The God Mars Book One: CROATOAN Read Online Free PDF Page A

War on
Terror would scare the Ecos into cooperation…”
    “They didn’t count on what a good diplomat you turned
out to be,” Matthew remembers with a weak grin.
    “…managed to open talks with them. But the
corporations got impatient, pressured UNMAC to hit them hard in.
The ’59 Offensive took back Industry, Freedom and Frontier,
establishing garrisons in those colonies. The Ecos held onto
Mariner. But the bloodshed turned the free world against UNMAC and
the nations supporting the war, so the UN offered a major troop
reduction.
    “And that’s when the Discs show up again, in force.
Hit-and-fade attacks against colony labs. Gagarin Colony gets hit
hard, and all they were doing was engineering better crops. Then
they come after us when we move to defend the labs, tearing up our
bases, shooting down our aircraft, strafing convoys. Now everybody
is blaming everybody else for the Discs: Ecos, competitors. There’s
even a popular conspiracy theory that UNMAC is creating an excuse
to further militarize and control the planet, a False Flag
play.
    “In any case, we escalate. We spend the next three
years in a shooting war with the Discs, who show up in greater
numbers with each attack. We never do learn where they originate,
where they go to ground. We never get one intact, not even
fragments to analyze, because of how completely they break down.
There’s a growing fringe that insists we’re dealing with
extra-terrestrials, but these flying bastards are actually pretty
simple conventionally-armed drones. And we never see the things in
orbit.”
    “UNTIL THE BOMBARDMENT.”
    “See!” Staley almost shouts. “There! It’s like MAI is trying to fill in or confirm what it should already
know!”
    “So it’s got memory damage?” Matthew assumes.
    “No sign of EMP corruption during the bombardment,
which means the EM shielding held,” Staley denies. “The loss seems
to be isolated to archive files, not the operating system.”
    “Except it won’t answer a simple question,” Matthew
grouses. “Like ‘What day is it?’ or where the hell is Cal
Copeland?”
    “What about some other kind of corruption?” I wonder
out loud.
    “Colonel?” Staley looks at me like he doesn’t want me
to say what I’m thinking.
    “How long can a system like MAI go without
maintenance and not show degradation due to age?”
    The look he gives me says that he doesn’t know and
doesn’t want to think about it.
    “So our AI’s gone senile?” Matthew blurts out. “In a
dozen or so months?”
    Staley doesn’t answer him, but I see him calculating
the implication uncomfortably. I continue the playback:
    “Until the bombardment,” I’m agreeing with MAI.
Then:
    “WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BOMBARDMENT?”
    I listen to myself pause at that, remember how
incredulous I was at the question. There’s something odd even in
the wording of it: “Who is responsible,” not “Who was responsible.” As if it’s not wanting history, but wanting to place
blame. I’m surprised to hear my reply come as quick as it does—I
was sure I deliberated for several minutes.
“MAI, do you not serve in the capacity of Tactical AI as well as
base operating system?”
    “THIS IS CORRECT.” First time it actually answered a
question. I remember hoping, in my bleary-eyed almost-passing-out
haze, that I was finally getting somewhere.
    “Then shouldn’t it be you who analyses the
available data and provides me with the likely answer to
that question?”
    “INPUT IS INSUFFICIENT FOR ANALYSIS. PLEASE GIVE YOUR
REPORT.”
    I remember getting another shock at this, but then,
given the extreme chaos of the event, it made a kind of sense: All
the chaotic, fragmented incoming data may have been too much for
MAI to process, especially as our communications were being cut.
MAI lost its eyes and ears in the middle of it. It likely doesn’t
know what happened, what the outcome was. And nobody’s come since
to fill in those blanks. Maybe that leaves MAI