3rd October 2038
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I looked at a number, steadily climbing monotonously higher, with the occasional jarring jump upwards, and very rarely downwards.
Like many a gamer today, I was staring at a ping value, representing the round-trip time between messages, but unlike the most oppressed of all demographics, this figure now well into the dozens of hours represented my wife steadily leaving the solar system. You'd have to be really into correspondence chess over snail-mail to even get close.
I'm sure gamers regularly contend with their wives leaving them, so I poured myself a drink in their honor. This one was the last of many, because I was attempting to drown my sorrows in vodka, as I sat cloistered on a rooftop bar. The place advertised itself primarily on the great ocean view, but I presume such advertisement was largely tongue in cheek because even in a mobile seasteading city-fleet like this one, you'd have to try pretty hard not to be able to see the sea.
Seagulls squawked and swarmed overhead, eyeing my appetizers but wisely keeping their distance as the ultrasonic and laser repellents unobtrusively positioned on the deck would hardly hesitate to give them a good tickling should they dive bomb me. What works for the drone works for the gander, and other variety of aerial fauna.
A pod of dolphins frolicked a few meters away, turning tricks for eager tourists throwing them scraps, while a few that had control implants kept other oceanic riff-raff at bay. You could tell that the locals, mostly of Taiwanese refugee stock, had become partially inured to the display, but even the most hard-hearted still had a ghost of a smile on their face as they saw such unreserved playfulness. I was mulling over both the prospect of another glass of Californian Cirrhosa and getting my liver gene modded to cope with my new hobby when my lace gently pinged me, indicating another bystander expressing a desire to have a chat.
Sure buddy, whatever rocks your boat. I didn't really want to talk, but the most recent message that Anjana had sent me included a mild admonishment to not be a total mopey shut-in in her absence.
He walked over, a tall man in the kind of waterproof outfit that indicated less than total confidence in navigating the more irregular ad-hoc walkways that connected the gently moving vessels; or the automated gondolas that taxied about the quasi-bay the crescent shaped fleet created.
He settled into the empty chair opposite mine, an expression of enthusiasm on his young face.
"Dr. Sen! What a surprise to see you here of all places." He said, tapping the menu and prompting a server bot to trundle over with a cocktail in tow.
I'd already checked his AR tags, but like many here, he'd had privacy controls enabled, even the normally active identity broadcasts. So I asked him the old fashioned way-
"Sorry, have we met? My memory is a little hazy right now, for many reasons." I gestured at the half-finished glass on the table, while the bot saved me some minor embarrassment by discreetly sweeping all the other empty ones away.
"Of course! I fully understand, you UNSEEN folk take amnestics like candy. Did they sever you?" He enquired earnestly.
"Severed? What, no- Oh wait, you mean like in that show?" I responded, recalling an older tv show that had presciently been one of the first to depict what it might be like to be forced to partition your work and life memories.
"Uh huh."
"Nothing that drastic, thank god. I remember my life outside work when I'm in there, though the obverse isn't true. I presume that I was on the stronger grade of amnestics when we spoke, because I can't remember the foggiest thing about you." I replied, swirling my glass and letting the ice cubes clink against each other.
"I get it, thankfully us CDSD operatives get a little more leeway."- I sat a little straighter, this guy was a spook from the Californian Digital Security Department. That explained the privacy controls, which even a little nudge online hadn't budged. I wasn't overly worried about him trying to something as gauche as turn me, not out in the open like this, but I was already mildly annoyed at something potentially work-related following me here- "Hey, no need to get alarmed, this isn't about the Petersen case." He quickly continued.
"Anyway, reintroductions are in order. I'm Daniel Wang, Project Lead and Liason with Turing. We met a couple weeks back, in Atlantis. We spoke quite a bit, and I do want to share -again-my condolences about your wife."
At this point, Atlantis had only been barely dredged out of the seabed, with its proximity to Californian Hawaii, it saw more than its fair share of Cali bureaucrats. I warmed up a little to him when he mentioned Anjana, because public draft updates had yet to broadcast the fact that she'd already been shanghai'd to Alpha Centauri. Must have been something I'd shared myself at one point or another.
"Fuck the Feds." I said, downing the remainder of my glass.
"Fuck the Feds indeed. Here, a toast to the gone but not forgotten." I returned the favor and mimed drinking from the empty glass. If anyone shared my seething hatred for the Federal United States, it was a Cali. "Anyway, I had a short layover in New Taipei, and I'm glad I ran into you. Heading somewhere yourself?"
I shook my head. "Nah, they had to vacate the temp offices because of overhead construction for a couple days. Some crazy new megastructure they'd rather blow the budget on. I'm working remote this week, but then I decided to make use of some of that shore-leave I saved up lately."
Working remote, oh how I missed it. This was back when I merely had GREEN clearance, and they'd let me do pretty much anything that wasn't explicitly field-work out of the office.
"I get it. Fantastic sushi here, though I'm getting used to tipping dolphins." That prompted a rumble in my stomach, and I decided to dampen the alcohol with some food.
"By the way, they did partially declassify that whitepaper on Theoretical Capabilities we talked about before, in case you wanted to read it while in khaki."
I looked at the link with interest, it had already percolated down to us GREENs, though the metadata still contained no end of argument as to whether it would be cleared for public release.
Why? Because it was fucking terrifying, that's why.
The fact that the list of collaborators on the paper included scientists from entities as mutually frigid if not outright hostile as the Federal US, the Californian and Lone Star Republics, the Reformed Chinese State, India, the Soviet Reunion and the EU all on one document was evidence enough that it dealt with the "theoretical capabilities" of the one thing that would let them put down their pitchforks, or rather, make them form a phalanx while brandishing it in its direction, the Aliens.
Daniel, or Dan, as he now freely gave me permission to call him, excused himself momentarily because his family, all refugees from Taiwan, had arrived at the bar to meet him. I took the opportunity to dig into the condensed summary.
The Tip of the Iceberg: A Comprehensive Overview of Known and Suspected Technological Capabilities of the Alien Threat - Kahnemann et al
Limited Distribution Only
The detection of relativistic kill vehicles inbound for the Solar System, with an expected ETA of 3 months and 22 days presents an unforseen and accelerated escalation in the threat presented by the Centauri civilization.
After the establishment of the first metahuman-enabled beachhead 0.2 ly from Alpha Centauri, both remote monitoring and Clairvoyant observation strongly suggested that the prior working timeline derived by Williams and Ganguly has been upended. Further, this paper, with the kind assistance of multiple narrowly superhuman AGI licensed from Turing, seeks to present a brand new understanding of the alien's technological base and their likely road map to bootstrap to unchecked technological dominance, unassailable by Humanity without resorting to drastic and unacceptable measures such as an unschackling of the SAMSARA system and other violations of long enshrined international treaties.
Three months ago, relativistically adjusted to Earth time, the first successful full in-system flyby past the External Line of Control since 2035 revealed glaring disparities between projected and previously detected alien infrastructure projects and the ground truth.
As disconcerting as it may be, it is now impossible to deny that Humanity has been mistaken in believing that the hard fought engagements in the outskirts of the AC system had the desired effect of locking down the ability of the aliens to send relativistic Von Neumann probes out of the system, or project force capable of threatening Earth within the next decade.
The researchers wish to emphasize that we have no intention of directing blame in this disregard at Admiral Torez, and the Joint Task Force Fleet that successfully prosecuted the Sandusky-Haven strategy of limited containment, at great cost in human lives and materiél.
No, the failings we describe are far more insidious and systemic, and reflect an gross tendency of all relevant parties at underestimating the unknown-unknowns in alien capabilities. This document serves as the first attempt to rectify this error.
The following are believed to have contributed to our failure overall:
1) Prior models that suggested the infeasibilty of stealth and the near certainty that our automated observatories near the AC system would detect drive signatures in time for intervention, metahuman or otherwise, have proven deeply flawed.
2) An exhaustive audit by Turing revealed the subversion of several of the AGI in the Joint Task Force Fleet, primarily in subfleets Laniakea and Sirius by a series of novel chained zero-day vulnerabilities.
3) Memetic subversion of high-ranking human personnel in system, including members of the Metahuman Task Force.
Failure of Detection:
Thermal detection of a new series of alien warship optimized for concealment, resembling the "Hydrogen Steamer" concept previously theorized, was started too late and with insufficiently comprehensive coverage.
Such vessels were believed to have already slipped past the sensor net as early as 2033, successfully reaching the previously unknown rogue exoplanet Hymir at the beginning of 2034. Clairvoyant augmented analysis suggests that the aliens used the sheer thermal mass and atmospheric coverage of the Ice Giant to disguise high intensity industrial activity, with the successful assembly of RKV launch systems that are only now being tracked down and partially neutralized by Metahuman Task Force Sleipnir.
It seems that the aliens have intentionally been working slower than they physically could on the linear and circular accelerators that they knew Humanity could see, within the AC system itself, in a successful attempt to lure us into complacency. The visible systems also seem to be technologically inferior compared to the ones they built in hiding, with projected performance metrics of maximum acceleration and impactor size both much lower than we now know is within their capabilities.
The currently detected batch of impactors, only serendipitously discovered by a teleporter-assisted Chinese warship when they struck minor interstellar debris, are believed to have been launched as early as February 2034.
It is theorized that by carefully timing their launches (the RKV accelerators themselves well beyond modern human capabilities, with demonstrated capabilities of accelerating projectiles to 97% the speed of light), and likely with the aid of information obtained by subversion, the Aliens used the shade of Hymir to disguise launch signatures from our observatories and probes at the outskirts of the primary system.
Exhaustive efforts by UN Clairvoyants have also detected several thousand more suspected Hydrogen Steamers, with at least 300 currently out of the range of any Human vessels tasked with interdiction. Many have targets that suggest further rogue exoplanets, previously undetected brown/black dwarfs, or an attempt to make it to star systems that our own colonial ventures haven't reached.
Unlike the original Hydrogen Steamer concept, which traded any degree of speed for stealth, these vessels have torch drives capable of accelerations of unprecedented magnitude, as high as 200 g in limited bursts, while maintaining minimal drive signature by heat dissipation techniques including directed neutrino heat radiators and potentially even more exotic particles. Detection of such vessels is extremely difficult due to their ability to cryogenically cool their external surfaces by boiling liquid hydrogen, to temperatures near the thermal noise limits of even the best superconducting detectors at our disposal.
We would go as far as to suggest that it is possible that they successfully cool some models to the temperature of the microwave background radiation, which is a chilling possibility, pun intended. (Research suggests that mild levity helps reduce acute stress reactions to bad news)
Enemy Within:
While Turing has refrained from sharing the reasons for its sudden (and then decried as unnecessarily disruptive) audit, for obvious info-sec reasons, the subsequent detection of several AGI models (Hydrogen class primarily, but also a more advanced Molybdenum included) having been compromised by the Aliens serves as wakeup call to observers who believed that our control over one of our greatest advantages over the aliens (referring to both metahuman and AI) were unassailable.
Chain of contact analysis revealed that several technicians and non-Turing scientists had harbored sympathies for the Aliens, some going as far as to become saboteurs. In the process of figuring out how they had been able to hide their activities from regular surveillance, it was discovered that metahuman interference was involved.
While legislative efforts to outright ban advocacy for peace or cooperation with the Aliens have not been successful, the researchers (with noted dissent from Banerjee, Malkovich and Ulbrecht), request stricter screening of future candidates, even those subject to draft.
We now raise the very real possibility that Centauri agents, at least in the form of their own AI or mind uploads, have infilirated the Terragen Sphere of Influence.
Readers carrying UN INDIGO or equivalent clearance levels may peruse a list of those arrested or terminated for involvement at [REDACTED].
As of the time of publication, we are unable to say with certainty what proportion of traitors were "true believers" or subject to memetic brainwashing (leaving aside the philosophical debate as to whether that is even a useful schema of categorization).
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Here are further capabilities, some once deemed impossible within the Extended Standard Model of Physics, implicitly or explicity derived from-
The first hint that things had gone sideways was the UN Employee Time Management software on my lace popping up a notification that I had begun receiving payment due to being back on the clock.
Dan walked back, with a younger version of himself in tow, and was about to make introductions before he noticed the perplexed look on my face.
"Bad time?" He asked, as the kid shyly peered out from behind his legs.
"I just got a ping saying I'm apparently working, and getting paid for it. I don't want to get in trouble with UN Auditors, so I'm trying to sort that out" I explained, getting more vexed as the dumber brand of AI responsible for personnel management was being obtuse as to why that was the case.
"Haha, you might want to join us instead, I've never had my wages garnished for something like that." He joked, before stopping as we got got pings.
He looked to me with an expression that mirrored the one on my face. "Hey, did you get just get notified that you've been appointed as a deputy police officer in the New Taipei flotilla? With the cryptographic badge too?"
"Jesus, and there I was thinking I was going crazy. I'm going to try and escalate to-"
At this point, a VTOL, that had been presumably hovering unobtrusively in the background and to which I'd so far paid no heed, made itself moderately more obtrusive by exploding.
It fell out of the sky, trailing smoke and fire, but thanks to the relative sparsity of the underlying ships, hit nothing but open ocean.
Alarm sirens began blaring, and when the New Taipei fleet lived in constant existential terror that their continental cousins would come back to finish the deal, you better believe they had some loud klaxons installed.
Gunfire and further explosions commenced, out of my direct line of sight this time.
The deck was in turmoil, screaming patrons running for jetskis and water scooters, tourists desperately checking for the ships with bomb shelters. I swore I saw some mad bastard swim off on the back of a dolphin, or it might have been the vodka.
One of the human servers ran up to us and was about to open her mouth and ask us to seek cover when Dan and I, in concert, pulled out our virtual badges. She stammered, and then with his assent, began shepherding his family to safety.
"First day on the job eh?" I asked him.
"I'd like to think that we're overqualified. C'mon, let's see what the fuck is going on." I joined him in running over to one of the unmanned taxis that too proved amenable to a flash of our badge.
We sailed off at what I thought was a frankly unsafe speed, though my impressions of the same were colored by being a child in the transitional period when fully self driving vehicles weren't the norm.
We didn't hit anything of note, and the boat pulled up at a small dock attached to a much larger ship, an old crude oil hauler turned into an apartment on the waves. This was where we'd been summoned, a rally point where the so far cryptic messages informing us of our purpose promised that all would be made clear.
To say that I felt that we'd already walked into a crime scene would be understating it, because while the continuing gunfire we'd been chasing was still ahead of us, the two separate clusters of men in this room held onto their weapons like they had few qualms of using them on each other.
On one side of the hastily repurposed meeting room where a group in the colors of the Chinese Metahuman Police, defiantly holding their ground as they were stared down by the bristling Taiwanese officials on the other side. They furled their brow through their transparent visors as I gave them a thumbs up for not shooting quite yet, and walked over to the Taiwanese gang.
Dan wasn't as reflexively mad at them as the locals were, presumably because while the relationship between China and the Californian Republic was cool, it wasn't as frigid as the former's with the Federal US. Adversity made for strange bed fellows, and the two could hold their noses and work together to contain their mutual rival. But he certainly wasn't fond of them either, since his family were refugees themselves.
"Good. The UN are here. Dr. Sen, kindly tell these Mainland scum to fuck off to Beijing before we make them." A bald and muscular man told me. He had his tags on, so I could see he was Mayor Hou Yingwei. The ones backing him were largely veterans of the now officially defunct Taiwanese military, now working as Civil Defense militia.
"I'd like to know what the hell is going on before I make any judgements here, is that alright?" I asked him placatingly, and turned to see what the Chinese delegation said in response.
"Dr. Sen, I can only apologize for the behavior of these irredentists. Would that I could greet you in a more befitting manner, but circumstances must." One of their members, a Major Han Kaicheng said.
"Okay.. Someone mind telling me what's actually going on? " I asked again.
"What's going on? These bastards are violating our micronation's sovereignty, that's what's happening. Fuck them and their 18 generations of ancestors. We're not going to stand for this."
"And why exactly are they doing this? Correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't an attempt at annexation is it?"
"Right, right." Both Major and Mayor looked a little sheepish.
The former spoke up first. "We're here to serve a draft notice to a metahuman living in New "Taipei". Unfortunately, these local yokels leaked it, and the target was spooked in advance. Now look at what you've done." He spat in Yingwei's direction.
"What we've done? Motherfucker, you have no right to be here, and as since he's a citizen of the Taiwanese Government-in-exile, we're legally obligated to-"
"To hell with that old man. We tried to make it easy on you and give you prior notice, unlike your paranoid delusions, we have no desire to annex your glorified fishing village-"
"Then get your thugs out of here now. We are a sovereign micronation fully entitled to-"
"Micronation my unwiped ass, as per the motion filed in the General Assembly, all people of first or second generation descent who-"
"A measure that didn't pass, I might remind you", I attempted to interject but was ignored as a stream of Chinese invective broke out from both ends faster than my lace could translate.
I looked at Dan, who shrugged helplessly in response. They gotten to a frankly incomprehensible argument about the finer points about the legality of repurposing ships initially registered in Taiwan when another explosion shook our ship and startled them to their senses.
"Mind explaining what that's about?" I asked, with no need to yell for once.
They looked at each other with disdain before the Major spoke up first- "That is why the Mayor called you. They stupidly broke secrecy before our collections team could secure the target. And now that his little fleet is going up in flames.."
The Mayor gritted his teeth, but before another slapfight started, I forced myself back into the conversation. "The UN takes breaches of the sovereignty of its member states very seriously, Mayor, and I promise you this will be escalated to the relevant authorities. But right now, can we agree to do what's needed to get Major Kaicheng to leave? I can't imagine you want whatever the hell is going on out there either."
He sighed and shook his head. "No. We're going to have to work together to sort this out, but I promise you lawsuits are coming."
"Alright. Correct me if I'm wrong, but an attempt to simultaneously serve a draft notice to a metahuman of contested citizenship went wrong, and now they're fighting back in the middle of the fleet?"
They both nodded.
"Alright. Are civilians in danger at this moment?"
"All New Taipei ships are fitted with emergency submersible life vessels. Anyone who had even a few minutes of warning made it out safely, or at least to a hardened ship designed as a bomb shelter. But we've lost contact with where the fighting is, so I don't know for sure."
"Thank you. May I presume it's the Metahuman Police who are currently interdiction the suspect?"
"Affirmative. We've even taken more casualties than we needed to, all in a pointless bid to prevent harm to the helpless civilians who needlessly endanger themselves on the high seas. I've already called in reinforcements, but the Mayor has actively fired warning shots from the AA grid even though we've explicitly broadcast peaceful intent."
"Peaceful intent? We know what happened when Chinese aircraft last overflew Taiwan!"
"ENOUGH." I yelled, startling him. "There are lives at stake, please tell me both sides have taken measures to stop more from being lost."
He looked at me unhappily, but clicked his fingers, prompting a display to come to life.
It showed a vessel that had clearly done more than it's fair share of duty as a cruise ship, now steadily sailing away as smaller vessels scrambled to get clear.
"When most of the civilians have evacuated, we ordered the ship's systems to try and get as clear of the fleet as possible while staying in our aerial defense umbrella."
"Finally a smart decision. Now, if you'd just consent to letting our reinforcements board the ship-"
I coughed.
"Alright. Dr. Sen, we asked the locals to call you over because we could use your help. And any others who might be of use too." The Major nodded at Dan.
"I get that. Is this so urgent that you don't feel a need to brief me?"
"No, no, that would be remiss of me. Here-" He took over the display, which glitched and fuzzed for a second. From the Mayor's slightly more annoyed expression, it had been hacked instead of a more polite means of connection.
"This is the target. We're prepping another VTOL, an unarmed one this time-" He glanced at the Mayor-"So take your time to get acquainted. It'll be here within a few minutes if they're being cooperative for once."
A dossier appeared on the screen:
Citizen Hu Junya (Estranged)
Occupation: Applied Metallurgist
Classification: Moon Level (月亮等级) Metallokinetic (with broad spectrum telekinetic powers)
I mentally converted the Chinese power ranking scheme to the newly developed Wanton scale, pegging it to roughly a Class 4.
Projected resistance to draft: 46%
Make that a hundred percent now.
Recommended method for servicing notice: Standard memetic conditioning, emphasize blood ties to relatives in the Mainland and reunited Taiwan. The presence of a staff psychologist at hand is strongly suggested. Avoid the use of force as far as possible since surveillance shows a mentally brittle state and propensity to react poorly to direct recruitment.
That was putting it lightly.
When it detected I'd read it all, it flashed to a high level overview of events before things went south, including snippets of surveillance footage that hadn't been gotten through entirely above board means, if the angry reaction from the Mayor and his staff were any hint. Dan did me a solid and began placating them, fluently switching to Chinese as he did so.
The CMP had infiltrated the flotilla before sending a notification regarding the draft notice, which had presumably been leaked by their less than sympathetic counterparts. Something had tipped off Hu Junya to the presence of the armed military police waiting in the VTOL loitering outside (the metal of their weapons?), resulting in a rather impressive display of telekinetic might as the craft was crumpled and thrown out of the sky as if the invisible hand of an angry god had taken offence to it rising above its station.
I paused for a second and asked the Major a question. "Do you plan to take him alive?"
"Yes, and we will go to all lengths necessary to do so."
I looked back, and now the screen switched to more chaotic footage, all bodycams and internal CCTVs that quickly stopped working in quick succession. From what I could tell, he'd also detected the plain clothes team aboard his ship, that had been preparing whatever measures needed to capture him. Using memetic agents first, in all likelihood, and then kicking down the door second. I wondered if he was among those metahumans with a known resistance to memetic conditioning, and whether that attempt had been what had set him off.
The footage showed an intense gunfight, Hu Junya tearing through the metal internal dividers of the ship as if they were cling wrap. Anything further down the periodic table than argon was grist to his mill. I watched the panicked POV of a CMP officer as a door tore itself off it's hinges, turned sideways, and flew at high speed towards him, fast enough that even its blunt edges bisected the two armed officers shooting ahead of him, and then struck him with an impact that threw him to the corner of the narrow hallway. His view shifted to the floor, unmoving, as a bloody Hu Junya stalked into frame, surrounded by a buzzing cloud that revolved around him that the camera's poor resolution barely resolved into bullets.
Guns exploded in hands, the few fools with metal knives had them stabbed into their own stomach, one woman had her implants ripped out of her skull, to join the floating objects still circling Hu Junya with bits of bloody grey matter still stuck to them.
A pair of screaming civilians ran past him, and he let them go, his face grimly set as he lightly gestured, a pistol wielded by a plainclothes MP turning in his grasp as he struggled to wield it, the panic evident in his face as the trigger moved of its own volition and the weapon discharged itself into his face.
Chains strangled, moving like snakes, old-fashioned eye glasses embedded themselves into skulls. Another officer dangled in the air, lifted up by what was presumably some kind of large metal implant. The next moment, it revealed itself to be a titanium internal leg fixator, visible where it separated with enough force to tear most of his leg off. He was then summarily clubbed to death with it, till his brains ran on the floor.
I scrubbed forward, but in the footage available he didn't show any signs of targeting civilians. Were they his neighbors? Colleagues?
I drew up his old records in my lace. Before Taiwan fell, he'd been an unassuming clockmaker, working for a local company. His wife had been one of the many casualties during the attempted occupation, his son had been studying at a mainland university before he'd been sent to a re-education camp, though he had been eventually discharged and emigrated to the newly opened lunar colonies. He had other kin, both on the island and elsewhere.
I didn't want to apprehend this man. The pain of losing Anjana was fresh in my mind, and I didn't want this man, who had lived an unassuming and productive life, even using his newly discovered powers to work on a local refinery ship, to suffer the same fate.
I didn't feel as if I had any choice in the matter. I could only hope this could be resolved with no further bloodshed.