Read Online A Boy and His Tank by Leo Frankowski - Free Book Online
Authors: Leo Frankowski
Tags: Science-Fiction
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eating, we'll continue your training. This afternoon, we'll start you on target pattern identification."
"Okay. When are you going to teach me how to drive this tank?"
"Not for quite a while. Not until we get into emergency override procedures. Ordinarily, I do all the driving, Mickolai. My reflexes are much quicker than yours could ever be."
"So you're the driver and I'm the gunner? Is that how it works?" I wolfed down the rest of the magnificent steak and started work on the lobster claws. The tool provided looked like a nut cracker and wasn't up to the job. Suddenly, some clean, new electrician's tools appeared as part of the place setting. Needle nose pliers and diagonal cutters made quick work of the lovely beast.
"No, I handle the weapons as well. Again, my speed and accuracy are better than anything that you could ever attain."
"Then what do you need me in here for? A sacrificial victim?" I dropped an empty lobster claw on my plate.
"Of course not! You are a vital part of the system, or you will be once you are properly trained."
"Doing what, for God's sake?"
"Doing just what I told you in the first place, Mickolai! Target pattern identification. It's like this. I am a system of digital computers that is very well qualified to perform any task that can be quantified. If a problem can be defined, a machine can always be designed and programmed to solve it better and faster than any human possibly could. I am a logical system and I can handle any logical problem. Your brain is not logical—"
"I resent that, young lady. I am perfectly sensible!" I started work on the baked potato, but my heart wasn't really in it, even though it had real sour cream on it. I had eaten entirely too fast.
"I completely agree, Mickolai, but a human neural net is not a logical system. It's an associative system. It is arranged to solve problems that are not well defined, or even those that are not defined at all! Except for some of your subsystems, like your visual apparatus, which are hardwired, the rest of you is self-programming, or maybe even non-programming!"
"You're saying that I can do some things better than you?" I got a little of the salad down, too.
"Of course! You can spot the enemy! A tank with a trained human observer has nineteen times the combat life of a tank without one. Modern weapons are such that if we can see the enemy, we can destroy him. Some of my weapons configurations include a rail gun that can shoot a stream of osmium needles at one quarter of the speed of light. No armor, nothing physical can stand up to that for more than a few milliseconds."
"Then why do you have all the armor?" I asked.
"I can take quite a bit of punishment, but not a series of direct hits. Even a near miss by a rail gun is very destructive. This was all covered in the introductory lecture that I showed you, Mickolai. Weren't you listening?"
"I think I must have been daydreaming for most of it."
"Humph. Then no recreation for you this evening, student! You have to watch it again, and this time there will be a quiz afterward."
"Yes, teacher. But for right now, it's my job to find them and yours to destroy them?"
"Correct. And you must learn to be very good at finding them. If you don't see the enemy and they see us, we both get killed. And if you make a mistake, and have me shoot out something that isn't the enemy, and they see us doing it, well, an operating rail gun is about as obvious as a fireworks display. It does not take a keen observer to spot the source. If we shoot first and shoot wrong, we're dead, too."
"I see. So it's mostly a matter of hiding and sniping at each other."
"Right. You and I work together at hiding."
I'd finished eating, and the forest glen dissolved around me. I was in the tank again, flat on my back and watching the displays on my helmet screen, augmented by other information coming in through my ears and my spinal column.
The tank had active communication and detection systems, like lasers,
"Okay. When are you going to teach me how to drive this tank?"
"Not for quite a while. Not until we get into emergency override procedures. Ordinarily, I do all the driving, Mickolai. My reflexes are much quicker than yours could ever be."
"So you're the driver and I'm the gunner? Is that how it works?" I wolfed down the rest of the magnificent steak and started work on the lobster claws. The tool provided looked like a nut cracker and wasn't up to the job. Suddenly, some clean, new electrician's tools appeared as part of the place setting. Needle nose pliers and diagonal cutters made quick work of the lovely beast.
"No, I handle the weapons as well. Again, my speed and accuracy are better than anything that you could ever attain."
"Then what do you need me in here for? A sacrificial victim?" I dropped an empty lobster claw on my plate.
"Of course not! You are a vital part of the system, or you will be once you are properly trained."
"Doing what, for God's sake?"
"Doing just what I told you in the first place, Mickolai! Target pattern identification. It's like this. I am a system of digital computers that is very well qualified to perform any task that can be quantified. If a problem can be defined, a machine can always be designed and programmed to solve it better and faster than any human possibly could. I am a logical system and I can handle any logical problem. Your brain is not logical—"
"I resent that, young lady. I am perfectly sensible!" I started work on the baked potato, but my heart wasn't really in it, even though it had real sour cream on it. I had eaten entirely too fast.
"I completely agree, Mickolai, but a human neural net is not a logical system. It's an associative system. It is arranged to solve problems that are not well defined, or even those that are not defined at all! Except for some of your subsystems, like your visual apparatus, which are hardwired, the rest of you is self-programming, or maybe even non-programming!"
"You're saying that I can do some things better than you?" I got a little of the salad down, too.
"Of course! You can spot the enemy! A tank with a trained human observer has nineteen times the combat life of a tank without one. Modern weapons are such that if we can see the enemy, we can destroy him. Some of my weapons configurations include a rail gun that can shoot a stream of osmium needles at one quarter of the speed of light. No armor, nothing physical can stand up to that for more than a few milliseconds."
"Then why do you have all the armor?" I asked.
"I can take quite a bit of punishment, but not a series of direct hits. Even a near miss by a rail gun is very destructive. This was all covered in the introductory lecture that I showed you, Mickolai. Weren't you listening?"
"I think I must have been daydreaming for most of it."
"Humph. Then no recreation for you this evening, student! You have to watch it again, and this time there will be a quiz afterward."
"Yes, teacher. But for right now, it's my job to find them and yours to destroy them?"
"Correct. And you must learn to be very good at finding them. If you don't see the enemy and they see us, we both get killed. And if you make a mistake, and have me shoot out something that isn't the enemy, and they see us doing it, well, an operating rail gun is about as obvious as a fireworks display. It does not take a keen observer to spot the source. If we shoot first and shoot wrong, we're dead, too."
"I see. So it's mostly a matter of hiding and sniping at each other."
"Right. You and I work together at hiding."
I'd finished eating, and the forest glen dissolved around me. I was in the tank again, flat on my back and watching the displays on my helmet screen, augmented by other information coming in through my ears and my spinal column.
The tank had active communication and detection systems, like lasers,
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