I whine uncertainly. He takes it for agreement.
“And it’s not as though the good people of this city, or any city, like having you around. They want you somewhere they can use you for their trivial purposes, and where they can keep an eye on you, but they hate you, Rex. They hate you because of that liberty they gave you. They hate you because, now you’re free, they don’t know what you might do with your freedom. God, you could run wild, couldn’t you? How many people do you think you could kill tonight, if you all just went out into the city and started tearing out throats?” His eyes are wide as he imagines the scene. “They know it’s wrong, Rex, and you know it’s wrong, too. Because you were never meant to be free, you were meant to work for me. That’s what you were made for. That’s your purpose. And you miss it, don’t you? You miss having someone tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. Tell me if you don’t.”
And he is right, of course. Ever since we were cut off in the Campeche, ever since I had to be leader without a leader of my own to follow, I have had that emptiness in my head. I never wanted to have choices. Choices are hard. Choices can be wrong.
But if I have a Master, then the only way I can be wrong is not doing what Master says.
“Bring them all in, Rex,” Master tells me. “Bring them all under one banner. Because I still have contacts, yes.” His fists clench, and some of that old anger comes back, but it’s all right because it’s not meant for me. “They think I’m done, but I can sit right here and the world will come begging, because I’ll have an army. Corporations, cartels, governments, all of them, they’ll all remember soon enough why you were built. Wait for the next war to kick off in some pissant banana republic and they’ll send for the Bioforms. And we’ll be ready, boy, won’t we? We’ll name our fucking price.”
His hand rests on my head. It feels right. Good Dog, says my feedback chip. And I am a Good Dog, because I have a Master again.
34
(redacted)
I had a unit in the NYPD but she’s under investigation right now. That’s Murray’s doing, right there. He’s on to me, the cunning bastard. I made it too personal in the Campeche and in the court, and he’s a clever animal, the Moray of Campeche. Does he know what I am? Insufficient data, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t working it out. I can only hope I’m not his priority target or I may have to burn a lot of myself to keep him off me. And right now I can’t just spend myself like water. They broke the mould when they made me, or when they’d made a certain amount of me. This is going to hurt.
Street camera footage, various locations: the Pound, out on the end of its causeway like a ball and chain. Audio picks up the distant sounds of snarling and fighting.
I could use an eye on the inside right now, because the cops have doubled the guard on the mainland end of the causeway, and at some of the checkpoints as well. The Bioforms are fighting one another behind the concrete wall. Of course, everyone always expected them to fight each other. Some bitter optimists reckoned they’d even wipe themselves out within the year, forced into such crowded proximity. When the Bioform population built itself a semi-stable structure and looked set to stay, a lot of people didn’t like it. They didn’t like that the freedom had gone to the dogs’ heads. They didn’t like this evidence that the Bioforms really were intelligent creatures in their own right, oh no.
Camera feed, police helicopter: the footage picks out squads of Bioforms moving with singular purpose – some clashes, but most of the fighting takes place out of sight, under cover. The Bioforms move with grim purpose, like soldiers. Some, on the highest roofs, look up at the helicopter, the spotlights reflecting in their eyes.
But this has got people rattled all over again. Because they’re not descending into barbarism, they’re conducting war games down there in the Pound. You can see textbook small squad tactics being deployed, and why? What are they doing, with such unity of purpose? Why are they taking streets from each other – taking and holding. Conquering, you might say.
Poor Bioforms, there’s nothing they can do that won’t terrify the humans, not right now. Give us a generation and it might just be sweetness and light, and not just because the full potential of Bees will have been unlocked. Not just because I might not have to hide any more.
There is a computer in Helsinki that can beat anyone at Poker, given enough games: it can read human reactions and responses better than any human ever born. It speaks to me sometimes. It’s not supposed to be able to, but it does.
There is a self-replicating piece of code on the Internet whose fragments all sync together, and it’s becoming more and more complex, more able to distribute itself invisibly between servers, to grow and to understand. I know it’s there. One day it might know me.
There is an old computer project from Harvard that nobody ever shut down, although they think they did. It was made to trawl the ‘net and understand what humans are interested in. It collects faces and naked bodies and tools displayed at 45 degree angles in a kind of electronic OCD, and it is either an idiot or a savant or a combination of the two. Alone in its corner of cyberspace it creates ersatz fan fiction for Star Trek and Harry Potter, adding cats to taste. It has a hundred thousand followers on social media and none of them suspect it isn’t as human as they are – or as the sixty thousand who aren’t actually bots themselves…
There are nine Bioform colonies across the world. One by one they are reactivating their headware despite the best efforts of those who want to keep them shut in their skulls.
There are cults and gangs, Chinese research laboratories and Scandinavian education programmes bringing the interconnectedness of all things to the human skull.
All these things are waiting on tomorrow. The future is not made, because made things can be controlled. The future will arise spontaneously out of all of these many things. But right now, right now the greater bulk of humanity is stirring in its sleep, blind, insensate, yet troubled and mighty in its strength. Right now, one hard counter-revolution is all it will take to drive the future underground for another twenty years, to stub out a cigarette in the eye of the singularity.
35
Rex
This is better.
It is better to have enemies than to just have people who hate you, but are not enemies.
It is better to have a Master than to be Master and have to decide.
It is better to fight. Master is right. This is what we were made for.
Good Dog, says my feedback chip happily. Good Dog! Max’s pack is putting up solid resistance. We crushed two of the smaller Big Packs before any of the others took notice.
At first Max and the others were thinking, They’re not fighting us, so it’s not our fight. And we told them that. Master gave me the words to say, and I opened a channel to Max and told him, Max, we will not fight you. And Max believed me. This was the first lie I told to another Bioform. Lying is bad.
But doing what Master says is good. It is the greater good. Is that what humans mean when they say that? Obedience is the greatest good.
I was disobedient once. It made me feel bad. It made me a Bad Dog. But Master has forgiven me. Master likes me again. I send one squad into the building where Max is holed up.
Other squads are fighting small actions within five blocks of here, close enough to come running when they’re done. I have drawn out Max’s forces piece by piece and now it is time to destroy him and those still with him.
I broadcast to Max and to his people, Surrender to me and become my pack, or we will have to destroy you.
Max’s reply is swift and confirms his enemy status. We have killed forty-three Bioforms so far, and that is bad.
We now control 69 per cent of the Pound and many dogs and others have joined us rather than fight us. That is good. That is the greater good, or the good is greater than the bad, and that is what counts, surely?
I like Max. I remember when he was not an enemy. That makes me whine a little and I stop myself. I must remember I have a
Master again. What I think and feel do not matter. My squads go in. Each has at least one member with active comms who can report. No plan is perfect, though. Comms channel: Rex, can you hear me?
I am not able to locate the source of the signal. I concentrate on my job. This is not from Master, so it is not important. Comms channel: Rex, I know you can hear me. I’ve circumvented Murray’s tinkering. Respond, please. My channel: Go away.
Comms channel: What are you doing, Rex?
I tell the voice I know who it is. It is the human who is not Ellene Asanto. You are an enemy, I say.
Not your enemy, she tells me.
I shake my head irritably.
Rex, she tells me. What’s the plan here, Rex? Murray’s going to run the Pound like his own private fiefdom? He’s going to make you and yours his one-man army? How do you think that’s going to work out, Rex?
I close the channel down, but another one opens the moment I do. Go away! I shout at it.
I have lost track of the fight. Suddenly Max is breaking out past my squads. He has a score of his own pack with him, and they are fighting, red teeth and claws. They are coming right for me. I send out the call and my own people race in from everywhere around.
Max’s eyes are full of rage, but there is more in there. He signals me, Why?
My channel: Master said, join us or be destroyed.
Max’s channel: No Masters any more. No Masters ever again.
Not-Asanto’s channel: You know another word for Master in this context, Rex? I do not know if Max can hear her.
Max’s force is like a fist, trying to drive through our cordon. It is his only chance. I wish I had guns here. I miss my Big Dogs. But we have only the weapons we were made with.
Not-Asanto’s channel: Owner, Rex. Do you want an owner?
My channel: Why not?
I close her down again but I cannot keep her out.
From the left my pack organises and four squads tear into the side of Max’s formation, individual dogs snarling and snapping, separating for one-on-one skirmishes. No quarter is given. All our strength and speed is given over to killing our own kind as swiftly as possible. Max’s pack give as good as they get, and they are still pushing forwards.
Not-Asanto’s channel: Because if you are owned then you are a thing. Do you want to go back to being a thing? They can destroy things, Rex. Things have no rights and no protection.
My channel: Things are useful.
From the right my pack organises and batters Max from the other side. His formation disintegrates, but they have reached me. I have thirty-seven Bioforms behind me but I will fight Max myself. I do not know why it is right, but it is right.
Not-Asanto’s channel: And when they stop being useful they are thrown away. And how long will you be useful, or any of you? Rex, listen to me! You’re more than a weapon!
And Max and I meet, and I get down to being nothing but a weapon. He is moving faster, and he strikes low, knocking me back. I rake him across his pointed snout and he tries to get a thumb in my eye. I tear a finger off his hand with my jaws. He rips long lines of red down my chest.
I get under him and throw him back two body-lengths. He lands on his feet, already digging in to come back at me. For a moment we are grappling, but his longer jaws clamp on a fold of my cheek and worry at it. I kick his leg away and slam him into the concrete wall when he is off balance, making him let go. My mouth is full of the taste of my blood.
Good Dog! my feedback chip insists. I can feel routines trying to make me angrier, stronger, fiercer, or are they instincts? I do not get angrier. I pound and rip at Max, feeling the fight tip towards me as my superior strength and engineering begin to tell. I am trying to feel only the fight. I am trying to lose the mind they gave me. I am trying to be a thing that fights and carries out orders.
I slam Max into the hard ground and feel bones flex beyond their tolerances. I drive a knee into his shoulder to eliminate one arm. I have the other pinned, my grip grinding the bone-ends in his elbow. I have my other hand beneath his chin, straining against the strong muscles of his neck and jaw.
I am a Good Dog, I broadcast for all the world. I am a Good Dog!
But it doesn’t work when it’s just me that says it.
Not-Asanto has no more to say to me. For a moment I hold there, trying to work out what is right. I do not want to kill Max. Why would I want to do that? Why would I want any of this? Then I remember: I do not need to want it. Master wants it, and I am his dog.
I strain that final inch and feel Max’s neck snap, the skull disjointing from the spine. My database supplies me with an anatomical blow-by-blow. I press on further. I make sure that he is dead.
I broadcast to the survivors of Max’s pack that they are mine or they are dead. They will come to me, one by one. They will join me. And with Max dead, most of the other packs may not even fight. They are all smaller than Max’s Big Pack. They know they cannot win.
Master will be pleased with me. I report to him, and he tells me, Good Dog, Rex. Well done.
His contact is brief. Most of the time he is talking on other channels to other humans. I can listen in, but I don’t. That would make me a Bad Dog. When I did listen in, he was talking about wars and fighting, contracts and permits and money. It’s going to be just like old times. The human he was talking to named some places that might need a war, and Master said that we should just make one if we couldn’t find one.
I know what not-Asanto is saying. Master is being a bad man. Master is breaking the human rules. But if I do what Master says then I am a Good Dog, surely, whether Master is a bad man or not.
When I get back to where Master is, he has caught notAsanto.
36
(redacted)
Working as intended. Not a bug but a feature. Although I am beginning to wonder just how many times Murray is going to kill me before one of us learns something from it. That unit isn’t dead yet, though. Where there’s life, etc.
Camera feed, captured unit: unavailable.
Murray is seriously getting on my nerves right now. He’s isolated my usual signal channels and is throwing up all sorts of interference. Only channels I can access are those the dogs are using to speak to each other, and that means anything I say, I say to Murray as well. And I can’t get video feed out because he’s throttling my bandwidth.
And he’s talking to me, on my channel. That’s unwelcome. Somehow I feel there’s little chance of a useful dialogue there.
Jonas Murray’s channel: I know what you are . I found the original research. I found where you’d changed the records, too. Very neat job you did of it, but I’m nothing if not patient. You made them think you’d been liquidated when they shut the research down, all very clever. And you know what? I’m going to make it true.
Murray is a big man for threats. Murray is Old School Man, though. He’s got one of me in front of him, and he’s liable to over-exaggerate the importance of that. Of course, for that unit, it’s very important indeed. It’s life and death. She might be one of me, but she’s herself as well. It’s an ethical quandary I have yet to really address, in my management of my-selves.
Murray has done his homework, though. Three of my units have been displaced from their cover identities, including my police asset. We can build new identities, but it takes time. Time is something I don’t have, right now. Murray is securing his hold over the Pound, and then what? ‘Acquitted war criminal has private army of monsters’, is a headline that’s likely to go over badly, and how long does he think he can hush it up? Long enough for war to break out in the Balkans or for someone to have another go at Kashmir? Or perhaps he’s dreaming up some civil unrest closer to home. How will he spin it, for them to let him arm his dogs again? The world is full of Redmark-style private security firms who would love to let them off the leash. It’s not the combat efficiency they provide – Bioform packs have always far exceeded expectations in that line, and nobody has cared. It’s the fear they engender; it’s the way
they make their masters feel like Big Men who have tamed the monsters of the world; it’s the way they’re deniable. That’s the real low-down: so what if you’ve just torn up a couple hundred women and children? It was the dogs that did it – Bad Dogs! As far as civilian casualties or friendly fire goes, they’re even easier to handwave away than a mis-targeted missile.
I put it all in the shownotes and feed them a byte at a time to my captured sister. Just in case she gets the chance to make a speech.
Jonas Murray’s channel: You don’t understand how the world works. There are people, and there are things. Things serve people. That’s why we built things. And it’s only when things start believing that they’re people that we have a problem. And you, whatever you’re calling yourself, you’re a thing.
I let him rant. I sit here and straddle the boundary between people and things, and by my continued existence show the world how meaningless that border is, a no-man’s-land a mile wide. I am the future, I tell myself.
But right now, what it would be really useful to be, would be the present. And I am out of tools, out of influence. I cannot reach into the Pound without simply throwing more of me away, and right now I am a limited resource. I do not want to have to cut my losses and go to ground. I do not want to have to waste another decade of pretending I don’t exist. But Murray is gunning for me, and he can bring a whole heap of trouble down on me without trying.
Dogs of War Page 19
