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CHAPTER SEVEN

Promotions and Awards
New Yugoslavia, 2205 a.d. 

A few months went by, and I found myself becoming human again. Then I got a summons from my boss.

In the course of things, I had managed to acquire seven qualified colonels rather than the usual five. Lloyd and Mirko had been elected delegates to a planetary constitutional convention, and were needed there. When my boss, General Sobieski, invited me and my staff to New Kashubia for a conference, I took my wife, Conan and Maria, and Quincy and Zuzanna with me in my Combat Control Computer. Three friendly couples made a good group, anyway.

A Combat Control Computer was basically a cylindrical truck, five meters across and ten meters long, that contained life support units called coffins for six people. You floated in an aqueous solution, and computer controlled systems supplied you with food, oxygen, and everything you needed to stay alive. Inductive mats imbedded under your scalp and along your backbone connected you with an array of computers. These were identical to the coffins that were inside of most of our bigger fighting machines, our tanks. The greater computer power of the CCC let you live almost twice as fast, however.

There were six small computers that contained the personalities of our personal tanks, Agnieshka, in my case. But in a CCC, you were also connected with twelve truly massive computers that contained everything known to humanity. This group of computers called himself Professor Cee, and acted like an English college professor.

When connected up, the huge computer power let you operate in Dream World at combat speed, which in my case was fifty-five times as fast as normal living. This effectively expanded my lifetime by a factor of fifty-five, a nice fringe benefit.

And while you were in it, you lived in Dream World, a form of artificial reality that could be anything that you wanted it to be. It was very pleasant, provided that you obeyed orders. If you didn't, you could be living literally in Hell.

* * *

The CCC also contained an array of communication devices that kept you in touch with as many as a hundred thousand Mark XIX tanks, as well as your superiors, no matter where you were in Human Space, although interstellar communications could take days.

So I called the gang together and we got into the CCC down in my garage, below my apartment. You had to strip down naked to get into a coffin, and as usual, the girls insisted that we males take a walk while they got in. I suspect that this had nothing to do with modesty, but was because Maria and Zuzanna were far more beautiful in Dream World than they were in reality. My Kasia was beautiful anywhere she went, of course.

It was a half-hour trip by the underground MagLev system to the military transmitter, over a day in Dream World. Our party consisted of six humans, six intelligent machines, and Professor Cee. Socially, we treated each other as equals. We spent the time at a medieval tournament, followed by a banquet in Zuzanna's castle. This had a lot in common with the Dark Tower that I'd had built for her in my valley, except that the real one didn't have moat monsters, wizards, and dragons hanging around.

Accelerating the CCC to the vector of New Kashubia took another thirty minutes, but none of us on board noticed it. Fluid suspension lets you ignore gravity, at least when it stays below ten Gs. We spent the day coursing after the stags with the palace hounds.

Transit time to New Kashubia took another hour, according to laws of physics that I have learned twice, and still don't understand. Had we been in separate tanks, we would have had to spend the time alone, but since we were all in there together, we spent the two subjective days on a dragon hunt. This time, Conan won the prize for the biggest kill. He said that he would have it mounted in his den, the way I had done with the prize I had taken during the "Search Light Party," during the last war.

We reported to General Sobieski in Dream World as soon as we got to New Kashubia. That was the way he preferred things. I've never met anyone who ever saw him in the flesh.

Sobieski is a great fan of J.R.R. Tolkien, and among friends he usually adopted the persona of Elessar, the king. The thirteen of us suddenly found ourselves wearing not medieval finery, but armored garb suitable for the nobility of Middle Earth. Quick changes of clothing are a common occurrence in Dream World.

We were escorted into the great hall atop Minas Tirith by hundreds of warriors with winged helmets. They didn't march very well, which indicated that these were all humans, and not machine intelligences. Our army never wasted much time on things like marching.

"Your Majesty," I said, standing in front of the dais, and bowing. "You called, and we have come."

"And right welcome you are!" Sobieski said, standing and stepping down from his throne. "The first order of business here is the long delayed awarding of promotions and decorations!" The crowd made a series of "Hooahs," "Poobahs," and "Praise them with Great Praise," which happened a lot that afternoon.

He continued, "First, the promotions! Mickolai, you are no longer a tanker first class, brevetted to general. Your permanent rank is now general in the Human Army, and you are in command of all of the forces on New Yugoslavia. Your seven direct subordinates are now promoted to colonels in the Human Army. In addition, as commander of the entire army, I have created three new ranks, for use by the electronic people among our ranks. Your electronic lady, Agnieshka, is now a major in our army, and the metal people assigned to your colonels are now captains. All other tanks whose observers have graduated from basic training will be given the rank of tanker class A. These new ranks are real, and include substantial pay and benefits."

The crowd went wild over that one. All of us felt that the electronic people deserved recognition as human beings, and these promotions were a major step on the road to their complete emancipation.

When the cheering quieted down, the general continued, "Next, there is a matter of awards and decorations. We'll start with your subordinates on those, and I'll have my scribes read the certificates."

It turned into quite a long afternoon, with some four hundred and fifty-one medals handed out. And every one of them was accompanied by a scroll stating where and why the action occurred that earned it. Our army wasn't very heavy on ceremony, but some things you just have to go through. By the time they were through, we were all loaded down with golden trinkets, both us humans and our electronic people, and I was as weighted down with medals as a Russian war hero.

Finally, I had a chance to say, "Thank you, sir. But I have a number of questions I wanted to ask you."

"Certainly, but save them for the business meeting tomorrow. For now, it's party time!"

"Yes, sir. But what is happening with my Gurkhas?"

"They will be expanded from a battered battalion up to several full divisions, of course, depending on how many of them actually enlist. You don't think that I'd pass up a chance to get as many of those magnificent warriors as possible, do you? All of the munitions factories are still operating at full capacity, and your Gurkhas have first priority on equipment and supplies. Now come on and have a beer!"

"Yes, sir," I said, taking a stein of Russian honey beer from a nearly naked serving wench. These were just computer simulations, more decorations than people. If you talked to one, she could convince you that she was "alive," but really, she wasn't anything like Agnieshka, for example. "But, why are we expanding the army when the war is over?"

"The War with Earth is over. The next war will be a long one, and it has already started."

"What?!"

"There's plenty of time, Mickolai. We'll talk it over tomorrow."

"But!"

"Drink your beer, General Derdowski. That's an order."

 

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