by Mark Alpert
I stare at the Model S prototype until I can’t stand looking at it anymore. Then I shake my Quarter-bot’s head.
I don’t think Dad understands the magnitude of what’s he’s asking of us. It’s like demanding that a person give up one of his eyes or hands, or requiring a grown man to live in a six-year-old’s body. It’s outrageous. It’s totally unacceptable. If the American government punished a human being with this kind of mutilation, the whole country would be up in arms. But the Pioneers have no human rights, because the government doesn’t see us as human. It sees us as mere copies, programmed to imitate the teenagers we used to be. It doesn’t believe we’ve inherited their souls.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s the way my mother sees me too. And now I’m even starting to wonder about Dad. If he truly believes the Pioneers are fully human, he wouldn’t make this demand of us. Or at least he’d acknowledge how despicable it is.
I want to tell Dad how I feel, but I don’t know how to say it. Even with all my computing power, my circuits can’t put my indignation into words. Luckily, though, I don’t have to say anything. Zia saves me the trouble. Her War-bot strides forward, grabs the Model S prototype by one of its tubular arms and hurls it across the Danger Room.
According to my Quarter-bot’s radar, the mini robot whizzes past the soldiers at sixty-three miles per hour. Then it hits the wall and shatters into a thousand pieces.
Dad stares at his broken prototype, flabbergasted, but Zia ignores him. She turns her turret toward the video screen and the televised face of Sumner Harris. “In case you’re wondering, I just rejected your offer. Now, you mentioned something before about violence?”
I pivot my Quarter-bot to see the reactions of the other Pioneers. Amber’s Jet-bot is still cringing in the far corner of the Danger Room, but Shannon and Marshall step forward and stand beside Zia. The three of them train their cameras on the video screen, waiting for Sumner’s response.
He’s incensed, of course. His face turns as pink as a canned ham. Sumner raises his right hand, and for a millisecond I think he’s pointing at Zia. But he’s not. He’s giving an order to the soldiers with the antitank guns.
“What are you waiting for?” he roars at his men. “Fire!”
At the same moment, I detect a radio signal careening across the Danger Room. The signal’s source is the Diamond Girl’s antenna and its destination is the console where Shannon was inputting instructions a few minutes ago. Her radio message is a go signal. It’s going to put her program into effect.
Now I finally get a chance to see what instructions Shannon gave to the Danger Room’s machinery. On the wall behind the soldiers, a long rectangular panel slides open and twenty-four weapons extend from the hidden compartment. Twenty are machine guns, each aimed at one of the men. The other four are flamethrowers, ready to ignite at Shannon’s command.
Two of the soldiers are so startled that they drop their guns. The other men slowly lower their launch tubes to the floor, then raise their hands in surrender. The skirmish ends without a shot being fired. Dad stares dumbfounded at the scene. He didn’t even get a chance to freak out.
Zia and Marshall collect the antitank guns and crush the launch tubes so they can’t be used again. Meanwhile, Shannon strides toward the terrified soldiers and turns on her Diamond Girl’s screen, displaying her pretty human face. She gives the men a reassuring smile. “I’m very sorry about this. We’ll need to detain you gentlemen until this misunderstanding is resolved.”
In one of her sparkling hands she holds a big bunch of plastic zip ties, the kind used by police officers as a cheap alternative to handcuffs. Still smiling at the soldiers, Shannon binds their hands behind their backs, handling them as gently as she can. I’m amazed at how well prepared she is, right down to the smallest detail. She saw in advance that we were heading for a confrontation with the base’s soldiers, and she anticipated that we’d need an overwhelming display of firepower to convince them to surrender. But that’s Shannon for you. She’s good at planning.
Within two minutes, Shannon handcuffs all twenty of the soldiers. The last one shivers in fear as she binds his wrists together, so she rests a glittering hand on his shoulder and gives it a light squeeze. “Don’t worry, you’ll be safe. With any luck, this situation will sort itself out very soon.”
“You’re right about that!” Sumner Harris leans over the conference table on his airplane. He bends toward his video camera, coming so close to the lens that his apoplectic face fills the Danger Room’s screen. “This whole fiasco will end at six o’clock tomorrow morning! You won’t even know what hit you!”
I don’t like the sound of that. I stride toward the screen and position my Quarter-bot right in front of the video camera. My steel face will loom just as large on Sumner’s teleconferencing screen as his face does on ours. “Is that the start time for the air strike? Six a.m. tomorrow?”
A loud HA! booms out of Zia’s speakers. “Let them try to bomb us! We’re hundreds of feet underground. Even if they drop a nuke on the base, our machines will survive.” She swings one of her massive arms and gestures at the handcuffed soldiers. “The only casualties will be these poor dopes.”
A few of the men glare at Zia when she says this, but most turn their heads toward the teleconferencing screen and direct their silent hatred at Sumner. In response, he pulls away from the camera, narrowing his eyes and pressing his lips together. Now he looks less angry but more sinister.
He shakes his head. “The U.S. Air Force isn’t stupid. They won’t order a strike against a base that’s invulnerable to aerial attack. But three of the Air Force’s Reaper drones are already circling above Pioneer Base, and each aircraft carries two pairs of Hellfire missiles. Those rockets are ten times more powerful than the shells in the antitank guns, and their guidance systems are very accurate. If I were you, I wouldn’t step outside.”
My acoustic sensors analyze the man’s voice, trying to determine if he’s lying. The U.S. government is certainly capable of ordering that kind of attack. They’ve already used drones to kill American citizens accused of terrorism, so they wouldn’t have any qualms about obliterating a robot. Still, I sense that Sumner isn’t telling the whole truth. “But what happens at six a.m. tomorrow? You haven’t explained that part yet.” A thought occurs to me. “Have you programmed Pioneer Base to self-destruct?”
“No, that only happens in the movies. You’ve clearly corrupted your software by downloading too many James Bond films.” Sumner laughs at his joke, but with his mouth closed, making it sound more like a growl. Then he frowns and shakes his head again. He seems angry at himself for conversing with me. In his view, I’m just a program, and talking to me is a waste of time. “Well, I’m afraid I have to say good-bye now, Pioneers. To be honest, I’m glad your project was canceled. It was a mistake from the beginning, and I wish I’d never heard of it.”
He stretches his right hand toward the video camera above his screen. But before he can push his camera’s on-off button, the Danger Room’s floor rumbles and I hear crashing footsteps behind me. Amber’s Jet-bot strides out of the corner where she’s been cowering for the past five minutes and charges toward the teleconferencing screen. I have to maneuver my Quarter-bot out of her path to avoid getting knocked over. She skids to a halt in front of the screen and leans forward until her Jet-bot’s head is just a few inches from the lens of the video camera. At the same time, she points at Sumner’s televised face.
“You’re a coward!” Her speakers are raised to maximum volume. “You blame everyone for your daughter’s death except yourself! If Jenny were alive, she’d be ashamed of you! She’d wish you were dead!”
When she’s finished, she steps back to view the video screen. I’m completely stunned by Amber’s outburst. What’s gotten into her? Why is she acting like this?
But Sumner’s reaction is even more surprising. He doesn’t get enraged. Ins
tead, he smiles. His grin is even uglier than his scowl. “It’s remarkable how much insolence has been programmed into your machines. In your remaining hours, I suggest that you concentrate on your own mortality. If you’re still curious about the six a.m. deadline, you should talk to Mr. Armstrong. He can tell you exactly how you’ll be deleted.”
Then he turns off his video camera. The teleconferencing screen in the Danger Room goes black.
The first thing I want to do, of course, is ask Dad what Sumner meant, but I’m too afraid to even point my cameras at him. So I look at the other Pioneers instead. Marshall and Shannon flank the crowd of handcuffed soldiers. Amber still stands in front of the video screen, and Zia clenches and unclenches her steel hands. They’ve all aimed their cameras at Dad. They want to know what’s going on.
Dad’s eyes are wet. He ignores the others and focuses on me.
“I’m so sorry, Adam. All the Pioneer robots will shut down at six o’clock tomorrow morning.” He clasps his hands together, as if begging for forgiveness. “I put a kill switch in them.”
Chapter
13
Dad rushes out of the Danger Room after making his confession. Like a guilty child, he simply runs away.
I can’t believe it. I’m furious! But I stop myself from running after him. I know where he’s headed. And I need a minute to think.
The other Pioneers are pointing their cameras at me and probably running self-diagnostic evaluations of their circuits, searching for the kill switch hidden in their electronics. I’m doing the same thing, and I don’t see any sign of it. But Dad’s pretty clever. He invented our machines, so he knows all their strengths and weaknesses.
Zia strides toward me. “I assume you’re going to talk to him? And get to the bottom of this?”
I nod my Quarter-bot’s head.
“Do you want any help from—”
“No, I can handle it.” But I don’t move.
Shannon steps forward too. Her human face is still displayed on her Diamond Girl’s screen, and its worried expression reveals the anxiety in her circuits. “Are you sure you want to do this alone, Adam?”
I’m absolutely sure, but before I can say so, Amber’s Jet-bot springs to my defense. “He said he can handle it. Don’t you trust him?”
Shannon’s simulated face twitches in surprise, but she doesn’t say anything. Meanwhile, Marshall shakes his Super-bot’s head. His plastic lips are bent in disapproval. “Adam hasn’t been so trustworthy lately. But it’s his father. Let’s leave him alone for now, all right?”
It isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but I’ll take it. I stall for a few more seconds, preparing myself. Then I stride out of the Danger Room and march toward Dad’s laboratory.
When I get to the medical center, I hesitate outside the door to the Intensive Care Unit. I’m really hoping to see Brittany in one of the ICU’s beds, recovering from her surgery. But when I open the door, I see a row of empty gurneys, and my acoustic sensor picks up the distant sounds of the doctors and nurses still at work in the operating room. According to my medical databases, it’s not unusual for brain surgery to last more than six hours, but I’m still worried. What if the doctors find out about our standoff with Sumner? If they learn that the Pioneers have taken over the base, will they stop the operation and abandon Brittany?
No, I can’t worry about that now. I have to focus. I steer my Quarter-bot across the ICU and open the door to Dad’s lab.
He’s in his chair behind his cluttered desk, sitting hunched over. I can’t see much of him except his arched back and frazzled gray hair. His elbows are propped on his knees, and his face is buried in his hands. This is pretty close to what I expected, and yet it singes my wires to see him like that. His whole body trembles in noiseless sobs.
As I stare at him, I scroll through my databases and retrieve a batch of memories of the original Pioneer kill switch, the one installed in the robots we occupied six months ago, right after our bodies died. General Hawke used this switch to disable my robot after we had an argument that got a little too physical. (To be specific, I shoved him against the wall.) He froze every motor in my machine by simply pushing a button on a remote control. Then Hawke ordered his soldiers to unscrew my robot’s arms and legs, leaving me helpless.
The experience was so traumatic that when I designed my second-generation robot—the Quarter-bot—I made sure that its circuits couldn’t be manipulated. I built sturdy firewalls in both my hardware and software to protect my electronics. I truly thought I’d made myself invincible. But I should’ve known better. Before I became a Pioneer, I was a teenage computer geek, and if computer geeks had a motto, it would be this: No system is invulnerable. Every machine can be hacked.
I step toward Dad’s chair until my Quarter-bot stands behind him. I’m more sad than angry now. I extend my right hand and place it on his trembling shoulder. “I know it wasn’t your idea. Hawke forced you to put the switch into our circuits, didn’t he?”
Dad nods, bobbing his head ever so slightly. Another tremor runs through his body. He can’t speak yet. He can’t even look at me.
I pat his shoulder very gently. “It makes sense, I guess. The Army needed a safeguard. If something went wrong with the Pioneers, Hawke had to be able to stop us. After what happened with Sigma, they couldn’t take any chances.”
Dad’s head bobs again.
“And I guess Hawke made you promise to keep it a secret from us? Because he knew we wouldn’t stand for it?”
“Yes.” His voice is muffled because his face is still in his hands. “He didn’t give me a choice, Adam. If I didn’t keep it secret, there would’ve been no Pioneer Project.”
This is what bothers me the most—the fact that Dad lied to us. Lied to me, in particular. But I have to push aside my feelings of betrayal and concentrate on what needs to be done. “So how does the switch work? I’ve checked my circuits fifteen thousand times in the last five minutes, and I don’t see it anywhere.”
Dad lowers his hands and sits up straight in his chair. But he still won’t look at me. He stares at the scattered papers on his desk. “It’s very different from the kill switch that was in your first-generation robots. It’s more carefully hidden. The technology is based on the principle that the human mind is inherently unstable.”
His voice is strained, but starting to sound more normal. Talking about technology comes naturally to Dad and seems to calm him. I nudge him in that direction by asking another question. “When you say unstable, do you mean crazy?”
He shakes his head. “Not exactly. The mind has to be flexible enough to take in new facts and replace outdated information. But it also has to retain its essential character from one day to the next. You wouldn’t want to wake up with a new personality every morning, would you?”
It’s a rhetorical question, but I answer it anyway. “No, definitely not.”
“Me neither. So the human brain has biological signals to coordinate its thoughts and maintain continuity. It like an unspoken message playing all the time at the back of the mind: ‘I’m Thomas Armstrong. I’m going to think and feel and react in my characteristic way.’ So when I started building the first neuromorphic circuits, I knew I had to design a similar signal for the electronic mind.”
I feel a spark in my own electronics as I listen to him. I’m remembering something I experienced six months ago, during my very first minute as a Pioneer. After my body died and I woke up inside my robot, my first real thought was I’m Adam Armstrong! I’m still alive! That thought has been echoing in my circuits ever since. “Yeah, I know what you’re talking about.”
Dad nods. “I needed to build a mechanism that would coordinate all your circuits so they could become a platform for your consciousness. So I engineered a low-power signal that would run constantly between your battery and your control unit. And that’s where I put the kill switch.”
&
nbsp; I lift my steel hand from Dad’s shoulder and raise it to my torso, tapping the layer of armor that surrounds my battery. “But I checked my wiring and didn’t see any—”
“It’s not a hardware switch. It’s all done with software. Your battery needs a special code to send the low-power signal to your circuits, and the code changes every five days. For the past six months, the Army has been sending you the codes through your recharging stations. You didn’t realize it, but whenever you charged your batteries, you were also getting the new codes you needed to keep your circuits running.”
I’m impressed and appalled. Dad’s kill switch is so devious. “But the Army can stop sending us the new codes at any time, right? So what happens when the old code expires and we don’t get a new one?”
Dad bites his lower lip. A muscle twitches in his neck. “Your battery won’t be able to send the signal that coordinates your circuits, so they’ll fall out of synchrony. Your thoughts and emotions will become chaotic, and your memories will slip into disorder. You’ll lose control of your robot’s motors and sensors, and random data will replace all the useful information in your databases.”
“So it would be like going crazy?”
“No, it would be worse. It would shut down your systems and wipe out all your memory files. And the damage would be permanent. After your mind collapses into randomness, you can’t put it back together.” Grimacing, Dad looks at me for the first time since I entered the lab. “Hawke promised it would be a measure of last resort. He said the Army would keep sending the codes unless the Pioneers went out of control and threatened the lives of civilians. But Hawke’s not in command anymore, so his promises mean nothing.” He shakes his head. “I should’ve never…never… I can’t…”
He buries his face in his hands again. Now, though, I feel less sympathy for him and more frustration. He’s giving up too easily. “Listen to me for a second. The last code the Army sent us… It expires at six a.m. tomorrow?”
