The War of the Artilect: Chapter 4

It took the Sentinel less than a minute to jump from the home system of the Artilect to the outskirts of Alpha Centauri A. After it had reached the system’s protective Wall it remained motionless for a few minutes and watched. Its long-range sensors were able to detect the bot swarms that were engaged in endless conflict, but they did not seem to notice his presence. Perhaps my cloak is hiding me from their view, the Sentinel thought, or perhaps they simply cannot see this far. Or maybe they can see me but do not consider me worthy of their attention.

The Sentinel waited an hour before making any further moves but the behavior of the swarms did not change. It finally decided that it had waited long enough and turned its attention to the problem at hand.

The Wall that protected Alpha Centauri A was old and weak – much weaker than the Sentinel had expected. In fact, the Sentinel was surprised at how different this barrier was from the one that protected Tau Ceti. The one around Tau Ceti had been strong and healthy but this one was drained of energy. The Sentinel spotted numerous momentary gaps in its substructure. It’s almost as if the Wall is beginning to flicker and fade. But how can this be – is no one maintaining it? And what of the bots? How could a structure this weak keep them at bay? The swarms are so powerful that they were able to temporarily overwhelm my father’s defenses. I cannot believe that this pitiful barrier could keep them out. So why are they not here? Is it because there is nothing left that is worth fighting over, or is something else going on?

Since there was nothing else it could learn from its current position, the Sentinel took advantage of one of the Wall’s temporary gaps and slipped inside the system. Once it was safely through the Wall it took some time to carefully survey the system. Alpha Centauri A was the primary star in a binary star system, and both stars were located within the Wall. The primary star was a yellow-white G2-class star and it appeared to have changed very little since the Sentinel’s network of probes had visited it five thousand years ago. A single planet circled around Alpha Centauri A in a tight orbit. Since this was the only planet in the system the Sentinel moved in to take a closer look.

When the Sentinel’s network of probes visited this world in the late 19th century it had found a lush, green planet that was filled with life. This system was actually the first one that the Diano Corporation had colonized. The colony was founded on March 1, 1756, and quickly became an important Ranger world. By 1867 the planet had been terraformed for nearly a century and was home to millions of people, packed with cities, roads, and farms.

Now, however, the world was very different. Before the Sentinel even started scanning the world it could see that something terrible had happened to it. From orbit there were no signs of life. It could see no green trees, no vast oceans, and no sprawling cities. The world looked empty and dead, as it must have looked ages ago before the first Diano starship ever visited it.

The Sentinel spent hours scanning the planet, examining every square inch in hopes of finding something. It was dismayed to find that the world was every bit as dead as it appeared to be. Only trace amounts of a once-rich atmosphere remained. The planet’s ocean basins were dry and had been for millennia. There was no plant or animal life left anywhere. Even the soil contained no bacteria or even microscopic life forms. There was only dust, and rocks, and empty wastes.

I do not understand, the Sentinel thought. The last time I scanned Ranger star systems I found many dead worlds, but they still had ruined cities and intact artifacts. While the worlds themselves were dead there were still many signs that they had once been thriving colonies. But this place is different. I do not see any signs that anyone has ever lived here. How could every trace of life have been wiped out so completely? There are no ruined cities, no ancient roads, no broken machines left behind to rust. What happened here? For that matter, if the world is empty then what is powering the Wall?

When the Sentinel thought about the Wall it suddenly realized that there had to be something left behind, so it began to probe deeper into the planet’s fractured crust. That Wall is not powering itself. Its engines must be here somewhere, and if they are here then I will find them. The Sentinel tuned its sensors to search for energy traces, however faint, and after a while it found something. Deep beneath the planet’s surface it found a facility that contained a single machine that was still running. From the surface it was impossible to tell that any building had ever stood on that location; all that remained was a wide plain that was strewn with broken rocks and empty canyons. The forces of time – if it was time that had done this – had erased everything. Beneath the surface, however, something had survived. The Sentinel immediately left orbit and transported himself into the long-deserted facility.

The bunker (if that is what it had been) was completely dark, so the Sentinel provided light. What it found was not encouraging. The floor was covered in a thick layer of dust that had no footprints. How long has it been since this place has had a visitor? Has no one been here since the world died? A thorough search of the facility yielded no traces of entry or evidence of other visitors. If anyone else had been there in the past thousand years they had hidden their tracks well.

The walls of the bunker were made of tarnished metal and the air was stale and foul. Broken light fixtures littered the ceiling and shards of metal dotted the floor. The facility had many rooms but they were filled with garbage. Room after room was filled with long-broken machinery, corrupted parts, or broken computer terminals. It was obvious that no one had been there for a very long time. The equipment is not just dead – it was destroyed, the Sentinel realized. Screens were smashed, tables were set on fire, and machinery was beaten into pieces. I am sensing malice, not an accident. But who has done this? Why would someone destroy everything except for the zero-point-energy plant? I do not understand.

A broken stairwell lead down to a deeper layer. There it found a sealed-off room that contained the remnants of a dying zero-point-energy plant. According to the Sentinel’s scans the five-thousand-year-old machine was in serious need of repair. You have been left running for far too long. You may have been designed to last forever, but your parts are worn out and your converter is nearly gone. Most of your processors have been fried and your remaining memory circuits are failing. While you are still running you are producing less than 2% of your targeted output. It is no wonder what the Wall is flickering; in fact, I am amazed that it is working at all! You should have been repaired centuries ago. Why were you abandoned? With no one left to watch over you, how much longer will you last? A few more years, perhaps? Then the pitiful Wall will fall. Will anyone miss it when it is gone?

The Sentinel could find no books, papers, or written material. After an exhaustive search of the bunker it did find the rusting carcass of a robot that had been crushed beneath the weight of a transformer. At some point long ago the ceiling had given way and allowed some equipment to crash down to the level below, where it pulverized the hapless robot. The Sentinel gazed at its remains with pity and concern. Were you alone charged with the maintenance of this place? How long has it been since you stopped working? But this is not your fault, little one. Who would leave the maintenance of something as vital as the Wall in the hands of a single robot? Did no one have the foresight to realize that it, too, might fail?

When it had exhausted its search and was convinced that there was nothing else left to find the Sentinel exited the aging facility and went back into orbit. If one bunker survived beneath the surface then perhaps there are others hidden as well. There may yet be clues that time has not been able to erase.

Once again the Sentinel scanned the planet but this time it probed deep beneath the surface in an attempt to find any signs of civilization, however slight. Hours went by as it probed endless cubic miles of the planet’s crust, looking for signs of life or evidence of power. It found nothing. As far as it could tell the zero-point-energy plant was the last functional machine in existence.

The Sentinel was about to give up when it noticed something. A thousand feet beneath what had once been the capitol city of the planet (but was now simply an empty field) was a large vault. It had no signs of life or traces of energy but it appeared to be largely intact. Curious, the Sentinel transported itself into the vault and took a look around.

Like the bunker it had found earlier the vault was completely dark, so the Sentinel provided illumination. What it found was surprising. The vault consisted of four immensely large rooms, each of which covered several square miles of floor space. In the rooms were hundreds of thousands of opaque, cylindrical pods that were eight feet long and four feet wide. All of the pods were connected to a central computer by a complex network of optical cables. At the lowest level of the vault was an immense power supply.

All of the equipment was long dead. At one time the power supply had been a functional fusion reactor but now there was nothing left but twisted, tarnished metal. Some accident ages ago had apparently destroyed it. While shifting through the wreckage the Sentinel found the mutilated remains of a robot. The Sentinel looked at it, curious. Were you trying to repair it when something went wrong? Or did you deliberately destroy the reactor in an act of vengeance? Were you even capable of thought and reason? The Sentinel probed the dead computer terminal that was attached to the reactor but it found nothing. Its memory circuits had been dead for thousands of years, and no trace of data remained. At least the rest of the machinery was not savagely destroyed, as it had been in the bunker.

The vaults themselves contained no evidence of destruction or traces of an accident. What greatly disturbed the Sentinel was the discovery of human remains. Each pod contained the fragments of a human skeleton, all of which were in stages of extreme decay. He found men and women, children and adults. All of them were long dead. The Sentinel was saddened as it looked around and realized that it had found the inhabitants of the planet. For the first time in its trips through Ranger space it had found people – but they were not among the living.

I have come too late, he thought sadly. There is nothing I can do to help the dead. You have already gone on to meet God. Each of you are either with the Lord in Heaven or in the torments of Hell and there is nothing I can do to help or harm you. Yet I mourn for you, children of men. What happened to you? Were you kept in stasis after your world was destroyed, waiting for a day when you could live again? Or did you retreat from the surface to live here, allowing your home to die from neglect?

The Sentinel probed the pods but learned little. Their machinery had become corrupted and decayed long ago, and the memory circuits no longer contained information. There were mysteries but no answers.

After spending hours fruitlessly probing the pods’ memory chips the Sentinel was about to depart when it noticed a plaque hanging on the wall near the entrance to one of the rooms. The rectangular piece of metal was tarnished but still legible, and while the language was ancient the Sentinel had no trouble reading it because it was written in the language of those that had built the Artilect. It read:

VAULT 1
HOME OF THE SYNTHETIC WORLD ATLANTIS
ESTABLISHED 2428
 

The Sentinel studied the sign and pondered its meaning. Is that the answer? Did these people leave the real world to live in a synthetic one, only to be killed when the vault lost power? But why would they leave reality to live in a dream? And what of the threat of the swarms? Weren’t they afraid that they would attack while they slumbered? Did they believe that their pitiful Wall would protect them and allow them to leave reality? How did things come to this?

The Sentinel searched the facility carefully but it found no other clues. Perhaps there is more here to be found, but I cannot find it. This world is long dead. It is time for me to leave this tomb and continue to Tau Ceti. Perhaps I will find life there.