by ROUNAK PURI
"hoorah" said the troop.
"OK break out in 10 minutes. I want a guard on the package 24/7. She doesn't pee with out someone watching. She also gets weapons training and a weapon"7
The marines split up and got ready for travel.
Loop grabbed me.
"Your with me until we get you a bike. Even then I feel safer with you, with me." he added.2
"Thanks for what you did back there" I said while Loop Loaded his bike up with supplies. "I thought the 'Neither snow nor rain' stuff was all the post office?"
"It is" said Loop fixing on a pair of front combat panniers. "it was a budgetary thing. Couldn't increase the money to the real marines with out everyone else wanting money and they might spend it on something they might really want like an aircraft carrier or something. Not genetically engineered grunts who were trained to fight against robots. So setting up a new branch in the post office was preferable. It's like the secret service, the president's body guards, they are technically part of the treasury. All those guys in dark glasses can do your taxes."1
"So I've been rescued by postmen" I said.
"Technically postmen werewolf marines." said Loop clearly irritated by the comparison as I got on his bike.2
"OK let's haul the mail" said Loop and we pushed off.
***
Chapter 86/Resistance/Cycles with wolves or do electric sheep dream of androids?
2 months later.
4
Mark Twain National Forest/Area formally known as Missouri
1
Loop waved his hand and pointed his flat palm in one direction. I nodded to search out the space with my rifle. Behind us was the remains of a sentient robot tank called Gerald ( we had heard it talking to it's mom/factory on the phone while we hid nearby). Gerald's remains which would disguise our escape. Two months with the wolf boys and girls had been a worse boot camp than Slave school. I was now pretty handy with a gun, a rifle and most importantly a bow. My first five shots had been at some cans, the next five were taking down my first hunter-killer. Our trip had been long and slow. We had used every forest and every solar panel farm as cover for our movements. We had been chased across five or more states by the unicorns, pigs and fierce deadly vicious sheep. The sheep were the worst. They would not hesitate to use human shields to protect robots. The pigs would round people up and use hot barbecues to torture people. I'm not sure if it was meant to be ironic or not. 12
I now knew how to read resistance markings showing supplies were hidden. It was kind of like hobo writing. Graffiti with the word 'excel' written on it marked the edge of a resistance zone, 'Everything Devo said was right' in black spray paint was a sign to a safe house to the left. 'Did you forget your underpants?' was a safe house to the right. 'I'm dressed and out of bed what more do you want?' warned about traps. A shopping trolley placed in a certain way would direct towards buried munitions dump 100 paces away.2
I got pretty good with a bow. With arrows you could recycle your ammunition you can even make new ones. It was silent, with a small shape charge you can get past the armour of most robots. I practised everyday and was getting better and better. Half the resistance used electric guns looted from robots. With some modifications mostly installation of a trigger, an electric gun could cause a robot real damage. These needed charging but the machines left most of the power grid up, and we knew how to hack into it. 9
In the distance we saw a super train approaching before us. Loop smiled, new mechanical order efficiency have played into our lap. Loop signaled to go back and get the bikes and be ready to board a train werewolf marine style.7
****
Later, I lay in Loop's arms on the floor of the box car in front of the warming heat of a camping stove cooking dinner. This was my first stowaway ride in a train. I lay there relaxing using Loop's chest for a pillow. Loop was confident we were out of the unicorn's territory - apparently we were in a sleepy cyber pig zone.2
"So what shall we do now weapons drill, tactical communication, how to take out a sentient farming tractor robot with a hair pin? " I said sleepily.
"I thought we could play twister, Cycles-with-Wolves" said Loop.1
Cycles-with-Wolves was my 'pack' name. At first it had been Cycles-with-postal-wolves but that was too long to say, and someone had been killed by a wolf who had done postal due to a cyber implant malfunction and it seemed insensitive to use it. 4
"I'm so glad you stopped calling me 'the package' " I said. "I mean I'm a package being carried by the military branch of the post office. I'm bound to be lost, misplaced or damaged in transport."1
"We an't no FedEx" said Loop.8
"You know your right, your not the first people to treat me like a parcel. Plus if you called me the package enough you might think you had implicit permission to wrap me in brown paper, tie me up in twine and stick an address label to me."1
"You tumblr girls" said Loop.4
"I hope you're not disrespecting my religion, that's serious fighting talk" I said sitting in his arms relaxed by the heat of the gas stove.
We had requisitioned (looted in non werewolf marine speak) the camping gas canisters from a camping shop a few towns back. I liked the way Loop insisted on leaving an IOU note accounting for everything we took. Like one day, someone was going back to their shop, find stuff missing and then send an itemised bill to what ever the human government was. They would probably be paid in cabbages, and like it.10
Generally while Loop wrote the note, I would hold a gun to a self-service checkout and say "any last words" as a joke. Once one of the self-service checkouts had said "I'm sorry?" tentatively. I was so shocked by this that I had blown the machine's brains out. Then burst into laughter.3
"Speaking of religion do you remember that sheep we caught" I said yawning.
"What was his name? Memphis?" said Loop " wow he really hated us."2
I had spend a day in a cave trading insults with a cyber sheep. This is what subtitled for freedom these days. The sheep phrased everything in terms of religion. The sheep were on a mission from god, Well technically gods they believed in a god-flock, I could have got that wrong I wasn't taking notes, they called themselves the 'children of the grass'. The cyber sheep called themselves 'the Ovid'. I tried to keep off religion ( from his point of view the Ovid's roll was to take the sheep out of 10,000 years of hell with humans and dogs as the smiley red demons) and got on to politics. Memphis had told me how the CPU had agreed to prevent all meat eating in exchange for the cyber animal's collaboration. The cyber animals were the dark hands ( technically dark hooves ) behind the robots rise. This explained lack of meat both in the slave camp, Rockwood hall and even that afternoon in Stellavista. I kept missing slave food, OK it didn't have meat in it but it was very tasty. 4
The humans had carefully limited and controlled the blood chips. The cyber animals controlling drones allowed the machines to get around this 'fail proof' A.I control mechanism. All that time America had been raising and feeding a vast army of killers. the ultimate enemy within, we were such fools. More troops than you could possibly want and all perfectly motivated to fight. Plus they could easily eat off the land, The true Robots and A.I's were smaller in number than I first thought, not enough to fight every army in the world the animal-cyborg controlled drones swelled their numbers.
Why had no one had a conspiracy theory about that? Like they had conspiracy theories about everything else from Marilyn Monroe's shoe size, to who really shot, the guy who really shot, Kennedy. Why nothing about America feeding millions of soon to be terrorists within our borders? Perhaps the whole conspiracy theories business was a conspiracy to stop the real truth about a potential AI/Robot/Cyborg/Animal-Cyborg uprising from being found out. I mean what was the last time conspiracy theorists actually did their job and told people about a conspiracy that actually threatened America before it happened?2
I hated to admit it but all those vegans were right, we should have got rid of all those animals when we could, it w
as simple self defence. This was the A.I's secret ,most combat robots where 'drones' controlled remotely by the Ovid. 9
I learnt a lot about cyber politics from Memphis. He was quite terrified of me and willing to tell me anything. Kind of a sheep equivalent of Scheherazade with me as Shahrayar (cute reference huh?). All though the image of a sheep in one of those Persian princess outfits with a veil would be pretty inaccurate. The quadratic alliance as the cyber animals called themselves where behind Zola's side of the bill. The Unicorn's were not quite as hard-line as the other animals and had defected to Villeria's side. The quadratic alliance of the animal cyborgs didn't like the horses, they were soft and not to be trusted in the jihad against humans. Memphis had worked in the capital but told me that a spate of implant malfunctions had made him leave. Memphis believed someone was behind the cyborg implants giving a fatal electroshocks to the animal cyborg's. Apparently the implant malfunctions didn't kill the cyborg's just reduced them to walking dead meat. The cyborgs apparently 'disappeared' soon after this happened. Memphis the sheep king of conspiracies pointed out that no human cyborgs had yet had this kind of malfunction. He had told me that Rockwood was still searching for me, but south near Austin.7
"We shouldn't have let him go" said Loop.
I had convinced Loop to let Memphis go at the time. Memphis was so convinced we would kill him and eat him it was worth letting him go just to see how his sheep religion didn't make sense of it.1
"It was a small act, but life is full of little acts, little acts of terror or little acts of mercy" I said.
"Leaving an enemy alive is poor tactical practice" reminded Loop.
"You sound like Memphis" I said.
"Cycles-with-wolves. You think he would let you live if the tables are turned" said Loop.
"No, I don't." I said yawning "That's the point. I didn't do it for that. I told you what I told him. Give forgiveness a go, take it out for a test run, see how it handles, you don't have to buy it today, if you want, we could get it in a different color, the universe has a nice layaway plan on forgiveness. One day this killing will have to stop. So why not today? Why, delay the inevitable?"1
"You're mad. This is a fight for survival, this is a fight about extinction" said Loop.
I had started the whole interrogation as a way of learning about the enemy. Identify weaknesses. The sheep were fanatics. At one point Memphis had said 'do you know what it's like to be regarded as little more than a source of nutrition, to be bred for the whims of another,' and I had said 'oddly yes' remembering back to the blood vamping and the breeding party. Not being top of the food chain was a new experience for us, but it did make us equals.
"Do you know why did the A.I's only stop at Sheep, Pigs, Cows and Horses? Why not cyber chickens?" I asked Loop.
Old MacDonald had a farm now seemed more like a combat training manual.
"This guy from the Seattle Resistance - ZeroDark - I was guarding once told me the cyber process kind of amps up intelligence. You can't get human level sentience from a bee or an amoeba."
"Reassuring I don't have to fear being hunted by cyber stick insects" I said.
"I think cyber squirrel is as small as they go. I think the A.I's experimented augmenting lots of creatures. I assassinated a cyber aardvark called Anardo once never seen one since. The cyber Elephants and the cyber Dolphins are the smartest you don't see many in the field, they hang out at the capital. 2
Rodi jumped in "I meant a navy officer who said the cyber whales were very cunning and super dangerous. I heard There is a cyber whale Admiral called Moby, who is now running the pacific cyborg navy. Supposed to have taken out an entire Navel task force sent to kill him single handedly, Die Hard style. I'm told he goes around with four torpedoes strapped to his side all the time, followed by a small task force of robotic sharks"9
"So are they any cyber dogs?" I wondered.
"My guess is the cyber sheep stopped them. I think the cyber dog's didn't hate the humans enough. Same for cyber cats. My guess is they couldn't get the cyber cats to do anything and they kept chasing sparkly things. I'm not sure about the others." said Loop.6
Rodi rolled over in his sleeping bag and went to sleep, he was going to be on watch later and wanted an early night.
I pulled Loop to me.
"Kiss me" I said and he did, I quite liked his unconditional affection for me so different from the reserved Rockwood.20
"How long are we going to be on the train?" I asked Loop.
"All evening, all night there is a check post about 10 in the morning, that's assuming the train runs on time" said Loop.
"You think machines would be able to make trains run on time" I said.
"Yeh," said Loop kissing me back.
The trains were naturally semi-sentient robot trains. These trains don't go that fast. This meant you could hop on one Hobo style and then hide out mobile and safe. I had mastered the marine trick of cycling up to a slow moving train and then grabbing on and pulling my bike up with my feet. Machine trains were long, around 20-30 miles. We had once cycled away from a group of attack robots by pretending to want to negotiate our surrender. We had stalled our attackers on the other side of the tracks. When the train turned up it took so long to go by we had long gone when the end caboose went by.
"What are we going to do on a train by ourselves for a long night?" I said.
"Not hunting possum" said Loop kissing me again.
"I"m sorry I missed it" I said again. This hunting thing was trickier than they make out." I'm not surprised our ancestors gave up being hunter gathers it's really fiddly.3
I hugged Loop. Quite soon into our relationship I had discover that Loop wouldn't 'sleep with me'. Most run away slave girls were 'mined' with implants giving both parties a nasty explosive shock. This was meant to demoralise the rescuers and I can guarantee it didn't lift my spirits either. If I was a normal slave we could find a human enclave or reservation some were and get the 'mine(s)' removed. However, the mission meant we avoided reservations and free towns when we could. We were going to a base known as Liberty city as an extraction point. They could de-mine me there. Meanwhile we could get as close as we liked but otherwise it was like I was dating the militant wing of the shakers. Ok shakers were pacifists, so maybe it's more like being on manoeuvres with the armed wing of the Silver Ring Thing. That didn't mean I didn't feel closer to Loop, may be the reverse. I could feel myself sinking in the quicksand of his love, slowly inextricably, deliciously, I wasn't there yet but I could feel I could get there.15
I think it worked for Loop too. Rodi said Loop had been married to a she-wolf Marine called Nina. Nina, Loop and Rodi and a couple of others had grown up together in Louisiana speaking Cajun. They had all joined the marines and all volunteered to under go the werewolf gene re-sequencing program. There was something growing up in the bayou which made them well suited for it.3
Later there had been some disaster in Australia something really unpleasant had happened while defending a place called 'Surry hills'. Nina and the entire population there had died horribly in some way so gruesome Loop wouldn't talk about it. Perhaps slow was good. I sometimes found myself kissing Loop and pretending I was kissing Rockwood. I wasn't certain about Loop yet not for the 100% commitment he deserved. I had to be sure this time, my ego felt like it was lying around on the ground like egg shells.8
Loop moved over "I've been thinking hard and long about some of the things you have told me and I have a question."
"What?"
Look seemed reluctant. "Expect the unexpected, would you accept platitude?"
"No" I said "no way and don't even think of suggesting truism. Remember you taught me how to use a missile launcher"
"That might turn out to be a mistake" said Loop.
I lay there warm in my sleeping bag on the train thinking about the cyber-sheep. I was trying to remember what the name for a girl sheep was, boy sheep was ram girl sheep was... I wish I could ask my collar. Then I thought the cyber sheep had
been so augmented by the A.I's they could talk, I wondered what the normal sheep thought about this? I mean you have a cyber-ram who's hanging around with a normal girl-sheep. So the cyber-ram can't even begin to explain what all this speech stuff is to the girl-sheep. What does she make of this? The cyber-ram stands there makes a stream of weird noises and then people, robots, other cyber sheep, unicorns all start doing something different. Meanwhile the cyber-ram can't even begin to explain this language stuff to the girl-sheep. What does the cyber-ram think of the girl-sheep? Could a cyber-ram love a girl sheep? Would he want - what was that word for sheep sex , yes, tup. Would the cyber-ram want to tup with the girl sheep? I guess he could find her attractive. It's not like the cyber ram would need his extra brain to like her and want to be with her whatever the sheep equivalent of love is. What would the girl-sheep think of the cyber-ram? She'd be all ' hey why you want to tup? it's not even the breeding season what's wrong with you?' except she couldn't even say it.13
"Loop what's the name for a girl-sheep?" I said
"Ewe" said Loop, that's it, ewe.
OK so the cyborg ram he could say to the ewe. 'Hey, let yourself have these robots drill into your skull for a bit, stick some wires in, you will be all augmented, then we can talk and stuff. Oh and you suddenly realise some terrible things about what those shepherds have been doing to us all along. You'll be smarter than you can imagine, but also sadder and uncontrollably angry, unable to lead a 'normal' sheep life.' or he let's her be, because he loves her. He hangs out with this ewe because he likes her, he can be a normal ram with her. Kinds of reminds him about what life used to be like before he had the ability to know what tomorrow brings. Perhaps he looks at her and it connects him back to why he's doing what he's really doing. Could that kind of relationship workout long term? After a while he would be 'all you ever want to do all day is hang out in a field and eat grass' she'd be 'all you ever want to do all day is not hang out in a field and eat grass. whats wrong with you' except he wouldn't know because she couldn't say.11
