by Mark Alpert
I gaze at the play of sunlight and shadow on Amber’s avatar. As she comes toward me, sunlit patches move across her body, sliding over her dress and bare limbs like spotlights. My virtual heart throbs. She’s so close now. There’s less than a millimeter of wiring between her software and mine. When the girl in the red dress touches the boy in the wheelchair, the gap between us will vanish and our minds will run together.
But then I look past her avatar and see a familiar object just beyond the perimeter of the glade, under the oak trees. It’s the big black box, ten feet high and ten feet across, that holds Amber’s walled-off memories. It sits in shadow on the forest floor. Not a single beam of sunlight touches it. It’s packed with the images and emotions Amber can’t bear to show me yet, the memories of her mother’s suicide. The box is blacker than black. I feel horrible just looking at it.
Amber notices me staring. She shakes her avatar’s head. I’m still not ready, Adam. Before I can show those memories to you, I have to deal with them myself. And I can’t do that yet.
Hey, it’s okay. I didn’t—
I loved my mom so much. When my cancer came back, she promised she’d stay by my side. She said she’d take care of me. So when she…
Her voice trails off. Her avatar’s eyes glisten. I’ve made her cry, and I feel awful. Because I couldn’t control my curiosity, I’ve reminded Amber of the worst moment of her life. I have to fix this.
With a painful effort, I raise my right hand from the armrest of my virtual wheelchair. I ignore the black box and stretch my hand toward Amber’s avatar. I focus all my attention on the girl in the red dress.
Come here, Amber. Let’s be together.
She takes another step forward and reaches for my outstretched hand. But just before our fingers touch, I have another horrible thought about Amber’s box of memories.
It looks like the Silence.
Chapter
12
At 5:00 p.m. that afternoon, General Hawke sends each of the Pioneers a radio message, ordering us to report to the Danger Room. I haven’t heard any news from Hawke for the past six hours, ever since his soldiers dragged Dad to the base’s command center, but now it seems the general has something to say. I make a quick stop at the medical center to check on Brittany—she’s still in surgery—and then head for our training facility on the lowest floor of Pioneer Base.
I arrive at the Danger Room within three minutes of receiving the message, but Shannon’s Diamond Girl and Marshall’s Super-bot are already there. Shannon stands by the control station in the far corner of the huge room, more than a hundred feet away. She’s at the console where we usually program the automated weapons—machine guns, grenade launchers, flamethrowers, and so on—that are deployed against our robots during our training exercises. Those weapons are currently out of sight, hidden behind the Danger Room’s wall panels, but during our exercises the panels slide open and the automated guns blast away at whichever Pioneers are training there. The system is designed to test our agility and the strength of our armor.
I’m curious about the instructions Shannon is giving the training program. The screen on her Diamond Girl’s head is turned off, so I can’t judge her mood, but she seems very focused. Her hands are a sparkling blur as they manipulate the console. I cautiously steer my Quarter-bot toward her, but Marshall strides across the room and intercepts me while I’m still twenty yards away. He shakes his Super-bot’s head and bends his plastic lips into a frown.
“I wouldn’t go over there if I were you.” His synthesized voice is low but firm. “In fact, I’d stay away from Shannon for a good long while. Maybe a year or two.”
“It’s that bad?” I peer over Marshall’s torso, pointing my cameras at Shannon, but she’s still bent over the console. “What did she tell you?”
“That you tricked her. That you asked her to keep track of Hawke while you broke the general’s orders. That you turned her into your lookout without telling her what you were doing.” He lifts his shoulder joints in a shrug. “No big deal, right? Why would she get upset about something like that?”
Marshall’s speakers are set on maximum sarcasm. The motors in his face pull his eyelids lower, mimicking an irate squint. He’s angry, all right, but what’s surprising is how disappointed he looks. He expected better from me. I let him down.
“I’m sorry, Marsh. I couldn’t let Hawke—”
“I don’t care about Hawke, all right? The man is a big, blustering idiot.” His Super-bot scowls. “I don’t care about the U.S. Army either, or the freakin’ ‘American way,’ for that matter. But I do care about the Pioneers. I care about you and Shannon and Zia and Amber. And those are the people you’ve hurt, Adam. You should’ve talked to us before doing what you did. You should’ve trusted us.”
I nod my Quarter-bot’s head. Marshall’s right. I was so arrogant, so selfish. I thought I could do everything on my own. “You’re right. It was stupid. I was so worried about Brittany that I couldn’t think about anything else. I didn’t—”
A loud clanking interrupts me, coming from the corridor outside the Danger Room. Zia’s War-bot barrels through the doorway, her footpads pounding the concrete floor. I’m surprised to see her here. I thought she’d ignore Hawke’s order out of principle, but apparently I misjudged her. Zia is on the offensive now and probably looking for opportunities to challenge the general. And when she confronts him this time, I bet she’ll do more than punch the wall…
A moment later, Amber’s Jet-bot follows Zia through the doorway, and my wires tighten in pleasure. It’s been only four hours since Amber and I shared circuits, but I feel a pulse of longing in my electronics, as if I haven’t seen her in months. I let my camera lenses linger on her for a few seconds. The image of her sleek, black Jet-bot streams into my processors, where it merges with a very different image from my memory files, a gauzy picture of the dark-haired girl in the red dress. But then I realize that Marshall is watching me, so I quickly turn away from Amber and peer at Shannon again.
The Diamond Girl finishes whatever she’s doing at the console, then faces us. At the same time, one of the Danger Room’s wall panels slides open. For an instant I imagine that Shannon is about to take revenge on me by firing an automated machine gun at my Quarter-bot, but there’s no weapon behind the sliding panel. Instead I see a large video screen, the kind that’s used for teleconferencing calls. Above the screen is a camera with a wide-angle lens, positioned to record a video of the entire Danger Room and transmit it to whomever we’re teleconferencing with. After a couple of seconds, the screen comes to life, displaying video of General Hawke and Sumner Harris.
They’re on an airplane, seated behind a conference table that’s been installed in a military transport jet. I check the image against my databases: The plane is a C-37A, an aircraft typically used by high-ranking government officials. Sumner is still wearing his expensive pin-striped suit, but his tie is a bit looser now and his face is relaxed. Hawke, in contrast, looks tense. His forehead has half a dozen deep furrows, and his upper lip is curled. He’s definitely not happy, and I can guess why. The fact that he left Pioneer Base without any warning, and in an official government plane, suggests that his departure wasn’t by choice. The Defense Department probably ordered him to leave New Mexico and report to his superiors in Washington.
Sumner looks directly into the video camera. Then his eyes flick downward to his own teleconferencing screen, which presumably shows us gathered in the Danger Room. “All right, the video link seems to be working.” His voice hisses out of the Danger Room’s speakers. “Let’s see if all the robots are here. One, two, three…” He grimaces, clearly repelled by the sight of us. “…four, five. Yes, all the machines are present and accounted for. But where is their technical adviser? Where’s Thomas Armstrong?”
“I’m right here!” Dad’s voice comes from behind me. I turn to see him rush into the Danger Room. His face
drips with sweat, and his glasses hang askew on the tip of his nose. “Sorry I’m late. I had to fix a few last-minute problems with the Model S.”
I’m confused. Why is Dad taking orders from Sumner? And what the heck is the Model S? I’m dying to take Dad aside and ask him what’s going on, but he doesn’t look at me. His eyes are focused on the screen.
Sumner frowns at him. He seems to dislike Dad almost as much as he hates the Pioneers. “What about security? Where are the security forces?”
Dad shakes his head. “With all due respect, Mr. Harris, I don’t think they’re needed at this point. We don’t—”
“Of course they’re needed!” Sumner looks away from the screen and points at Hawke. “Contact the garrison at the base! They’re not following my instructions!”
For a long moment Hawke does nothing but glare at Sumner. Then the general rises from his seat, grabs the radio hanging from his belt, and marches toward the back of the plane. As I watch him step beyond the frame of the video screen, a wave of mixed emotions flows through my wires. Although I never liked Hawke, I always respected his commitment to the Pioneer Project. He truly believed in the military value of human-machine hybrids like us. And he treated us the same way he treated his human soldiers—with loud, scornful derision and rare, grudging praise. He wasn’t an ideal leader, but I’m starting to realize he could’ve been a whole lot worse.
Soon I hear the clomping of boots in the corridor. Twenty human soldiers jog into the Danger Room and line up against the wall, half on one side of the doorway and half on the other. Each man carries an M136 antitank gun, a yard-long tube that fires a conical high-explosive rocket. The shell can penetrate more than fourteen inches of steel armor, making it a pretty effective weapon against a Pioneer.
The soldiers kneel in unison and mount the launch tubes on their shoulders. Twelve of the men aim their antitank guns at Zia, who’s their primary target because she’s bigger and more intimidating than the rest of us. The other eight soldiers train their guns on Shannon, Marshall, Amber, and me.
I brace myself, turning on my Quarter-bot’s targeting radar and readying my weapons. The other Pioneers do the same, preparing their systems for combat. Zia, Marshall, and I have our own rocket launchers, which we extend from compartments in our mechanical arms. We also power up our gamma-ray lasers, the weapons that decimated Sigma’s machines in our last battle against the AI. Meanwhile, Shannon analyzes the tactical situation, draws up a battle plan, and uses the Pioneer radio channel to coordinate our robots. All this happens in less than a tenth of a second.
But Amber doesn’t join our wireless battle planning. When I train my cameras on her Jet-bot, I see her retreating to the farthest corner of the Danger Room. It looks like she’s scared, maybe even panicking. That would be an understandable reaction for almost anyone else, but Amber was absolutely fearless in our war against Sigma, so this behavior surprises me. I send her a radio message: Amber, are you okay?
She doesn’t answer. Alarmed, I zoom in on her Jet-bot and notice that her cameras aren’t even pointed at the soldiers. Her gaze is fixed on the video screen and Sumner Harris. The man grins, clearly pleased by the arrival of his security forces, and in response, Amber backs her Jet-bot against the wall. There’s terror in the body language of her robot. I don’t understand it.
But before I can send Amber another radio message, Dad screams, “Stop!” He runs headlong into the no-man’s-land between the Pioneers and the line of soldiers. First he waves his arms at the men holding the launch tubes; then he turns toward the teleconferencing screen. “Stop it, Harris! Tell your men to lower their weapons!”
Without waiting to see if Sumner will comply, I leap forward, thrusting my Quarter-bot between the soldiers and my father. “Dad, get down! Lie down flat!”
He refuses to get down. Instead, he steps closer to the screen, all his attention focused on Sumner. “You’re breaking our deal! You said there’d be no violence!”
Sumner calmly shakes his head. I guess it’s easy to be calm when you’re miles away from the fighting. “I said there’d be no violence as long as the Pioneers accepted my offer. But we don’t know if they’ll accept it, do we? Their programming is inconsistent and often illogical.”
I aim one of my cameras at Dad and the other at the video screen. “What offer? What are you talking about?”
Dad tilts his head back and looks up at me. “He was threatening to delete you, Adam. You and all the other Pioneers.” His face is contorted in pain. “He convinced the White House to give him direct control of the Pioneer Project. Now he has the authority to shut down your machines and murder all of you.”
On the screen, Sumner shakes his head. “Deleting software isn’t murder. The Pioneers are artificial-intelligence programs. And the president has decided to eliminate all AI software that poses a threat to national security. He’s trying to prevent another catastrophic massacre like the one caused by the Sigma program.”
Dad points at the screen. “You see? He’s serious. He said the Pentagon would launch an air strike against Pioneer Base if necessary. The Defense Department is so afraid of the Pioneers that it’s willing to bomb one of its own bases.”
My acoustic sensor picks up some disgruntled noises from the soldiers—a shocked gasp from one, a muttered curse from another. The men begin to fidget and murmur, probably wondering why no one warned them about the possible air strike. Three of them lower their antitank guns from their shoulders.
Sumner notices that his men are wavering. He furrows his brow and glowers on the screen, aiming his rage at my dad. “This is taking too long, Armstrong. Hurry up and explain the offer.”
Dad raises his arms and grasps my shoulder joints. I can’t feel his touch—I have no pressure sensors in that part of my Quarter-bot—but I can tell from the pained look on his face that he’s gripping me tightly. “Hawke warned me that we might face a problem like this, so I started working on a solution a few days ago. The government wants to delete you because it thinks you’re a threat. So I set out to make you less threatening.” He reaches into the back pocket of his trousers and removes a rectangle of black plastic, a device that looks like a car key fob. It’s a custom-made remote control with four buttons. “I worked in secret and built a prototype called the Model S. The S stands for Safe.”
He points the remote at the Danger Room’s doorway and presses one of the buttons. After several seconds, I hear footsteps in the corridor again, but they’re too mechanical to be a human’s footsteps and too light to be a Pioneer’s. Then a miniature robot shuffles into the room.
The Model S is less than four feet tall, with slender limbs and a round gray head. Dad presses another button on the remote, steering the robot to the left. The pint-size machine toddles across the Danger Room, slowly stepping past the Pioneers and the gawking soldiers.
This isn’t a scaled-down version of a Pioneer robot. It’s a bare-bones machine, much simpler than Dad’s usual designs. Its arms and legs are gray aluminum tubes, as thin as broomsticks. Its torso is the size and shape of a coffee urn. Its hands are basic two-finger grippers, useful for picking up small objects but not nearly dexterous enough to type on a keyboard or pull a trigger. Its head is an aluminum sphere, slightly smaller than a soccer ball, and it holds none of the advanced instruments that every Pioneer is equipped with. I examine the inside of the Model S with my ultrasonic sensors and see it has only an inexpensive camera, a built-in microphone, and a cruddy loudspeaker. With just one camera lens in its head, the robot looks like a baby Cyclops.
The Model S has no weapons or armor. Its motors are so underpowered that it can barely move at a walking pace across the Danger Room. It’s more like a toy than a robot, but it wouldn’t even make a good plaything. The machine is so flimsy that a rambunctious kid could tear it apart in minutes. The only sturdy piece is the torso, which is reinforced with an extra layer of metal because it contains the r
obot’s neuromorphic control unit. For the moment, the machine’s control unit is empty—Dad’s operating the robot with his remote—but it has more than enough processors to hold a Pioneer’s mind.
If my Quarter-bot had a mouth, it would be hanging open. “That’s your plan? You want us to transfer our software to a bunch of tin puppets?”
“It’s made of aluminum, not tin. And you won’t be able to transfer your software to it wirelessly. I put an antenna on this prototype so I could send it commands by remote control, but the final version of the Model S won’t have a radio or antenna.”
“Why not?”
“Well, there’s no point in moving your software to the new robot if you could transfer yourself back to a more threatening machine. The whole purpose is to ease the government’s fears.” Dad lowers his head and stares at the floor. He can’t look at me. He’s too ashamed of this terrible bargain he made. “We’ll have to use a fiber-optic cable to transfer your data to the Model S. And after we download your software to the robot, we’ll need to remove that cable port to prevent any future transfers. Sumner Harris insisted on that.”
“I get it. Sumner wants to make sure we can’t escape. He wants to imprison us in the mini robots.”
Dad sighs. He sounds exhausted. “Harris wouldn’t agree to any deal unless it guaranteed that the Pioneers couldn’t pose a threat. But the Model S is a good compromise, Adam. It’s less capable than your current machine, but transferring into it won’t ruin your quality of life.” He presses another button on the remote to halt the robot. “Its control unit is exactly the same as the one you’re occupying now, so your mental activities won’t be restricted at all. Although you won’t have as many sensors at your disposal, you’ll still be able to see and hear and think and communicate. And that’s a lot better than being deleted, right?”