Von Neumann’s War

“Well, yes I guess so. They would need the blueprints though. The only blueprint the one we caught has is for building a copy of itself.” Richard took another sip of the coffee.

“Well, why don you make de goddamn ting make copies of itself and tell it to go eat all its fuckin’ buddies?” Helena said, angry at the bots.

“Well, the government thought of that, but they don’t know how to reprogram the… Hey that’s it!” Richard finished his coffee. “I think we could do that! Helena you are a genius.”

“Da. And pretty goddamn goodlookin’ too.” She kissed him on the cheek, wrinkling her nose as his beard tickled it, and stood up. “You come to de goddamn bed every now and a fuckin’ den an’ I’ll show you. But take a shower first. You stink.”

Richard took the subtle hint, took a shower and then joined her in bed. But he didn’t sleep. Helena made love to him passionately and like a woman who doesn’t see the man she loves as often as she would like. They lay silently in their bed for a few moments after and Helena drifted happily off to sleep. Once Richard was certain she was sleeping soundly, he eased himself out of bed, pulled up his shorts, and slipped out of their bedchamber, through the main shaft living room, and back to his laboratory. He tapped the computer on and booted up the work he had been looking at before.

“Now let me see. How would you wipe the mind of the bot and change its programming… hmmm? You will be mine, little robots, for I am very clever and you are not.”

* * *

“We just got word from Atlanta,” General Riggs said as Roger walked into the command center. “Last word, that is. Tech’s redoubt put in a last call and then went off the air. The laser station on Stone Mountain was still in operation, but they expected to get overwhelmed shortly. And lidar reports that the swarm is already twinning. One group seems to be headed our way.”

Roger nodded and thought about the defenses. Huntsville was the first redoubt to be hit that had everything that had been envisioned. They didn’t have as much of everything as he would have liked, and not all of it was produced within the redoubt, but they were the first redoubt to have a chance of holding out.

“Your transport is spooling up at the field,” Riggs continued. “You’d better hurry.”

“What?” Roger replied, confused by the sudden, to him, nonsequitur. “Like hell. Huntsville’s my home. And my team came up with most of the defenses. I’ll get Alice and the rest out of here — their designated retreat is Denver — but I’m staying.”

“Like hell, as you said,” Riggs replied. “You’re the guy who runs everything. You should have been in Cheyenne days ago.”

“Too bad,” Roger replied. “You can’t order me to leave and by the time you could get ahold of the SecDef it’d be too late. Get the rest out; I’m a stayin’. Besides, I want to see how it all works.”

“Oh, hell,” the general said, shrugging. “Have it your way; I’ve got a war to run.”

* * *

“What the hell are you doing here?” Roger asked as he entered his own “command center.”

Traci spun around in her chair and grinned, shrugging one shoulder as if to say “What are you gonna do?”

“I made sure everybody was on the transport and then… opted out,” she said. “So did Alan and Tom. They said they’d be down in a minute.”

The underground bunker had been highly modified since the first time they sheltered in it. The outer doors were now nonmetallic. Some were carbon composite but most were thick wood assembled with glue and dowels. Even the hinges and locks were composites. The bunker had loads of communications links but even those were nonmetallic fiber-optic cables. The rooms had been upgraded as well and the “command center” for the Neighborhood Watch group was more than comfortable. There were two fold-out couches, recliners and three computer station chairs to control the bank of nine plasma screens on one wall. Currently they were showing views from remote pickups on Monte Sano Mountain, downtown Huntsville, the airfield and Weeden Mountain, which directly overlooked the arsenal, as well as lidar data from the surrounding area.

“They’re almost to Fort Payne,” Traci continued, naming a town halfway between Atlanta and Huntsville in a direct line. “Another group just dropped on Chattanooga.”

“Bull should be rolling,” Roger said, taking a seat at one of the station chairs and toggling for a different view of the airfield. Sure enough, a flight of the new Goshawk composite fighters was rolling out of their bunker. “Go for it, Bull.”

“I’m sure they’ll have fun,” Traci said, toggling a different view from Monte Sano Mountain. The high ridge was directly to the east of Huntsville and had a long view of the area between Huntsville and Atlanta. Faint on the horizon was what looked like a large cloud of birds. “And so it starts.”

* * *