Absolution

by Peter Smith

  “I guess we’ll just have to figure it out as we go.” Canine said.

  Trotsky furrowed his brow, “Is that how you saved your forces during the fall, by pantsing it?”

  A laugh and the nod of his head was the only answer Canine had for that question, “With all of your great wisdom, you still manage to screw up.”

  “Even the best leaders in history get it wrong from time to time,” Trotsky responded.

  “You invaded North America, you attempted to kill her and failed. That’s a ‘Bay of Pigs’ level fuck up but with someone that doesn’t have to borrow nukes from another country.”

  “I am not worried about how the child will respond because I know her better than she knows herself.”

  Canine nodded and finished his juice with one last tilt of his head. When the glass landed on the side table, he leveled his gaze on Trotsky, “She’ll kill you.”

  “Her father yes. Maria though, is too weak, too prone to forgiveness. She’ll try to salvage the peace accords because it’s what she truly believes is right.”

  Canine stood, “Then I guess my time here was wasted.”

  Trotsky stood as well, shaking his head, “Not at all, we were able to enjoy some stimulating conversation.”

  “I hope that the next time we meet, that conversation is all that we’re exchanging.” With that, Director Canine turned and walked toward the door.

  When he was nearly through the doorway Trotsky called out to him, “My dear Director please think more highly of me, I want for us to have a productive relationships. After all I am here, where is your vaunted leader?”

  Canine stopped but remained silent.

  Trotsky took an opportunity to present an idea to the Director, “There is another alternative.”

  Canine turned and inclined his head, his chin raising up slightly, “Yes?”

  “Room could be made for you and your general.”

  Canine remained silent for a long pause and then spoke, “And what would the cost be?”

  Trotsky walked up to him, “Just accepting the place of the masses… and helping us to prevent future dictatorship.”

  The insinuation was clear, and Trotsky was certain that Canine understood. It would be awkward for them to turn on the Patterson girl. They’d likely have to kill some of their own in the process, but loyalties shifted all the time.

  Canine shook his head and walked out the door, “Until next time Mr. President.”

  10

  Maria Patterson

  Greensboro, North Carolina

  The wind tugged at the strands of hair that had broken free from her high ponytail. It annoyed her they kept flipping into her vision and that only exacerbated her existing irritation at letting something so insignificant bother her at a time like this. Still, she would have given a former province of Canada for a hair tie.

  She did her best to ignore the annoying strands and to block out the speaker’s voice as she stared at the blanket of green trees that was laid before her. Pillars of smoke dotted the vista, reminders of the battle that had wrapped up her less than an hour ago, “Are there any more of them out there?” She asked.

  “Unlikely, our sweep of the surrounding region has been comprehensive given the number of drones assigned to this task.”

  She looked to her right, at the gleaming form of Tobor. The best upgrade she had ever given her protector and confidant had been the Quantum Entangled Particle communication network. Buried within every drone it wished to be assigned to and every facility of significance within the empire. The first time she had lost Toby, she had lost a part of herself.

  Now though, her friend was nearly indestructible as this newly arrived body showed. The emotions of an hour earlier, at watching that form be destroyed had faded, though she believed they had been justified at the time. No matter how resilient the QEC was, even it could suffer from defects, so the less they relied on it to keep Toby alive, the better.

  She sighed as she considered the amount of peril that she and her robotic companion had found themselves in the last few years. She smacked the ropey synthetic muscle that stretched over its abdominal area, “When are you going to tell me what happened at the launch facility?”

  “While it is of significant priority, the current situation is in more immediate need for your attention.” Tobor responded evenly, never taking it’s vision from the trees and the wilderness they represented.

  She ignored its attempt at managing her stress level, “What happened Toby?” She glared at the drone, irritated that it would yet again try to shield her. She wasn’t a child anymore, and she needed to be up to date on what was happening.

  To Tobor’s credit it didn’t persist, “The entire platoon was lost. The facility was active, numerous launch vehicles were in various stages of assembly when we arrived. I could not establish a connection to the local wireless network and was required to initiate a physical infiltration of the primary fiber optic cabling for the facility. I was engaged by local defensive systems and then transferred to the drone unit assigned to this facility when your connection to the family network was severed.”

  “An entire combat platoon was destroyed?” She touched a hand to her forehead, her other hand went to her hip, “How?”

  “Counter AI on station seized control of my team.”

  Her eyes went wide, “How the hell is that even possible?”

  “Unknown.”

  She stepped to the side, needing to move suddenly, “How were you unaffected?”

  “I initiated quarantine protocols upon detection of potential intrusion.”

  She rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated huff, “You aren’t giving me a lot to work with her, what were you able to learn?” She said, emphasizing the last part of her question.

  “It is possible that my upgraded OS allowed for me to detect the infiltration while the other drones could not. Regarding the data gathered, none of our existing keys is effective. I sent a copy to a secure server at Camp Williams and tasked several sub AIs to break the cipher.”

  She nodded, Camp Williams was a former NSA facility in Utah. Originally meant to house terabytes worth of information that the American intelligence service vacuumed up, it had survived ‘The Fall’ and with regular updates across the decades had proven to be a valuable data crunching asset for her family. She smirked at the memory of her father-in-law claiming that the facility had been named in his honor. She refocused and then narrowed her eyes, “What’s the status of the launch facility now?”

  “The aerial transport reported internal explosions and a collapse of the support system holding the platform in place. The facility has broken up and has descended to the ocean floor, orbital observation confirms.”

  “Didn’t trust the aircraft?”

  Tobor shook it’s head, “No.”

  She nodded, “Makes sense, the offensive AI of that facility could have taken over the transport’s systems.”

  “That was my logic for using satellite verification.”

  “Do we have to worry about our primary data networks?”

  Tobor’s head cocked to the side in the way it always did when the robot was studying her or annoyed, possibly both. She almost thought it was an act of disbelief, “Proper communication’s security was followed. I was the only unit directly communicating to the family network. All data shared with family servers was initially transferred to my form, scanned for foreign coding and then transferred. The other drones could not establish a connection unless in the event of my deactivation at that location.”

  “I know you follow protocol but I’m a glass half empty kinda gal these days.”

  “To request confirmation of known constants is inefficient and will prove to be distracting.” Tobor’s tone verged on admonishment.

  She smiled, “Sorry, just a lot of moving parts and not enough information to put it into clarity.”

  She shifted her gaze to Toby’s face, “I thank you for saving me?”

  The robot
methodically shook it’s head, “You have not this time.”

  She laughed at the subtle reminder of the many times her robotic protector had prevented her death, “Well thank you”.

  She resisted the urge to wrap her arm around Tobor’s waste. The need to faded as a voice behind her rose in intensity. She let out a sigh, General Kellen was on the launch deck of the RU, personally interrogating the few prisoners they had captured. The three men and two women commandos of the Russian Spire might as well have been robots themselves given how little they were surrendering to the Supreme Command of Allied Forces. He wasn’t bad at interrogation, but he wasn’t the best. She listened through the wind as he threatened and cajoled the soldiers, much of it wasted. At least he never lost his temper and allowed their stoicism to influence his behavior.

  Williams likely would have done a better job of the task. She turned, Tobor matching her movement, and looked for the second in command to General Kellen. He was nowhere to be seen, which was unusual given the importance of this situation. Her husband was gone as well. Her curiosity piqued, she made a mental note to find out where they had gone as soon as she cleared up the issue before her.

  She stepped up to the General and caught his attention with a slight motion of her hand. He frowned, finished his last threat and stepped away from the line of enemy soldiers on their knees, their hands bound behind their backs. He indicated for her to join him and she suppressed the roll of her eyes that normally would have been as automatic as the beating of her heart. The man was still doing his best to establish dominance with her and she could give less of a shit about hierarchy. She took a deep breath and walked over to him.

  “What do you need?” He asked, tersely.

  “This is a waste of time, cut them free.” She said, her voice low, playing along with the deference game.

  “Let them go?” His eyes narrowed and his right hand motioned toward them, “They just tried to kill you.”

  She nodded her head slowly, “I know that, I was there.”

  He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath as his fingers pinched at the bridge of his nose. He took such a long time to respond that she was getting ready to speak when he did, “There is no way in hell that I’m going to let combat hardened enemy soldiers, one of whom is a valuable member of the NCO corps, to return to their ranks and rain hell against our force.”

  She smirked. This man had few weaknesses, and she was apparently one of them. He could keep his cool while interrogating enemy special forces but holding a conversation with her for mere seconds was enough to melt his emotional control, “Respectfully General, it was my forces that captured them.”

  He stood there, looking at her and shook his head, “Are we not allies?”

  “We are, which is why I’m asking you to let them go.”

  “Why, why would should we do this?”

  She looked at the group of them, their eyes locked forward, but she knew they were paying attention to their every expression and movement. She wasn’t sure if they could hear their conversation, especially given that the implanted augmentations within their ears had been deactivated, “The fighting has to stop sometime, one of us has to take the hits necessary to show our desire for peace. The simple fact is, we can afford to”

  She paused, thinking about her next words carefully, “If no one will prove their commitment to peace, there will never be peace. You will never get rid of every enemy General, it’s not possible. You’ll be stuck in a perpetual cycle of conflict that will drain and degrade you until both sides crumble away and the work of the generations that came before will have been wasted. We can afford to be magnanimous. The simple fact is that I will never allow Trotsky to wipe you out or dominate the world. Take advantage of this power that I have, be secure knowing that you and your people will continue to exist no matter what choices you make. You can work toward peace. I can maintain the balance that keeps this world from descending into chaos and give you the time and opportunity to do so.”

  Kellen’s head shook, and the disbelief was clear in his expression, “You already stopped me from gutting his Special Operations Command, I could have ended this war. How did he repay you for saving the lives of hundreds of his commandos? He authorized this strike, these men and women,” He shot his hand out toward the line of detained soldiers, “to kill you. To leave your husband a widower, your son without a mother and as you put it so well, to deny the force that’s keeping this planet from tearing itself apart a leader.”

  She nodded, “I know, I’m still asking you to let them go.”

  He sighed. That simple act, the way his shoulders slumped, and the air escaped his chest, in that second she could see the exhaustion and desire to keep the argument going dissipate, “I’m not going to let them go, I’m...”

  She nodded her head and closed her eyes for a second, “Patterns”.

  His brow furrowed, thrown off by her interruption, “Excuse me?”

  She looked at him, her hand moving to her face and pushing strands of hair from her vision, “Something my dad taught me.”

  Kellen tensed at the mention of her father but she continued, “See, human beings are the descendants of hunter gatherers and forty thousand years ago we relied on patterns to keep us alive. The day and the night, changing seasons, the habits and rituals of our tribes. These things were predictable. But when the seasons changed unexpectedly, there was less food, and people died. It got colder faster than expected. The tribe wasn’t ready, and people died. Another tribe moves into your area and they sped up the consumption of water and food, finite resources, and people died. So anything that threatens a pattern we’re used to is deemed bad, a threat to the tribe.”

  She turned to stare into the distance, “We avoid change, we don’t want our patterns disrupted even if they’re bad patterns. It’s why religion was created, to try and put meaning to the changes we couldn’t anticipate. By worshiping an angry, vengeful god, we felt we could exercise some amount of control over the world. If there are better ways to live our lives or do our jobs, we’ll stick with the old ways of doing it because it’s comfortable, it’s predictable, it’s safe. To change the pattern invites uncertainty and incites the hunter gather in us to fear that death is coming.”

  His eyes tightened, “So my people and I are all mindless robots, stuck in a negative pattern that only you can see?”

  “Let me put this another way that you’ll be able to relate to. The United States in the 1930s viewed Japan to be backward and inferior. That was based on decades of trading with the island nation and dragging them out of their feudal heritage. When America forced open the doors of trade with that nation in 1853 it arrived with steamships, to find samurai. A mental pattern was established, one that where American’s were superior to the Japanese and if you’re superior, you don’t need to change. For the Japanese a different pattern was created, one that emphasized rapid adaptation to a situation, they quickly”

  He cut her off, “I know my history Mrs. Patterson and I know where you’re going with this. You’re going to say that the American military of the day was stuck in a pattern that required them to focus on battleships, while the Japanese had adapted to a changing technological environment and went all in on aircraft carriers and naval aviation.”

  “And they were less likely to underestimate the American military too, at least at first.”

  His head nodded, and the tension in her stomach eased a little. He looked at the prisoners and then to a Marine standing behind them, “Put them on a transport, none of their equipment and take them to Kauai, deliver them to the Russian delegation there.”

  He turned to her, “Let’s give peace another chance then, try to break some patterns.”

  At that moment her heart sank, but she didn’t let it show. Her victory had been far too easy. Human beings usually had to suffer an incredible trauma to see the world through a new lens. She certainly had to be destroyed as a person before she could acknowledge what she had always secretly under
stood, that her father was a mass murderer. Yet here Kellen was, a man secure in who he was, changing after one speech.

  No, this was far too easy, the man was attempting to deceive her and if that was the case then she needed to play along to moderate whatever he scheme he was hatching while trying to throw her off.

  She smiled, faking relief and appreciation, at least she hoped she was successful with it, “Tell you what general, your forces are limited and stretched thin, I’m sure your personnel could be put to better use on something other than guard duty. They attacked me, my forces captured them, let me send them back to their master, I’ll have them dropped off at the border of the Russian Spire’s territory and they can walk back home.”

  Kellen eyed her and then nodded, “Sound reasoning.” He looked toward his transport, parked on the opposite end of the RU’s launch deck, then back toward her “Well if you’ll excuse me I need to contact Director Canine and let him know that the peace negotiations are still on”.

  “Great, safe travels General, I’ll see you in Kauai soon.”

  He nodded once and strode away. Tobor, who had been listening to the entire conversation, had already ordered a platoon of drones to remove the enemy combatants. As the highest ranking prisoner was being pulled to her feet, the Non-Commissioned Officer that the General had referred to earlier, let a smile crack her lips as her eyes drilled into Maria. Once everyone was too far out to hear anything they said, she inclined her head toward Tobor, her eyes never leaving the backs of the prisoners or the General until they all disappeared into their transports.

  “I’m about to be stabbed in the back by an ally and in the front, again, by the man I just let off the hook for trying to murder me.”

  “Yes” was all her robotic companion gave her back.

  “I have to be an idiot right?” She turned her head and looked up at Toby.

  It turned its gaze upon her, “There is nothing foolish in hoping that others will work for the best outcome for everyone concerned. What would be foolish is not preparing for them to behave in the worst manner they are capable of.”