Tony Ballantyne - Recursion

“Big, isn’t it?”

“I don’t want to fight it anymore. I’d rather take my chances in the Oort cloud.” Herb’s voice was a dull monotone.

“Oh, don’t be like that. I’m sure you’ll have no worries.”

Herb laughed hollowly. “We’re doomed, aren’t we? There’s no way we can defeat that. All those spaceships, all those machines. Where did they come from?”

“Earth.”

“Why are they attacking us? Did you say Earth?”

“Of course. It doesn’t take a genius to work that out, does it? You’ve seen the technology. It doesn’t look any different from that of Earth’s, does it? Herb, you’ve even seen pictures of one of your alter egos wandering around a shopping center! How alien do you think that is? You’ve got an imagination the size of a muffin! You saw roads and cars! You even saw bloody cows! Who did you think was in charge of the Enemy Domain? Martians?”

Herb was blushing with embarrassment. “I don’t know. It’s just…I mean…How can it be from Earth? How did it get so big? Why didn’t we hear about it?”

Johnston jumped onto the coffee table and threw his hands up in despair.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Herb! Use your brain! You should have been expecting this! Everyone should have been expecting this! That’s one of the reasons why we have an Environment Agency! Come on, think!”

Herb shook his head. He felt too overwhelmed by it all to react. Johnston leaned down and spoke in a softer tone.

“The only surprise should be that it didn’t happen sooner. Good grief, Herb, we have let self-replicating machines loose upon the galaxy! Self-replicating machines! Haven’t you ever stopped to think what that implies? You’ve already seen first-hand the damage that can occur when they go wrong! Look at that planet you destroyed! All it takes is one machine with above average Artificial Intelligence to get loose, an AI with a grasp of how to build a warp drive, and there’s no telling where it will all end.”

Johnston jumped down from the table and knelt at Herb’s feet.

“I mean, come on. We’ve seen it happen on Earth! Look what happened when DIANA tried to build that space elevator back in 2171. Public outcry, mass protests. Some saboteurs even managed to get hold of a batch of mothballed stealth suits and used them to get close enough to try and blow it up. And all the while, unbeknownst to the protestors, the VNMs designed to anchor the thing to the planet were out of control. They just kept going down and down, burrowing into the Earth. They were tough to stop, too. Those things were built to be strong. If the EA hadn’t figured out a solution in time, the whole planet could have been converted to something close to adamantium from the inside out. Now, just put that problem on a galactic scale. That’s what we have to deal with.”

Johnston shook his head in despair at Herb’s stupidity.

“You still haven’t seen it, have you? And you converted a whole planet by accident! Don’t you realize how fast these things spread? Suppose you have one machine that takes a year to make a copy of itself. Not ten seconds, not ten minutes, like the ones you used on that planet below. Let’s just say a year. In two years you have two machines, in three years you have four. In a hundred years you have 1.26 times ten to the power of thirty of the things. That’s ten billion billion machines for each planet in the Milky Way.”

The numbers were making Herb feel dizzy. Johnston was almost shouting now.

“Its not even the first time something like this has happened. In the past few years I’ve helped destroy twenty would-be galactic empires.”

Herb laughed weakly and spoke in a wobbly voice. “Twenty. Well, there you are. Well done, Robert.”

Johnston calmed down. He took hold of Herb’s hands and rubbed them gently between his own. He gazed at Herb with a gentle smile.

“You’re frightened. Of course you are; who wouldn’t be? Well, trust me. We’ll beat it. Both of us.”

“Both of us. Of course,” Herb said. “And who else? How big is our army?”

Robert looked confused.

“Army? What army? There’s just you and me.”

“Just you and me,” Herb repeated.

“Of course. What good would an army be? No matter how many people we raised, we’d still be hopelessly outnumbered.”

“Of course.” Herb began to laugh. “Of course. No problem. How silly of me. You and me versus an Enemy two hundred light years in diameter!” His laugh grew more strident. “And there I was thinking that this would be difficult. Well. That’s okay, then.”

Tears began to run down his cheeks.

Johnston tilted his head slightly. “Herb, I think you’re becoming just a little bit hysterical.”

That just made Herb laugh even louder.

Herb was making himself a cup of tea the long way. He set the water to boil over three minutes; he had a teapot ready, already filled with two spoonfuls of genuine organic leaves from his father’s plantation. Doing it properly made a difference, no matter what people said. He saw Johnston emerge from the secret passageway and suppressed a smile. Robert ignored him. He was carrying a heavy object, something plastic and basically cuboid. One side was pearly grey glass. He staggered across to the coffee table and set it down as gently as he could. Herb watched him out of the corner of his eye until a deep red glow shone from the center of the water, signaling that it had boiled. He picked up the thermal jug and poured its contents into the teapot. Hot steam rose and he pushed his face into it, relishing the sensation as it condensed on his face.

Johnston had vanished back down the secret passageway. There had been a subtle shift in the balance of power, and they both knew it. As long as Herb could keep up the appearance of hysterical disbelief, he had Robert off balance. Now Herb was refusing to look at a viewing field unless forced to.

In response, Johnston had slipped back into his 1920s American mode. His suit was that little bit sharper, his accent that little bit harsher. He had to work harder to gain Herb’s attention. But, as always, he had a plan.

Herb placed the lid on the teapot. He was now only four minutes away from the perfect cup of tea. Robert reemerged from the passageway, this time dragging a long flexible plastic cable. Herb watched in silence as Robert used a complicated looking connector to join it to a similar cable emerging from the plastic cuboid.

Herb experienced a sudden flash of recognition. “That’s a television, isn’t it? I’ve seen them in old information files.”

“Gotcha!” Robert pressed a button on the machine and stepped back. There was a strange whistling noise at the edge of Herb’s hearing. The grey glass panel at the side of the box lit up. Pictures began to move on it. Herb squinted to see them clearly.

“What’s that?” he said.

“A piece of history. You’re looking at one of the early colonization projects, one of the first wave initiated after the invention of the warp drive. Like most of the projects back then, this one was sponsored by a single corporation, in this case DIANA.”

They were watching a large spaceship, seemingly stationary against the background of stars. It was all silver and gold curves, in the fashion of the time. Herb found it difficult to make out the overall shape of the ship, but he had to admit it had a certain pleasing quality to the eye, the way the matching curves swept out and back in, balancing each other.

“We’re pretty certain that this particular colony ship was the source of the Enemy Domain.”

“Pretty certain?” asked Herb.

“Nothing is ever a hundred percent,” Johnston replied easily. “This ship was headed out in the right direction. The programming on the VNMs we’ve seen matches the development tensors of the original ayletts loaded on board this ship. We’ve even matched the genetic material of the hundred or so colonists on board with the half-grown clones on the planets throughout the Enemy Domain. We’re pretty sure.”