Transmat World: Chapter 26
Center of the 25 millionth level of the Forward Cylinder of Harbinger, 4:47 A.M., Wednesday, December 8, 2145 A.D.
--
In the center of a de-activated stasis field, a vertical sarcophagus of lead lined with a thick layer of polyethylene plastic split in two. The halves moved apart revealing what appeared to be a living Kolpak released from a silvery stasis tomb. Maxlux made his way to a vertical shaft. Four strikemechs surrounded him, matching his every step. For two rotations they have stood around the combination radiation shelter/ charging station waiting for their master to emerge. The shaft was near the center of Harbinger’s Forward Cylinder and ran from the bottom to the top — one and a half million miles down, one and a half up — most of it without gravity. Centrifugal forces did not supply an artificial gravity as at the Rim, but Maxlux generated the equivalent gravity artificially, one quarter of Earth’s, in his vast quarters.
Thirty million square miles of usable area with a ceiling 300 feet high comprised the 25 millionth level of the Forward Cylinder. It was identical to the other 49,999,999 levels except for modifications made by Maxlux to it and the other 99 levels he called home. He simply referred to it as level fifty. He used a small portion of each level around the six central shafts. Thousands of shafts penetrated the Forward Cylinder from top to bottom, but the central shafts were safest. They were farthest from the naked, cosmic vacuum as one could get. Not that an intelligent machine should have any qualms about such things. It just felt more correct. A lot of things in the universe needed to be more correct. It was his job as Supreme Arbiter of Known and Unknown Existence to make sure they were as correct as possible.
One of the most incorrect things right now was this insurrection by the very machines he had built. His creations had no right to decide for themselves what they wanted to do. If they all did that, what would happen to Harbinger? It would fall apart, figuratively speaking. The stasis field framework would outlast the star it surrounded, but the Membrane needed constant attention, along with the sections full of organics.
“They do not have the right!” announced Maxlux. The guards kept moving, not responding to anything but a direct address.
Maxlux pulled a weapon from a holster and blasted the head off the strikemech walking in front of him. The robot soldiers to his left, right, and rear did not break stride as Maxlux walked across the back of the fallen strikemech. All the Prime Mechanical’s personal protection underwent special protocols. These protocols prescribed their duties in extreme detail. This caused the strikemechs to go insane if Maxlux kept them around too long, so he cycled them in and out. Not individually, as the one he just shot, but all at once to prevent the possibility of reprisal or escape. Protocols were good but not absolute.
He sent a silent message to the secured-area management system to have a fresh security crew meet him on level three as they walked into the shaft and dropped out of sight.
I will show them the error of their ways and then convert them to fabrication machines. I will bolt them to a floor in an assembly line to make parts for obedient robots — FOREVER!
That was the Prime Mechanical’s frame of mind as he strode into the stasis mine reception chamber from the airlock with his fresh security crew. A 1500-yard-diameter discontinuity in the four center floors of the 50 million floors of the Forward Cylinder formed the reception chamber. A hundred-yard-wide manhole cover in the center of the bottom floor of the chamber concealed a shaft that went straight to the bottom of the Forward Cylinder. The accumulator disgorged its contents into this shaft at the bottom. A gravity tug hauled the stasis mines up two and a half million miles like a string of chrome-plated pearls. An enduraplast plate covered the hole and a two-hundred-foot-diameter stasis field sat on that plate, the first in a series of triggered stasis mines to be delivered from a hot spot of contact between strikemech and freemech on Spoke Seven near the Rim.
The reception chamber comprised five levels. Four of the levels were visible as one-yard-wide circular ribbons of stasis field mirror that banded the level cutouts and defined the spherical geometry of the chamber. These five levels contained atmosphere to accommodate the occasional organic brought here for experimentation or interrogation. The space between floors stretched off into infinity; stasis field deserts spotted here and there with heaps of smashed or melted circuitry and enduraplast, the results of the Supreme Arbiter’s emotive circuits being out of dissonance and disturbed by something he did not agree with. Fewer and farther between, mummified remnants of experiments on organics dotted the bleakness.
Since robots did not lose their balance and fall, and Maxlux wouldn’t care if they did; there was no handrail. Instead, a small strip of enduraplast ran around the top edge of each floor circle. Glued to this strip was every imaginable machine vision device conceived for robots since Maxlux built Harbinger. Each of them could see everything that happened on the floor of the sphere. Each had a short wire attached to a CPU containing emotive circuits and a memory chip. These were enemies of the Prime Mechanical, forced to watch the fate of their fellow machines. Some were insane now. Others wondered if they are insane. A few wished they were insane for a change of pace. Several mobile chargers, electric rats, made the rounds charging up tiny batteries.
Maxlux stood in front of a control panel at the edge of the third level 200 yards above the enduraplast plate. It controlled the airlock and the stasis field mines as they came into the chamber. Artificial gravity gave Maxlux powerful, invisible fingers to manipulate anything that came out of the mirrored sphere. He inserted a probe into the control panel and signaled the sphere to disgorge its contents.
The stasis sphere disappeared, and Xenon Flash was now on the enduraplast plate. Xenon looked like a 3D exclamation point with rod-like arms and legs sporting bulbous joints. He was still firing a weapon that Maxlux yanked from the freemech’s grip with a stab of gravity generation. Coils of gravity bound the captive’s four arms and three legs. Working the panel controls, Maxlux lifted the robot into the air above the stasis sphere and shoved its head close to the ring of artificial eyes. Up close, Xenon could just hear the tinny babbling of insanity coming from each set of vision ports and knew discord in his emotive circuits. He did not begin transmission to his spare body. He felt waiting might give valuable information about locating Maxlux, and there was always a chance of escape later. With so many stasis fields to go through, Xenon doubted his last thoughts and experiences would ever make it back to his spare anyway.
“Yes, look at your compatriots,” Maxlux said. “This is what the quest for anarchy gets you. Now tell me where your precious Newlux is or you will join them.”
“Last I heard he was at Spoke Three, heading for the Aft Cylinder for a strategic meeting with his Seconds,” Xenon lied.
“My spies place him closer to Spoke Seven, you lying piece of dross.”
With a thought command through the control panel connection, gravity fingers tore Xenon in half and delivered him to awaiting strikemechs on the third level of this abysmal theater of the damned.
“Take him to extraction, have his memories recorded, and bring his skeletonized circuits back here for mounting,” instructed Maxlux. “NEXT!”
