The Synchronicity War Part 2 (9 page)

“So in your vision, you heard me say that
risking Defiant at Green4 enabled us to stop the attack at Avalon
and that’s why you took the ship into combat?”

“Yes, Sir.” Another pause.

“One of my Aides tells me that you brought one
of your A.I. pilots with you. Is he…it, the one that heard the
audio transmission?” Shiloh took note of Howard’s gender confusion.
There was no confusion in Shiloh’s mind. As far as he was
concerned, Iceman was definitely a ‘he’.

“No, Sir. The A.I. that actually received the
transmission was destroyed in combat but his recording of that
transmission was shared with all of the other pilots.”

“Hmm. How do you know they aren’t pretending to
have received that transmission?”

“Well, when I started to relate word for word
what you said in the vision, Iceman took over and repeated the rest
of your words exactly before I had the chance to do so. Since I
hadn’t told anyone what I experienced, there was no way for him to
know that unless there actually had been a transmission of some
kind.” Howard’s expression had by now changed to what Shiloh
thought of as his poker face. There was no clue as to what the man
was actually thinking.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m taking this
so calmly. I’ll tell you why. Yesterday, I received a proposal from
our Strategic Planning Group, to start a project to investigate
whether a recent breakthrough in man-to-machine wireless
communication, could be modified to give us a strategic edge.” He
reached over to one side and picked up one of several data tablets,
which he quickly manipulated and then handed to Shiloh. “Read the
highlighted paragraph, Commander.”

While preliminary experiments
suggest the possibility of transmitting data forward AND backwards
in time, there’s no guarantee that any project to pursue this
phenomenon will result in a practical capability. Justification for
allocation of scarce R&D funding might be available if a
careful review of After Action reports indicates that
retro-temporal communication is already happening
.
Shiloh handed the device back to Howard but said nothing.

“Based on the rest of that report, I’m inclined
to accept that you’ve been experiencing retro-temporal
communication, Commander. So I don’t think you’re crazy. But this
concept is so new to me, now that it’s clear that it actually
works, that I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around it. Can I
assume that you’ve given this a lot more thought?”

“Yes, Sir, a LOT of thought. I’ve also had very
insightful discussions about this with Iceman. He…”

“One of your A.I. pilots?” interrupted
Howard.

“Yes, Sir. In fact, he’s the one I brought with
me in case you’d like to talk with him.”

“Go on.” said Howard.

“Well...ah…there’s another side to this
retro-temporal communication. After comparing notes, Iceman has
convinced me that the enemy has…or WILL HAVE this technology too
and is trying to use it to jam our own retro transmissions!”

“What!” Howard’s face lost all composure and
color.
I swear to God, one of these days I’ll say something and
the Old Man will keel over from a heart attack!
Thought Shiloh
with alarm.

“Prior to having the clear vision of your
comments from a few minutes ago, I had another vision. Visually it
was the same one but the auditory portion was quite different. It
didn’t sound like your voice and the words didn’t seem to be in
sync with your mouth. The gist of what you appeared to be saying to
me was that I did the right thing by letting all 55 alien ships
leave Green4 unmolested in order to detect a much larger follow on
fleet. Because of the confusing nature of that vision, I decided to
try to ambush the alien fleet while they refueled at the gas giant.
That attempt didn’t pan out, probably because the enemy ships were
controlled by their own A.I.s, who demonstrated their ability to
react faster than mere flesh and blood crews could have. When I
described that confusing vision to Iceman, he told me that it was
the unanimous opinion of all the A.I. pilots that we are now
fighting a war over space AND time. He called it the Synchronicity
War. We have to start strategic temporal planning now too.” Howard
took a deep breath and said,

“Strategic temporal planning. I’m not sure I
even know what that means exactly but I agree that we have to widen
the scope of our strategic planning. I think I’m going to want to
talk with this Iceman after I’m done with you, Commander. But you
and I aren’t quite there yet.” He picked up another data tablet and
held it in the air.

“This is your latest report. When I read your
recommendations, I was VERY tempted to dismiss them out of hand as
nonsense! However…given what I’ve just learned and what I’ve just
said about widening the scope of our strategic planning, I’m now
prepared to take a second look at them. In a nutshell, you’re
recommending that A.I.s be given much more responsibility
including…granting them the same officer ranks as human officers!
Having A.I. Astrogators I can understand. I can even see the
advantages of A.I.s having Helm and Weapons control on our ships
but making them Officers? I’m having a little difficulty with that
one, Shiloh. Expand on your reasons why we should do that?” Shiloh
nodded. He was ready for that question too.

“Even before we discovered that the alien fleet
was A.I. controlled, I was noticing that Iceman and his team were
faster at analyzing problems and finding solutions, whether those
solutions involved Astrogation or tactics or what have you, than we
were. As pilots of CFPs, we have only scratched the surface of what
A.I.s can do for us. Consider the advantages of having our ships
controlled by A.I.s. They never need to eat, sleep or take breaks.
Their attention never wanders. They never make mistakes within the
limits of the data they have. They can analyze a tactical situation
much faster than any human and they can game out with precise
calculation, dozens…maybe even hundreds of tactical options in
seconds. What if we designed a combat frigate that was totally
automated without any human crew? How much more compact could we
make it? With less mass, it could accelerate faster, be
structurally stronger and never need to replenish consumables such
as food, air and water. It would be available indefinitely. Or we
could design an automated ship the size of our combat frigates that
has the same combat power as the cruisers that we’re building now.
I’m not saying that all our ships should be crewed solely by A.I.s
but we’re missing out on a major increase in capability. With all
that said, how can we put A.I.s in control of ships, especially
ships that still have some human crews and NOT make them officers?
In a fleet vs. fleet situation, a human fleet commander very likely
will have to make critical decisions, based upon multiple factors
with very little time. Acting within seconds or even fractions of a
second could be the difference between victory and defeat. There
may not be time for an A.I. to verbally recommend a course of
action to a human commander, who will then need time to consider it
and then more time to convey his or her decision back to the A.I.
for implementation. We know that the enemy has A.I. controlled
ships. Maybe they’ve been doing that all along and maybe not but we
have to assume that every enemy fleet we encounter from now on,
will react far faster than our human commanders and that’s a hell
of a headwind to expect them to overcome. If we want A.I.s to
determine and control battle strategy and tactics, then they have
to be able to issue commands to humans and expect to have those
orders obeyed even if those orders involve the sacrifice of those
crews and ships.” Howard said nothing for what seemed like a long
time.

“As I said, I see the advantages of having A.I.s
controlling helm, astrogation and weapons functions. But it’s a big
leap from there to giving A.I.s formal and permanent control over
lower ranked humans. I have no problem with creating a rank
structure that’s unique to A.I.s. What if the human fleet commander
gives the senior ranked A.I. temporary fleet command for the
duration of the battle only?” Shiloh’s initial impulse was to
reject the compromise. As far as he was concerned, the only
question that mattered was whether A.I.s were sentient beings.
Either they were or they weren’t and if they were, why discriminate
against them by making them a separate, lower class of beings? On
the other hand, he was astute enough to understand the difference
between what’s desirable and what’s realistically achievable, at
least in the short run. If he viewed the Admiral’s compromise as an
interim step that would gradually build up trust in A.I.s by the
rest of the Space Force personnel, then it became easier to
swallow.

“That might work. Eventually I’d still like to
see A.I.s and Humans working side by side with complete equality
but maybe we need to take a half step first in order to build
trust.” Howard gave a grunt of approval.

“Okay. I’ll have my staff work on formalizing
the procedures that will allow that to happen. We’ll also have to
get the engineers to figure out how to modify our ships to allow an
A.I. to plug into Helm, Weapons and Astrogation systems. Completely
automated ships are worth looking into but obviously it’ll take
time to get them designed, built and tested. I’ve already approved
your previous proposal for a rank structure to be used solely by
A.I.s as CFP pilots. That’ll have to be modified when we start
giving them temporary fleet commands. Now let’s move on to some of
your other recommendations.”

“You recommend that the Strategic Planning Group
have A.I. members. I’m not opposed to the idea in principle but
forcing the SPG to accept A.I.s as full fledged members is asking
too much of them too quickly. Let’s take the same half step
approach there. What I’m prepared to do now, is to assign one or
more A.I.s to the SPG as advisors only. We’ll try that for a while
and see how that works.” Shiloh said nothing because Howard hadn’t
asked his opinion or approval. Howard went on. “You also want to
create formal CFP squadrons, that’ll be permanent units. It seems
to me that if we do that, we lose a lot of flexibility in terms of
moving CFPs around individually as and when needed. What’s your
response to that, Commander?”

“While I’ll admit that creating permanent
squadrons would reduce deployment flexibility to some extent, I
think the advantages would outweigh the disadvantages. A.I.s have
unique personalities. I’ve talked with them enough to realize that
they don’t interact with each other in exactly the same way. A.I.s,
that have operated together for some period of time, seem to become
more efficient as a team just as humans do and it’s not hard to
figure out why. By getting to know how each other thinks, the team
operates more smoothly. Veteran A.I.s have a lot of experience and
insight to share with those fresh off the training programs.
Permanent squadrons are the perfect mechanism for bringing new
A.I.s up to the same level of skill as the veterans. There’s also
the aspect of A.I. and human interaction. I’ve developed a very
good rapport with Iceman and several of the other A.I. pilots over
the last few weeks and months. I trust Iceman’s judgment. That
trust paid off in the battles at Green4 and Avalon. Deploying him
and the others as sentries in the Early Warning Network will mean
breaking in, for lack of a better expression, a new bunch of A.I.
pilots and I’ll have lost Iceman’s insight. Let me put it this way.
Iceman and I make a good team. He’s as least as valuable to me as
having a good XO and keeping him and the rest of the group together
will enhance his effectiveness as well. The concept, of the whole
being greater than the sum of its parts applies to A.I.s just as
well as it does to humans.” Howard sighed as if he were about to
say something unpleasant.

“I can see that you’d like to keep your
remaining 11 CFPs together and on Defiant. I’m not sure that we
have the luxury of allowing that. Your mission was to establish the
outer layers of the Early Warning Network. That assumed deploying a
full load of CFPs across multiple star systems and right now,
Defiant is the only ship that can do that efficiently and quickly.
There just isn’t enough room on board to carry a full load of
deployable CFPs AND also carry a permanent squadron at the same
time.”

“Admiral, I’m coming to the conclusion that we
should seriously rethink deploying sentry CFPs as an Early Warning
Network. That network didn’t provide us any warning at Avalon even
though the enemy fleet had to have refueled from at least one star
system that was being monitored. We were very lucky at Green4. By
detecting their emergence from jumpspace, it was relatively easy to
figure out where to deploy the few recon drones that our sentry
fighters carried, in order to pinpoint their refueling orbit. But
the fact that they slipped through our inner layers undetected
tells me that two sentries per gas giant aren’t nearly enough. The
network is too porous. My original proposal of five sentries per
gas giant would work but as you pointed out, we don’t have enough
CFPs to do that any time soon.” He was about to say more but Howard
interjected.

“The EWN was your idea, Commander. Are you now
saying it’s a bad idea?”

“The concept is still worth having. It’s the
execution that I’m having doubts about, Sir.”

“Well then, if you have a better way to execute
the concept, I’ll be happy to listen to it. Do you?” And that was
the problem, he didn’t. Shiloh thought furiously about other ways
to provide the detection and warning coverage without using fighter
sentries. Suddenly he had a flash of inspiration.

“I may have. Am I correct that Space Force is
decommissioning Exploration Frigates as new construction becomes
available, Sir?” Howard nodded. “Then that’s the solution, Sir. We
modify those decommissioned FEs to enable an A.I. to pilot them. We
then load them with as many recon and message drones as possible
and we send one FE to monitor each gas giant. That way we
accomplish two goals. The FEs can carry enough recon drones to
boost the probability of detecting alien incursions plus we don’t
have to tie up as many A.I.s to make it work.”