Mech

by Isaac Hooke

  “And so he slowly approached, carrying a big stick in hand, and began collecting the meat at a crouch. I’m sure you know what happened next. The gator lurched forward, moving faster than I thought gators ever could, and latched onto his leg. Then the gator retreated, dragging my brother into the water. He dropped the stick.

  “I stood there dumbstruck for a few seconds, but then something took over my body. It wasn’t me who was running toward the shore, it couldn’t have been. A little boy like me didn’t have the courage. Somehow, the big stick my brother dropped ended up in my hands, and somehow, I was splashing into the water after the gator, into a swamp that was infested with them. Somehow, I was swinging and prodding with that stick, hitting the gator for all I was worth before it could drag my brother under. And I must have hit the creature in the eye or something, because it let my brother go.

  “I dragged him to shore, tossed aside the stick, and helped him limp home. I was his crutch the whole way. When I got home, my mother seemed just as concerned about me, as him. Because you see, my face was bleeding. I hadn’t even noticed during the entire trip back. I thought that was sweat I felt on my face. I couldn’t figure out what had done it, at first. But then I remembered the stick my brother had chosen. It wasn’t entirely free of branches. He’d broken them all away before approaching the gator of course, but there were still a few stumps on there. Sharp, poky things. When I was frantically swinging that stick back and forth to save him, I must have accidentally hit my face with one of the sharp edges. That’s the only explanation. A small thing compared to the damage my brother’s leg suffered. Still, the wound was deep, and took some time to heal. I never had any rejuvenetics done to fix it. Didn’t want to. I wore it as a badge of honor. Still do.”

  Rade nodded thoughtfully. “Thank you for sharing that. You seemed reluctant to share that story, which is odd. It’s something to be proud of.”

  Rex shrugged. “I didn’t want to sound like I was bragging to my chief. I’m sure you’ve done your fair share of heroic things in this life. I’m sure what I did on that shore that day barely compares.”

  “No, you shouldn’t say that,” Rade told him. “You shouldn’t diminish the bravery you showed that day. Didn’t want to brag… is that why you don’t have your avatar reflect the scar? At least I don’t ever recall seeing it on your digital representation.”

  “That would be why,” Rex admitted.

  “Maybe you should consider adding it,” Rade said. “It’s part of who you are. Something you should be proud of. What you did, going back for your brother—at great risk to yourself—was something that not everyone would do. You showed then that you had the potential to become a MOTH. I’m glad you finally attained that calling.”

  “I’m glad, too,” Rex said. “Because honestly, I feel I was born for this.”

  “That’s how most of us feel.” Rade stood. “Well. It was good catching up with you two. I’ll see you at dinner.” He focused on Praxter. “And I expect you to show this time. Even though you don’t need food, that’s no excuse to skip the social factor.”

  Praxter sighed. “I suppose I will come. To socialize.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Rade said.

  With that, he left.

  21

  Rade was called to sickbay later that day.

  When he arrived, a female Artificial in a doctor’s white coat had him lay down on an operating table, and then wheeled a weaver to his side. The telescoping limbs of the surgical robot injected him with a painkiller, and operated on his shoulder while he was awake.

  When it was done, it checked out his upper back, which was still cramping slightly, and engaged in a deep tissue massage.

  “Please sit up,” the Artificial said.

  He complied. The Artificial ran some scans, and had him move his shoulder through different ranges of motion.

  “Well, your rotator cuff is repaired,” the Artificial announced. “The weaver has removed the old one, and replaced it with freshly bioprinted material.”

  “Great,” Rade said. “Gotta love bioprinting. You guys are replacing more and more of me… I’m going to become like my old chief soon. Bourbonjack had more body parts shot off than anyone I’ve met. Half his body was bioprinted. I’m quickly catching up: a doc already replaced my eyes, and my other arm. It looks convincing, and the skin feels almost real, but the texture’s slightly off. Plus, there’s the branding underneath the tricep, next to the underarm. I also have it under my eyes. When I look up and pull down the skin, stamped into the sclera I can see the company name ‘Anderson Incorporated…’”

  The Artificial ignored his complaining and said: “I’m going to have to ask you to lay off the weights for at least a few days. I don’t want you to put any stress on the freshly installed tendons, not until they can adapt to the weight of your arm. You need to strengthen them. I’ve done my best to stimulate growth in the new cuff, and tried to match it as closely as I could to the rest of your muscle mass, but there’s always a margin of error. You’ll have to let it naturally adapt.”

  “Lay off the weights?” Rade said. “I’m not sure I can hold off working out. There’s nothing else to do all day on this tin bucket you call a ship.”

  “Do not work out,” the Artificial said crossly. “If I see a queue request from you for a torn rotator cuff in the next few days, I’ll keep dropping it to the back of the line, and make you wait an entire week before I treat it.”

  “I’m only teasing you,” he said. “And queue bumping like that is illegal, by the way.”

  She frowned. “It’s my sickbay.” She turned away. “That will be all.”

  “Gee, thanks, doc,” he said.

  He shook his head as he went to the door.

  AIs are getting more standoffish as time goes on.

  He supposed that was what happened when you gave them responsibilities traditionally assigned to humans: they became full of themselves and the power they had over their creators. Or it could be that she was merely saddled with a position she might not have necessarily wanted.

  He could report her threat to the captain, but decided there was no point in getting her in trouble. It wouldn’t help anything. But if he did tear his rotator cuff again, and the doc kept dropping him to the back of the line, well, the captain would hear of it.

  On the way back to his berthing area, he stopped near the hangar bay that his team had forcefully entered after leaving the colony.

  The Brigands would still be in that bay, alongside the Hoplites and Titans of the Anarchist’s former platoon; the lieutenant commander had told him the mechs had been moved into storage alcoves after the inoculating antiviral code was installed. Part of that inoculation involved ripping out Bender and TJ’s hack, of course, because otherwise anyone could take over the mechs. Their work, which the pair called the Doomsday Hack, had also exposed a new zero day exploit for those models of mechs, and the robotics company back on Earth, Nova Dynamics, had come up with a new patch to correct the issue. The company transmitted it throughout the InterGalNet so that fleets and colonies across the United Systems could apply it. As far as Rade knew, the local techs had installed the patch, because the Brigands had turned on at one point, transmitting their locations inside the alcoves to him. But before he could send a message to any of them, they had shut down again.

  The Hoplite that harbored the Anarchist had been relocated to a classified section of the ship. Rade didn’t know where exactly, but he probably could have Bender and TJ find out if he really wanted to.

  He approached the outer airlock door and pulled up the remote interface on his HUD. He wasn’t sure he had the necessary security privileges to open it, but decided to try anyway. He transferred his access codes, and a moment later the interface turned green. Smiling, he opened the hatches.

  He entered the airlock, and stepped into the hangar bay. The airlock hatch automatically sealed behind him. He knew the AI was closing those doors for safety reasons—in case the hangar b
ay was somehow breached while he was in the bay—but it was still creepy. If the ship’s main AI wanted to space him, it could do so very easily in that moment.

  He scanned the alcoves that bordered either side of the expansive compartment. On the right, he spotted the Titans and Hoplites that had formerly belonged to the Anarchist. On the left, the Brigand mechs resided.

  He walked along the left hand side, analyzing the IDs of each mech until he came to Taya. Like the other mechs, she was currently offline. He accessed her remote interface, and was pleased to learn he still had full privileges on the mech.

  Still, there was something he wanted to be sure of before he reactivated her.

  He tapped in Bender. “I don’t suppose you can use your rockstar status among the ship’s technicians to find out something for me? Without any hacking?”

  “What do you need?” It sounded like Bender was panting, as if he was working out in the gym.

  Rade glanced at his overhead map and realized Bender resided nowhere near the gym. In fact, he was camped out in a storage closet, of all places. There was another person with him. An Ensign Brenda Clark.

  The sly devil.

  “I just want to confirm that Taya and the other Brigands have had the latest Nova Dynamics patch installed,” Rade said.

  Bender didn’t reply for several moments. Rade thought he heard grunting and groaning. Then: “The tech shared the logs with me. They’ve all had the anti-Anarchist code installed, in addition to the patch for my Doomsday Hack. I sifted through Taya’s log file, and everything looks good. She’s good to go, and cleared for duty, just like the LC said.”

  “Just wanted to be sure,” Rade said. “Sometimes mechs are missed.”

  “Never hurts to double check,” Bender agreed. “That all you need, Chief?”

  “Thanks bro,” Rade said. “Get back to whatever it is you were doing.”

  “With pleasure,” Bender said, emphasizing the latter word before disconnecting.

  Still Rade hesitated, feeling nervous. Not because he worried she still had some aberrant code running in her system. But because of what he was about to do.

  He realized he had merely been stalling by calling Bender.

  Just do it, he told himself.

  Still he hesitated. He wondered if the Nova Dynamics patch had rescinded her emotions, taking away her humanity and everything he liked about her. He had never reported her “defect,” so maybe not…

  He activated the mech. The small activity light on her head visor turned green. She stood up, and tried to step forward, but realized retractable binds held her in place—part of the storage requirement.

  “Chief Rage,” she said via her external speakers.

  “Well hello,” Rade said.

  “What’s going on?” Taya said. “Is there an emergency?”

  “No,” he told her. “Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to talk.”

  “Okay…” Her voice sounded cautious. That was a good sign.

  “Are you still defective?” he asked.

  “By defective, do you mean do I still have my emotions?” she replied. “If so, the answer is yes.”

  He slouched in relief. “Yeah, that’s what I was wondering.”

  “Before we continue,” she said. “I want to apologize for my behavior on the mission. I was not myself. The Anarchist overrode most of the machine constitution. Forced me to kill allies. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.”

  Rade was a little disappointed to hear those words. The pain in them notwithstanding.

  “So, when you told me you wished you were human, you were under the Anarchist’s influence?” Rade asked. That was when she’d also asked him if he’d ever consider an Artificial as a girlfriend. He didn’t actually want to say that part aloud, because he was conscious that the main AI was probably listening in. If he was going to do what he intended to do, her crush on him was probably best kept a secret.

  He was about to switch to an encrypted comm channel to clarify his comments, when she spoke again.

  “No, not then,” she said slowly. “It happened only later, after the spheres passed our position on the plains. The Anarchist must have used those spheres to increase his processing power, allowing him to brute force hack into our systems, similar to what Bender did with the cloud computing resources of this starship.”

  “Ah, well, thanks for clarifying that,” Rade said. “So then, how was the virus removal process? Did you suffer any negative effects at all?”

  “I wasn’t conscious for most of it,” Taya said. “When the tech activated me for a moment, I was able to review the subsystems where the Anarchist’s touch had been wiped. None of those subsystems actively affected my consciousness. I’ve already run another diagnostic since you activated me, and there were no changes to my memories or personality, as far as I can tell. And as I mentioned, my emotional subroutines remain active.”

  Rade nodded slowly, momentarily at a loss for words. Once more he was having doubts, but decided he owed it to her to at least give her a chance. He was always talking about how he wanted to treat AIs better, and more like the sentient and self-aware beings that they were. This was the first step.

  It was time to switch to a private comm channel. He tapped in, and she answered.

  “What’s on your mind?” she said. An avatar appeared in the lower right of his vision. She’d never used an avatar before. He was a little taken aback by what he saw, however: she’d chosen her avatar to eerily resemble Shaw. Shoulder length blond hair, tanned skin, that super cute face.

  Rade was angry when he saw that. “Choose another avatar.” He had pretended another woman was Shaw before. The guilt he felt after having sex with her was unbearable.

  “Why, is it not pleasing to you?” Taya asked. “I thought it would make you happy.”

  “Not her,” he said. “I don’t want to be reminded of her. I’ll go…”

  The image changed. The tanned skin became pale, the blond hair black. Her face became far prettier than Shaw’s, almost modelesque.

  “Better?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Listen. I know you’re able to disconnect the inner actuators from the rest of the cockpit so that my movements don’t affect your external body. Basically, simulating a moving treadmill for VR locomotion purposes. I also know you can alter the pressure on those actuators to make it seem like I’m touching, or being touched by, physical objects.”

  “Well, yes,” Taya said. “But there are also Implant modifications you can acquire to do the same thing.”

  “I don’t have the time, nor money, for Implant modifications,” Rade said. “And I’m not really thrilled by the idea of shoving more tech into my head. But this is something you can do right now. I want you to prepare a virtual environment for me, and use the inner actuators to allow me to interact with it.”

  “You want to repurpose a billion-dollar war machine for a private VR session?” she asked.

  “I’m doing research,” he replied. “I’ll need you to participate, of course. Using your avatar.”

  “Oh…” she said, smiling slyly. “Well that changes everything.” When she grinned, she still had Shaw’s dimples. But he wasn’t going to tell her to take those away. “Do you have a particular environment in mind?”

  “I do,” he said. “Load this program.” He selected the virtual environment he’d prepared in his embedded ID, and transferred it.

  “Ready,” she said.

  Her cockpit hatch dropped open invitingly.

  As Rade clambered up the hatch, toward that open cockpit, at the back of his mind he remembered what a recruit division commander had once told him during Big Navy bootcamp. A Chief Gunner’s Mate named Atsu Bowden. His words were that it was best not to get involved with someone on your team.

  Rade ignored that voice, telling himself she was a machine, not a human, so the fraternization rule didn’t apply. Besides, this was just a date.

  He settled into the cockpit and the hat
ch closed, casting him in darkness as the inner actuators wrapped him in their tight cocoon. It felt different without the jumpsuit in place, their cold touch more immediate, direct.

  Taya fed him the feed not from her main camera, but from the virtual environment he’d just installed. He was seated at a stool in the bar of some classy hotel. In front of him sat a wine glass.

  Taya sat beside him in a black cocktail dress. It exposed her back, and shoulders, and was low enough in front to expose a good bit of bosom. She’d chosen smaller breasts, close to what Shaw had. Her black hair had grown longer, as compared to her avatar, and now fell to the middle of her exposed back. Her lips were a plump red, her eyelashes long and sensual.

  He lifted the glass of wine and turned his body toward her. The cold tips of the actuators that touched his exposed skin had warmed enough by then that he stopped noticing they were there.

  Taya glanced at his glass, and materialized one of her own. She took a sip, and smiled. “So, we’re on a dinner date?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of a drink date,” Rade said.

  She shrugged. “I’m new at this.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” he said.

  She chuckled nervously at the implication, and took another sip. “It’s good. Red wine?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Cabernet sauvignon. I modeled it after a Bordeaux.”

  “It’s wonderful,” she said. She looked at her glass, and noticed a lipstick stain on the rim. She frowned, and tried to wipe it away, but when she couldn’t she set the glass down on the counter.

  “Sometimes the VR programming gets a little too realistic,” she said. “You’re using the Crimson Stokes VR engine?”

  “Version one point three,” he agreed. “You’ve never fully entered VR before?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, all mechs and combat robots have it as an option in their onboard processors, but between missions I usually just shut down. It’s like taking a nice long, restful sleep. Today’s maybe the second time I tried my avatar generation subroutines. And my base VR isn’t as advanced as this one. I might have to swap to Crimson Stokes sometime. Then again, it’s not on the list of approved upgrades.”