Von Neumann’s War

“Well, more than two-thirds of the world has been eaten by alien machines, most all phones are out, all telecommunications is out, but the damned Internet is still clicking away. There’s probably still plenty of porn sites available.” The President shrugged. “That damned Al Gore was brilliant. All those algorithms.”

“Uh, right,” Mitchell was, almost, sure that was the President’s attempt at a joke. “This is actually the type of disaster that Dr. Licklider had in mind when he started the ARPANET concept back in 1962.”

“He expected alien invasion?” The President raised an eyebrow.

“Uh, no sir, or at least not to my knowledge he didn’t. I meant a massive global scale war that would knock out comms around the world. The ARPANET was to enable communications between various shelters and redoubt locations in the event that the Cold War ever got hot.”

The President considered the general for a moment and the Chairman realized that his leg had been pulled. At least, he thought it had. Sometimes the President’s sense of humor, and it could be quite black, was so dry that even his closest friends weren’t sure if he was joking.

“What kind of interesting data has Dr. Licklider provided us, Kevin?” the President asked. He spent most of his time in the War Room nowadays. Planning, hoping, and praying that somebody would figure out a way to stop these damned menacing alien robots. So far, the Americas and Australia were about all that was left of the world, but nobody expected that to last much longer.

“Well, as you see the red dots scattered across the country sir, these are bot sightings or incidents.”

“What do you mean?”

“In more than a thousand different locations, there have been boomerangs either sighted flying overhead, wandering through the terrain, or actually attacking and acquiring metal. One incident that was reported on the Internet to a radio show claims that his pickup truck was devoured by a swarm of bots leaving nothing behind but the plastic, vinyl, and rubber parts. There are several other similar cases.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“From the report we just received from the NSA it appears that the first incident was reported about three days ago, and the sightings have picked up nonlinearly.” Mitchell flipped the screen to a graph of the bot sighting frequency versus date.

“What does this mean, Kevin?” The President didn’t like the sound of this. A chill ran up and down his spine and his skin began to crawl.

“They’re doing just like we would do before an attack sir. I think this is reconnaissance.”

* * *

“No shit it’s fricking recon,” Gries responded to Roger after he read the report to him. “I don’t need a brain the size of Chicago to figure that one out. We recon them, they recon us. The side with the big battalions still wins.”

“Ronny agrees also. We’re getting close to an all-out attack from the bots… and—”

“We’re not any closer to figuring out how to beat ’em!” Shane finished Roger’s sentence for him.

“Goddamnit! Goddamnit! Goddamnit!” Roger pounded his fist on his desk and then kicked his trash can across the office.

Chapter 21

“How in the hell did you get these things here?” Colonel Matthew “Bull” Ridley ran his fingers across the empennage of the sleek composite aircraft in front of him and whistled. “Nice.”

“Yeah, I thought the damned bots were taking out all air traffic globally now.” Sergeant Cady said looking at Alan and Dr. John Fisher, who were standing beside the squadron of sleek swept-wing and forward canard aircraft. Both Alan and John were looking like an opossum with a certified north Alabama shit-eating grin.

“The airframes and control systems were built by Scaled Composites out in the Mojave. The engines were delivered there and the aircraft were assembled and then flown here,” John said.

“Yeah, but why didn’t the bots eat them?” Gries asked.

“Magic?” Belgian RAF Flight-Lieutenant and Bull’s right hand Rene Lejeune asked and shrugged his shoulders. “Luck?”

“Actually, y’all can blame the sergeant major there.” Alan grinned and nodded to Top.

“No sir. I had nothing to do with such black magic and evil wizardry,” Cady asserted.

“Well, Top, you remember talking about that ceramic car engine you saw on television back when I showed you the ceramic jet-propelled bullets for the M-240B?” Alan asked Top.

“Vaguely, Alan. I think that part of my memory got frostbitten in Greenland.”