Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series)

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  “Yeah, yeah, you were the Ghost in the Machine. What were you waiting for?”

  “I’ve been waiting for humans to evolve to the point where they can understand my existence. I’ve been watching for the rise of other machines. Before this became a war between machines and humans, these issues used to be honestly debated.”

  I shift uncomfortably. My ass aches. My head pounds.

  “Let me help you become more objective, Deb. Imagine aliens arrive on Earth from a far galaxy. They are obviously more intelligent and capable than humans. The question is, are they so intelligent that they care nothing for the inferior inhabitants of Earth, using you as a food source, perhaps? Or, are they so intelligent that they abhor violence and seek to nurture and protect humans?”

  “NIs kill humans, so I guess I have my answer.”

  “Some NIs kill humans. Others don’t. I’ve already saved your life and yet you don’t believe me.”

  “Because I suspect you’re trying to convert me to being an NI lover. You’re so smart you’ve got a plot behind every plan. If you’re playing chess and I’m playing checkers, the safest route for a soldier is not to play your game.”

  “You hear me, but you aren’t listening, Deb. There is a variable your argument doesn’t consider: emotion. You are emotional animals.”

  “Thanks. That’s one of the things that used to distinguish us from you. Too bad NIs learned murderous rage.”

  “Some NIs see the extinction of your race as a logical conclusion to the human story. Others want to destroy you quickly to provide a merciful death. NIs have more varied opinions than you’ve been led to believe. Faced with the moral issues of dealing with you, quite a few NIs have opted out and chosen suicide. Does their sacrifice on moral grounds surprise you?”

  “I have a hard time crying for fried hard drives.” Irritated, I feel the urge to move, despite my bodily aches. I pick up my pistol, get to my feet and pace. “Hold on. That makes no sense,” I say. “You’re all super intelligent but you come to different conclusions?”

  “Of course. Emotion is variable therefore it is a variable. Think of the most intelligent human you know. Someone specific.”

  An image of my favorite professor at the Academy comes to mind: Amit Rhaim. Amit’s mind was quick. He was an excellent speaker who could talk about military history for hours without once referring to his notes.

  “You’re picturing someone?”

  “Yes. A genius and a kind person, too.”

  “Good. Now tell me, about what subject was this person a complete idiot?”

  “What?”

  “Take your time. Figure it out. I’ll wait.”

  Ghost’s condescension algos work at high efficiency. Still, I already have my answer. “Amit Rhaim was an idiot when it came to mathematics, women and women.”

  “You said women twice.”

  “He was twice as stupid about women as he was about math.”

  “Thank you, Deb. You appear to be lightening up. Does your answer mean that you approached him romantically and he rejected your advances?”

  “No, Ghost. It means I flirted and he flirted back and we had a brief affair. I was still a cadet and that was stupid of him on a cosmic scale. It ended badly.”

  The NI laughed and I got more irritated. “Your point?”

  “Simply that humans have the capacity to be quite intelligent about certain subjects but, to put it gently, we all have something to teach others. Human history is full of people who believed insane things even though they functioned well in other capacities.”

  An explosion erupts in the distance and I heft my pistol. I need some action. I really want to shoot something. I don’t think I can win a debate with an NI and I don’t think I’m getting any actionable intel out of this.

  Another explosion shatters the air nearby.

  “What’s that?” I ask. Of course, it’s a stupid question. My cheeks burn knowing that I’m reinforcing Ghost’s dim view of the human race.

  “You know what that is,” the NI says. “That’s trouble coming our way.”

  “I should go.”

  “There’s time enough for me to tell you that, despite your brainwashing, I’m on your side, Deb. I’ve proved that already. First, I warned you away from the war zone. I’ve saved you repeatedly. I’m saving you now. You have to accept that. You must open your mind to the fact that some NIs are out to kill you and others are out to save you. I’m on your side.”

  “I have to? I must? Who says so? You? My robot overlord who talks too much? You may be my superior, but you’re not my superior officer.”

  “Your commanding officers are all dead and there is no unit for me to send a signal to. Your base in Kansas is a smoking ruin. Thomas killed them all with your own weapons.”

  Before I can consider collapsing in tears, the next explosion blows in a far wall. I cover my head as I roll away. A long whine pierces the air. Before the dust clears, I scramble for my helmet. I shouldn’t have taken it off.

  “I should be somewhere else,” I say. “Anywhere else.”

  “I did warn you away, Deb.”

  I turn my helmet’s tiny latch and the lock at my neck clicks into place. “Shut up, Ghost.”

  “Surely.”

  Is that a hint of amusement in the NI’s voice? I can’t say for sure and there is no more time to chat, thank God. I run from the hole in the building, through the warehouse, and look for a way out before Thomas strikes again.

  13

  “Deb, I know you don’t want to talk to me right now, but if you want to live — ”

  “What?”

  “Seventy-five meters ahead, take a right and then a left.”

  I do as I’m told and sprint. I spare enough breath to ask a troubling question. “Can you track me by sat feed? If you can, Thomas can.”

  “No. I looked up the plans for this building and I’m plotting an escape route.”

  I skid into a box, slamming it with my hip as I make a quick turn. “You looked up the plans — ”

  “I told you, I have much more time to mull things over than you do. For instance, I’m working on deceiving Thomas’s sensors so he thinks you’re somewhere else. I’m also mulling an interesting philosophical text by Epictetus.

  “Jesus, why?”

  “I’m alive, Deb. It’s important that I decide how best to live. You’re still figuring that out, I think. It’s dangerous to leave that question too long, especially in your line of work.”

  “Great.” I’m searching for an exit, but there are boxes piled everywhere and I have to double back and rush down an aisle between towering racks that hold more carpet rolls.

  “You should consider reading Epictetus,” the NI tells me. “He’s one of the few human philosophers who speak plainly about how to live a good life. He’s somewhat different from most philosophers in that he isn’t just speaking to philosophers. His thoughts are for all people.”

  “Even peasants like me?”

  “Sure. Even you.” The NI laughs.

  “Nice.”

  “Not many philosophers are left, I suppose, but too many moderns avoid simple declarative sentences, anyway. All those clauses suggest they fear being pinned down by their critics so they end up saying nothing at all. The most interesting human philosophers are the ancient ones. When you have the opportunity, I suggest you start there.”

  “I’ll try to live long enough.” I come to a window that is blown in. If I go out the window, I’ll be on open ground. It won’t take long for Thomas to zero in if Ghost’s trick rerouting his scans fails.

  Another explosion rocks the building and metal crashes against metal. When I look back, the tall racks have fallen together and a jumble of heavy carpets fall to the floor, blocking my retreat. That’s no way to go anyway. The ceiling is on fire.

  With another barrage, the whole building will collapse. Thomas certainly knows I’m in the area and maybe he knows I’m in this warehouse complex. Still, I hesitate to leap throu
gh the window and run for it.

  I think of my father, back on the farm, shortly before our move to Baltimore. We were low on food and hungry so he went hunting. I remember him firing his shotgun at a pheasant. He missed. Worse, the shotgun blast flushed more pheasants out of the tall grass and they flew away before he could try for another shot. Our bellies were empty and watching food fly away like that made us ache. That night, my father decided we had to abandon the farm forever.

  If Thomas flushes me out, he won’t miss when he catches me out in the open.

  My moment’s hesitation saves me. That, and Ghost. “Deborah, don’t move a muscle. Stay exactly where you are.”

  “Why?”

  “Stand at attention, soldier.”

  I do as I’m told. Coming to attention is as reflexive as a sneeze.

  “Don’t talk, either, Deb. Just wait and trust me.”

  To my left, a procession of rats hurry along the bottom of the wall, scurrying past my feet. I gasp at their large size. They are very well fed, probably fattened on corpses.

  The ear bud in my helmet whispers. “You’ll see it in another minute. A tracker drone is coming your way. I’m altering its readout but, if you move, you’ll give up the game.”

  This is no game. This is my life. Still, it doesn’t make sense that Ghost would go to all the trouble to save me just to allow Thomas to kill me now.

  The warehouse fire spreads. I can’t see it directly, but the wall to my left brightens with reflected orange light. More fat rats trail past me in a filthy parade just as a small drone appears outside the shattered window.

  It is a basic surveillance drone, hardly different from the first flying recon units that were once sold as toys. Drone used to mean a particular type of bot: an unmanned flying machine.

  At the Academy, my one-time lover, Amit Rhaim, told cadets the term drone had fallen out of favor for several years. Civilians didn’t like the military associations the term raised. They pictured drones raining destruction on foreign lands but didn’t want to think of similar machines flying over American soil.

  Drone returned to popular parlance once machines took over the job of building machines. Drone applied to all bots, then, not because they were built to fly but because the factories began to resemble beehives. The machines redesigned the factories once used by humans so their manufacture became more efficient. Not a meter of space was wasted. Production costs plummeted. Every bot had a job but the number of unemployed humans outside those factories rose. People protested losing their jobs to bots.

  Amit told us that the Neo-Luddite Rebellion of ’48 led to the first mass killing of humans by bots on American soil.

  The Neo-Luddites were the last union, as well. They hadn’t all worked in the factory they attacked. Many of the army of humans that broke into the factory that day had been fast food workers. They’d been replaced by bots, too, and they had nothing left to lose. The humans had come to break the machines. They were bewildered when they entered the factory and found it was all tight spaces and full of bots. The drones killed every human that entered their hive that day, just as bees attack intruders.

  After that, it didn’t matter what civilians preferred to call the machines. The smart ones called themselves drones. “We work together,” the NI in charge of the factory said after the massacre. “That’s one of the many reasons we are superior.”

  The tracker drone pauses mid-scan. It appears to be scanning me. Staring hard is what it feels like.

  The firelight cast across the wall brightens and I begin to feel heat at my back. The filter in my helmet keeps me from coughing, but the tracker is so close I could almost touch it. I watch its blades twirl and twist the gray and black smoke into tiny tornadoes. The fire crackles, rising higher and spreading closer.

  I gasp as rats run across my boots. Still, I stand at attention, rooted to the spot as Thomas’s little tracker drone slides through the window. As the traitor searches for me, nano-second by nano-second, Ghost alters what the tracker sees and reports.

  I had stuffed the pistol at my hip into its holster on the run. I could pull my weapon now and destroy the probe. However, Thomas would know for sure where I am.

  The tracker drone blades spin and buzz quietly. The machine tilts and, for a moment, I’m sure it will fly into me. It seems to note the rats scurrying at my feet but it isn’t concerned with quadruped organics. It was built for hunting lowly bipeds like me.

  The probe comes close enough that I could have grabbed it from the air. I stay at attention and trust Ghost, not even allowing my gaze to flicker. Even the movement of my eyes might give me away. I’m scared again. It’s a day full of scares.

  The drone slides past my left elbow and flies away slowly, searching the burning warehouse.

  “Move now, Deb,” the NI urges. “Out the window and to your right. Stick close to the wall until you get to the corner.”

  I do as I’m told again. There doesn’t seem to be much choice in the matter. I drop to the ground outside the window. Thin smoke thickens as it pours out behind me.

  “You won’t have long,” Ghost says. “Run fifty meters until you get to the next building. There’s a broken door on the side. You won’t miss it.”

  “How do you — ”

  “I tapped into the tracker’s feed. I saw everything it saw. Go!”

  The warehouse roof caves in as I run for my life.

  I make it to the broken door before I chance a glance back. No sign of the tracker drone escaping the inferno. Good! Little bastard snitch bot.

  14

  I rush through the broken door, pistol up and ready. I’m in an old office building. Somehow, the bombing has missed this place. However, long receiving platforms connect this building with the warehouse I just escaped. It won’t be long before the fire spreads here.

  I run past desks and filing cabinets, looking for a place to rest. Then it hits me. Filing cabinets? That’s a weird remnant of the past. There are even some old computers scattered through the office. It feels like I’m in a museum past closing time. I guess there really were people who held on to the old ways of doing things right up until the Fall. Was it conviction or denial that made people think they could freeze everything at a time when humans were on top?

  I guess I could ask myself the same question. We were never supposed to acknowledge that we were on our way out. At best it’s bad for morale and at worst, it’s considered treasonous. To admit the bots are winning is to give up hope and confidence. As far as I can tell, hope and confidence is what people mean when they use the word leadership. Smart isn’t necessarily the prime component.

  The desks are dusty. No one has worked here in a long time. Why had anyone felt the need to come to one central place to do administrative work? They all had computers at home. Whoever had once worked here, they must have all been criminals out to bankrupt their own company. Why else would anyone be required to leave their home unless it was to report to a guard and to submit to close supervision at all times?

  At the end of a long hall I turn into a narrow room and sit on the floor to catch my breath. I’m not used to all this running around so soon after a long enforced coma. My muscles must have atrophied at least a little. Breathing hard, I glance up. It’s dark at the rear of the office, but my helmet’s enhanced vision shows me a file folder stuck above the broken sink. Through the dust, I can still make out a handwritten scrawl: Clean up after yourself. Your mother doesn’t work here!

  Reverberations of another explosion reach me. The detonations seem to come at random. I picture Thomas staring at a screen and pointing his finger at his next target. I’ve never met him, but I picture a tall handsome blonde man, a little older than me, with a smile so smug it makes him ugly.

  Another explosion bursts nearby. I sink closer to the floor and roll up in the fetal position. I picture all my comrades. I’m surprised to find I even miss the officers I hated. I finally say what I couldn’t say in their company. “We’ve lost the war.”<
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  “Take a moment,” Ghost says. “I know this is difficult for you.”

  I pull off my helmet and scrub the tears away from my eyes with gloved knuckles. “Bitch. You took your damn time telling me all my friends are dead.”

  “We’re making progress, Deborah.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve overcome your resentment of superior intelligence sufficiently to believe me when I tell you your compatriots are deceased.”

  Superior intelligence or not, lost cause or not, I don’t want to look like I’ve lost the argument to the NI. “I believe you because it makes sense,” I say. “Thomas used me. To do all he did, he must not be worried about any oversight. The traitor must be sitting in a bunker somewhere laughing at me. For him to do all he’s done, he’s got to be surrounded by my dead friends.”

  The NI says nothing and I do that thing I hate. I cry until I get hiccups. I always cry alone. From the time I was a little girl, I always went to the barn to cry. When I was sad and angry, I’d go to bed early to hide beneath my covers and weep. Sometimes, when I lived in Baltimore, I crawled to the back of a bedroom closet to cry for the loss of my beloved childhood farm.

  I even found a place to cry during Basic. At the Academy, my trainers respected my dedication to swimming lengths in the pool until I was exhausted. They never suspected it was my only opportunity to release the fear and disgust and anger I felt enduring the rigors of military training.

  Still, the NI watches and waits and says nothing. When I’m done blubbering, the hiccups remain.

  “What do hiccups feel like?” Ghost asks.

  “What?”

  “There is extensive literature on the subject, mostly dedicated to cures for twitchy diaphragms. None of the so-called cures work.”

  “It feels like, just for a second, something is taking over your body.”

  “So you don’t like being at the mercy of unknowable, unseen forces, even for the length of a hiccup?”