—
The words were barely out of Lint's mouth before Fluke had riddled the thing full of laser holes. For a weapon that was essentially a glorified flashlight, a laser rifle was startlingly loud. Considering the aiming issues, Lint was just glad Fluke had hit the machine rather than any of them. Or even Doctor Destructo.
Destructo beheld the devastated doobah, her face a mix of surprise and resignation. "I was going to blow up the world with that," she said in a tone of mild disappointment.
"Naw ya weren't," Fluke said. "Yew was all like, 'Here's the thing! Don' go shootin' it!' Cuz o'course Imma shoot it. Ya knew thet!"
"Perhaps," she conceded. "But now there's no hope at all. Not even of a clean end."
"Aw, tiddly-tuddly," Fluke said. "Professor Peril, yer old. Ya 'member the Cuban Missile Crisis?"
"Of course I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis!" Peril said.
"Are we still here?" Fluke asked.
"It would so appear," Peril said.
"And Doc Destructo, 'member Chernobyl?" Fluke said.
"My gray hair asserts that I do," she said testily. "And I remember Three Mile island!"
"Really?" Fluke took a moment to visibly admire her figure. "Lookin' good, granny!"
"And we're still here! Yes, yes, I see where you're going with this!" she sneered.
"An' the Nazis? Peril, y'remember...?" Fluke said.
"Yes, we've established that I'm very old!" Peril snapped.
"And we're still here," Destructo snapped.
"Yeah, an' a lotta people ain't. The Nazis sucked. An' so did Stalin. So did lotsa stuff. But where I'm goin' is… you gotta have hope! It's not stupid. Hope ain't just a feelin'. It's believin' things can get better. That we can get through stuff. That it's worth trying and workin' fer. And you gotta work for it! You gotta try to make the good stuff happen. Try to make the bad stuff not happen. An' if you stop hopin', then nobody tries, an' that's when 'all is lost!'"
He actually seemed to have struck a nerve there, and she quietened. "Not a bad lesson," she said with a soft, introspective air. "Now, I know."
"And that's 50% of any battle!" Fluke said. "Hope! Don't never give up! Ya stay till that there fight's won! You dare!"
"Fluke, you didn't even vote," Lint muttered.
"An' I learned mah lesson! Ain't never gonna flake out again. 'Cause now we got Evil Doofis comin' back, an' part of it's mah fault. Ah know thet!"
"If we ever get to vote again…" Fluke muttered.
"Hope," she repeated. She gazed at the smoking remains of Fluke's act of gleeful entropy, and her eyes shone with a sudden, clearly happy inspiration. "Of course," she said. "You… just destroyed it."
"An' fer th' environment… well, um…" Fluke faltered.
"And for the environment, the government or even the rich jerks could be finding ways to make carbon sequestration practical. They're not doing it, but they should. It could make a real difference," Day offered.
"Why didn't the robots shoot Fluke when he shot it?" Lint asked.
"They're protecting us, not the machine. They're run by ChatBots. They're shockingly stupid," Professor Peril said.
"You're using AI to fight AI?" Lint said.
"AI… to fight…AI…" Destructo muttered, staring into space.
Peril said, "The irony appealed to her. The impracticality of it only slowly became apparent later. She said, 'I loathe that I may have acted as stupidly about the subject as the typical CEO.' Now of course I say, we should have used more of my Giant Man-Ra–"
"Be quiet Percy. I'm having an epiphany," Destructo said. "Fluke… just… destroyed… it….. Of course," Destructo said quietly. "That's it! Instead of causing the end of the world, I will prevent it!"
"Ah! Yes! That sounds very constructive," Lint said.
"I see now. I see. I see it now. I see." She kept repeating that. "Ultimately, only AIs can control AIs. We'll need AI safeguard programs, perhaps, to police the other AIs. I will design… safeguards against destruction of humanity or the natural world by A.I."
"Good, good!" Day said.
"Mobile, autonomous safeguards that will end such threats the same way Fluke here just ended my McGuffin Device! By shooting them!"
"Uhmmmm…." Day said, concerned.
"Ah like it!" Fluke said. "But does it vi'late As'mov's First Law if robots shoot robots?" Fluke said.
"You've read Asimov?" Lint said.
"Laws was in a episode of Buck Rogers," Fluke said.
"Right. I remember that one. Second season. The one with the psychic space munchkins..." Lint said.
"And I shall oversee them! I shall watch the watchmen! And so I shall have power! To do good! GOOOOOOD! HAHAHAHAHA!" she said.
"Um… good. I think," Lint said.
"Scupper me bilge decks! Belay ya barnacle-bottomed barge rats!" Capsize garbled from where he was still strung up over a seething pit of nastiness.
"Why'd ya have yer robots capture Capsize?" Fluke asked.
"He's very annoying. If the world's ending, I wanted to kill him first," Destructo said.
"Un'nerstood," Fluke said, "but we gotta stop ya."
"Understood. Here, just take him. It was an extraneous impulse, anyway."'
"Oh. Uh, thanks!" Fluke said.
"Feh." As Day and I kept our weapons drawn, Fluke clambered up and rescued the endlessly and irrelevently exclamation-ejaculating sea… person.
"We are done, here!" Destructo said. "Mobile ChatBots! Collapse the temple!"
"Roger dodger," the robots said.
"Another temple destroyed. Such a waste," Professor Peril lamented.
"The beauty of some things is in their impermanence, Percy. Like a piñata."
"I like piñatas," Peril conceded.
Starting at the center of the chamber, the stone floor began to collapse away revealing a growing circle of black sea water, and a sleek E.R.S.O.E.A.A.W.S.A.S. SUB-OPTIMAL submarine surfaced at its center. Destructo dashed to it and was inside in moments, dragging Percy Perril along by the ear.
"We shall meet again, 4.F. Joe!" he began, only for her to interrupt him.
"Speak for yourself, Percy. I'm done with this ! $!" she said.
"Aw," he said, as they disappeared into the sub's hatch and the sub promptly sank out of view.
"Happy trails, ya evil archfiends! Or sump'n!" Fluke said.
"When you see Tirapec, tell him Hianha says hi," Day said softly, but the sub was already gone.
The robots in the chamber seemed to have lost interest in fighting. One of the concrete walls suddenly exploded inward, revealing that the rest of the 4.F. strikeforce had routed the robots outside.
"Welcome in!" Fluke said. "Now we gotta get outta here! The temple is fallin' apart!"
The 4.F.s frantically fled from the toppling temple, great slabs of quick-set concrete slamming down like meteor strikes all about them. Once outside, the ground trembled and a great fissure suddenly opened in the earth ahead of them.
"How are we going to get across that?!" Day cried.
"We need a bridge!" Fluke shouted.
"Somebody call for a bridge?" Troll Bridge said calmly, appearing out of nowhere on the other side of the crevasse with his bridgeotronic bridgelaying bridgelayer.
"I'm… glad we brought you," Lint conceded.
Troll Bridge responded cheerfully, laid down the bridge from his vehicle, and then faded into the background again. Everyone crossed.
"Get to the WOMBAAAAT!" Fluke cried and everyone piled into the toyetic conveyance, and Wild Fred soon had them airborne.
Inside the WOMBAT, on the way home, Lint said, "We and our enemies have developed a very strange dynamic. Getting stranger."
"She got away and she's going to do something crazy," Day lamented.
"Yes, but... But she decided she may take some steps to tamp down and hinder a possible AI apocalypse," Lint said.
"Gonna do it in a way that's nuts," Day said.
"Yeeeah… sigh. But hey, the world didn't blow up. That's a win," Lint said.
"Durned straight!" Fluke said. "See? Ah kin do the psychological whatevers."
"Long as it involves shooting something," Lint said.
"Sho' as shootin'," Fluke said.
Day said sadly, "She had a point. Everything is terrible right now."
Lint said, "So we shouldn't have stopped her blowing up the world?"
Fluke said, "!&%! that!"
"Do you think all is lost?" Day asked. "The world, I mean."
Lint was quiet for a long moment. He thought about the possible, very real end to the democracy he'd dedicated his life to, in a matter of days when the new president would be sworn in. Words crowded his mind and would not come to his lips. "Lord help me, I just don't know," he finally said.
"Shucks, Lint, all is always almost lost," Fluke said.
Lint sighed. "Well, yes."
"Long as it's just almost, we're good," Fluke said.
"A lot of bad can happen during an 'almost,'" Lint said, gravely. "Think how many people his lies killed in the pandemic. It wasn't almost for them. Who knows how many lives he'll end or destroy this time?"
Fluke said, "You gotta ride it out and try to make as much good stuff happen as you can in spite of all of it. Fight for the little guys against the big bads where you are and how you can. The most important thing is ya don't give up."
Lint took a deep breath, and he nodded. "Fluke? You're not dumb. At all," he said.
"Ah know thet. But thanks," Fluke said.
"Well except for not voting. That was ungodly stupid," Lint said.
"Ah know thet, too," Fluke said and nodded, accepting the criticism with equanimity.
Day said, "I've invested my life in making this crazy outside world of yours work. And I won't stop trying right when it seems more important than ever. If I'd wanted to hide, I'd have stayed home when I was a girl. No matter what idiot takes over in Washington, no matter how the rich and the racists try to corrupt everything, I will do everything I can to make things work out okay. It's my duty as an American and as a human being."
"Here, here!" Lint said with a grin.
"And we're going to expose Omnocorp!" she said! "And when all the evidence is out for everyone to see, the courts will… will….." She trailed off.
"We'll do it anyway," Lint said.
The WOMBAT lurched.
"Arrh! Methinks Wild Fred's fallen into a caffeine coma again," Capsize said. "Arrh," he added.
"Ah'll take th' wheel," Fluke said, and moved forward.
"Maybe someday we'll look back on it all and... laugh?" Lint said. "Long time from now, maybe. Long time."
Day looked into coming years, saw so much pain and injustice and work coming, but maybe something beyond it, too, and said, "That would be good."
With acknowledgement to science fiction author David Brin, who has championed the cause of A.I. policing A.I., and to Max Allan Collins, who invented the Dick Tracy villain "Z.Z." Rowe who went around shooting computers. I do not endorse shooting computers; 'tis meant to be silly.