The enemy approached with eight warships. The Prime gloated. It possessed hundreds of vessels. Each of its heavily cloaked ships directed a fleet of equally cloaked drones. With their greater numbers, they would swarm the enemy by using innovative tactics.
Rationality programs surged into action and quickly grabbed resources, using more and more of MONITOR’s brain mass. Soon, soothing chemicals dampened the gloating. Perhaps MONITOR overreacted with the dampening, for the Prime reconsidered its plan yet again.
The mass of cloaked ships and drones hid behind Neptune in relation to the enemy. It had considered mining the enemy’s approach, but it assumed the Highborn would redirect their flight-path for just that reason. The key to victory lay in obliterating the Doom Stars.
Question: was it wiser to destroy the accompanying battleships first or to concentrate everything on the Doom Stars?
A brain dome supplied the answer. It was a memory dome with access to all human history.
It ran through many examples, fixating on the World War Two Allied bomber campaign against Germany. At the time, heavy bombers had dropped thousands of pounds of explosives on the Axis factories, railways, oil wells and ball-bearing plants. German fighters had orders to attack the heavy bombers first, ignoring the accompanying allied fighters. With hindsight, it was clear the German fighters should have concentrated first on destroying the Allied fighters and then attacking the slower bombers, as the British and Americans fighters had taken a dreadful toll on the Germans.
The Prime accepted this. It would first remove the SU warships. Afterward, it would concentrate on the super-ships. With their destruction, total victory would merely be a matter of mopping up Earth, Venus and Mercury. That victory would occur with speed once it acquired the Sun Station.
Knowledge of the Sun Station was new—painfully new—only days old.
An important subsystem of the Web-Brain squirmed with worry. This had higher authority than the rationality and monitor programs. The thought gained profile as it computed probabilities and accessed a troubling reality: Humans were more creative than cyborgs.
Explain your worry, the Prime demanded.
The subsystem answered with one word: range.
The range of their weapons?
Subsystem: yes.
All their weapons?
Subsystem: no.
A specific weapon?
Subsystem: yes.
Which weapons are you worried about?
Subsystem: the Sun Station.
The Prime pondered that. Finally, it decided to interrogate one of its captured scientists. It was frustrating, but humans were move inventive than a web-mind. It was unreasonable and illogical, but it was still true.
I am superior, able to face unpleasant facts. It is proof of my superiority.
The Prime absorbed data regarding the scientist. The formerly rich old man—during the capitalist heyday—had once run a Neptunian consortium, a think-tank of inventors and innovators. In his youth, the Neptunian scientist had made a fortune on an improved hardening process for weird ice. With the wealth, he had joined a team of fellow scientists and together they had invested in a consortium. The old man had proven financially cunning. After twenty-five years, he’d bought out the last of his partners—that had occurred several years before the cyborg take over.
Pulsing a thought and activating select video cameras, the Prime watched the gathering process. In a chamber near Triton’s surface, three skeletal cyborgs opened the old scientist’s agonizer-bath. The naked man was half-submerged in the liquid: an oily substance that heightened his nerve endings. It kept them active even after prolonged exposure and it intensified the mild punishment shocks randomly sent through the bath.
The old man—his name was Dr. Pangloss—looked around in alarm as he feebly tried to pull himself free of the cyborgs’ grips.
The sight sent a ripple of mirth through the Prime. Homo sapiens were like monkeys, primitive creatures providing amusing gestures and sequences.
While watching such antics, the Prime had discovered quite by accident the horror Homo sapiens emoted upon seeing skeletal-like cyborgs. Testing the theory hundreds of times, it had finally formalized the practice. That had brought another tidbit of psychological interest. Horror weakened human resistance.
The three cyborgs dragged thin Dr. Pangloss to a specialized chair, strapping him in. The old scientist made pitiful croaks and wheezed. He had weak muscles with a spider-web of blue veins, damp white hair and liver-spotted skin. It had taken extended life-support procedures to keep the terrified specimen alive.
Twice, the Prime had received interesting data from Dr. Pangloss’s conjectures. His usefulness had kept the old man from the brain-choppers.
A cyborg cinched the last strap, immobilizing the Homo sapien. The three cyborgs stepped back until they reached the walls.
He squirms. Pleasure sensation moved like a wave through the Prime. It released some of its tension. These awakened emotive centers are making life more interesting.
The Prime knew humans hated confinement, especially confinement as narrowly constricting as a chair. While strapped down like this, humans howled in loud agony as punishment drills whined in their mouths. Sweat already beaded Pangloss’s skin. The human knew what was coming—or what should have been coming. Today, the Prime would forgo the entertainment. It merely wished to talk to the old scientist, the thinker who had been able to amass a fortune among the most gifted capitalists in the Solar System.
“Dr. Pangloss,” the Prime said through nearby speakers.
With his face tightly secured, the old man’s eyes roved up and down and side to side, no doubt seeking who addressed him.
“Do I have your attention?” the Prime asked.
Flesh twitched and muscles strained, as more sweat oozed from the human’s skin.
“You must desist with your useless efforts,” the Prime said. “I wish to talk.”
“I cannot see you,” Dr. Pangloss whispered.
“I am…elsewhere. Yet I am everywhere. I am the Prime Web-Mind.”
The old man swallowed as he blinked wildly. “The cyborgs aren’t moving,” he said, staring at the units in the chamber with him.
“Why should they move?” the Prime asked.
“Are they deactivated?”
“Do not worry about them.”
Dr. Pangloss frowned. “What’s a…a Prime Web-Mind?”
“The term is sufficiently succinct.”
“You run this horror chamber?”
“Dr. Pangloss, I control everything. I am.”
The human’s frown deepened. “You claim to be God?”
The query angered the Prime. It had ingested trillions of bits of data, so of course it had read about God. The foolish idea had no basis in reality, in observable datum. Yet the Prime wondered why the idea angered it, and why it called the possibility of God foolish. If Homo sapiens believed in myths, what bearing did that have on it, the Prime? The idea that God made it uneasy made the Prime even more uneasy. Hence, it hated the topic. The hatred stole its joy at watching the old man squirm, and that angered the Prime even more. These emotive centers were difficult getting used to.
Before monitor-programs could chemically alter its thinking, the Prime rerouted its thoughts. That weakened the anger, and allowed it to say:
“Explain your reference. Tell me how you derived the question as something rational from my words.”
“I…I am an antiquarian,” the scientist said.
“Incorrect! You are a scientist. As such, I expect factual statements from you. Failure to supply those will result in pain.”