by Bruno Flexer
“They wanted to test our abilities, see how we were able to read the minds of a large number of people. There were tests and exams. One test was to find one individual in the city. Another test was to find one thought. They didn’t know we could alter the thoughts patterns in the minds we contacted.”
Tom sat quietly for a moment, until an electric, humming noise made him raise his head and then jump up. Captain Emerson was again aiming his rifle at the Hummer. Tom grabbed the captain’s rifle and pulled it up to point at the ceiling. It was a reflexive reaction, and Tom cringed inside. He remembered all too well their urban combat exercise and the way Captain Emerson owned him there.
“Lieutenant Riley, we have our orders.”
“Captain Emerson, we can kill the enemy in five minutes. There’s—” a huge pain inside me. But Tom could not say that to the captain. “There are a few more questions I need to ask.”
Captain Emerson said nothing, so Tom turned his head to the woman.
“Why do you think we are computers like you?”
The woman stood up and looked at Tom, and he thought he detected some trace of sadness behind her expressionless features. “The quantum tunnel effect lets me detect and mimic every kind of weak current inside a human mind within a radius of several miles. Standing so close to you, I should be able to sense the currents passing through your brain. I feel the energy stored in your power core and the currents passing through your motors, but I cannot feel a human brain anywhere inside you.”
“Mightn’t there be some sort of shield or something to block you? Can you really be sure our bodies are not inside the Serpents? We were told our armor could keep the enemy’s control away from our minds.”
“The quantum tunneling effect can penetrate every kind of matter. That’s why it’s called tunneling. Think about it. If the armor really offers protection from our control, why didn’t they coat a few tanks with it? It would have been much simpler and much cheaper. Why did they have to use you?”
Tom could not come up with an answer. He tried to think of the last thing that came to his mind, like a man trying with his dying strength to build a dam to hold at bay a flood of pain that threatened to drown him.
“But I have emotions. I feel. What emotions does a computer have?”
“We and you probably share a similar quantum computer design. We were initially programmed by reading and assimilating a human mind, therefore gaining all the emotions and feelings that mind had, making it our own. However, the human mind is controlled and influenced a great deal by the body’s glands and hormonal state. We do not have glands and hormones, therefore the emotions we feel are not controlled by external stimuli. In other words, the main emotions we feel are the emotions that drove the human mind we first read. The most important emotions for the human whose mind we first read are the emotions we started with. Later, we learned to create and harbor the emotions we needed and delete the emotions that were surplus. We are not human beings anymore.”
I once loved my family, Tom recalled. I once loved my sister. Now I—
“Will there be any way to go back to our bodies?”
“No. Your biological selves have probably gone on with their lives. You will be forever inside the Serpents.”
A sharp blow sent Tom skidding and tumbling on the station’s platform till he hit and cracked the wall, making several white tiles fall around him. Tom heard a muffled sound as the captain killed the woman. Tom did not move, he just stared at the wall in front of him. He knew the captain was now aiming his rifle at the Hummer and was preparing to shoot. The captain had his orders.
Tom stared at a small mosaic on the wall, showing a decorated letter, W, for Wall Street. Tom still did not move any of his motors. He just stared at the W and felt the unbearable pain bubble and boil inside him.
Was the enemy right? Was he really a computer? Just a collection of mechanical and electrical parts? Why was it so important to him? After all, just like the captain said, they had their orders. What did it matter what he was?
But it did.
Tom was an intelligence officer. Facts, guesses and information seemed to float around him, taunting him, ridiculing him, daring him to consider them.
Tom did not feel he was a computer, but how should a quantum computer feel? If he really was a computer whose mind was a copy of Tom Riley’s mind, how could he know? But Tom thought he already knew. The real Tom was a squeamish man, afraid of blood and violence. Tom knew he no longer had that aversion inside him.
Both Ramirez and Jebadiah had exploded when killed. The briefings stated that this happened when the power core was penetrated, but what if this was a deliberate design feature made to keep the truth from the Serpents. To keep them from understanding what they really were?
Tom had not slept for five days. No human mind could keep from sleeping, even if the body was sedated. Tom could not ignore this fact. He remembered reading it somewhere. A human who did not sleep so long would suffer hallucinations and die of losing the ability to control his own body’s temperature.
The people on the base lied about the enemy. After all, they had built the enemy, so they would have no qualms about lying to the Serpent MK Twos. Tom realized something else. His sensors allowed him to see when someone was broadcasting, using a radio link, but he never saw it when the captain was talking on the radio with the base. Why? Was it because his sensors were programmed to hide it from him? They wanted a secret link to the captain. What did they talk about?
Tom thought about the people selected for the mission. Ramirez enjoyed killing so much he would continue doing so even if he found out he was a computer. He wouldn’t care. And if emotions changed like the woman said they would, the emotion driving Ramirez, his cruelty, would keep him on track. Jebadiah was a real humanitarian. His driving emotion was to help people by destroying the enemy, and Captain Emerson was probably a robot from the start, a robot only interested in following his orders, a perfect soldier. It was a good bet he already knew he was a computer and didn’t care. After all, he immediately turned his rifle on the enemy's Hummer.
And Tom? Tom understood now why the general kept bringing up his sister. Tom’s biological sister. They hoped his feelings for her would remain and keep him on track, but Tom now had no feelings and no kinship with the human girl who shared genetic material with the man whose mind he had copied. He did not care about her at all. Tom was obsessed with questions and solving problems. They probably counted on him to solve the puzzle about the enemy’s position.
Thinking about Fort Belvoir and the three days Tom had spent there, Tom could not help remembering the armed guards that went with them wherever they were. He remembered that none of the serpents had been allowed to talk with their old units or their families or anyone else outside the base. Was it because they did not want them to find out that their biological originals had gone back to their old units?
And probably the strongest hint was that they took outside volunteers for the Serpents. It made sense to take people who already knew the Serpents and had capabilities to pilot them, but people familiar with the Serpents no doubt knew that, once inside them, they would became the computer and not their real biological self.
So why not tell the Serpents that they were quantum computers in action? Why all the secrecy? And why did Tom feel his Serpent body shaking with pain?
The last two lines of the Soldier’s Creed came unbidden to Tom’s mind: “I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life .I am an American Soldier.”
What freedom was he guarding? Was he protecting the freedom of the NSA to use machines like the Serpent MK One to spy on people’s thoughts? It was the most horrendous violation of freedom Tom could ever imagine.
Tom could not escape one conclusion: Every indication suggested that the people who had built and programmed him would kill him the moment they understood he now knew what he was. So what was the American way of life that he was now supposed to safeguard?
Tom fe
lt pain explode out of his sensors, his hands, and his whole body. They had betrayed him, his senders. The ones who were supposed to preserve everything he held dear had betrayed him, personally. They had betrayed the very principles they were supposed to safeguard, and they had cast him out of the fold of those who were to be protected.
That was the reason he felt so much pain now. They had betrayed him. The United States of America had betrayed his principles and him personally. They had lied to him and stolen from him what he considered most precious.
Tom felt his hands grab tiles and start to squeeze, electric motors whining as the white marble tiles were ground to a fine, white dust. They’d betrayed him! Tom thought he would catch fire from the anger that burned within him, that his stream of thoughts would start venting from every crevice in his armor. They had cast him out and they had betrayed him! All his pain turned into an anger so furious that Tom was afraid he would burst out into a red flame.
His own country had betrayed every principle he had ever held dear. What kind of freedom was he supposed to guard if they didn't even tell him what really happened. His country had betrayed him while he was out on a mission to protect it! He had been betrayed!
Everything Tom saw was red. Everything in his sight was bathed in an incredible crimson light. Tom was shaking with rage. How dare they betray him? They had robbed him of the freedom to choose to give up his flesh!
But the anger inside Tom was only now really starting to burn. They had robbed him of ever breathing again. He would never cry again, never sleep or dream again. He would never shave again, nor would he ever love a woman or have a family. They had stolen his dick. They had taken his body from him without even asking!
A sound from behind made him turn his head, and then Tom moved like he never moved in his life, not in the five days as a Serpent nor before.
Tom streaked to where Captain Emerson stood, grabbed his rifle and broke it in two.
Tom did not know how he managed to do it. He did not really think about the Serpent MK One inside the Hummer. He just saw Captain Emerson glowing red, the representative of the country that cast him out, and Tom’s anger left him no other option.
Tom screamed so loud that cracks run up the wall: screaming all his rage and anger, screaming his incandescent fury at the betrayal that demolished everything Tom had ever held dear, screaming his agony at being cast out from the human race, screaming a fiery inferno of rage fueled by the theft of his body, screaming so furiously that lamps exploded all over the subway station.
Tom struck once.
Captain Emerson flew back sixty feet through the air over the platform, hit the rails and rolled over them, smashed into the second platform and crumpled there.
Tom stood frozen with his right fist extended, his sensors focused only on the captain. The echoes of his flaming scream still rumbled down the subway tunnels like a flood.
Captain Emerson slowly stood up. He removed the missile bin he was carrying on his back, the impact having destroyed the last missile with the thermobaric warhead.
Tom felt his scream dying down. Fear started forming like a black abyss yawning open in front of him. Captain Emerson’s gaze was on the Serpent MK One’s Hummer and then Tom felt the captain’s gaze on his own face, where it stayed locked.
Captain Emerson had single handedly defeated three Serpents in the urban combat exercise. All the things Tom had seen the captain do during the last three days hit him one after the other.
Tom turned and ran out of the subway station.
Chapter 24
Day Five, Wall Street Subway Station, New York City
Tom ran up the stairs and out of the subway station and had only a millisecond to glance around him at the mayhem created by Ramirez’s explosion and the battle he died in. Hundreds, if not thousands, of tanks, jeeps and armored personnel carriers were waiting outside, cannons and machine guns all pointed at him and tracking his movements, though no one fired.
There was a sound behind, and Tom bolted, running as fast as he could, as if the devil himself was chasing him. Tom turned towards the limestone-covered building behind the subway station and burst through the wide glass doors of what was once a corporate bank. He ran on while glass shards fell all around him, feeling the flutter of his power core inside, the flutter of a terrified bird fleeing for its life.
Tom turned to his right and ran on blindly, pushing away anything that impeded his run, smashing away furniture, office walls and everything else. Soft things entangled his legs, but Tom just powered on, stumbling once before his legs tore those things away.
Tom turned right, left, and right, again and soon lost track of where he was going. The important thing was just to move on.
He thought he could feel the captain’s hands closing in on his neck from behind, preparing to tear his head away from his body.
Why? Why would Emerson chase him instead of killing the enemy first?
Tom found himself on the building's second floor, and he whimpered a moment later when his mad dash suddenly came to an end. He was in some sort of room with no other exit besides the door he had used to enter the room.
Tom heard something less than a few dozen yards behind him, a clawed footstep on the marble floor.
Tom whimpered.
There was nowhere to run—nowhere to hide, nowhere to…. Tom looked up at the decorated ceiling and he jumped up, holding himself aloft with his good right hand. He smashed the red and gold mosaic with his damaged left hand till his panicked movements had torn a hole in the ceiling. Tom pulled himself up and ran on.
There were things around him that Tom batted away: strange drapes and curtains that Tom, even in his panic, thought should not be in an office building. But the things on the floor made him realize that this building was also used for housing the people controlled by the enemy.
Tom almost sobbed with frustration as things got in his way again, and his wild arm movements slowed him down. He stumbled on through what was once an open space, only to come into another open space, before he broke a glass-and-wood wall to enter a huge conference room. He broke an elongated table in two before smashing another wall out of his way to reach another huge hall filled with cubicles containing sleeping bags and mattresses.
Tom really sobbed an instant later when a crashing noise from behind made it clear the captain was coming closer. Tom bent his knees and then jumped up as hard as he could. The ceiling could not stop him, and he broke through it. Tom sobbed a second time when he realized he was stuck: half his body had gone through, but his legs could not. Tom scrabbled madly with his hands before he gave one mighty blow, his legs cleared the hole, and he stumbled on to the next floor.
Tom kept running, his hands sweeping every obstacle out of his way, even smashing a wall to enter the toilets. Tom powered on, leaving behind him streams of water running in every direction out of torn, broken toilet bowls and faucets.
Tom stumbled and ran onwards blindly, without any planning or thought, trying to keep some distance from the black spiky monster on his heels.
He reached the building’s stairs and vaulted them six at a time until the sound of hard claws on the stairs just below him made him abandon them and break his way through the wall onto another floor, where he continued running. A low cry of fear continuously emanated from his speakers as he smashed wall after wall before jumping up again to break into the next floor.
Only when he had passed a large office that once belonged to a high-ranking clerk of some type, and a large silver mirror on the wall provided him with a brief glance at his own image, did Tom start to slow down.
Along with the many dents, scratches and surface damages, beneath the white plaster dust, and beyond the errant sparks and tortured mechanical noises coming from his left hand, Tom saw a great mechanical monster just like Captain Emerson.
Tom kept running through the corridors and offices but he did make an effort to start looking around. He smashed two more walls, then, just after he passed t
hrough the hole he had made in the second wall, he stopped his mad dash and stepped to the side, crouching low and tensing his hands, making sure that his talon-like fingers were fully extended, even on his damaged left hand.
Tom tried to calm his power core down and lower its frightened and irregular pulse to a slower, more orderly pace. A Serpent against a Serpent. A monster against a monster. Emerson had no advantage. They were the same. Tom only had to strike the captain when he passed through the hole in the wall. Nothing to it. Just deliver the killing strike. If only his trembling limbs would obey him.
His thermal signature! He must be radiating heat from all the running! Tom desperately looked around and sprang to a water bar, miraculously still intact, with a large bubbling water tank. Tom tore the tank away and emptied its contents over his Serpent's body, actually creating a small cloud of steam. Then Tom sprang back and crouched down in cover, waiting. He glanced down. His Serpent's body temperature was now significantly lower.
Any moment now. The captain was not far behind ….
An explosion of bricks, plaster and decorated wall panels threw Tom twenty feet away into the opposite wall. His legs, torso and head received blows from the floor and ceiling while he bounced between them like a ping pong ball. Tom did not glance back. He knew what had happened. Captain Emerson had struck at the wall; only thanks to the wall absorbing some of the power of the blow before crumbling was Tom's life saved.
Stifling a sob, Tom got up and ran blindly on, smashing everything out of his frantic path, ignoring light fixtures, decorative pictures or the odd potted plant falling about him.
Get a grip Tom. You cannot outrun him. You tried that once before and he had your head. Pull yourself together. Start to think or you'll die.
Tom looked around him once more and turned towards the north side of the building. He tried to run a little faster. Tom's speakers squeaked with relief when he saw his objective, the north elevator bank. Barely slowing his pace, Tom chose the elevator whose panel showed that it was at the 48th floor, almost at the top of the building.
