by Jeff Edwards
The curve of the machine’s yellow carapace was stamped with the words NORTON DEEP WATER SYSTEMS, and the streamlined black ‘N’ of the Norton corporate logo. It was the company’s mark of ownership, there for all the world to see. For all of Ann’s personal sense of ownership, Mouse belonged to Norton, not to her.
She unscrewed a waterproof pressure cap from the ventral data port, and plugged a length of fiber-optic into the narrow connecting jack beneath. She plugged the other end of the cable into a hand-held test module about the size of a brick, and began to punch buttons and watch the results on the built-in digital display. The readouts were all in hexadecimal, but Mouse was Ann’s baby. She knew every status code by heart.
Officially, the machine’s name was Multi-purpose Autonomous Underwater System Mark-I. Usually, that was shortened to M-A-U-S, or Mouse. By classification, it was an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle, not a robot. The United States Navy didn’t care for the word robot, with its science fiction movie connotations. Consequently, that word was never officially used, and even unofficial use of the R-word was discouraged. The machine was either referred to as Mouse, or by one of several more generic designations: the unit, the package, the system, the equipment, or even the UUV. Never the robot.
To Ann, the controversy over that one word was a perfect example of the warped logic at the heart of the military value system. Military types had no problem launching missiles at people they’d never even met, but they practically wet their pants if you called a piece of equipment by the wrong name.
Ann’s coworker, Sheldon Miggs, attributed that particular fixation to improved communications. According to Sheldon, standardizing the names for equipment, tactics, and supplies went a long way toward making sure that someone didn’t launch the wrong missile at the wrong time, shoot the wrong target, or pour the wrong kind of chemical extinguishing agent onto a raging fire. When Sheldon told it, the whole thing made a certain twisted degree of sense. Then again, Sheldon bought off on too much of that whole ‘defense of freedom’ shtick. To him, these military types represented something heroic. Ann saw them for what they really were—robots in starched uniforms, responding to programs written by greedy politicians and the military industrial complex.
And that, come to think of it, might explain why the Navy didn’t care for the R-word. Maybe they didn’t like the competition—one group of robots to another.
Screw the Navy. Not one of their acceptable terms came as close to describing Mouse’s nature and abilities as the dreaded R-word. Mouse was a robot, and Ann was damned well going to call it a robot.
She sequenced through the test readouts one at a time, verifying that every one of Mouse’s components was operating within design specifications. She paid particular attention to the error-checking routines for the robot’s command code. She’d put in a brand new patch in the software last night, and she wasn’t entirely sure that it was stable. But no errors were showing up this morning, so maybe she was worrying for nothing.
Just for good measure, she sequenced through every test readout again. Again, every test passed without error. The robot was purring like a kitten.
Ann disconnected the test cable and replaced the pressure cap on the data port. She was careful to check the o-ring seals, and to make sure that the threads of the cap were properly seated. Like all of the other external fixtures, the data ports were waterproof, and rated to withstand the pressure at the robot’s maximum operating depth. She could have theoretically left the cap off entirely without affecting the robot’s performance, but there was no point in taking unnecessary chances.
When she was satisfied that the port was properly covered, she checked the seals and alignments on every other external fitting. Finally, she looked up at the burly Navy man standing by the controls for the boat davit. She knew from earlier introductions that he was a second class petty officer, but she couldn’t remember what it was about his uniform or rank insignia that was supposed to tell her that.
She had forgotten the man’s real name, but she knew that the Navy types all called him Boats. Maybe that was because he was in charge of the boat deck. Ann didn’t know, and she didn’t particularly care. As long as he handled her equipment with respect, the man could call himself the Queen of Sheba.
Ann caught his eye and nodded. “Let’s do this thing.”
Boats gave her a thumbs-up, then he glanced around the boat deck and spoke in a loud voice. “All hands stand clear of the boat davit while conducting over-the-side operations.”
The crowd of khaki onlookers was well clear of the work area, but they all shuffled backwards a few steps anyway. Their murmuring trailed off as the angled arm of the boat davit pivoted smoothly to the left, swinging Mouse out over the lifelines, where the robot dangled twenty feet above the wave tops.
Boats checked the alignment of the davit, made a minor adjustment, and then punched the control for the winch motor. With a muted hydraulic rumble, the winch began to reel out cable, and Mouse descended toward the water.
This was what the looky-loos had come to see: the weird yellow machine, embarking on the great rescue mission. What a bunch of freaking idiots.
The davit operator was good. At the last second, he reduced the speed of the winch, and Mouse settled into the water with barely a splash.
Boats caught Ann’s eye, and waited for her signal.
Ann looked over the side of the ship. Mouse was trailing at the end of the cable, his bright yellow hull about three-quarters submerged in the cold slate-gray waves.
This was always the scary part. As long as Mouse was hooked to the cable, they couldn’t lose him. But the second they let him off the leash, the robot would be on his own—beyond human control.
In some places, the Aleutian trench went down more than 25,000 feet. If something went wrong in water this deep, Mouse could be lost forever.
But they couldn’t keep the robot on the leash. He couldn’t do his job with the cable attached, and even if he could, that went against the entire purpose of an autonomous machine. Ann had devoted years of hard work to making sure that Mouse could operate safely without human intervention. Why was it always so difficult to turn him loose?
She took in a deep lungful of the startlingly cold Alaskan air, and exhaled, her breath coming out as a cloud of vapor. She gave Boats a nod. “Let him go.”
The Sailor manipulated the davit controls, and the clamp at the end of the cable disengaged itself with a metallic thump. Hydraulics moaned again, and the winch began reeling in the cable.
Free of his tether, Mouse floated just below the waves for a couple of seconds, bobbing gently with the swells, as though gathering his wits or getting his bearings. And then the robot’s propulsion pods came to life, driving the machine forward, and down.
For a second or so, Ann could see the robot’s yellow form through the water, and then it disappeared into the depths. For better or for worse, Mouse was on his own.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Ann sat in the ship’s Combat Information Center, and stared at the screen of the ruggedized laptop computer that served as the display and control interface for Mouse. Somewhere out there, across two miles of ocean and three thousand feet under water, Mouse was approaching the downed mini-sub. The robot was due to transmit a final updated position report before beginning its survey of the accident site.
The khaki-brigade had followed her inside. They were lingering around CIC, keeping mostly out of Ann’s way, but sticking close enough to see the action—if there was any.
Jesus. Didn’t these people have jobs?
A flashing status indicator on the laptop screen grabbed Ann’s attention. Personal feelings aside, she had a job to do. Part of that job meant swallowing her distaste for these military yahoos, and simulating a degree of courtesy that she didn’t really feel. But the other part of her job—the important part—was making sure the robot did what it was supposed to do. That part Ann was very good at.
Her eyes stayed fixed
on the screen. If something was going to go wrong, this was when it would probably happen.
Mouse’s onboard computer sometimes failed to transition properly from directed transit mode to autonomous mission mode. The robot had no problem following programmed navigational waypoints from one set of geographic coordinates to the next. It also operated pretty reliably under full autonomy, using the situational-response algorithms built into its core programming to make decisions, and its maneuvering motors, sensors, and manipulator arms to take whatever actions were dictated by the results of those decisions. It even made good decisions, the majority of the time. That was supposed to be the tricky part: getting a self-directed machine to assess complicated problems without human intervention, and then plan and carry out appropriate corrective actions.
Mouse could do all that. But sometimes the damned thing went crazy during the transition from one mode to the other. During two out of the last five test runs, the robot had completed transit mode without a hitch, and then promptly abandoned its mission and returned to its launch point, where it had driven itself to the surface and steered in circles until it was captured and shut down.
In Ann’s technical log, the unplanned excursions were written up as Unpredicted Vehicle Behavior. That was geek-speak for ‘the robot did something freaky and I don’t know why.’
Ann had been up most of the night, working on a software fix to patch the mode transition problem. She’d located a bug in the command code, but she had no idea if correcting it would fix the problem. The patch looked pretty good on paper, but she needed a week or so of testing to be sure. Not that there’d been any time for tests. Mouse had gone back into the water just minutes after she’d uploaded the new code—orders of the ship’s commanding officer—Captain Bogie, or whatever his name was.
It wasn’t fair, damn it! This was just supposed to be an Advanced Technology Demonstration. They were here to put the Mouse prototype through its paces, find out what worked and what didn’t, in an actual shipboard environment. What the hell was the Navy thinking, trying to turn it into a rescue? For that matter, why were those idiots at corporate going along with it? Until the Navy signed off on the final contracts, Mouse was still the property of Norton. The company could have said, ‘no.’ They should have said, ‘no.’ Why hadn’t they?
Ann knew the answer to that question. She just didn’t like it. The International Submarine Escape and Rescue Liaison Office was rushing people and equipment to the scene as quickly as possible, but the nearest submarine rescue equipment was still at least eight hours away. Unfortunately, the men and women aboard the Nereus might not have eight hours. For all anyone knew, they might not even have eight minutes.
Finding the submersible wasn’t an issue. Like most manned underwater vessels, the Nereus was equipped with an emergency transponder. The little black box was working just fine. It had been transmitting an emergency locator beacon every six minutes since the accident had occurred.
The real problem was depth. The Nereus was nearly three thousand feet down. Much too deep for divers. Even the advanced hardsuit dive rigs couldn’t withstand the water pressure that far down. At this particular moment in time, one Navy destroyer and one crazy-assed underwater robot were the only hope of rescue.
That was so wrong that it was nearly perverse. The lives of human beings should not be allowed to hang by so thin a thread.
The software wasn’t ready. The hardware wasn’t ready. And Ann sure as hell wasn’t ready.
This whole situation had disaster written all over it. The people on that submarine were going to die, and Ann and Sheldon were going to get the blame.
Where was Sheldon, anyway? Ann risked a quick look over her shoulder. No sign of Sheldon. Nobody back there but the gaggle of Navy officers and chiefs, watching over her shoulder. Waiting for Ann to either pull a miracle out of her ass, or make a mistake that would kill the people on that submarine.
She swallowed, took a deep breath, and tried to will her body to relax. Forget about the Navy boneheads. They don’t matter. Watch the screen. Do the job. Pretend they’re not even here.
The cool semi-darkness of CIC made it a little easier to ignore the unwanted onlookers. As long as they remained relatively quiet, she could mostly tune them out.
Someone tapped Ann on the left shoulder. She flinched at the unexpected contact, and whipped her head around see the newcomer. It was that captain guy, Brodie, or whatever.
The man held out a ceramic mug and smiled. “Coffee?”
Ann took the offered cup. “Thanks.” She turned back to the screen. Still no sign of Mouse’s updated position report. Had the robot stopped communicating altogether? Could her program patch have caused some unexpected side-effect that made the mode transition problem worse rather than better?
“I’m Captain Bowie,” the man said, apparently oblivious to the fact that Ann was attempting to ignore him. “We met briefly when you came on board, but I haven’t really gotten around to chatting with you yet. It’s Ms. Roark, right?”
Ann nodded. “Just Ann, sir.”
She kept her voice carefully polite. It was a simple matter of self preservation. There were not exactly an infinite number of job opportunities in the robotics industry, and fewer still in Ann’s area of specialty: underwater robotics. If she wanted to keep paying the rent, she had to be civil to the uniforms.
Anything beyond courtesy was Sheldon’s responsibility. Sheldon was the talker. It was his job to shake hands, answer stupid questions, and generally keep people too busy to bother Ann. A job at which he was failing miserably at the moment.
The captain stepped closer and leaned over to look at the screen. “How are things looking?”
Ann suppressed a sigh. This guy wanted to make small talk.
“I’m waiting for an updated position report,” she said. “Mouse is coming up on his last navigational waypoint. We should be getting a fix on his position any time now.” She paused for a second, and decided to be honest. “He’s actually a little bit overdue. I expected to hear from him almost a minute ago.”
“Is there a problem?”
Of course not, Ann thought. Everything is just fine. I’ve got three lives depending on an untested code patch that I wrote at three in the morning, when I was practically cross-eyed from sleep depravation. But everything is peachy here, Mr. Captain, Sir. Just freaking peachy.
She glanced up at Captain What’s-his-name, and wondered for a second if she had said some of that last bit out loud. More than likely not, because he didn’t seem to be ramping up to indignation. His brown eyes looked tired, but not angry.
Ann returned his stare with one of her own. From a strictly physical perspective, she liked what she saw. He was in his late thirties or early forties, about six feet tall, and almost good looking in a nerdy clean-cut sort of way. His black hair was too short to have any real character to it, and his narrow face seemed slightly out of proportion to his neck and body. Still, the overall package wasn’t bad, if you were into overgrown Eagle Scouts.
Looking beyond the physical was another matter. Whatever points he picked up in the looks category were far outweighed by his non-physical deficits. The man obviously bought into that whole bullshit warrior-Zen thing. Ann could see it in everything about him, from his body language to the starched creases in his uniform. He was a card carrying member of the ‘Defenders of Freedom Club,’ just like Ann’s father had been.
She caught herself and mentally shifted gears before she could say anything stupid. This was not the time for a drive down that particular stretch of Memory Lane. “Where’s Sheldon?” she asked.
The captain shifted his gaze to the laptop screen. “I believe he’s up in the wardroom, talking to your company on the satellite phone. COMPACFLEET is busy signing promissory waivers, to make sure that you guys get paid in case we break your Mouse prototype, or lose it somehow in the rescue attempt.”
Ann nodded and turned back to the laptop.
“You didn’t sig
n on for any of this,” the captain said. “We understand that. You come out here to run some tests, and the Navy shoves a rescue mission in your face. We know you’re not ready, and we know that your equipment isn’t ready either.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “But, right now, your Mouse Mark-I is the only game in town.”
Ann nodded absently. “I understand, Captain.”
“I’m sure you do,” said the captain. “But I’d like to hit one more quick point before you get too far into this.”
Ann looked up and found that he was staring at her again.
“I know you’ll do your best,” he said. “But there are a lot of ways that this operation could go sour. There hadn’t been any communication with the Nereus for hours. The guys on that submarine might already be dead.”
Ann nodded slowly. This was not quite turning into the Go-Navy pep talk she’d been expecting.
“We don’t know what kind of damage that submersible has taken,” the captain said. “They could be flooding, or running out of breathable air. If their electrical system has failed, they could die from hypothermia. The ocean temperature at three thousand feet is just a hair above freezing. Twenty four hours is a long time to go without heat, especially when your only clothes are light duty coveralls.”
He looked back to the laptop screen. “If they had an electrical fire, they might even have burned to death, or died from smoke inhalation.”
Ann rubbed her eyes and blinked several times. “Are you trying to cheer me up, Captain?”
The corners of his mouth turned up—the ghost of a rueful smile. “No. I’m just telling you that the odds of success are not in our favor. Everyone in the chain of command knows that. The Navy will take the heat if things don’t work out. You’re not going to be left holding the bag.”