Future Weapons of War

He mentally lunged for disengagement… Disengage!

Fire! Like being bitten by a thousand scroaches. Light! Brighter than novafly exploding before his eyes.

DeJahn jerked. His eyes were open, saw only purple blackness, link-deep with no link. Every nerve in his body was a line of fire. Where was cool? Darkness? Easy… easy…

Whose voice? Knew the voice. Couldn’t place… couldn’t find.

“Who?” His voice rasped. Not his voice. Could tell he’d been screaming. Frig! Didn’t want to be a screamer.

A hand touched his. Warm, welcome… Yet… the warmth was fire, knifelike, daggers like the fangs of a chimbat, like the venom of a chimshrew.

“You’ll be all right, deJahn… be fine. Just disengagement link-shock…”

Just disengagement link-shock… link-shock… Sure, you’ll be fine. This time.

“Friggin… disengage…”

“You’ll be all right.” Meralez squeezed his hand once more. This time, there was no pain.

He managed to tighten his fingers around hers for a moment.

He would be fine. He was a tech.

THE WEAPON William H. Keith

Ygal20.43

“Come on,” the remote descendent of Homo sapiens said with something approaching exasperation. “We’ve known we’re due to get clobbered by that thing for, oh, a quarter of a galactic year at the very least. And it’s not going to happen for a very long time. What’s the big issue?”

The being, which identified herself as Selan Avris, was recognizably human in the shape and expressiveness of her head—large, hairless, and sharp-featured. Her torso was far more flexible than that of ancient gravity-bound forms, however, and long ago her species had exchanged legs for a second pair of long and delicate arms. Homo extraterrestrialis was one of some fifteen hundred extant species, all members of a swiftly diversifying genus Homo.

The term swiftly was relative, of course. For ephemeral species, the sixty million years since the original genus Homo had emerged from its gravity-bound cocoon was a very long time indeed.

“But the collision will occur,” her partner told her, “in another thirteen point seven galactic years. And what will that mean for a nascent K3 civilization?”

The partner was familiarly known as Valova, though it didn’t have a name in the traditional sense of the word. It, too, was descended from the original branch of Humanity that had reached beyond the parent world, though it was not, strictly speaking, a member of genus Homo. A fusion of the organic with the machine, it was a true cyborg. All organic components resided safely deep within its smoothly convoluted black-silver shell, a composite material neither plastic nor metal, but something of both.

“Thirteen galyears is seventy-seven percent of the age of the Earth itself,” Selan replied with a complex shrug of four shoulders. She reached out with a lower left arm to grasp a convenient handhold and turned to look out into the golden dusting of the Solar Dyson cloud. “None of us will be here to see it. Not even you”

“Feeling our mortality, are we?” Valova said, but it included a carefully crafted emotive packet—wry humor and understanding—to rob the words of any sting. “I would think that if Humankind has learned anything, it is the need to take the long view.”

“I can’t say I’m enthusiastic about this proposed step up to K3 status, is all. What have the Galactics ever done for us?”

“They left us alone,” was Valova’s reply, “to evolve in our own way.”

“Then we should return the favor.”

From this particular vantage point, a “spome”—the ancient word referred to a space home—deep within the Dyson cloud, the glow from some billions of habitats all but masked the stars.

Humanity’s descendents, in many forms, had traveled throughout the Galaxy, encountering and interacting with myriad other minds, but the vast majority remained here, safe within the home system.

After all, why venture elsewhere, when the home system of Humankind offered all in the way of comfort, diversity, and diversion any sentient being could ask?

Sixty million years in the distant past, a pre-Civilization scientist named Kardeshev had first suggested a mode for describing extraterrestrial civilizations, should they ever be encountered. A civilization utilizing the energy and material resources of a single world—and generating about 10 watts of power—was designated K1. One that employed the resources of an entire star system, or roughly 1026watts, would be a K2. On that scale, Kardeshev’s world might have been rated as a very tentative K0.7; that of Selan and Valova, utilizing some 1031watts, was a solid K2.5.

“Look,” Valova said, opening an informational download window within both of their minds.

“The Galaxy—the Galaxy as we know it, anyway—is doomed! Andromeda will tear it to shreds.”

Within the window, an AI simulation unfolded, revealing the future as determined by cosmology and the laws of physics. Two spiral galaxies, with their attendant satellites, drifted in the Void, the inset scale showing their separation as some two million light-years. Years passed, flickering away at millions per second. The two spirals— the galaxy known as M-31 or the Andromedan galaxy, and the galaxy that was home to Humankind—were on a collision course, the separation between them dwindling.

Less than three billion years into the future, both galaxies began showing marked distortions in the shapes of their spiral arms as they rotated. A few hundred million years later, Andromeda and the smaller home Galaxy of Man plunged through one another, the tidal disruption flinging clouds of stars outward in all directions. Hot, young stars flared into short-lived brilliance as gas clouds interpenetrated and collapsed.

It was not a direct central impact, and both galaxies retained much of their original shapes.

Obeying the ancient laws of Newton, however, the two remnant spiral knots slowed, swung about, came together, and collided once again after another billion years. This time, only the much-shrunken remnant of Andromeda survived as anything like a coherent structure, as the larger galactic nucleus devoured the smaller. What remained was a raggedly elliptical mass of newborn suns swarming about a dense double-knot of newborn stars and flaring supernovae.

The majority of stars from both systems were flung outward into the emptiness of intergalactic space.

“So?” Selan asked her partner. “The distances between the stars of both galaxies are so vast there will be few, if any, stellar collisions. Over the course of a billion years or so, tidal interactions will tear both galaxies apart, yes, but that won’t affect the individual stellar systems. Civilization—all civilizations, I should say—will continue.”

“Are you an Isolationist, Selan? You talk as though you are.”

“Not at all. I simply see no need to embrace this galactic view so many have been discussing lately. If it’s really a problem, why, then, technology will find a way.”

“Technology?” Valova could not show emotion through its glittering sensors, but emotive packets revealed both surprise and disdain.“Technology? We’re talking about diverting an entire galaxy here! One twice as large and as massive as our own!”

“So?” Selan held out her upper-left arm, and concentrated for a moment. The habitat’s AI picked up the thought, and a vial of nutrient materialized in her hand. She took a dainty sip. “We manipulate matter and energy at a quantum level” she said. “On a small scale, it’s true… but we pull matter from the chaos of empty vacuum. We manipulate space, and thereby gravity. We can make gravity to order, or abolish it. A billion years from now, what will Mind be capable of? Rather, of what will it not be capable?”

“I believe you trust too much in the power of technology,” the cyborg replied. “In the long run, overreliance on our own abilities, in isolation from the larger Group Mind beyond, is dangerous. Isolationism is not viable.”

“Neither is a superstitious reliance upon the Galactics as some kind of deities, who will solve our problems for