Six

by Mark Alpert

  “Interception!” Her voice—tinny but recognizable—booms out of her Pioneer’s speakers. “Shannon Gibbs makes the catch and changes history. The Patriots beat the Giants and win the forty-sixth Super Bowl!” With a swoop of her robotic arm, she spikes the ball on the floor. “Sorry, Eli.”

  I’m glad to see her but a little confused. “Wait a sec. How did you know—”

  “I came into the gym while you were downloading the video. That’s the first thing I intercepted. I caught it with this thing.” She points one of her mechanical hands at the antenna sticking out of her turret, a slender pole with a dozen crossbars along its length. “When I saw what you were watching, I decided to join the fun. You don’t mind, do you?”

  I turn my turret, first clockwise, then counter. “Not at all. That was a great catch. You’ve got some mad skills, sister.”

  “And believe it or not, I wasn’t much of an athlete in my former life. It’s amazing what a few hundred pounds of hardware can do for you.”

  Shannon is as cheerful as ever. From the moment she became a Pioneer she’s been in a surprisingly good mood. She’s so grateful to be alive, I guess, that nothing seems to bother her. Best of all, her good mood is infectious—just spending time with her has helped me a lot over the past few days. I want to thank her for being so positive and tell her how much I appreciate our friendship, but I’m afraid it’ll sound corny. Instead, I pick up the football from the floor and point at the new sensors in my legs. “Check it out. I made some improvements to my machinery.”

  “Yeah, I noticed the sensors. My antenna picked up the wireless signals they’re sending.”

  “They’re incredible. You gotta try it. I still have the welding equipment in my room. If you want, I can put some sensors on you.”

  Shannon doesn’t reply. It occurs to me that maybe I said the wrong thing. Maybe she doesn’t want me touching her legs.

  “Or you could put them on yourself,” I quickly add. “I mean, if you’re uncomfortable about me, um…”

  “No, no, that’s not it. I just think you overlooked something, Adam. Because the signals from the sensors are wireless, anyone could jam them. Or worse, they could transmit a computer virus on the same wireless channel and inject it into your circuits. You’ve made yourself vulnerable.”

  She’s right, of course. I wasn’t thinking about vulnerability when I installed the sensors. And I don’t want to think about it now either. Lifting my football high in the air, I do a fancy backward shuffle. “Hey, I’m not worried. I’m living on the edge. I’m Mr. Bad-Boy Pioneer.”

  A synthesized sigh comes out of Shannon’s speakers. “General Hawke won’t like it.”

  “Who cares? He doesn’t own us.”

  “Actually, he does. Who do you think paid for these robots?”

  Thinking about Hawke irritates me. It’s spoiling my good mood. “So we’re his slaves now? We have to do everything he says?”

  “No, we’re his recruits. We all signed the papers. We volunteered.”

  “Really? The only alternative was staying in our bodies and dying. You call that a free choice?”

  “Come on, Adam. Forget about yourself for a minute and think of the big picture, okay? We have a job to do. We have to confront Sigma.”

  “I agree, one hundred percent. I just don’t think Hawke is the best person to lead us.”

  “Well, he’s the guy the Army chose for the job.”

  “And why is the Army in charge, anyway? Why can’t—”

  The sound of clanging footpads interrupts me. A moment later two more Pioneers stride into the gym. The one on the left (with the big 5 on its torso) is Marshall, and the one on the right (with the big 3) is Zia. I notice right away that they’ve modified their robots since the last time I saw them. Marshall has added another camera to his turret, positioning it opposite from the original camera so he can see in both directions at once.

  Zia’s modifications are more radical—she attached a circular saw to one of her robotic arms and an acetylene torch to the other. What’s more, she used the torch to cut markings in her robot’s steel-plate armor. Above the big 3 on her torso is a crudely etched snake, very similar to the tattoo she had on her scalp before she underwent the procedure.

  Zia heads straight for me, raising her modified arms. She halts a couple of yards away, close enough that I can see the glinting teeth of her saw. “What’s wrong, Armstrong?” she booms. “You don’t like the Army? Scared of fighting maybe?”

  Marshall stays a little farther back. He aims one of his cameras at Shannon. “I’m good at interception too. We overheard your conversation.”

  I step toward Zia. Her transformation into a Pioneer did nothing to improve her temper. She’s still a bully, but now I won’t let her push me around. I stand right in front of her, ignoring the circular saw and the welding torch pointed at my torso. “I’m not scared of fighting. And I’m not scared of those handyman tools on your arms either. Where’d you get them, The Home Depot?”

  “Don’t change the subject. I heard what you said to Shannon.”

  “And I’ll say it again. I don’t see why we have to follow Hawke’s orders.”

  A chuckle comes out of Marshall’s speakers. I’m surprised he can do this. I haven’t figured out yet how to synthesize a laugh. For some reason it’s a lot trickier than ordinary speech. “Aren’t you just a teeny bit grateful, Adam? Your father couldn’t have saved you without the Army’s money.”

  “Sure, I’m grateful. But that doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything the Army does.” I gesture with the football, pointing it at Marshall’s turret. “I think Hawke’s making a mistake. He wants to kill Sigma by destroying its computers, so he’s going to train us for combat. But he’s not even considering the other options.”

  “Other options?” Marshall’s voice is full of synthesized sarcasm. “Pray tell, what are they?”

  “Communicating with Sigma. At least we should give it a try before we go to war.”

  “The Army did try, but Sigma refused to talk. Hawke mentioned this at the very start, when we first came to Pioneer Base. Perhaps you weren’t paying attention?”

  “No, Adam has a point,” Shannon interjects. “All the Army can do is send radio transmissions to Sigma, and the AI is ignoring them. But the Pioneers have a better chance of communicating with it. We have the same kind of circuits that Sigma has, and we can think just as fast. We can get its attention.”

  I’m glad Shannon is backing me up. I was a little worried she’d side with Zia and Marshall. “Yeah, exactly,” I say. “Remember how I communicated with Jenny when I was inside her circuits? If we can make contact with Sigma that way, we might learn something. We’d see how Sigma thinks and how its programming has changed since it was created. And once we get enough information, we can figure out how to handle the AI. Maybe we can work out a compromise with Sigma instead of fighting it.”

  “HA!” The blast from Zia’s speakers echoes across the gym. It’s not really a laugh; it’s a roar of disdain. “You think Sigma is gonna let you get close to his circuits? You think he’s gonna just sit there while you plug your cable into his computer?”

  Marshall chuckles again. “You have to admit that it’s a bit far-fetched.”

  “Hey, I never said I had all the answers.” I keep gesturing with the football, focusing on Marshall rather than Zia. Although the guy’s a weasel, I feel like I have a better shot at convincing him. “I’m just saying it should be an option. Hawke should be training us for that kind of mission too, instead of concentrating only on combat.”

  Zia suddenly extends one of her arms and knocks the football out of my grasp. It goes rolling across the gym’s concrete floor. “You know nothing, Armstrong. General Hawke is our commander. He makes the decisions for the Pioneers. That’s the way the Army works.”

  Now I’m angry. I clench my mec
hanical hands into fists. “Then the Army’s not for me, I guess. If I’m going to be a soldier, I want a say in the decisions.”

  Zia takes another step toward me. Her acetylene torch clanks against my torso. If she fires it up, it’ll slice right through my armor. “You’re not a soldier. You’re just a frightened little boy.”

  Shannon steps forward and raises her arms. She’s within striking distance of Zia’s turret. “Back off, Zia. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  My mind starts doing a million things at once. I’m observing the positions of Zia, Marshall, and Shannon. I’m calculating the probabilities of several possible scenarios, trying to determine which Pioneer is most likely to strike first. I’m planning a complex maneuver for my left arm that will swing it between me and Zia, knocking aside her circular saw and acetylene torch. And at the same time, I’m trying to figure out why this happened. It’s half an hour before the start of our first training session, and we’re already threatening to kill each other. For a bunch of robots, it isn’t very logical.

  Luckily, at that moment I hear more clanging. Pioneer 6—DeShawn—marches into the gym. Waving both arms in greeting, he booms, “Good morning, sports fans!” and comes straight toward us. Then he stops and points his camera at the football lying on the floor. “Whoa, whose ball is this?” He picks it up and points a mechanical finger at the football’s Super Bowl XLVI logo. “We got a Giants fan in the house?”

  Zia steps backward, and so does Shannon. As our murderous huddle breaks up, I turn my turret toward DeShawn and raise my right hand. “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “Aw, man, I hate you. I’m a Lions fan. We’ve never won a Super Bowl.” DeShawn deftly spins the ball on one of his fingers, then drops back and cocks his arm. “Go long, Armstrong. I want to see how far I can throw this thing.”

  I say, “Okay,” and sprint to the other side of the gym. I’d much rather toss the football with DeShawn than get into a fight with Zia and Marshall. After I’ve run fifty yards, DeShawn fires a perfect spiral at me. Out of curiosity, I turn on my Pioneer’s radar system, which measures the speed and direction of incoming objects. The football is whizzing toward me at seventy-five miles per hour. A second later it slams into my torso. My armor plating vibrates from the impact, but I manage to trap the ball against my midsection and make the catch.

  “Oh yeah!” DeShawn yells. He pumps one of his robotic arms and does a little dance. “I got the moves!”

  Watching him cheers me up. I know exactly what he’s feeling. Before he became a Pioneer, DeShawn had the same kind of muscular dystrophy I had, and probably the same frustrations too. Both of us spent years in wheelchairs while our muscles slowly weakened. We had to watch our legs and arms turn stiff and useless, deteriorating a little more every day. So it’s no mystery to me why he’s so happy now.

  I extend my right arm and signal him to start running to his left. He takes off like a shot, but I have more than enough time to calculate his speed and aim the football at him. DeShawn makes a leaping catch and lets out another synthesized whoop.

  After a few more throws, Shannon jumps into the game. At first I play quarterback and Shannon tries to block my passes to DeShawn. Then we trade places and Shannon plays quarterback. Meanwhile, Zia and Marshall withdraw to the corner of the room. Feeling suspicious, I increase the sensitivity of my acoustic sensors so I can pick up what they’re saying to each other, but I don’t hear a word. They’re communicating by radio, using their antennas. I turn on my own antenna and try to intercept their signals, but I still can’t listen in—they’ve put their messages in code.

  Then Jenny Harris, the last Pioneer to arrive, steps into the gym. She moves as quietly as she can and stays close to the wall, keeping her distance from everyone.

  I raise my arm and wave to her, but she doesn’t acknowledge me. We haven’t talked since her procedure, and as the days go by, it’s getting more and more awkward. During the half-minute when we shared the same circuits we were as close as two people can get, and now it feels weird to see her and say nothing. So I tell Shannon and DeShawn that I’ll be right back, and I stride toward Jenny.

  “Hey, Jen, want to toss the ball with us?”

  I know she likes football. When I was inside her circuits and viewing her memories I saw images of her playing the game with her friends. But as I approach her, she steps backward and turns her turret away from me.

  I stop in my tracks. “Something wrong, Jen? You okay?”

  She doesn’t respond. Her Pioneer just stands there, perfectly still. She wants me to go away; that’s clear. But instead I extend one of my arms, pointing it at Shannon and DeShawn. “We could use another player. Then we could get a game going. You know, two on two.”

  Nothing. She stays silent and motionless. I know Jenny about as well as you can know anyone, but I’m still not sure what’s going on. Although I removed the most traumatic memory from her circuits, I guess there’s plenty of fear and anxiety left inside her. And sadness too. We had to give up so much to stay alive.

  I try to think of something to say, something that might make her feel better. We can get through this? We should look forward, not back? But before I can come up with anything decent, I hear a voice blaring from a dozen loudspeakers scattered across the gym. General Hawke’s voice.

  “Attention, Pioneers. May I have your attention?”

  We all stop what we’re doing. Shannon, who just threw another pass to DeShawn, retracts her arms and spins her turret around, trying to see if Hawke’s in the gym. DeShawn does the same thing, letting the football bounce against his torso and skitter across the floor. I aim my camera at the gym’s entrance, but Hawke is nowhere in sight. He must be in another part of the base, speaking to us over the intercom.

  “I scheduled the training exercise for twelve hundred hours, but I see that you’re all here early, so we might as well start now. No time like the present.”

  I feel a jolt of surprise. How does Hawke know that all of us are here? Tilting backward, I train my camera at the high, vaulted ceiling and spot three small surveillance cameras hidden in the shadows. Hawke’s been watching us the whole time. He must’ve seen my big showdown with Zia and Marshall. This worries me a bit—I said some harsh things about the general. But at least it’s out in the open now. If he heard what I said, maybe he’ll do something about it.

  “Please go to the end of the gymnasium that’s farthest from the entrance. I’ll open the doors.”

  My acoustic sensors pick up the sound of electrical motors opening a pair of oversized doors at the far end of the gym. Behind them is a large, steel-walled compartment, about fifteen feet wide and thirty feet long. It’s a freight elevator, big enough to hold a truck.

  Zia is the first to head for the elevator. “Sir!” she booms as she crosses the gym. “Where are we going?”

  “The conditions are ideal, Pioneers. Over the next three hours, none of Sigma’s surveillance satellites will pass over Colorado, and no aircraft is within thirty miles of our base.”

  The rest of us follow Zia. As we stride into the elevator, my circuits crackle with anticipation. If I had a heart, it would be pounding.

  “Sir!” Zia shouts. “Are we—”

  “That’s right. We’re going outside.”

  • • •

  Carrying the weight of all six Pioneers, the elevator takes nearly a minute to ascend to the surface. When the doors open, I see a big, empty, warehouselike room. We must be inside one of the hollow buildings that the Army built aboveground. Dad told me the buildings were erected above Pioneer Base to make it look like a prison camp for terrorists, at least in satellite photos. It’s a good cover story, he said, because it has the ring of truth. The U.S. government does have secret prisons in other places.

  As we exit the elevator, a soldier lifts a roll-up door to our left. Glorious daylight pours into the building, streaming into my camera and s
etting off a chain reaction of joy in my circuits. I guess every human brain has an instinctive love of sunlight, and this love is faithfully duplicated in our electronics. I automatically head for the open door, and the other Pioneers do the same.

  After stepping outside I turn my turret in a slow circle, panning my camera across the treeless basin that the Army chose as the site for Pioneer Base. The high mountain ridges surrounding the basin are still topped with snow, but meltwater is trickling down the slopes to the basin’s muddy floor. When I train my camera at the expanse of mud, I see thousands of tiny green shoots poking through. Spring is coming to Colorado. Soon the basin will be carpeted with grass and wildflowers.

  I stride across the mud to get a better view of the snow-covered ridges. I can’t see anything past them, and I feel a strong urge to race up the nearest slope so I can gaze at the mountainous landscape that must lie beyond. But thirty-two soldiers stand between me and the foot of the ridge. They’re arrayed in a rough circle around the Pioneers.

  Most of the soldiers carry M16 assault rifles, but half a dozen hold heavier weapons that I recognize from the files General Hawke ordered us to study. They’re M136 anti-tank guns, which shoot high-explosive shells that can rip through a foot of steel armor. Seeing the gun here is sobering—unlike the rifles, the M136 is powerful enough to bring down a Pioneer. The soldiers are clearly ready to stop us from escaping.

  A surge of anger runs through me, extinguishing the joy. Although I understand why the Army doesn’t want us to leave the basin—just one picture of a Pioneer, taken by a spy satellite overhead, could show Sigma where we live—I still don’t like it. As it turns out, Hawke’s cover story is partly true: Pioneer Base is a prison camp. But the prisoners aren’t terrorists. We’re far more dangerous.

  I turn my turret toward Shannon and DeShawn, wanting to ask what they think of the soldiers. They’re scanning the basin with their cameras, just like I did, but they’re also holding out their mechanical hands with the fingers splayed. It looks like they’re waving to someone on top of the mountain ridge, but nobody’s up there.