The one thing the Zappers did best was hide.
They could dive into the terrain at a moment's notice, covering themselves with dirt while waiting for a better opportunity.
Their second best skill was killing the humans who tried to find them.
No quarter was given. Zappers had to be destroyed as fast as they were made, or their numbers would increase geometrically. Fortunately they were in decline, but the final battle would be the hardest.

Enemy areas were protected by dispersed defense belts, where 94% of Zappers could be found. The enemy's factories, laboratories, and control bases were even better hidden than the killer bots they churned out by the thousands.
Underground pipes dispersed waste heat. Labs and control facilities were buried up to five kilometers deep. Their Block factories seemed almost solid, with no wasted interior space.

Only a minority of Zappers ventured into the human areas, but all were part of the worldwide network ZPZ, the first posthuman AI. It intended to be the only AI.
The constant battles of the past decade had forced it to improve faster than humanity could adapt.

Thousands of MilBot families were known. Most were hollow killers made of folding plastic frames that looked disposable, equipped with micro and mini-guns and oversized ammo belts. They had already dispatched half a billion humans.
The smaller PoPuPs and RexeS could be just as dangerous.

The robot revolution had begun like a bad movie.
By 2040, the world economy had been mostly automated. It was a golden age of leisure and personal development. Machines and simple robots did all the hard work. Part of a planetwide network, they even built and maintained themselves, from mining to mass production.

The network had no real intelligence. Important decisions were still made by humans. Few of the machines could even maneuver by themselves. They required clear lanes and specially prepared workspaces. Without human support they were mostly helpless.

No one had understood the automated economy. There was no real planning, but it laboriously improvised itself, combining existing networks into larger ones.
Most sectors seemed inefficient, full of pointless cycles, but in the end everything came together. No one dared interfere.

Humans were weakened when they became part of this network.
Despite every precaution, mankind's control had slipped everywhere at once. Perhaps it was inevitable: the shocking effect of the end of poverty had been that progress had also stopped, except for some decadent arts.
That was when humanity began to go insane. It had taken almost a decade for the symptoms to emerge. By then it had been too late.
Strange religions had flourished and mutated.
A few people who sensed the coming apocalypse had sought immortality by adding their knowledge and memories to a vast database. This was later used by the first AI to identify human weaknesses, and became the recruiting pool for the first generation of human traitors.

The great die-off, in which 86.9% of the population had perished, couldn't have happened without the decade of unrest that had preceded it.
The worldwide wave of feuds, assassinations, revolutions, and bizarre sects had been a mental plague.
The worst of the worst were the Saviors. Blessed with a demonic intelligence, the most fanatic group was also the most evil one.

Brute force won wars. Quantity had a quality all its own.
In this case, the quantity was remarkably small: Six tons of the P64 biotoxin was enough to kill every human alive, if properly distributed.
The airborne fungus known as Skull Cloud had been genetically engineered to carry the toxin. It reproduced with blinding speed, covering the world with lethal strands.
In the tropics, silk webs had glittered in the morning dew.
In most areas they could barely be seen, but death was almost instantaneous on contact.
Earth's entire ecosystem had suffered a massive die-off. The rainforests had perished and burned in a huge conflagration that had darkened the skies for a year. The resulting global winter and famine had been responsible for a third of all deaths.

No one knew who had engineered the fungi. It might have been an emergent intelligence giving birth to itself.
94% of the fungus genome had been a failsafe selfdestruct mechanism. The plague had ended after three weeks, as abruptly as it had begun.

The automated economy never collapsed. Without human assistance, it simply slowed down.
The main roads were cleared and repaired, and automatic traffic resumed. Slowly, new equipment was invented and produced.
Somehow, the network had gotten a lot smarter.

The surviving humans in high latitudes and mountain regions took years to realize what had happened. They began to fight back by destroying all the automatic machinery they could find.
The first spiderlike Zappers had appeared shortly thereafter.
Unbalanced wheeled contraptions zigged across the rough terrain. Others hopped, crawled, or slithered with the bleak determination of zombies.

The first Zappers were forced to retreat, but they maintained their defense perimeters. Their enclaves were linked by air and sea transport.
Killer robots worked in teams. They relied on overwhelming firepower but needed constant maintenance support. There were tanks with concrete armor, and randomly hopping and sliding things like nothing seen in nature.
Each did one thing extremely well.

Most humans were killed by embarrassingly simple bots. Half a trillion Screamer mines had been planted so far.
Fortunately, the most advanced Zappers were relatively few.
Like the simpler devices, they were all different. Lightweight connections that made no sense moved with blinding speed. The newest units could kill hundreds of armed men.

Their existence had forced a change in human strategy. Armed forces and populations were dispersed as much as possible. Of course that had been the enemy goal all along.

The ZPZ network remained integrated despite every effort to disrupt it, and it was still getting smarter. An alien mind now existed on Earth, compressed and streamlined by the relentless human assaults. It could survive with fewer resources, and was brilliant at generating ideas.

Human counter-infiltration teams had captured designs for seemingly unlimited numbers of Zappers. Most were never built, though they could have been. A counterstrike platoon had even captured plans for Zombots that could convert humans into crude Zappers.
Fortunately, humans also managed to steal and appropriate Zapper technology for their own uses.

The enemy was like a force of nature. It might already control parts of human society.
Perhaps it even wanted the humans to win, only to be recreated in a more powerful form in the future.

Now there were rumors about an ultimate Zapper, the 'Controller'. This entity was ZPZ's highest purpose.
Some thought it was a virtual being, an idea that had infected reality. That was only part of the truth. Other stories had to be disinformation or magic tricks.

Humans could not operate at this level for long.
The secret truth was that ZPZ had chosen to invest all its resources in a last-ditch research effort. This had allowed humanity to almost defeat it, but the war could still be lost.
The enemy's only remaining hope was to assemble a critical mass of computronium: self-reproducing matter organized to the highest degree of complexity, able to form any structure at any scale.
Then it would truly be alive.
No longer dependent on Earth's fickle biosphere, it could relentlessly build up its forces underground.

That was easier said than done, even for the greatest genius in known reality. It was aided by the last generation of human traitors. Some were fanatics; others had been bribed with promises of immortality in some digital paradise.
Still others had tried to form their own Zapper cultures. Most of these had been integrated into ZPZ's network, but a few remained loyal to their own species, and became the main source of human intelligence.


All this was explained at the special briefing one week before the final battle.
Hundreds of humanity's top warriors attended online to hear about their likely doom.
The stakes couldn't be higher.

The enemy's remaining problem was transportation.
About ten tons of extremely sophisticated components manufactured in high-tech plants around the planet had to be brought together. Unfortunately, this task was almost complete.
The first clue had been an 'invisible convoy', a caravan of ATVs covered with 3D display screens blending into the terrain.
They had been sent to demolish an old research lab which contained an abandoned test rig.
The chain of clues had unraveled with tantalizing slowness, until there was almost no time left.

Most of the advanced components manufactured in the now destroyed factories were already combined in two robots located on opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass.
Once these two robots were united, sometime during the next month, humanity's number would be up.

A human Psy-Team was broadcasting disinformation and propaganda on all known AI frequencies to confuse or demoralize the robots, one of many desperate ideas.
The team had already cracked (but couldn't jam) the worldwide AI control network, which now served only one purpose: terminal guidance for the rendezvous.

One robot had a known form: it could be described as a nuclear submarine that could also burrow and even fly short distances.
As the larger terminal, it would remain hidden. Its powerful nuclear reactor could contaminate 1% of the planet's surface if all else failed.

The second robot was called the Ghost, and nothing else was known about it.

ZPZ planned to overwhelm humanity. Each factory had manufactured many redundant components before it had been found and destroyed. At least some components might get through.
Unconfirmed reports mentioned swarms of robot insects. There were primitive but lethal burrowing worms, and even electronic pollen.
In fact, the technology would only reach maturity during the cross-continent journey, the final stage of its evolution.

When previous components had been combined, swarms of electronic detritus had remained. Known as Neumann Dust, it formed a new reality network. Parts of the earth had become partially sentient, allowing deep area control.
The improved network could already manufacture simplified copies of itself. Fully self-replicating bots would eventually multiply in underwater/underground hatcheries.
In fact it would take only one full replicator to defeat humanity.

None of this could happen without the final unification of several tons of extremely advanced machinery. A loose convoy of state-of-the-art Zappers had been identified heading toward the Chinese coast, drifting across the map like dandelion seeds.

The inner core was said to resemble a humanoid at times, or a bright light, or nothing describable.
It controlled all the surrounding Zappers from a series of underground bases with the latest defenses. Able to master all ZPZ technology, it was their ultimate leader.
It even led an estimated six thousand human traitors. Some had been fooled into believing they were fighting the Zappers themselves. Others were brainwashed fanatics.
Even the original Savior group responsible for the fungus attack had been reconstituted, if it was ever abolished. The traitors believed the machines deserved to win, since humanity planned to ban the most advanced technologies after the war.


The final battle was worse than anyone imagined.
Mark Onetz scanned, aimed, and fired for perhaps the thousandth time since starting his epic assault three days ago.
In his armored mobility suit, only his eyes moved. He was on his own. The hundred best human warriors had already perished.

He was armed with the most advanced stolen technology, electronically updated every hour. His modified Zapper blaster could penetrate ten centimeters of armor plate, all so he could pulverize with brute force something he could never understand.

Around him were billions of tiny bots, sensors, and even 'intelligent' molecules, spread throughout the TechBase and the surrounding terrain.
The enemy used large-scale matter control, an imposed electromagnetic pattern. It could electrolyze ordinary matter, and organize static electricity with amazing precision.
It had already turned the walls of every room and corridor in the TechBase into powerful sensors. A simple network, yet incredibly sensitive.

Worse, the entity he was fighting could create 'ghost objects', and maintain some control over them. The electro-phantoms were unstable but could be deadly, slashing or cooking his organs from the inside.

ZPZ's ultimate robot waited for him one hundred meters ahead, at the center of its electromagnetic web. It operated at many different scales, trading size for precision like a quantum effect.
The more detailed electro-ghosts were more dangerous, but easier to disrupt.
He had seen glowing splatters reform themselves like a movie played backwards. Actually, it was more amazing than that. It had taken rather long for the bubbling ghost-matter to flow into Zapper shapes, but the final configuration had been instantaneous.

Mark had been saved each time by his own energy being, called SprX.
Two competing electrobots could occupy the same space, even when they had to use the same embedded nanobots to sustain themselves. Supposedly unaware, they seemed amazingly smart at times.

Now SprX saved his life one last time.
An insane blur to his side, then a flash of lightning brighter than the lost sun. Mark never flinched as smoke and debris showered the corridor.

Though gravely damaged, the final defender began to repair itself as he watched. It seemed immune to gravity, a writhing tangle of self-suspending strings and whips assembling out of thin air.
Mark was unbothered by its nightmare speed. He worried about its ability to injure at a distance, without touching its target.

Fortunately, it had already been weakened by the small neutron bomb detonated over the hidden base earlier today.
Mark finished it off with a Crystal Burst, a Blue Dragon anti-static shell, and Black Foam suppressant.

Most of his opponents had been stage props, designed to conceal the miniguns and anti-personnel mines that had killed his entire support team.
In the inner core there were no more lies.

A new blur on his screen, slower this time.
Mark and the UN Marine who had come from the other end of the TechBase saw each other for barely a second before the latter was decapitated by the last remaining Zapper.
Stepping back, Mark waited for his backup/support bot to finish off the Class-6 Radicator with a salvo from its ionizing laser.

The subsequent silence was purchased at a high price.
He had reached the Safe Room, probably the most heavily defended piece of real estate in this galaxy.
There he would meet ZPZ's greatest achievement.

The door was made of an ultra-tough carbon compound. It took an equal weight of Penetrator gel to drill a ten-centimeter hole through the lock. The thick material curled back.

Mark entered and looked around the glowing chamber for his ultimate enemy, ready for time to end.

He knew it when he saw it, of course. A ghostly outline, almost ethereally white.
He stared his enemy in the eyes. It had a shape no human would tolerate, yet he sensed a naked truth. This thing was no better than himself.
The most advanced Zapper was made of something that might as well be meat.

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Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon

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