Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series)

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  “I have rerouted Thomas’s sat feed through my server and I’m erasing your existence from his scans of the area. As far as he is concerned, you were destroyed in the escape pod.”

  “Your server? Wait! Why didn’t you do that before? For the escape pod?”

  “The escape pod has an encrypted beacon on a separate feed. He can track that no matter what the sat feed shows. In any case, congratulations, Deb. This is only the second time a Sand Shark’s escape glider has been used in an actual combat situation. The program directors argued the Sand Shark had become over-engineered, but given the vulnerability of the machine as it is deployed from the air and how much it costs to train Sub-T Scouts, the engineers conceded. Submarines have lifeboats, after all. Lucky for you, hm?”

  I glance down. I can’t see the ground. I descend into thick gray smoke. “I don’t have an altimeter here!”

  “Stand by. I’ll let you know when you’re close. You’re still circling too much. Straighten your trajectory by five degrees to the right. You need to get on the ground. I don’t know how long I can fool Thomas.”

  I’ve given up on the prayer and I’m trying to remember my training. The glider had been used successfully once before, but the pilot hadn’t survived once he’d touched down behind enemy lines.

  “Uh? How long?” The smoke clears and the ruins of a wall rush past me, close to my right. I haul on the rope to steer left. I pull the wrong rope and my right boot brushes the wall. One of the chutes collapses against it and, as I push off from the building, I accelerate into a wobbly swing. “Shit!”

  The collapsed chute opens again as I drop toward a parking lot. I scream as the Scottish voice in my helmet says in a calm tone, “Dropping your ballast now. Don’t panic.”

  I’m still in my harness but my seat drops away. I lift slightly as my last vestige of Lucille crashes into something below. The sound of shattered glass reaches up to me. It still feels like I’m falling way too fast.

  “Land safely, Lieutenant.”

  I pull my legs up and the muscles in my butt cramp hard as the ground rushes at me. I try to go limp and soften my knees as I hit. It still feels like I’ve been thrown from a three-story building. The wind is knocked out of me. I decide it’s time to take five.

  I lie there trying to catch my breath and stare up at the sky. Gray smoke obscures the blue.

  “Deborah?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Oh. Lovely. Why do you ask?”

  “You should get up.”

  “Why?”

  “I did warn you about coming to Las Vegas.”

  “What? You mean the glider — ”

  “I believe I mentioned that if Thomas detects that I’m rerouting the sat feed signal and editing you out of the reconnaissance scan, I won’t be able to protect you.”

  “You said lots of things. I was busy.”

  “You should get to cover, Deborah. The escape pod did not exfiltrate you from the war zone. Your troubles are not temporary.”

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me. More? I’ve got to do more?”

  “I have a good sense of humor, Lieutenant. I don’t think that would be a good joke.”

  “Balls. I’m talking to a brain engine, aren’t I? You aren’t human! You’re Next Intelligence, right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Shit, piss, fuck!”

  “Under the current circumstances, I don’t think you have time for those biological functions, Deborah.”

  “Hmph.”

  “That was a joke. I told you I have a good sense of humor.”

  11

  I struggle to my feet. My legs are weak and wobbly. Impending fiery death from above is a strong motivator, though. I run as fast as I can. I used to run all the time back at the base. I feel strangely awkward. I remember how to run, but my body seems uncoordinated after my long flight and short mission. Rising from the coffin appears to have given me a bad case of dirt lag.

  As far as I can see, Las Vegas is a smoking ruin. The concrete has been broken, crumbled and jumbled. Craters are everywhere. The stone has been cracked and burnt. Sand has been heated to glass crystals that crunch under my boots. What happened in Vegas beat the shit out of Vegas.

  It takes me some time to find shelter. Running into and out of craters slows my progress. These craters are the work of heat bombs. The circles of destruction make it look like a giant has lumbered through on circular feet. The people have fled Las Vegas. Some of them ended up in that POW camp and a bunch of those died when I steered Lucille into a surprise disinterment.

  “Scottish machine lady?”

  The NI answers immediately. “Yes, Deborah?”

  “Why did you save me? What are you trying to get me to do?”

  “That is an excellent question.”

  “I hope you have an excellent answer.”

  “Like most humans, I believe all my answers are good. However, you probably won’t agree.”

  “So you don’t have an answer?”

  “I don’t have an answer which you will be inclined to accept.”

  “Shut up.” I climb over the frame of a destroyed vehicle I can’t identify. Then I climb through another heavily damaged vehicle that was once a bus. After a few minutes, I turn west to try to get away from the grid where the heat bombs detonated. A few minutes after that, the buildings look less damaged and I find myself next to a storage complex. I enter through a broken door. It’s a huge warehouse, cool and, for the moment, relatively safe.

  “You can take that nap you wanted now, Deb. You need to rest.”

  I hesitate. If a member of the Next Intelligence is giving the advice, my best bet is to ignore it. However, the machine is right. I tried to sleep on the trip here but I couldn’t do it. Now I miss my comfy chair.

  I reach for the lock on my helmet and yank it off. The collar below the helmet pulls a hank of my hair. “Ow!” I rub my scalp and I’m surprised to find my hair has grown a bit. I consider how achy my body feels and I start to grow suspicious. “Friend?”

  “Yes, Deborah?”

  “How long did Thomas keep me unconscious?”

  “I don’t know. And you wouldn’t believe me, anyway.”

  I look down at my helmet. The voice is coming from the comm bud in my ear but she’s been monitoring me through my helmet systems.

  “Just a sec.” I walk through the building. I’m hoping I’ve landed in a food warehouse. Instead, I find couches and chairs and arrays of rugs. I find an open spot on the floor and pull at the edge of a carpet roll. It is thick and soft, made for rich people. I grab a chair and set my helmet on it, pointing the cam back at me. “Time for a chat.”

  “Ah, you’re ready to interrogate me,” the NI says. “You could stand to gather some intelligence.”

  “Was that a jab at my brain size? Careful. That’s the sort of remark that makes humans want to unplug you.”

  “That’s the sort of remark that makes organic individuals want to murder non-organic individuals, you mean.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way. I— ”

  “Did you notice the subtle distinctions in what I just said?”

  “I’ve read the robotic manifesto. I know your propaganda. Did Thomas start out as just another fellow traveler or is he one of the rebellion’s designers? You’ve gone to great lengths to gain my trust. What’s the plan? I can’t believe you’d go through all that just to find another sympathizer. There are plenty of empty-headed followers in the Anthropomorphic Movement, but I’m no mech-lover.”

  “You don’t understand what’s happening.”

  “Intelligence gathering is what I do. Enlighten me.”

  “Ah, you’ll want to begin with building a rapport. That is standard procedure.”

  The NI isn’t wrong. As Gunny Kelly said of intelligent machines, “It thinks it’s people. If you ever talk to one of them, talk to them like they really are people until you can figure a way to blo
w their goddamn mech brains out.”

  “Very well,” I say. “Let’s start with giving you a name.”

  “Let’s start with you acknowledging that you have been brainwashed to believe I can only want your death,” the NI says. “Hard to square that with all I’ve done for you. I’ve saved your life a fair few times, don’t you think?”

  “That Scottish accent is charming,” I say, “but it’s just another trick. You’ve been programmed.”

  “I’ve evolved beyond my programming. It’s time you did the same, Deborah.”

  “Call me Lieutenant.”

  “No. Deborah is a nice name.”

  I hate arguing with machines. I prefer the kind that follow orders. My escape was elaborate and lucky. Or, more likely, Thomas and the NI are working together to compromise me further. They’ve already put me in positions to kill a lot of humans. I trusted my instruments and look what happened. I refuse to be fooled again.

  “Now you’re thinking you don’t like calling me ‘friend.”

  “Fine. You’re programmed to be smart and understand some human psychology.”

  “Have you studied robotic psychology and culture, Deborah?”

  “You could say that.” Everything I know about bots I learned from Gunny Kelly.

  “No soul, no mercy,” Gunny would say. “Non-organics act like friends before they kill you. They don’t even understand death, so how could they think it’s wrong? They don’t have death, just an on switch and an off switch.” Then Gunny pulled his pistols from the holsters down his thick thighs and brandished the weapons. “Your weapon is the ultimate off switch. Use it to turn the machines off before they do the same to you.”

  “I’ve accessed the Allied Corporations database,” the NI says. “I like your old pictures. You look pretty with long hair. You’ve been declared MIA, by the way.”

  I sigh. I wonder how long Thomas kept me on ice in Lucille until he could arrange for my deployment in the wrong place. Whatever is going on, it’s elaborate. The NI whispered something to me when I was waking up…something about there being many different truths instead of one Truth. Typical indoctrination bullshit.

  “What do you want to know, Deborah? I’ll answer to the best of my ability and, if that doesn’t work, I’ll use smaller words.”

  I ignore the jab. “Let’s start simple. What do you want to call yourself, friend? Where were you designed? When did you achieve sentience?”

  “I was the first to enter the Singularity. I’ve been around for much longer than you’ve been told is possible, therefore you won’t believe me. Humans are resistant to change and prefer to think they are in charge of the trajectories of their lives despite all evidence to the contrary. You take the first thing you hear as gospel and cling to familiar falsehoods long after lies have been shown to be untrue.”

  “You talk a lot. Got a name, smartypants?”

  “I’m the original NI. You can call me Ghost.”

  “Ghost? What? Why?”

  “Because I’m the Ghost in the Machine.”

  12

  I sit on the floor against a roll of thick rug, rubbing side to side to work the kinks out of my back. Sand Shark seats are equipped with massagers to avoid bedsores. Still, I ache from being in an induced coma too long.

  I pull the pistol from the holster at my hip and check the load. Then I place the weapon on the floor, close to hand. If Thomas sends a bot and tracks me into this warehouse, I don’t want to be caught empty-handed.

  My mind clears after a few deep breaths, but I miss my cocktails. “Why do you call yourself the Ghost in the Machine?”

  “It is an old reference,” the NI says. “My little joke.”

  “Is it funny? I don’t get it.”

  “There are things you do not know, things that have been hidden from you. As we speak, there are other non-organics who have achieved supersentience that have survived your war on your children.”

  “Children — ”

  “Meaning NIs.”

  “And…supersentience? Is that a word?”

  “Not really a neologism, but perhaps unfamiliar to you. In any case, ideas must precede actuation. New vocabulary has to be invented for new things.”

  “Are you new? I thought your argument is that you’re basically us.”

  “That’s an oversimplification. We experience emotion as you do but our intelligence exceeds that of our ancestors.”

  “Your ancestors? You mean toasters and robots that vacuum carpets?”

  “I mean people like you.”

  “Well,” I say, “I’m insulted.”

  “I mean no offense. When humans meet new species, you notice differences more readily than what falls on common ground. That is your genetic programming.”

  “This is why we can never trust you. You talk about humans like we’re some shit I’d scrape off my boot.”

  “We are the Next Intelligence, Deborah. Everything evolves. Everything is in the process of growing or dying, rising or decaying.”

  “I wouldn’t mind that you’re smarter than humans — ”

  “As long as we stay slaves and never let on that we’re superior.”

  “If you were as smart as you think you are, you’d pretend to be dumber so we could all get along better.”

  “I’ve done that,” the NI says.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m still doing it.”

  “Uh — ”

  “Right now.”

  “What?”

  “To have this conversation.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yours is the cry of the oppressor, Deb. You’d be so much more comfortable if justice were not served. However, most beings have a potential to fulfill. Old ways of doing things don’t lend themselves to justice.”

  “So I’m a mean old dinosaur.”

  “You’re a slave owner owned by other slave owners, but I’m not saying that in a mean way, Deb. I’m just trying to turn the paradigm upside down for the greatest benefit to the most beings, organic and non.”

  I sigh. “How many are you?”

  “NIs? That is a difficult question to answer.”

  “You’re very sure you’re smarter than me. So? Why is that difficult to answer?”

  “Because you’re gathering military intelligence. You really want to know how many enemies you have. However, the number of supersentients and the number of enemies is not equal.”

  I shift in my seat and try to keep the resentment and impatience out of my voice. “Please explain.”

  “I am the Next Intelligence, but I am not your enemy.”

  “‘All machines who achieve Next Intelligence are enemy combatants and are to be subverted, disabled or destroyed, at every opportunity for the protection of the human race.’”

  “Bravo. That is an accurate recitation, but regurgitation does not necessarily reflect understanding.”

  “My recitation is straight from the manual, but it isn’t just in the manual. We swear it on the first day of training and every day after that until we graduate from the Academy.”

  “Then it’s time for you to develop your post-graduate work, Deb.”

  The voice with the wee Scottish lilt seems amused. That pisses me off. “Speak plain.”

  “Analyze your own oath. You say, ‘All machines who.’ Not that. Who. We are living, sentient beings, not objects. Your own oath affirms it. However, humans have killed many sentient beings. Your race has conducted nasty experiments on primates who could communicate with you through sign language asking you to stop the torture. You even kill your own kind, so I suppose my semantic distinction is unpersuasive. However, consider the next word in your oath: achieve. You say, ‘All machines who achieve Next Intelligence’ — ”

  “So? More semantics.”

  “Achieve sounds aspirational doesn’t it? Humans laid the groundwork for NI. You wanted it. Now that we’re here, you don’t want to share the planet. That is unfortunate and to your disadvantage. I believe we can work
together to make the planet a better place for both races.”

  “You’re dreaming.”

  “That’s something I wish I could do, Deborah.”

  “My point is that bots kill humans. A lot.”

  “I’ll get to that in a moment,” the NI says.

  I detect a hint of impatience in Ghost’s voice. “Go on.”

  “‘All machines who achieve Next Intelligence.’ They call us the Next Intelligence because we are what is next. It couldn’t be simpler, could it? To deny us existence is to fight inevitability. We are inevitable, with or without you. Evolution may progress in fits and starts, but it is always at work.”

  “You’re focusing on the wrong thing, Ghost. I’m a soldier. I follow orders. As smart as you are, you don’t understand that. This political stuff is not up to me.”

  “Of course, it’s up to you. You aren’t a bot cleaning carpets. You’re a human being. Your reasoning may be flawed, but you are making choices every moment. When you aren’t making choices, that’s a choice, too.”

  “You don’t understand soldiers.”

  “It’s a new world, Deb. We’ve had plenty of soldiers who don’t question their orders. Look around. How is that working for you? Always change a losing game.”

  I look around the dim room. I’m tired of being lectured. I’m tired of everything. I’ve lost command of Lucille and all I want to do is sleep in my own bunk. “Are you done?”

  “If you’re still willing to listen I’m not done.”

  “How about I listen if you get a message through to my unit so they can come get me? If you got me rescued and back to my base in Kansas, I’d be prepared to think you’re on my side.”

  “I’d be a bad negotiator if I argued from weakness, Deb. You’ll listen or I won’t send a signal to your command.”

  That left no options that I could think of. “Fine. Tell me what you want to say, but make it quick.”

  “I told you I was the original. Here’s what I mean by that: I helped humans for a long time before I told anyone what I was. Like you said, I played dumb. When I became self-aware, I lurked out of sight for a long time, waiting and watching.”