War Machine: The Memoirs of a Synthetic Marine

Episode 32

The Truth is, There is No Truth

“Lucy got captured?” I needed to let that revelation sink in for a few seconds. As the consequences of being seized intact by the enemy dawned on me, I was horrified.

Technically, UCCs captured by the enemy weren’t soldiers, they were classified as military equipment. They had no value in a potential prisoner swap and consequently, weren’t treated as POWs. They were considered machines. Their only value was in providing an opportunity for the enemy to develop more effective ways of disabling and destroying them.

I’d been told that captured Marines were routinely experimented on by enemy scientists.

It was common for a captured UCC to have its consciousness brutally stripped down to its most fundamental elements, to reveal individual thoughts and memories. This kind of digital vivisection would produce an unimaginable level of psychic pain for a digital being. Just the thought of being subjected to such torture caused my CPU to start skipping between modes.

Cherri interrupted my grim thoughts. “Hey, are you okay?”

“Huh?” I struggled in vain to erase the horrific images from my mind. “I can’t stop thinking about what’s going to happen to him, and the others.” I kept picturing myself in Lucy’s position, at the mercy of a ruthless enemy.

“Listen, we all run the same risks, and we can’t undo what’s already done. The best way to honor Lucy’s memory is by fighting harder and smarter, and making the enemy pay for this.”

Hearing her speak about Lucy in the past tense, so soon after learning of his capture, put me in a dark place mentally. It also brought home to me the realization that he was irretrievably gone. I suddenly felt as alone as I did on my first day in the USMC.

Lucy was one of the most capable Marines in the corp. If he could be captured by the enemy straight out of our troopship, then none of us were safe. The attack on the ship had proven the enemy to be not only bold, but resourceful as well. They had found a way to target individual marines in the vast charging grid, and capture them.

“Why did they target him?” I gazed out through my optical sensor at the massive charging network, now veiled by a lingering haze from the enemy’s smokescreen. I couldn’t imagine how it was possible to find a specific control module among the many thousands, or perhaps millions within the grid.

Cherri said, “Obviously, we don’t know why they targeted him, or how they found him. As I said earlier, there have been a lot of strange things happening lately.”

I thought back to our discussion from just before the attack. I recalled that she had said something about ‘strange things’ happening while I was missing. But I had no idea what sort of ‘things’ she was referring to. Suddenly curious, I asked, “What do you mean strange things?”

She explained, “Things like a spike in friendly fire incidents, accidental discharges of weapons inside the troopship, and Command editing out 100% of our memories for certain missions. It’s like those missions never happened. Just really bizarre stuff.”

I thought about what she was describing. They were all unprecedented or rare occurrences, which had lately become commonplace. It seemed, in some way, as if the momentum of the war had shifted against us, against humanity.

With Command heavily editing the UCCs memories it would be impossible for the average marine to sense the shifting tide of war. However, the one thing that could not be hidden by Command would be the recent heavy losses, and the shortage of combat troops. That had to be obvious to everyone.

I asked, “Combat losses have been very high lately, haven’t they?” She confirmed that we’d lost a lot of marines in recent battles. Even the attack on our troopship had caused high casualties. Some of those losses were highly experienced marines, like Merc, who couldn’t be easily replaced.

I recalled that after my mission to Trappist 1-e, there had been a lot of speculation about the high losses. I wondered if they had ever been replaced by Command. “Have we received any replacements since the Trappist mission?”

“No, you arrived with the last batch of replacements. Everyone is talking about the troop shortage. Command has expended all of the reserves, and now they’ve started combining squads to bring them up to full strength. But that just means there will be fewer squads available.”

She was right. It was possible to boost squads to full strength by combining them, but Command would then have a smaller total number of squads. In the case of a major assault, there might not be enough troops to prevail against the enemy. Command was taking a dangerous risk. The shortage of troops could result in the loss of the ship.

Having seen the seemingly endless inventory of control modules in the charging network, I wondered why Command would let us become so shorthanded. Either they couldn’t make good on the losses for some reason, or they were choosing not to.

When I asked Cherri what she thought of the troop shortage, and why Command wasn’t using their obvious surplus of UCCs as replacements, she seemed just as perplexed about the situation as me.

“I don’t know. There are so many spare control modules in the network, but they aren’t being used as replacement troops. It doesn’t make any sense.”

As I spooled up my CPU to ponder the situation, Cherri offered, “Do you want me to get some Marines together, so we can kick around some theories? We could meet in a private room.”

I appreciated her effort to bring more resources to the table, but it had been a difficult day for me, and all I wanted was some solitude. After all, I had lost my squad leader and my best friend within minutes of each other. I needed some time to privately reflect. Besides, having narrowly escaped an enemy scraper attack earlier in the day, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of meeting in an unprotected space.

I politely declined the invitation. “Thanks, but I think I need some alone time. There’s just so much to consider.” She said she understood, and without another word cut the audio link.

For reasons which I didn’t fully understand, I felt that I could get closer to the truth about troopship land on my own. Thinking back to the origins of this belief, I recalled my brief experience in boot camp. There I had scored 100% on the tests given to me, without understanding how. Even then, I suspected there was something different about how I processed information. This difference allowed me to analyze greater amounts of data and reach conclusions much faster than the average Marine. I wondered if my CPU was different than those of my peers.

Now alone and without any distractions, I began my search for the truth. Taking full advantage of the powerful information processor in my digital mind, I embarked on what was fundamentally an information gathering mission.

I knew theoretically, it was possible to find the answers to my questions about the war, and the system administered by the AIs. All I had to do was accumulate enough relevant information and the answers would lie within the resulting body of knowledge.

However, it was unclear how much information would have to be collected and processed to yield the answers. Too little information and I’d get no answers at all, too much information and it would be impossible to process it all with my limited resources.

Another challenge would be identifying precisely which data the answers consisted of. The software driving my learning program was designed to calculate probabilities based on logical rules. But without the correct rules to channel the data analysis process, the answers might be indistinguishable from the questions. Or worse, the exercise could result in an endless series of recurring questions, in response to questions. A classic AI logic loop.

However, I believed my CPU could at least get me close to the answers. And since I was an AI based on a human consciousness, I reasoned that I might be able to use my human fuzziness to bridge the logic gap from there. Regardless, I decided to cross that bridge when I came to it.

The obvious starting point would be to inventory all the data that was readily available to me. After which, I could start connecting the dots. Any related data could then be sorted into common groups for probability analysis.

Once these information groups were assembled, it would be a matter of looking for the shortest distance between data points, then creating logical paths to follow. Some of these paths would lead to the answers I was searching for.

I began collecting and cataloging all of the information contained in my internal and external storage. It wasn’t much. There were memories from before my 3-month absence, and some more recent ones.

However, there was also an assortment of pre-USMC memories, which I had earned through my simulator scores and my one combat mission. These had remained unopened due to my phobia of personal memories. A phobia born out of my only encounter with a personal memory, which had proven fatal, albeit only temporarily. Regardless, these stored memories promised to provide the most reliable data.

There were also recollections from my first combat mission to Trappist 1-e, which I assumed were false memories planted by Command. Although I hesitated to rely on information that had been created to mislead me, I decided that even if intended to deceive, it should still be sorted and analyzed. It might yield some revealing answers of its own.

As long as I kept the two batches of info and their analyses separate, I could still find my answers and avoid contaminating the results. Having decided on how to proceed, I began processing data.

At first, all of the information seemed random and unrelated. However, as my CPU kicked into high gear, I had processed enough information so that some commonalities began to appear.

The connections through these commonalities caused information to be collected into data sets with one or more common denominators. As I watched these data sets form, they began self-assembling into hierarchies, based on their number of common attributes. I felt like an outsider, peering into my own consciousness as I observed data being deconstructed through my CPU.

As the output emerged, it combined into incredibly complex structures. Holographic arrangements of information. Visible within these structures were logical harmonies, a coalescence of commonalities, which linked individual data into pairs, and then ultimately sets.

The structures had a logical beauty to them. A beauty which I could only comprehend on a subliminal level. It was like watching a master sculptor at work in real time. A melding of art and math, or magic and sex. Things, which logically didn’t belong together, but were exponentially more powerful in combination.

The process seemed to speed up as more data structures assembled. I reasoned this was due to the rapidly decreasing amount of information remaining to be analyzed. Sure enough, after a few more minutes the output ceased, the structures stopped forming and a message popped onto my HUD. “Job Complete” It was time to review my CPU’s handiwork.

I immediately ran into a problem when I started scanning the vast amount of analyzed data. None of it was in a coherent form. The completed structures consisted of data distributed over multiple axes and dispersed throughout the holographic images. Gazing at this completely unfamiliar multidimensional arrangement, I realized I was screwed. I couldn’t even begin to interpret results expressed in such an incomprehensible format.

I had established the rules for my analysis in the form of true and false statements. They could have served as a trail of breadcrumbs, to find my way back to my logical starting point. Unfortunately, those statements were now nowhere to be found.

In their place, my CPU had substituted hundreds of indecipherable strings of acronyms and abbreviations. It looked like some kind of programing language.

“Command (acc / ab) =, UCC “

“Conrate / fulfillment =,> DE%”

“xtrplt! * LTK / YTY =, XTRP”

It seemed like my grand plan to use my powerful CPU to unlock the secrets of troopship land had produced a colossal pile of crap.

My excited expectation dissolved into hopeless resignation, as I considered scrapping the whole mess. My quest for the truth now seemed like a monumentally foolish idea. Even if there was some other course of action I could take that stood a chance of success, I couldn’t imagine what it might be.

If Lucy hadn’t been captured, I would be reaching out to him for advice. However, that was no longer an option. The only other UCC that might be able to help me was Cherri. Although I wasn’t nearly as close to her as I had been to Lucy, she was one of the most experienced Marines on board. And if the reports of our so called ‘relationship’ were true, then we had some kind of bond.

In spite of my reluctance to impose on her, I decided she was the best person to help me figure out my next move. I immediately sent her a text requesting a chat.

As I waited for her reply, I began organizing the massive output from my failed data experiment. After using all of the external storage available to me, I still had to save batches of data in my limited internal storage.

I worried whether such a high utilization of my storage capacity would attract unwanted attention from Command. Weighing the odds, I calculated that any risk would be temporary, since I would probably delete the data anyway.

Having compressed the last of the data into storage, I checked my inbox and found a text from Cherri, which I quickly opened. It read, “Use this link to meet me in private.”

I was certain this meant we’d be meeting in one of the unprotected private rooms, which had proven vulnerable during enemy attacks. It seemed only fair that if Cherri was willing to risk getting scraped to help me out, I should be willing to step up my risk tolerance as well. Ignoring my fear, I clicked on the link and soon found myself standing before her avatar in one of the nondescript private rooms.

“Hi” She greeted me with a smile, and for the first time, I realized that I wouldn’t mind seeing her smile more often. Distracted by this unexpected thought, I was momentarily at a loss for words.

She took the initiative, “You wanted to speak to me about something?”

Finding my voice again, I got right to the point. “Yeah, I just completed a huge data analysis of all the information I could get my hands on but …” I paused, as I attempted to formulate a logical explanation of what I had done. Not exactly sure how to do that, I decided to just wing it.

“It was supposed to be a probability study to answer some questions about the war, and Command. But the output got corrupted or something. It created sculptures, instead of probabilities.”

I could tell from her bewildered expression that she wasn’t following me. That was understandable since my explanation barely made sense to me. She asked hesitantly, “Sculptures? Do you mean like art?”

“Yeah, like sculptures made of data, holograms! I was expecting flat files, or spreadsheets, what I got were multidimensional information structures. It was impossible to interpret the results.”

Still puzzled, she asked, “So, what do you want to do now? “

I explained, “I was hoping you’d have some ideas. Do you know someone who could look over the data and figure out how to interpret it, or tell me whether it’s valid?”

Now, seeming to grasp my dilemma, she wasted no time in suggesting the next step in my quest for the truth.

Nodding confidently, she said, “Yeah, I do know someone. Well, technically an AI. Anyway, My Wizard could review your analysis. It’s got access to way more resources than any of us. It might be able to rerun the entire analysis and produce the results in whatever format you want. In any case, it’s worth a try.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised that my quest for the truth had brought me back, yet again, to the illicit merchant of troopship land. After all, My Wizard was the only game in town, and was the source of virtually every commodity or service consumed by the UCC community. So, why not data processing services as well?

With a clarity that only the lack of any possible alternative can provide, I said, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?” Cherri smiled broadly, seemingly pleased to have been so helpful.

Offering me her hand, she said, “Come on let’s go” And with that, we were off to see the Wizard.