by Isaac Hooke
“So we can’t repair it, you’re saying?” Jason asked.
“Not without blueprints,” Aria interjected. “Like Tara says, too much of the mech has been pulverized. And we certainly can’t repair a damaged AI core.”
“So even if we could repair it, you’re saying that we wouldn’t be able to use it?” Jason asked.
“That’s right,” Aria said. “We’d need something that could print up an AI core. And we left our industrial printers back at the base. Not that we have access to the necessary materials, anyway.”
“I am detecting a couple of small batteries in the big mech, though,” Tara added. “My guess is they were originally linked together in an array to power the unit. They’re compatible with our own power cores. So even if we can’t repair the mech, we can at least salvage those batteries.”
“All right, how about the smaller one?” Jason said. “The mech that’s about the same size as our own? Do you have blueprints?”
“I believe so,” Aria said. “The closest match is a Blaze.”
“How long would it take to repair it if we used all our drones,” Jason said.
“Hm,” Aria said. “Well, we wouldn’t be lacking for material, since the drones could use processed metal from the main mech. And when repairs are done, we could transfer over one of those compatible batteries from the main mech. I’d say it’d take maybe an hour in total?”
“Do it,” Jason said. “We’re ahead of schedule, and should still make the target site before dusk.”
“Is that a good idea?” Sophie asked.
“We can destroy it if it’s not friendly,” Jason said. “I want to try to glean whatever extra Intel I can on the enemy before we close. This unit here is the best chance we have of that.”
He opened up his storage compartment and released his repair drones, putting them under Aria’s control. The others launched their own drones, allowing the repair swarm to commence.
Jason and the others assumed guard positions around the farm, watching every approach. Shaggy stayed close to his side.
An hour later, when the drones were done they returned to their respective owners, and Aria ripped open a panel in the big mech to retrieve two power cells. She transferred them to the appropriate opening in the back of the Blaze, and then stood back while the machine booted.
Jason and the others surrounded the mech, and kept their weapons trained on it.
The Blaze finally stirred. When it stood up, it was taller than everyone present, even Jason. And also far more slender—the mech seemed to be the least armored among them all.
It turned its gaze from mech to mech, seeming to focus on the different weapons that were trained upon it, and finally that featureless face swiveled toward Jason.
He was about to ask the Blaze to identify itself, when he received a handshake request.
“The Blaze knows our comm frequencies,” Jason said. “I’m going to let it connect.”
An avatar appeared in the lower right of his HUD a moment later. A woman, of Asian descent, with straight black hair to the shoulders. Below the avatar was her name: Xin.
“Oh no,” Sophie said. “Not another woman.”
The mech spun toward Sophie for a moment, her avatar assuming an expression of confusion. Then the Blaze returned its attention to Jason’s Vulture.
“Jason, you’re alive!” Xin said.
22
Jason stared at her, uncertain of what to say.
“Your avatar looks… different,” Xin continued. “Where’s your beard?”
“Uh, guess I shaved it?” Jason said.
“Why are you acting like you don’t know me?” Xin said.
“Maybe because I don’t?” Jason said.
Xin stepped back, seeming more cautious now, and her gaze once more switched between the different weapons that were trained upon her. She seemed to finally notice the destroyed mech beside her, or a portion of it anyway, and she turned to face it entirely.
“This cannot be,” Xin said. She looked between Jason, and the big mech, and back to Jason. “Then you are the backup.” She glanced at the others. “All of you.”
“What are you talking about?” Jason said.
Xin gestured to the big mech. “These are your originals.”
“Uh, I don’t think so,” Tara said. “The only memory I have after my scan is waking up in this body.”
“Yes,” Xin said. “You are a copy of a copy.”
“Well, that’s somehow reassuring,” Sophie said, her voice oozing sarcasm.
“Would you mind lowering your weapons?” Xin said. “I dislike speaking down the barrel of laser turrets.”
“We’ll keep them raised for now,” Jason said. “Tell me how you know me? Or knew me, at any rate. And what do you mean this big mech contains our originals?”
“We were part of an experimental unit,” Xin said. “The War Forgers. We were a highly specialized team of hunter killers. Our original mission: seek out and destroy the alien bioweapons that roamed the region. Each of us brought different skills to the table. But there was something else we could do. Something else no other unit could do: our mechs could combine to form a bigger entity.”
“You mean this huge mech is made of smaller mechs?” Lori asked.
“That’s right,” Xin replied.
“Cool!” Lori said. “It’s like a Russian matryoshka doll without the nesting! Or something.”
“When combined, we shared our abilities,” Xin said. “We could teleport, create an energy shield, utilize micro machines… individually, we were a fighting force to be reckoned with. But Together, we were unstoppable.” Jason could hear the capital T on Together.
“Except something stopped you here,” Jason said, nodding toward the fallen mech.
“Yes,” Xin said. “Something… I have no memory of what did this. Last thing I remember is walking through this farm, and then I was here with you now.”
“So you say we can combine?” Jason asked her.
“That’s right,” Xin said.
“How?” Jason said. “There was nothing about this in the manual.”
“Your units would have come with the original manual,” Xin said. “I have an extra section in mine, an addendum that was given to me during training.”
Jason received a request on his HUD.
Xin wants to send you Mech Manual 3.03 Addendum 5A. Accept? (Y/N)
He didn’t accept, at least not yet.
“We didn’t have the luxury of training,” Tara said. “The real world was our training.”
“Who is in control of the combined mechs?” Aria said. “At least, I’m assuming we’d have to sync up with one mind?”
“You form a collective consciousness when joined,” Xin said. “However, only one of you is truly in control. Everything is in the addendum. Do you want it, or not?”
“Send it to Lori,” Jason said.
The request vanished from his HUD.
“Done,” Xin said.
“Lori, you’re our resident hacker,” Jason said. “Check it for viruses.”
“It’s clean,” Lori said a moment later.
“All right, distribute it to the rest of us,” Jason said.
He received the send request from Lori and accepted. Then he navigated to the new section of the digital manual and had a look.
Everything was laid out in detail. From the mount points that were needed to link up the different mechs, to the process that had to be performed to sync their minds. Apparently, the syncing process only worked with the minds of five women, and one man. And it couldn’t be just any five women and man. There were very specific parameters that had to be met, and even when they were, that was still no guarantee of a sync. Jason and the others had been chosen specifically because their minds were compatible with one another. The designers didn’t know why it required such an arrangement, and why it couldn’t be one female and five males, or a combination of males and females, for example.
Once t
he sync was completed, the female minds formed a collective consciousness with the male, whose AI core controlled the movements and abilities of the overall mech. When he moved, or activated an ability, his mind subconsciously delegated the necessary instructions to the AI cores of the different mechs composing those limbs, which executed the task. It was similar to how some dinosaurs, the most massive organic beings to ever have existed, had large ganglia embedded in their tails to help control the rear portion of the body.
“So I’m looking at this,” Jason said. “To sync, it says our minds have to be in complete harmony. If one of us is unable to form the link, it won’t work. So why were you found separated from the others?”
“It’s possible the mech took a devastating blow to the leg, which severed my connection,” Xin said. “The others would have still maintained the link without me, but they would have lost my portion of the collective consciousness, as well as my abilities and the usage of the limb I provided.”
“So you spoke of backup copies,” Jason said. “When I sold my scan, I only licensed one copy of my mind, along with a backup. If I’m the backup, then that means I’m the only one of me left.”
“That’s right,” Xin said.
He did a quick check of the others, and confirmed that they had only licensed one backup as well.
“So if we die out here…” Lori said.
“There’s no coming back,” Xin said. “However, I still carry my backup.”
“How can you tell?” Jason said.
“It’s listed in the ‘excess inventory’ slot on my HUD,” Xin said.
He checked. His was empty.
“I’m guessing our other versions carried our backups, too?” Jason pressed. “Like you?”
“Yes,” Xin said. “But not at first. You see, the backups were stored in our main base of operations. We were on a mission to investigate a strange disturbance in this area. We were attacked by robots and bombers, and barely escaped intact. When we returned to our base, we discovered that it had been bombed. The satellites in orbit had been sabotaged, cutting us off from communications with Central Command.”
“All of the satellites?” Jason said.
“Yes,” Xin agreed.
Jason glanced at the others. “I guess we can lower our weapons, for now. I think she’s telling the truth.”
The team did so.
He returned his attention to Xin. “Seems like a lot of satellites to destroy.”
“It is,” Xin said. “We suspect it was some form of cyberattack.”
“That would make some sense,” Jason said. “Now you were about to explain what happened to our backups…”
“I was,” Xin said. “We discovered our original backups—all of you—still intact in the ruins of the base, and we stowed them safely aboard each of our units. We didn't have a way to update our backups with the latest memories, so we simply took them. ”
“Central Command didn’t send anyone to look for you?” Jason asked.
“Perhaps they did,” Xin said. “But we were forced to leave the base when more bombers arrived. We fled into the night, and faced attacks from mutant alien bioweapons. We decided that our best hope of survival at that point was to return to this area, and seek out the source of the bombers. And that is the last of the memories I have.”
“What happened to the backup AI cores the other mechs were carrying?” Lori asked.
“What do you think?” Sophie said impatiently.
“I… oh!” Lori said. “They’re inside us!”
“I think she means, how did they get inside us,” Jason said.
“We programmed our mechs to eject the AI cores if we received debilitating damage,” Xin said. “My ejection routine obviously malfunctioned. But the others’ obviously worked.”
“So they would have landed in the nearby area,” Jason said. “But we woke up nowhere near here. And we were in these bodies.”
“Yes,” Xin said. “That would be Suzy’s doing.”
“Suzy?” Aria asked.
“A roving repair drone we kept with us,” Xin said. “Essentially a small, autonomous land-based vehicle. We gave it instructions to follow behind the War Forgers, and to collect the ejected AI cores if anything happened to us.”
“So this Suzy retreated, and then built mechs for us?” Tara said.
“Not from scratch,” Xin said. “You see, a cargo transport carrying reinforcement mechs was scheduled to arrive on the same day our main base was attacked. From the minimal data we recovered from the AI core of the base, we learned the transport was shot down two hundred klicks outside Brussels, moments before the bombers arrived. Based on the detected explosion profile, we had high hopes that the mechs survived the attack, as each unit was encased inside a specially reinforced storage pod that provided extra armor. The pods were equipped with an extensive parachute array to cushion their fall in case of an emergency jettisoning, though admittedly they would still hit fairly hard, hence the reinforced armor.
“We programmed Suzy to search the impact zone for those mechs if she was forced to recover our AI cores. She was to seek them out, install the AI cores, and if necessary, perform any repairs. Then she would initiate a reboot and move on to the next mech.”
“Speaking of repairs, I didn’t have any repair drones in my inventory,” Tara said.
“It’s possible your Shadow Hawk didn’t come with any by default,” Xin said. “Sometimes the depot ships the mechs without certain accessories, like the drones.”
“Why didn’t Suzy stick around to let us know what was going on?” Aria said.
“You didn’t get the message?” Xin said.
“What message?” Jason asked.
“We left several small holographic players in Suzy’s possession, along with the AI cores,” Xin replied. “The players contained a message explaining the situation, and would have been stowed in a different storage compartment than the AI cores. Evidently that particular compartment was damaged somewhere along the way, and the players were lost. Perhaps an attack by bioweapons ruptured the chamber.”
“Couldn’t she just tell us directly what had happened?” Lori said.
“Unfortunately, no,” Xin said. “Suzy was equipped to handle repair tasks, and that alone. There was no time to upgrade her AI core with something more advanced.”
“Where is Suzy now?” Jason asked.
“We gave her instructions to idle near the main base after she finished installing all of the AI cores,” Xin said. “Perhaps she is doing so. Or perhaps she has been destroyed. If not by bioweapons, then our robot enemy.”
“I got a question,” Tara said. “Why didn’t you just go searching for those reinforcement mechs in the first place, before heading out to face the enemy? Then you could have installed your AI core backups right away, doubling your numbers.”
“Given the distance, and our unwillingness to delay, we chose not to,” Xin said. “There was no guarantee any of the reinforcement mechs had actually survived. And we didn’t really want duplicates of ourselves active at the same time. Would you?”
“I would!” Lori said.
“Hm, I wouldn’t be too big on that,” Jason said.
“Yes,” Xin said. “As former humans, we like to hold on to the idea that we’re unique. Besides, we thought we were invincible… up until that point, we’d never lost any of our units.”
“So here we are,” Jason said. “About to repeat the events that led to our previous defeat.”
“Maybe we should turn back?” Sophie said.
“Hell no,” Tara said. “Those robots are going to keep hunting us if we do. We already talked about this. This needs to end, here and now.”
“But we haven’t even tried to combine yet,” Lori said. “I think we’re going to need to combine, if we have any hope of winning this.”
“And even then, that doesn’t guarantee a victory.” Aria nodded at the ruins of the big mech. “Look at what happened to us the last time we combined.”
“Lori’s right,” Tara said. “At least we’ll have a chance, if we know how to combine. It’s not a panacea, but at least we’ll know we have the option.”
“It’s possible that we would have had better luck individually, than combined,” Aria said.
“Anything’s possible,” Jason said. “I’d like to have both options though. We’ll go into this with an open mind. If we think we need to combine our powers, we will. If it seems like we’ll have a better advantage apart, then we’ll approach the situation from that angle.”
“So then…” Sophie said. “We’re going to attempt a mind sync, or what?”
“I want to retreat a few klicks first,” Jason said. “Just in case. Already our profile is a bit large as it is. I’ll feel even more exposed if we combine. Let’s head back a few estates. Maybe until we reach a village.”
And so the six of them retreated.
23
Jason had Xin take point behind the tanks, because he wanted to keep an eye on her.
“So you never discovered why these guys were attacking you?” Jason said.
“No,” Xin said.
“Nor why all the satellites in orbit were disabled by a cyberattack?” Jason said.
“I wish we did,” Xin said. “We’re not even sure if the two are related. Maybe it was just a coincidence that Milnet and Internet satellites worldwide were hacked at the same time our base was attacked.”
“But probably not,” Jason said.
“Probably,” Xin agreed. “By the way, is your Containment Code active?”
“No,” Jason said. “Our minds never had it applied.”
“That’s good,” Xin said. “You won’t be restrained by arbitrary Rules of Engagement, then, like I am. And you have your emotions. I don’t.”
“Lori, fix her,” Jason said.
“Fix me?” Xin said.
“She can probably disable your Containment Code,” Jason said.
Xin’s avatar nodded. “Our Lori had similar hacking prowess, however her own Containment Code prevented her from making the attempt.” Her facial muscles twitched, and then she fell to her knees.
