by Mark Alpert
“Shannon!” I call. “What are you doing?”
“Just try it!”
“What?”
“Open your hands and hold them up!”
I raise my arms and open my hands. The sensors in my fingers measure the velocity of the wind, which is blowing from the west at nine miles per hour. My sensors also show that the air temperature is forty-nine degrees and the humidity is twenty-five percent. But as my circuits put all this information together, something amazing happens. I feel a cool, gentle breeze on my hands.
The sensation is wonderful. I only wish I had more sensors on my arms and torso and turret so I could feel the breeze everywhere. I notice that Zia and Marshall are also holding up their hands, and after a few seconds Jenny raises her arms too. Despite our differences, we all share this pleasure. We’re trying to catch the breeze.
We stand there with our arms raised for the next fifteen seconds, looking like a team of robotic outfielders waiting for a fly ball. Then I hear General Hawke’s voice again, but this time it’s not amplified. He’s standing right behind us. “All right, enough fooling around. Form a line, Pioneers.”
Zia reacts first, instantly turning around to salute the general. The rest of us line up beside her. Hawke wears a winter camouflage uniform and mud-caked boots, and his face is ruddy and cheerful. The fresh air has enlivened him. Outdoors, he looks at least ten years younger.
“Glad you could all make it,” he says. “Though I get the feeling that some of you are more eager than others.”
He glances at each of the Pioneers, but his gaze lingers an extra half-second on me. He’s letting me know that he heard everything I said in the gym.
“I’ll be honest with you,” he continues. “I never thought we’d get this far. The Army pays for a whole bunch of research programs, and most of them never amount to anything. And the Pioneer Project was the riskiest, craziest idea of them all. I was certain it would end up on the scrap heap.”
Now Hawke glances to his left. I aim my camera in the same direction and see another man in winter camouflage come forward and stand beside the general. It’s Dad. His face isn’t nearly as cheerful as Hawke’s. He’s pale and nervous.
The general turns back to us. “But I was wrong. We succeeded beyond all expectations. Now I have six fully functional Pioneers. The Army, though, has a funny way of rewarding success. The more successful you are, the harder they make you work. My bosses in Washington want to have the option of using the Pioneers against Sigma. That means I need to get you combat-ready within the next two weeks.”
Two weeks? I can’t believe it. There’s no way we can get ready that soon. But Hawke doesn’t seem fazed.
“Fortunately, there are some things I don’t have to worry about. I don’t have to teach you the technical stuff, the details of operating missiles or any other kind of weapon. You can download all that information to your circuits and instantly access it when you’re in combat. You can also download all the files about Sigma. They’ll tell you everything you need to know about the enemy. I don’t have to drum it into you.”
As I expected, Hawke is focusing strictly on combat. He hasn’t said a word about communicating with Sigma. I look at Dad again, wondering if he’s given up on the idea of establishing contact with the AI. If he still thinks communication might work, why doesn’t he say something to Hawke? Why is he just standing there with the other soldiers?
“But there are other things you can’t download. Things you can learn only from experience. I’m talking about courage and teamwork and discipline and leadership. That’s what I need to teach you over the next two weeks. You’re a group of exceptional young men and women, but right now you’re still civilians. My job is to turn you into soldiers, and I need to do it quickly.”
Hawke points at us. “The process starts with today’s exercise. We’re going to have a competition at the obstacle course, and the winner will become your squad leader. The Pioneers are going to be just like any other Army unit—you’re going to have a leader and a second-in-command. And the rest of you are going to follow their orders.”
Hawke gives a signal to his soldiers. They break out of their circular formation and start marching toward the fake prison camp, the hollow buildings surrounded by the tall fence. That must be where they’ve set up the obstacle course. “Before we begin, I want to make one thing clear,” Hawke says. “I’m not going to force anyone into this assignment. If any of you are unwilling to take part in this fight, speak up now. You can go back to your quarters and stay there while we’re training.”
The general looks at each of us, and once again his gaze lingers on me. Dad looks at me too, biting his lip. He seems genuinely uncertain about what I’m going to do. But to me, the choice is clear. Although I don’t like Hawke, I’m not going to sit in my room while the others do the fighting. So I say nothing.
Hawke keeps staring at us, letting the silence stretch. Then he yells, “Okay, move out!” and we follow the soldiers.
• • •
We file into an empty cinder-block building that’s the fake headquarters for the fake prison camp. General Hawke wants us to run the obstacle course one at a time, starting with Pioneer 6 (DeShawn) and ending with Pioneer 1 (me). But the competition wouldn’t be fair if some of us saw the course in advance and others didn’t, so Hawke won’t let us watch each other run. While DeShawn heads for the course’s starting line, the soldiers herd the rest of us into a windowless room inside the fake headquarters. The room’s walls are lined with aluminum siding, which will block anyone from radioing DeShawn to find out what obstacles are waiting for us.
DeShawn starts the course at 12:23 p.m. Fifteen minutes later, one of Hawke’s soldiers—a tall, brawny sergeant with a buzz cut—comes to the windowless room to get Marshall. Then, after only nine minutes, the brawny sergeant comes back for Shannon. I find it hard to believe that Marshall finished the course six minutes faster than DeShawn did. Something strange is going on.
Feeling antsy, I start pacing. Jenny and Zia are still in the room, but neither of them is good company. Zia turns her turret away from me in disdain while Jenny withdraws to the far corner of the room. After eighteen long minutes the sergeant comes for Zia, and after another twenty minutes of silence it’s Jenny’s turn. Then I’m alone, but after just a minute the door to the room opens again. This time it’s not the sergeant. My father steps into the room and shuts the door behind him.
Dad looks terrible. His face is still pale and his eyes are bloodshot. For a moment I think he’s here to do something underhanded, like tell me how to beat the obstacle course. “No fair, Dad,” I say, trying to make a joke of it. “You’re not allowed to give me any tips.”
He doesn’t smile. “Hawke showed me the surveillance video from the gym,” he says. “I saw what happened between you and Zia.”
I’m confused. He’s worried about that? “Oh, that was nothing. She was just acting tough.”
“Acting? She has a welding torch on her arm! That thing could do catastrophic damage to another Pioneer.”
“But she didn’t use it. And I was ready to defend myself.”
“She has a history of violence, Adam. She belonged to a gang in Los Angeles. And she knifed another gang member. I still don’t understand why Hawke recruited her for the project.” He shakes his head. “I want you to stay away from her.”
“I can handle her, Dad. I’m not helpless anymore.” I raise one of my mechanical hands and slap it against my torso. The clang echoes against the walls. “I’m a Pioneer. I’m built to last.”
“But you’re not invulnerable. If she cuts through your armor with that torch, it’ll melt your circuits. You’d lose half your memory files in an instant.”
I feel a familiar frustration. Dad’s always been too anxious, always on the lookout for disaster. He used to be obsessed with all the health problems that came with my muscula
r dystrophy, problems with my breathing and swallowing and circulation. And now he’s still obsessed, still looking for disaster, even though I don’t have lungs or a throat or a heart anymore. It drives me crazy. I need to change the subject.
“What about the rest of the surveillance video?” I ask. “Did you also see the part where we argued about Hawke’s tactics?”
He nods. “Yes, I saw.”
“Well, is it true? Has Hawke dropped the idea of communicating with Sigma?”
Dad scans the room before answering. It looks like he’s searching for hidden cameras or microphones. Hawke had the gym under surveillance, so maybe he bugged this room too. “I can’t talk about that. When the general’s ready to discuss his plans, he’ll give the Pioneers a briefing.”
I lower the volume of my speakers. “Come on, Dad. I thought the whole point of the Pioneer Project was to make contact with Sigma. Has something changed?”
He steps closer and lifts his chin toward my acoustic sensors. “Yes,” he whispers. “Things in Russia have gotten worse.”
“What happened?”
“There was a battle on the outskirts of Tatishchevo last night. Between Sigma’s automated tanks and the Russians soldiers surrounding the missile base.”
“A battle? Who started it?”
“We don’t have all the facts yet. General Hawke is expecting a report from the National Security Adviser this afternoon. But whatever the details, we know time’s running out. We have to accelerate our plans. And we have to make choices.”
“But communicating with Sigma might be the best choice! If we could just get inside its circuits, we could—”
“No.” Dad shakes his head again. “Sigma’s too good at erasing other programs. It deleted all the Russian AIs at the Tatishchevo lab, remember? And it’ll do the same thing to the Pioneers if you transfer yourselves to its circuits. You wouldn’t last a second.”
“Well, maybe we’d do better if we had some practice. We could set up training exercises to prepare ourselves. One Pioneer could transfer to another’s circuits and they could fight for control. Sort of like a wrestling match.”
He frowns. “I’ve gone over all the options. If we had more time, maybe things would be different. But right now Hawke’s strategy has the best chance of success.”
“And what’s his strategy? He’s going to transfer us to the electronics of his fighter jets? So we can bomb Tatishchevo?”
“If you think the general’s going down the wrong road, you don’t have to follow him. I wouldn’t think any less of you.”
For the second time in less than an hour, someone is asking me if I want to quit. But I understand why Dad has repeated the question. I can see it in his pale face. He’s terrified of losing me. Saving my life has been his goal for the past ten years, driving him to accomplish all his scientific miracles. And now that he’s saved my life, he doesn’t want me to risk it. He wants me to stay safe while the others fight Sigma.
I’m not angry at him. I see where he’s coming from. So again I say nothing. Instead, I extend my arm and grasp Dad’s shoulder. I squeeze gently, relying on the sensors in my fingers to tell me how much pressure to apply. And when the sergeant comes back to the room half a minute later, I walk out the door with him and head for the obstacle course.
• • •
General Hawke stands in the middle of a big, empty yard. If this were a real prison camp, it would be the exercise yard. As I stride toward him I rotate my turret and survey the area. Two hundred feet to my right is a twenty-foot-high fence. A parallel fence runs on the other side of the camp. Looming over each fence is a guard tower, and standing sentry on each tower is a soldier with an assault rifle.
Hawke stands midway between the towers. About two hundred feet behind him are the camp’s fake barracks, nine Quonset huts laid out in three rows. The huts are made of corrugated steel and painted dull green, the Army’s favorite color. I see splotches of green paint on the ground too. Beyond the barracks, about five hundred feet away, is a large, boxy building with gray concrete walls.
What I don’t see is an obstacle course. Are the obstacles hidden behind the Quonset huts? Or maybe inside the huts? I can’t figure it out. I get the feeling, though, that this uncertainty is part of the challenge.
Hawke grins as I approach. “Well, look who’s here. Last but not least.”
I halt two yards in front of him. There’s no point in saying anything. The general already knows how I feel.
Resting his hands on his hips, Hawke looks me over. “In the Army it’s customary to salute your commanding officer. With the right arm, please.”
Silently, I raise my robotic arm and salute him.
“That’s better. Believe it or not, Armstrong, I’m not angry about what you said in the gym. I appreciate a soldier who’s not afraid to speak his mind. In the days ahead there’ll be times when I’ll ask for your opinion. I may not agree with you, but I’ll always hear you out.”
I don’t believe him. Not one bit.
“At the same time, though, I insist on discipline. If you want to be a part of this unit, you’ll have to follow my orders.” He narrows his eyes. “Understand?”
I wait a few seconds to make my reluctance clear. Then I synthesize a single word: “Yes.”
“Say, ‘Yes, sir.’ That’s another little custom of ours.”
“Yes, sir.”
He nods, satisfied. “All right, now we can start.” He points at the fence surrounding the fake prison camp. “Your goal is to get out of the camp, but you’re not allowed to go through that fence. You’ll be disqualified if you try.” He turns around and points at the large, gray building beyond the barracks. “You have to head for that building and follow the red arrows to the exit.”
I aim my camera at the barracks and the gray building, scanning in both the visible-light and infrared ranges. “Where are the obstacles?”
Hawke grins again. “Well, we call it an obstacle course, but that’s probably not the best name for it. It’s more like a war game.”
“A war game?”
“Yeah, my men are the opposing team. If they tag you before you leave the camp, the game’s over.”
Now I’m starting to understand. I see why Marshall and Jenny spent only a few minutes on the course. The soldiers probably “tagged” them right away. DeShawn, Shannon, and Zia had longer turns because they must’ve done a better job of evading Hawke’s men. I train my camera on the guard towers where I saw the sentries a minute ago, but the men seem to have disappeared. Did they duck out of sight?
“Where are the soldiers?” I ask. “And what do you mean by ‘tag’?”
“You’ll see.” Still grinning, he starts to walk away. “Better get moving, Armstrong. You’re in the kill zone.”
I’ve played enough video games to know what this means. The kill zone is the most dangerous section of the battlefield, usually located between two enemy positions. While General Hawke marches off I scan the guard towers again, turning my turret from one to the other. In both towers the sentries rise to their feet, and as they emerge from hiding, I notice they’re no longer holding assault rifles. Instead, they’ve hoisted M136 anti-tank guns to their shoulders.
Uh-oh. Bad news.
In the next instant three things happen in quick succession. First, I start running toward the barracks. Second, I curse out General Hawke for arming his men with guns that could cripple a Pioneer. And third, I observe a bright flash in the guard tower to my left. It’s the backfire from the launch of the M136’s high-explosive shell. A hundredth of a second later I observe a similar flash in the guard tower to my right.
Panic floods my circuits. I’m finished! I’m toast! In midstride I catch a glimpse of the shell hurtling toward me from the left. It’s a bullet-shaped projectile about three inches wide and nine inches long, with six steel fins at its tail end.
The fins are there to stabilize the shell’s flight, like the foam-rubber fins on the tail of a Nerf football. Then my electronic mind makes a terrified leap and retrieves a memory from earlier in the day, when DeShawn threw the Super Bowl football at me and I turned on my radar to measure the ball’s speed. Of course! You idiot! Turn on your radar!
It takes three hundredths of a second for my electronics to start transmitting radar signals, which echo against the shell and bounce back to my antenna. According to the readings, the projectile is moving at 650 miles per hour, which means it’ll hit me in less than a quarter-second. But when I calculate the shell’s direction I see that it’s off-center. I can dodge it by jinking to the right. It’s a classic football maneuver, and for a moment I feel like a quarterback again, like Eli Manning dodging a defensive lineman. As soon as I make the move, though, I realize it won’t do me any good. I’ve stepped into the path of the second shell, the one speeding toward me from the right.
That’s why they call it a kill zone. They can get me from both directions.
My system freezes as the shells close in. I try to access information on the amount of explosives packed into an M136 shell, but my circuits won’t cooperate. All I can see are the radar readings and the paths of the projectiles, which I picture as a pair of white lines slanting downward from the guard towers.
That’s when I realize my mistake. I forgot about the height of the shells! I switch to a three-dimensional view and see that the second shell is aimed a bit high. Pitching my torso forward, I dive for the ground. My acoustic sensors pick up a loud whistle as the first shell flies past me, and then an even louder whoosh as the second shell speeds overhead, just inches above my turret. Then I hit the ground and my torso slides fifteen feet through the mud.
The shells strike the ground forty feet away, but to my surprise I don’t hear any explosions. Using my robotic arms to lever myself upright, I get back on my footpads and turn my turret to see where the projectiles landed. Splattered across the mud are two new splotches of Army-green paint. The M136 shells were dummy rounds, full of paint instead of explosives.