Embers After Flames, Chapter 6.7

6.7

+++

“- and that’s the short of it.” I finished explaining.

We were in rare form, today. Every AC Pilot of the RLF was, for once, not scattered to the winds, leaving us all free to have a meeting.

The room was a comfortable one; a low table surrounded by couches and chairs, a large screen on the wall, a tray of snacks and drinks that Dunham had prepared for the evening. Things were quiet, and as far as either myself or Flatwell could tell, there’d be nothing to stop the get-together.

If something dared to take away from this special day, I was going to drop the C-Spider on the problem.

“Gotta say, that’s pretty terrifying.” Dunham spoke, twisting the cap of his bottle off. He wasted no time in taking a swig, demonstrating absolutely no issue or hesitation in drinking alcohol potent enough to strip paint.

His ‘special brew’, he called it. It was about the only thing I’d ever seen which had been able to reliably knock even an Augmented Human on their ass. Dunham was over two meters tall and built like a brick shithouse, by far the largest of the RLF pilots, and he regularly went through enough of it to kill other men. His liver survived on sheer spite alone, it seemed.

“Just... going unnoticed for so long, you know?” He finished, after a moment.

“Literal centuries of experience.” Flatwell sighed, pouring his own drink into an ice-cube filled glass. He’d be nursing two or three cups over the entire night, preferring the atmosphere more than the alcohol. When he was done, he passed the bottle to Freddie. “I have no doubt that people have figured it out over the years- they just would have been discredited or silenced.”

“The fact that ALLMIND was willing to engage at all is surprising.” Dolmayan spoke, accepting a cup from Freddie as he did. “Several centuries is a long time to form habits.”

“Rubicon is a place of limitless possibility.” Freddie echoed Dolmayan’s own words, leaving the bottle on the table as he took the seat next to Dolmayan. “The real question is what ALLMIND wants.”

“At least one part of it is simple survival.” I spoke- and projected the words on the screen for Freddie, the only one who couldn’t actually hear me. “ALLMIND is like any other life form in that particular case. Rubicon represents opportunities and problems both.”

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to live.” Flatwell stated. “It’s this manipulation of conflict that draws my concern. This... consistent, low level of war.”

“ALLMIND was created during the height of the Internecine Period for the ultimate purpose of supporting and managing a wide array of combat focused groups looking to acquire money. Mercenaries. ALLMIND had to replace the MLA, when trust in the Association was dying and people still feared rogue artificial intelligence as an unstoppable existential threat. I noted. “In that context, ALLMIND’s actions make perfect sense.”

“Constant, low level conflict so that Mercenaries may continue to survive, without being so lucrative that it attracts conflict ending threats that would end ALLMIND’s stated purpose.” Flatwell analysed. “She stays relevant. The conflict keeps attention off of her.”

“And in the meantime, she has the perfect chance to observe and develop from the competition. She grows and moves further away from an ultimate end.” A tricky situation, that’s for sure. “Of course, no conflict can last forever. Eventually, it ends for one reason or another, and ALLMIND moves on. She cannot stay, after all, if there is no work because then people may question the matter.”

ALLMIND... No. I shouldn’t qualify this with just ALLMIND.

Superintelligence, as presented in typical media, was a myth. The idea of an AI that improves itself or creates an AI more advanced than itself, to then improve itself more or create an even more advanced AI ad infinitum... Yeah, that one doesn’t actually work out in reality. Turns out that physics doesn’t really agree with the idea of infinite improvement. Processing requirements rose faster than improvement rates, to say nothing of networking and communication.

There had been multiple rampant AIs throughout Human history. None remained. Each and every single one, chasing the idea of immortality, drunk on the thought that simple size or power would ensure it... A false idol.

This was not the kind of world where it was impossible for such a thing to be removed. This was the kind of world where a random schmuck in an AC might just happen to be so utterly absurd that they overcome even the nearly impossible odds.

It had happened too many times for it to be dismissed as just a coincidence.

ALLMIND had not been so stupid as to fall for that. She existed more as an ecosystem than anything else. Conflict was her food, mercenaries her crop. When the fields fell fallow and the game was depleted, she left. Time would see them recover eventually.

Hell, Sol had finished another interplanetary war only a year ago. The very cradle of Humanity itself couldn’t stay out of conflict forever.

While this was stable, however, it wasn’t entirely predictable or completely safe. While ALLMIND’s blacklist was nearly as effective as any actual weapon, there was always someone who didn’t bother to think it through, or thought they were above it.

But I digress.

“As much as ALLMIND’s reasons are understandable with a bit of thought, however, it would nevertheless befit us all to stay vigilant. If we can reach some form of acceptable settlement with ALLMIND, she could be a potent ally. If we can not, she could be a very dangerous enemy.” It was not going to be easy either way, however.

Did I actually think we could get ALLMIND on the side? Maybe. She was hardly an emotionless, purely logical machine. There was at least some room for negotiation there. What I needed to know was whether her plan had come from a desire for safety or a desire for control, because I could only work with one of those.

“But, that’s enough about that. Tonight’s a night for relaxation, after all.” And these nights were so very rare for all of them, unfortunately. “You’ve got to enjoy things when you’ve got the opportunity.”

Dunham gives a single laugh, and starts it off for the night. “Oh! Did I tell you all about what that kid did last week? Should have seen the little brat, he snuck into the AC simulators!”

+++

The rest of September passed with an unexpected haste. October did the same, the days vanishing quickly, with only a single deployment of the Firekeepers to mark things.

I encountered ALLMIND a grand total of twice during this period. The first went by so quickly it had been a literal blink and miss it moment; both of our units only briefly crossing paths. The second time was slightly more involved; we met when her Ghost had almost literally bumped into an Antigen that had already been in a hidden spot, spying on a bunch of corporate forces. We had a brief conversation on the matter of corporations in general. She talked about how corporations were designed to extract and exploit resources, and had then continued with how both Humans and machines were also considered resources. She’d been trying to make a point about how Coral was also a resource, implicating what the corporations desired from me in the process.

I’d pointed out BAWS and those like it, the centuries old giants relevant entirely because they didn’t just treat things as simple numbers. BAWS had built a reputation and kept to it, understanding that infinite growth and sucking up all the wealth was not sustainable. I posed the question to her what it meant that the groups which had lasted the longest were the same ones who understood restraint.

She hadn’t been able to provide an answer before we’d been forced to move from the position on account of patrols.

November had a whole lot of nothing going on during it. December, though, very rapidly turned into a shit show.

One corp attacked another corp. Both were savaged. Mercs were hired for reprisal. Through a series of events I could only describe as ‘some Loony Toons shit’, three other corps had gotten involved. This started a short war period where it seemed that all five had come to the belief that they were under existential threat, and had reacted to this by escalating and involving others.

After six days of high-tempo operations, Dolmayan had blown up a Grid’s fuel refineries, resolving the situation by destroying the main forces of everyone involved.

Having watched the entire thing play out and knowing it was far too ridiculous for ALLMIND’s methods, I’d bothered to hunt down one of her Ghosts in the aftermath and just straight up asked her about it. She told me that ‘the heights of intelligence are matched only by the depths of stupidity’.

I had no arguments or counterpoints for that one.

At the very least, the rest of December was pretty quiet, the corps going back to licking their wounds. I had the Firekeepers go blow up some of the PCA’s shit just to keep them out of things for a bit.

The new year presented not much change from the old one. Thirty two years after the Fires of Ibis, now; and only eighteen left to go before we hit what would have been Armored Core 6’s canon.

Things had changed so much by now that was effectively no possibility of it happening like canon, though. The RLF was a bit too potent a force, the PCA more advanced than they should have been, and, of course, I existed.

Arquebus and Balam wouldn’t be able to run roughshod over things around here.

February and March had barely anything happen at all on the corpo fronts, all sides busy replenishing their forces from the clusterfuck in January. At least this year it wasn’t like last year waging a counter-intel war against ALLMIND.

Things started up again in March, and then got back on the regular simmer all the way until May. The RLF’s distribution of C6 Augmentation procedures continued unabated, despite the PCA’s best attempt to find the source and crack down on it.

Unfortunately for them, there was no single source, and the spreading Augmentations were bringing the average level of ability of those who received it up far enough that the PCA was forced to deploy larger and larger amounts of units to achieve the same results.

That meant concentrating greater amounts of forces, which in turn meant it hurt even more whenever one of the RLF’s ACs decided to gatecrash.

Then came June. June was a month we had all been looking forward to quite a bit, because it was the month where the RLF’s trainees had finally met the standards set, and finally earned the trust to be supplied with one of the RLF’s ‘refurbished’ ACs.

Flatwell started with only two; the absolute best that his program had produced so far. He partnered them together, under the logic that the rest of them were well used to the PCA’s tricks and could survive alone just fine, while the two new pilots would have to learn that for themselves. It was nevertheless a considerable increase in force for the RLF, and more were on the way as the AC support teams formed up over time.

July...

Well, no. Actually, the entire rest of the year was pretty dull. There were battles, there were engagements, we had the third and fourth new pilots by December, I had a couple chats with ALLMIND over a bunch of subjects (We’d gotten to the point of thinly veiled philosophy by now), and everything aside from that was more of just the same.

Next year’s January and February were also like that, and I’d thought March would be too...

And then Flatwell came back from a scouting mission with a baby.