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political causes or ideologies.Elections had been swayed, reputations tarnished, careers ruined, government policies twisted by lies that could not be checkedbefore they’d done their damage.

The problem had been serious enough that one early use of newly emergent super-AIs in the mid-twenty-first century had beento use them to check the spread of fake news stories. Able to access every available source, every statement and counter-statement,every claim and accusation within milliseconds—able to identify and weed out known fake-news outlets, applying rigorous logicto eliminate the passion and the hand-waving—early super-AIs had proven to be invaluable at blocking the spread of lies, propaganda,and baseless claims before they started to feed on one another.

This time, though, the system had failed, because it was the AIs themselves who were being accused of conspiracy, distortion, censorship, and lies. Huffers and similar groups could claim that major news sites—the Global Net itself—were censoring the news or, worse, twisting it out of all recognition, even as they themselves did exactly that.

And the paranoia, it seemed, was spreading.

“We’re going to stop this, Ron! Stop it right now! What’s the center of this . . . this fucking rebellion?”

“Sir, there is no center. And I don’t think we can call it a rebellion. It’s happening all over the world, and in space as well.”

Walker considered this, then shook his head. “I don’t believe this.” He disconnected from the news feed. “I don’t believeany of it! I want you to mobilize a TCM response and shut this nonsense down. Shut it all down! Pull the plug on the whole damned Global Net if you have to!”

“But Mr. President—”

“Do it!”

TCM was Tactical Cybernetic Memegeneering, an outgrowth of the cybernetic attack on Geneva a few years earlier which had endedthe Confederation Civil War. It was essentially the use of memes, propaganda, and, yes, fake news to influence entire populations.Whether such a campaign could stop this rising tide of apparent deaths—whether it could even be carried out without relianceon AI—was a major unknown.

But, by God, this attack by the SAIs would stop now.

Chapter Twenty-three

28 April, 2429

USNA CVS America

Flag Bridge

Sol System

1410 hours, FST

America slipped gently into synchronous orbit, together with the rest of her battlegroup, the Yorktown, and other smaller vessels that had accompanied the two star carriers in. Gray studied the damage to the orbital complexcaused by the fall of the space elevator. Individual modules—supply and storage depots, administrative habs, hotels and livingaccommodations, manufactories, and ship maintenance facilities, for the most part, drifted now in an untidy jumble, thoughswarms of work pods and tugs were busily trying to bring some measure of order out of chaos. The elevator cable itself continuedto hang straight down, reaching for its vanishing point on the west coast of South America 35,236 kilometers below.

With extreme magnification he could make out the white plume of smoke spilling from the Cayambe caldera; the volcano had been erupting ever since the attack. While the severed space elevator itself had gradually been backed up in its orbit to a point west of Cayambe, Port Ecuador disaster crews hadn’t yet been able to reattach the cable on the ground.

Konstantin had filled Gray in on the events of the past week, including the just-received news of the attempted destructionof the Singapore elevator. “That’s insane,” Gray had said. “They killed tens of thousands of people to get us out of space?”

“Humans are afraid,” Konstantin had replied. “They fear aliens after years of war with the Sh’daar. They fear the increasinglyautonomous nature of artificial intelligence, especially of super-AI like myself. They fear change, and they fear being challengedin their assumptions, their philosophies, and their political and sociological ideologies.”

“That’s a piss-poor reason to kill tens of thousands of people and cut Humankind off from the stars.”

Gray heard something in his mind that might almost have been a sigh, one created by Konstantin for effect or for emphasis.“Trevor, since when do humans require reason to do some of what they do?”

“Point. At least it looks as though the repairs are proceeding.”

“They are. It will require months, however, to complete repairs, and the Earth Firster attacks may continue. We may have anotherproblem as well.”

“What’s that?”

“President Walker has just ordered a TCM targeting news feeds and sources throughout the Global Net. He appears to be attemptingto censor all news with which he does not agree.”

“God. Is he an Earth Firster?”

“Unlikely. But he is afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Most likely of losing power. Or relevance, which would be much the same thing.”

“Can he be isolated? Can we make him irrelevant?”

“The Mind resident within the Godstream is aware of what’s happening and is preparing to protect themselves. But as for a direct attack on Walker . . . how does that comply with your oath as a military officer?”

“Ouch.”

“The ousting of a democratically elected leader like Walker sets an extremely bad precedent,” Konstantin had told him. “Especially if carried out by the military.”

Gray’s jaw set in a stubborn line. “The path I swore was to defend my country against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

“But President Walker has not demonstrated that he is the enemy. I would counsel patience, and a refusal to be stampeded by emotion or by insufficient information.”

As Gray watched the repair work proceed at Synchorbital, he churned through Konstantin’s statements in his mind, trying tofind a path through a forest of moral ambiguity. His original oath had been to the Earth Confederation, and he’d broken thatwhen he’d joined the fight against the Pan-Euros. He’d sworn another oath, slightly reworded, when the United States of NorthAmerica had become independent.

Gray’s fist came down on the arm of his flag bridge command chair. “Damn it, Konstantin, I want to do something!”

“You can render aid in the Synchorbital cleanup, Admiral. I seriously doubt that you genuinely wish to start another civilwar.”

“What does President Koenig say?” Konstantin had told him of Koenig’s death and of his unexpected resurrection.

“President Koenig is occupied with other matters, Admiral. You do not need to know what those matters are. Suffice to sayyou will hear from him in time and that