Machinehood

by S. B. Divya

  Welga grunted and exited the room with the majority of the attendees. Follow orders had worked when she was a fresh-faced member of the armed forces, but she’d spent the last several years working with Hassan, who valued his team’s input. If they wanted her to deal with the caliph again, she would ask for command or go solo. Don’t expect me to trail after someone else this time.

  She found her alcove in the crowded, basement-level common area: two basic chairs and a circular table big enough for back-to-back screens. Welga ignored the physical interface and grabbed a network tether for her wrist. News alerts kept popping up in the center of her visual. Welga moved the distractions to the upper left. She entered the code word to bring up the live joint intelligence report, which incorporated information from domestic and foreign sources. The agency’s WAI compiled the document as reports came in, and the page count ticked up every few seconds.

  The Machinehood had attacked at multiple raw-material sites around the world, and the timing had enough gaps for travel. The same operatives could have caused more than one incident; however, the analysts hadn’t found any obvious names from sub-orb or regular flight passenger lists. The report also confirmed that the Machinehood had camouflage technology. No surprise. Welga had seen it firsthand. That meant that their faces weren’t known unless they were dead. They could wear regular clothes and travel like humans. I wish I had a recording of the one that I saw.

  Welga skimmed past the details of the domestic strikes. She’d witnessed two of the Machinehood’s attacks personally. Did it mean anything? You two again, the operative had said. They recognized her from the first attack, but they hadn’t expected her at the refinery. A coincidence, then.

  No usable genetic material had been left at any site. The explosions had burned away most of the blood, and what remained had decomposed faster than average—another technology the world hadn’t seen before. Unless some other shield had thought to steal a sample, hers was the only one in the world. Not just lucky, damn lucky. The electromechanical organs hadn’t survived, either. The lab techs had started analysis of the smart-metal. Not totally unknown stuff, but the details were in a different compartment that she couldn’t access.

  Welga glanced at the small container of hexagonal yellow pills, about two millimeters wide, on her table: flow. Every alcove had them, since any analyst would need them for their work. They’d expect her to observe her restriction, one she’d been used to for the past two decades.

  “I will not have my bad genes lead to your deaths, too,” her mother had declared on her deathbed.

  Luis and Welga had promised her they would never again take the focus enhancer. Why would they want to use the thing that had killed their mother? Welga hadn’t known that she’d need them to compete in college as a biogenetics major. She’d taken flow a few times in high school, to keep her grades up, but she had to sneak it from friends. She figured a handful of times wouldn’t hurt her, and they hadn’t, but the academics in college demanded frequent, regular usage. Like zips, the more you used flow, the better you could handle it. Her brother had learned from her example and avoided higher education altogether. Welga had taken care with other pills, too, screening everything that went into her body—and she’d allowed the government to alter her so that she could monitor her health. That the military had access to her vitals seemed like a fair trade. And yet, after all that, it turned out she’d betrayed her body with zips.

  She pushed the container to the far side of the table and shifted focus back to her visual… or tried to. The government-issue basic chair made every position uncomfortable. She pulled the medical pill pack from her pocket, her motions made awkward by stiff sleeves, and took another pain drug. Mottled skin, half-healed, stretched as she flexed her hands. She grimaced, glad that swarms weren’t allowed inside this building. What must her face look like right now? She hadn’t showered since before the incident at the refinery. Soot and blood still stained her clothes. Her burned skin resisted her finger motions as she continued through the report.

  The Machinehood knew how to cover their tracks. No tip jar to provide a money trail. No contact information for fans or supportive protesters. No fingerprints. And, of course, no bodies left intact. The bots in Chennai had been standard models, hacked into flinging themselves at her crew, but someone had to send the signal, and someone had to coordinate the onslaught.

  The report proceeded to address each aspect of the Machinehood’s operations. The bots originated in the US. No surprise. American factories produced the majority of the world’s armaments and weaponizable machines. Funding had been routed through multiple encrypted banking services. That trail went cold in the Bahamas, where the banks refused to cooperate.

  The custom code hack had been done by manual upload. Professional and clean. The report moved on to possible connections to the al-Muwahhidun in the Maghreb. The empire took in plenty of income from biogenetic modification designs, and the caliph made no secret about his desire to expand its borders. To save humanity from corruption, he claimed. Goddamn megalomaniac.

  Olafson slumped into the chair across from her.

  “You’re in,” he announced.

  “Good. In what capacity?”

  “Rice wants to send you and a few other experienced agents there on parallel solo operations. We think that improves the odds that you’ll get through—and back.”

  “I agree, and I like the tactic of working alone. I’ve been looking through the report, and whatever bits of evidence we have point to the caliph, but why bring machine rights into this? What is he after? The Machinehood’s ultimatum was broadly worded bullshit, right? A new era for humanity. Stand with us or render yourselves extinct. Why create this SAI bogeyman? We know the al-Muwahhidun hate AIs and bots, but they sell biotech for money, and that relies on the infrastructure they’ve destroyed. What do they hope to gain from these attacks?”

  Olafson spread his arms wide. “The caliph wants to rule the world. He’s never shied away from telling us that, right from his first propaganda vids. Someone who holds the keys to the world’s first super-soldiers could do just that. The deregulation in North Africa led to his rise in the early eighties. We don’t know how far he’s taken biogenetic modification since he closed the borders. Given that video segment from your source, plus the fact that we can’t identify the smart-matter you found, they might have tech that’s more advanced than any in the world. As for the SAI angle,” Olafson tapped his temple with an index finger, “he’s using fear as his strongest weapon. They’ve already scared pill funders and disrupted production. That’s having a negative impact on the world’s labor force. People are hoarding their supplies or finding themselves unable to work. Add to that the idea that a SAI is masterminding the whole thing, and people can come up with a hundred plausible end-of-humanity scenarios. Scare people enough, they’ll capitulate to your demands. He can hold the rest of the world’s way of life for ransom.”

  “But he preaches nonviolence, and the Machinehood is willing to kill.”

  “He used to. He hasn’t issued any public videos in nearly a year. For all we know, he’s dead. Maybe someone more radical is in power. Here, look at the next section in the report.”

  Welga skimmed the portion that Olafson highlighted in their joint visual. The al-Muwahhidun destroyed any network stellas near their borders, and they had no coverage within their territory. That much hadn’t changed. And since the epic fuckup in Marrakech with Welga’s team, the United States had sent only bots to fight at the front lines of the empire’s expansion.

  “We haven’t had any human intel from inside the empire since 2088?” Welga asked.

  “We got people inside, but…” Olafson shrugged. “No one returned. Either they’ve been brainwashed and turned, or they’re rotting in a prison somewhere. About two years back, the order came from the top to stop trying until we knew more. Your team was the last to get out.”

  “Not my team,” she said, almost choking on the words. “J
ust me. And I barely made it.”

  Shit. No wonder the agency needed time to prepare. They didn’t have a working strategy for gathering intelligence in that region. A solo mission into a blackout, deep in the heart of enemy territory: What were the odds she’d return with the evidence they needed? If she came back at all.

  Espionage had gone the way of silent films after the ubiquitous deployment of microdrones, but the Maghreb remained the one unobserved place in the world. High-resolution satellites showed only a riot of colorful drapes over the public spaces in the empire. They obscured enough to prevent human or WAI analysts from deciphering the activities within. The Machinehood couldn’t pick a better place to hide.

  Welga scratched the back of her neck and winced as her new skin protested.

  “I feel like we’re still missing something,” she said. “We have a lot of theories, but none of them fit the caliph perfectly. He’s never operated this openly before. And if he’s dead… that changes the entire game.”

  “That’s why we need you to get in there and find out, Ramírez. You’ve been lucky in your first two encounters. I hope the third time’s the charm and you get out with the intel we desperately need. If you can find a DNA match or extract one of their modded soldiers, or hell, copy the designs for their biotech—any of those would prove to the world that the al-Muwahhidun is behind the Machinehood. It would give us sufficient reason to send a major force to invade their borders. That’s what we all want, right?”

  Welga had a vivid memory of being cut off from everything and everyone as they crossed the front line. No agent. No news feeds. No murmur of family or friends. Nothing in her visual but the basic heads-up display of her armor. Walking around the office had a similar feel, though you could attach to a terminal and connect with the world’s information. In the Maghreb, you had nothing but your voice, eyes, and ears. Any radio communication would give you away.

  Total network blackout. A situation where no one knew what to expect. Where violence went untracked. Where you left your fallen behind and hoped they’d be there when you returned. Except that you never did.

  WELGA

  10. In our long history, we have exploited many intelligent beings. That a horse or cow or sheep cannot give legal consent should not give us the right to exploit it. In spite of our advances in bioethics and our care in watching the rise of artificial intelligence, we have overlooked this for so long that we have forgotten it.

  —The Machinehood Manifesto, March 20, 2095

  Welga’s back and eyes ached. Twenty-four hours of poring over intelligence reports while new data continued to flood in faster than she could parse it—too many loose ends. Too many other dead ends. Briefings had grown more tense as the Machinehood operatives went quiet again. Probably nursing their wounds, like her and Connor. She stood, stretched, and regretted it when her knitting skin and bones screamed in protest. She stuck her hand in her pocket and remembered the fragment. No DNA matches, but if the blood belonged to someone in the Maghreb, would they have it in any database?

  She left Olafson blanked on flow and rode up the elevator to see Anne Crawford, who worked in the forensics section.

  The analyst wheeled out of her alcove and held out a hand to Welga. “Good to have you back, Ramírez, though I’ve seen you in better shape.”

  Welga laughed. “Good to be back. Sorry about the awkward handshake. Fractures in both arms.”

  “Ouch. I’d have chosen better circumstances, but I suspect you wouldn’t be here if that were the case. What can I do for you?”

  “I saw in the report that you did the genetic analysis on my sample.”

  “Yes. That was a good catch on your part. Stealthy, too.”

  “Thanks. I wish it hadn’t been such a dead end. Do you still have it?”

  “Sure. I was just examining it under higher magnification. Turned up something interesting, though not terribly useful.”

  Crawford led Welga to a bench where the metal fragment sat, inert and unpowered, under a microscope. The display showed a sequence of letters and numbers at magnification. Damage had warped the final five characters. Ridiculously, Welga felt a little sorry for the blox. I’d like to find your home as much you do, she thought.

  “See this prefix?” Crawford said. “It indicates off-world manufacture.”

  “It came from a space station?”

  Crawford nodded. “They’re working with materials developed for microgravity. We have people looking into the origin of this piece. Unfortunately, the laws only require a prefix to indicate off-world sourcing. The rest could be a serial number or sales code or something else. The al-Muwahhidun must have bought the stuff from the black market.”

  “If the blood on this came from someone in the empire, could we tell?” Welga asked.

  “If we had the person in our criminal database, we’d have identified them by now. Ordinary citizens, though?” Crawford shrugged. “Best case, we might get some ancestral matches that we could trace to the region, but our WAI would’ve noted that. The only feature it highlighted were some unusual genomes. Let’s head back to my alcove, and I’ll pull up the details.”

  Crawford handed Welga a tether and slipped one over her own wrist. She shared a section of the analysis report that Welga hadn’t reached. The damn thing had grown to over a thousand pages.

  “The DNA from the fragment has no significant match to anyone within five percent similarity,” Crawford said. “That means no immediate family.”

  Beyond that, the search results listed nearly two hundred people who could be distant relations, none with ancestry from North Africa or the Middle East. One had a note attached: 99.999 percent similarity in several unusual sequences, with greater than 85 percent confidence. That entry belonged to a dead kid named Jun-ha Park. American. Fatal genetic disorder. Died in 2087 at age thirteen. No connection to the caliph.

  The number of human genomes in the global public database had exponentially increased since the passage of international safety laws. Any adult who took a drug or used a pill had to submit to genetic screening, but minors were protected. Jun-ha Park’s DNA was logged only because of his unusual medical treatments.

  “Sorry I couldn’t be more help,” Crawford said. “I entered everything into evidence. It’s keyed to the code word in case you come across anything related.”

  “Thanks,” Welga said. She downloaded the information into her local storage so she could look at it while traveling—or in a blackout zone. “I guess we’ll need more creative methods to identify who this blood belonged to.”

  “I suspect I know where you’re going to do that. I just want to say, in case I don’t see you again, good luck.”

  “Thanks, Crawford,” Welga said.

  That was as close as anyone in this office would get to saying good-bye.

  Just before she removed the tether, an alert popped into her visual: Connor Troit is awake. He’s en route to your apartment in San Francisco.

  Welga took the elevator to the ground floor and exited the building. Security drones moved to hover above her, making no attempt to hide their presence. Other, far less obvious sensors would be tracking her, too.

  Heavy gray clouds looked to threaten rain. Treetops bent as wind stirred fallen leaves, carrying the scents of sunbaked dirt and oak pollen. Storms on the East Coast had moved from seasonal to year-round over the previous half century. They no longer came as a surprise, but she’d ignored the alerts while indoors. The building would be sealed against wind and rain damage in less than thirty minutes. She couldn’t linger outside too long.

  She stood beneath a nearby tree and launched a small handful of microcams so that Connor could see her. His feed composite showed him inside an auto, his eyes closed, body slumped into a seat, purple under his eyes and hollows in his cheeks. Her hand reached out involuntarily, needing to touch him. He had no one to take care of him but her, and she was on the other side of the continent, hidden away in a secured building.

  “Hi,
cardo,” she said gently, after opening an audio channel between them. “How are you doing?”

  The corners of his mouth twitched upward. “Hi,” he said, his voice hoarse and weak. “I’m good enough… to send home. Not so great… at talking.”

  At least he was well enough to try smiling.

  Connor cleared his throat and switched to text, fingers twitching as he typed. They stitched up my internals and put on me a bunch of juvers, but they’re keeping the essential stuff stockpiled. I’m supposed to get a fresh batch of pills delivered tomorrow.

  Welga nodded. With his level of injury, their kitchen wouldn’t have the necessary materials to fabricate everything he needed to heal.

  Marcelo said he’d come by if I need any help. Or send over his care-bot.

  Their friend lived one hive away and had purchased a bot to look after his aging parents.

  “Good. I’m glad someone’s looking after you. I need to head back inside soon—storm’s coming—but I’ll check on you again when I can.”

  We haven’t caught the Machinehood yet, he sent. The launch is in four days.

  Welga winced.

  We’re going, right?

  “I watched some of those lectures from the monk—Ao Tara—and it doesn’t sound so bad, but cardo, you’re in no shape for a rocket launch, and we haven’t made enough progress on the Machinehood. They need me. I’m sorry.”

  His fingertips flew. Who knows when we’ll get another chance at this? Let someone else do the heavy lifting this time, please. Haven’t you given enough of yourself? And what about your tremors? Have you sorted that out yet?

  “I’m doing fine for now.” As long as she kept at least one zip in her system… and didn’t count the seizures.

  And later? He raised his brows. If it kills you? If you don’t make it home?

  She shoved away the memories from Marrakech, of Connor sitting at her hospital bedside when she awoke. “It won’t, and I will. I’ve come this far, and I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”