The endgame
If by some warp of time and space you, in 2013, come into possession of this document, I shall have to start by explaining humanities predicament on earth in 4030.
First who am I? I am a historian, or as you might say an historian.
We are the remnants of the human race who happened to be underground when the Fourth World war ended. The surface of earth is a hot desert of radioactive dust being driven at hurricane speed in endless electric storms. Such is observed in the brief time a periscope survives the eroding assault of the atmosphere. We don't know about earth's seas.
We survive in a troglodyte existence, gradually regaining contact with other survivors using tunnelling machines. We use energy from nuclear fission reactors, the dream of fusion reactors remained just that - a dream, and geothermal sources, although the problem of finding a heat sink limits this latter to small applications.
A historian might seem a luxury in times like these, but we are needed to interpret such archives as we have, to maximise the effectiveness of our underground exploration.
On one day the leader of tunnelling group B, Han, came to me saying, "Ellen we've broken into the control room of an underground nuclear missile site. Could you help us? We don't want to hit a missile and blow ourselves to a Confucius confusion."
The crawl in the exploration tunnel was long and hot. We emerged in the control room, softly lit by two fluorescent tubes. Vladimir, the IT man was already there. It intrigued me that as a group of people marooned in a gold mine in Nevada we had so many of the old nationalities here.
The two desiccated corpses lay supine over the control panel. Vladimir handed me a magnetic drive, saying, "This is the AV recording of the last ten hours up to the death of these two, and some hours beyond. You should listen to it. I will remove the hard disc drives of the computers and their back ups and would ask that we meet when I have interpreted them. That may take some time. "
I spent an hour searching the control room, but did not find a document relating to the layout of the base, and therefore could not give Han a safe way to continue tunnelling. I told him that there may be something in the hard drives of the computers, and to keep in touch with Vladimir.
I did find a laminated paper copy of the procedures for the control room operators. Also I found empty syringes clasped in the skeletal fingers of the two men.
Returning to my cubicle, chiselled out of rock and lit starkly by white LEDs, I read the procedures. The thing that jumped out at me was that the order was very clear that no drug of any kind should be taken by the operators into the control room. This rule had clearly been flouted.
I watched the video. Whilst the audio covered a long period, the video terminated some twenty minutes before the decision to take the fatal injection was made. It seemed the operators had disabled the camera but had not realised the existence of another microphone.
The sequence of events was as follows. The war had entered the phase of verbally directed decisions to launch inter continental ballistic missiles, instigated by the Pentagon in Washington, following the procedures of verification and confirmation as laid down in the manual.
The two men were probably not best emotionally suited for their task. The enormity of having launched five of their ten missiles overwhelmed them, their grief and guilt came over on the recording. Against the procedures they had committed suicide with a forbidden drug. As a result they failed to shut down the two control computers which was the intended routine once the Pentagon instructions had been fulfilled.
The recorded audio became near silent as the operators died, and all that could be heard was the sussuration of cooling fans. I found it puzzling that the audio recording was shut down after a week, although not having procedural documentation covering this point I assumed there was some kind of automatic cut out.
Some weeks later Vladimir telephoned me. "Ellen would you like to set up a meeting with Han. I think I've sorted things out with the computer drives."
Vladimir walked in with a huge file of printout and a slim report book.
He addressed Han first. "Han, you can tunnel safely in any direction you wish. If you broke into a missile silo it would be empty. All I ask is that you say we, me and Ellen, set the course as safe for you. I do not want to reveal the fact that all missiles had been fired. I am not sure of the emotional, historical or political consequences of this revelation. We rely on your absolute discretion."
"You can," said Han,"I'm not sure I understand why. But then I'd like to get on. We've been twiddling our thumbs for far too long."
He hurried off.
"Is this the explanation for the so called second strike that destroyed our planet?" I asked.
"I believe so," said Vladimir gravely.
"It has been a difficult matter." He tapped the pile of computer print out, "That's a lot of code to analyse."
"But?"
"I know you won't understand my analytical work, you'll have to accept my interpretation as a story."
The story he told was short enough but terrifying. The computers were largely self programming, and should have been shut off once Washington's instructions had been fulfilled. But they had not, and the computers indulged themselves in playing games. The lead computer and number two became more and more competitive. Seven dimensional chess with forty eight pieces a side was the pinnacle of their gaming.
Vladimir concluded, "That last day, number two computer, I'm sorry to use these terms about machines but it's the only interpretation you'll understand, became bored. It told the primary computer so, and primary was so fed up with what it perceived as a bored teenager, that it told it to do its own thing."
After a while number two computer shouted gleefully, " I know what I want to do. I'll fire the rest of the missiles."
"The last code generated by the lead computer before the surface of earth was obliterated by the automatic response of the totality of four superpowers' nuclear armoury, could be interpreted as:
'Whatever turns you on.""
The End - really
Epilogue
At that point my mind was numbed by the coincidence of human frailty and incompetence in control of unbelievable destructiveness. Somewhere peripherally I heard Vladimir explain that once all the missiles had gone the power to the computers was automatically withdrawn.
What would we tell our descendants - if there were to be any?
