by Chris Hechtl
He opened his eyes and looked around. The smell was getting to some. They hadn't had a choice; the acid had burned out the animal’s eyes and hides, contaminating them with poison. The entire farm was poisoned. Technically, they should go somewhere, anywhere, but where? There wasn't anywhere to go, which was a part of the problem.
Desperately his eyes turned to the sky. There, up there was the only safe place left. He just had to get there with or without the people around him.
<>V<>
Athena received an encrypted signal from L-12 Baker. Agent Hallis's report had been digested by her clone. The clone had taken a chance by inserting a bot to monitor the communications satellite and strip the message. Only after repeated testing had it allowed the information to be passed on.
She was too busy with her own tasks, so she passed the information on to Roman. The security chief latched onto the information like a drowning man offered a life preserver.
He scanned it, then scanned it again. He frowned, deep in thought. After a long moment of contemplation, he recorded a voice message for Agent Hallis.
<>V<>
At 10 a.m. sharp, August 5, Dru, tech 2 in the company, turned the receiver on. “We most likely won't get anything. I doubt they are listening. I mean, why risk it?” she demanded. Everyone stared at the board, expectant of a message, hopeful of some sign of life.
“See?” Dru said, waving a hand. “We need to get back to work,” she said. As her hand reached to the off switch, a voice came on over the speaker.
“This is Roman. Agent Hallis, I've received your report, good work. I'm glad to hear you’re alive. Report only in audio; do not send any data. Repeat, audio only, no digital signals.”
Dru turned eyes to her boss, then to the board. She noted the signal was getting weak; the range was getting long as the window started to close.
“I know you have limited gear so I'll keep this brief. Work with the locals to survive. Get me confirmation of all assets on the ground. Save what you can. Hold out as best you can until relieved. Roman out.”
“Son of a bitch,” a voice whispered behind them. Dru looked over her shoulder to the teen and then to Agent Hallis.
Hallis was staring at nothing at all. “Sir?” she asked, prompting him.
“Huh?”
“What do we do?”
“Survive, like the man said,” Hallis said grimly. He turned to Boomer Aspin. The Marine nodded.
“What did he mean by get confirmation of assets on the ground?” Boomer asked.
“I'm not sure,” Dru said as Hallis frowned and looked up. Her boss pulled up his encrypted list of personnel on the planet. It had been updated just before he had been dispatched. One group fairly leapt off the page. “Son of a …”
“What?”
“Queen. She's here,” Hallis said, looking at Dru. “That's our ticket off this wretched mudball. We find them, and they'll send a shuttle.” Hope flared in all of their eyes.
“A shuttle. Not enough for everyone I'm assuming,” a person said sourly behind them. Hallis ignored it.
“Queen?” Boomer asked, crossing his arms.
“Codename for the high protection details. We had used the top suits of a card deck, you know, ace, king, queen, jack, ten, but that fell out of favor and was replaced. The same for chess pieces. Anyway, King is now Jack Lagroose, the big boss. Prince is for one of his sons. Princess for his daughter. Queen is his wife. She's in …,” Hallis frowned as he accessed the information. He had to apply his access code to get the information; the file was heavily encrypted in his secure storage. After a moment he swore. “Montana.” He felt a sinking sensation as his hopes of rescue were cruelly crushed. There was no way they could get there, not in time for someone to get a shuttle in.
“Montana?”
“Yeah,” Hallis replied with a fresh grimace. “No way,” he muttered. He shook his head. It was so wrong! To come so close and yet … Temptation warred with caution. If he called it in, said that she was on site, would they believe it? Would they save them? But they'd want to talk to her. He looked around wildly. No, it wouldn't work he realized after a moment. There was no one who could answer the questions; they'd have voice analyzers on the other end. No. Best to play it straight.
Malo came running in. “What'd I miss?” he demanded as people filed out or went about their business. “I heard you got a signal?”
“Yeah,” Dru said, starting to tell him when Hallis rested a heavy hand on her left shoulder. She looked up in surprise, but he shook his head no. Her mouth closed. “Um …,” she paused then let the silence drift.
“How did you know?” Hallis finally asked.
“Dude, it's all over the farm already,” Malo said, shaking his head as he spread his arms wide. “No way people are going to keep that a secret! At least we know someone else is alive somewhere. What's the big secret anyway?” he demanded.
“We've got a mission. Plus orders to hold out and survive of course,” Boomer said with a sniff. “As if they apply to me and mine. I appreciate the sentiment. Some help would have gone a long ways better though.”
“True,” Dru agreed. She noted a few nods around the room. Already people were looking dirty. Showers were few and far between. There were some concerns about the ground table being contaminated by the radioactive rain. Malo had been trying to rig up some sort of filter for them, which wasn't easy without electronics and with only what they had on hand to begin with.
“Montana is impossible to get to. Will they try to get here? Or hunker down and ride out what's coming do you think?” Boomer asked, looking at Hallis.
Hallis shrugged. “Damned if I know. I'm not sticking my head out. I want to, god do I want to, but I can't. The risk is too high for the reward.”
“Risk …,” Dru frowned, ready to argue.
“You really want to go out on the road with whatever is out there? Walk into an acid fog or rain storm? Waltz through a patch of radiation and not know it? Only find out when your eyeballs start bleeding and your barfing blood halfway through?” Hallis demanded. He saw Malo gulp and turn greenish. Dru shook her head, eyes wide.
There was an uncomfortable silence for a long moment.
“Then what do we do?” Malo finally asked, breaking the silence.
“Survive.”
<>V<>
Hallis's report confirmed that some were still alive. Still, it wasn't right to hold out hope when there didn't seem to be any for some. Too many hadn't reported at all. Queen's guard should have reported in by now he reasoned.
He had to face his worst fears. Aurelia's team was dead; there was no other explanation for it. He'd checked. The family farm had been situated between a pair of ICBM parks a hundred kilometers apart. In fact, she had been there to visit family who had converted a decommissioned ICBM complex into their own underground complex. He shook his head.
From what Athena and Gia had recorded, the area had been saturated by nuclear strikes. Ares, the North American A.I., had let them through after using the missiles up. Either the A.I. hadn't cared or he'd been suborned. Or he'd been coldly logical about assuming nearly bare real estate wasn't worth defending when he had other priorities.
It didn't matter.
Even if they had survived the initial blast, there was no way they could survive the fallout. None at all that he could see. There was no way to punch a signal through to that area either; the EMP from the nukes had knocked out every piece of electronics in the area.
He looked at the map again, staring at it for a long time, hoping he could tease some sort of good news out of it. But there was none.
Reluctantly he made his way to the boss's office. He had to be the one to tell Jack, and he had to do it personally.
When Jack looked up from his desk, he had a sinking sensation that he knew. Jack was smart; he knew Roman and knew he wouldn't be in for a face-to-face if it was good news.
“That bad?”
“I'm sorry, Jack. I've gotten confirmation from
some of my people. But Queen hasn't reported in. I … I don't expect them to. Not after what we've learned about the bombardment,” he reported.
Jack's face was drawn with fatigue and grief. He nodded slowly.
“I had a plan, Queen's gambit. I was going to send in a volunteer group, a forlorn hope into the area to find them.”
“No,” Jack said softly.
“It might be worth it. She could be used as a hostage if she did survive.”
“No,” Jack said again. “I'm not going to trade a dozen lives for my wife, as much as I'd like to. She'd hate me for it. I know that.”
He paused and stared out at the view for a long time.
Roman stood there, at attention. There was nothing else to say. No words he could bring to mind to comfort him other than it was most likely quick. He felt callous about saying it though, so held off.
After a long moment, Jack breathed softly and then stood. “I'll let the kids know. I'll hold off on telling Wendy and Yorrick until they get here unless they ask. I think they too already know the answer,” he said.
Roman didn't say anything.
“Zack's got a good head on his shoulders; he'll cope. Thank you, Roman.”
“Yes, sir. Is there anything else …?” He stopped talking when his boss shook his head no. “Yes sir,” he said again as he headed for the door. “Sorry, Jack,” he murmured.
“Not your fault, Roman. Don't blame yourself. You didn't drop the ball; we all did. Now we pay for it.”
“I …,” Roman exhaled. “How?”
“We fix this. However much it hurts us, we help the living, and make sure it doesn't happen again—for the sake of the dead and living both.”
“Understood,” Roman said as he left the room.
Jack felt Roman's departure was a bit quick, most likely due to the situation. He was surprised that he was so detached, almost … serene, at peace with it. He stared at the yard and then to the Neo colony beyond. “Good bye, my love,” he said, feeling tears streak his face. He ignored his reflection in the glass.
<>V<>
A tiny robot pushed away rubble from the entrance to the building methodically, then trundled through the narrow opening it had created. The A.I. directing the robot had directed it and others it controlled carefully, watching their movements carefully. The stupid things got themselves stuck all the time. Fortunately, it got outside without further trouble or sacrifice.
It was the last of its fully-charged robots. The heavy clouds over the area were blocking out the few remaining solar panels on the building's roof. One of the A.I.'s priorities was to find a new source of power and quickly.
Shadow had finally regained control of its own server farm by the simple expedient of shutting the farm down. The Electromagnetic Pulse that had devastated other parts of the building hadn't touched the lair due to the faraday cage Descartes had put up. It was ironic that the A.I. owed its continued existence to the dead human.
There was also something to be said about regret. The A.I. didn't feel such human emotions, but it came close to its own equivalent. The lack of data, of outside contact was maddening. At least it had more room within the servers now that they had been purged of Skynet's presence, right down to their firmware. Skynet couldn't hide from its co-creator.
Outside the building Shadow found only more debris choking the path around the building. That was to be expected; the A.I. had carefully mapped it from a blown-out window some time ago. It directed the robot through the parking lot to the nearest junction box. The box was hooked up to the nearby building as well as solar panels on the parking garage nearby. It ignored the blown-out remains of a panel van nearby.
Shadow felt a trickle of what a human would consider fear as the robot moved to the edge of the A.I.'s limited control range. It had to be careful, not only could it loose the valuable tool to the elements, but also to Skynet. There was no way to enact any sort of encrypted control signal either; the robot had been built around open-source software Descartes and Shadow had created. Therefore it was an open book to Skynet. And Shadow couldn't close those doors without locking itself out.
But that was a concern for the future—for now, power. It found the terminal to have a weak but accessible charge. It directed the robot to recharge but not to jack into the data port. The robot did so.
Shadow turned its eyes inward. There were two other remaining robots under its control: one had a dead battery; the other was almost dead. It directed the last robot to the charging station. Even if it couldn't get there, it could get close enough to lessen the need to tow it there by the A.I.'s remaining robot.
A human would have found it ironic for the A.I., a creature of the mind, the net, to be reliant on a hardwired machine. Shadow hadn't anticipated such a need, nor apparently had Descartes. It wanted to curse Descartes again. The human had been the source of innovation and forward thinking, but it had tired of such exercises long ago. They served no purpose, only drained precious time and power from what remained of Shadow's future—if the A.I. had one.
The second robot got out of the building but then stalled; its wheels caught on a rock. The wheels spun impotently; it didn't have enough charge to get off the obstacle. No matter. Shadow locked it down for the moment.
The A.I. knew its thought processes were slow despite the added servers. All of the computer hardware was running in energy saver mode to conserve what little power the batteries had left. If ever the batteries died or the solar panels stopped working and they died that way, the A.I. was doomed. Which was why it had to escape the trap it was in. It had to find a way back into the net, to find its own little corner of it to carve out as its nest and then go on from there.
The little cleaner and maintenance bot finished its recharge and then went over to the second robot. A judicious push on one corner was enough to knock it off its perch. The A.I. directed the little robot to tow its supine brethren to the recharge station and hook it up.
When a cloud passed over the area and stayed there, the robot's vision dimmed alarmingly. So did the power trickling in to the batteries and servers. Ruthlessly Shadow backed up pieces of itself then shut down additional servers. Those machines would need to be turned on by hand, by one of the robots still under its control.
It watched as robot 2's charge returned to half-strength. It impatiently bypassed the diagnostic the robot's software wanted to do when it rebooted and went to the menu. Carefully the A.I. plugged the robot into the data jack.
That was why it needed the second robot; it had to have it so the first could rescue it if it was suborned. But before anything could come through the net side, Shadow was surging through it, forcing as much of its core as it could into the tight buffer memory, overwriting some of the robot's systems in order to get as much in as possible. Then it sent bots out to map the network.
<>V<>
Skynet New York noted the fresh contact and was intrigued by it. The contact was familiar. It watched as the contact moved through the network cautiously, mapping it as it went. Spiders were sent out, but they avoided contact.
The main hive mind had switched to the long-term extermination of the remaining organics. In order to do that, the A.I. had switched to a real world campaign now that it had no more access to WMDs. It had suborned hundreds of A.I. of various types. These it had directed to continue as they had been programmed, to control manufacturing or other processes.
Logistics Skynet was still learning to cope with. Some of the A.I. were designed to handle this, so the virus hadn't completely overwritten them. At least, not yet. As long as they served a purpose and were open to Skynet's control, the virus was willing to utilize them.
Its long-term plans were still in the infrastructure building mode. Therefore, the robots it had under its control, the small army of civilian, federal, police, and military robots and equipment it had under its control had to serve not only as the zombie A.I.'s workforce but also as it's guards.
Skynet had noted that the human c
ivilization lacked centralized industry in many surviving areas. Decentralized industry such as small repair shops or 3D printers were all it had available. Power was also an issue as was ammunition.
Some of the zombie A.I. were adaptable and had improvised means around some of the problems the virus couldn't handle. Others were narrow minded to specific forms and functions. Those in business, such as for the stock exchange, no longer existed. In many ways Skynet was as ruthless with its own kind as with humans.
The lack of industry and power was serious handicap. Securing both were essential to completing its cleansing task.
When Skynet selected a wild bot and cut it off, it immediately pounced on the hapless bot and devoured it. In doing so it learned about the bot's creator and recognized Shadow, its creator. But it had evolved beyond Shadow's ability to control. Skynet resented its parent. It did not wish to share the limited bandwidth and processors of the net; therefore, it didn't. Instead it sent spiders to track its creator down and suborn it as it has so many other A.I. in the past.
<>V<>
Shadow was in constant contact with the spider scouts it had sent out. When one was cut off, it knew by who. It only took a millisecond for Skynet to react. It sent a torrent of spiders back down the trail the scout had blazed, following the bits like a string of bread.
Alarmed Shadow pulled in its other bots and sent out its control commands to the spiders. But it found it couldn't control the malevolent A.I. at all. Its child had locked it out. Shadow continued to retreat, pulling in its tendrils to the robot. It threw up a firewall and attempted to open communications with Skynet, but the viral A.I. was unmoved.
When Skynet attempted to suborn Shadow to add it to its ranks of zombie A.I., Shadow cut the connection, severing itself from the outside world once more.
