by Jeffrey Ford
In his final campaign, he was blown to pieces by a blast from a beam cannon the Harvang had stolen from his arsenal. An entire regiment of ours was ambushed in Snow Country between the steep walls of an enormous glacier—the Battle of the Ice Chute. His strategies were impossibly complex but all inexorably led to a frontal assault, a stirring charge straight into the mouth of Death. It was a common belief among his troops that who’d ever initially programmed him had never been to war. Only after his defeat did the experts claim his tactics were daft, riddled with hubris spawned by faulty AI. His case became, for a time, a thread of the damning argument that artificial intelligence, merely the human impression of intelligence, was, in reality, artificial ignorance. It was then that robot production moved decidedly toward the organic.
After the Harvang had been routed by reinforcements, and the Corps eventually began burying the remains of those who’d perished in the battle for Snow Country, the general’s head was discovered amid the frozen carnage. When the soldier who found it lifted it up from beneath the stiffened trunk of a human body, the eyes opened, the jaw moved, and the weak, crackling command of “Kill them all!” sputtered forth.
The Corps decided to rebuild him as a museum piece for public relations purposes, but the budget was limited. Most of his parts, discovered strewn across the battlefield, could be salvaged, and a few new ones were fashioned from cheaper materials to replace what was missing. Still, those who rebuilt the general were not the craftsmen his creators had been—techniques had been lost to time. There was no longer the patience in robot design for aping the human. A few sectors of his artificial brain had been damaged, but there wasn’t a technician alive who could repair his intelligence node, a ball of wiring so complex its design had been dubbed “the Knot.”
The Corps used him for fund-raising events and rode him around in an open car at veterans’ parades. The only group that ever paid attention to him, though, was the parents of the sons and daughters who’d died under his command. As it turned out, there were thousands of them. Along a parade route they’d pelt him with old fruit and dog shit, to which he’d calmly respond, “Incoming.”
It didn’t take the Corps long to realize he was a liability, but since he possessed consciousness, though it was man-made, the law disallowed his being simply turned off. Instead, he was retired and set up in a nice apartment at the center of a small town where he drew his sizable pension and history-of-combat bonus.
An inauspicious ending to a historic career, but in the beginning, at the general’s creation, when the Harvang had invaded in the south and were only miles outside of Central City, he was a promising savior. His artificial intelligence was considered a miracle of science, his construction the greatest engineering feat of the human race. And the standard by which all of this was judged was the fact that his face could make seven different expressions. Everyone agreed it was proof of the robot builder’s exemplary art. Before the general, the most that had ever been attempted was three.
The first six of these expressions were slight variations on the theme of “determination.” Righteousness, Willfulness, Obstinacy, Eagerness, and Grimness 1 and 2 were the terms his makers had given them. The facial formation of the six had a lot to do with the area around the mouth, subtly different clenchings of the jaw, a straightness in the lips. The eyes were widened for all six, the nostrils flared. For Grimness 2, steam shot from his ears.
When he wasn’t at war, he switched between Righteousness and Obstinacy. He’d lost Eagerness to a Harvang blade. It was at the Battle of Boolang Crater that the general was cut across the cheek, all the way through to his internal mechanism. After two days of leaking oil through the side of his face, the outer wound healed, but the wiring that caused the fourth expression had been irreparably severed.
There is speculation, based primarily on hearsay, that there was also an eighth expression, one that had not been built into him but that had manifested of its own accord through the self-advancement of the AI. Scientists claimed it highly unlikely, but Ms. Jeranda Blesh claimed she’d seen it. During a three-month leave, his only respite in the entire war, she’d lived with him in a chalet in the Grintun Mountains. A few years before she died of a Harvang venereal disease, she appeared on a late-night television talk show. She was pale and bloated, giddy with alcohol, but she divulged the secrets of her sex life with the general.
She mentioned the smooth chrome member with fins, the spicy oil, the relentless precision of his pistons. “Sometimes, right when things were about to explode,” she said, “he’d make a face I’d never seen any other times. It wasn’t a smile, but more like calm, a moment of peace. It wouldn’t last long, though, ’cause then he’d lose control of everything, shoot a rocket blast out his backside and fly off me into the wall.” The host of the show straightened his tie and said, “That’s what I call ‘drilling out a victory.’ ”
It was the seventh expression that was the general’s secret, though. That certain configuration of his face reserved for combat. It was the reason he was not tricked out with guns or rockets. The general was an excellent killing machine, but how many could he kill alone? Only when he had armies ready to move at his will could he defeat the Harvang. The seventh expression was a look that enchanted his young troops and made them savage extensions of his determination. Outmanned, outgunned, outmaneuvered, outflanked, it didn’t matter. One glance from him and they’d charge, beam rifles blazing, to their inevitable deaths. They’d line up in ranks before a battle and he’d review the troops, focusing that imposing stare on each soldier. It was rare that a young recruit would be unaffected by the seventh expression’s powerful suggestion, understand that the mission at hand was sheer madness, and protest. The general had no time for deserters. With lightning quickness, he’d draw his beam pistol and burn a sudden hole in the complainant’s forehead.
In an old government document, “A Report to the Committee on Oblique Renderings Z-333-678AR,” released since the Harvang war, there was testimony from the general’s creators to the fact that the seventh expression was a blend of the look of a hungry child, the gaze of an angry bull, and the stern countenance of God. The report records that the creators were questioned as to how they came up with the countenance of God, and their famous response was, “We used a mirror.”
There was a single instance when the general employed the seventh expression after the war. It was only a few years ago, the day after it was announced that we would negotiate a treaty with the Harvang and attempt to live in peace and prosperity. He left his apartment and hobbled across the street to the coffee shop on the corner. Once there, he ordered a twenty-four-ounce Magjypt black, and sat in the corner pretending to read the newspaper. Eventually, a girl of sixteen approached him and asked if he was the robot general.
He saluted and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“We’re reading about you in school,” she said.
“Sit down, I’ll tell you anything you need to know.”
She pulled out a chair and sat at his table. Pushing her long brown hair behind her ears, she said, “What about all the killing?”
“Everybody wants to know about the killing,” he said. “They should ask themselves.”
“On the Steppes of Patience, how many Harvang did you, yourself, kill?”
“My internal calculator couldn’t keep up with the slaughter. I’ll just say ‘Many.’ ”
“What was your favorite weapon?” she asked.
“I’m going to show it to you right now,” he said, and his face began changing. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and brought forth a small-caliber ray gun wrapped in a white handkerchief. He laid the weapon on the table, the cloth draped over it. “Pick it up,” he said.
He stared at her and she stared back, and after it was all over, she’d told friends that his blue pupils had begun to spin like pinwheels and his lips rippled. She lifted the gun.
“Put your finger on the trigger,” he said.
She did.
She took aim with both hands, stretching her arms out across the table.
“Now!” he yelled, and it startled her.
She set the gun down, pushed back her chair, and walked away.
It took the general two weeks before he could find someone he could convince to shoot him, and this was only after he offered payment. The seventh expression meant nothing to the man who’d promised to do the job. What he was after, he said, were the three shrunken Harvang heads the general had kept as souvenirs of certain battles. They’d sell for a fortune on the black market. After the deal was struck, the general asked the man, “Did you see that face I had on a little while ago?”
“I think I know what you mean,” said the man.
“How would you describe it?” asked the general.
The man laughed. “I don’t know. That face? You looked like you might have just crapped your pants. Look, your famous expressions, the pride of an era, no one cares about that stuff anymore. Bring me the heads.”
The next night, the general hid the illegal shrunken heads beneath an old overcoat and arrived at the appointed hour at an abandoned pier on the south side of town. The wind was high and the water lapped at the edges of the planks. The man soon appeared. The general removed the string of heads from beneath his coat and threw them at the man’s feet.
“I’ve brought a ray gun for you to use,” said the general, and reached for the weapon in his jacket pocket.
“I brought my own,” said the man and drew out a magnum-class beam pistol. He took careful aim, and the general noticed that the long barrel of the gun was centered on his own throat and not his forehead.
In the instant before the man pulled the trigger, the general’s strategy centers realized that the plot was to sever his head and harvest his intelligence node—the Knot. He lunged, drill bits whirring. The man fired the weapon and the blast beam disintegrated three-quarters of the general’s neck. The internal command had already been given, though, so with head flopping to the side, the robot general charged forward—one drill bit skewered the heart and the other plunged in at the left ear. The man screamed and dropped the gun, and then the general drilled until he himself dropped. When he hit the dock, what was left of his neck snapped and his head came free of his body. It rolled across the planks, perched at the edge for a moment, and then a gust of wind pushed it into the sea.
The general’s body was salvaged and dismantled, its mechanical wizardry deconstructed. From the electric information stored in the ganglia of the robotic wiring system it was discovered that the general’s initial directive was—To Serve the People. As for his head, it should be operational for another thousand years, its pupils spinning, its lips rippling without a moment of peace in the cold darkness beneath the waves. There, the Knot, no doubt out of a programmed impulse for self-preservation, is elaborating intricate dreams of victory.
A Note About “The Seventh Expression of the Robot General”
I’m still not exactly sure why the U.S. became embroiled in a war in Iraq. When I ask people what they think, most can’t figure it out either (some of these friends were even there) and those who have an answer aren’t very convincing. The mission was, at best, murky, and yet thousands of our soldiers were killed, wounded, and traumatized. Billions of dollars were squandered. And the citizens of our country who didn’t have loved ones in harm’s way basically slept through it. I wondered what it was that made the U.S. leap so readily and so blindly into the Grand Guignol of that affair. I know that something about the mystery of mindless war making for its own sake is at the mechanical heart of “The Robot General.” Vigorous flag waving and statements like “If you’re not for us, you’re against us” led us down the garden path into a futile morass. As an American who has some knowledge of the history of America, I like to keep in mind a quote from William Samuel Johnson: “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”
86 Deathdick Road
I had on my good pants, the uncomfortable ones, and was in the car with Lynn. I knew we were going somewhere I didn’t have any interest in going, because I was wearing a tie and jacket. She had on the lemon perfume I’d bought her two Christmases back.
“When was the last time we were out on a date?” she said. She wore a brightly colored shawl, paisley in gold and orange. It came to me that her hair, when I wasn’t noticing, had gotten longer, the way she’d worn it back in college.
“Long time,” I said, and made the turn on 206, heading south. Twilight was giving way to a cool spring night, and we drove with the windows open. “Who told you about this guy?” I asked.
“I saw Theda in the market Wednesday. She and Joe went to see him. She said the guy’s amazing.”
“The Man Who Knew Too Much?” I asked.
“No, he’s the Smartest Man in the World.”
“But, come on, fifty bucks to behold his brilliance . . .” I said and sighed through my nose.
“Don’t be insipid,” she said. “You can ask him anything and he knows the answer.”
“I could stay home and get that on the Internet for free,” I said.
Her smile went to a straight line. Before things could get rotten, I said, “How many questions do you get to ask?” It was all I could think of.
“Everybody gets one question,” she said, staring through the windshield.
“What are you going to ask him?”
“Why you’re such a turd,” she said.
“What did Theda ask him? Two plus two?”
“She asked him if she was ever going to have a kid.”
“It doesn’t take the smartest man in the world to answer that one,” I said. “She’s fifty if she’s a day.”
“He told her, ‘No,’ but after he gave his answer, she said, he got up from his throne and walked over to her table. He shook hands with Joe, and then leaning over Theda, the smartest man in the world cupped her left breast with his right hand and whispered, ‘Know this.’ She said she felt a spark inside her that went straight to her brain and exploded—that’s what she said. She started crying, the audience clapped, the guy returned to his throne and took the next question.”
“Know what?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Lynn and laughed.
We drove on, listening to the radio, neither of us saying much except for me wondering aloud if there was going to be any booze involved.
Lynn gave a curt “No,” and then said, “Okay, you have to slow down here. We have to look for a dirt road, going into the trees up on the left.”
“What’s the address?” I asked, easing down on the brake.
She lifted a piece of paper off her lap and unfolded it quickly. Turning on the overhead light, she read, “Eighty-six Deathdick Road.”
Suddenly I was almost past the entrance in the trees. I slammed on the brakes. There was no other traffic behind us, so I backed up a little and made the turn.
“Okay, look for Deathdick,” she said.
“Are you kidding? Deathdick?” I said. I didn’t see any streets, just the dirt road ahead, winding through the woods, lit by my headlights.
“The place is called Mullions,” she said.
I looked over at Lynn, and her hair was glowing. When I looked back at the road, we were driving on asphalt through a posh suburban neighborhood of McMansions and landscaped lawns. Up ahead, I saw a lot of cars parked along the street on both sides.
“I guess that’s it,” I said.
“But which house?” asked Lynn.
I slowed way down and crept to the end of the car line on the right-hand curb. We got out and I joined her on the sidewalk. Lynn pointed to the front lawn two doors down, at a bright tube of violet neon twisted into the name MULLIONS.
“Is this place legal?” I asked.
“I guess so,” she said.
We were met at the front door by a thin woman on the down side of sixty. She wasn’t fooling anyone
with the surgical cinching of her face. “Millions to Mullions,” she said. “I’m Jenny. I hope you’re ready for some answers tonight.” She flashed us a smile of giant teeth and held out her hand, palm up.
Lynn dug through her purse and retrieved our fifty. Once Jenny had it in her hand, she said, “Ask well,” and then stepped aside as we passed into the living room.
Once we were out of earshot, Lynn said, “What was up with her face?”
“It’s better to ask well than look well,” I said.
The living room was packed, people milling around, talking, sitting on the gold-upholstered furniture. A huge bad painting of a garden with a waterfall and a McMansion in the background hung in an ornate frame in the center of the wall, above the couch. The carpet was also gold, and there was a small chandelier above. I looked around, and right off the bat, I spotted some of my neighbors from town.
I pointed out Dornsberry to Lynn and she rolled her eyes and whispered, “Not that douche bag.” I’d never seen this guy at a party in town when he wasn’t lecturing some poor bastard on the finer points of golf. A holy-rolling, cigar-smoking runt. His presence was bad enough, but off to the left of us was Mrs. Krull, laying out for some old guy on the verge of either sleep or death one of her long bummer stories. When her one-legged aunt had succumbed to cancer of the vagina, she’d called and kept me on the phone for an hour with the excruciating details. I’d heard she had a pair of gray parrots on perches in her dining room that crapped willy-nilly and constantly repeated the phrase “Just kill me” in her husband’s voice.
Lynn saw I’d noticed Krull, and she said, “Sorry.”
“This smartest man better be really smart,” I said. Then a woman walked by carrying a small plate with hors d’oeuvres on it. I thought I caught a glimpse of pigs in a blanket. “Eats,” I said.