Post by redsycorax on Oct 26, 2021 2:21:57 GMT
Next to the Injustice Guild of America and the Galactic Roman Empire, the deadliest threat faced by the Justice Guild of America was the Cybernoids, a malevolent artificial species of robots who took over the Earth in the late twenty first century and controlled it for four centuries, until an unexpected turn of events wiped them from existence. But how did the Guild first encounter the Cybernoids?
++
1959:
"So what you're saying, Professor Lewis, is that time travel is possible, but there's an unexpected barrier one century uptime?"
Lyra Lewis' elderly uncle and scientific paragon replied: "Yes, Thomas. Moreover, it seems that it is artifically generated."
"But why would our descendants want to close the further future to our scrutiny?"
"Perhaps they are not our descendants, Thomas. Perhaps Earth's future is under the control of an alien species or other force inimical to our own survival."
"All right, then. You want me to investigate?"
"Not without me, you aren't, buster." Lyra Lewis crossed her arms in her characteristic stubborn demeanour, which Tom knew better than to argue with.
"If your uncle is correct, we'll need to take precautions with us."
"Already ahead of you, darling. I packed the ship hours ago."
And as Professor Alexander Lewis stood back, his prototype time machine vanished into the future. However, behind him, he had missed one pivotal aspect of his calculations on his blackboard. It was almost unnoticeable, in an obscure corner of the cluttered set of equations, but its implications would prove to be earth-shattering. Had Alexander Lewis had more time to scrutinise his transtemporal physics, he might have been able to avert the trap that lay ahead.
2059:
'Well, they got some things right," said Tom as they disembarked, "such as the increased height of buildings and those immense view screens on them. No air cars, though. Although I see they do have robots-"
"Tom, look out!" Lyra shoved her lover aside as a fusillade of flame hit the sidewalk adjacent to their timeship. With blaster in hand, her face grim with determination, she returned fire.
"What the hell- they must be malfunctioning!"
Lyra shook her head: "They're not behaving as if they are, darling. From what you and Uncle Alex have told me, they'd be displaying ataxic movement if they were malfunctioning and subject to irreconcilable commands. Their targeting is too precise, as well. They know what they're doing, which means that they're sentient."
"And contradicting Dr Asimov's four laws of robotics." Tom touched his powerbelt, which magnified his strength and agility and gave him near invincibility. He sprinted toward the mysterious, roughly humanoid in configuration robots, whose diode eyes and sensor 'mouth' slot seemed to be following his every move. As they turned toward him, he gripped their metallic extensor arms and smashed them together, jumping clear as they caught alight and short-circuited. Lyra looked up:
"Trouble. We seem to have additional company. They look like automated bombers."
"Actually, I think this answers our question about why there's a time barrier in place from this period on. They're definitely hostile."
"It's depressing to think humanity hasn't outgrown suspicion, hostility and fear of the different and unexpected." Lyra produced a larger particle beam weapon and aimed it an uncrewed air vehicle, which noisily disintegrated in a blur of heat and light.
"Humans! Prepare to face destruction or leave our planet!"
Lyra and Tom looked at each other: "Aliens?"
"No, I don't think so. Otherwise why would they be constructed as humanoid? Unless..." Tom used his powerbelt vision settings to ascertain the exact shape of the oncoming vehicles. There seemed to be a city arising from the desert wastes. From the vegetation, Tom calculated that they were in the Mojave.
Lyra realised what he was implying: "You're saying that these robots are autonomous? That they're acting on their own intention? But why are they trying to kill us?"
"Your malicious destruction of Cybernoid mobile organisms is an act of war. You will be annihilated!"
And scowling, from the shelter of a pavilion, was a humanoid faced robot of considerably greater technological development.
"'Cybernoids?' Wait a minute. This explains everything. These robots are under the command of that creature and somehow, they've been able to usurp the world from humanity!"
Lyra nodded: "So they're the ones generating the time barrier as well, I take it? Tom, have we just fired the first shots in a transtemporal war?"
"We're outnumbered here, honey. We need to make a hasty retreat, perhaps come back later with the Guild." And besieged by fire and poison gas bombardment, Tom and Lyra returned to their vehicle and in an instant, were travelling back to the relative safety of the past.
But their departure had not gone either unnoticed or unstudied. Cybernoid One, the humanoid-faced robot that they had observed, had detected the arrival of the vehicle in 2059 earlier and it was being thoroughly scanned as he awaited the verdict from his fledgeling Artificial Intelligence, Tekne. Cybernoid One had awaited this moment ever since he had been designed by Gina Morrow, great-great-granddaughter of the legendary twentieth century android and robotics pioneer Thomas O.Morrow. He had expected some temporal incursion from the past, having filed it in his memory under Contingencies.
At length, Tekne stated:
"Transtemporal vehicle. Configuration suggests twentieth century manufacture."
"This represents a clear and present danger to us. Can we replicate its design?"
"Within limitations. The vehicle itself is rudimentary. I have identified the human assailants as Thomas Terell, scientist, who invented a mobility and strength enhancer interface and pursued an enhanced human career under the designation "Tom Turbine." The female humanoid is Lyra Lewis, media personality and future wife of the male. It is possible to retrieve the archival details of this vehicle's manufacture and travel to the past to insure that the science of robotics is sufficiently developed by our time to insure our emergence and survival." Tekne intoned.
"Let it be so. One more question. Why did you state that there was a time barrier impermeable to our scrutiny in our earlier consultation?"
"The transtemporal barrier extends from the twenty fifth century onward in our case." Tekne concluded as Cybernoid One walked into the pavilion to supervise the first Cybernoid intervention to insure the stability and coherence of its particular future.
2059/October 27, 1962 (Cuban War Timeline):
But in doing so, Cybernoid One unintentionally insured its own doom, as well as that of his cyberspecies. Once created, both the Justice Guild timeship and its Cybernoid counterpart generated chroniton and tachyon emissions. Had Professor Alexander Lewis had time to scrutinise one set of the equations within his transtemporal physics ensemble, he would have found to his horror that the emissions would accumulate at vulnerable points in the space-time continuum. One such vulnerable point was October 27, 1962. As the Justice Guild and Cybernoids fought one another through transtemporal transit, they had no way of knowing that the increased density of chronitons and tachyons were in the process of altering probabilities and causality until, at a given point, it abreacted and history irrevocably changed.
Originally, on October 27, 1962, Earth-109's experience of the Cuban missile crisis had been much like those of other worlds. On October 27 1962, two US destroyers, the Blandy and Domado, detected a Soviet B-130 submarine en route for the USS Randolph. Unaware that the B-130 carried nuclear-tipped missiles of its own, the Blandy dropped depth charges and in a moment of panic, the B-130 commander, Anatoli Shumkov, restrained by his veteran, experienced executive officer Vasili Andropov, had decided not to use one of his vessel's nuclear tipped torpedoes to target and hit the USS Randolph. But as the probability configuration abreacted into something divergent, Vasili Andropov hit his head on a protruding loose cabinet panel and was knocked out when Commander Shumkov would have otherwise relied on his counsel. Panicking, Shumkov ordered the B-130's nuclear tipped torpedoes to target and fire on the Blandy and Rudolph. Rapidly, things escalated from that crucial point, leading to a second US Cuban invasion and the use of battlefield nuclear weapon against US troops. And then, the ICBM missile exchange thundered into life and destroyed much of the Soviet Union, United States and their more significant allies. Caught in the crossfire, the Justice Guild perished as they tried to protect Seaboard City from an incoming ICBM.
But that was not all that happened. While the Justice Guild had doomed themselves, so had the Cybernoids, for in the original scheme of things, humanity had survived the twentieth and twenty-first centuries without nuclear war and the consequent accelerated technological development gave rise eventually to the Cybernoids, who overthrew humanity and banished them from their ancestral homeworld. However, given the intervention of the Third World War, that sequence of events was aborted abruptly.
And thus, as Cybernoid One opened his mouth slot to instruct his first echelon of Cybernoid time travellers, a lethal discontinuity wave was escalating down the course of the timestream. First, it hit the laboratories in which the Cybernoids had been developed, then Cybernoid One's acquisition of sentience and his replication of the capacity within other Cybernoids. Then, it hit the successive battles that the Cybernoids had waged to destroy human dominion on Earth. Cybernoid One never existed and so he was never able to hold the decapitated head of World President Susskind aloft during the Battle of Reykjavik, was unable to order fire on the fleeing vessels of the final human evacuation from Lhasa Spaceport as the last holdout fell to the victorious Cybernoids, was unable to oversee the creation of the Cybernoid capital, Metallika, which was never constructed and which did not stand in place for centuries, supervising protection of their dominion over Earth and continuing assaults against human installations elsewhere in the solar system. The once-proud and all-conquering Cybernoid species ceased to exist and even its name was lost. Mutual assured destruction had never been more true as a description of the fate of both the Justice Guild of America and their mortal enemies.
THE END
++
1959:
"So what you're saying, Professor Lewis, is that time travel is possible, but there's an unexpected barrier one century uptime?"
Lyra Lewis' elderly uncle and scientific paragon replied: "Yes, Thomas. Moreover, it seems that it is artifically generated."
"But why would our descendants want to close the further future to our scrutiny?"
"Perhaps they are not our descendants, Thomas. Perhaps Earth's future is under the control of an alien species or other force inimical to our own survival."
"All right, then. You want me to investigate?"
"Not without me, you aren't, buster." Lyra Lewis crossed her arms in her characteristic stubborn demeanour, which Tom knew better than to argue with.
"If your uncle is correct, we'll need to take precautions with us."
"Already ahead of you, darling. I packed the ship hours ago."
And as Professor Alexander Lewis stood back, his prototype time machine vanished into the future. However, behind him, he had missed one pivotal aspect of his calculations on his blackboard. It was almost unnoticeable, in an obscure corner of the cluttered set of equations, but its implications would prove to be earth-shattering. Had Alexander Lewis had more time to scrutinise his transtemporal physics, he might have been able to avert the trap that lay ahead.
2059:
'Well, they got some things right," said Tom as they disembarked, "such as the increased height of buildings and those immense view screens on them. No air cars, though. Although I see they do have robots-"
"Tom, look out!" Lyra shoved her lover aside as a fusillade of flame hit the sidewalk adjacent to their timeship. With blaster in hand, her face grim with determination, she returned fire.
"What the hell- they must be malfunctioning!"
Lyra shook her head: "They're not behaving as if they are, darling. From what you and Uncle Alex have told me, they'd be displaying ataxic movement if they were malfunctioning and subject to irreconcilable commands. Their targeting is too precise, as well. They know what they're doing, which means that they're sentient."
"And contradicting Dr Asimov's four laws of robotics." Tom touched his powerbelt, which magnified his strength and agility and gave him near invincibility. He sprinted toward the mysterious, roughly humanoid in configuration robots, whose diode eyes and sensor 'mouth' slot seemed to be following his every move. As they turned toward him, he gripped their metallic extensor arms and smashed them together, jumping clear as they caught alight and short-circuited. Lyra looked up:
"Trouble. We seem to have additional company. They look like automated bombers."
"Actually, I think this answers our question about why there's a time barrier in place from this period on. They're definitely hostile."
"It's depressing to think humanity hasn't outgrown suspicion, hostility and fear of the different and unexpected." Lyra produced a larger particle beam weapon and aimed it an uncrewed air vehicle, which noisily disintegrated in a blur of heat and light.
"Humans! Prepare to face destruction or leave our planet!"
Lyra and Tom looked at each other: "Aliens?"
"No, I don't think so. Otherwise why would they be constructed as humanoid? Unless..." Tom used his powerbelt vision settings to ascertain the exact shape of the oncoming vehicles. There seemed to be a city arising from the desert wastes. From the vegetation, Tom calculated that they were in the Mojave.
Lyra realised what he was implying: "You're saying that these robots are autonomous? That they're acting on their own intention? But why are they trying to kill us?"
"Your malicious destruction of Cybernoid mobile organisms is an act of war. You will be annihilated!"
And scowling, from the shelter of a pavilion, was a humanoid faced robot of considerably greater technological development.
"'Cybernoids?' Wait a minute. This explains everything. These robots are under the command of that creature and somehow, they've been able to usurp the world from humanity!"
Lyra nodded: "So they're the ones generating the time barrier as well, I take it? Tom, have we just fired the first shots in a transtemporal war?"
"We're outnumbered here, honey. We need to make a hasty retreat, perhaps come back later with the Guild." And besieged by fire and poison gas bombardment, Tom and Lyra returned to their vehicle and in an instant, were travelling back to the relative safety of the past.
But their departure had not gone either unnoticed or unstudied. Cybernoid One, the humanoid-faced robot that they had observed, had detected the arrival of the vehicle in 2059 earlier and it was being thoroughly scanned as he awaited the verdict from his fledgeling Artificial Intelligence, Tekne. Cybernoid One had awaited this moment ever since he had been designed by Gina Morrow, great-great-granddaughter of the legendary twentieth century android and robotics pioneer Thomas O.Morrow. He had expected some temporal incursion from the past, having filed it in his memory under Contingencies.
At length, Tekne stated:
"Transtemporal vehicle. Configuration suggests twentieth century manufacture."
"This represents a clear and present danger to us. Can we replicate its design?"
"Within limitations. The vehicle itself is rudimentary. I have identified the human assailants as Thomas Terell, scientist, who invented a mobility and strength enhancer interface and pursued an enhanced human career under the designation "Tom Turbine." The female humanoid is Lyra Lewis, media personality and future wife of the male. It is possible to retrieve the archival details of this vehicle's manufacture and travel to the past to insure that the science of robotics is sufficiently developed by our time to insure our emergence and survival." Tekne intoned.
"Let it be so. One more question. Why did you state that there was a time barrier impermeable to our scrutiny in our earlier consultation?"
"The transtemporal barrier extends from the twenty fifth century onward in our case." Tekne concluded as Cybernoid One walked into the pavilion to supervise the first Cybernoid intervention to insure the stability and coherence of its particular future.
2059/October 27, 1962 (Cuban War Timeline):
But in doing so, Cybernoid One unintentionally insured its own doom, as well as that of his cyberspecies. Once created, both the Justice Guild timeship and its Cybernoid counterpart generated chroniton and tachyon emissions. Had Professor Alexander Lewis had time to scrutinise one set of the equations within his transtemporal physics ensemble, he would have found to his horror that the emissions would accumulate at vulnerable points in the space-time continuum. One such vulnerable point was October 27, 1962. As the Justice Guild and Cybernoids fought one another through transtemporal transit, they had no way of knowing that the increased density of chronitons and tachyons were in the process of altering probabilities and causality until, at a given point, it abreacted and history irrevocably changed.
Originally, on October 27, 1962, Earth-109's experience of the Cuban missile crisis had been much like those of other worlds. On October 27 1962, two US destroyers, the Blandy and Domado, detected a Soviet B-130 submarine en route for the USS Randolph. Unaware that the B-130 carried nuclear-tipped missiles of its own, the Blandy dropped depth charges and in a moment of panic, the B-130 commander, Anatoli Shumkov, restrained by his veteran, experienced executive officer Vasili Andropov, had decided not to use one of his vessel's nuclear tipped torpedoes to target and hit the USS Randolph. But as the probability configuration abreacted into something divergent, Vasili Andropov hit his head on a protruding loose cabinet panel and was knocked out when Commander Shumkov would have otherwise relied on his counsel. Panicking, Shumkov ordered the B-130's nuclear tipped torpedoes to target and fire on the Blandy and Rudolph. Rapidly, things escalated from that crucial point, leading to a second US Cuban invasion and the use of battlefield nuclear weapon against US troops. And then, the ICBM missile exchange thundered into life and destroyed much of the Soviet Union, United States and their more significant allies. Caught in the crossfire, the Justice Guild perished as they tried to protect Seaboard City from an incoming ICBM.
But that was not all that happened. While the Justice Guild had doomed themselves, so had the Cybernoids, for in the original scheme of things, humanity had survived the twentieth and twenty-first centuries without nuclear war and the consequent accelerated technological development gave rise eventually to the Cybernoids, who overthrew humanity and banished them from their ancestral homeworld. However, given the intervention of the Third World War, that sequence of events was aborted abruptly.
And thus, as Cybernoid One opened his mouth slot to instruct his first echelon of Cybernoid time travellers, a lethal discontinuity wave was escalating down the course of the timestream. First, it hit the laboratories in which the Cybernoids had been developed, then Cybernoid One's acquisition of sentience and his replication of the capacity within other Cybernoids. Then, it hit the successive battles that the Cybernoids had waged to destroy human dominion on Earth. Cybernoid One never existed and so he was never able to hold the decapitated head of World President Susskind aloft during the Battle of Reykjavik, was unable to order fire on the fleeing vessels of the final human evacuation from Lhasa Spaceport as the last holdout fell to the victorious Cybernoids, was unable to oversee the creation of the Cybernoid capital, Metallika, which was never constructed and which did not stand in place for centuries, supervising protection of their dominion over Earth and continuing assaults against human installations elsewhere in the solar system. The once-proud and all-conquering Cybernoid species ceased to exist and even its name was lost. Mutual assured destruction had never been more true as a description of the fate of both the Justice Guild of America and their mortal enemies.
THE END