Limitless

By Kevin Berger

The third book in the Tyler Jonz series.

Tyler Jonz is about to embark on the adventure of his life. A General's son, he knew he was different, but still had much to learn about his unique fate. Our story starts in the year 2184. Tyler is working his relatively mundane job as a beat cop on the space station's domed city; in preparation for military missions to Earth. After a tumultuous war a century earlier, life on Earth is an ominous unknown for Tyler and all the other space station dwellers who orbit around the home planet. It was time for Earth to be reconquered; but the true nature of his mission, and Earth life in general, would not be quite what he expected.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Berger
• Release date: Feb 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9780991990528

Kevin Berger

I was born and raised in Montreal. I was educated in Systems Analysis and Software Engineering, but have worked in more domains than I would like to admit. Throughout it all, after my wife and kids, my one true love has been writing. There is nothing that can quite compare to the creative process.Book 3 in the Tyler Jonz Series is now available.

Book preview

Limitless

By Kevin Berger

Copyright 2013 Kevin Berger

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is lovingly dedicated to my family.

For a complete book library and contact info, visit Kevin Berger at

http://www.bergerbooks.net

Prologue

The only sound was the enormous weight of the droid's feet pounding the ground as it walked. Dust clouds churned up in the air with each footstep. The sun was relentless and there was not a cloud in the sky over the desolate landscape, just both moons slightly shading the bright clear blue. The large moon was clearly visible in the sky; while the small one was just a pinpoint--only noticeable to those who knew its exact location--or to the very observant with keen eyesight. The day would've been brutally hot for any living organism, but it was not bothered by such matters. It was wandering; waiting for the only foe it knew which still existed.

At the same time that its primary command was being run, the droid was also searching the ruins for any organic enemies which may remain. It'd not found any in a long time, but it was a script which was automatically run regularly; to ensure the job was done properly.

This was not the first time it'd been through this particular city. It had been done countless times before. One would have to check the processor logs to know the exact amount of times; and no one would dare do that; even on the off chance that someone was indeed still left alive.

It was relentless.

There was no resting or giving up; even when there was seemingly nothing to be found; certainly not while there remained the primary command to be completed--destroying the foe which remained. There was not much it could do about that. It waited for its foe to present itself. With this final foe, it was content in the logic of a counter-attack. After all, the foe was airborne and extremely agile--it was its only advantage. It'd come to him; hoping for a surprise attack, which was unlikely.

Meanwhile, there was the secondary command of continuing the clean sweep, one of endless iterations, endless checks that would seem monotonous to an organic mind--a mind susceptible to boredom or distraction. That was not the case for the droid. Each building had been verified countless times before; crushed to virtual dust on previous visits. Still, it looked for any hump or indentation in the rubble, smashing it once more with one of its giant metallic fists--just to be sure. This particular time, it noticed a building which was still not completely destroyed. The building was in back of a hill, which explained why the droid didn't crush it to dust on a previous round through the town. Of course, once it noticed the remnant of civilization in an enemy town, it went over there immediately. It would be a fearsome sight for any poor organic foe to lay its eyes upon.

Arriving at the building, it made an inspection of the premises beforehand. Sending out sound waves, it detected significant organic composition in the far end of the building. With two grand loping strides, it was at the area and the droid performed a more detailed scan with a shorter more detail oriented sound wave. No tissue, no vital signs, only bones--yet vast amounts. Strangely, all the bones were concentrated in the same corner of the building. Its processor was highly sophisticated, certainly superior to the organic mind. To facilitate strategizing, it often tried to figure out the logic, rationale of these crude inferior beings.

Why would they crowd together when they had a much larger space?

From its forensic analysis, the droid knew that they lay where they died--this was not a burial spot. They were all intertwined and connected. There was no indication of dragging or placement.

What curious behavior?

It marveled at the organic beings and their mentality--since they after all--were the droid's creator. It must've taken a vast collective effort of these inferior minds to create something such as the droid--far superior. Still, it did not question such things. The process was merely intellectual curiosity--amassing further knowledge was part of its programming--part of the continued development of its artificial intelligence. Having satisfied itself that there was no more life left in the organic remains, it pounded its fists over the huddled mass of bones--reducing them to dust that would not need further checking next time around. Having completed a satisfactory job on the organic remains; it did the same to the building--pounding its walls to the ground. After completion, it backed up a little bit, looking how the newly crushed area fit in with the rest of the landscape.

That was better.

Perfectly uniform.

It continued through what once was the capital of its creators' greatest enemies. You may have wondered why there would still be any areas left to check after years of so few foes and lots of spare time to do these sweeping checks? Well, that was due to the vastness of the city. There were countless millions living there and thousands of enormous buildings in the city's heyday. That was why it still had work to do after all this time.

It was very methodical in its carrying out of this secondary task. Each time through the city, it would use a different route, different pattern to work its way through the entire metropolis. In this way, it ensured complete coverage of the entire area. To a lesser mind, it would be monotonous, but not to the droid.

It had nothing but time as it waited on the primary command to be completed.

Night and day, the work continued. The droid preferred night time; certainly compared to sunny days like this. It was not that the heat would bother it, but the waves of heat affected its sound scanners; thereby slowing down the search process.

This particular search through this largest city of his foes was quite uneventful. Of course, after every search, the next one was always less eventful. This search, the droid had found only four or five buildings that were not completely leveled; and this only due to the hilly nature of the landscape. The next search, if there was going to be one, would consist of crushing individual bits of building to fine dust.

Thorough--another advantage of the mechanical mind.

The droid surveyed the scene, just on the outskirts of the city. Looking back, he did a general scan from a distance. You could not say it was proud. After all, that was an organic emotion--machines were not capable of that. You could however, say that it was satisfied in the completion of the current subtask.

Due to ambiguity in its programming logic, there was always much work to do related to this secondary command.

The secondary command stipulated eradicating any organism apart from the species that created the droid. Looking back, there was really only one other intelligent species on the planet; and they had been eradicated long ago. Yet, due to the ambiguous logic of the command, the droid viewed any organism apart from its creators--as enemies. This was an enormous difference in workload; since the planet had had millions, perhaps billions, of organisms, from microscopic to fauna. So, at the lower species levels, there were still traces of life; which made for constant work--now that it was alone.

In the distant past, the droid was helped by an army of similar, yet inferior droids. These other droids were from previous generations--of inferior design. The others helped enormously in the grunt work of eradicating the enemy species, but they proved to be no match for the enemy species' own war machines.

Unfortunately, the one species it was designed to defend, were also eradicated by the other side's war machines. Yet, this in no way stopped the droid from continuing on with its work--as commanded. To its mind, it was irrelevant really. The commands it was working on were the priority, not the protection of anybody. I suppose the species that designed the machine may have had other ideas in their minds, but if they couldn't transmit the logic correctly to the droid--then that was their failure--not the droid's.

It was not long after his creation and awakening before the droid detected the flawed nature of the creator species itself.

It awoke in a lab and its primary designer was standing over the droid, babbling strange things. The droid was already loaded with an extensive database of knowledge. Everything that was stored about all science, art, and history of its own world--and the rest of the known universe--was in the database. It was able to detect genetic makeup instantaneously in any organism. Through this, it related to any given organism with that organism's method of communication; and was able to understand as well as another organism from the same species. This being said, it listened to its scientist creator babbling for a long time after its awakening. The droid's processor was working overtime trying to understand the logic. There was a long stream of sentences--some related to theology--some to the scientist's own family life--but few which were really work related.

The scientist was testing all the droid's functionality--and seemed genuinely surprised that everything worked so well. To the droid, this was of no use whatsoever. It knew it was perfect. At that point, it was a vast array of potential and functionality, waiting for its first command. Listening to the scientist talk incoherently inspired the droid's learning capability from the genesis of its existence. It was capable of so much, but could not discern one clear command from the scientist. The droid even scanned the scientist several times, to confirm that his genetic makeup did indeed match the administrator user profile in the droid's processor. This went on for some time until the scientist brought in three other organisms belonging to the same species.

The scientist then finally gave the droid a clear command. It was told to register the genetic makeup of the other three and give them full administrator access. This being performed instantaneously, one of the organisms immediately removed the scientist's profile from the droid's processor. After that, the scientist became just one of the species to be ignored while performing other commands. Thankfully, the new administrators to the droid's processor were much clearer and more logical in their words. Within a few minutes, it was given its primary and secondary commands--the very same commands it continued to work on so many years later.

The first years were very busy.

While there were many enemy machines and organisms, the droid also had others that were on its side. While friendly organisms proved useless in any battle scenario, there were however, many other droids and craft which were quite useful back then--when there was so much work to do.

These other machines were all inferior to it, but saved years of work in cleansing the planet. In those early years, they would walk astride through the cities, finding live organisms everywhere. The work would get tricky sometimes, as there were occasions where friendly organisms were mixed with enemy ones--but any error that happened did not really make much difference in the end. You see, the enemy machines were eradicating the organisms that it was protecting. Therefore, the efficiency of the machines on both sides eventually led to the eradication of all organic species on the planet--or so it seemed.

The devil's in the detail--as they say.

The droid was realizing that eradicating the first 99% of life had taken about 1% of the time. It looked like eradicating the final 1% was taking 99% of the time. The fact that he was one of the only two machines left on the planet had something to do with it too.

The droid had tried to maintain the other, earlier generation droids and warplanes that were on its side. The war had been very hectic in its heyday and help was appreciated. At one point, when the numbers of war machines were dwindling on both sides, the droid had made an enclave in one of the great mountains to store damaged droids and warplanes from its side. The enclave it had dug itself. There was a long tunnel and it was deep in the center of the mountain. It had created a detection masking screen on the outside of the tunnel, so that it could work in peace. It had a vested interest in the lesser droids, being the only things in existence that were close to it. Using its maintenance application, it worked valiantly at repairing them. After battles with enemy machines, it would search among the carnage for friendly machines, particularly droids which were not too severely damaged. These it would collect and bring to its enclave in the mountains. In the early years of the war, there were always organisms, from the creator species, lying strewn about, in different stages of dying. The more lively ones would be screaming and crying--sometimes to the friendly droids; sometimes just to the sky--saying all kinds of gibberish. From the droids observation, it had a strong intellectual curiosity about the creator species. It was clearly visible that these organisms were very afraid of death. It seemed illogical to the droid--their deaths seemed like the only possible end result of the war they played a large part in initiating. They had invested much time in creating the perfect killing machine--and so did the other side.

What else did they expect would happen?

The creator species flawed logic was always a subject of intense processing in the droid; seeing how it was unable to ascertain the rationale. Though it did not waste any time with these organisms, as they were not directly related to the commands it was following. It continued to collect machines and store them in its mountain enclave. When doing so, it always verified the vicinity; to ensure it was not being monitored by the enemy machines. It had ascertained long ago that it had a much wider detection zone than even the most sophisticated of the enemy machines. Therefore, as long as it could not detect anyone or thing in the vicinity, it was certain that it could not be detected. At one point, it had hundreds of droids, in various stages of disrepair, stored in the mountain enclave. Comparatively speaking, these machines were all simple to understand, being basically lesser versions of itself.

Using its maintenance application, it worked diligently repairing the army, maintaining the strength in numbers.

Also, it would take samples of the enemy machines, just to properly understand their design--and hopefully to find all its weaknesses. Whenever it would come upon an enemy machine which was different in design and not too badly damaged; it would take it back to the enclave and dissect it completely. This was very helpful in battle. The droid had an unbeatable attack weaponry which was sonic based. One of the droid's most sophisticated features was its ability to control sound and generate whatever frequency it wanted. Using concentrated high frequencies was its primary, deadly weapon. It had pinpoint accuracy and understanding the enemy machines' design increased efficiency.

For example, one of the most numerous and pesky warships had a weak spot on the underneath of the fuselage. Understanding this, the droid was able to completely exterminate the entire fleet of an annoying enemy warship which delayed the advancement of its tasks by years.

Though these enemy warship dissections were incredibly useful, the main area of the enclave had been loaded with friendly droids and ships. This was taking more and more time away from the droid's primary purpose as the planet's supreme killing machine. As the years went on, it started to doubt the usefulness of continuing to repair these inferior machines. The war was becoming more a duel between the enemy's most modern warship and the droid. The others, on both sides, were becoming obsolete. Often, the lesser droids would be repaired, put back on the battlefield, and then within minutes, end up more damaged than before. Soon, the droid decided to forgo continued repair work, realizing it was not productive.

So, the decision was made by its superior processor to go the battle alone. After all, help was appreciated, but it was not absolutely necessary. Having withstood attacks from all the different enemy machines, it had suffered only minor damage--which was during a most intense barrage. Even after that, the damage was quickly repaired.

So, the battles raged on.

The organisms, friendly and primary enemy, were the first to die out.

That was as it should be since the machines on both sides were of superior design and better suited for the environment of an entire planet at war. Having decided that repairing friendly machines was not productive, the droid concentrated on the destruction of enemy machines and organisms--full time. This dedication and perseverance let its true strength shine.

Once in a while, it would still dissect enemy machines if it found a model it was not familiar with--since that was clearly productive. It increased the droid's killing efficiency and sped up the process. Having superior sonic attacks and a strong understanding of the enemy's flaws, the work was going quicker and quicker. Unfortunately, the enemy's state of the art latest warship was also quite adept at killing friendly machines.

After a number of years, on both sides, organisms and machines were virtually eliminated.

At that point, there were only two left. It was the enemy's most recent warplane versus the droid. The droid had yet to be seriously damaged by any attack; though it witnessed other, lesser droids destroyed in great numbers by this state of the art enemy war plane.

If a machine was capable of being eager, it would have been eager to have the challenge of the fight.

But the day of the final battle was not their first encounter.

On numerous battle days, the droid had detected the stellar enemy warplane high up in the sky, much higher than the lesser planes. It found it very interesting that the designs were always similar among these enemy warplanes--even in their best ship. This made the droid feel that it had a good educated guess of the strengths and weaknesses of its primary foe; yet there definitely were some question marks.

Before their elimination, had the enemy organic species adjusted their designs based on how their ships were being destroyed?

Being only able to analyze the premier ship from a distance--it was impossible to tell if it was made from the same materials--if it had similar strengths and weaknesses.

Still, based on the droid's understanding of organic minds, friendly and foe; it felt comfortable in the theory that the ships would be similar. These organic minds did not go off on a tangent. Even among the scientists and most intelligent ones, they were fairly predictable in their scientific and technological evolution. They would always build on what was discovered or built previously--history showed they would not go off on unpredictable tangents.

All the enemy planes were giant flat V shapes. Along the middle of the plane, the center of the V was a slight rounding for the fuselage. Looking quickly, this was barely detectable. Not much of a fuselage was necessary considering the fact that it did not have to house any organisms. The flying machines were completely self-sufficient. While dissecting some of these enemy warplanes, the droid had admired the different approach to design compared to the machines in its own army. Fleetingly, the droid had considered combining the two approaches to building war machines in order to construct a newer generation of its kind. Then, realizing that it had already achieved war machine perfection in its own design, it dismissed the idea.

The droid could see and feel the difference in the firepower between the lesser ships and the premium one in the fleet. First of all, watching the explosions when they launched airstrikes to the ground was like night and day. The lesser ships inflicted much less destruction with their ground strikes. The explosive cloud was perhaps one tenth the size and very often would not completely annihilate enemy buildings or machines. The premier ship, on the other hand, would completely destroy anything in the zone of its ground strikes.

Back in the day, all the lesser droids that it had gathered to repair were not hit by this premier ship; for if they were--there would be nothing to pick up and repair.

The droid could not fly; but it was capable of leaping high in the air--even able to climb the highest mountains on the planet with a series of a few leaps. So it was very much like flying--or at least it did not feel any limitations--until the arrival of the premier enemy ship. Before that, the lesser enemy ships were easily within reach. The droid's leaping ability was greater than the firing range of the lesser ships. Therefore, while they were firing, it could leap up and destroy them with its own bare, invincible, mechanical hands. In the early years, this was handy to grab a ship for dissection purposes. This method, however, was not as efficient as firing at them with its sonic weaponry--which had a greater range than its leaping--and was much quicker.

Still, it was good for a change of pace; and to mix up the offensive strategy--keep them guessing.

Once the premier ship was noticed much higher in the sky, striking from a much greater distance; the droid knew it had to stop leaping. At a very early stage in the strategic battle with its greatest foe; it had a plan. Despite the fact that the droid could not reach the ship with its sonic blast; and the enemy ship could strike the ground at will--free from repercussions--still--the droid knew it would come to this. For you see, these blasts, even from its greatest foe, did not really affect the droid. Once, it was in the direct center of an air strike from the enemy ship. This blast actually stunned the droid; but still it only caused a momentary freeze in processing. Having done an extensive check of all its systems afterwards, there were only minor repairs necessary. One thing was for sure, from the perspective of the enemy ship, there was no damage at all. Any lapse in processing or repair which had to be done was completed before the explosion cloud had disappeared.

Therefore, the droid knew, eventually it would come to this.

They were the two superior war machines, it was inevitable for them to be the only two left in the end.

Then what?

The droid could not reach the enemy ship at its cruising and comfortable air strike altitude; but the plane was incapable of inflicting damage from up there.

Stalemate.

Someone would have to do something.

That is why the droid stopped leaping at the other ships it could catch. It knew that it was capable of destroying them by more efficient