Von Neumann’s War

“Hell, give us transporters and antigravity just to see what happens.” Roger sort of smiled while at the same time looking disappointed. “Hey, how about adding power armor like in Starship Troopers or the veritech fighters, hovertanks, and cyclones in Robotech.”

“I’ll get right to it.”

“Oh, by the way, Alice Pike called me Saturday night with an interesting bit of information. Apparently John Fisher’s daughter strikes again.”

“Refresh my memory… John Fisher’s daughter?” Alan asked.

“You know, she’s the thirteen year old amateur astronomer who captured the images of Mars with her eight-inch telescope — the ones that we’re putting in the final report to Ronny.”

“I didn’t realize that was John’s daughter. How about that?” Alan said. “Apple didn’t fall too far, huh?”

“Well, like I said, she’s made another unwitting contribution to the Neighborhood Watch.” Roger said.

“How so?”

“I didn’t realize this, but John and Alice have known each other for years and their daughters go to the same school together. It appears that John’s daughter has gotten Alice’s daughter watching sci-fi and cartoons. Anyway, Alice and her daughter watched an episode of the cartoon called Justice League Unlimited this weekend. Alice said that we needed to see that episode.”

“Really? JLU? I’ve seen commercials for that, but I haven’t had time to watch it,” Alan said. “Did she say what the episode was about?”

“Yeah, she did.”

“Well?”

“Von Neumann probes attacking Earth.”

* * *

“What’d ya mean that nothing helps?” Alan Davis just could not believe that the combination of powered armor suits, supercyber weapons, SuperCrest (as they had called the alien chem-bio agent as a joke on Roger), ultrahigh bandwidth communications, and even through-the-Earth transporters were not enough to beat the simulated alien red forces. After a month of modeling, no blue force winning scenario had been modeled.

“Well, watch the big screen and you can see the results for yourself,” the programmer from the CASTFOREM simulation group explained. “We used D.C., Atlanta, L.A., New York City, and Seattle as the central points of attack and had the red forces spread radially outward from there as blue forces were depleted. Now, we did have to assume a continuous supply of red forces from space.” The software engineer tapped a few keys and nodded to the screen.

The big screen on the wall of the War Room displayed a map of the United States with multiple blue forces gathered at scenario battle theaters scattered across the country. A tiny red dot appeared at each of the cities mentioned and they began growing into red blotches that oozed outward. As more and more red began to spread across the map, engulfing the blue forces, a window on the side displayed a tally of casualties and capabilities losses. The numbers were staggering: in the tens of millions and growing each second.

“This even uses the transporters, right?” Alan asked.

“Right. You see here that just about a year after the initial attacks begin, the war is over. Red forces win and spread to the rest of the world, pretty much no matter what miracles we use.”

“There has got to be a way to win this thing.” Alan scratched his head while he stared at the big screen.

“Sure there is,” the engineer said, shrugging. “It was obvious. You didn’t ask for the scenario, but I ran it anyway.”

“Don’t keep me hanging,” Alan replied.

“You have to cut off their infinite resupply of troops from space.”

“Now how the hell are we gonna do that?” Alan asked with a frown. “Where is Superman when you need him?”

“Doing it with Lois Lane?”

* * *

“Mr. President, every war game we’ve run so far says that we cannot win an all-out invasion,” Ronny Guerrero explained to the President and his senior staff.

“You mean your boys down in Alabama have come up with no brilliant ways to beat this thing?” the NSA asked.

“Yes, ma’am, and as I understand it, nobody at the Pentagon has come up with anything either. The suggestions of the Neighborhood Watch team is that we need a larger all-out defense development effort to determine if there are possible solutions available.” Dr. Guerrero paused to measure the President’s reaction.

“You mean something big, like the Manhattan Project, don’t you?” he asked.

“Well, sir, I think it would have to be bigger than that and Star Wars and Neighborhood Watch combined,” Ronny said trying to make no facial expression, but it was hard for him to hide the grimace.

“Well, keep moving ahead at the level of efforts you have now and add a little to have your team figure out how to set a program like that up. But we’ll wait until we get the recon from Mars before we embark on such a mammoth economic drain. Who knows how that would affect the economy right now?” the President replied.