Unity © by Allan Grimes 1998
All Rights Reserved
Webpage by Jilli / Fate

UNITY

PAGE 3:   (Conclusion)

By:  Jedi2345

AKA Alan the Grimes

Something in the fighter unit clicked. It's ancient programming clicked in, it was finally going to be sent on a mission! If it had feelings it would have been overjoyed.

"...Intruders follow me." Crystal led the fighter unit back to the door. The hole Crystal had cut in it was still there. There was no sign that anybody on the other side had looked for her here yet. As intended the passage along the side of the crates was too narrow for the fighter unit. If he tried to walk along the ground that is. The fighter unit simply switched to wall walking and moved sideways through the passageway.

The cluster warned Crystal to stay back and let the fighter unit do its job. Crystal couldn't suppress her desire to watch. She followed. By the time she reached the mine the fighter unit had already disabled the first miner robot and was soon to take out the second. The fighter was using its claws to efficiently rip the cabling out of the necks of the robots. It was an amazing sight.

The robots on the ship had seen no rush in finding the biologic servant that was stored in the city that they were trying to upgrade to full robotic status. They hadn't given her a full power pack anyway. She wouldn't get far. They would probably find her somewhere down in the mines crying and cold looking for that mystic spirit that only she could sense.

The flow of ore into the processor was falling. There must be something wrong with one of the miners. Fred the robot stepped out of the ship. 'There she is!' he thought to himself. 'Wonder why she's just standing there this time?'

Crystal was enjoying the show as the lone fighter unit decimated the six miner robots. It was so efficient! She heard a robotic voice from behind her. "Hey, You'd better return to the ship for a recharge." Crystal turned her head. It was the one who had given her drugs to make her fall asleep only to wake up in pain and confusion. She waited as it approached. The instant Fred was in range she executed a perfect hook kick. The kick landed squarely on the side of Fred's head. His processors were reset. He fell to the ground.

Crystal went over to a stack of metal pit-props. She picked one up and returned. Just as Fred was recovering she slammed it down on his power cell. Fred was dead. Hans, the other robot, must have sensed Fred's demise. He brought an electron gun with him. It would take out any robot that wasn't sufficiently shielded. The Hans fired at Crystal. Crystal felt a tingling sensation but there was no further effect. She took the pit-prop and welding it like a club charged Hans. With one mighty blow she permanently disabled his processors.

She looked around the smelter and then through the ship, there weren't any more robots. The cluster asked her to see if she could connect the ship to the city. She found a bundle of spare fiber optic cable in the ship's hold. The cluster noticed something strange. The plugs on the ends of the cable were identical to the ones throughout much of the city!

Twenty minutes later after the cable was attached on both ends the suspicion was verified. The communication protocols were nearly identical. The ones on the ship had a newer version number but they were still fully compatible! The cluster found that there were some interesting files on the ship.

Crystal was getting tired. She went back into the city. She came across a large domed well tended park. In the center was a great old oak that was probably little younger than the rest of the city. It was well over eight hundred years old. It had been carefully tended to by the module's servant unit. She climbed up onto the canopy of the large tree and settled down to sleep between two large branches. The cluster was about to forget that it wasn't until recently that it could go without sleep and urge Crystal forward but it decided to let her be.

The cluster's mind split apart into its component parts so that it could efficiently preform all the myriad tasks that lay in front of it. It's first task was to go through the computers in the city and activate the minds of the custodial units. There were thousands of these units and each had to be reset individually. Then there was the ship to deal with. Though the robot's knowledge of cybernetics was archaic compared to that of the city their work on AI and computer technology was much better than that known to the city. There was also a large theoretical database about warp propulsion that was also more advanced than that in the city. The City's computers would have to be upgraded.

Then there was the question of the history of the last eight hundred years. Yet another mind of the cluster searched the ship for data on history. The ship was an ore freighter but it did have a modest library of texts that covered several historical and fictional topics.

There was an almanac of history of sorts. When read right-side-up it didn't make much sense but when inverted and looked at upside down its story became horribly clear. Many years ago a wise scientist noticed that the mean quality of the human genome was slowly deteriorating. Since natural selection was no longer a factor defective genes were becoming more and more common. He suggested that the carriers of bad genes simply be prohibited from reproducing. This proposal was viciously rejected by the 'morally upright' as they were called.

Centuries passed. Many cures were developed to compensate more and more for the deteriorating genes. Some were administered genetic cures that repaired the organs that were failing. These were good for the individual but the offspring of these people still carried the defective genes. A research group came up with an obvious solution. They proposed a project to dig deep into the genetic history of the species. Recover the best genes that could be found, splice them together and create the ideal person who would be breed and mass-produced using a technique called 'cloning' to replace the ailing human race. The general population was revolted by the thought of an 'artificial person' But they were quite happy and content with a population of people who were becoming progressively more and more artificial.

The project to create the 'artificial person' continued underground. When they realized that they had no choice but to flee the planet. They sent a probe out to build a colony for themselves, where it landed nobody knows. Their probe led to their discovery. They were arrested for disobedience and imprisoned. Nobody wanted to be inferior to some 'test-tube freak'.

The people payed for their shortsightedness. Soon the cost of maintaining what was left of the flesh became more than the benefits it provided. It was soon discarded in favor of a machine. Some were wise and made careful genetic decisions but they too bowed to peer pressure and the promise of immortality and became robot too. Everybody refused to permit the thought that the most efficient general purpose machine was in fact the biological human life form. Sure you can get a machine to print 500 pages a minute or crush tons of rock a minute but the living human being was the only thing that could survive alone in the wilderness without the benefit of an industrial base to produce spare parts and power. Work was in progress to close that gap but it was still there.

The next entry regarding the colony said that a hundred forty years ago a prospecting ship came across a strange energy signature. They came across an uncharted settlement. When they landed they discovered that it was the colony the probe had created. They reported that the 'Proud and glorious master race' that they had tried to create was nothing more than a ghost town inhabited by mindless semi-automatons. They haughtily declared it a monument to the follies of fleshy existence. They patently ignored/blocked from their minds the fact that the inhabitants of the city were intended to be workers and slaves. One of their crewmembers was severely damaged by one of the inferior and mindless fighter units. The fighter unit was restrained by force and killed by lethal injection. Lethal was right. They drilled a hole in its side and pumped it full of plasma from the ship's engines. They rationalized the procedure saying that they had no other way of dealing with a biologic. It wasn't even alive anyway.

There was a bunch of crap about the history of the robots that nobody was really interested in so I'll skip it.

Crystal awoke to the sounds of voices. The park was filled with people. People who had been no more than mindless drones who were now male and females with minds and hearts. One of them was trying to climb up the tree to where Crystal was. Crystal reached down and helped the man up. "Hi, I'm Crystal who are you?" She asked playfully. He smiled slightly he knew it was a game and she was the victor because he had no name. He evaded that little trap and asked "Do you know anything more than the rest of us?"

"Nope. Nothing of any note." They sat next to each other just looking around at the world. They could tell that it was going to be a really beautiful world once all was put right. They looked at each other and saw that they were beautiful people too.

Rows of Engineer units were being marched into the amphitheatre. They were still behaving like heartless drones. Crystal's friend turned to ask why. Crystal answered "They are on a different bus. The cluster can't access that part of the network. All of the critical controls are there too. If we can't restore the central computer life support will eventually fail and we will all be dead... They've asked me to handle the debriefing, excuse me." She jumped down from the branch and hiked over to the amphitheater. Walked down the steps and climbed up onto the stage. It was made of concrete. Since there was no rain and all the condensation formed on the ceiling of the pressure dome and since nobody had used it the stage showed no sign that it was seven hundred and fifty years old. The cyborg Engineer units all sat in exactly the same posture equally spaced apart They filled up the first three rows of benches and half of the fourth. Without really thinking about it Crystal's brain reported that there were ninety-six of them.

The cluster informed her that one had been destroyed during a meteor shower when a module was hit and depressurized. There were two frantically trying to manage the central power station with limited computer support and another standing outside the computer core a few feet back from the imaginary yellow line where he would be accosted by the fighter units. His orders were to move in if he saw an opportunity. The cluster simply wanted to keep an eye on the situation. They had already queried him and learned that his specialty was hydroponics and agriculture, he had helped build the Park Dome but he was fully qualified to work on computers too.

"We have a problem." she addressed the Engineers. There were several ex-servant units who were looking on in curiosity. "We need to get into the central computer control room in the government complex. The computer is down and the doors are guarded. How do we get in?" nobody stood up to answer. Crystal pointed to one at random. "You."

The selected engineer stood up. "We are unable to access core database. The server has been down for one hundred twelve hours." The engineer was expressionless. He understood the problem clearly and was willing to help. If they were not able to fix the computer and the colony died he would simply say "That was an unfortunate turn of events."

"Exactly, that is the problem. What is the solution? How do we get in? Do any of you *remember* building that room?"

One of them raised his hand. It was a simple mechanical motion that conveyed no feeling. "Yes?" The engineer stood. "I have repaired the computer on several occasions recently. The computer is in a class one clean room. The room is hermetically sealed. The air is recycled every two hours. All people entering the room must wear class 2 protective garments."

"And the control room?"

"That room is the only access point to the computer room. There is one entrance. It is on the common ventilation system. The ducts measure eight by sixteen inches."

"Is there an emergency hatch or something?"

The engineer shook his head. Crystal looked at them for a minute thinking. A plan came to her. It was both dangerous and gruesome.

She asked the cluster "I have a plan but I don't like it..." The cluster responded. "We sometimes have to do things we don't like. You have our approval." Crystal shuddered. She wished there was a better way.

Crystal stood only a few feet from an ominous bloodstain on the floor. There was a small device that was the custodian's life support system. It had cleaned up most of the remains. Crystal swallowed her fear and stepped across the invisible line. The fighter units lurched into motion. Crystal spun and ran as fast as she could. The door at the other end of the hall was being held open for her. She was faster than the fighter units and was able to maintain a healthy lead. Crossing into the office area she saw that the Engineer units were waiting just as ordered. Their utility arms bore circular saws. There was a horrible whine as the blades spun up to 10,000 rpm.

Crystal ran past them. She didn't turn around. The sounds of blades cutting flesh and metal and the death cries of the doomed would give her nightmares for years. When the din subsided and she turned around she saw two lifeless piles of meat and scrap metal.

She signaled an engineer unit to follow her. She solemnly walked down the Hall of Death. The door at the end was unlocked. The keys to the door hung from the knob by a small synch tie. The door opened. The last time it had been opened was 6 months ago when the engineer unit had gone in to repair the previous breakdown. The air inside was still and quiet. The machines sat idle. The engineer unit sat down at the console. Crystal took the next seat over. The engineer reached under the table with his utility arm. It found a dataport. Text began to appear on the screen.

"Tell me what you are doing." Crystal ordered. The Engineer reported "The Auxiliary kernel is still responsive. All caches have been flushed to permanent storage. There is a series of hardware failures all across the system Replacement parts will have to be installed the system can still be restarted using the functional modules. Sending shutdown signals to affected modules. Launching kernel. The kernel was fully up and running before Crystal could blink. It was as if it was completely unaware that it had crashed. It simply initialized the network connections to the rest of the city. The entire city now shared the same system.

Engineer units filed into the room and then into the airlock to start working on repairing the damaged modules. The cluster tapped into the computer and asked it why the city that it had followed such a precise plan in building for so many years suddenly became so disarrayed. The answer was simple. There was a hardware failure and the database was corrupted. The computer was ordered to build the city so as it did in all ways was bind its wounds and keep going no matter what.

The cluster worked and rebuilt the database. The original design was beautiful. It was executed remarkably well given the terrain and environment. The city was ten miles across. A ring about two miles wide would have to be completely rebuilt. Rebuilding would require a population. The cluster ordered the machines that had built the servant units to start making more people. Some of them could choose to have the measuring and utility appendages of engineers and do the work of rebuilding. The others would populate the city and make it flourish.

In its search of the computer It found a series of messages to greet new colonists and visitors to the city. Out of curiosity the cluster ordered the recording played to all of the citizens.

"Greetings and welcome to The City of New Hope..." There was a computer rendered graphic of the spaceport and customs facility. "All are welcome. Please present your ID to the teller at customs. If you don't have a standard ID or wish to remain anonymous you will be assigned a random ID number. We welcome you to enjoy your stay. You may stay as long as you wish. Always remember to be courteous to everybody and share the city's bounty with all. The city's philosophy is that all ideas are welcome here. The only rule that we enforce is that nobody is allowed to steal from another. Whether that be freedom or the rights of that person. We hope you will be able to get along with everybody you meet. We provide a wide range of educational and recreational programs."

The program went on for thirty minutes. It described the philosophy of the city in detail and it said how that you were freed from menial labors by the efforts of the servant units who had been designed to serve. The cluster noted that this scheme of making a subservient class was almost this city's downfall. The part about curing genetic disorders even antisocial personalities through genetic therapy sounded reasonable. If it could help the person to live a happy life and not impinge upon his freedoms...

The next message was an automated transmission. "You are receiving this message because we failed to enter the code to stop it. This message means that nobody will not be able to arrive at the city. It is up to you to make the city work without us. It is most unfortunate that we were not able to come. You were activated in our absc----" the message terminated abruptly.

Overall the plan seemed sound and could be made to work without very much effort. Because everybody literally was attached by means of a network to the city everybody could instantly coordinate with everybody else. The city could organize itself into a fully functional society in a matter of hours.

Crystal and her friend, Rachel sat at one of the city's better coffee shops. There were a wide variety of coffees grown in the city's hydroponics bays. They hadn't made contact with the rest of the universe yet. To prevent premature contact the city had sent out a phony distress call to prevent the robots from landing. It said that they had taken so much ore that they were about to crash back into the planet. The planet being only 900 miles across didn't have much gravity but it sounded good and no rescue vessels had shown up since. Thankfully too that most of the city had been built underground and there was little chance that anybody would notice any activity.

There had been several ships through the sector though. It appeared to be on some sort of trading route. For the time being construction flights from the city would try to avoid detection. They had built a starship construction facility inside a small asteroid. The entrance to the main hanger was still sealed with rock. Arriving ships would send out a pulse on a special frequency that would trigger a response pulse from the beacon. There were no landing lights the ships would be docked electronically.

Rachel took a sip from her coffee. Their cybernetics allowed them to go long periods without food but a little chemical stimulation was always nice. They both were staring at a piece of white plastic that they each carried with them. It was to help them use their cybernetics to read. The cybernetics would allow them to read just about anywhere when they closed their eyes but it wasn't really polite to have your eyes closed when you had company or were in a situation when you were expected to respond to visual clues. The solution was to Carry a piece of plastic which would act on as a movie screen that their cybernetics could project imaginary images onto. There was nothing special or hi-tech about the piece of plastic itself. They were reading the city's newspaper, The tribune. It was available on the city's net.

As with all things in the city it had started out as a feeble first attempt but had quickly evolved into something that was at least marginally good and well established. Rachel noticed an interesting headline "Its good to see that they have finished the evacuation shelters on level three. Now we don't have to worry about where to put the citizens incase we are attacked or a meteor. shower or something."

"Umhm" Crystal nodded. Her friend had been a part of the cluster until about six months ago when that module was going to be destroyed and rebuilt. Rachel had the toughest time becoming an individual again but she learned to cope. She couldn't say that living as an individual was better or worse than being a cluster but it sure as hell was different! Rachel could remember all seven versions of events of what had happened before she had become a part of the cluster so she really had not the slightest clue exactly who she had been before she guessed it didn't really matter much. --

Crystal was interested in today's feature. It was about reinstituting old human customs. Today's subject was an article about whether the institution of marriage was a good thing. There was an opinion poll that went along with the story. Crystal responded with a 'no'. Crystal didn't see any point to that custom in this new kind of society.

"What do you plan to do today?" Crystal asked. It was truly an open question because there was a nearly infinite set of answers. People didn't really have permanent jobs. They had a set of things that they for one reason or another were good at. They would then access a built-in board service similar to the Usenet and look at the listing for the talent that they wanted to exercise that day. They would then do that job for they day and at the end of the day update the posting with the current status of the job. For example if someone decided to start a 4 day project on constructing a new module, at the end of day one they would outline their progress for the day. Then the next day ether them or someone else would come in and pick up where they had left off. "Dunno. I kind of like being a teacher, I certainly have enough experience." Rachel grinned.

Life was good.

Postlude.

Three years later the citizens of the city launched their starship. It was fully manned with a highly trained crew of living men and women. It followed one of the trading ships that were commonly seen passing through the sector. Two weeks later it arrived at Tau Cetti.

The robots were shocked. They had thought that the biologics were extinct. But lo and behold here they were, not on some tiny shanty colony or some rusty old barge but in a state of the art starship. The robot's first reaction was shock and horror. They wanted to launch a fleet and pound the City of New Hope into ruin. But then more rational minds prevailed and the new species of humans were welcomed into society. It was time at last to let go the dogma against genetic engineering that had reduced them to robots.

-END-

I DECLARE THIS * A R T * !

In writing this I've noticed that it bears similarities to Metropolis. Hope it is nearly as good. It also bears a slight resemblance to Arthur C. Clarke's The City and The Stars but I think this one is better than that one if less comprehensive.

This story came to me in a dream. At first it seemed that it would make a far better video game than a narrative but then as time progressed I said what the hell if I'm going to make a game out of it I'd have to write it first anyway. It took me nearly a year to sort the dream out into a coherent narrative. How do you think I've done?

If this story has made you wonder about the author's sanity. I have only this to say   "All wOrk AnD no PLaY makEs jacK a duLl bOy"