by Mark Alpert
I focus my camera on the walls, looking for any kind of distraction, but the first thing I see is the Super Bowl poster with the photo of Ryan and me. He was my best friend, my oldest friend. And Sigma killed him. Then I see the poster with the three drawings of Brittany. What does “I HAVE BRITTANY” mean? Did Sigma hire someone to kidnap her? And if she’s still alive, where is she?
This isn’t working. I have to think of something else. I rummage through my memory files, viewing random images from my past, trying like crazy to forget the present. Then I notice a folder that’s separate from the others. These are Zia’s memories, the ones I observed and copied while I was inside her circuits. Aside from the memo that mentioned Ryan and Brittany, I haven’t examined these memories yet, mostly because I don’t want to think about Zia. I assume she’s in her own room right now, armless and legless and under guard just like me. She’s probably just as miserable too, but I don’t feel any sympathy for her. I should delete my copies of her memories, forget about her entirely.
But something’s bothering me, a nagging question. I want to know how Zia found that memo from the National Security Adviser. Hawke swore he didn’t show it to her, but should I believe him? Maybe the answer’s in that folder.
So I dive into Zia’s memories again and retrieve the image of the memo. It’s linked to an unusually large batch of older memories, from more than ten years ago. These are scenes from Zia’s early childhood, blurry and distant and dimly remembered. I see her father, a swarthy man in an Army captain’s uniform. Then I see her mother, a beautiful woman wearing a head scarf. And then, to my surprise, I see a youthful, dark-haired version of General Hawke. He’s standing next to Zia’s parents at a dusty Army base in the desert. All three are smiling and looking down at Zia. Despite the heat and dust, the little girl is happy.
This is a powerful memory, linked to hundreds of Zia’s files, and as I follow the connections I find something even more surprising. One of the links loops back to her recent memories, to a sequence of images showing Hawke’s office in Pioneer Base. In these images, though, the general is absent. Zia is alone in his office with a stolen key in her steel hand. She goes to the file cabinet and unlocks the top drawer. Then she leafs through the papers there, all the memos written by Hawke and the National Security Adviser. But they’re not what she’s looking for. She reads the memos, but she isn’t really interested in me or Ryan or Brittany. She’s looking for information about her own past, not mine. She suspects that Hawke is keeping a secret from her, about his relationship with her mother and father.
I stop viewing Zia’s memories. Something unexpected has happened: I feel sorry for her. It’s a little strange to feel sorry for someone who just tried to kill me, but I can’t help it. Her memories show a different side of her. She’s just as confused as the rest of us.
I’m still thinking about Zia when another unexpected thing happens. My acoustic sensor picks up a low thud that shakes the ceiling of my room. Then a colossal tremor rocks Pioneer Base, tilting the floor and knocking over my torso. The walls buckle and the ceiling caves in, and tons of steel and concrete come raining down.
Oh God! What’s happening?
The collapse is so sudden that the soldiers don’t even have time to scream. A steel beam slams into one of them, and a slab of concrete crushes the other. Another slab plummets toward me, and there’s nothing I can do but watch it fall. My circuits pulse with terror. No, no, NO!
Luckily, the falling concrete glances off my torso. My armor gets dinged and dented, but it protects the control unit and batteries inside.
By the time the debris stops falling, I’m nearly buried in it. My turret is free, though, and I can move my camera. Okay, calm down. Take it one step at a time. All the lights are out, so I switch my camera to infrared, which allows me to view the rubble by its temperature—cold steel, warm concrete, cool plaster. The walls and ceiling of my room are gone, smashed to bits. Now I’m at the bottom of a cavernous space, at least fifty feet high and a hundred feet wide. Panning my camera, I see wreckage everywhere. The soldiers who were guarding me are mashed in the rubble, their bodies already cooling.
Earthquake, I think. It must’ve been an earthquake. Reaching into my memory files, I retrieve a map of Pioneer Base and locate Dad’s room, about a hundred feet from mine. Raising the volume of my speakers as high as it can go, I yell, “DAD! CAN YOU HEAR ME?” then listen carefully for an answering shout.
My acoustic sensor picks up nothing but the sounds of settling debris. Then I get a signal from another instrument in my sensor array, my Geiger counter. It’s reporting high levels of gamma-ray radiation.
No. It’s a mistake. The sensor must be broken.
But when I check the Geiger counter, I find nothing wrong with it. Its readings indicate that gamma rays are streaking through the dusty air at 100 millirems per second. Although this level of radiation won’t affect my circuits, it’s enough to kill a human after a couple of hours of exposure.
It wasn’t an earthquake. It was a nuke.
I desperately scroll through my databases on military hardware, looking for information on nuclear warheads. In less than a millisecond I find a file about RNEP, the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, a warhead designed to destroy underground bunkers. It plunges deep into the earth before exploding, which maximizes the destruction below the ground rather than on the surface. Sigma must’ve launched the nuke at us.
No, no. Please God, no.
“DAD! ANSWER ME! SAY SOMETHING!”
My acoustic sensor detects a few distant sounds—water flowing from broken pipes and trickling through the rubble—but no voices. Not a moan, not a whisper. Pioneer Base is lifeless. The explosion killed everyone.
“SAY SOMETHING! PLEASE!”
Then I hear someone coughing. It’s a feeble noise, but over the next few seconds it gets louder. It sounds like someone just regained consciousness and is now coughing the dust out of his lungs. By measuring the timing of the echoes, my sensors determine the position of the cougher: about seventy feet to my left, near the edge of the cavernous space. I point my camera in that direction and catch a glimpse of a warm body lying in the rubble. After another few seconds he stops coughing and speaks.
“Help. My legs. They’re bleeding.”
The voice is weak but I recognize it. It belongs to one of Hawke’s soldiers, Corporal Williams. He’s the guy who escorted me to Pioneer Base the first time I came to Colorado.
I’m glad he’s alive, but I was hoping for my father.
“They’re bleeding bad. I need a medic.” The corporal’s voice rises. “I need a medic! Is anyone there?”
If I had my arms and legs I could help the man. I could pull him out of the rubble and maybe carry him to safety. In my present state, though, all I can do is talk to the guy, which is pretty useless. So maybe it’s better that I didn’t hear Dad’s voice. I wouldn’t be able to help him either.
I’m about to synthesize a few comforting words—Don’t worry, help is on the way—but before I get the chance, I hear a crash above us. At first I think it’s another chunk of debris falling, but then I hear a barrage of hammer blows: Bang, Bang, Bang. That’s followed by a high-pitched metallic snap, like the sound of a crowbar prying something loose. A burst of hope rushes through my circuits—help really is on the way! A team of rescuers must be coming down from the upper floors of Pioneer Base, carving a path through the wreckage.
I point my camera upward, training it on the spot where the noises are coming from. It’s a jagged concrete ledge that used to be part of Level Four, three floors above us. According to my map of Pioneer Base, the ledge is near Stairway B, an emergency exit that goes up to the surface. After a while I see movement on the ledge, something shoving aside the hunks of steel and concrete in its path. Then my camera views the unmistakable silhouette of a Pioneer.
The robot turns its turret, scanning the c
avernous space, clearly looking for a way down to the rubble-strewn bottom. It must be Zia. Who else could it be? Maybe Hawke didn’t remove her arms and legs. After several seconds the robot strides toward a huge pile of wreckage that slopes down from the ledge. It extends its arms toward a twisted steel beam jutting from the pile. The Pioneer grips the beam with both its mechanical hands and begins scuttling downward, bracing its footpads on the shifting mountain of debris. As it descends, I see the number stamped on its torso. It’s not 3, Zia’s number. It’s 6A.
I’m confused. This is DeShawn’s evil twin, the spare Pioneer usually stored in his room. But DeShawn is on the plane to Russia, along with Shannon, Jenny, and Marshall. So who the heck is inside Pioneer 6A? Did Zia transfer herself to DeShawn’s twin?
The robot reaches the bottom of the rubble pile, its footpads stomping the chunks of concrete. At the same time, Corporal Williams starts shouting. He can’t see a thing in the darkness, but he can hear the noise. “Over here!” he yells. “I’m over here!”
Pioneer 6A strides toward him. The robot stops beside Williams and tilts its torso forward so it can point its camera at the injured soldier. For the next few seconds it just stares at Williams. Maybe it’s examining the man’s injuries, trying to figure out the best way to carry him. Or maybe not. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this.
“What are you waiting for?” Williams shouts. “I’m bleeding! I need a medic!”
The robot extends one of its arms toward the corporal. Then it clenches its steel hand into a fist and smashes the man’s skull.
The horror is so intense that it overwhelms my electronics, cutting off all the signals from my sensors. For a couple of seconds I can’t see or hear a thing. By the time my sensors come back online, Pioneer 6A is retracting its hand. Its steel fingers are coated with blood. Then the robot turns its turret and scans the surrounding area, using its infrared camera to look for other warm bodies.
It’s not Zia. She may be psycho, but she wouldn’t kill anyone like that.
It’s Sigma.
Pioneer 6A strides through the debris, moving toward the center of the cavernous space. At first I can’t understand how Sigma is controlling the Pioneer. I know the AI has communications satellites, but how can its signals reach so far underground? Only one explanation makes sense: Sigma must’ve learned the same trick DeShawn figured out—how to occupy more than one machine at a time. It sent satellite signals to the T-90 tank on the surface, which would’ve survived the underground explosion because it was on the other side of the basin. Then Sigma steered the T-90 into the blast crater above Pioneer Base and used the tank’s powerful radio to transmit signals through the rubble. Once the signals reached Pioneer 6A, Sigma sent copies of its data to the robot’s circuits.
Sigma’s mind is stretching around the world. It’s balanced between the computers at Tatishchevo Missile Base, the control unit of the T-90, and the electronics inside DeShawn’s evil twin.
Pioneer 6A comes closer, still scanning the area. Within seconds it’s less than fifty feet away from me. Although my torso is covered with debris, my turret is exposed, and the electronics there are warm enough to show up on an infrared scan. Frantic, I turn off my camera, hoping the device cools down quickly. I keep my acoustic sensor on, though—it doesn’t give off much heat—and I hear 6A’s footfalls in the rubble.
The robot marches in a determined way, homing in on its target. Its strides are firm and even, and they’re getting louder. When I analyze the echoes I realize it’s heading straight for me. The Pioneer is forty feet away, then thirty feet. Then twenty. I start to wonder how the robot will trash my circuits. Will it keep pounding on my torso until the steel gives way? Or will it drive a spike through the seams in my armor and peel me open like a can? Either way I won’t feel any physical pain, but the mental anguish is already unbearable. My friends are in danger, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll never see Brittany or Shannon again. Or Dad. Or my mother.
I want to cry out, “No!” and I almost do. But instead I hear someone else’s voice, coming from twenty feet away. It’s another of Hawke’s soldiers. Before the nuke exploded, he was standing guard in the corridor outside my door.
“No, please…don’t hurt me…don’t—”
I hear the sickening crunch of the robot’s fist against the man’s skull. Then I hear the whir of the Pioneer’s motors as it retracts its arm and turns its turret, resuming its search for warm bodies. After a moment it takes a tentative step, then another. Then it marches off to the right, heading for the other end of the cavernous space. When it’s far enough away I turn my camera back on and see the Pioneer barge through a gap in the wreckage and disappear into another section of the ruined base. Within thirty seconds I can no longer hear its footsteps.
I should be relieved, but if anything I feel worse. I know the robot will return. Once it kills all the soldiers, it’ll focus on finishing off the Pioneers. It’ll keep hunting until its batteries run out.
“Oh God,” I whisper, setting my speakers at their lowest volume. “God, help me.”
Then I hear an answer. A whisper comes from the darkness several yards away. But it’s not God. It’s my father.
“I’m coming, Adam.”
He crawls toward me, emerging from a hiding place under a concrete slab. He’s wearing a pair of infrared goggles, which allow him to see in the dark. His legs are injured, maybe broken, but he grips the rubble with a bloody hand and pulls himself forward. In his other hand he holds a long slender pole.
“Dad! You’re alive!”
With an exhausted grunt, he drags himself next to my turret. His chest is heaving. “You have to…move fast. Get to the surface…before that Pioneer comes back.”
I don’t understand. Dad knows I can’t go anywhere without my arms and legs. “No, Dad, listen. You’re the one who has to leave. There’s a ton of radiation here. I think a nuke hit us.”
“Yes. I think so too.” He lets out another grunt and brushes the bits of debris from my turret. “I couldn’t sleep…so I was wandering the halls…when the explosion happened. And luckily…I was near the supply room.”
“That’s where you got the goggles?”
“Yes. And also this.” He holds up the slender pole, which has a dozen crossbars along its length.
“Wait a second. Is that an antenna?”
Smiling, he inserts the thing into my turret and screws it in. “Now you can transfer…to another Pioneer.”
As soon as he installs the antenna, my wireless functions come back online. It’s amazing, a miracle. My circuits sing with joy. Dad saved me, and now I can save him too. “Okay, go back to your hiding place and wait,” I say. “Once I’m in another robot, I’ll come back here and get you.”
Dad shakes his head. “No, it’s too risky.”
“Too risky? Are you crazy?”
“Don’t worry about me, Adam. Just save yourself.”
I’m about to raise my voice and start arguing when I hear a distant scream. It’s coming from the section of the base where Pioneer 6A went.
“Go back to your hiding place!” I hiss. Then I activate my radio transmitter and start searching for an available Pioneer.
The search isn’t easy. Radio signals don’t travel well underground. Most of the waves from my transmitter bounce off the piles of wreckage surrounding us and ricochet back to my antenna. But there are lots of gaps in the wreckage, and some of the waves are snaking through. I send more power to my transmitter, making the signal as strong as possible, and after several anxious seconds I get a response. My waves have reached a Pioneer whose circuits are unoccupied.
I start the data transfer. Once again I feel the stretching sensation, but this time it’s excruciating. My mind is being strained through a thousand jagged holes. I have to find my way through a maze of debris, my data packets scattered among the fallen beams
and slabs. And because the wreckage obstructs so many of my radio waves, it takes forever to complete the transfer.
Finally, after nearly a minute, my packets reassemble inside my new Pioneer. The first thing I do is turn on my camera and survey the area. I’m standing in a room that’s relatively undamaged. Although the ceiling is gone, three of the walls are still intact. I test my motors by taking a step forward and swinging my arms. My legs work fine but my arms seem oddly heavy. When I train my camera on them, I get a big surprise: there’s a circular saw attached to my left arm and an acetylene torch hanging from my right.
Whoa. Am I inside Zia’s Pioneer?
No, that can’t be right. After Zia attacked me in the gym, Shannon and DeShawn grabbed Pioneer 3 and tore off her torch and saw. But then I remember there’s another robot with the same equipment—Pioneer 3A. That’s where I am, inside Zia’s evil twin.
I get another surprise when I turn on the Pioneer’s acoustic sensor. I hear a loud clang, steel against steel. Then another clang, even louder. The noise is coming from nearby, the room next door. Underneath the ringing blows I hear a familiar synthesized voice shouting the foulest words in the English language. It’s Zia, and she’s furious.
In three strides I step around the intact wall and rush into the neighboring room. Pioneer 6A—the robot controlled by Sigma—stands in the center of the room, its camera turned away from me. The robot looms over two dead soldiers sprawled on the floor and a limbless Pioneer 3 lying on its side. In 6A’s right hand is a thick steel bar, which comes crashing down for a third time against Zia’s torso. The blows have already dented the armor around her circuits, but they haven’t stopped the stream of curses flowing from her speakers. And that’s a lucky thing, because Zia’s voice drowns out the stomping of my footpads as I charge toward Pioneer 6A from behind.