posted 06-22-99 08:25 PM ET        

No Mistakes Allowed

�Come on Frank, it�s time to go! You don�t wanna� miss Yang�s speech.� John said from the open door.
�I�m coming. I just have to program the nano-bots. The army needs these Ragnarok cannons by tomorrow. A new team of recruits need to be equipped before they�re sent into Believer territory.� Frank replied.
�Man, we�re really loosin� a lot of good men out there. I hear Yang has issued orders to create some more cyborgs though. About time the men and women out there are replaced by non-humans. Give a couple of clones a few cybernetic implants and we�ll have some lean, mean killing machines ready to take care of those damn fanatics! It�s about time we teach those bible bashers a lesson!�

John sounded excited, he always did when talking about the war. He had lost his oldest son to a Believer quantum laser. He said he would never forgive the bastards for that, and Frank didn�t think he ever would either. John was actually what would be called Asian on Earth, with a somewhat yellowish skin. Frank had heard that in those days, John wouldn�t have been a normal name for an Asian, but noone really remembered what would be normal for who anymore. Most people didn�t even know what Asia was. Some people said it had been a huge desert somewhere very isolated where it only rained every 40 years. Frank didn�t really believe those stories, but it had been so long since humanity actually lived on Earth that he didn�t know anymore. He could probably check the datalinks if he took the time, but he always got home very late and was too tired to do that kind of stuff. John said it was a rather large area usually referred to as the East even though there wasn�t really any east or west since planets are round. John said it was because the light-skinned people, like Frank, who came there came from the west so it became east for them. Maybe it was true, maybe it was not, who cared?

�Okay, that�s it. 100 Ragnarok cannons will be waiting for us when we arrive here tomorrow. The genejacks will take care of �feeding� the bots.� Frank said when he was finally done programming.
�About time. We�ll be almost a minute late for the speech, let�s hope the punishers won�t notice us.� John said with a worried voice.
�Relax, we�ll just tell them we had to do some work for the army, they�ll accept that. Besides, Simon Lyella is on duty tonight, and he owes me a favor� Frank hoped he�d remember that.

Frank was responsible for programming the nano-bots at factory Z-Beta-006 at People's Teeming. His bots supplied the army with needed equipment, mainly Ragnarok cannons, an advanced type of quantum laser cannons that could be mounted on different vehicles. The technology had been stolen from the UoP by one of the Hive�s finest probe teams.

Ragnarok was apparently the armageddon of old Norse mythology back on Earth. The University had extensive historical archives and had probably found it there. They always had enjoyed giving their weapons strange names. Their inventions were like babies to them, so they spent a great deal of time finding names for them Frank had heard. Academicians, a bunch of whackos all of them. Now this technology would help the Hive win the war against the Believers, or at least that was what the Party said in their propaganda. Frank didn�t really believe it. The war had been raging on for 20 years already and he certainly couldn�t see an immediate end to it. Both sides were strong, bases changed hands continuously and millions had already died on the battlefields, mostly cyborgs and �mutants� though.

�Mutant� was a rather unofficial term for the �modified� humans, clones of course, who were sent to the war. They had no gender, no emotions, nothing to live for except the glory of the Hive. Or at least that was what he had been told, who knew, maybe it was just more propaganda, so that noone would attempt to stop the �production�. The Believers didn�t use neither cyborgs nor �mutants� though. They didn�t believe in meddling with �God�s design�, so they sent waves of brainwashed fanatic men and women into battle. Officially the Believers didn�t clone either, but he had heard reports of humans looking strangely alike out there on the battlefields. They couldn�t support this continuous flow of soldiers if they didn�t clone, but officially there were no cloned Believers. The brainwashing skills of Miriam were admired, even by chairman Yang, so she probably had her faithful followers believing they didn�t have any clones at all.

In the holo-theatre Yang�s hologram was already standing at the center, speaking to the crowd that had gathered. Everyone had to show up at these speeches after work to show their loyalty to the Party. Anyone who were late or didn�t arrive at all were punished by a division of the police known as the �punishers�. Frank didn�t even want to think about what would happen to the unfortunate people who didn�t show up. Simon remembered the favor though, and since he had, after all, been doing work for the military they were excused.

The speech was the normal stuff; congratulating on a productive day of excellent work and more lies about how great the war was going. �Miriam and her cruel followers will soon be worshipping the great Hive, rather than their silly God�
Noone but the exceptionally stupid believed it, of course, but it was part of the daily routine. Afterwards everyone would salute the chairman and go home.
Frank said goodbye to John, discussed the new programming code, LUPUS, with one of his fellow bot-programmers for a while and went home to his apartment.

His living conditions were good, bot-programmers were valuable and the Party took good care of anyone with the right skills. It had been decided that he would become a programmer when he was still just a child. The evaluators came to his family�s home and asked him questions and took DNA-samples. One week later his father was instructed to send him to the bot-programming academy when he reached the age of six. His mother and father had been in ecstasy. Very few were lucky enough to become bot-programmers, and this would mean that their citizenship would be upgraded from level 5 to level 3 which would mean a great improvement in living conditions and their purchase-quota.

That was 50 years ago, he was still quite young, with at least 100 years left, maybe 150 if he was valuable enough to the Party. Should he become one of the top 10 programmers for more than one year in a row he would even be allowed a total lifespan of 300 years, and upload into the mind-database after his death. They had not found a way to use uploaded minds or return them to new bodies yet, but he assumed that would be possible sooner or later. Then a new body would be designed for him and he could return to the world of the living once more. Because of the problem of overpopulation only the most important people were allowed any more than 300 years, but when the Hive was to colonize new worlds later, great minds would be needed, and that would be his chance for a new life.

Frank felt more tired than usual. In addition to his normal duties he�d had a lot of work to do on the Morganite-Hive nano-bot cooperation project. It had been necessary for him to communicate with some guy named Ahmed al-Shukra. He was some specialist in the field of nano-bot specialization, specifically making nano-bots transform only certain materials. As it was now, the nano-bots had to be programmed to only work with everything within a certain area. This could in some cases be dangerous if anyone got too close, or the work-area was miscalculated or there was an error in the programming code. There was also some exchange of bug-detecting programs he had to take care of. Bug-detectors were crucial, if there was an error in the program code it could be disastrous. Nano-bots could �eat� expensive computer components, like had �never happened� at factory I-Omega-045 in Communal Nexus, or even worse. Frank shuddered at the thought of an habitation complex, with inhabitants, swallowed by the nano-bots. Well, he could use some sleep, and this thought pattern could take a long time to finish, so he decided to just forget it. The chances of such a thing ever happening were minimal. He fell asleep quickly, and the neuro-stimulators made sure he had pleasant dreams of increased productivity and glorious victory for the Hive.