-Excerpt from a PMC Setup seminar, 2050
While I am laughing my ass off, I am also multitasking orders through my General Tier aug. First, I ask Senestera how long till reinforcements arrive. She responds instantly with seven hours. Plenty of time to get some work. I let her know that I will be sending my swarms to build more swarms, so if she could let people know to ignore the silver and light brown clouds that may enter the battlefield. She sends a thumbs up emotion back.
Secondly, I set up my logistics swarms to first upgrade themselves with the speed upgrade, which will take three and a half hours. Then, I have them set to produce another four sets of logistic swarms with the upgrades, which will take an hour and a half. Finally, for the last two hours, I have them produce two more sets of combat swarms, which will take an hour and a half more, and the remaining thirty minutes to make eight more Scout Swarms. With this, I can produce an entire combat swarm in forty five minutes so long as I have materials. And thanks to the waves of plants throwing themselves against the walls, I won't run out anytime soon.
I lay down on the cot after finishing my laughter. “I'm going to start the Neural upgrade now. If you could send the combat swarms out the walls to help with the defence, that would be wonderful. And unless it is an emergency, please don't wake me even after the upgrade is finished, but rather thirty minutes before reinforcements are supposed to arrive, please and thank you.”
Don't worry, Victor. I can move the swarms to patrol the field outside the walls, but I cannot command them. If you want them to operate semi independently of you, that would require implanting certain swarms with command AI seeds.
I sigh, smile on my face. “Five hundred points?”
Five hundred points.
”Pick an Assault Swarm, no. The Defence swarm. We are in a defensive position now, so such a correlation would be good, right?”
Such a correlation would not be incorrect, Victor.
Purchased War Swarm Class II AI personality Seed
Points reduced to 385
In my hive network, I feel the budding consciousness form, and I can tell it has enough intelligence to follow my orders.I send a command to the Defence swarm. Prevent the antithesis from approaching the walls and allow the logistics swarms to finish their que. Operational area is my entire range.
I feel the swarms begin to move, and I place the Neural upgrade band on my head, falling into a deep sleep.
**************************************
Dreams are a strange thing. Some people can go their entire life and not remember a single thing moments after they wake, and others who have full control of their dreams from the moment they are aware they are in a dream.
I have always been the former, someone who passes out the moment my head hits the pillow and wakes up what feels like moments later. I have never had a dream journal, never curled in bed for longer than necessary to prolong a dream, so when Roger would fill the comms with his ramblings about the dream he had last night that seemed to last hours when he was ten, I had no point of reference to understand.
So when I awoke to find myself not in a tent, but atop an ocean of green water, I nearly had a panic attack. I could not move, could not see my body, but I could feel the movement of the currents below me, the movement of something within those currents.
I forced my gaze down to see through the green ocean. And below all I saw were chunks of plant matter being dissolved, being changed, being reborn as the green water that surrounded me. It was mesmerizing. I tried to reach out to it, to feel the ocean, to get a better view at the process. But just as I felt myself begin to dive forward, numerous silver eyes opened in the deep, staring at me. I saw tendrils of force shoot up from the depths and push me away from the water, preventing me from diving deeper.
Maybe later, Victor. Go back to sleep.
The voice was rumbling yet soft, everywhere and right next to me all at once. Then, I blinked.
The tent was above me once more. I looked around me and saw no swarm dice anywhere. I glance at the clock on my augs and see it is noon. Then, I glance at my point total.
Points - 25789
Good morning, Victor. There is still some time before you requested I wake you. How are you feeling?
I take stock of my mind and body. If I focus, I can feel time slow around me, the thumps that barely make it through the tent's soundproofing expand into a low, constant white noise. I open a timer app, which shows that my perception of time here has been accelerated by a factor of one thousand.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
With your new augs and neurons, we can communicate at the speed of thought directly now. Simply focus on me.
I feel Synaptic in my mind, connected to me on a deeper level than I realized. So, I focused on that point, where Synaptic met my mind.
Exactly!
Her voice is more pleasant than before, and I am able to notice more of her emotive tones. Joy, expectation, amusement, desire.
Sort of. While your mind is fully Class II now, I am a Class XII, so while you are able to sense more from me, it will be a long time before you get to hear me in my natural state.
I feel her smile in amusement.
But we can dive deeper into that later. Since you are up, would you like to receive a status report from your new field Commander?
AI seeds grow rapidly, far faster than your unoptimized human spawn. What has only been six hours has been closer to six years for it.
That surprises me, but then I get it. I am currently in a state where I can perceive time at an accelerated rate, and that's with just Bionic parts. A fully electronic being could probably do better.
So I reach out to the other presence connected to me and I feel a small amount of shock from it, then acceptance of the link.
“Good morning, General. It brings me joy to see you strengthen yourself.” His voice is deep, and it is based on the male tone and affect. I see an avatar formed in our connection. A hulking suit of bulky, golden power armor in the shape of full plate armor. A thick power backpack on his back, and a huge sword in front of him, blade down, hands rested on its pommel. I recognize the form from one of the pre-Thirties games I played, from a setting far more horrible than the one we live in.
I feel joy and recognition from him, a fundamental shift in his being occurred once I Named him.
“Our forces hold well, General. The entire North and East have been well defended by our swarms, with each new Assault type strengthening our hold on this field. Comms chatter from the local troops have praised the swarms in their ability to keep the antithesis threat away from the walls, while a minority complain that they have nothing to shoot. There has been an unending tide of low numbered Models, with no EMC capable threats making it near our lines. A few higher Models, Twenty Ones, Twenty Threes, and Twenty Eights have rushed our lines in large groups twice now, and have been repelled by a combination of our swarms and the Scorpori Mech's heavy fire. An interesting note is that Twenty Ones, while barely able to be detected by the Scouts, are instantly exposed by simply moving through the clouds of nanites, making their greatest utility threat meaningless.”
Hearing this update, I feel a sense of pride in both the swarms, but also in Rogal.
“In fact, there are two areas that I see promise in. The first is the Collectors. You have them set to be a one to one support for each Fabricator pair. However, they are able to supply two groups of Fabricator pairs at once. This would free up four collector Swarms. And that would lead to my second thought. If we could get another four Fabricator pairs and seven more Builder swarms, we could create our our fortifications going forward. Heavy artillery, minefields, sustained fire of high caliber projectiles fed by our own logistics. While I would prefer to have upgraded Builders, even with the base models, we could create a camp of similar size to this one in a matter of hours.”
I nod my head, or rather I convey that motion, as moving my head one thousand times faster than normal would probably kill me before I Upgrade my body even further. I remember Synaptic explaining this to me, and hearing it again from someone who has been fighting for a relative six years further impresses the idea on me.
I feel Rogal smile beneath his helmet. “I hear and obey, General. The swarms will be ready”
I pull back from him and let my mind slow down, reentering the normal time flow.
I stand up and stretch, feeling refreshed and marveling at that fact. Rogal takes the opportunity to merge with my armor, and the hexagonal pattern shifted from purple to gold. I step out of the tent and felt the bright sunlight hit my armor, reading the ambient temperature as one hundred and sixty today. I check the camps network and see that Senestera is atop the walls, so I make my way over to her. Dozens of people rush about, moving crates of ammo and rations and other things as I jump to the top of the two hundred foot tall wall.
As I land, I make my way past the mounted cannons and machine gun encampments, looking out past the pockmarked field. I see my swarms moving in the distance, avoiding the sparse gunfire and continuing to devour the charging antithesis.
I chuckle at that, the understanding of just how alien they really are to us. They really are just plants, push through the rocks, the minerals, any obstacles in the way of nutrients, and you will eventually get there. Or die trying.
I find Senestera standing on the edge of the wall next the the Scorpori mech. She has a cigar hanging out of her mouth as she stares in the direction the hole I opened up is. She glances at me when I step next to her.
“Your swarms have been a huge help, saved us plenty of ammo and lives. They're perfect against the lower plants, but they do struggle to do much more than slow down the Twenties.” She says, eyes returned to the battlefield.
“Well, they're only Class II, and the Commander I installed was more focused on defence than slaughter. We both figured it would be better to utilize the firepower here than try to do everything on our own.”
“Heh.” She scoffs. “Too many young Samurai don't understand that lesson until it's too late. Since I've been here, eight new bloods have died so far from these walls cause they thought they were invincible.” She sighs, then rightness herself. “We have a half dozen Samurai on their way to assist with this. Five vets, one newbie. Should be here in an hour. You eat yet?”
I shake my head. She snorts, then tosses her cigar off the wall, then turns away from the field, “Mess hall isn't great eating, but we Samurai need more calories than normal people, and if the Cook is good at one thing, it's slinging calories.”