A. R. Yngve - Argus project
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PROLOGUE: The Last Politician
He was the last politician, and everyone called him "Kansler".
Of all the political offices from previous times of human history -
chief, warlord, king, president, prime minister, governor, mayor,
councilman - only the Kansler's title carried real authority in the 22nd
century. He was the appointed Chancellor of the Outer Defense Ring
Charter - a title rarely used - and his jurisdiction stretched across a
vast space of the Solar System. From the orbit of Mars to the orbit of
Pluto, the Kansler was the acting supreme commander of Earth's military
forces. A thirty-year career had finally taken him to this, the last
remaining position of ultimate power in the Solar System, and he had
built up a strong fleet of warships.
And yet, the Kansler's power hung by a thread - for his title would be
lost, the moment he made a significant mistake in the eyes of the Terran
public. And with Earth at war with its Jovian colonies, his career was
at stake. The populace of the old homeworld regarded itself "genetically
superior" to the renegade "little moles" who built underground cities on
Jupiter's moons, and cared little for what was done to them. But defeat
- after having paid trillions of tax credits to sustain attacks and
blockades - that they would never forgive.
Time was on the side of the Jovian rebellion; time which the Kansler
did not have...
"What we need is a hero," the Kansler explained to Boulder Pi.
"What do you mean, Kansler?" the midget engineer asked.
"A man who the public can identify with, who can embody the strength,
purity and superiority of the Terran fleet. Someone who can rack up my
hits and bring us the funding we need to keep the war effort going."
The kansler's problem boiled down to money - or rather Popularity
Points, "hits", the currency of the times. The more popular one was, the
more electronic credits one raked in from the world's computer indexes
of all humans. A citizen known to nobody, a child or a moron, could earn
as little as 1,000 PP - not enough to buy a decent set of clothes. A
megastar actress or musical artist, known to billions across the Solar
System, could peak a career with a hundred trillion PP. Most citizens of
Earth never earned more than 1,000,000 PP during a year; there was not
an infinite supply of popularity for all.
The Kansler's PP Index now lay at an unstable 300 billion points - and
he needed at least ten times that amount over a period of several years,
to fill the war chest.
"Kansler, might you consider shrinking our offensive to just one of the
breakaway colonies?" a deputy officer cautiously suggested. "It could be
less financially risky to take the system back one planet at a time,
instead of all in one sweep..."
"You talk like the underling you are," the Kansler said, stating a fact
rather than venting his emotions. "You are an underling because you
think small. The public doesn't click hits to small men with small
ideas. This is a big project I have in mind - you will understand
later."
"A question, Kansler," the deputy asked in a softer voice.
"Yes?"
"About 'heroes'... If one of our combat pilots becomes a war hero to
the public... won't the hits increase go just to him, and less to the
Fleet itself? Can we get the jurisdiction to, eh... 'tax' his credits
earned on our war?"
"I don't give a damn about the legal details and I don't care. Bring me
Clarke on the line."
The deputy, earning his wages, pushed the buttons that made the call to
Colonel Haruman Clarke of the Martian Security Force, stationed on
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Phobos. Ever since Mars won its partial independence from Earth rule,
the 2,000-man Security Force had watched over this new nation, ready to
squash any further attempts to "destabilize" the Solar System. At the
time, Clarke was on an Earthbound vacation - he hated Mars and would not
set his foot there.
"Reporting for duty, Kansler," the stern-faced colonel greeted his
superior. "You wish a high-level talk?"
The Kansler looked about himself; only the deputy and Boulder Pi were
physically present in the room, plus two of the Kansler's bodyguard
robots. A few cam-links to Earth were active, but the universal computer
indexes indicated that the public's attention was turned elsewhere - to
a sports event on Venus. The deputy made a questioning motion toward the
exit doorway; the Kansler merely shook his head.
"Colonel", the Kansler said with a little smile, "I have chosen you to
become the greatest hero in the history of war. Should you accept this
honor, you will never regret it."
He paused, and waited for the signals to travel back and forth between
Mars and Earth. Minutes passed. Finally, the on-screen image of Clarke
raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.
The Kansler continued: "Colonel, meet Boulder Pi. He's the Fleet's
chief cybernetics engineer who's going to make it happen. Mother Earth
needs a man a cut above the rest, who is prepared to become a cyborg."
When he heard the word "cyborg," a sneer of dislike crossed Clarke's
face - or it could be the sight of a Jovian mutant, standing next to his
commander, that disturbed him. Clarke's sneer arrived on the screen
after the Kansler had finished his speech, but he had stood still in
front of the camera the whole time - before and after. Clarke spoke few
words and radiated the patience of a rock, more than most Terrans were
capable of. Perfect, thought the Kansler. Of all my candidates I
couldn't have made a better choice.
"Don't be alarmed," the Kansler reassured him. "This is no ordinary
cyborg we're talking of..."
The conversation that followed was, like most actions made by citizens
with high PP counts, available for public view. As the men talked, they
could observe their personal hit counters go up... first slowly, then by
the thousands per minute. The count reached its peak just after the
Kansler mentioned the code word "Argus" in public view.
Enemy agents also had open access to this information. The Kansler was
fully aware of it. After all, one of the enemy were in fact standing in
the same room. He nodded slightly to Boulder Pi, who had jumped into a
set of artificial leg extensions he utilized to walk faster. Here on the
Moon, a midget like Boulder could easily use leg extensions without
motors. Boulder Pi listened in on the conversation, knowing some of the
Kansler's plans from previous discussions. His chief worry was that the
Kansler might succeed, but also that the plans would be structurally
flawed and doomed to fail - a potential blow against Boulder's
professional prestige and PP count.
In much, Boulder was a man of two minds.
"Boulder?" Kansler asked him. "Would you care to show the Colonel your
prototype cyborg?"
Boulder Pi said, in a confident tone: "Sure. On this 3-D model, you can
see the working protoype for Project Argus, Model V-NICS - also called
'Venix'..."
"I see," Clarke replied after a while, "but I still don't understand
what you're getting at."
"You will," the Kansler said, his glassy eyes glittering with
excitement.
Chapter 1: The Last Broken Nose
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Several weeks later.
"Gus" Thorsen was the last traditional heavyweight boxing champion, and
proud of it.
In the 22nd century, boxing was completely safe. On-the-spot medical
aid and microscopic surgery robots had made brain injuries a thing of
the past. This had also made the sport obsolete. Professional fighters
could literally tear each other's limbs off without suffering pain or
permanent injury; the sight of two men punching each other in the head
seemed comparatively quaint.
And yet, Gus Thorsen kept fighting the remaining handful of boxing
challengers in fair tournaments - no promoters existed in their sport
any longer, because profits were virtually nil - while supporting
himself on minimum-wage jobs. When his friends asked him when he was
going to quit his outmoded hobby, Gus usually smiled and tried to change
subject. Truth was, he couldn't explain why he kept fighting. He had no
other ambitions in life.
Gus Thorsen was now approaching his 38th birthday.
"Gus! You heard the latest on the colony wars?" his trainer asked,
speaking through the screen on the pugilist robot's faceplate.
Gus aimed his punches at the screen, watching the trainer's face
projected on it, and kept dancing around the robot with his guard down -
the classic technique of his late idol, Muhammad Ali.
"What?" he asked, never standing still.
"The news, kiddo! The Kansler made Colonel Clarke volunteer to become a
cyborg super-soldier - the first of a new breed of fighting men. So I
was thinking..."
The trainer ceased talking, as he directed the pugilist robot to duck a
rapid-fire series of jabs from Gus - probably the fastest boxer on the
planet, though that didn't mean much. In the space of two seconds, one
of his punches managed to hit the robot on its plastic chin. The counter
on its forehead went up from 29 to 30, and rated the hit a "K.O.".
"I was thinking, maybe that's the future of fighting too. People aren't
watching old-style fighting anymore, and they're getting bored with
mutilation contests. With cyborgs, we could draw crowds using faster and
more powerful action. As long as there's a human brain inside the body
that's taking the impact, the interest will remain."
"None of my business," Gus gasped; he had been sparring for hours on
end, and his feet were not as fast as two hours ago.
"It kinda is, actually... I'm thinking of moving on to training
cybernetically enhanced fighters, instead of this traditional stuff. "
"Uh-huh..."
"I'm selling the gym."
"What!?"
Astonished, Gus stopped dancing about for a full second - long enough
for his remote-controlled pugilist to score a hard right hook on his
jaw. Gus tumbled onto the floor, dazed by the punch. The trainer shut
down the pugilist and climbed up into the ring with his first-aid kit.
As he applied instant remedies for the head, brain and face injuries Gus
had received, he seemed more concerned than usual - not about Gus's
health, but about his sullen expression.
"Gus, kiddo, don't give me that look. You knew it was gonna happen one
day. Real estate prices just keep going up! This gym would just about
break even, if we moved it to one of those sea platforms or the new
mountain plateaus, but the air and sea conditions are not right for
traditional boxing."
Gus spat out his bloodied dental protectors and replied: "Then move to
another planet. I'd go to Mars or Venus, as long as I can stay in the
ring."
"With the lower gravity? You're not trained for that, you'd lose your
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title quickly to those zippy colonists. Or get killed. The territories
are much rougher than Mother Earth."
"Ali wouldn't have been scared of -"
"Here we go again!" the trainer chanted. "It's 'Ali' this, 'Ali'
that... when are you gonna stop living in the past, Gus?"
Gus replied with brooding silence, and stood up; six feet tall, he was
about average height for a 22nd-century Earthman. His muscular, broad-
shouldered frame stood out more than on most citizens - and rarer still,
his nose was broken, a reminder of his first major fight that he refused
to have fixed. Even the trainer had had all his injuries and scars
removed, and looked oddly baby-faced at his age of fifty-six.
"I gotta get to work," Gus said, climbed out of the ring, and headed
for the locker room.
The trainer made a half-hearted attempt to follow him, but gave up and
shrugged his shoulders to the other boxers. Their attention had been
alerted when Gus was knocked down - which astounded them - and now
fifteen of them were approaching the trainer with ominous looks on their
sweaty, red faces. The trainer began to talk faster.
"Sorry, boys and girls and she-boys, I can't control the open market!
In three or four months' time, The Giant Panda's Final Resting Grounds
company will turn the place into a funeral parlor for pets. Hey - calm
down! Look - I'm calling the cops..."
Panicking, he injected a shot of painkillers in his own arm and cowered
into a corner. Gus didn't stay around to watch the angry boxers beat up
the trainer. He loathed that kind of violence - and the "victim" could
easily patch himself up. He showered and dressed in his work dungarees,
picked up his bucket, then walked out through the back entrance.
Outside, a youthful-looking woman - all women looked youthful in this
city - was waiting. In the open place, she was tossing a frisbee after a
large Dalmatian dog. The dog leaped up on its hind legs and caught the
frisbee with its teeth. When the dog saw Gus come out, it barked and ran
up to him.
"Easy now, Giddog. I gotta take it easy, I was K-O'ed."
He patted the dog behind the ears and let it lick him his slightly
swollen chin. The woman made a worried face, came up closer to Gus and
felt his forehead.
"You took your painkillers?" she asked.
"Why?" he replied, stooped slightly, and gave her a peck on the cheek.
"Thanks for looking after him for me."
"Oh, it's just fun. I'd much rather take care of him, than watch you
getting punched out in that horrible, sweaty gym."
Gus pretended he hadn't heard her remark, for what seemed to him the
thousandth time. The three of them - Gus, the woman, and the dog - began
to walk together to the center plaza of the town, where Gus's night
shift was about to start. Around them, dusk fell over the city of Kuwait
- though one hardly noticed the darkness, with the holographic
projections up in the sky, lights from passing zeppelins and aircraft,
and the setting sun being reflected in a myriad solar panels.
Once, there had been a black substance called "crude oil" under their
feet. Now those reserves were mostly drained, and solar cells were being
built on every free inch of the former oil-producing countries of the
Middle East. Many individuals like Gus, whose skills were not in demand,
made a decent living cleaning solar panels during nighttime.
"How's your day been?" he asked her.
"Same old, same old... sometimes I wake up in the morning and think: 'I
don't know if my life is going anywhere.' Then I take a shot of Pro-Pro
and I feel better."
Gus tossed the frisbee, and his dog darted off to catch it.
"Gus," she said, "I want to have a baby."
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He stopped in his tracks, and scratched his thick neck.
"Benazir... we've talked about this before. I like you... no, I guess I
love you, but... I'm not sure if we're able to raise a child together."
Benazir put a soft, bronzed hand on his large shoulder.
"Who said anything about raising it? I meant I want to have a baby, not
spend the better part of my life watching it grow."
Something about the way she said it made Gus feel hurt.
"That's not the way I was raised," he told her, trying not to sound
negative. Their relationship had lasted a record four years, and Gus had
learned that Benazir avoided anything "negative" - pain, duty, aging,
frustration. At least, he could satisfy her need for security - and
satisfaction.
"Well, you were raised by flesh parents," she pointed out with an
innocent smile. "I had a robot nanny."
Gus understood that she expected him to envy her. She remained
childlike at the age of thirty-nine, but so did billions of other
Terrans. He feared, deep down, that she stayed with him out of pity -
pity for growing up in poverty, for being more used to relating to
people than to machines.
"Don't look so glum, Gus. I was just teasing."
"It's not you. Gym's closing down. 'Not profitable anymore.' If I can't
fight good opponents anymore, I'm gonna get sloppy. And even if I'm not
beaten... my title has no meaning without challengers."
A red diode lit up on the woman's forehead-band. Benazir ceased
listening to him; she had plugged one ear and eye into her link-implant
to chat with her network of friends across the globe. She sent her
replies with thought-commands that controlled the transmitter in her
headband. Without turning off this line of communication, she waved at
one female friend who drifted down on the street in a small heli-pod.
"Hi, Gus!" shouted the other woman as she opened the door to the
transparent heli-pod. "Do you have time to join us at Plex Twenty-Four
tonight?" She made a gesture that might have been a proposal, but if so
it was too subtle for Gus to notice. Gus made a wave of his hand, and
put the cap on his head.
"Sorry, gotta work. Catch you later, Benazir?"
She kissed him and entered the heli-pod's cockpit-bubble, which began
to ascend with a muffled noise. Gus waved after them, and folded out the
mop handle he kept in the pocket of his dungarees. The synthetic voice
of his wrist-watch told him he was late, and he began to hurry. Giddog
barked happily, running ahead of Gus, looking behind him at his master.
From high above their heads, the rumble of aircraft traffic began to
increase...
Chapter 2: Crash
"Giddog, get me another dry sponge."
The Dalmatian wagged its tail in response, ran away and used its teeth
to pick up a fresh sponge from the dispenser in the corner of the plaza.
The dog then carried it back to Gus, as it had been trained to.
"Good Giddog," Gus smiled, and tossed the large dog a small snack - it
leaped up on its hind legs and snapped it up. Giddog's tail wagged hard
enough to knock over a passing pedestrian.
As Gus attached the sponge to his mop handle and dipped it in the
bucket, he began talking to Giddog. Some of his work-mates found it odd
that he talked to a dumb animal, instead of to a synthetic pet that
could actually converse. Gus simply assumed that Giddog liked to listen,
because the dog looked at him with rapt attention when Gus spoke in his
slow, steady voice.
"You know, Giddog, I'm probably not going to do any more ring-fighting
after the gym closes down. It's not... hell, I don't know. What do you
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think?"
Giddog sat down on the street, and let his black tail and ears droop.
"Hey, don't be sad. This only means I'll have more time for you.
Maybe... maybe we'll move in with Benazir... permanently, settle down
and have a baby, eh?"
Giddog looked up and barked eagerly; Gus grinned and gave his canine
friend a nod.
"Yes, Giddog, we'll find a nice female Dalmatian for you. It's not that
easy, you know. Real dogs, the old-fashioned kind, are rare. I have to
travel into the outback, Australia or Tasmania maybe, to find one that
fits you."
The dog barked again, raised its front paws and wagged its tail, as if
expecting another treat.
"You know," Gus said, half to himself, "I really miss my family. And
your mother, Laura, she was my best childhood friend. You resemble her a
lot - well, except for the little bits."
He took his last doggie treat and tossed it to Giddog. He climbed up on
a ladder platform, one of the several which stood among the clusters of
elevated solar panels, and began to clean the panels. A work-mate from
across town entered the plaza, and shouted hello to Gus; the man was of
medium height and build, and wore the same type of work-clothes as Gus
did. On the back of his shirt, the electronic print showed an unending
stream of animated commercials.
"Hi, Chris! What's new?"
"Oh, nothing... I had my new liver fitted today. Doctor told me not to
drink so hard."
"Well, are you?" Gus said, not sure whether he was joking with Chris -
the man did spend too much money on drink, plus the regular cheap patch-
up jobs on his internal organs. Chris led a lifestyle that would have
killed any man in a previous century.
"What's a poor panel-cleaner to do?" Chris exclaimed laconically. "I
ain't never racking up more PP's than any of us losers. Booze is cheap
and reliable."
"Have you tried making your own alcohol?" Gus joked.
Chris began working another set of solar panel twenty meters away, and
carried on the conversation in a half-shouting fashion.
"Are you kidding, Gus?!"
"When I grew up in Australia, my grandfather used to make his own booze
out in the desert. He used a rusty old thing called a 'distiller'. It's
still out there, I guess - desert's dry, it'll last long."
"You talk about Australia more and more," Chris remarked. "Why don't
you go back there someday? Place is absolutely splattered with solar
panels. You could get a lot of work down under. I mean, if it's so great
as you always describe it, what're you doing here?"
"I don't wanna talk about it," Gus responded, and cast a nervous glance
about himself. In the 22nd century cameras were everywhere, and privacy
a fiction.
"No, you never do, do you?" Chris shouted, his attention drifting
toward a camera-bot that flew by in search of more interesting events.
"Your hit count ain't never going up, unless you start to be more open
about yourself. Secrets ain't worth shit until others can hear them.
That is, if your secrets really are all that exciting..."
Gus did not get angry at his co-worker's last sour comment. He had
heard it before, and had grown weary of trying to explain why he refused
to reveal his entire life - except to his dog. There was an old word for
it, that Gus kept forgetting... "-grity" something...
Chris kept ranting out loud in his persistent hope of being noticed by
a roving camera and scoring some extra PP. Gus glanced up into the night
sky. The holographic commercials blocked out the stars; only a few
planets were visible to the naked eye. And the Moon. The dark half of
the Moon was scattered with the lights of cities, centers of pleasure,
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sports and leisure, both legal and illegal. Gus had never been to the
Moon, not with his low hit count. One day, if he somehow could gather a
million PP, he could take Giddog and Benazir on a trip there... or to
Mars. Maybe boxing was still popular there, he thought, on that
frontier-world where two good fists counted for something...
Colonel Haruman Clarke's personal transport craft flew toward Kuwait
City's spaceport, escorted by two small automatic fighter-pods. Each pod
resembled a huge, gray, stiff-winged mosquito. Inside the craft, Clarke
sat watching the outside view, thinking about his future. This is my
last day watching Mother Earth with living eyes, he thought. But it'll
be worth it. For when Boulder Pi and his engineers have remade me, the
perfect woman shall be mine. Clarke had never met her, only seen and
heard the recordings the Kansler had shown. And yet, it seemed as if he
had known her for a long time.
He dimly recalled some sort of court case, where she had been publicly
humiliated on legal technicalities. Clarke promised himself to restore
her reputation - once he became Argus-A, the new Adam to the new Eve.
Colonel Clarke found it funny that she had been the first, and he merely
a development of the original. And he wondered how the Fleet had managed
to keep her away from the public eye so efficiently. Maybe with the new
top-secret "info-busting" weapons he'd only heard rumors about...
"Venix," he whispered to himself... and his reveries were aborted when
the human pilot sent a message over the loudspeakers.
"We're being pursued, sir. Four unidentified auto-pods just took off
from the ground and are approaching fast. They're too small for our
escorts to hit."
"Take us down to land," Clarke said quickly. "Anywhere. Now."
"There's only the open plaza there," the pilot replied.
"Do it."
The thirty feet long aircraft began to dive while using its airbrakes
to slow down; the pursuing pods closed in on it. Just a hundred meters
from the plaza, the first pod attacked and hit Clarke's ship.
A thundering explosion interrupted Gus as he was standing on a ladder-
platform, mopping up solar panels. He looked up and saw an oblong
aircraft careening toward the plaza, its nose pointed straight at Gus.
He jumped down from the platform, landed on the ground four feet below,
and scrambled for cover. His dog followed him closely.
"Giddog - follow me! Chris, call for help!"
Chris dropped his mop and ran away from the plaza, punching signal
buttons in the palm of his hand.
The aircraft drew a thick trail of smoke between two buildings, its jet
thrusters braking with an ear-piercing screech... but it was too damaged
to stop entirely. It plowed through the grove of brittle solar panel
trees on the plaza, and crash-landed in a shrubbery eighty feet farther
away. The craft did not explode - its fuel had been automatically
jettisoned before impact. Instead it broke up into several sections,
twisting like some enormous gleaming worm, and settled with a squeal of
bent and scraped metal.
Gus peeked out from the concrete doorway where he had taken shelter,
and saw the smoking wreckage but no people - and no news pods or robot
cameras came flying, which struck him as weird. He shrugged off his
misgivings and ran the twenty feet to the wreckage.
"Hello! Is anyone alive in there?" Through one of the cracked, wide
porthole panels, he could discern movements inside; he stepped up on the
toppled solar panels and searched for the emergency door, still shouting
at the passengers inside. "Don't panic! Help is on the way... I
think..."
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Before he could reach one of the nearest doors, it burst open from
inside the wreck. A uniformed man, about his own height, climbed down
from the opening with a gun in his hand. Gus backed away; at the sound
of his feet, the man spun and aimed his gun at Gus's chest.
"Halt!" the officer croaked.
Gus raised his hands over his head, staring at the other man's face.
The label on his uniform read "CLARKE" - but his face, height, and age
seemed exactly similar to Gus. Except Clarke's nose wasn't broken. The
extensive safety mechanisms in his aircraft seat had rendered him
practically unharmed in the crash; traces of chemical foam clung to his
uniform. Colonel Clarke froze; also he spotted the likeness. The spell
lasted only a few seconds. He thought: Has to be another fad. Facial
makeovers in the likeness of famous people are so old hat. I haven't
licensed my face. Gotta get my lawyer on it. Someone owes me royalties.
"Get me a car," he growled into the small headset that hung from his
cap. "Hello? Hello? Damn, I just get static." He still kept the gun
aimed at Gus. "The Jovian rebels. A murder plot against me. You! Get me
to a car-pod. Now!"
Gus swallowed and replied rapidly: "Don't shoot. Any other survivors?
The pilot?"
"Shut up and show the way," Clarke ordered, making a movement with his
head to indicate directions.
Still holding his hands up in the air, wondering what the hell was
going on, Gus skipped down from the wreck and began to walk toward the
nearest parked rental car. His dog, growling and snarling, came running
up toward them.
"No, Giddog! Stay put! Please don't shoot my..."
The dog refused to listen; Gus knew it might put itself at risk to
protect him. Then, as he faced away from Clarke and the wreckage, a
sharp whistling noise came from above - then another noise, and
something dark hit Gus from all sides, faster than he could possibly
dodge it. A loud explosion shook the very air around him, very close,
and Gus felt the air being squeezed out of his lungs. He blacked out.
Giddog? Giddog? Giddog?
Darkness.
Gus opened his eyes, and found he could not move; his entire body
seemed caught in a stiff mold. He understood that he lay in some sort of
stasis-bed, the kind used as life-support system for patients in
critical condition. Only a small face-plate allowed him to peer outside
the bed. For a moment, the place vibrated with the rumble of a jet or
rocket engine. He could dimly see the red-lit chamber in which he lay. A
door marked COCKPIT opened a few feet away. A figure ambled closer, and
looked at Gus.
"Rest easy, Colonel," said the figure. "We can't restore your old body,
but you'll get something far, far better."
"Mmmff!"
The tightly fitted breathing mask over Gus's mouth muffled his
objection. The figure touched a control panel near Gus's head, and the
boxer passed out again.
Chapter 3: In Cold Blood
Three days later, the Kansler searched for and received these public
statistics:
UNIVERSAL PP INDEX Search result - last 24 hrs:
Col. Haruman Clarke.............+12.2% The
Kansler.........................+5.1% Boulder
Pi............................-0.1% Simon Bizley
(dead):................0.0% Gustav Cassius Thorsen (dead):..+0.1%
Bizley, the pilot of Clarke's downed aircraft, had passed away in
obscurity. A few colleagues and friends of the (supposedly) late "Gus"
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