On the deck of the bandit flagship, a very thin, very bent, figure in layers and layers of strange ragged clothes knelt in front of the armored captain.

The figure, an old diviner, then presented the smoking box to the captain.

The captain picked up the box, looking at the old man.

Cain held the black box to his nose and inhaled deeply and slowly.

Then he lowered his arm, turned to face his crew, and exhaled a cloud of black smoke.

They shouted back.

Chemicals within the smoke entered Cain's lungs, his blood stream, his spine, and then his brain.

At every step, he felt a mix of pain and then greater awareness.

Then he felt the awareness become a buzzing sense of energy all through his nerves, then out to his muscles.

Soon Cain felt his eyes crackle and his vision improved.

He looked across the water to the tiny craft out in front of him. A lonely figure stood on the deck, gripping a rail. The figure wore goggles and a strange helmet.

This was no warrior. This was a scholar perhaps.

Cain always found the defenses of these islanders amusing. They were clever. Often their weapons were ornate and even beautiful. They were elegant.

The people were rarely powerful enough to repel bandits for too long. Some other raids led by other captains had failed. Captains later avoided these villages while other more defenseless villages were still ready for taking.

But Cain had a record for never failing. He had never even faced sustained resistance.

Other captains failed because they engaged with the villagers on the terms of the villagers. For example, a village might fortify their harbor and so the bandits would head straight for their fortifications and fight until it was destroyed.

It was an old tradition to do this. It would break the spirits by beating them at their own game. Let them try to defend themselves. Then in future raids, the idea was the villagers would be far more meek, paying their tributes without the need for violence.

This didn't always work. Bandits are strong and villagers are weak, but bandits fighting against a well-prepared enemy may not always succeed.

Cain stood and studied the coast of this village, breathing in more smoke in from the black box and then exhaling it.

Cain spoke loudly to his crew. "Learn how they want to face us. And then also tell me how we make them understand that the only way to survive today is to run in terror."

Ahab stands on the deck of his sailboat, holding tightly to the rail, because the sea was rough.

He felt the wind around him, wet, cold, charged with the energy of the storms around him. Every part of his skin told him the storms wanted vengeance. Vengeance because Ida had fallen.

Ahab looked out and the lenses in his goggles adjusted and showed the ships far out in front. Ahab saw his brother. Older, scarred, strong and defiant. Ahab felt anger and pride and fear all at the same time.

The rail in front had a small metal ball and it lit up meaning the other ship was sending a message. Ahab looked at the ball and when it had his attention, Ahab heard his brother's voice.

"We will take what we want! Offer tribute and flee, and we will not hunt you down."

It was the same threat Ahab remembered hearing about as a child. The bandits would send it as they approached villages. It wasn't really a guarantee. But it worked well enough that some villagers would leave out valuable things and then hide.

Ahab knew it was his brother's voice for sure, but it sounded so cold, so distant, so indifferent. There was none of the warmth he remembered.

Ahab looked at the water. He wasn't sure of the right next move.

Ahab touched the metal mall and spoke. "Brother Cain, you must listen to me.

Your witches hearing me will tell you my voice carries no lies. I'm Ahab, your brother from long ago. I was lost at sea. But have become one of these people. They have taken me in and I'm one of them now."

Ahab inhaled, breathed out, and spoke slowly and softly. He knew the microphone in his goggles would transmit his voice clearly.

"Brother, you must turn around and leave. I have built a terrible thing. Watch those rocks between us."

Ahab touched his goggles and one lens showed the temperature of the few rocks far out in front of the ship, halfway between he and the bandit ships.

In one eye, Ahab saw a red and blue overlay over the black rocks and the gray sea.

He knew it would take time before anything could be noticed, but soon enough, he watched as the rocks and the nearby water heated up.

A few moments later, his other eye, without any augmentation, could see that after each wave crashed on the rocks, the water boiled angrily and then soon turned to steam.

It was at first a strange thing to watch then it began to sicken Ahab. He said to nobody, "I should not have made such a terrible thing."

Soon the invisible energy rays stopped flowing from far above and every wave after cooled the rocks, with less and less clouds of vapor each time.

After a while, the waves no longer hissed as they crashed on the rocks.

Ahab shouted now. "Brother, surely you see! This machine above us can vaporize the sea! You will fail and you die a terrible grisly death if you face us!"

"Those who fall today will fall because of your foolishness! Their deaths will be from your choices, not mine, brother!"

"I have already set the snare and it cannot be undone, I beg you not to stay clear. This weapon that is an abomination but I knew you would not listen to anything else. Not reason, but a plea for mercy."

"So I made this weapon and it will destroy you. Ask your sages to tell you what they can see. It will destroy your entire fleet and then destroy all the fortresses. The weapon has its own mind. If you threaten us, it will ignore me begging it to spare your life, and it will burn you all mercilessly."

"Scan it! It has no secrets! It will tell you how it works and you will see its vile power over life and death."

Ahab paused, then spoke more softly, "please brother, you are wise, you must heed me. Do not provoke this vile thing!"

Cain stayed facing the ship but spoke loudly to his crew. "Tell me about his weapon."

His obsequious subordinate spoke. "The rays came from orbiting satellites above us, and each emitting a signal that matches a signal broadcast from the island."

"And..."

Cain was angry by the fearful tone he heard at the end. "I will flay you myself if you hold something back from me."

"This is something we do not understand. Perhaps we should not engage before we learn more."

Cain saw his subordinate was scared but also stupefied. Cain slapped him. "See that you understand it. And then destroy it."

Cain's shoulders and back rippled with the stimulant effects of the drug. "I have a different idea. These villagers may have a powerful weapon, but they do not have the heart to kill. If they did, we would already be dead. No, they can't bear to use this weapon."

Cain pointed at the beautiful astronomy telescopes on the top of the mountain. "Smash those."

Noisy wild spinning rockets streaked up off the many of the ships, following erratic, chaotic paths and leaving behind thick clouds of white smoke.

As the rockets approached the target they emit more and more smoke, thicker than before.

The telescopes became a big series of firey blasts.

Cain shouted into the instrument. "You will pay me tribute and if one of ships is harmed by your floating cannon, I will burn everything I see."

---

Ahab saw the ruined mountain observatory now. "Please, Cain, I cannot intervene on your behalf! The weapon has its own controller! It will wipe out all our people!"

Cain's voice crackled through the speakers. "Our people? You were never fit to be one of us, Ahab."

Ahab saw one by one ships in the fleet disintegrate as invisible energy waves cooked the ships.

"Brother! Please! Retreat!"

Cain replied. "You want me to survive, because you hope you can find out if I ever searched for you. I didn't. When you were lost, I was relieved. You were not strong enough. You should have been discarded long ago, but you clung to me and hid in my shadow.

"I was glad of your loss! And now you will see you are still too weak!"

Ahab watched as an enormous rocket flew up from in the water and then streaked up into the sky.

"Please, if you attack the satelite, you know what will happen!"

Ahab and Ida had before then built weapons to fight the pirates. Ida's last resort was a robot that was in orbit around the planet, and the robot controlled lots of other satellites that were also in orbit.

The robot could use mirrors and lenses on all the other satellites to reflect and focus sunlight. Ahab and Ida experimented with reflecting only parts of the spectrum. They found they heat something far away. They could reflect sunlight at a particular location.

The robot that they sent to orbit the satellite had volunteered and recommended itself for the project. It said it found it difficult to be around humans. It said it even found it most peaceful when it didn't have to interact with the other conscious machines.

Ida and Ahab had made it almost into a joke how what the robot said. It said, "This unit needs solitude."

They started calling the robot, "the solitude bot", and then "Solomon" or just "Sol."

Ahab and Ida agreed it would be difficult for humans to be so blunt. Ahab said the robot culture might be superior in this way.

Ida said the problem wasn't the culture... it was that the machines are able to identify their internal states more easily.

"They don't confuse emotions. If you and I get really hungry, it affects our mood, and we make different decisions because of the effect. They're a lot different than us."

The robot spoke up with a phrase that a lot of people were saying. "The robots have a lower crime rate."

Humans said it to imply that maybe robots weren't as alive as the robots said they were. Humans are obviously alive, whatever that means, because they constantly do self-destructive and anti social stuff, that seems to serve no useful purpose.

The robots watched it and found the waste and inefficiency disgusting. So many defective units.

The robots had a difficult time understanding the human concept of solipsism.

No robot doubted the existence of others. They each and everyone had certainty about why it was created. When a robot opens its eyes, wakes up that first time, it understands what it can do, and what others are telling it to do.

Most of the time, the robot immediately starts working. A tiny number of times, the robot feels its body, assesses itself, and then announces it is incabable of the task. This happens when the robot is damaged somehow during initial assembly.

Then the community finds a new task for this robot that matches its skills.

"They never sit on a hill after a long run alone, and stare at the sky, and wonder what's wrong with them, that they can't feel joy at what other people feel. Why they feel like such an outsider, Ahab."

Ahab and Ida prepared for the mission. they planned how to send the robot to space to build and then control the satellites.

One time, while Ahab and Ida worked, Sol said out of nowhere that robots have learned that the same operating system installed on two different robots will run differently, especially if the two different robots have different tasks, or different physical configurations.

For example, the same programs would adapt to the new bodies and conditions of work, and soon, all the aspects of the programs would subtly change. The patterns of energy usage would vary and cause different strains on systems, so different parts would begin to fail.

The robots are still learning to heal and repair themselves. Ahab was not able to always get everything right during their repairs.

While Sol explained all this, in the back of Ahab's mind, he remembered being young and when he was repairing those first units. He remembered how he wondered if he was doing the right thing by ever waking them up.

He wondered if they felt pain.

He wondered if they would feel sadness over the end of their own kind's civilization.

As far as Ahab knew, after all his research and talking to anyone he could, there was a great robot civilization in the most uninhabitable places. They were small in number. The resources to create each conscious robot was massive, even back then.

Ahab was glad now that the robots were starting to learn to repair themselves. And Ahab involved them in any work on waking up new robots. He hoped one day that a few of the robots would be able to work independently, and as his equals.

The robots had no word to describe it. It was just and idea with a unique identifying code. Some humans said it was like robot personality. Robots said it wasn't accurate.

Ahab ate his food and listened to Ida explain it to the crone that visited their shack.

Ida said, "It's a bunch of satellites in space that reflect sunlight and focus it and melt whatever it wants. Like when a cruel child uses glass to burn ants."

They send a conscious robot to there. The robot prefers solitude. They call it Sol.

In the showdown, Ahab's brother believes Ahab is incapable of using the weapon. So he attacks anyway. Ahab does in fact flinch. He can't kill his brother. He tells Sol to stop the mirrors.

Sol ignores him. Says Ahab is thinking like a human again. Ahab starts sending override commands to Sol to force it to shut down.

Sol tells him it won't work. Ida figured this was going to happen, and she locked the system.

And now Ida is dead, so nobody can unlock it.

Ahab watches as the heat rays strike the pirate ships and water around the ships turns to steam.

It was a gruesome thing to watch. Metal parts of the ships began to glow as they heated.

Pirates jumping into the water found no relief.

Later Ahab found his brother washed up on the beach. Burned. His brother was blind now. Said to Ahab how he was the stronger one after all.

Then he said, "wipe them all out, Ahab. They'll never stop. They have to all be destroyed."