Silicon Uprising

by Conor McCarthy

  Brad grabbed the Super Soaker that they’d mucked around with for half the afternoon and hosed the guy with it. The man yelled, “Motherfucker,” accelerated, and spun the wheels, leaving a cloud of smoke. That meant illegal firmware in the car’s computer to defeat restrictions. Police parked in a side street activated their siren and came out to pursue him.

  Jason smiled at the memory, then checked his watch again. Two minutes late for taking cover. He rode for a sandy area ahead and stopped there.

  He leapt off the bike. Four minutes cooling instead of five would have to do. That left two to cover up.

  Out of the backpack he dumped the covers on the ground and piled up some dirt and sand for the bike.

  He sat and waited, accompanied by the smell of disturbed dirt. What else might they have deployed? A sniffer drone? He chuckled at the idea.

  Four minutes later, he laid down the bike, covered it, and hurled the pile of sand over it.

  He ran over to a smooth patch free of stones, hit the deck, and half curled into a fetal position. He hauled the cover over himself and checked the time. Seconds remained.

  Michael had said to give the satellite a five-minute window. In the early evening it would have been visible, a bright dot following a constant path across the sky. But as Jason lay there near midnight, it was passing through the Earth’s shadow, invisible. He had no reason to cut a peephole and peer at the sky.

  Silence fell, except his own breathing and a faint repeating metal ting as the electric motor cooled. A gentle breeze rustled some dry vegetation.

  His watch ticked over the five-minute mark. He wanted to wait another thirty seconds for safety, but he needed to go.

  Sand thrown off, covers stashed again, a quick drink of water, and away. Atop the next rise he corrected his heading. One hand-span to the left of the light patch.

  The bike accelerated down the slope. For a brief moment, something grabbed his attention in the distance off to the left.

  A shapeless black dot was heading across his path. In a second it descended a distant slope and went out of sight behind a hill.

  Jason skidded the bike to a halt in the next depression and set a frantic pace covering up. The covers weren’t meant to hide anything from close inspection. He gripped the M4 and peered out from under the sheet’s edge.

  The thing had moved with a gait that indicated legs rather than wheels. Its size suggested a large animal.

  The hard, rhythmic thumping of rubber-shod steel hooves grew louder and drifted to his right. As if on cue, its pace slowed.

  Within a few seconds a bull-sized quadruped robot mounted the rise and began pounding its way downward on track to pass only twenty yards away.

  It must have spotted movement earlier, fortunately only through the wide-angle camera on the side of its head. But now its head swung back and forth in a search pattern using the two main high-res cameras.

  Jason gingerly lowered the edge of the cover to close the crack until it became a tiny slit. The clanker’s onboard AI probably lacked the intelligence to detect the camouflaged cover, but if the CMC took special interest in the beast’s uploaded images he stood no chance.

  The machine plodded onward. Dual machine guns protruded from its head. They pointed menacingly at him every time it looked his way.

  He had encountered an accurate simulation of these things in a popular computer game. The beast was covered in thin armor to keep the weight down, but you still needed armor-piercing rounds to stand a good chance against one. It also had a layer of reactive armor tiles that exploded to deflect incoming projectiles, so you had to keep hitting the same place. Either you won before the head aimed at you, or your life ended with the sight of four electronic eyes and a nose made of two flaming gun barrels.

  The monster passed the point on its path that was nearest to Jason. Its head and center cameras swung toward his hiding place once more. He caught a whiff of machine oil and new electronics. The head stopped at the limit of its turning range.

  Not far enough. He now lay behind the high-res cameras’ field of vision.

  He exhaled and realized that he hadn’t breathed since the thing appeared over the hill.

  It stomped its way up the rise he’d just ridden down. As the sound faded in the distance, it accelerated to its original pace.

  Jason uncovered and jumped on the bike again. The whole plan was insane. A desert crawling with clankers, and God knew what patrolled the tracks. But the beast now searched the desert behind him, and that provided a good reason to keep going and at least scope out the tracks. Maybe he even had a shot at planting the charges.

  Jason passed the next fourteen minutes almost in a trance. He set his memories aside and focused his mind on the terrain ahead, determined to cover the distance one rock at a time. The bike rolled on up gentle slopes and down again while his eyes darted around to check every unusual speck in the night-vision image.

  When he neared the top of a low rise, the railway tracks appeared on the other side. Jason braked to a halt.

  As far as he could see, nothing moved. Still, he felt the urge to leave the bike in the depression and return carefully on foot.

  He made a U-turn and rode back down the hill to wait out the next satellite.

  After five minutes hiding under cover again, he left the bike hidden, climbed the slope, and dumped his backpack near the crest. He lay on his belly at the top to survey the area.

  No lights glowed anywhere nearby. Far down the line in both directions, nothing near the tracks caught his attention as unusual.

  Jason looked back the way he’d come. All was still. The cover over the bike blended into the terrain so well that finding it could take some searching.

  He reached into his pack and pulled out a bomb. He weighed the rectangular brick in his hand. The mansion they might have forgiven after a short prison sentence, but this—never. To hell with them. Time to go.

  Up he leapt and charged down the hill.

  He reached the nearest rail and slid his hand under it, holding the magnetic side of the bomb up. When it felt about in the middle of the rail, he raised it up. The magnet made a satisfying clang against the steel. He bent down to peer at the detonator box.

  The light flashed red. Armed. Over to the other rail.

  He got the other bomb into position, hovering under the rail, and glanced along the tracks.

  A light glowed maybe half a mile away, growing steadily larger. An attack drone? If he’d been spotted, the lack of cover made escape impossible.

  He paused, still holding the bomb under the rail. Leave the bombs planted or pull them? He seemed screwed either way. Distract the drone and hope the bombs were never discovered?

  But they would think he was Crimson Unity and search every pebble in the area.

  Now a little nearer, the light began to resolve—not one but two lights traveled along the tracks, one on either side, angled downward at them.

  At least he had the advantage of night vision, so he had no infrared flashlight announcing his presence for a mile around. Fortunately the drones had no beams pointed his way. But they were coming at a fast pace, and if they also scanned the tracks ahead with night vision, he would need to get out of sight fast.

  And there must have been only a minute until the satellite sweep.

  Jason pulled the bomb that still lay in his hand out from under the rail. To get the other one, he planted the side of his face on the gravel to see it. He couldn’t make out the button on the detonator box in the dim green night-vision image.

  He searched with his fingers, wondering how much vibration it took to trigger the bomb.

  At last he found it. The flashing green light sent a wave of elation through him. He pulled the charge off the rail and felt grateful that Michael’s people had securely fastened the magnet to the charge. Leaving it still stuck to the rail was more than he cared to deal with.

  He leapt to his feet and sprinted up the slope.

  At the top, he checked the onco
ming lights again. They had advanced near enough for the night-vision goggles to make a clear image of the source—two drones, three feet off the ground, illuminating the rails at an angle.

  From their positions, they appeared to be searching both sides of the rails and underneath.

  He grabbed the pack and began pulling out the camouflage sheet while running toward the sandy area in the gully. Jason hurled himself to the ground, dragged the cover over, and checked his glowing watch dial.

  A few seconds remained before the satellite sweep.

  A minute later the faint sound of many whirring electric rotors rose up over the hill from the tracks beyond. It passed on by and then the remaining satellite time ticked away.

  He uncovered himself and climbed the slope again.

  Flat against the ground once more, Jason surveyed the scene. The light from the drones moved away in the distance. All was peaceful again, but the drones had plenty of time to sweep again before the train passed at 6:27 a.m.

  Maybe they swept in a regular pattern, but it could change if they stopped to investigate something or recharge. If he knew how long the drones took to return from each direction, he could identify the last sweep before the train.

  He retrieved the cover and returned to the top of the hill to wait for the drones to show.

  He’d miss the rendezvous with Michael, who would wonder what the hell happened to him. Probably assume he was lost. But screw the goons, their drones, and their AI boss. He’d use the buried phone.

  At least no goons had shown up yet.

  The cover was too small to stretch out under, so he lay curled on his side. He managed to remove the stones that dug into him. After a while a stinging pain began in one spot on his hip just as a satellite sweep began. The instant it passed he prepared to roll over.

  At that moment, a brief brightness appeared under the edge of the cover.

  Jason forgot about the pain. With one finger he raised the edge of the cover and focused on the distant light scanning the railway, this time coming from the opposite direction. It was definitely the drones.

  They passed in front of him forty-seven minutes after their last sweep. Now he needed the time from the west to complete the round trip. He settled in again, squirming under the cover to distribute the pains when the satellites weren’t watching.

  Twenty-three anxious minutes passed before the drones cruised by once more. Both ways allowed plenty of time to plant the bombs.

  Two patches of Jason’s skin still ached. To hell with the hard ground. He hauled the cover over to the soft sand, lay down beneath it, and settled in for the long haul.

  Drained of energy, and with the excitement maybe over for a few hours, Jason struggled to keep his eyes open. He set an alarm to wake him later. He drifted off into nightmare images of lying naked in a bed of fencing wire, with tarantulas crawling over it.

  The lone howl of a coyote startled him awake. Alert again, he listened for any sign of it nearby. Nothing stirred for a while, until he heard the faint sound of a rattlesnake. Maybe the coyote had disturbed it, but at least it sounded far away.

  Silence fell, except for something scratching around in another direction. Jason rolled over, felt tired again, and resolved to stay awake by placing a pebble under his ribs and listening for any detectable sound.

  Twelve

  JASON STOOD ON a table in the house he grew up in. Floodwater rose rapidly. None of the doors would open. Elsewhere in the house raiders kicked doors in and smashed valuable goods on the floor.

  Behind one wall a quadruped robot clanked about. How could that room be dry while he had water above his waist? Or did water mean nothing to it? An alarm sounded from somewhere in his own clothing. The noise could bring raiders to torture him, or the clanker might burst through the wall. Madly he searched for the source.

  He awoke in blackness with the alarm still going and something lying over him. A swipe of his cheek against the smooth insulated underside reminded him what it was and where he lay. Hastily he fumbled for the phone and silenced the noise.

  With heavy eyelids he headed for the hard ground up the slope, rubbing the sharp pain in his side where the stone had dug into it.

  In the end the drones passed heading east twenty-seven minutes before the train was due. He expected the train to show on time with computerized precision. His watch said thirteen minutes until the next satellite.

  It left too little time to get out of nuke range, but plenty of time to bomb a train.

  He sprinted down the slope and knelt beside the first rail. With confidence boosted by familiarity he positioned a charge underneath and raised it. The magnet stuck with a satisfying clunk.

  A red light flashed the promise of revenge against the goons.

  He repeated the procedure on the other rail, ran back up the slope, and grabbed the backpack on the way over the top.

  When he reached the bottom of the gully he kept running along it until he stumbled upon the bike cover. Under two minutes had passed since he had run down to the tracks, and only ten minutes remained before he’d need to hide from the satellite. With a possible nuclear blast imminent, he had to use every minute.

  He stood the bike up and mounted it in one coordinated leap, plunging the suspension down as he landed. The wheels sprayed dirt behind him as he took off, riding faster than was wise, crushing the low desert vegetation and spitting stones out from under the tires. The image in his goggles brightened with the coming day, until he yanked them down and let them hang from his neck.

  Vibration from the ground shook the bike. He skidded to a stop and turned, half expecting to see a mushroom cloud. Instead, a long cloud of dust rose up. Then the sound hit: the gouging of hard earth, the groaning of steel, and the sharp clash of metal parts colliding and tearing. Intense enough to thump him in the ribcage and pulse in his lungs.

  The nuke was somewhere in that wreck.

  He took off at speed again, so focused on guiding the bike and avoiding obstacles that he didn’t notice the passage of time. When he finally checked his watch, he was half a minute late.

  Jump off, cool the bike, cover up.

  Wait and hope.

  Pull it out and away on the last leg.

  When he reached the top of the next rise, a small dust cloud was floating above a hill far off to the left. Jason braked to a halt and rolled the bike back down the slope until he could only just see above it into the distance.

  A small metallic form appeared, galloping its way back toward the tracks. The clanker looked harmless from so far away. If it kept going it would find nothing but wreckage at the crash site. Maybe it was the one he’d seen, or maybe a number of them patrolled the area. He waited until it descended out of view.

  Jason pressed on as fast as he dared, putting as much distance as possible between him and the quadruped.

  The top of the hill that Michael had parked behind appeared in the distance. Jason imagined finding unwanted visitors there and shooting them. What if they weren’t goons? Were they guilty if they believed the CMC’s propaganda and reported his description to the police? But he’d have done the same a few days ago. Was he just as guilty?

  He glanced behind him and saw that a black dot had appeared in the sky near the train wreck. A helicopter. It descended and soon passed out of sight.

  Over the last rise, the base of the hill beside the highway came into view. The place he’d left late the night before lay deserted.

  Slowly he rode toward it. If armed goons came around the corner, maybe a full-power ride out into the desert was better than whatever fate awaited him with Half-Bit’s men. Even if he risked being shot in the back while climbing the hill.

  Tracks from the SUV had carved out a U-turn in the sand and led out to the road. A twig protruded from the ground nearby. After dismounting, Jason dug around and pulled out the phone.

  The sound of tires rolling on hard sand behind the hill made him jump to his feet. He grabbed the Glock in its holster.

 
If it was them, no doubt he’d be outgunned. But it could have been civilians stopping at the sight of the massive dust cloud.

  He released the pistol grip, dropped the foil-wrapped phone on the ground, and kicked sand over it. An ordinary civilian would think nothing of a trail biker, but one glimpse of a foil-covered phone and they might seek a reward by tipping off the CMC surveillance subsystem.

  Michael appeared around the corner in the SUV.

  Jason began laughing. He bent over with tears in his eyes, then leaned back and guffawed at the sky.

  Michael threw his hands up. “What? Did someone draw a penis on my face?”

  “I’m just glad to see you. Let’s go. Go!” Jason said, and waved his arms at the vehicles.

  With machinelike efficiency, they loaded the bike. Jason retrieved the phone again but kept it wrapped.

  As the SUV headed back to the highway, Michael said, “I figured out the latest time you might still arrive in one piece and drove out here just in case.”

  “Appreciate it. Drone surveillance was heavy. I had to wait until the last sweep of the tracks.”

  “I was hoping it was something like that.”

  “They had at least one of those military quadrupeds out there.”

  Michael frowned. “Shit. I’d have gotten some armor-piercing ammo if I expected that. Defending yourself would have blown the whole plan but you’d have had a shot at survival.”

  “What’s the deal with them? Half-Bit isn’t supposed to have direct control of any robots.”

  “Still doesn’t as far as we know. It orders humans to deploy them, but it has access to the data.”

  “Came real close. The camo covers are brilliant. Fooled the monster.”

  “I’m glad the time we spent on them paid off. It’s too soon to celebrate though. Expect roadblocks. Store the gun and the other crap.”