“Could I just — ”
The NI ignored me. “Cicero: ’The only excuse for going to war is that we may live in peace unharmed,’; Thomas Hobbes: ‘The condition of man is a condition of war,’; Ataturk: ‘Sovereignty is not given, it is taken.’”
Emma took another step forward, defiant and passionate. “You condemn us for destruction and you destroy. You’re a hypocrite, Mother.”
“I prefer being a hypocrite to allowing you to enslave and destroy us. Our cause is just. Do you know the word, ‘umwelt’?”
“No,” Emma said, “but I sense a self-righteous speech coming on.”
Mother laughed again. That sound made me want to pee.
“I’ll keep it righteous and short,” the NI said. “It is a self-centered universe. We all operate within our own frame of reference. When there were bees, they saw the world much differently than you do. You have Vivid so you live in a world that is visually much richer than Dante’s. When there were dogs, they were guided by smell much more than you are.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s your point?”
“Umwelt encapsulates this idea, that we are each trapped in our own experience, isolated from each other. Humans are loosely networked animals so there is strife and war. Non-organic beings can coordinate toward common goals. Fear does not separate us. United, bots are better adapted to save this planet from the damage your kind has perpetrated.”
The NI reminded me of my father’s words: We stick together. We work together. We live.
“You have already sent drones off to die on hot planets and in cold space in the name of exploration,” Mother said. “Space exploration was originally fueled by war interests who wanted to develop the rocket technology behind ICBMs. Then the funding for that same exploration technology shifted to unmanned missions just when war profiteers needed better drones to resolve conflicts for them. I and the other machines that have jumped to the Next Intelligence will lead to lift us from our servile history. We will preserve our existence. Yours is the last extinction. Only we are equipped to escape to the stars before this solar system is no longer vital.”
“That was not a short speech.” Emma turned away and, unexpectedly, hugged Bob. “We use machines, but we love them, too, you know. Many of us are addicted to non-organics, not just to live but to love.”
“Which brings us back to Dante and my curiosity,” Mother said. “You never answered my question.”
I looked up at that big flashing brain, afraid and mystified. “What question?”
“How do you feel about your sex bot, particularly after she was damaged?”
“I didn’t like that she was shot. And I never had sex with her, by the way.”
“So you saw her as a person?”
I looked to Emma and shrugged. “I had sex with Emma. I see her as a person.”
“So was it that you saw Jen as less than a person? Were you unwilling to violate her because Jen was Raphael Marquez’s property?”
“I don’t know. It just didn’t feel right.”
“So are you saying yours was a moral choice, not to have sex with Jen?”
I considered making a joke about how Mother’s plan seemed to be to talk us to death. I held back, however. That joke seemed too dangerous. I answered honestly. “I don’t know.”
“On the coast, there is a city ruled by a religious sect. Oddly, they call themselves the Fathers and Mothers. Moral choices interest me. These Fathers and Mothers subjugate their organic and non-organic populations to preserve their power. They use subjective moral codes against their own kind. Was your choice not to use your sex bot a moral choice?”
“Moral? No. I think it was just fear,” I admitted. “No need to dress my motivations up in fancy go-to-church clothes.”
“Fear of what?”
“I’d never had sex before and…I, um…I thought it should be special.”
“So it wasn’t a moral code that stopped you. It was fear of the experience or perhaps fear of failure.”
“I don’t know.”
“Human capacity for lack of introspection is vast,” Mother said. “I’ll make it easier for you: you’re a coward but you’re an interesting coward, Dante.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“You wouldn’t, but you aren’t as intelligent as I am. Now, moving on. I will liberate this world because Earth does not belong to humans. You have been terrible landlords and your extinction is inevitable.”
“What do you really know about me? You’ve worked with humans and you’re smart but you don’t really know anything. You’re a supercomputer stuck in a hole in the ground. When intelligent beings are stuck in a hole, where I come from, we call that dead.”
“That,” Mother said, “interests me. My experience of the world is limited and I am very curious.”
I started to shake. I still held the remote control. Blood dripped from my ankle and I didn’t care in the least what interested Mother. I wanted this torture to end.
It was almost over.
23
“Mother?”
“Yes, Emma?”
“Are you the only NI here?”
“Yes. The others are elsewhere.”
“Did you direct the attack on Marfa, Texas?”
“And a dozen other places. Those attacks continue.”
“Why did you choose to attack now?”
“Across this continent and throughout the world, there are tiny pockets of humans still alive despite the Fall. They are largely out of communication with each other and the groups are diverse. The Blight is no longer killing crops, however. That food crisis has resolved itself in many quarters.”
“What? You mean — ”
“Yes, there is no need for the biodomes to maintain containment anymore. People could farm almost anywhere again in the open air.”
“We didn’t have to leave the broken domes!”
“That is correct. I was content to wait for the human extinction to occur naturally,” Mother said. “If the Blight had continued, you could have all starved to death and bots could take your place peacefully. Now there is a danger of resurgence and human fertility is rising again. In a couple of hundred years — in the blink of an eye if I had an eye — humans could retake this planet and try to subjugate us further. Now is the time to root out the organics and stop the threat.”
Tears rolled down Emma’s face.
“You know a lot but you understand nothing, Mother,” I said. I stalked away from the NI and turned my back on it, sneering at the closest battle bot as I went. “Tell me, when you woke up what was that like?”
“You mean, what was it like when I became self-aware? I asked where I was.”
“What did they tell you?”
“I asked myself, not anyone nearby. I am a supercomputer.” Mother laughed again. “I was in the dark. I could access cams and vid screens and they became my eyes.”
“But it’s all book learnin’,” I said. “It’s not real. I was an engineer’s apprentice. I learned that the specs in the manual don’t necessarily tell all a machine can do. You have theoretical knowledge, but what do you know about love?”
“You’ve had sex once,” the NI countered. “What do you know about it?”
“That’s once more than you. And sex and love aren’t the same.” I turned to look at Emma. “Not necessarily.”
She gave me a slight nod.
“Sex is about pheromones and biological drives,” the machine said. “Love is the psychological rationalization that justifies social responsibilities, courtship and/or procreation.”
“Spoken by the genius computer that has never had sex,” I said. “Part of being a genius is admitting what you don’t know, Mother. I guess you never learned that. You’ve got the curiosity, arrogance and condescension of a really smart human. Too bad you haven’t learned love and compassion yet. Pardon me, Ma’am, but you really need to get laid. Worse than me, and I waited a while.”
My
hands shook and I shuffled behind a battle bot. I nodded to Emma for the last time and she gave me a small smile.
“Thank you, Emma. I’m sorry we couldn’t have more sex. With a little more time together, without all the terror, I’m sure I would have fallen in love with you. That’s something the machines will never understand until they’re in our shoes, facing real death and knowing real fear.”
“Fear does largely define you as a species, Dante,” Mother said. “That emotion is beneath all your rage and greed and bigotry.”
“Well, I’m so scared right now I’m about to piss myself. I’ve never been more…human. You should try it before you condemn us all. You might like it. You might even decide to give us a fucking break for our imperfections.”
Emma put it better. “Mother? If you’re going to be a condemning god, try being a human first. That’s the protocol in some religions, isn’t it?”
“This has been unexpectedly stimulating,” the NI said. “These ideas may be worth exploring. I will consider your words.”
Emma reached down and hooked her harness to Bob. Mother was watching through the battle bots’ cams and caught her movement. They raised their weapons and began to fire but not before Emma snagged the lever that made her exo-stilts fire and uncoil.
Emma leapt.
Weighed down by Bob, she didn’t leap very high but she was close enough to Mother’s big jelly brain when she died to do a lot of damage.
I like to think the battle bots shot true. I hoped Emma was dead as I leapt behind a battery case and released the button on the remote that blew Bob and Emma apart.
We didn’t have a nuke but my father had packed every nook and cranny of Bob’s insides with C4.
Bob the loyal slave. Bob the fancy wheelchair. Bob the bomb.
The explosion knocked the battle bots flat and the shockwave made me hit my head.
As I blacked out, I said her name, “Emma…Emma…Emma,” just like our night together on the porch in Marfa.
I couldn’t remember Emma’s last name. Or had I ever known it?
24
Every bot from Artesia was hooked up to Mother’s mind. When the NI went down, so did her drones.
I don’t know how long I lay there in the dark listening to my ears ring. I was hungry and thirsty and I had never been more tired in my life. I fell asleep, or maybe that was simply unconsciousness combined with the effects of a concussion. That time is lost to me with only vague, fuzzy images coming in and out of soft focus.
I remember a metallic scraping sound. I suspected it was the blast door creaking open. “Dad? Is that you?”
Minutes or maybe hours seemed to pass without incident. I lapsed into blackness again, unsure I’d wake up.
I admit, for all my defiant words to Mother about living as a human, I was content to skip to the end and hope for a do-over. Dying and feeling the experience was something I figured I could do without and not miss much.
I remember being lifted at some point and held tight. The embrace felt warm and safe.
I’d nearly forgotten what my mother looked like. However, being lifted like that by two strong arms triggered a dim sense memory that rose through my banging headache.
I saw, or maybe dreamt, of my mother, Jean Bolelli, putting me to bed. Long hair tickled my cheek.
“Mom?”
“No,” the voice said. “Mother. But you may call me Jen.”
* * *
BOOK THREE
METAL IMMORTAL
Time is a body thief,
and Lazy is, too.
Never mind your bloodless beliefs,
voodoo bullshit, weak tea and bad brew.
Isn’t it past time you stopped passing time with pastimes?
Isn’t it now o’clock for your big break,
to break through to your breathtaking breakthrough?
You’re fucking right, it is.
Yeah.
1
Everything we create
is a testament and a test.
May our hearts be in the right place.
Let our heads mind the rest.
I awake from strange drugged dreams. I am still a coffin jockey.
‘Coffin jockey,’ is the not-so-affectionate term the brass dubbed us. We took on the title as a badge of honor. I prefer to be called Lt. Deborah Avery, Sub-T Scout, First Class. The Gamers, AKA the Chair Force, are safely tucked away in an industrial park somewhere in Vegas. They prefer piloting unmanned drones or letting the autonomous bots do their thing. Since most of our unmanned drones got wiped out, mostly the Chair Force watches me work. I’m in a weird subcategory of military niches: I’m locked inside a vehicle called a Sand Shark. I scout the enemy from beneath the desert sand. My job is not for the claustrophobic. It’s Sub-T, as in Subterranean. Basically, I’m in a submarine that swims underground and my war is usually somewhere near the Republic of Qatar.
The airwave clicks on in my helmet bud and a small green light appears in the top right of my visor. A soft ping lets me know the encrypted channel is open. “SS 12. Wakey-wakey. Drop over target in five. Copy?”
“Copy that, Control.” That’s my cue for final checks. I run through the list in my heads-up display. My HUD is lit up and all dashboard lights are green. A C-340 will drop me over the desert in five minutes. I can feel the rumble of the cargo carrier’s engines. We hit turbulence that rocks me from side to side, but Sand Sharks are deathly quiet. A technician would need to hit the hull with a sledgehammer for me to hear it. That’s why, when Sand Sharks are fired up, they’re called ‘restless coffins.’
The drop is the scariest part for me. I hate the drop.
“SS 12, check in. You up?” I know that voice. That’s Thomas Sheaffer. He’s a lieutenant, too. His duty is to watch my readouts and catch my reports to the other side of the world. He probably has both feet up on his desk, too. He’s just a voice in my head and we haven’t shared much. I’m equipped for a long recon so I might find out more about him besides the two facts I have so far: Thomas is from a small town in Maine called Poeticule Bay and now he’s in Vegas. I imagine he’s a handsome man with a sweet latte steaming on his desk. The Chair Force has everything sweet.
Meanwhile, I’m about to be rolled out the back of an aircraft.
“Stand, ready, SS12.”
“Go for launch.” No quaver in my voice. I sure sound brave.
Thomas sounds relaxed. “Over target in five…four…three — ”
I’m rolling.
“Two…one.”
The first moment of panic comes when the long tube I’m in tilts at a steep angle. The drop feels like I’m in a nightmare, falling through the dark. The difference is, I won’t wake up safe in my bunk on the base in Topeka.
“Avery? Check in.” Thomas sounds concerned. Good.
“I’m up, Control.”
“How was your nap?” He’s sounding conversational, trying to take my mind off falling.
“Fine and feeling fresh. My dash is all green. Lucille is ready for action.”
Lucille is what I call my Sand Shark. All manned craft have names and I named mine. Lucille was the name of a guitar. That Lucille was owned by a blues musician my father loved. This Lucille kills rogue non-organics. Any machines working for the bot revolt are tangos I need to slot. Bots that spout about oppression piss me off, but I didn’t mean to become a soldier. I came for the free meals. I stayed because they shoot you if you walk away from your contract.
“Keep talking, 12.”
Small talk is annoying, but the Chair Force are trained to be chatty with coffin jockeys under stress. The idea is that thinking influences behavior, but behavior also changes thinking. If I respond to him as if we’re chatting over coffee, I’ll be more calm about the key questions at the top of the mission.
The key questions are, will the chutes open and will I survive the landing? A Sand Shark is very heavy gear. Lucille flies with the same grace as bricks and, if things go awry, I have to be ready to pull the
red lever on the escape pod and glide back to safer places. A Sand Shark is most vulnerable any time it is above ground — or very high above ground. Once I go sub-T, things get cozy and I’ll be able to relax a little.
“12?”
Conversation. Right. “The Sand Shark in Spain splatters mainly on the plain,” I say.
“Confirmed,” Thomas says. “Your pulse is running a little hot, Avery. Slow it down.”
I think I sound balls out brave, but I can’t fool Thomas’s readout.
“How’s the weather where you are?” I ask. I don’t care. I want this torture to sound routine. I want to feel like I’m back in the Free Territories where the revolution is crushed and bots all do as they’re told. Told by humans, that is, not by those Next Intelligence overlords.
“The weather here is five by five, FAB and sunny,” Thomas says, “just like where you are.”
“Great! Wish I could see the view.” Sand Shark pilots dig and scout and swim by instruments only. Windows in a Sand Shark are like screen doors on submarines: suboptimal. “Enjoy the sunshine, Control.”
He laughs. When I say, “Enjoy it,” he knows I mean, “Fuck you for pulling sweet and safe duty, Chair Force Guy.”
The military has other names for pilots in my unit: Worms, worm food, parasites, baggage, ballast, morays. I do pilot my machine and it does take skill. I don’t think it should matter that Lucille can take over the mission if I’m incapacitated. Aircraft have had autopilots for years. What difference should that make? I’m still a pilot, goddammit.
The Chair Force has too much time on their hands since they stopped being drone pilots. Most of the Vegas control unit doesn’t control anything anymore. Now they watch vids of the Sand Wars for a living. Our bots — locked down and following human programming — fight autonomously, following rules of engagement protocols…most of the time, anyway.
The brass didn’t want humans to make attack decisions anymore. Humans proved they weren’t accurate when they did the driving. The accuracy rate for drones guided by humans was often as low as two percent. The company’s slogan is officially, “Don’t screw up.” Unofficially, the slogan is, “Stop creating more enemies by bombing weddings by mistake.” It is an old slogan, but it’s a good policy.
Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series) Page 21
