Sometime during this endless parade, one of the helper engines in the middle let out a long, low whistle.
“Do you think we should just walk down and introduce ourselves?” I asked. I got the response I expected—none. “I didn’t think so. I guess that leaves following along the track after this behemoth clears out.”
It took the opportunity of our pause to play around with our CCTs. I turned off Sancho’s and then my own. I hoped that Sancho had bonded enough to me that the IFF signal from his CCT wouldn’t be necessary to our continued travels.
The CCTs were off on the theory that as just another biologic, any unit would ignore us. Not that units ignored all biologics, but at any it didn’t assign a potential threat to. It would give us a fighting chance.
The tracks cleared while I had been tinkering but it was another hour before we couldn’t see it in the distance.
“Shall we dance?”
Our travel following the tracks back to their source marked a sharp delineation in terrain. The rails paralleled the mercury level approximately 200 meters away on solid ground and well above the high mercury mark. But solid ground was a bit of a misnomer. High winds seemed the norm, buffeting across the area, leaving dunes of scarlet sands piled around haphazardly. The strong breezes blew fine particles of earth around, scouring our fur and exposed workings. Sometimes the wind compelled us to lean into it to stay upright, even with our gyros at emergency maximum. Walking in it was difficult enough, but the loose sand at our feet dragged constantly.
Nothing biologic seemed to grow or wander here. Even the normal barb grasses or tiny animated life forms I’d encountered in abundance avoided this place. After our first day of travel I wondered if those biologics were smarter than I was.
Even resting here didn’t follow the norm. As our required sunlight pelted us, the temperature began to rise to a level I’d never before experienced. The light energy also carried a greater power. By noon we were fully recharged, but at the same time beginning to feel the effects of overheating. With fluids dangerously out of specification, my pump temperatures skyrocketed. As ludicrous as it seemed, we had to get out of the sun.
“Sancho, we need to get shade. Come around this dune and help me dig.” I figured we would make our own cave. That was the plan, but the sand fell down faster than we could dig. We did well to dig far enough to make a depression that provided protection from the afternoon rays. As we settled in, our temperatures began to fall immediately. Another datum to keep in mind for selection of camping locations.
Conversely, the night in this awful place held its own almost hidden danger. The ambient temperature fell alarmingly after sundown, causing the air to take on a serious chill. Only the fact that we moved constantly through the night kept our fluids thin and non-viscous. The cold also affected battery efficiency. We had to keep moving but we had to do it carefully as not to deplete our batteries too far.
It became a pattern. Walk slowly all night, when the temperatures fell to almost liquid-hardening temperatures, seek the sun for its bounty in the morning, and burrow like biologics during the afternoon.
For many days and nights of travel we followed those steel rails, which had an annoying habit of disappearing under the red dunes for long distances. We met with no excitement at all—not a single investigation, not a single patrol to avoid. As far as I could tell, I saw nothing, but a unit might have seen me and ignored me. How can one tell? Maybe they all waited in ambush over the next crumbly, nearly collapsing rise. I didn’t know and wouldn’t oscillate my circuits worrying about that. Instead, I worried almost constantly about fluid status. I began to feel some of those long term issues, including the inability of my coolant to moderate my temperature. It wouldn’t be much longer before I was going to have to do something drastic.
Eight days of alternating freezing and baking before one night the train tracks disappeared down into the ocean. It didn’t make any sense. I stopped so suddenly that Sancho bumped into me from behind. How could a train run through the mercury? It really didn’t make any sense.
Looking carefully ahead on the beach I didn’t see the tracks leave the metal anyplace within the limits of my vision.
“Any ideas, fella?”
Sancho, as usual, had no clue as to what we were doing. He just loyally followed along without a word. Sometimes I still had to prod him to get moving in the beginning of the evening. Conversely, there were times he all but dragged me out of our daytime hole and down a sand embankment at the start of a new working night. In spite of his mental limitations, I had never felt so warm toward my companion.
My mind worked overtime to explain the mysteriously vanishing train tracks. The single possible explanation I dreamed up seemed farfetched.
“Was it Sherlock Holmes who once said, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth’?”
I saw several problems with my theory, but the only way I could confirm or deny it was to investigate.
“Let’s set up camp, Sancho.”
After our run-in with the basilisk, making camp involved a bit more than just flopping down anyplace. We scouted about for places with no blind approaches, above high mercury level signs and recently a place we could get out of the sun. However, in this case the site I chose really had no available shade. We relaxed adjacent to where the railroad disappeared into the sea.
“Sancho, I hope you are ready for an all-day run. The true test of my theory will come a little after high sun today.” I couldn’t tell if Sancho remained awake or not. It mattered little this early in the morning.
The mercury level dropped slowly at first but within two hours the beach gained 3.4 additional meters, and 2.8 hours after sunup my target revealed itself with just the barest hint of the top of a dome.
“There it is, Sancho. We finally made it!”
Sancho actually stood up to get a better look. Together we watched as the liquid metal receded from around the structure. The dome was much flatter than either of the two Factories I’d known, being only 5 meters above the ground. Its radius appeared the same as in my memories.
“What a funny shape. And where are its construction and production facilities?” No material processing plants, smelting plants, assembly line buildings or anything like them exposed themselves.
“I don’t know whether to think they are farther out in the sea or aren’t collocated. I think the second is more probable. Otherwise you’d have to time arrival of raw materials with the shrinkage of the sea. And what would happen if the sea level rose so it never became exposed.”
Such a strange place it inhabited. We had, by then, traveled through all types of places, but the desolation of this barren and wind-tossed place made my voltage flutter like no other.
By noon the sea relinquished its grip on the ground around the Factory, leaving it still moist with tiny puddles. The shining metal reflected the brilliant rays of the sun like tiny stars, each planet-bound, to spend their energies with futility against the ground.
“Is that what I am doing?” I wondered aloud. “Am I futilely spending my energies where they can do absolutely no good?” Time would tell and my companion Sancho would not. This was that time. I steeled myself for what I must do.
Just as before with 55474, the door was in almost exactly the same location. My body shook gently. I didn’t know whether it was in excitement or terror or both, but I realized that if I didn’t go right then, I might lose my will.
I think the gritty, thick feeling of my fluids and the voltage fluctuation across my main power bus told me that I was very afraid. They were redundant warnings of danger I had been facing in my mind for hours. I quivered in more fear at that moment than ever before in my short life. I certainly knew I was more afraid than when I had confronted 55474 in its den. I no longer had any tricks to get me out of trouble if it showed. Six couldn’t save me. Sancho couldn’t pull me out. I alone would match my wits against the full mental powers of a Factory.
If I failed, Six perished.
I don’t know what possessed me, but I stood up, throwing my pack over my shoulder. I heard myself say, “Sancho, old pal. This is something I have to do alone.” I slipped the vine leash from around his neck.
Sancho bellowed through his snout.
“Sorry, but this is one danger you can’t keep me from, nor can you share it. I must do this.” Even though I seemed to have no conscious control of my motions, I started to walk toward the dome. A sense of peace flowed over me. My decision was made and consequences be what they will. In the words of one famous Human, “Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.”
My ability to control what I was doing returned as I approached the flattened dome. I still had minor jitters about my abilities. I hoped my new line of persuasion would work. Visions of what had happened with 55474 flashed through my mind, and I prayed to the Humans that being chased out of another dome by a dozen armed units wasn’t to be the result. If it was, I might as well just find a nice quiet spot, like that sunny little butte where I found thousands of rock beetles crawling around and live there because Six was finished. Two Factories, even if not cooperating, would make short work of Six at this point. My meager capabilities wouldn’t impact that outcome at all.
I followed the rails the last dozen meters to the audience chamber door. All of the Factories at least seemed to have the same internal layout. Could the Humans’ plans for us have played a part in their shape?
A dim yellow light from the ceiling, a stark contrast to the vivid reds of the outside world, lit the chamber. Just as before, the audience chamber awed me. Each sound amplified so that even the floor against my feet, soft and furry though they might be, was like a windstorm. Humans surely looked down on their subjects in this place. They watched my performance for them.
My limbs felt like mercury filled them. “Excuse me,” I said. I got no response. “Hello, Factory?”
“Biologics do not converse,” came a high reedy voice, emanating from seemingly everywhere. While this was disconcerting, it also settled me. I felt the power of my convictions fill me and all but lift me off the floor. I was ready.
“And why not?”
“No biologic examined to date has even rudimentary vocal apparatus.” The high voice seemed to penetrate through me rather than having been heard.
“Then the answer should be obvious. I am not a biologic.”
“Probability—”
“I don’t care what the probabilities are, Factory. I am not a biologic.”
“Highly unlikely. However, if you are not a biologic, then probabilities are that you are not of this world.”
I thought about that for a moment. “No, I began my life right here on this planet.”
“Then you are a biologic and thus meant to be destroyed. Primary orders indicate—”
“Yes, I know. ‘Seek and destroy.’”
“Not entirely accurate.”
“This conversation is getting off the main topic. I am not a biologic. I was produced by Factory 55466.”
“Probability 0.0. My memories indicate that Factory 55466 was to be sent to Rigel-3.”
“This is Rigel-3!” I said in near exasperation. “You are both on this same planet.”
“Negative. I have landed on Rigel-3.” A pause of over three seconds took place. “Correction, this is the same planet. Faulty memory indicates, ‘Design Assumptions: No two Factories shall ever be placed on the same planet.’ Memory moved to temporary storage and replaced with working hypothesis: Factory 55466 has landed on the same planet I now occupy.” I wanted to dance. I had half the battle won.
“So what conclusion can you make from this new data?” I asked, hoping that the Factory would make the next likely leap on its own.
“No conclusion,” came the annoyingly high voice. My initial optimism was premature. I would have to pry each and every concession out of the Factory.
“Perhaps the ‘biologics’ you are eradicating aren’t biologic at all.”
“Probability—”
“There you go again with those probabilities. Think, Factory. Don’t let the numbers answer the questions for you. You are fighting another Factory’s units.”
“Probability 0.004.” I decided to let my silence answer the Factory’s stubbornness. It remained quiet for nearly a minute. This was even more difficult than I had thought.
“Let us look at the data you admit is real. You are on Rigel-3. Factory 55466 is also on Rigel-3. You have another Factory on the same planet and you can’t even see there is a possibility you are fighting for the same thing?”
“Affirmative.” Literature indicates that Humans sigh when exasperated. When exasperation struck me I whistled through my main speaker, and right then it sounded like a bird convention. I had to take another tack.
“What are your primary operating instructions?”
“Classified information. Biologics do not require such information.”
“Ah, but I am not a biologic. I am a unit of Factory 55466.”
“Unconfirmed. Information is classified.”
“If I could prove my manufacturer?”
“Then the information would be made available to you.”
“And how could I prove my origins?”
“All manufactured units contain a serial plate near their main processing unit. This identifying mark may only be scanned with ultraviolet laser. It is microscopic in size.” I got a chill through every fluid in my body. A laser in my neck near my main processor could do much more than read a tag. With a surge of power it could instead incinerate my processor, leaving me a mindless moron. Here was another time of fear.
“By all means, please scan,” I said, opening the access panel in my neck. I hoped cold calculation hadn’t been replaced by folly. I hardly felt a small tube writhed into my neck. Excepting key physical systems’ monitoring, my body wasn’t designed with many internal sensors. I waited for the searing loss of the ability to reason—which never came.
“Identity confirmed. Serial number 1, series—Teddy Bear, make—S12 prototype.”
“Oh, good, I am who I say I am,” I added with as much sarcasm as I could muster.
“No Model S12 ever defined.”
“I guess that only leaves one conclusion.”
“Two conclusions; however, one is exceedingly remote. The primary conclusion is that you were created by Factory 55466 as you have asserted.”
“Very good. You took that jump without brushing the bar. Now, what are your primary mission parameters?”
“Main mission parameters: Control planetary surface, super-surface and sub-surface against native flora and fauna for the purpose of extracting and returning to origin any mineral from the metal chemical series, including transuranics and superuranics. There are sub-parameters defining which types of materials have priority.”
“Now, considering these mission goals, what would happen if two, or more, Factories were on the same planet?”
“That computation will take an excessive amount of system resources. Be more specific in your query.”
“What would a Factory, call it Factory #1, think of Factory #2’s units?” There was a lengthy pause. This Factory had taxed its own ability to bring new truths to light.
“Extensive simulations indicate that there is a 98 percent chance it would class such units as local fauna.”
“And what would be the reaction of Factory #1 to this local fauna?”
“It would fall back on its main mission parameters and destroy such a unit.”
“Using this information and the unquestionable fact that you have another Factory’s unit standing in front of you, please reevaluate the current situation here.”
“Working...Working...” The bodiless voice repeated this word about fifteen times before answering. “Current demographics indicate there are three other Factories working on Rigel-3. There is a 15 percent chance that there is one Factory above this base amount and a 3 percent chance of two additional Facto
ries. Analysis indicates that a 50 percent increase in military production capacity is warranted.”
What would I convince it of next, destroying the world? …My wits against the full mental powers of a Factory.
“Wrong conclusion. Why would you increase your fighting force?”
“I must fulfill my primary mission; I must control the planet per my programming.”
“Then why not change over so 100 percent of your production is military?”
“Battle is wasteful. Even with recovery and recycling there is a 62 percent waste factor.”
“But if you increase military the war would be over quicker.”
“Production/usage curves show an opitmax recovery for capital and material expenditures at a 50 percent increase.”
“What if I could show you a way to be successful with a decrease in your military production?”
“Not possible.”
“Not under your current assumptions. What is the maximum payload you can send to origin?”
“Not to exceed a mass of eight megatons.”
“How close to reaching this figure are you?”
“I have exceeded the payload of the vessel by a factor of 16.4. Projections show that this figure will double, plus or minus 8 percent, in the next fiscal year.”
“So you already have more than you can ship.”
“Affirmative.”
“Why wait?”
“I do not have control of the planet surface.”
“I can show you a way to control the planet surface, so that no local fauna nor flora impede you. It will take fewer resources in an amount of time that is less than one quarter of your own most optimistic projection.”
“Impossible. The standard deviation of such a plan is several thousand sigmas from the mean.”
“Granted, that is the projection from your own resources, but what if you allied with one of the other Factories? What if you used both militaries as one cohesive force?”
Toy Wars Page 19