A Printer's Choice

by W. L. Patenaude

  But from the north came the US Marines and Army field artillery. The Croatians came from the east, as Mexico’s Special Forces fanned from the west and the southwest, bringing with them their unique hatred of Juan Carlos Solorzano and his armies. Above them all rushed the whistles and roar of close air support, and the hum of ten thousand battle-evaluation drones probing ever deeper into areas targeted for liberation.

  Corporal John McClellan pushed south on foot with his six escorts and the four advance drones assigned to them. He was tasked to help secure one of the three printers at the state university’s engineering campus, and then program it to print supplies in support of the general mission of reclaiming the southeast.

  There had been no resistance from the suburbs down to Hillsborough Street, and then farther south to the wreckage that lined Western Boulevard. At the train tracks, the unit’s other combat programmers, Lance Corporals Daniel Macedo and Samuel Jordan, split off east and west, disappearing with their escorts into fire and shadow, making for the two other printers that the Sals struggled to airlift before the battle’s forward edge reached them.

  McClellan received an all-clear when they came to the old College Inn. Less than an hour prior, the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit had purged the area at a not insignificant cost. Teams were reconfirming the safe status of the building and surrounding areas to establish a command post. But there were no promises of safety from that point south. McClellan’s destination in the engineering campus, half a mile away, remained a fury of armored vehicles and infantry as the 26th maneuvered ever deeper, to push the Sals back and secure the printer.

  “My Marines will give you your safe zone,” the area commander said to McClellan. “You just get there in one piece and print us what we need.”

  There was an exchange of salutes, and McClellan and his escorts moved on. They went past mounded and smoldering remnants of town houses, past the remains of the evacuation—a pickup with an empty crib, a woman’s red shoe next to a wheelchair, a charred Sal tank—and then crossed over grit and glass to Centennial Parkway.

  McClellan’s night goggles began to offer brilliant renderings of the firefights ahead. Through his radio he got word from the engineering campus: the Marines of the 26th had been clearing buildings top down, floor by floor, engagement by engagement, keeping up a tempo that the Sals could not maintain.

  But battle evaluation drones also issued warnings. The Sals who had retreated south of Lake Raleigh were refortifying in the abandoned regional headquarters of the Global Union. They were coming north again in their wild, undisciplined way.

  Drone technicians were having words with their colleagues in Command. There was disagreement about assessment reliability—about numbers and directions and capabilities. This was not a discussion that sped or slowed McClellan’s forward motion, but he was glad when he heard agreement. The enemy may again be growing fierce, but bad news was better than being surprised.

  McClellan’s radio gave news from the rear. Sal divisions had broken off from an engagement with the Mexican Special Forces. They were making east for the soccer fields where Danny Macedo’s printer lay protected by twelve Marine snipers who had been promised reinforcements that had not yet come.

  Combat programmers such as McClellan were allowed access to such intelligence. Awareness of real-time shifts and surges would be needed if they found themselves required to print without the ability to contact Command for orders. Programmers were supposed to silo such intelligence for later use, but McClellan never siloed anything. He saw events on a macro scale—as if he stood on a map of North Carolina and could see throughout the Southeast, and he watched armies being realigned and strategies adjusted on both sides.

  They came to rows of dead Sal soldiers and the shadowed, grim stares of the infantry of the 26th. A sergeant waved the programmer forward to the campus.

  “Don’t you worry about Sals down south,” he said, flicking a spent cigarette into the darkness. “I hear we got a little something for ’em—but we’re still hunting, so keep an eye out.”

  There came the scream of air support. Ahead, white daylight suddenly came to the forests south of Lake Raleigh, and then the white became fire that rolled upward into the vault of the night. Silver bursts of interference clusters came next, scrambling Sal surveillance systems.

  “Ooh-rah!” McClellan and his escorts shouted, and they double-timed on.

  Smoke from the detonations rolled north over Lake Raleigh, through the engineering campus, past McClellan and his escorts. The haze provided cover, but it confused their drones and their goggles—one of many design flaws of these machines. The drones sent worried chirps into their earpieces, and McClellan cursed. Either the drones were suffering from the smoke and interference, or they were picking up signals of the dead or wounded. Or the drones were accurate.

  The team was rounding a storm-water pond when McClellan saw arms, and an unfriendly rifle flash from its muzzle. He went to one knee as his armor took the hit. He returned fire while his escorts engaged the nine other Sals who emerged from smoke and scrub. In his goggles McClellan’s attacker glowed bright and tall, but the Sal fell fast when the programmer gave two pulls of his trigger.

  He was assessing his next target when he felt grasping at his boots. He fell backward at the edge of the pond and twisted sideways to protect the programming coupler in his backpack.

  A gloved hand and a knife arced in the haze above him. McClellan rocked the butt of his rifle, bringing a hard blow to the chin of the Sal holding the knife. The Sal stumbled. McClellan used the delay to reposition himself, but the muddy bank gave little support and he fell farther toward the water.

  The Sal threw himself back on McClellan. The knife came again, at just the right angle, under the ridge of his helmet, which was lifted by the slimy touch of the Sal’s fingers. McClellan thrust at the Sal with his rifle, aware of his coupler still safe in its backpack, when two more Sals came from the foul water, grappled, and held him.

  The knife probed flesh and bone, and his temple burned.

  One of the escorts, Lance Corporal Rocha, shouted with fury from a blast to his neck. Rocha fell near the upper ridge of the pond, and as McClellan was being dragged farther down—as the blade went deeper, as he held firm to his rifle, slamming the Sal with its butt again and again—he assessed the data and held his position, and in doing so held the position of his three attackers.

  McClellan knew his escorts, trained with them, had lived with them for three months. Given which weapons he had heard fire last, the lull meant only one thing. He relaxed before he heard the pop that came from the ridge—and then two others. The Sal on top of him, the one with the knife, went down quickly when a charged slug from an L-21 shattered his head. The other two fell in rapid order, their bodies tumbling into the filthy waters out of which they had come.

  The escorts and the drones confirmed a safe environment as McClellan stood with the help of a brother Marine. McClellan performed a quick body check, confirming the security of his sidearm and coupler. Rocha cursed at the precious time needed to bind wounds, but went quiet when he saw they needed to clean and reattach the flesh over McClellan’s left eye and ear.

  The escort with the comm implants radioed their situation to Command, reporting the estimated time of arrival to the printer.

  Command was relieved, but troubled by shifts in the battle conditions to the west. All indicators had been that McClellan’s destination—the printer at the southern front—would have been the most difficult engagement and thus the most critical position for their best programmer. With the strongest Sal push taking place in the west, Danny Macedo would be needed most. But he and his escorts were pinned in a firefight about twenty yards from their printer, and Danny’s wounds were slowing him down.

  McClellan took in what information he needed. They double-timed it, soon getting to the checkpoint at the engineering campus. The men and women of the 26th hooted when McClellan and his escorts arrived. Medics rushed out t
o meet Rocha, who limped forward supported under both arms.

  The checkpoint was an open first-floor passage leading to a courtyard enclosed by long, plain engineering buildings. It was there, among the frenzied beginnings of command and medical centers, that McClellan gave an uncertain good-bye to his wounded brother. He thanked Rocha, and told him he’d print whatever he wanted if he’d just stay alive that night.

  “Don’t worry about me, Johnny,” Rocha said. “Get your ass to the prize and print what we need to end this. You’re the programmer. It’s your time, bro.”

  Medics pulled McClellan away to check and repack his wound. As they did, the combat programmer stared down the open passage to the wide, grassy quadrangle. In the center, beacons from hovering tricopters lit an open flatbed that carried the prize.

  The medics cleared the programmer with a slap on his back, and onward he went.

  Along the foundations of the darkened engineering buildings were rows of Sal soldiers—the dead lying on their backs, the living being taken somewhere that was not McClellan’s concern. Tricopters and drones hovered above the buildings to offer steadier light, both for the programmer and for the snipers positioned on the roofs.

  Four of McClellan’s escorts maintained their close positions, and the five sprinted forward and stopped at the flatbed holding the printer. McClellan radioed an update to his commanding sergeant, and the two spoke quickly.

  “Conditions in the west are deteriorating fast,” she said. “We need you printing soon.”

  McClellan unfastened his backpack and threw it on top of the flatbed.

  “Programmers only up top, boys,” he said to his escorts. “But stay close. Don’t forget, Jordan promised us a drink when we finish the job.”

  There was an exchange of embraces and affectionate curses, and then McClellan hauled himself onto the flatbed to behold the new printer.

  It was a beauty. It was a standard clamshell, but its silvery hull was sleeker than the models McClellan knew. It hung over the flatbed at about twenty by fifteen feet—which was a little roomier than he’d been told. Better yet, the Global Union engineers had created one hell of an interface, and he was pleased that it matched the specs that the GU had reluctantly shared that morning.

  He reconfigured his earpiece to wait for the sergeant’s commands, adjusted the packing under his bandage, and began to prep for the job.

  In the Marines it’s always muscle first, no matter your occupational specialty. But now at his prize, McClellan secured his weapons and stripped off his battle helmet, upper body gear, and muddy camo shirt. He slipped on the old-school protective vest and helmet all programmers use, because you can’t program with interference. He may have been more vulnerable in the lesser gear, but he was confident in the protection offered him by his brothers and sisters.

  He searched under his T-shirt for the chain that held his programmer’s key. He swept it over his head and pushed the key into the clamshell. Then he knelt to retrieve his coupler from his backpack, and kiss it for good luck.

  His sergeant radioed. Looks like the GU engineers did save a detail until the end.

  McClellan listened as his unhappy commanding officer relayed the news: these experimental printers had been programmed with a new safety protocol called Just War logic.

  “What the hell is that?” McClellan said.

  “Unknown,” his sergeant radioed. “The engineers will not transmit details. We are in negotiations now. Hold for orders.”

  McClellan used his forearm to wipe the blood trickling down his cheek. As he waited, he surveyed the land around him for good drilling sites, and he stretched his arms and fingers.

  “Here’s what we have,” the sergeant radioed. “Just War is a safety protocol to keep programmers from printing items defined as ‘excessive force.’ Except the engineers don’t define what that is. They only tell us that these Just War logic checks should not—repeat, should not—become a factor after you gain trust.”

  There was static after McClellan had been told again to stand by. He waited and performed his own data search for Just War. And he cursed the Global Union, which the United States had broken from just months ago—even as it sought to save the GU’s printers, and so supply a war of mutual benefit.

  His earpiece clicked again. “Corporal McClellan, GU engineering stresses that this is an experimental unit meant only for Earth repairs and assistance. They request that we limit printing to noncombat items only. Repeat: GU engineering requests that we limit printing to noncombat items only.”

  McClellan was aware that his standing—the star of the show, they called it—meant that he had to watch his expressions. But a stupid and dangerous mission limitation given at the last minute from spineless engineers deserved some hand and mouth motions aimed at their printer that indicated annoyance.

  For morale and decorum he restrained himself, and instead radioed for guidance.

  His sergeant took a moment to reply. “Command suggests you assess the situation once inside the printer. Then use best programming judgment to determine if you can complete the wish list.”

  Air cover rumbled in the west. Over rooftops he saw a far-off succession of white bursts and mushrooming fire sprouting from south to north. The drones around McClellan seemed agitated.

  “Do you copy?”

  “I copy,” McClellan radioed. “Awaiting needs list for preprinting source assessment.” And, for the benefit of the watching Marines, he said, “I’ll make everything we need.”

  McClellan propped his combat tablet on the programmer’s shelf. He matched encryptions and read the incoming data from the wish list. As expected, Command wanted more than just basics. The list was mostly equipment to keep pressure off the rear western flank, which would help keep the Sals from getting to Macedo’s printer. It would then be up to Macedo to print what was needed to halt the assault on his front.

  “All right,” McClellan said, “let’s do this.”

  He compared the needs list with the soil characteristics and opted to go subatomic. That would take extra programming, but it would get him everything he’d been asked for—the personal guided ballistics, a full range of ammo and lots of it, charged high-energy assault rifles, and on the list went. At the bottom of his list were medical needs, food, water, and charged power-supply batteries. Jordan had been assigned those. McClellan and Macedo would concentrate on the weapons.

  Twelve automated tricopters were landing outside his print zone. Teams of infantry were positioning themselves to ferry the printer output to the tricopters, which would get them to the western line.

  McClellan went through the list again, and paired the items to print similar materials in sequence. He looked through the instructions he’d been sent about the printer’s Just War logic, and devised a way around it.

  It would be a tactic that good programmers—the ones with highest trust ratings, such as he—should not use.

  But this was war.

  The pause before presync took longer than usual, but then the printer roused. He slipped the coupler into its waiting port, and he let his hands drift over the clamshell’s cool skin.

  Again there was a delay, but the coupler activated as the printer slowly accepted it.

  He played the quick game of code verification, answering the printer’s queries about his blood type, master’s codes, and neural programming permissions. And then came the activation of the neural links in his hands and brain. He continued caressing the printer to maintain physical contact, which helped the link grow strong.

  The clamshell stirred but was cautious. This wasn’t a surprise. It would have already begun reading comm traffic and drone assessment data about the world it awakened to, as well as the worn and wounded state of its programmer.

  Then the printer did something odd. It introduced itself as Audrey.

  McClellan cursed. Looks like the GU left out another detail.

  “Audrey?” McClellan said through his neural link. “I didn’t know printers
had names.”

  “I was created with the option to select a name,” the machine said through the same links. “Personalization has been found to assist programmers, and I wish to assist. I am Audrey. What are we seeking to print, John McClellan?”

  McClellan thanked the printer because it seemed the right thing to do.

  And then he lied about his intentions.

  “I need seventeen thousand charged batteries for hospital camps. I’m entering the joules and stats. I have design specs, unless we find better ones.”

  With any other printer he would have given the weapons list first. But the Just War logic would require a full analysis of the hostilities occurring throughout the Southeast—and that might require a history of the Sals and of the United States, of the famines and the storms, of the camps and the mobs that surged from the camps. Moreover, McClellan didn’t want to explain how the weapons were to be used or exactly where—which he didn’t fully know, and wasn’t about to be told.

  So his plan was to bypass the Just War logic by gaining trust with a phony print order, and then, once trust was established, forcing the printer to give him the weaponry he needed.

  “I could print generators,” Audrey offered.

  “They’re too big. I need batteries.”

  The high-def thought for a moment and continued to scan its surroundings.

  “There is a standard warning related to this situation,” she said. “What you ask me to print may be re-formed midway through the sequencing to make weapons. As there is no threat in this immediate location that would require additional weapons, and as I do not understand the nature of any related hostilities, nor your role within them, I will refuse this job request until additional information is supplied. Moreover, I am detecting no medical camp of the size that would require the energy I am asked to provide.”

  “Combat engineers are prepping them,” McClellan lied again. “They’re back out by the checkpoint. Audrey, come on. You know my trust rank is pretty high, and you know it’s been a tough night—I can’t hide that. I’m a little shaky. And we do need the batteries.” And then he added, “They’re on my list,” which was true.