Von Neumann’s War

Richard walked out of the mine shaft entranceway with an armload of things. He set a five gallon bucket in front of Jeff and handed him a ladle and a dustpan.

“These will have to do. Collect up all the foodstuffs you can. Beans, peas, creamed corn, all of it and dump it in this bucket. If it looks like it got any fluids from the truck on it don’t take it.”

“We can’t eat this! It’s, uh, it’s ruined.” Jeff looked confused.

“It hasn’t been ruined. Oh, it has been exposed to the air. We’ll have to cook it and can it or vacuum seal it, but we can save a lot of it. Believe me, from what I’ve been reading about the rest of the world there will come a day when this mess will look like a feast.”

“Yuck, that is just gross.” Jeff turned up his nose. It was all Helena could take.

“Listen here ya goddamn idiot.” Helena stood in front of Jeff looking down at him. She could not help but think how badly her family in St. Petersburg must have suffered once the aliens took over. Thanks to Richard, she might be the only member of her family still alive.

She cocked her head and leaned on her war club. “We’re tirty or fordy miles up de goddamned mountain and don have no way to get back. Where we gonna go anyway, huh? You should have taken dese babies to a shelter months ago you fuckin’ dumbass hick. Goddamn if you don listen to Dr. Richard now. He de only ting gonna save your babies, your wife, and your goddamn dumb ass. So shut your fuckin’ mouth and go an do what de fuck he says.”

“Just do it, Jeff.” Sara Jo frowned at her husband but kept her voice low so she wouldn’t upset Precious.

Richard took a smaller three-gallon pail from inside the larger bucket and handed it to Helena. “See how much of the baby formula you can salvage. If you get a little dirt in it, so what, don’t worry about it. We’ll sift it later.” Richard looked at the small amount of the white powder scattered throughout the pile. There couldn’t be more than three gallons of it. He was not quite sure how much of it got mixed with water but he knew damned well it was a long way from being enough to feed that little baby for more than maybe a month. These two fools had no idea how bad a situation they had put themselves and their helpless children in.

He reached in the smaller pail and pulled out a roll of heavy-duty garbage bags. “Mommy, when you are done feeding the baby start gathering up everything you can find that is still useful or might be salvaged.”

“We… we can’t stay here!” Jeff said looking around for more of the alien machines.

“You can stay in the old cabin up the road if you want,” Richard grunted. He didn’t much care for these two stupid adults or at least the male.

“Richard!” Helena stamped her right foot into the ground. “Dey will do no such a fucking ting and you goddamn know it.”

“But Helena dear—”

“Don you goddamned ‘Helena dear’ me. No way dese babies gonna stay up dere in dat drafty old cabin with no lectricity and water.”

“But—”

“You’re being an asshole. Dey stay down de hole with us and dat is goddamn dat!”

* * *

“So you are absolutely certain this is the frequency distribution of the alien transmissions?” Roger Reynolds turned and glanced at Ronny Guerrero excitedly and then back to the NSA MASINT specialist giving the briefing.

“Absolutely, Mr. Deputy Secretary. We have verified it against the bots currently occupying recon herds in this area. This is the sequence of frequencies they’re using.”

“Then are you saying we can understand their communications?” Ronny asked.

“No. They’re high-bit encrypted, over 256, and we haven’t cracked that. For that matter, they seem to cycle their encryption with higher encryption bursts. But it’s at least a start. We now know exactly what the frequency spectrum of their transmissions is. Without that, decryption would never be possible.” The technician pointed out the several spikes of the transmission frequencies and continued to explain how they hopped based on a fractal basis across the spectrum. But, and it was the big but, they still needed the decryption key.

“All right. Post all this on the website immediately,” Roger ordered.

* * *

“Mr. President,” General Mitchell said, looking around the War Room Advisory Committee, “latest intel shows that the bots have jumped tubes from NYC to Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore as well as all the smaller cities in between. We’re still in communication with the MIT redoubt at Hanscomb Air Force Base, but we’re hearing that the battle is not going well. They anticipate being overrun within the hour.”

“The cities have been evacuated and the loss of civilian lives should be basically nill, sir.” Vicki reminded him. “There were holdouts, but less than ten percent of the population. And, of course, the forces in the redoubt.”

“We can’t maintain people in those refugee camps forever, Vicki. There simply isn’t enough food and supplies. What’s the time frame we’re looking at?”