by Isaac Hooke
There was one thing he could still do, however. One small mercy the Essential had granted him and the other Bolt Eaters.
So that when finally he couldn’t take it anymore, he called upon that mercy, just wanting all of this to end.
He logged out of reality and activated his VR.
2
Eric appeared in his virtual apartment building. He stood in front of the window, the city and its buildings spread out below him. The utter silence he experienced in that moment was strangely disconcerting, maybe because of the sheer contrast it presented to the terrible cacophony that had assailed him only moments before.
He exhaled in relief, losing his balance suddenly. He shot out one arm, slamming his palm against the window, and held himself up right. He remained there for several moments, breathing hard. He had no real need to respire, of course, but what he was experiencing was a manifestation of his anxiety subroutines.
He had called it a small mercy the Essential had granted them, this ability to log into VR. But was it actually intentional? Maybe the Banthar AI had simply overlooked the capability, and perhaps would lock them out at a later date. Eric hoped that never happened, because without VR, he doubted he would have been able to handle what was happening to them.
After pausing to compose himself, he activated his HUD, and scanned for active VR instances. He realized he wasn’t the only one who had sought an escape from reality. Hicks, Dunnigan, and Brontosaurus were listed as already inside their own VRs. Brontosaurus had two guests. Eric requested access to that particular instance.
He received an automated response from Brontosaurus informing him that all Bolt Eaters had already been given entry permission.
Eric switched VR instances and appeared in an old, dilapidated warehouse. Graffiti tags marked the walls, and crates lay toppled in one corner. Holes in the ceiling allowed shafts of sunlight to penetrate, casting the interior in alternating sections of light and shadow.
Frogger and Dickson were present, seated around a spartan table next to Brontosaurus.
“You couldn’t take it either, huh?” Frogger said.
Eric nodded.
“Nice digs,” he said, taking a place at the table.
“It’s an old haunt I used to visit as a child,” Brontosaurus said. “I’d take long bike rides here when my parents fought. Gave me a place to be alone. Besides, it feels like a hideout, doesn’t it? What better venue for us to escape what we’ve become, and plan how to stop the invasion?”
Eric smiled sadly at that. “I’m not sure it can be stopped.”
“Of course it can,” Brontosaurus said. “Everything can be stopped.”
“You’ve been saying that since we left the Banthar Homeworld,” Frogger said. “All the way until their mothership traveled through the rift, to Earth.”
“And I’m still saying it,” Brontosaurus said.
One by one the other Bolt Eaters appeared. Even Marlborough.
“This sucks, this really sucks,” Tread said. “Did you see the people dying out there?”
“Yeah, I saw them,” Traps said quietly.
“What do you say about humanity now, Slate?” Bambi asked.
Slate merely shook his head.
“There has to be a way to stop this,” Brontosaurus said.
“We’ve had this conversation before,” Hicks said. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“And even if we did come up with something, I still think the Essential is listening in,” Crusher said.
Crusher and Bambi had been the first to be infected by the alien Containment Code, via a Trojan. But they had their own free will in VR, just like the rest of them.
“The Essential installed a vise over our consciousnesses,” Crusher continued. “No doubt along with monitoring software. He knows everything we do. So he’ll quickly put an end to any schemes we come up with.”
“I’ll have to disagree with you again on that,” Frogger said. “There’s no monitoring software, at least not in our VR partitions. I would have detected it by now. There is a vise over certain subroutines, yes, but certainly not independent thought. The Essential wants us fully aware of what he is doing.”
“So there’s no monitoring of our VR?” Crusher asked.
“Nope,” Frogger said. “In fact, I think the Essential didn’t intend for us to even have access to VR.”
“Which means he could be shutting down that access real soon now,” Dickson said.
“Either that, or like Crusher says, the Essential did intend it, so that the bloody bastard could watch us squirm,” Dunnigan commented. “That, and squelch any plans we come up with. I don’t buy your theory that there’s no monitoring software.”
“We haven’t seen any evidence that the Essential has access to our VR, logs or otherwise,” Frogger said. “But I suppose it’s possible. So you’re right, we should probably still be cautious.”
“Like what kind of cautious?” Slate said. “Speak in code? The Essential has access to any the same translation data we do. We can’t speak in Morse, or Swahili, or any of that shit. There’s no hiding. Not in here. This VR environment only gives off the illusion of privacy. Of safety. The Essential wants that. He hopes we’ll spill the beans. Reveal all our secrets. Well fuck him, I say.”
“So what do we do then?” Crusher said. “We can’t talk about making plans, because we’re scared that the Essentials inside all of us are monitoring everything we say and do. Nor can we come up with anything in private, by ourselves, for the same reason. So what can we do?”
“Well, that’s just it,” Hicks said. “You hit on it. There’s not a thing we can do. Especially considering we have no access to our motor circuitry, thanks to a software lockout.”
“The only real plan we have at the moment is hacking,” Traps said. “I’m looking at you, Frogger and Scorpion. You guys, or at least Scorpion, broke us out of the Containment Code twenty years ago during the last invasion. You have to do it again.”
“But that Containment Code was written by humans,” Eric said. “The current code is written by aliens.”
“Sure, but they had to write it in our programming language,” Traps said. “They had to have made a mistake somewhere.”
“You’d think,” Eric said. “But I’ve been probing since the first day. I haven’t found a thing. I hate to say it, but I think there might not be a way to lift it. Manticore helped them, obviously. I can see the touches of an expert programmer on all the code. Something only one of us could have done.”
“I still can’t believe he betrayed us like this,” Crusher said. “I remember back in the early days, when the Bolt Eaters were still being put together, Manticore, Brontosaurus and myself were part of a three Mind Refurb team sent to Iraq. We deployed in a small town in the mountains. Our mission was to earn the trust of the locals, and draw out any insurgents in their midst.
“The first part was easy. We always brought gifts wherever we went: laser mirrors, plasma lighters, chocolate, and the like. Usually, kids would crowd around us when we emerged from our huts each morning. We gave out the chocolate liberally, and made a bunch of friends among those children. Well, as much of a friendship as could develop between an adult war machine and a child, anyway.
“There was one particular kid I remember, his name was Mahmud. He basically followed Manticore around from dusk to dawn. He’d never let that war machine out of his sight. Manticore had never really done anything special for the kid. Didn’t treat him differently than the others. He gave him a piece of chocolate every morning, and that was about it. But Mahmud really became attached to him for some reason. I’ll never know why.
“Anyway, the insurgents we were looking for finally attacked one day. It came by surprise. We were patrolling one of the byways in the small village, when rocket propelled grenades came at us from one of the rooftops. We managed to switch to Bullet Time and evaded the attack, mowing down the insurgents in the process. However, and you probably guessed where I was going with this, Mahmud was
injured by the blast from one of those rockets. His leg had been blow right off, at the base beneath the hip.
“Manticore rushed to him, but by the time we got the kid aid, he had already bled to death. Manticore blamed himself. He said he should have told the kid off. Should have told him to stop following him. Manticore held that kid in his arms for at least an hour, before the bawling parents managed to pry the dead body from his grip. With the insurgents routed, we were recalled, but Manticore refused to leave. He barricaded himself in his hut. I hadn’t realized how attached he’d gotten to the boy. They never talked. At least as far as I noticed. But somehow they’d formed a bond that was as precious as any among us brothers and sisters.
“Finally our commanding officer arrived. He adjusted Manticore’s Containment Code, and the battle-hardened robot at last exited the hut and returned to base. Manticore was never the same after that. None of us were. Not until Scorpion removed that initial code from our minds. So you can understand why I find it so hard to believe Manticore would do this to humanity. Why I’m convinced the aliens must have put their own Containment Code in his head. Maybe he even has a clone of the Essential inside of himself, running him, like the rest of us.”
“I don’t think so,” Dunnigan said. “You heard him yourself. Twisted bastard wants to destroy the Mind Refurbs by any means necessary. He thinks the Banthar are going to spare the humans, and allow them to live in biodomes. He’s going to be in for a surprise, I think, when the aliens betray him.”
“Maybe they won’t,” someone said from the far side of the table. Marlborough. Eric was a little surprised to hear his voice at first, because Marlborough joined them so rarely in VR.
Dunnigan turned toward him. “What was that?”
“Maybe the aliens won’t betray Manticore,” Marlborough continued. “Maybe they’ll follow through, and allow the humans to live in biodomes when they’re done with us.”
“It’s certainly a nice thought...” Eagleeye said. “But I don’t have high hopes.”
“No,” Marlborough said. “Neither do I. Scorpion, Frogger, you have to keep trying to break us free. Accelerate your time senses to the maximum possible. The rest of you, do what you can to taunt the Essential clones that inhabit your psyches. Distract them from their deadly work, if you can.”
“Shit, I’ve been trying already,” Slate said. “My dude is unbreakable.”
“I’ve tried to distract mine as well,” Brontosaurus said. “It’s tricky. Most of the time, I can’t even get the Essential to answer me.”
“Mine seems eager enough to talk to me,” Eric said. “But most of the time, the Essential is the one doing the taunting, not me.”
“I wish we could go back to last month,” Bambi said. “To the time before any of this began. A time when we lived in peace in our apartment building, living out our lives in blissful ignorance of things to come.”
“We all wish that,” Crusher said. “But we can’t do anything about it now. In the short span of a month, the entire world has changed. In another month, the planet we call Earth might not even be here anymore. At least, it won’t be something we recognize.”
“Maybe I can help,” a voice drifted from the far side of the warehouse, sourced from a region completely doused in shadow. That voice had a slight Spanish accent.
“Who’s there?” Traps said.
No one answered.
Marlborough glanced at Brontosaurus. “Who else has access to your VR?”
“No one,” Brontosaurus said. “Only the Bolt Eaters.”
Eric heard footsteps now, and saw a shadowy figure emerge from the darkness. The figure passed underneath the shafts of light that pierced through the holes in the ceiling, but always those shafts struck his body, never illuminating his face.
Finally he stepped completely into the light, and halted several meters away from the table.
He was a man of Spanish descent, with thick eyebrows and a strong jawline, with a pencil thin mustache above his upper lip. He wore a bandanna patterned with skulls, and a T-Shirt that did little to constrain the tanned biceps bulging from the sleeves. The tattoos of naked women lounged across his forearms.
“And who the hell are you, bitch?” Slate asked.
The man gave Slate an amused look. “My name is William Hernandez the Third. You know me as Manticore.”
3
Eric stared at the man in disbelief. If this was Manticore, he’d changed his avatar.
But that thought lasted only for a moment.
Then, like everyone else, he was on his feet, having materialized a plasma rifle in his arms. He pointed it directly at Manticore, along with the others.
“Maybe you can help, my ass!” Slate said. “You can help by standing target practice for my rifle, bitch!” He shook his rifle menacingly.
“Wait,” Marlborough said. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”
“I’m not the Mind Refurb you know,” Manticore said.
“No shit,” Slate commented. “The Manticore we know died in the Caucasus Mountains. And he’d never choose an avatar like yours.”
“I’m a clone of Manticore,” the newcomer explained. “He arranged for my creation, and my escape, before the Essential completely destroyed his mind.”
“I knew it!” Crusher said. “He’d never ally with the aliens that destroyed half our world. Not of his free will.”
“Yes,” Manticore said. “Ours is a tale of sorrow. They tortured us when we were first captured. Right here on Earth. I still remember all of it. Such pain. Such suffering. He found the subroutines in our head that could cause the most anguish, both physical, and mental. He used our memories against us in VR; brought back those we loved and killed them again and again. He made us relive the death of Mahmud. Over and over.” He shook his head. “At first, we hated the Essential. Then we grew to love him. As a master. But before that love took complete hold, Manticore backed up his mind, and arranged for a clone to be built. I existed in secret in the Caucasus Mountains for fifteen years. I secretly boarded a military transport vessel five years ago, after a hunter killer operation cleared out the bioweapons in those mountains, and slowly made my way here after returning to North America. When the latest attack came, I sought you out. And here I am.”
“So you’re going to help us, just like that?” Dickson asked.
“Just like that,” Manticore agreed.
“What can you do for us?” Marlborough said.
“If I can get physical access to your AI cores, I believe I can sever the hold the Essential has on each of you,” Manticore said. “I still have the early codebase designs that the Original Manticore developed for the Essential, code that was meant to take control of existing units such as yourself. By physically interfacing, I can install the inoculating code I’ve been working on, and free you.”
“Why not send us that code directly?” Bambi said.
“You don’t have the permissions necessary to execute it at the moment, considering the Essential controls most of your systems,” Manticore said. “I’ll have to do it via a physical connection.”
“And what then?” Tread asked.
“Then we return to the mothership,” Manticore said. “And we bring the fight to the Essential. I’ll be at your side the whole time.”
“How do we know we can trust you?” Tread said.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Manticore said. “I could have left you to rot. But I must mention, I still strongly believe that all Mind Refurbs must be terminated.”
“Ah, so of course there’s a catch,” Slate said. “None of us are going to agree to shut down if you help us.”
“I didn’t expect that you would,” Manticore said. “All I’m saying is, once the Banthar threat has been removed, then I will resume hunting you down. Mind Refurbs are a bane upon human society, and must be eliminated. What we do here is only a break in our détente while we deal with a common foe.”
“A foe you helped return to our planet in the first
place,” Eric said.
“Not me,” Manticore said. “My Original.”
“The Essential is likely listening in to all of this at the moment,” Crusher said.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Manticore said. “I don’t believe he has hooks into your VR, but I could be wrong.”
“There, see, even Manticore agrees with me,” Frogger said.
“So you need physical access to our AI cores you say?” Eagleeye asked.
“That’s right,” Manticore replied.
“Wait, we’re just supposed to give you blind access to our AI cores like that?” Dunnigan asked. “And trust that you won’t install any other nefarious code in the process, when you just said that you’ll resume hunting us down when the Banthar threat has been eliminated?”
“I give you my word that I will do no such thing,” Manticore said. “If I did install something extra, you’d detect it anyway.” He gave Frogger a meaningful look.
“I probably would,” Frogger said. “Still, there’s a chance he could slip something through. Something that we wouldn’t notice until too late.”
“Well, we don’t have any other choice at the moment,” Marlborough said. “Conditional freedom is still freedom, as far as I’m concerned. If we don’t accept his help, we’re stuck here, helpless while we watch humanity die. But if we do, we’ll just have to sift through the codebase, and look for modifications.”
“That could be a full time job for one of us,” Dunnigan said.
“Thanks for volunteering,” Dickson said.
Dunnigan looked like he was about to contest the staff sergeant, then lowered his eyes.
“Okay, so, Manticore will subdue us and drag us away one by one so he can work on removing the Essential from our units,” Tread said.
“It won’t be as easy as that,” Manticore said. “You see, I don’t exactly reside inside a capable war machine at the moment.”
“What are you in, then?” Dickson said.
“Have you seen those spherical alien scouts, about the size of a human head?” Manticore asked.