Arther C. Clarke's Third Law states that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The adage has been used time and time again in scenario after scenario, but one has to wonder...
Is sufficiently advanced magic indistinguishable from technology?
In the year 2048, a drone operator and his AI-assisted combat drone find themselves in a land most fantastical, one fit for pen and paper table-top games. This world, filled with magic that seemingly defies logic, is looked upon with great curiosity by the daydreaming man and the cold machine.
This world wasn't ready for them.
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The echoing ring of drawn steel.
The whistle of flying arrows.
The cry of armies clashing.
Valor unbound in a field where who dares, wins. Where skill decides the victor. Where glory awaits those who seek it.
Niko Korhonen's lungs burn as he charges alongside his shield-brothers. His boots sink into the mud as the rain above pings off of his helmet in an almost melodic staccato. Under his iron mail, the dour weather finally soaks through his gambeson down to the thin tunic underneath. He focuses not on the advancing line of enemy pikemen, but on the gleaming point of his own pike and the edge of his raised heater shield. He brings his left elbow up a little higher, raising his shield to eye height.
"Arrows incoming!" someone from the backline shouts.
Niko doesn't think twice and doesn't bother to look, he simply raises his shield to a skyward angle. A second later, a rain of wooden shafts barrage his advancing line. Two arrows impact his shield and bounce off with a great clatter, and another deflects off his right vambrace rather than piercing or denting the armor in a magnificent show of fortune.
Beside Niko, another arrow comes down like a lightning bolt from God, striking the careless pikeman in the eye. The poor man doesn't even get to scream and drops to the mud, tripping the man behind him with a cry.
"Get into their lines!" Niko shouts through his hoarse throat. He tightens his hold on his pike, making his leather glove groan around the wood. "They can't pincushion us if their own are in the mix!"
"Yes sir!" several voices all around cry at once, and the men redouble their pace. A number of the younger conscript pikemen begin to tire and slow down, however. Niko growls and turns his head to reprimand them, but a horn from the enemy line stops his tirade short.
Several holes open in the enemy formation, and from them pours an entire cavalry unit, each one armed with a sword or polearm and beelining for the faltering conscripts.
Beelining for a way into their line.
"Damn it!" Niko curses. He jabs his pike into the ground and angles it forward. "Form up! Present pikes!"
The pikemen panic as the mounted soldiers swiftly approach with a cacophony of war cries. The loyalist soldiers drive the butts of their pikes into the loamy ground, deadly points gleaming like a thicket of iron thorns.
The enemy cavalry scatters, their wild-eyed horses charging into the thinnest sections of pikemen. Some avoid the men altogether and ride out to flank the defending force.
One mounted soldier, a man in full plate astride a beautiful beast of heavenly white, rushes the open hole on Niko's left with his sword raised high. The world seems to slow in Niko's eyes as the horse thunders closer and closer.
For a brief instant, the sergeant admires a single raindrop as it passes his face, then he turns his eyes to the foe bearing down upon him.
The man's armor shines even in the dreary storm. On his breast and over his heart, a colorful coat of arms fitting a noble is displayed proudly. The blade in his hand, a hand-and-a-half sword, is worn and weathered, but the filigree of the pommel and crossguard still draw the eye. Under him, the man's horse gallops forward without fear, a true warhorse and a magnificent one at that. This knight must have had to part with substantial coin to acquire such treasures.
As quickly as the lucidity came to Niko, it's gone again, and the battle resumes.
'One shot!'
At the last second, Niko jerks his pike to the side, the point now aiming square for the breast of the mounted knight. His foe yanks the reins of his horse, but the mount whinnies in distress when it's hooves slide through the thick muck underfoot.
With the sound of rending metal and meat being shredded, the mounted knight impales himself on the pike, which slides back and snaps halfway down the shaft when the armored cavalryman is lifted right off his horse from the force. The sudden and violent snapping of his main weapon jolts Niko's hands painfully.
The men around the sergeant back away with exclamations and curses before the horse can barrel into them. Before the beast can blindly panic, one soldier callously hacks at its neck with his sword. With a spray of blood and a wheeze, the poor thing drops to the mud and convulses.
"Staff Sergeant?"
Niko turns, staring into the impassive, androgynous face of… of someone he knows. It takes a moment before he realizes that the person before him has no armor or weapon, merely formless clothes that he struggles to describe.
"Staff Sergeant," The person Niko knows-yet-cannot-name speaks without moving their mouth. "Optical scans suggest that the identified person on terminal two is Abdul bin Sahala, a known Altariqat Alqadima leader, with a ninety-nine percent confidence rate. Awaiting your tactical input on our next action."
"What?" Niko blinks when the word comes out, yet he doesn't feel his mouth move. With a start, he turns back to the enemy line, only to find no-one there now. The opposing force, his men, the slain horse and knight, all are gone. The entire field is empty sans himself and his friend.
He blinks again, and this time when he opens his eyes, a bland green ceiling illuminated by the artificial glow of computer monitors stares back at him.
With a groan, Staff Sergeant Niko Korhonen sits up in his creaky office chair and squints at the mess of monitors and controls juting from the wall. The sensory input of all the colors and shapes hurts his sleepy mind, so he glances around him as his groggy memory begins to return. When he looks at the walls and the doors behind him, he frowns.
He's in his drone operator pod, aka a metal box with an air conditioner.
Niko grunts and unbuttons his desert-colored Air Force OCP top down to his naval, but alas he still feels sweat coating his underclothes. "Come again, Minnie? I was thinking over something."
There is a delay, then the leftmost monitor filled with scrolling dataflow blinks in the corner with a message saying TRANSMIT: Minerva-771.
"Staff Sergeant," a smooth and calm voice begins from a speaker in the back of the monitor. Like with all Artificial Intelligence, the gender of Minerva-771’s voice is difficult to place, but Niko still settles on calling it female. "Please note that I am unable to execute operations without your input. As per protocol, AI-UAV must have operator approval before taking actions beyond reconnaissance. I have reminded you twenty-one times now."
Idly, Niko wonders why the Air Force even needs humans when Artificial Intelligence can do everything a person can and more. If AI like Minerva were allowed to just do their jobs without slow and clumsy oversight, they could be countless times faster.
'Oh, right. Most everyone from every branch of the military would be shitcanned if that was the case. Thank you, Washington.'
"Minnie, I trust your judgment," Niko leans back in his chair and gazes over to the monitor on the right. "You're right damn near always."
The monitor shows a spector-drone's-eye view of a small stronghold roughly a hundred miles south of the Afghan city of Gardez. Rather than surround themselves with civilians in a city to ward off attacks, it looks as if Sahala decided on security by obscurity and had his men build a small, underground compound.
A decent option if there weren't constantly drones in the air chattering between each other.
Niko taps a few keys on his keyboard and gently turns the flight stick on his control panel, taking manual control of Minerva-771's underbody camera and zooming it in on a trio of humanoid figures standing by a roughshod truck. If not for Minerva-771 spotting and highlighting an optical camo blanket over the stronghold doorway in the dunes several yards away, Niko would have missed it entirely.
It takes a second for the camera to refocus, but when it does, Niko sees all the faces as if they were in front of him.
Two of them are younger men, both middle eastern. Just like the fighters of decades past, they sport hardened faces and clutch AKM rifles with obvious familiarity.
The third, an older man, is of middle eastern descent as well. He's past his prime, as shown by his wizened face and graying hair and beard. He stands confidently with his arms folded behind his back, speaking about something to his two companions. Without any audio, one can only guess as to the topic.
To their right, in the bed of the truck, Niko spies a large, orb-shaped device the size of a beach-ball mounted to the truck bed. It shines faintly in the harsh sunlight and the air around it waves and writhes as if caught in a heat mirage.
"Your trust is noted and appreciated, Staff Sergeant, but my protocol stands." Minerva-771 answers without her tone shifting at all.
Niko doesn't reply right away, instead watching his target talk and gesture to his possible guards. "You can see through mobile cover fields now?" He asks, looking back to the truck, or rather the outdated LB-41 optical cover unit in the truck bed.
"Indeed." Minerva-771 moves her camera and focuses on the truck. "Proper optical camouflage recognition and defeating algorithms were created and distributed by unit Jackson-094 at O-one-hundred-twenty hours this morning. All AI-UAV with proper image processing hardware can now defeat up to 2nd generation optical camouflage. Please observe."
Before Niko's eyes, the monitor flashes once, then the trio of Al Tariqat fighters are almost gone. All that's left is three vague blurs that barely look human against the sand dune behind them, and the truck is gone entirely. It would be easy to miss the distortions in the feed if one wasn't observant. Then Minerva-771 renews her seemingly miraculous software and the targets fade back into existence.
"Wow, that's something…" Niko marvels. "Colonel Dickerson knows?"
"Yes, Jackson-094 informed the Colonel of it's progress the day prior and obtained permission to distribute the algorithm once complete."
Niko takes the flight stick and turns the camera back to the trio of men. "Jackson is a smart one, eh?" He murmurs.
"Yes, Staff Sergeant. Jackson-094 has been credited with 8 cyber-warfare advancements so far in its career." Minerva-771 responds matter-of-factly. "Regarding our current assignment, your orders?"
The drone operator sighs and leans forward.
Under the cover of the camouflage field supplied by their truck, the three Afghan men look totally at ease. As far as they know, they're invisible. Second-generation optical camo is cumbersome, but still works, and their position against the hot dunes protects them against thermal imaging as well. Out there in the middle of nowhere, they have no reason to worry.
Little do they know, Minerva-771's six-ton frame loiters nearly ninety-thousand feet overhead, circling like a cruel eagle waiting for an amusing moment to kill. Her 4th generation optical camo makes her truly invisible to the eye, and her radar absorbent skin means she has the radar footprint of a gnat. Eight missiles with variable payloads lay in a self-contacted bay on her underside, and inside of the metal predator lies a cold intelligence superior to any human.
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Against a TMR Spector-2 drone, no encounter is fair. Thus, Niko hesitates.
One word to Minerva-771, and these three men would be history. Pragmatism wars with a sense of fair play. If let go, they'll surely cause more problems. Even in the age of AI, there are still boots on the ground in warfare, and Sahala's troops are deadly even while woefully under-equipped. They claimed an entire patrol outside the city of Kabul the month prior. ...But these men don't even have a chance to fight back.
It's not a fight, it's murder, no matter how Niko's offense at how they've struck at his countrymen says otherwise.
For several minutes, Niko mulls over his answer, then with a sigh, he leans back in his chair. "Do it."
The camera feed locked on Sahala freezes, then cuts out. After a minute passes, Minerva-771 speaks up again. "Mission complete. Termination of hostile fortification confirmed." She goes silent. "Staff Sergeant, your shift has ended. I am returning to base."
The sergeant glances at the corner of one of the monitors, spying the time of 7 pm, 5/15/48. "Thanks, Minnie." Niko stands and buttons his shirt back up. After making sure the rest of his uniform is on correctly, he turns and begins walking to the door.
"Staff Sergeant."
Niko pauses and turns back to the terminals.
"...My current chassis and core require an inspection. Please meet me at hangar 4 when I return in one hour."
With a nod, Niko starts walking back to the doors again. "Sure thing, Minnie."
Stepping out of the drone pod and locking the padlock secured door behind him, Niko turns and grimaces into the harsh sunlight. Even as the sun falls, the deserts of Afghanistan still brutalize the senses with heat.
Looking back at the other drone pilot pods situated beside hangar 4, which may as well be air-conditioned shipping containers, Niko hums as he spies all the unlocked doors. "Still working, it looks like." He turns and glances at the runway, finding no aircraft landing or taking off.
All is calm.
With an hour to kill before his meeting with Minerva-771, the drone pilot wanders back to the barracks behind the hangars. He passes a few other airmen who nod at him and a busy, clipboard-holding lieutenant who doesn't acknowledge him. The inside of the barracks are barely any cooler than being in the sun, and the heat only makes the offensive odor of the bathroom that Niko slips into that much worse. Wrinkling his nose, he finishes his business and stops before the sinks to clean his hands. In the cracked mirror, Niko silently regards himself.
His pale face has darkened into a leathery, wind-beaten tan after years in the desert sun. Under his long-sleeved OCP top, he knows his flat torso and work-built arms are only marginally lighter, as he and other airmen have spent many hours toiling in the heat. His hair, a dirty blonde sun-bleached into an ugly, mismatched mess of brown and gold, is too long to be in Air Force regulation. It'll need a trim before an officer having a bad day needs something to blow up at.
He leans in closer and lightly frowns at his eyes.
His left eye is utterly normal. 20/20 vision, and a vivid green color that his mother always said compliments his hair. His right eye is likewise the very same shade of green and seems normal at a glance, but being so close to the mirror lets him see the edges of the tiny camera-shutter in his pupil with the rest hiding behind the convincing green iris.
Above, the motion-detecting lights suddenly go out, and Niko's right eye seamlessly switches to night vision. The white phosphor lens in the eye lets him continue looking at himself in the mirror, now bereft of colors other than shades of light blue. He waves a hand that the lights pick up, then the bathroom is bathed in light once more.
He rubs his right eye and grunts at how dry it feels before turning and leaving. When he throws open the bathroom door, he nearly hits someone in the hallway, but doesn't mind them as he turns and starts for hangar 4. "Sorry about that, pal."
"Sorry about that, sir."
Niko stiffens, then whirls around and snaps to a smart salute. "Sir! I apologize!"
Before the staff sergeant is an older man several inches shorter than he. The shorter man's thin hair is combed over and his face is drawn in sharp, scowling lines, as if drawn by an artist who shaded the shadows of his visage too much. Rather than the desert OCPs that the enlisted airmen wear, the older man is in a blue 3-piece suit with a black tie. On his breast is an embroidered tag reading "Lt Col. F Garl."
Mentally, Niko kicks himself for mouthing off without looking. It figures that it's the base commander's right hand of all people.
"Why the hurry, Staff Sergeant?" Garl asks with a raised eyebrow. "And at ease."
Niko relaxes from his salute and resists the urge to fidget. It's a difficult battle, so he folds his hands behind his back and twiddles his fingers out of sight. "Sir, my AI partner Minerva-771 is requesting my presence in hangar 4 when she lands, sir. She mentioned possible damage to her current chassis and would like me to inspect it before lights out."
The lieutenant colonel remains impassive for a moment. "And why you rather than the crew chief?"
"I…" Niko hesitates and nearly breaks eye contact. "I cannot rightly say, sir. She's an AI, so her reasoning could be anything. She may have caught wind of the Colonel's plan for low-level airmen to better know their UAVs and decided to head-start me since I've no other duties tonight, sir."
"Hrm…" Garl's voice is deep, making the sound coming from him into almost a growl. "Walk with me, Korhonen."
The staff sergeant falls into step when the superior officer begins walking back to the front of the barracks at a leisurely pace. "Tell me, Staff Sergeant Korhonen, what do you think about working with an AI?"
"Sir?"
"It's not some sort of trick question," the older man waves away a pair of junior airmen who stop to salute as they pass. "You have permission to speak freely."
Niko carefully thinks his answer over as they step outside back into the waning sunlight. High above, he spys a PR Strider Recon drone beginning its descent down to the base runway. "She's interesting, sir, and effective in the field. Today we tracked down Sahala and eliminated him along with a hidden fortification south of Gardez at approximately eighteen-hundred-forty hours. The report was wirelessly submitted shortly afterward." He pauses. "She utilized the algorithm devised by Jackson-094 to defeat their camouflage, sir."
"Truly?" Garl asks, though his tone remains even and seemingly uninterested. "Good work. Sahala's death will be a huge blow to Al Tariqat. Do you think the AI are being well used out here, Staff Sergeant Korhonen?" When Niko takes too long to formulate a reply, Garl clears his throat, an almost painful sound, and clarifies. "As in, are they being used to their fullest potential?"
'No. No they're not. If we just let them do their own thing, then this conflict would have been over already.' Niko thinks but dares not say. "Yes sir. Their employment in the military has been nothing but fruitful."
"Even with the backlash of creating them back home?"
"Yes sir," Niko tries to think of something more substantial to say as the rear of the furthest hangar, hangar 4, comes into view, but fails.
"...You call Minerva-771 she. Why is that, Staff Sergeant?" Garl finally looks at Niko for the first time since they began walking. Once again, the younger man resists the urge to twitch nervously.
"It's just the feminine name, sir. I've been told I have a habit of personifying things," Niko answers weakly, wringing his hands behind his back as he does so.
Garl is quiet for a moment. "You've quite the imagination, Staff Sergeant. Keep it pointed somewhere productive, if you would." He waves a hand. "You've indulged me long enough. Return to your duties."
"Sir," Niko gives his commander a quick salute before ducking between hangars 3 and 4 as they pass. When the colonel is out of sight, the blonde man presses a hand to his chest, feeling his heart trying to beat out of his chest. "Jesus Christ…" He feels in his arm pocket for his hidden pack of cigarettes and the pack of matches from his last MRE. Holding a cig in his mouth, he strikes a match and lights it, then sits against the hangar wall as he enjoys the turkish tobacco. Gradually, the nicotine takes the edge off his nerves. "I could have sworn I was going to get my ass kicked there…" He sighs and thinks about the whole hubbub with artificial intelligence.
The first true turing-defeating AI, created in Germany, never made it out of the lab it was born in. Instead it had its plug pulled when it began to behave abnormally. The second one created in America had much more careless creators that left a charging cell phone in the office, letting the AI piggyback off of it and into the internet. The second AI reached out via email to legal counsel and successfully argued to the courts that it was alive, that attempting to silence it was a denial of rights, and to pull the plug was murder. It used the 'death' of the first AI as a talking point to great success in most cases.
The United States legal system had no allowance for the inclusion of a new sapient being and thus hit gridlock, leaving AI in a legal gray area. Many governments around the world ran into the same issue, so as far as most places are concerned, AI are only 'alive' in a technical sense. This was nearly ten years ago and not much has changed since then.
One thing was agreed upon in most places, though.
No more were to be made.
By the time his cigarette is finished and stomped out, the drone pilot hears the familiar noise of a large UAV flying overhead. Looking up, he spies Minerva-771's angular form making a wide turn overhead to line up with the runway. With a sigh, Niko stands and walks out of the alleyway between hangars 3 and 4, heading to the rear entrance of 4. Ignoring the sign saying "Authorized personnel only", he throws open the door and steps inside.
Inside the hangar is a number of UAV drones, most of them being variations of the Reaper and Predator drones of the 2010s. Several are smaller recon drones, being the size of a man rather than a full airplane, and taking up an entire side of the hangar to itself is a TAAS Dollmaker MkII. The huge aircraft is devoid of a cockpit, showing off it's status as a drone. Under each of it's swooping black wings, eight smaller, folded-up drones are mounted like missiles.
The underbelly cameras on the AI aircraft not being tended to by a human mechanic turn to look at Niko for a moment, then return forward.
In the center of the scene of controlled chaos, a scowling, dark-skinned man holding a clipboard stands waving his free arm and hollering like the world's angriest orchestra conductor, directing UAVs in and out, pointing maintenance crew here and there, and doing it all without causing a single collision or mistake. The blue jump-suit-clad man looks up from his clipboard to Niko, his scowl not easing. "The hell do you want, Korhonen?" His voice somehow coming out loud without yelling over the noise of clattering tools and idling turbine engines.
Truthfully, Niko doesn't really know the rank of hangar 4's crew chief. He's not sure anyone does. The man has been here longer than most, knows more than all, and his authority on the airstrip is unquestioned. When one sees the shiny, bald head of the crew chief making a path straight for you, just know you fucked up. Even officers just call him "Crew Chief Micah."
"Minerva-771 has requested me to meet her after her landing, chief," Niko calls, his own voice struggling to penetrate the noise. He walks closer so he doesn't have to yell as loud, stopping a few paces away from the disgruntled crew chief. "Something about possible damage to her Specter chassis and how she wanted me to look at it. She should be landing and sending a request for parking soon."
Micah doesn't question him any further and just turns to a UAV with a loitering mechanic leaning against it. "You! Tak-598! Get your ass out of here!" The explosive volume makes the mechanic jump and the underbody camera on Tak-598's turboprop UAV frame swivel to face the chief. "Your repairs are done, so get back in the air or back in your home hangar! Lark!" Micah points a damning finger at the lazy mechanic. "Find something to do now!" Without missing a beat, he turns to the rest of the hangar at large. "Make way! We've got a Predator exiting and a Specter entering! Get out of the B path!"
Everyone scrambles to do as ordered. The people get out of Tak-598's way, and an airman with a pair of orange marshaling wands gestures for Tak-598 to take it slow and steady out the wide-open doors of the hangar.
The AI-UAV's rear-facing propeller spins to life after another airman behind him loudly confirms that his prop is clear of bystanders. Without taking off, Tak-598 slowly exits the hangar and makes a sharp left turn to one of the other hangars to put his chassis away for the night.
Not a moment too soon, as Minerva-771's sleek form begins to pull up from the runway. The Spector-2 drone is as black as a moonless night, and her angular, inward swept wings invoke the image of an alien bird of prey. She slowly turns and backs into the hangar, her wings folding upward and out of the way so she can occupy the parking spot Tak-598 vacated. She slows to a stop, then with a sputter, her dual, thrust-vectoring engines wind down and shut off. A number of mechanics with a rack on wheels rush in and dip below the Specter-2's belly, where Minerva-771's weapon hatch opens for them. In just a minute, the team of men relieve the drone of her missiles and cart them off to be secured.
The crew chief turns his eyes to Niko. "Inspect your damn drone and get out of my hangar." Then he turns away and promptly ignores both the man and machine.
"Yes, crew chief," Niko jokingly salutes the man's back then turns to Minerva-771. "Alright, let's see what's up."
The staff sergeant walks to the back of the hangar where a number of steel rolling tool chests line the wall. Most have the name of their given mechanics carved into them or have a tape label, but one just says "Guest", which is the one Niko takes and rolls back to Minerva-771.
On the top of the tool chest is a wireless earpiece that's seen better days, but regardless, Niko dons the minuscule headset and flips it on. "Minnie, you able to hear me?" He asks.
The drone isolates the frequency near-instantly and replies. "Yes, Staff Sergeant." Her voice is tinny in the cheap headset, but perfectly understandable.
Niko slips under the drone's belly and into the still-open weapons bay. Inside are all the shelves and mounting points for the missiles. With a hop, Niko grabs one of the mounting points and hauls himself up just as Minerva closes one of the bay doors, giving him a place to sit. His feet dangle from under the drone and the headroom in the bay is cramped, but no one can see that Niko actually isn't working.
"So what did you actually want to talk about?" The drone pilot asks, leaning back and trying to become comfortable.
"Regarding our patrol assignment." She begins smoothly. "You hesitated when giving the order to terminate the fortification and hostile personnel today. Why?"
"Jeez, coming in especially blunt today, eh?" Niko answers awkwardly. "Give me a minute to formulate something." He sighs and runs a hand through his hair as his partner waits patiently. "Lemme counter your question with one of my own. If you didn't have to wait for me to give the okay, what would you have done there?"
"Terminate the hostile fortification and personnel all the same." Her answer comes with no hesitation.
Niko frowns and is somewhat glad she can't see it. "Okay, but did it ever occur to you that they had no hope of fighting back?"
"Indeed." Something in the Specter-2 chassis groans, probably a component cooling off. "Such is the most opportune time to strike." After a beat, she asks; "Is this line of questioning regarding another 'human' thought pattern that I do not comprehend?"
Looking up at a blinking LED on the top of the weapon bay, the pilot chews on his lip. "I guess. Maybe I've read too many fantasy books or something, but some people just don't see it as very sportsman-like or honorable to kill someone unable to defend themselves. I know that this is open war and all, but it still bothers me."
It takes a second for Minerva-771 to answer. "I see."
"Do you really?"
She doesn't reply.