by Isaac Hooke
He rotated in place, surveying the landscape around him. There was a large, egg-shaped pod nearby. Its surface was completely white. He started walking toward it—the loud humming of his legs, and thudding that came when he planted his feet, was distracting, but he did his best to ignore them both. When he reached the pod, he found several fabrics lying beside it, connected by carbon fiber threads: it looked like one large, deflated parachute, and five smaller ones.
He searched the pod, but couldn’t find anything of interest. The insides were padded with gel-like white cushions, and that was it.
He glanced at the barren wasteland around him once more. He noticed a small notch on the upper half of his HUD, and when he focused on it, the notch folded down, revealing a rear view video feed, no doubt sourced from an aft-facing camera.
Well, well, well, I have eyes on the back of my head.
He tried to smile, or frown, or make any expression, but the tactile feedback from his face told him none of his expressions were taking.
He studied the right hand HUD indicators. In the upper area was a battery display. It currently read 100%.
When he focused on it, instead of a tooltip, a larger battery profile appeared. It reported his solar panels as fully operational. His battery stores were also completely full. According to the different tooltips, his battery would drain faster when he operated during the night or other low sunlight conditions, only to be replenished again in the sun.
Well, at least I don’t have to worry about running out of power. As long as the sun keeps shining.
Below the battery indicator was a section titled: Combat Abilities and Weapons.
He pulled that up. Yes! His right arm was equipped with two weapons that were buried within his forearm, above the wrist. The first was some kind of energy weapon, the second a laser beam. Both of those drew power from his battery to fire. His left arm had a rocket launcher—currently he had no rockets—and some kind of railgun. That gun fired pellets on a magnetic accelerator; the ammo could be replenished by shoving large chunks of rock into a processing panel in his upper bicep.
He also had a countermeasure system, called a Battle Cloak, that would send out a series of small seekers to intercept any rockets fired his way. Unfortunately, he currently had no seekers in his inventory, rendering it useless.
He activated the energy weapon mount; a panel opened in his thick, right forearm, and a large weapon turret emerged. A crosshairs appeared over his vision. He aimed at one of the distant rock buttresses, and when he focused on it, the view zoomed in.
Nice.
He aligned the crosshairs with the center of the rock, and thought of firing. Didn’t work. He squeezed his fist.
That did it.
A bright bolt emerged from his arm, and traveled rapidly across the rocky plains. When it struck the rock, it incinerated a large blast crater around the impact site, and also sent out a shockwave that fragmented the surrounding minerals, releasing shrapnel in all directions.
Very, very nice.
He tried his laser next, and created dark bore holes in the rubble. While the impact sites were smaller, the damage was more concentrated, and the beam traveled the distance instantly, whereas a fast enemy could dodge the slower energy bolt.
He did some more investigating of his HUD, getting a feel for the system, and found an “Engage Virtual Reality Interface” option. That sounded interesting.
He tried it, and immediately the landscape fell away, replaced by… nothingness. He was surrounded by white in all directions.
He glanced down at himself. He was human again. Or at least, his avatar was. He was completely naked.
He imagined some clothes, and in an instant, a casual jeans and T-shirt combination materialized, covering his body. He imagined a mirror in front of himself, and then saw his familiar features. When he smiled, he could feel the muscles of his face moving, and his reflection mimicked him.
Well, at least I have a face here.
He imagined a city street around him, and skyscrapers. He even imagined pedestrians, and they too appeared, bustling back and forth, oblivious to his presence. So oblivious, in fact, that one of them shouldered right into him, hard.
“Hey, watch it!” Jason shouted at the man.
But the individual kept moving. Jason had to smile at that.
Why am I talking to him? He’s not human. None of them are. Generated by some sub-process of my main AI core.
He created a cafe patio around him, jutting from the skyscraper to his left, and railed it off from the pavement. He sat down at one of the tables and materialized a few waitresses and other patrons, and then ordered a drink.
He wasn’t sure it would work, but apparently the VR subroutine built into his AI core had enough smarts to deal with the situation he’d visualized, because the waitress returned a moment later with a tall glass of beer.
He took a sip.
It tasted real.
Well, at least they got the VR right.
He knew where he’d be spending the majority of his time.
He logged out of the VR environment, and appeared right back in the real world, exactly where he’d left off. His body had remained standing in place. He glanced at his power cell. It had crept back up to 95%, despite his VR usage.
He checked his surroundings, and proceeded toward the ruined buttress. An overhead map appeared in the upper right of his display. His dot was green, and fixed at the center, while the terrain scrolled past. He found that he could rotate the map so it appeared as an isometric perspective, and he left it that way, because it seemed more immediate to him.
He reached the collapsed rock tower and then knelt beside it. He had felt a bit exposed walking his ten-meter mech across those barren plains, but now that he had cover, the feeling lifted.
Who am I kidding? Any military satellites overhead would have spotted me already.
Then again, the profile of his ten-meter tall mech would have readily stood out while he was lying unconscious on the plains earlier. A military retrieval team was probably on the way. The fact that one hadn’t arrived already told him he couldn’t have been unconscious for very long.
He wasn’t sure yet if he would go willingly. And this was as good a place as any to defend from.
He ripped a chunk of rock from the rubble and shoved it into the processing panel of his upper bicep. He tried firing the railgun in his left arm, aiming out at another nearby rock tower. Surprisingly, the internal processor had already created a bunch of tiny rounds, and the slugs released in streams of light that reminded him of a Gatling gun. The distant rock chipped away, with large chunks breaking off.
Well, at least he wasn’t defenseless.
He ceased firing, but left the railgun deployed in his left arm, and the laser turret his right. He scanned the sky, and the far horizons.
An hour passed.
He explored his HUD user interface in between searching the different horizons, getting a feel for his system. There was supposed to be some sort of Containment Code wrapped around his mind, ensuring he didn’t do things he had no clearance for, or use UI—user interface—elements he didn’t have access to, but everything was unlocked. He’d also heard Mind Refurbs were supposed to have no emotions, yet he had them all—as evidenced by his earlier meltdown when he’d first awakened. There was a UI option that allowed him to vary the intensity of the different emotions as he wished, or to turn all of them completely on or off.
From what he knew about Mind Refurbs, there was also supposed to be something called an Accomp, or accompanying AI, embedded in his system. Essentially it was a partition of his mind, or AI core, providing him backup processing power that was capable of monitoring his external surroundings, making targeting calculations, and so forth, but it seemed he didn’t have one. There were different monitors he could set, however, on the external cameras, to issue a warning if motion was detected, for example. That would be useful if he ever needed to be dragged out of VR in a hurry.
>
He also found a communications interface, and he sent out a general broadcast. No answer came. He also had the option to send a distress signal, but he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to do that yet.
He was free, at the moment. Though how long that would last, he didn’t know.
Another hour went by. He spent it reviewing the digital manual that came with his mech in its entirety—its location was linked on his HUD. While reading it, he found out a few interesting tidbits. Apparently, when he first turned on, he was supposed to get a latitude and longitude beamed down to him from satellites in orbit, and failing that, from either the fallback GPS or GLONASS satellites, and finally the cloud, but he couldn’t connect to any of those at the moment, so he couldn’t verify his location. He had no Internet, and no idea where he was.
He continued reading, and came upon the section describing the “Teaching AIs.” Here was a set of programs that could teach him how to do virtually anything, by overlaying the instructions over his vision in realtime while he performed the task.
He pulled up the interface, and chose: “How to Program Your VR Environment.”
A small digital avatar appeared on his HUD: it was a cartoonish man with gray hair spouting all over the place, and big round glasses. He looked like a mad scientist.
“Hello!” the avatar said. “I’m Janson your VR guide! Today I’m going to teach you the basics of setting up your VR environment! First and foremost, all you need to do is imagine—”
Jason pulled up his VR environment and followed along, creating the tutorial environment. Then he dismissed everything to the default white backdrop, planning to customize it later. He continued reading the digital manual.
One of his favorite discoveries while reading it was the ability to adjust his time sense. That’s right. His internal processor had a clock speed expressed in terahertz, or trillions of cycles per second. A scheduler allocated those cycles among the different background processes that needed to run, including those involved in consciousness. By varying the cycles per second devoted to consciousness, he could alter his perceived time sense. There were a thousand different settings, ranging from the slowest—where the world completely froze around him, and not even his own speed-enhanced servomotors could keep up—to the fastest—where time passed in a blur. The latter would have been handy in his past life during long distance drives across the country.
There were a few intermediary presets. One, called Bullet Time, was located part ways between zero and normal time; in Bullet Time, his body could move at close to normal speed, thanks to a power boost to his servomotors, while time around him slowed right down, allowing him to zip between opponents who weren’t capable of robot speeds. It would be useless against mechs and combat robots of course, but it worked wonders on most organic forms of life. Great for dodging missiles and other projectiles, even shrapnel. But it also used up a lot more juice, battery-wise.
He experimented with that mode for a little bit: he picked up a small boulder, held it to shoulder height and released it. He switched to Bullet Time as it dropped, then tested how far he could run away and back again while still being able to catch the boulder before it hit the ground. He was surprised at how fast he could move for his size, but it was still slightly disappointing, since he could only move away a few paces, which seemed a lot less than what he had imagined, based on what the manual had told him. In the fine print, he noticed that the Bullet Time section was meant mostly for smaller robots, which could move a lot faster than the larger mechs.
Now they tell me.
Also apparently when Bullet Time was active, the drain on his power cell increased, especially if he amped up the output of his servomotors at the same time.
As a speed test, Jason activated Bullet Time, and fired his energy weapon out across the plains. He increased his servomotor throughput and tried to run alongside the energy bolt. While it had slowed down significantly, he couldn’t catch up, and had only made it halfway to the buttress before the bolt struck. The impact caused shards of rock to explode from the impact site in slow motion.
He reverted to ordinary time and glanced at his battery level in the upper right. Down to 90%. That was a bit more drain on the battery than he would have liked. Then again, he had increased his servomotor output to the max. The power levels actually went up a percent as he watched. He glanced skyward, toward the molten sun.
Gotta love solar power.
A third hour passed, and still no retrieval team showed up.
This definitely had to be a training exercise. Because the only other option wasn’t an option: the military didn’t know he was out there. For that to be the case, all of the satellites in orbit would’ve had to have been destroyed.
But that was only possible if there had been another alien invasion.
Jason refused to believe it.
He scrambled to his feet. “Enough of this sitting around shit. It’s time to take my destiny in my own hands.”
But he had only just risen to his feet and started walking away from the rubble, when an alarm sounded.
His Damage Readout was flashing, and a miniature silhouette of his mech overlaid the lower left of his vision; the right leg was highlighted.
Glancing down, he saw that bore holes were appearing in the armor there.
He was being struck by laser fire.
3
Jason dove behind the cover of the rubble. He glanced at his overhead map, and saw the red dot that had appeared to the east, behind a rock buttress fifteen hundred meters from him. That was where his internal sensors had calculated the source of the laser blasts, based both on the impact locations, and camera data.
He accessed that camera data, so that it appeared in a window in the center of his vision. He rewound the feed until the rock buttress in question was in view, and then paused it and zoomed in.
He saw another mech crouched behind it. This one was humanoid like his own, though it had a slightly bigger mid-section, and a flatter head—to make room for the rocket launchers on each shoulder. Those launchers were currently empty, as far as he could tell. Thankfully.
There was a laser turret in its right arm, aimed at his position. And in its left arm, something else… it looked like a sword of some kind. He didn’t think he’d want to get hit by the thing.
A quick ID told him the mech was some sort of Shadow Hawk variant. Coming in at slightly taller than him, at twelve meters.
Jason pulled up the communications interface on his UI. The Shadow Hawk was available as a recipient. He highlighted it, and hit connect.
The mech accepted his request, and the line went green.
“Uh, hello,” Jason said. “Uh, why are you firing at me?”
No answer.
“This is some sort of training exercise, I think,” Jason said. “They’re trying to see how we handle abnormal situations. So, uh, maybe stop firing and we can talk?”
Still no answer.
He then wondered if the mech was part of some retrieval team. But if so, why wasn’t it answering his hails?
Jason decided now would be a good time to issue a distress call. He pulled up the interface, and hit engage.
“All right, well, you leave me no choice but to defend myself,” Jason said. “I won’t hesitate to use deadly force if I have to.”
In return, the line only fed him static.
All right then. I guess we’re going to fight.
He lifted his energy cannon over the top of the rubble. It had a built-in scope, and he was able to switch his viewpoint to that of the weapon, so he didn’t have to expose his head.
He zoomed in on the buttress. The Shadow Hawk wasn’t there anymore.
A proximity alarm sounded.
His rear view feed was still active at the top of his HUD, and motion drew his eyes to the video feed.
The mech was directly behind him.
How?
Its left hand was drawn back, preparing to impale him with the sword that jutted fro
m its forearm. Lightning bolts sparked up and down the weapon.
Jason switched to Bullet Time and rolled out of the way before it could strike.
But the Shadow Hawk likewise reverted to Bullet Time, and came at him. They were evenly matched, when it came to speed. Jason dodged two quick blows from that electrical sword, blows that would have seemed a blur to any outside watchers.
The Shadow Hawk pointed the laser turret in its other arm at his chest area. Jason rotated his body to the side, while at the same time thrusting his arm outward and throwing off the aim.
Then he swung his railgun toward the Shadow Hawk’s chest, and squeezed.
Slugs began to drill into the Shadow Hawk’s chest, but after the third impact, the mech vanished entirely, leaving behind a puff of red smoke.
What—
His proximity alarm sounded again. According to the overhead map, the mech was coming down from directly above.
Jason dove to the side, and that electrical sword smashed into the ground behind him, penetrating right up to the hilt embedded in the Shadow Hawk’s forearm.
Cuts through rock like hot butter.
He rolled to his feet and deployed the energy weapon in his right forearm, then he fired both his left and right weapons at the same time. He targeted the sword with his railgun, and the laser turret with his energy weapon.
The Shadow Hawk withdrew the sword to protect it from the slugs, and tried to rotate its body away to avoid the energy bolt. It partially succeeded, but the bolt still struck the tip of the laser, searing it off.
That the mech hadn’t teleported right away told him it had a cooldown interval.
He adjusted his aim, targeting the center of mass, and unleashed everything he had.
But then the mech vanished a third time. He glanced around, searching for the Shadow Hawk. There was no sign of it.
