Post-Human Trilogy

government was Luddite, but he couldn’t find the appropriate words. It didn’t matter—Colonel Paine was on a roll.

“Your wife is pretty damned accomplished. A PhD when she was only twenty-six, recruited by the top nanotech lab in the country for her post-doc. But you’re no slouch yourself, Doc. You made it into med school before the world ended, back when it still meant something. You two are a couple of smart ones, all right. I bet you even think you’re smarter than your commanding officer.”

Again, Craig desperately wanted to reply. He shifted in his chair, his mouth forming the shapes of words, but he didn’t have time to settle on which ones to say before Paine went on.

“Have you ever looked up my file, Doc? No? Shoot. You’d think you’d look up the file of your C.O. If you had looked me up, you’d know I’m a Rhodes Scholar.”

“That’s impressive, sir. I didn’t know that.” Finally…words.

“Back when it meant something,” the colonel repeated.

Craig nodded in understanding.

“So now that you know you’re not being addressed by a Luddite idiot, let me explain something to you.” Paine pulled out his sidearm and held the gun up for Craig to see. “They teach you anything about game theory in medical school, Doc?”

Craig shook his head.

“Then you’ve never heard of Nash’s equilibrium?”

“No, sir.”

“Okay. Now we’re in business—there’s something I can teach you. In game theory, every scenario is broken down into a mathematical equation, and the entities in the game—whether they be individuals or whole countries —are assumed to be rational. You follow me so far, Doc?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me give you an example. Say you and I are gunfighters in the Old West. It’s high noon.” Paine wiggled the gun in his hand and looked at it, almost adoringly. “We’ve got a beef to settle, so there we are, in the middle of the town, dust blowing up around us. Somebody is going to die. That’s a given. Know why?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s simple, Doc. People who are rational always act in their own best interest. Let’s put some numbers to it. Let’s say you’re making up your mind about whether or not to draw your gun and shoot. You could just keep it holstered. If I keep mine holstered too, then our chance of survival is going to be 100 percent. Great, right? We could just walk away and call it a day.” Paine shook his head. “The only problem is, that’s a heck of a gamble, ain’t it? I mean, what if you decide to keep your gun holstered and then I pull out mine anyway?” Paine aimed his firearm directly at Craig’s forehead. “Your chances of survival just dropped dramatically. In fact, since I’m a dead shot, I’d have to say they’re damn near zero.” The colonel leaned back in his chair. “So, what are you going to do?”

“I’ve got to shoot,” Craig replied, swallowing as he did so.

Paine smiled. “That’s right, Doc. And why is that?”

“If I shoot, chances are 50/50 that I’ll survive. Beats zero, sir.”

“Well, you are a smart son of a gun.” Paine sat back in his chair and lowered his weapon. “Let’s change the equation a little bit, shall we? Let’s say that instead of guns, we’re holding nuclear weapons on each other. Instead of a fraction of a second for a bullet to hit our enemy, it will take several minutes. If you fire, the other player knows it and fires back. Both of you have a zero percent chance of survival. You know this scenario. It’s called mutually assured destruction, and it has held from the time Russia first got themselves a nuke back in 1948. No matter how afraid we got that nuclear war was going to happen tomorrow, in truth, we were always safe, because nobody wanted to start a war that would end with everyone dead.” Paine held his gun up and trained it on Craig’s forehead once again. This time there was something in the colonel’s eye that unnerved Craig. The killer inside emerged from his eyes as they fixed, hard and unmoving, upon Craig’s. “But let’s say someone—or something—found a way around mutually assured destruction. Let’s say Nash’s equilibrium went straight out the window. That happened once in history. The good ol‘ United States of America had a bomb and no one else did—and we used it…twice.” Paine’s tone became even colder as he spoke. “If I’m China, sitting here with an A.I. that can circumvent Nash’s equilibrium, and you’re the USA, sitting there holding yourself, what are you gonna do?”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

Paine’s face instantly went pale at the thought. After a moment of reflection, he sat back in his seat and lowered his weapon. “Not in this life, Doc. The USA will never do what anyone tells them—or at least that’s how our President looked upon the situation.” He crossed his arms and cocked his head slightly to the right. “I wonder how things would have shaken out had your wife been President.”

Craig kept his composure. He didn’t like having his wife brought into the conversation, but he also knew the stakes were high. If Paine was telling the truth, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had him and Samantha on their radar—and that was a place one never wanted to be.

“Now,” Paine continued, “I do read the files of every man under my command. I’ve read yours. It’s impressive. You’re a doctor, automatically an officer with the rank of captain. You could have hidden away in a military hospital, but instead you trained for Special Forces assignment. You’re a veteran of ten HALO jumps, one from 50,000 feet.” Paine paused, and his eyes met Craig’s. “Balls. You’re the most qualified man the Air Force currently has in combat S.A. Now, I didn’t know what the hell ‘combat S.A.’ is, so I had to look it up. That wasn’t easy, given its secret status, but hell, if I wasn’t gobsmacked to find out it stands for ‘suspended animation.’ I’m gonna assume you used your wife’s connections in DARPA to get yourself in on that.”

“That’s how I found out about the program, sir.”

Paine nodded. “You were selected for this mission as an add-on because of your specialty training and because you’re the only guy in the entire United States military who has a chance in hell of hooking up with a Special Forces suborbital low-opening parachute unit and actually managing to pull it off. However…” Paine began as he slipped off his aug glasses and leaned his elbows on the small wooden desk. “…it behooves me to tell you that your participation in this mission is extraneous to its overall success. So, believe me when I tell you that when I told the chairman of the Joint Chiefs that you were solid and that the President doesn’t have to worry about whether he is sending a traitor on the most important mission in American history since the Enola Gay, I really didn’t have to. I stuck my neck out for you, Doc.”

Craig blinked. “I… thank you, sir. I’m no traitor, sir. My wife… she just worries.”

“You’re Special Forces now, Doc. The men you’re accompanying on your mission today are the best this country has to offer—the best we have left. This is a dangerous mission. We cannot put those men at any more risk than is absolutely necessary.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Do you? This is as top secret as it gets. Even I don’t know the details. Yet you’re wife knows…” Paine paused as he retrieved his aug glasses. He slipped them on, nodded again to select something, and then read, “This mission is important, Sammie. If it’s successful, this war will be over a lot sooner than the world thinks.”

Craig fell silent once again.

“In Britain, during the blitz of WWII,” Paine related, “they had a slogan: ‘The walls have ears.’ These days, it’s a hell of a lot worse. There’s nothing you can say that isn’t picked up by a mic somewhere, fed through an algorithm that picks up patterns and weeds out what’s important. If our intelligence forces have that capability, you can be damn sure the Chinese have it too. If they heard you, they’re on high alert right now.”

Craig nodded. The colonel was absolutely right. He’d been a fool to say anything.

“You never, never put your fellow soldier at risk, Doc.—especially when you’re Special Forces.”

“You’re right, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

Paine leaned back in his chair one last time. “Let me be clear. I could have your ass in jail as we speak. I could have your wife arrested. I could do all of that, but I won’t. I won’t because I believe you made a mistake and that you sincerely care about your fellow soldiers and your country.”

“I do, sir.”