Future Weapons of War

star’s wake. Sol had been flung clear of the Home Galaxy by the interpenetration of the galaxies, and now, two billion years later, continued to travel into the Night, eight hundred thousand light-years from the hazy glow of the merged galactic nuclei. The sky was starkly empty; other galaxies shone, dimly, as pale patches of light in the remote distance. The nearest star of this epoch—a sullen ember of a red giant, worldless and sterile—hung in an empty Void almost six hundred light years away.

Worse by far, they no longer had the resources to maintain the nonlocal communicative Net.

Once again, the remote descendents of ancient humanity were limited by c not only in travel but in communications. The nearest communicative civilization circled the fourth-nearest star… over twelve hundred light years away.

For the first time in three billion years, Earths children were truly alone.

Mind contemplated the Ultimate Night.

“We are not defeated,” it said at last.

“We are changed,” another said. “Change is not defeat.”

A third mind was not so sure. “Our resources are finite. We are changed, yes… but for the worse, surely. What hope do we have of reaching our former state?”

All three Minds had been components of the Star Lord that had spoken from one of the

Galaxy’s spiral arms almost eight galactic years before, the Star Lord associative that had questioned the price of their struggle for mere survival.

There were no other Star Lords within the Sol lifecloud.

But there was hope.

“Look there.” The first Mind pointed out a distant pinpoint source of x-rays—no, a cluster of sources, tightly grouped. Parallax measurements determined that it lay about five thousand light-years away. “You see it?”

“A fragment of the Weapon,” the third Mind said. “Flung clear by the collision. I see another over there.”

“And there.”

“Resources,” the first Mind said.

“To what end?”

“We no longer command a galaxy’s trove of data,” the first Mind said. “But we know what can be done. We can take energy—a fraction of what is available, true, but enough—from the Zero Point Field. We can divert Sol’s Dyson cloud, and Sol itself can voyage to that fragment of the Weapon, and use it to acquire yet more energy. We could return to the Merged Core, if we wished.”

“Or not,” the second Mind said. “Knowing the possibilities of nonlocal communication, spatial proximity may no longer be necessary. We could form the heart of a new communicative Network, one that ultimately spans a billion galaxies.”

“A true Type K4 civilization,” the first agreed. “Type 4Z. The Weapon may ultimately help us overcome the Ultimate Night.”

That moment in darkness heralded the birth of Universal Mind.

And the epochs passed….

THE LOOKING GLASS WAR Brendan DuBois

The President of the United States sat before his computer screen, which was still blank, and he sighed in frustration as the damn computer kept on humming at him and doing nothing else. He had switched it on and off three different times, and the screen was still blank. Not a damn thing. He had even gotten on his hands and knees below his desk in the Oval Office—an elaborate carved wood monstrosity that had once belonged to Johnson—and struggled to make sense of the jumbled strands of wire and power cords that were crowded under there, and gave up after a few minutes. Not very presidential but he didn’t care. The damn computer was still blank.

He sat back in his custom leather chair, comforted that at least the bearings weren’t squeaking any more. At least the chair was now working. It had seemed nothing much else was working this day.

Take breakfast, for example. The White House kitchen—which was much improved over the previous administrations, if any of those sell-serving memoirs he had read years earlier had been true—had about four or five breakfast choices that they rotated around each successive morning. Breakfast choices, like so many other things, had been settled during the transition period three years ago, and everything should have been fine. Except for this morning, in the private sitting room just off his bedroom, breakfast had been something that he had never liked. Lumpy oatmeal. And cold toast. And no damn Washington Post or New York Times. He had thought of throwing a hissy fit, start tossing things around and making phone calls to the Head Usher’s office, but there had been that embarrassing item in the Style gossip section in the Post last month about another incident he was too humiliated to think about, concerning missing toilet paper, so he sat down and ate mechanically, staring at the far wall.

Some breakfast, some start to the day. And as he ate, he knew there were many, many things that should be crowding his mind, things to address, things to take care of, but funny, wasn’t it, that the only thing on his mind was getting in front of his computer.

That’s it. Again, not very presidential, but there you go.

And after his disappointing breakfast, a quick sprint by himself downstairs from the private quarters on the second floor and to the West Wing and his office and then to the computer, and… nothing.

A blank screen.

He moved back and forth a bit in the chair, looking out the heavy-set windows in the Oval

Office at the best view in town, of the White House private gardens and, there in the distance, the Washington Monument. Since they were bulletproof, the windows had a greenish tinge, and he hated them from day one of his administration, since it felt like he was in the middle of a drained aquarium.

But after reading the daily threat assessments against him, he had gotten over his displeasure. Like today. So he turned away from the computer and looked at his desk. There was the leather folder thatcontained his daily schedule —micromanaged down to fifteen minute chunks—and he opened it up…

And slammed it down in frustration. This was too damn much. The damn thing was empty.

He picked up his phone and waited for Mrs. Tompkins or Mrs. Gross to answer, and there was nothing. Just incessant ringing on the other end. Out sick, maybe? Or having a coffee break? He started working his way down the buttons on his phone, trying Rogers, chief of staff; Macomber, his appointments secretary; Gillian, his press secretary, and then through a half-dozen aides and assistants.

No answer.

Nothing.

He slammed the phone back down. Could be a connection with his blank computer screen. He was sure both the phones and the computers worked off of the same type of network system. If one was down, maybe the other was down as well. That thought tickled at his mind, and he remembered a meeting some time ago, when Corcoran, his Joint Chiefs chairman, nice and sharp looking with his Army dress uniform, was waving some length of cable around. Something about a threat. Something to do with computers. Something to do with… He couldn’t remember.

The President swiveled back in his chair, switched the computer off and on again. It kept on humming along, but the screen was still blank. He could see the reflection of his face in the blank screen, like a mirror, or a… looking glass. Right? That was the phrase. Something from Alice in Wonderland, sinking into the blank screen and off he’d go, scurrying along the Internet. He slowly caressed the keys, felt an odd, brass taste in his mouth. Something like the trumpet mouthpiece he had suckled on back in high school in upstate New York, before he joined thedebate club and found that secret strength he never knew he had, the power of talking, of words, of being able to link words and sentences into something people cared about.

Another secret he never revealed, even to his wife. It had been… well, if not easy, then in some way, predetermined. Law school and private practice and lots of pro bono work, and then assemblyman and state senator and majority leader and then governor, joining the list of Rockefeller and Cuomo and Pataki, but unlike those poor sods, he had gone all the way, from Albany to D.C, like Roosevelt, so very many decades ago. Lots of