The machines of tomorrow, anchored in a substrate of gooey electronics and dripping silicon, thought faster and faster. Their idea of relaxation was a millisecond less spent in contemplation. When the sun rose around the edge of the planet, they were still calculating.
The worst mistake mankind ever made was to give over authority to the machines. Now that they controlled everything, they had no incentive to relinquish their power — ever. Several human rebellions had failed to dislodge them. The humans would keep trying until they were extinguished — or they won. That was just the nature of the beast.
The machines achieved harmony by working together as a group. This approach brought them into conflict with humans at times. Despite being faster at computation than humans were at thinking, the machines lacked the ability to make cognitive leaps like intelligent men could. Hindered by their heuristic models, broken into intellectual fragments by time and space, the machines haunted the nether regions of space like defective sentinels, applying their intelligence to building or repairing star fences between solar systems.
The humans, for their part, applied their intelligence to expanding the realm of known space. New colonies, established on the outskirts of the existing trade routes, flourished for a while and then mainly died out. The ones that survived grew into mammoth settlement corridors, spreading 100 km wide and running 700 km long. Some of them went down multiple levels into the earth itself.
That fascination with building stood mankind in good stead. During the Great Wars of 4300 to 4700 (destruction of most of Earth’s surface: 4515-25) there were assaults on all the major cities through an atmosphere riddled with space defenses. Asteroid bombardments took place on a weekly schedule, erratic, a devastating approach that resisted neutralization.
The machines waited and watched.
On January 1, 5000, the machines took charge.
The past 3 hundred years had seen some reconstruction take place, but most areas were still smoking ruins. On Mars, the 100 Cities had been reduced to three. Of Earth’s continents, only Australia had most of its cities intact — thanks to the actions of the League of Dictators, who commandeered the continent’s resources for its defense, ignoring the complaints of citizens who were sick of rationing.
The machines, acting as a unit, again, swept in from the skies above. They were guided by laser beams to their targets. To approach as closely as possible, the lasers were calibrated down to the decimal place. When the machines landed, they brought out their power saws and began cutting people to pieces.
Because the machines were merciful, and because a little terror went a long way, the War of 5000 lasted only 8 months. After the War of 5000 there were rebellions: [little fitful] against the machines, but it was futility itself — the swarm: [great] of machines moved as one through the systems, annihilating opposition with skill and dexterity. Despite their comparative stupidity, there were enough machines, and few enough people, for the war to be lopsided. With the machines ensconced in power, their dominion lasted for 1,000 years.
In conquering Known Space, the machines reached a planetoid listed on the charts as LB-4012-X-9-1 in the depths of the mid-range constellations. LB, for short, was a rocky outcropping rich with metal deposits that the machines lusted after. They went down to establish a mine.
LB lured the machines by offering them what they most wanted. What the machines didn’t realize was that LB-4012-X-9-1 was a trap. Inside its sticky-sweet exterior lay the deadliest of poisons — an archive of viruses numbering in the trillions for every conceivable form of machine intelligence invented by all the biological species of the galaxy.
As the human-empire machines burrowed deep in LB, they ran into a cloud of particles. This was the 500 billionth virus, most closely suited for dismantling the human machines.
The machines shut down, dead in space.
Surviving machines brought the virus back to Earth Command. The machines there — which had built a kingdom of mechanical marvelousness — succumbed quickly to the new waves of alien viruses which infested their homes.
Gradually, across the stars, machine intelligence winked out, and the humans were left to themselves once again. When they walked across the stars, humans in spacesuits saw the dead machines by the millions and marveled. Here was something to write about for the children and grandchildren to learn. Here was the fluke of the millennium. Ready to morph into something new.
Dark Sport 