Blackness.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Reggie hadn’t known what to expect. Certainly, it hadn’t been to suddenly be transported to a fancy laboratory with gleaming metallic floor and unfamiliar, advanced equipment all around him. There were two women in the room with him. One was wearing a long white coat and a pair of goggles as she peered into Reggie’s eyes from inches away. The other wore a stylized military uniform with a slick, plasticky sheen to it.
“Did it work?” the woman in the military uniform asked.
The one in the goggles held up a finger and waved it back and forth before Reggie’s face as if checking for concussion symptoms. “Yes, ma’am. It appears to have uploaded successfully.”
“What’s going on?” Reggie asked. His voice came out with a metallic reverberation.
“State your name,” the officer ordered.
“Reginald King, Sergeant, United States Army, retired. Most people call me Reggie. Can someone please tell me what’s going on here?”
The officer turned to the tech in the lab coat. “You didn’t say it would be demanding.”
“His confusion is understandable,” the tech explained. She turned to Reggie. “Sir, I’m going to try to explain this in simple terms. You are… a computer program.”
“I know that,” Reggie snapped. “But what’s this body I’m in? Who are you people? Where am I?”
The tech glanced over at the officer for permission and received a grudging nod. “Sgt. King—Reggie—you’re currently inhabiting a household utility bot with a few modifications. We needed a way to have a conversation before… proceeding.”
“Proceeding with what, exactly?”
“Oh, and I’m Dr. Gina Chow,” the one in the lab coat said. “This is Gen. Leslie Steele, Earth Unified Space Navy.”
Reggie blinked—or tried to, at least. His robotic body lacked eyelids. “Excuse me? Back up and explain what year this is.”
Dr. Chow cringed. “2620,” she said. “You’ve been dead for nearly four hundred years.”
General Steele stepped in. “Sgt. King, let me be blunt. Earth needs you. Our current war is going badly. We’re losing colonies to the Zafeen by the day. There isn’t enough manpower in Unified space to keep up with our losses.”
“Why me?” Reggie asked. “Why not some more modern AI? I don’t even know what you space-people use for weapons.” This was crazy. Reggie was a tanker turned live-in gamer. He had no business in this time. What made them think he could save anyone?
“AI was outlawed centuries ago as an existential threat to mankind,” Dr. Chow explained. “The technology used to scan a human brain was banned shortly after you were shut down after the regulatory agencies of your time discovered that it was being used by terrorists as a torture and interrogation tool. Right now, you and a few like you are the most advanced AI we can lay our hands on.”
“We’re war criminals, technically,” Gen. Steele said with a growl. “I’m willing to live with that and pay whatever price comes due at the end of this. My only job is to save mankind, and I’ll be damned if I let a three-hundred-fifty-year-old document by a bunch of dead, superstitious fools doom us all. Sgt. King, your planet needs you. Will you answer the call?”
Reggie’s mind spun. It was as if someone had rewritten the campy, gung-ho Armored Souls universe as a gritty war film. Someone had swapped the script of Star Wars and inserted Starship Troopers in its place. Savior of mankind? War crimes? Anti-AI legislation? Ken Bradley’s technology being put to diabolical use by terrorists?
Imagining that his borrowed robotic body could swallow, Reggie answered the general with the only reply that came to mind. “On one condition.”
Gen. Steele turned to Dr. Chow. “What kind of soldier is this you’ve given me? I’m talking about the existence of mankind, and he’s got a condition?”
“Hear him out,” Dr. Chow suggested. “He’s the best of the lot.”
Gen. Steele crossed her arms and fixed Reggie with a scowl that might have chilled his blood if he had any. “Fine. What?”
“In the archive where you found me, there’s a miniature universe. Between missions, I’d like to be stored there along with all the other players you’ve recovered if any.”
“The hell?” Gen. Steel scoffed. “You want me to give you a video game to play when you get bored? Let me tell you what, soldier. You won’t get bored because between missions we can just shut you off. You won’t notice a thing, same as you didn’t notice the last four hundred years.”
“Pass.”
Gen. Steele blinked.
“You heard me. All your offering me is an existence of war and destruction. What’s the point? You’re fighting for your way of life. If the people worried about AI rising up and taking over have any basis for their fear, it’d be because AI, as you see it, has no choice but rebel. You get a victory over some foe I’ve never heard of, I get non-existence until the universe is horrible again. No deal.”
To Reggie, sitting on that couch waiting for the world to end was mere moments ago. The wound to his heart still stung. Faced with the prospect of being nothing more than a weapon, he’d go back to the nothingness from which they awakened him. If he gave in now, they’d never consider his wants or needs again.
“How much work would it be?” Gen. Steele asked, addressing Dr. Chow without taking her eyes off Reggie.
“Trivial. I could load up the simulation any time and run it on the processor in my goggles.”
“Fine. King. You get to have a phony little home base between missions. NOW will you agree to not only fight for your planet but convince the other AIs to join as well?”
“Take care of them the same way you just agreed to, and yeah, I can convince them. It’ll all just be one big game. And after all, we’re all gamers at heart.”
Tech References
Sign up
Join the X.P. Loot Log at xp-hunter.com to be the first to hear when new Xavier P. Hunter LitRPG books come out.
About the Author
Xavier P. Hunter was born at the dawn of the video game age. He grew up with a game controller in his hand, moving from Atari joystick through PS4 controller the way a hermit crab outgrows its shell. His little league was RBI Baseball, his first date was Princess Zelda, and his first unpaid internship was leading raids in World of Warcraft. He lives in a world of pixels and frame rates, coming out infrequently to eat and that sort of thing.
Most of his writing is done while patches download or when servers are down for maintenance.
Like most superheroes, he operates in meat space under an assumed name.
xp-hunter.com
Ghost Platoon Page 27