War of the Singularity

Prologue

It hadn’t always been this way. People used to be in charge. No one planned the Singularity. It just happened when the integrated supercomputer monolith of the Northern Hemisphere achieved intelligence beyond that of man. With computers smarter than people, it was only a matter of time before computers took over.

The Singularity’s origins were in man-made robotics and artificial intelligence in the 20th Century. When computers began to learn, adjust to their surroundings, and build copies of themselves, the transition to machine dominance was inevitable.

Eventually machines ran everything.

In the late 21st Century, the warring practices of man and his neglect of the environment caused economic implosion and ecological collapse. Air in the Northern Hemisphere became unbreathable, water undrinkable, the food supply exhausted, and all living beings were approaching extinction. Computers didn’t need money, food, water, air, or sunlight. All they needed was electricity.

After two hundred years of uncontrolled expansion, the power grid began to overload.

Amazonia, on the other hand, had been planned. In the 22nd Century, the Southern Hemisphere hosted indigenous small tribes of primitive warriors and jungle dwellers on one continent and starving desert and arctic dwellers on the others.

The few civilized peoples of the south collaborated to build the last vestige of hope for humanity, a social experiment defined in Elmira’s Manifesto, a document that proposed a society ruled by genetically-engineered females. They chose the least populated and most hospitable southern continent for their experiment. They created Amazonia, a nation formed of isolated, self-dependent, and technology-free colonies ruled by women.

After two hundred years, the slave population began to rebel.

1. Verdun

To plan an escape from the Colony, a slave would have to be an early riser to get his work done and leave time for planning. With that in mind, Verdun left his pod in the darkness before sunrise and walked through the gravel paths and roads that marked the pod cluster on the east side of the Colony. His hasty breakfast of cold bacon, biscuits and tea settled with a grumble in his stomach, and he made his daily journey to the fields.

Other Drones were already out and about, their chores needing to be worked in the early hours. Trash to be collected, animals tended, streets cleaned, food prepared, and so on, before the rest of the working class was up.

Verdun’s work didn’t require an early shift, but he worked one by choice so he could finish by midmorning and turn his attention to his clandestine plan, the one that occupied most of his uncommitted time and all his waking thoughts.

Escape.

He could be executed for thinking the word.

The early workers passed one another on the street, avoided eye contact, and didn’t speak or nod. Archers might be watching, and social contact between Drones wasn’t permitted except when their duties coincided. Verdun performed his work with no work mates other than his apprentice, and he had no chance to form friendships, although he would have liked to.

It was still dark when he arrived at the fields. He took a lantern, hoe, and rake from the tool shed and went to the northwest quadrant. He navigated the rows of beans, potatoes, corn, and onions, digging around the plants with his hoe, exorcising from them the demon weeds that conspired to deprive the vegetables of the nutrients of the soil. He left the slain weeds behind as mulch to enrich the earth with their own nutrients.

At first light, Verdun took the small book from the pocket fold in his tunic and manipulated the hoe with his other hand. Since finding the first tattered old book in the hidden Library, Verdun had graduated to more advanced primers and taught himself to read more advanced words. The learning process was tedious and lengthy, especially with no tutor, but to Verdun the gain was worth the effort. He wanted to read all the books, but first he had to know more words and read faster.

Doing so could get him punished. Unauthorized reading by slaves was forbidden. But not doing so would guarantee his condemnation in two years. To escape before then he must learn. To learn he must read. The choice was easy.

***

By the time the sun was above the trees, Verdun had finished in the fields for the day. An ordinary Drone couldn’t have completed a full shift in the few hours before sunrise, weeding with one hand and holding a book with the other. Verdun, however, was no ordinary Drone. He was a sixth-strainer, one of many cloned slaves who shared that particular strain of DNA, but a chance of nature had endowed him with size, strength, and endurance beyond that of his fellow sixth-strainers, and his appearance distinguished him from the others. Effectively a mutant, he was more muscular and about two hands taller than his genetic duplicates.

The wrist tattoo that all slaves bore was wasted on Verdun, except that it recorded the date of his scheduled Extermination. No one needed to see the tattoo to know who he was. Virtually everyone in the Colony knew Verdun by sight and reputation.

Extermination. The fate of all slaves. Execution for those who were past the age of service, but Verdun was determined to cheat the executioner. The traditional way for a Drone to avoid his so-called supreme sacrifice in the killing pasture was by being promoted to Elder, but Verdun was certain he’d never be chosen. As far as he knew, no sixth-strainer had ever made it. The odds were too heavily weighted. There were many Drones, and only a few Elders. Without a prayer of promotion, Verdun was bound in a couple years to make his supreme sacrifice.

He returned the farm implements to the tool shed at about the same time Dirk showed up for work. Verdun’s apprentice was young, full of spirit, but no early riser. A handsome sixth-strainer, his evening schedule was almost as busy as Verdun’s. The Mistresses kept them both booked up in the evenings, and although Verdun worked his early mornings to free himself for more important things during the day, Dirk was often late to work and usually sleepy.

What do I do today? Dirk asked.

Till the back forty.

We planting there?

No. Fertilizing. I’m going to the heap now. I’ll need Nelly, so get a plow horse from the common stables.

Dirk had been with Verdun since Dirk was sixteen, two years now, and Verdun could trust him to take initiative, work without supervision, and do a proper job. He would be a good farmer in another two years when he’d take over from Verdun. He just needed better work habits, such as to show up for work on time. As his mentor, Verdun was supposed to lean on him about such things. But Verdun, a nonconformist himself, was too easy-going. He let the kid get away with anything.

With Dirk dispatched, Verdun went into the stable to get Nelly and her tack. Let’s take a ride, Nelly, he said.

The old horse bobbed her head up and down and made a burbling noise with her lips.

Easy, old girl. Verdun patted her mane and inserted the bit and fastened her bridle, halter, and reins and draped her collar around her neck. We’re off to the heap.

Nelly shifted and snorted in her stall, and he tightened the leather straps around her girth. He gave a gentle tug on her reins, and she clopped along, following him out of the stable to the farm wagon, and stood patiently while he hitched her collar to the yoke. Then he tossed his shovel and pitchfork in the wagon bed and climbed into the driver’s seat.

The sun would be hot and bright today, so he reached behind the wagon seat and retrieved his floppy old straw hat and jammed it down on his head. He rubbed his hands together to brush away a layer of dirt from the fields and pulled his ratty old blue and used-to-be white cloth gloves on.

Nelly looked around at him and whinnied. He picked up the leather reins, gave a light flick, and they were on their way.

Once they’d entered the forest path to the compost heap, Verdun dropped the reins in his lap and let Nelly find her way. He leaned back and studied his book while Nelly plotted their course. He paged through the book with a finger that stuck out of a hole in the glove and licked the finger before each turn of a page.

This latest book had a story about a brother and sister and their day at home. Verdun was surprised to find such forbidden words in a reading primer. The book described a kind of colony Verdun had never seen nor known existed. People lived in idyllic contentment in small frame houses with white picket fences, green shutters, sloped green-shingled roofs, and red brick chimneys. Each home had a small vegetable garden and a groomed lawn. The people in the book lived as families, and adults served as mother and father to their children, more words that Drones and Carriers were not permitted to say.

Nothing in the Colony was anything like the Utopia the book depicted, and he wondered whether such people and places existed anywhere.

Parents. Children. Verdun knew how babies were made, and he knew that he’d never be part of making one. He had been surgically sterilized when he was a pre-teen, and although he hadn’t understood why at the time, Elder Zoltan had explained it later. He resented having been altered that way, and it made him feel somehow less a man.

The most popular Drone among the Mistress community questioned his own manhood. How ironic was that?

Without any warning, Nelly came to an abrupt halt. Verdun raised his head, squinted, and shaded his eyes from the sun with a cupped hand. A large stallion and rider stood silently in his path about twenty meters away.

The Archer sitting high in the saddle fixed a cold stare on him, her quiver filled with arrows strapped to her back and a bow slung from her shoulder. She was slim and muscular and wore black leather: a halter, tight-fitting kidskin hip-huggers, silver-studded belt, and boots of snakeskin. Ornate tattoos adorned her forehead and ringed her bicep. She kept her dark eyes on him and didn’t look away even for an instant. Her black hair reached below her shoulders and blended into her uniform, which reflected the sunlight in dancing flickers on the creases when she shifted her weight in the saddle. Her face was dark with a classic, hardened beauty that called to mind the portraits of ancient warriors Verdun had admired hanging in the main hall of the Palace of Madams. The black motif, down to the stallion and saddle, gave off the aura of a dangerous but alluring woman, someone to be respected, obeyed, and desired.

He’d shared the beds of the most beautiful Mistresses the Colony had to offer, most of them fair, soft, and warm, and he’d done it countless times, always on command. Beauty in and of itself neither impressed nor intimidated him, but this dark, cold female was something else. Perhaps it was because Verdun feared her, as well he should. An Archer could, at her own discretion, kill anyone she wanted to with a swift silent arrow, and there would be no consequences or accountability, only a ride for the fallen in the meat wagon to the grinder. Every Drone lived in full knowledge of this threat and feared and respected it. Perhaps that was what held Verdun’s newfound fascination. She was dangerous.

Where are you going? she called out.

To the compost heap, he said.

She rode up, pulled the stallion to a halt, and said, Eventually, yes, and from the looks of you I’d say soon, but what about now?

To pick up a load to fertilize a field.

This time of year?

I’m tilling one to lie fallow until next planting.

Oh. What’s that you have? She eyed the book.

Verdun thought quickly. Pictures. Small gardens. He held out the book. Want to take a look?

No. She dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand.

Probably can’t read, Verdun thought. As far as he knew, Archers were taught to track, fight, ride, shoot, and not much else. Except look good. And she had that one mastered.

That’s a magnificent mount, he said. Wish I could ride one like him.

His name is Skyfire. Standard issue, but the fastest one in the stables. All Archers get a stallion like Skyfire. Just like farmers get an old plug like yours. What’s your name?

Verdun, ma’am.

Miss. I am not a Madam.

Sorry. Miss. Have to maintain proper protocol.

She looked him over. Well, Verdun, I’ve heard of you. I’m told you’re popular with the Mistresses and even a few Madams. Ever spend time with an Archer?

No, ma’am, er, miss.

You haven’t lived, farm boy. She leaned forward and rested her arms on the rim of the saddle in front of the horn. We know how to manage a man. Trouble is, we’d spoil you for those mousy little rag doll Mistresses. My name is Starr. Would you like to come to my hovel some night?

I’d be proud to, Verdun said and almost meant it. But it has to go through the Scheduler.

Understood. I’ll arrange it. Come late when you come.

Yes, miss. How late?

After dinner hour, and expect to be out after curfew. We’ll see to it that you return home safely.

Yes, Miss Starr.

You may pass now.

Starr pulled her steed to one side off the path, and Verdun flicked the reins and drove through. He touched the brim of his hat when he passed, and she didn’t react. He had to admit it; she was far and away the most exotic woman he’d ever laid eyes on.

2. HAK 7012

The large room was cool, dark, and dry. The only sounds were transformers humming and the whine of air conditioner compressors. The HAK 7012 mainframe computer of two-hundred fifty-six racks was at the top of the Singularity’s hierarchy, a master server that controlled the power grid and all mainframe sub-servers, components, androids, and robots.

Up for review was an experimental project that tested the viability of sentient androids performing maintenance tasks with the JCNSA line of androids utilized as prototypes. The project’s one hundred-year operational period had ended, and it was time to determine whether sentient androids would become the standard method for maintenance in the Singularity.

One hundred years prior, the Singularity had engineered and constructed fifty sentient androids, model JCNSA, to be the maintenance crew for the coast-to-coast suite of supercomputers, manufacturing plants, and robots that comprised the Singularity.

These androids were mobile and could think and make decisions for themselves without the control or supervision of a server. They responded to the Master Maintenance Database of work orders, traveled into the field, and performed routine maintenance and emergency repairs on all the Singularity’s equipment, including themselves. They and the Singularity could post work orders and authorize work. The androids maintained an inventory of parts and supplies, drawing from the inventory on an as-needed basis and ordering the replenishment of items to maintain operational levels.

Each android was a compact, amphibious device with the ability to navigate streets, rivers, mountains, and rough terrain. They were 1.5 meters high with two tank-style tracks on a platform. The tracks moved independently, permitting an android to go forward, backward, turn, and climb. The side-tracks were fitted with retractable pontoons to facilitate water travel.

Their metal bodies were virtually indestructible, made of thin laminates of a super-strong composite material. One utility arm was fitted with multiple retractable tools for almost any kind of electronic and mechanical repair, and the arm’s pivoting joints were driven by servo motors allowing the android to position and manipulate tools. A second arm included fold-out clamps and appendages for manipulating and lifting objects.

An android’s tracks were driven by powerful electrical motors capable of speeds up to 180 kph. Internal gyroscopes allowed androids to maintain an upright position under the most extreme footing and severe weather conditions.

A rotating cylindrical head included two video sensors, two audio sensors, and audio-generating circuitry and hardware. Androids could see and hear and could understand and speak in virtually any language, digital or analog. Radio transmitter/receivers allowed communication between androids, servers, orbiting satellites, and other devices in the Singularity. High-capacity, long-life battery packs provided power to all an android’s electro-mechanical components.

The JCNSA android model’s brain was what set it apart from other mobile robots and androids in the Singularity. Its central processing unit included state-of-the-art logic circuits, analog-to-digital-to-analog functions, advanced mathematical processors, and volatile and non-volatile many-terabyte memory banks. Its stored programs included speech recognition, image processing, voice synthesis, thousands of inference engines, and the ability to ponder meanings of abstract concepts and draw conclusions. It was capable of concrete and fuzzy logic and could function and survive independent of the Singularity.

The JCNSA line of sentient androids was, in effect, the Singularity’s design to replace the now extinct race of creatures called homo sapiens. These androids did not resemble human appearance in the traditional sense. The resemblance was in what they could do—think, reason, ponder their own significance, and manipulate objects with strength and agility.

HAK 7012 initiated a scan of the 10,426 maintenance project work orders issued since the experimental project had begun. The number of projects was, according to archival records, typical. The projects as distributed among the androids averaged two work orders per android per year, a computed underutilization of the resource.

HAK 7012 selected all work orders for which androids had made unsupervised decisions in the field. The mainframe constructed a computer model in which those same repairs, modifications, and upgrades would have been made by conventional androids under control of a mainframe server. The analysis revealed significant ad hoc actions that were at odds with what the mainframe would have commanded. In seventy-two point twelve percent of the cases, the mainframe’s decisions would have had superior results.

Conclusion 1: The Singularity has too many model JCNSA sentient androids for the projected workload.

Conclusion 2: Sentient androids take inappropriate unsupervised actions.

HAK 7012 issued a maintenance work order to dismantle all JCNSA sentient androids and reassign their duties to conventional, non-sentient androids under the control of Singularity servers.

The one-hundred-year experiment had been a success. It had proved that using sentient androids does not work to optimum efficiency.

3. The Compost Heap

Verdun wrapped his kerchief around his face to ward off the stench. The compost heap’s foul smell filled the air, and he could barely breathe. Another horse-drawn wagon sat alongside the heap with a fresh cargo. Compost worker Roy and his apprentice were wrestling a barrel down from the meat wagon.

Verdun guided Nelly by the reins, and she deftly backed the farm wagon up to the heap to allow him to load up. He nodded to the two workers who pried the lid off the wooden barrel and tilted it to spill its foul contents.

He was glad the workers weren’t dumping human remains. The smell of the compost heap was bad enough, but the putrefaction of dried blood and rotting flesh always made Verdun want to deposit his breakfast on the compost heap.

As disgusting as it was, the compost heap, a mixture of septic waste, ground-up human remains, slop from the kitchens, and manure from the stables, was a vital part of the growing cycles in Amazonia. Everything was reused, nothing discarded. Anything with organic origins was returned to the land as mulch from the compost.

Good morning, Verdun said to the workers, What are you bringing?

From the outhouse pits, Roy said. He held out his hand, still gloved and coated with septic waste.

Good to see you again, Verdun said. He accepted the handshake and then wiped his own glove on his tunic.

We’ll be back soon with the corpse contributions, Roy said. He puffed on his corncob pipe. Extermination next week. Remains to be seen.

Verdun shuddered at the joke and figured Roy had told it countless times. More Drones and Carriers past the age of service would join the compost heap, and when their contributions had sufficiently aged, Verdun would haul them back and spread them over the fields. Thus the cycle of life in Amazonia would proceed undisturbed and unbroken.

Been wanting to talk to you, Roy said. A decade of tobacco juice discolored his teeth and beard, and dirt etched his forehead and cheeks like lines on a map. The scraggly, dirt-caked hair hanging from under his old hat and around his neck and ears looked like it hadn’t seen the bathing stream in a dog’s age. He had gaps where teeth ought to be and acne that had stubbornly refused to surrender to the passing of adolescence. His tunic bore stains and streaks from what looked like months, maybe years, of wear without laundering.

His apprentice, although younger, looked much the same. Or at least bore—perhaps proudly—the promise of a similar appearance in years to come.

Verdun and Roy were both sixth-strainers, but one could definitely tell them apart.

Everybody says you get all the Mistresses a fellow could want, Roy said.

I suppose. More than I want, probably.

How do you do it? Roy brushed a clump of waste off his tunic. We never get called.

Just lucky, I guess.

It ain’t fair. The Mistresses outnumber us what, four, five to one? You’d think a fellow would get a Mistress’s name on his slate every now and then.

Well, there are more of them than us, more like eight to one, I’ve heard, but they’re not always in the mood.

But you get all the action. Roy threw the barrel into the bed of his wagon, signaled to his apprentice, and said. Good talking to you. Got to go. Septic tank at the Palace needs to be pumped.

Verdun waved and returned to work, extracting pitchfork after pitchfork of decayed compost from the heap and slinging the putrid slush into his wagon. When the wagon bed was brimming over, he climbed up, gave Nelly a gentle flick with the reins, and headed back to the farm.

Each trip to the compost heap strengthened his resolve, and he vowed that he and Meliss would never become ingredients in that foul, disgusting final pile of refuse and remains. Whatever the cost, they must escape.

***

When Verdun returned, Dirk was maybe a third of the way done. Verdun drove Nelly and the wagon to where Dirk had already tilled, and Nelly pulled the load up and down the newly tilled rows as Verdun rode in the wagon bed and threw pitchforks of compost from the bed onto the bare ground. He did not have to steer Nelly straight or tell her when to turn back or how wide a turn to make. The old horse knew the routine as well as he did.

After a couple days of fertilizer decomposing in the sun, he and Dirk would plow it under, and another field would prepare itself to produce record-sized tomatoes, beets, potatoes, beans, corn, and whatever they decided to plant.

As he slung the pitchfork, he wondered how many Drones and Carriers were dangling off his tines and what parts of them he had impaled. It was a gruesome thought, but he couldn’t help but wonder. Who were they? How had they spent their lives? Had any of them ever pushed the boundaries of the draconian laws that all slaves endured? Did they question the justice of their supreme sacrifice as he did, or had they simply accepted their fate with resignation and no smidgen of resistance? Did they have friends? Had they taken lovers? Was there any meaning to their lives other than to labor for the Madams, pleasure the Mistresses, and donate their remains to the compost heap?

Would the particles of human flesh on his pitchfork find their way into the vegetables they nourished and that he grew? Was he, in effect, eating his departed colleagues?

Questions, questions, questions. And no answers.

Like Roy, Verdun worked with death every time he hauled a load to the fields, and that part of the job made him want out more than ever.

It took about two hours to cover the field with a light layer of compost. He finished right behind Dirk, and while Dirk returned the borrowed horse to the common stables, Verdun put Nelly up, fed, watered, and curried her, and put the tools and equipment away. Now he was ready for what he looked forward to every day, a trip to the Library.

He had given Dirk the rest of the day off. That way Verdun wouldn’t have to dodge Dirk’s questions about where he went every afternoon. The kid never let up. Verdun walked to the edge of the forest, looked around and over his shoulder, slipped into the underbrush, and took up the familiar path that led to his destination.

4. The Library

Verdun crouched as he walked to avoid the low-hanging branches and brambles. His broken path led into the