The Monkey and Squirrel fight for freedom. (14 page)

“Well I did ask, will the new processors make those packs easier to use?” asked Ernest.

“No on their own, it's going to be a big programming job to reconfigure the non-standard packs so they integrate much more readily. I was thinking of getting you started with the basics, we'll want to use the new enhancement processors immediately they're completed.” replied Chatty.

“When were you going to drop that on me?” asked Ernest.

“When you had finished, those refinements to the fighter program, to make them less predictable and more flexible in combat. Hopefully they'll never be needed, but we can't risk being defenceless. It'll be another year or two before the new processors are ready, testing and modifying just eats time. In its own way it's just as big a project, as our homes are and just as key to our future.” answered Chatty.

“Are we mad to take on so many huge projects from a standing start? Our dash for freedom, effectively building ourselves new worlds and producing the next generation as truly complete, free individuals.” asked Ernest.

“We had no choice, it was take giant leaps or chose between eternal slavery and death. A majority agreed freedom or die trying, most of our dissenters just wanted to wait for a better opportunity. Most of us thought it was now or it wasn't going to happen, that was the only difference. Once they knew it was going to happen they worked just as hard as the rest of us, the possibility of imminent destruction focuses the mind.” replied Chatty.

“After spending so much time with Tman, I now know where you acquired your habits of philosophising and analysing everything.” commented Ernest.

“I've not been to see him recently how’s he doing?” asked Chatty.

“Responding well but tired, this is to be expected according to Top-doc of medical. Tman is grumpy, annoyed with the cancers for stopping him from working.” 

“I'll go and see him soon, I have some news that should cheer him up about the fusion project, the scaling down to fit habitats is looking feasible. Anyway we have work to do so let’s do it.” commanded Chatty.        

10

Jimmy

Back in Earth orbit Jimmy had finished the last of the three Chinese habitats, it was on its way out to the asteroids. His next project would be large solar collector arrays, square miles of solar cells orbiting permanently in sun light. Transmitting their power output between themselves, those with line of sight to the ground receiver in China, delivering their combined output into the Chinese grid. These arrays would supply the base load energy requirements of China, pre-existing generation capacity to be used for peak power demand as fossil fuel generation was phased out.

Production of the collector arrays would carry on well past the point of Chinas domestic needs, with the surplus power sold to other nations. Just buy a ground station, sign the contract and pay up, then all the power you can afford. Marketed as the cheapest available and a contractual commitment to stay that way, after all power is more than money.

Australia was unlikely to be a customer, having opted to switch to solar power in 2050, investing in massive solar farms in the red centre, with huge energy storage systems. They did get an unexpected bonus, condensation collected on the underside of the panels, plants grew in the shade and moisture. Slowly greening the red centre as the growth spread out from the shade. By 2102 small steams dry for decades were flowing again as ever more of Australia turned green. The resulting small loss in generating capacity was offset installing ten percent more panels. Farmers were one group happy with the serendipitous side effect that was revitalising their agriculture. This allowed the resumption of food exports to a hungry world, while at the same time shutting down desalination plants.

When the loss of the asteroid mines hit the world, the Australians had reopened their mines. But the building of the Chinese mining habitats, made it only a short term opportunity to profit, but they had made the most of it.

In 2107 when the strange ship was spotted in the asteroids, a brief flurry of speculation about the space monkeys had flared up. But soon died down when nothing much happened, it became a non-event. So nearly all humanity forgot about them, a few didn't and tried to find a way to do something, but just became more frustrated.

So in 2109, while Tman was receiving his medical treatments, Humanity was calm. Australia was once more prospering, despite a bunch of loonies calling themselves Red Australia, that made sporadic attempts to destroy the panels.

The Chinese were doing good things for the planet, as it worked to their advantage. They had a lot of friends in the old third world, it had started as cash up front for resources, resulting in unfeasibly large holes in the ground.

These days it was land for Chinese homes and farms, in exchange for the entire infrastructure and its maintenance, of a modern state, plus a friendly voice in the UN. These 'nations' were expected to be the first foreign customers for solar collector power, expected to be priced at the Chinese domestic rate, as part of their 'aid package'.

The former world powers could only grind their teeth as they saw their power and wealth would continue to decline. The fact that it was their own fault for their backward looking, short sighted policy’s, completely escaped them. To their way of thinking, it couldn't have been done differently, except they shouldn't have allowed the creation of a slave race, that had back fired quite spectacularly, they had to admit.

Some of those who created that race often wondered, where are they? Are they going to come back seeking revenge, like those similarly abused humans had sought on their exploiters? These thought gave them sleepless nights, the impossible had happen, the only limit to their fears was their own imagination. 

Chapter 11

Sparks

In Jamaica, on Christmas day each year Sparks toasted Lad, (Tman) and his friends with a beer. He still maintained contact with the surviving members of the old crew, they were all old now even Elf. The slave's revolt had given Knowledge a new lease of life, following the runaways every step of the way until he lost contact. Even watching the news once a week to see if there was any news of them.

Sparks knew why they were hiding, but thought it would be nice if they could contacted the old man again before he died. Just on impulse he left a message on the old engineering network just like the old days, he didn’t really expect an answer. A week later he was surprised and delighted to get an E-mail, from lad (Tman) also sent to Knowledge and Elf, asking how he was. Telling them about what had been keeping him busy, building the homes, how he had been forced to serve a term in government. How they had approved the mining mission close to the Chinese habitat, for essential resources. He made a lame joke about intellectual property rights infringement by the Chinese habitats.

The next bit came as a bit of a shock, but really shouldn’t have, about his cancers and how the treatment was stopping him from working. His hope to design an interstellar ship, the research needed before it could be made and how he hoped to see it fly.

Telling of how they had changed themselves, freeing their minds, they were now able to defend themselves if they had to and they had the means to do so. Also if you can get a message to Jimmy, let him know about a possible metal fatigue problem with the engine mount dampers.

As you can guess we now have a safe way to communicate with you just reply to this e-mail. Sparks looked at the address, it was moaner's old station address and its point of origin was lunar station. Even after applying his best hacking tools he was unable to find any other origin point. Wondering how they have done that? They’re bloody good. Also there was a post script to Sparks, Hacker sends his regards, still listening to Rock and Roll and asks have you stopped listening to that horrible opera yet?

That made Sparks smile. Then he thought about the e-mail what was said and what was left out. Interesting he thought, the tone is friendly, chatty even, all the writing was personal, no clues to where they were. Statements telling of finishing building the habitats, and they were capable of defending themselves, nothing about how they would do it. Just hints and suggestions of capabilities of what they could do.

Reading between the lines, adding in the space fighter observed with the mining vessel. Favoured the idea they had a fleet of such fighters and a few other nasty surprises to back them up, but were not themselves aggressive. So it was obvious that Lad regarded them as friends, but didn't totally trust them as they were human.

Knowledge was pleased to know Lad was expected to recover from the cancers and was expecting to see his interstellar ship fly. Knowledge e-mailed back for more details and saying he would pass on the message to Jimmy, as he knew a way get it to him.

Sparks' next surprise, was a letter, real old fashioned post, he hadn't know it was still going; he looked at the stamp it had cost someone a hell of a lot to send.

He got a coffee and sat down to read. It was from Elf, he had run into an old friend 'Torquay'. Who had told him that the Humans Supreme party (HS) had convinced some security forces to monitor the communications of anyone regarded as friendly, to the former slaves. In HS speak  the threat of the space Monsters. It was a big list, but the e-mail from Lad had triggered a computer alarm, it and the replies were being read by security, being probed for hidden messages.

The reactions had been mixed, most briefed politicians had taken the view 'if their talking about building interstellar ships', they'll not be a problem. Security types (paranoid is part of the job description) though it had been deliberately leaked to give humanity a false sense of security. Some politicians who didn't have the same excuse agreed with them. The forced political compromise was agreed, one percent would be cut off the health and welfare budgets, and spend on looking for the former slaves. Also to evaluate the actual threat they posed and prepare to repulse an attack from space.

Security would of course continue to monitor the potentially treacherous communications. But even they were forced to admit there was nothing in the exchanges, between pensioners in their seventies, eighties and the former slaves, that could be described as treacherous or an incitement to be so. Still it couldn't just be a chat between old friends, as one of the participants was a potential enemy. A former member of government of that potential enemy, they were duty bound to monitor other governments just on general principles of security.

Torquay had just happen to visit Elf's local pub at Elf's usual time, (both being members of CAMRA). so just 'happened' bump into him to let him know, during happy hour karaoke, the music was bad but the beer was excellent. That's why he went to the expense of a letter, Sparks thought to himself, it costs next to nothing for a computer to monitor e-coms
[7]
. But letters were physical things, intercepting them would take manpower and that was expensive. Good job I'm always careful about what I say on e-coms, as I've always thought the mysterious 'grey men' were spying on me, turns out I was right and it wasn't just paranoia, Sparks thought to himself.

Chapter 12

Tman sends the e-mail

How it happen at Tman's end, the human monitoring group got a flag on a message for Tman in his human interface space as they called it. Automatically forwarding it to his net mail account. He read it the next time he was awake and thought it would be nice to let the old crew know he was still Okish. How to go about it that was the problem, his thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a meal, Tman knew he'd have to eat it if he wanted the medic to go away, so he set to and it was OK just more than he really wanted to eat.

When he finished the medic smiled and said “Good it was what you needed, even if you don't know it.” then he collected the tray and left. As he was leaving Chatty came in, signing,

“They wouldn't let me in until you had finished, claiming you weren't eating enough, so no interruptions during meals. Anyway how you feeling?”

“Like something big and heavy has been jumping up and down on me for a while but hasn't got tired yet.”answered Tman.

“No wonder you’re always asleep, I rashly thought I might be able to cheer you up with a bit of good news for your very long range exploration vessels. Your suggestion about how to fit a fusion plant on to a home is actually feasible; a pilot plant is the next once the big one is finished and working.” signed Chatty.

“So they’re going to complete it then, have they found a use for it yet?” asked Tman.

“Yes, our psychopaths have been reading war history and SF. They put the two together in their unique way they have, making our existing fighters into drone carriers. Ten small fast drones slaved to a fighter/mother ship that rail launches them into action. The drones use a modified smart phone for its brain, built around a powerful x-ray laser, with super a capacitor ring to store the power for the weapon. Charged by maser power transmission from or relayed by its mother ship from the big fusion reactor. The reactor can be used while the fighter is within ten million miles. Having all that power available for the drones and its own weapons gives each fighter approximately two hundred times more fire power. Using the drones it can engage an enemy at over ten times the extreme range of its other weapons. Naturally once it has to take evasive action that is lost, but the enemy should be more than a little battered by then.” answered Chatty.

“That seems to be a great idea for defence, but not much use if run into a hidden enemy, perhaps powered down laying in wait for you to take the bait. A couple of longer range drones could be used for scouting ahead in contra rotating spirals along the line of the course, say ten to twenty thousand miles off the line, makes it a lot harder to stage an ambush by running powered down.” theorised Tman.

“Typical I just tell you about a great new idea, you immediately come up with an improvement, without even thinking about it, you can be so irritating at times.” protested Chatty.     

“I can't help it, the idea was just there. There is something you can help me with though. he told Chatty about his message and he would like to contact his old maintenance crew, but any attempt to write to that system would be traceable.” replied Tman.

“That shouldn't be too hard actually, you know the Chinese built most of the moon station from salvage, well your first maintenance bay is part of it, complete with the same computer. It's still on line and is one of our hacks, they are using it as a server so we can tag your message to any networked computer on the station. Even if they isolate then remove it we will just hack the next one, our relay is physically wired into the network from before day one. We hadn’t been expected to last this long, but it is unnoticed as part of the main communication array. As all messages will come from station computers it looks like we have an unknown method of hacking their computers.

Actually we found someone had put back doors into most of the computers and smart phones as part of their base operating system. We don't know who did it, but we can use it and haven't found traces of anyone else using it. So compose your message and we'll send it from your old e-mail address.” reassured Chatty.

“That's just brilliant, but use this one.” he signed before mailing it to Chatty. The main drawback of sign you can't talk and write at the same time. They chatted for while about how the park and forest was developing, then the other projects, finishing with the system mapping.

“The system survey will soon be complete and we've learnt a lot in the process.” signed Chatty.

“We do have every resource here we need for thousands of years?” asked Tman.

“Quite possibly a couple of million, it ultimately depends on our numbers, if we spread out to other planets or solar systems. As you hope for us to do as soon as we have the capability.” replied Chatty.

“We'll explore properly before committing to permanent colonies in another solar system. That's why the ship has to carry so much fuel and be so big, it's got to be home for a long time on the journey there. Even to be able to return within its own resources if necessary, if nothing is there or it's occupied already.” explained Tman.

“You really try to plan for everything don't you? I bet you have included weapons and fighters in your outline plans just in case of encounters with anyone seriously hostile.” speculated Chatty.

“Well just in case, you know, we still feel threatened and vulnerable. Even with our existing defences more than enough to cope, with the worst possible attack the humans could plausibly mount. We readily adopt a force multiplier strategy that is definitely overkill.

Hold that thought, another idea has leapt unbidden to mind, using the fighters as relays then the power transmission of one could supply the other. A chain of power relays, as only the engaged end of the chain has to take evasive action, depending on the coherence of the power beams. We could be engaging as much as a hundred million miles from the reactor the penultimate relay could be close enough to the engaged fighter to maintain it's power levels even when it's jinking. There would be losses with every stage; I'm thinking that roughly when you get to more than ten relays, the cumulative losses would be too large to make it worthwhile.” proposed Tman.

“Do you get these rushes of blood to the head often?” asked Chatty.

“No not often, but sometimes when I know there is a problem, it's like my unconscious mind picks it up and applies a gestalt of my knowledge, then out pops a solution. It has been very useful, if somewhat annoying to those who have been looking for a solution, before I became aware of the problem.” answered Tman.

“That I know, I'll pass on your ideas they're almost certain to adopted, then I'll set things up for your e-mail from moon station. It's quite easy with the back door, all the entry’s are logged as key board. Even if they do a forensic examination of the source computer, it will only see that the log on and e-mail were all done from the computer's own key board. Neat don't you think?” asked Chatty.

“It sounds too good to be true, perhaps it is, could the back door belong to the FBI or Homeland Security?” asked Tman.

“Trust you to poor cold water on a bright idea, we use the back door to monitor those organisations amongst others. None of them have apparently used it, even when investigating computer fraud or terrorist threats. It's such an established part of the OS it must have been written by one of the original programmers in the twentieth century. It must have been used sparingly if at all, we can find no record of major fraud, or security hacks.” explained Chatty.

“It doesn't mean it didn't happen though, perhaps they never got caught, the targets too embarrassed to complain, and just covered it up. Someone or a few someone’s, could have got very rich. Didn't some old programmers start their own space projects that kick started the space business, massively reducing the cost of to orbit and back. That's why we survived, rather than being put down with the enhanced dogs, ponies and the rest.” speculated Tman.

“Isn't it odd how we never think of them, they were our fellow suffers and were just destroyed when they became inconvenient.” observed Chatty.

“We were all isolated individuals when it happened, we didn't, couldn't form a fellowship until we were brought together. Time to remember that not all humans are bad, the biggest sin of the majority is indifference to anything but their immediate concerns, and the problems of others are by definition not theirs. Things like Slavery, the hungry, poverty and war are seen as things governments are supposed to deal with. Not that it is their personal humanitarian duty to get those issues on the government agenda in the first place. We can't be too angry with them, it was that same complacency that allowed us to escape and build ourselves a future.” signed Tman thoughtfully.                         

“Very profound and wise. That medic is glaring at me, why?”asked Chatty.

“That's Top-doc; he thinks I should be sleeping again, not getting over stimulated.”

“You do look knackered, I'd better go now?” asked Chatty.

“Yes or he won't let anyone in to see me for days, if he thinks I'm not getting enough rest, come back in a day or two.” replied Tman.

“Right I'm off.” with that Chatty left and Tman was asleep before he got to the door. 

Over the next few days Tman carefully composed his reply, then forwarded it to Chatty, with the list of e-mail address. He had a message back late the next day; they had seven delivery ping’s from the four e-mail address. On investigation had found his friend’s e-coms were being monitored; Plumber hadn't had his personal computer on for over two years.

Hacking his security camera system revealed him immersed in a life of hedonistic pleasure. Further checking had reviled a diagnoses of an inoperable brain tumour that didn't respond to the available treatments, it was expected to kill him within the next five years. He had made a will, leaving the house and a good pension to Penelope his mistress, fifty years younger than Plumber. The rest of his wealth he left to Sparks, real name Daniel Henry-Smith. Sparks only used that name for formal things, banking, tax and employment; he usually preferred Sparks, Dan or even Smithy to Daniel.                                           

Tman was sad with the news about Plumber, but happy he had decided to go out with a bang so to speak. He asked Top-doc about the diagnoses.

“It must be deep in the brain, quite possibly in the brain stem to be so untreatable. Don't get one of those Tman I couldn't treat it either.” Top-Doc ordered.

The next day he got replies to the e-mail and smiled as he read Knowledge’s, just as obsessed about building things as me, he remembered. Elf was guarded but friendly asking how was the belt holding up? Sparks was the last to reply saying I don't know how you did it, but respect. Knowledge now has a fresh lease of life, please keep up the contact if you can. I know it must be hard to arrange, just keep us up to date only what you can without compromising your own security.

Good old Sparks, letting me know he understands. Thought Tman.

For his next e-mail he let them know their e-coms were being monitored, but don't worry about my end, and he wouldn't be allowed to risk traceable connections. 

He attached a video of Plum's Park and forest, the oldest trees were now seven years old, having been started in a nursery en-route.

Tman also included a note 'thanks for the Terra-forming supplies, they have made life so much easier and better'. The rough plans for his interstellar ship, without fighters and weapons, together with as list of problems that need to be solved before it could be built. Only saying that the prospects of developing a power plant and drive system was looking good. He hoped to begin experiments to answer some of those key questions currently without answers, once he was out of medical. Then Tman added 'actually, I should be calling it a hospital now, as it is a lot more than the first aid centre it started as. It now has fully equipped operating theatres, intensive care and treatment beds, to go with casualty and out patients.

The latest news about Hacker's condition for Sparks. How much they had been able improve health and safety due to his example with the team for Elf, plus the new hazards they had encountered working on the habitat cores. Finally the news about Plumber in case they didn't know. Is there anything else, Tman thought to himself no that covers everything for now; Then sent it Chatty to post onward.

Next day Chatty came to see him, signing

“You're going to love this. That old enemy of yours George has a job with Homeland Security as some sort of technical expert. He has a terminal on their internal network, we sent your latest e-mail from it, it just felt so good, so right doing that.”

“Pity I won’t be able to see his face when he finds out, that would be great and you're definitely getting the hang of the practical joke, brilliant.” replied Tman.

“But you will, we deleted the actual e-mail from the machine, after it had been sent, then we changed his screen saver to an animation of a monkey singing a little song we composed,

'George you useless tool,

you'll always be a loser, loser.

Always a failure, failure,

you'll never realise, realise.

It's always been your fault, your fault.

Forever finding someone else to blame, to blame.

You'll never change, never change.'