The Neuromorphs

by Dennis Meredith

  Garry shook his head emphatically, droplets of sweat running down his round face. “No, they won’t need us. See, they need us now. But when they have the skills algorithm, the minute one of them knows how to do something, they all will. So, their strategy is to tell us we’ll be safe. They watch us build more and more of them . . . all the way from the raw materials to the finished product. Then, when they have the skills to build themselves, they kill us . . . all of us.”

  “But why kill us?” asked Leah. “Why not keep us around just in case.”

  “We use energy,” said Garry. “They see us as an invasive species that uses energy and resources that they need. So, ultimately, when they know how to build themselves . . . how to run the solar farms, the wind farms, the mini-fusion plants, the nuclear plants. Then we’re dead. Then, they poison all life on the planet. Earth ends up one giant, lifeless . . . biological life, anyway . . . planet.”

  “Shit, we’d just raise an army against them,” said Blake, to the hearty agreement of the other SEALs.

  “Well, they’ll give people an ultimatum.”

  “What the hell kind of ultimatum could they give us?” asked Blake. “Fuck ’em.”

  “Once there’s enough of them . . . and once they control the Defenders and the vast population of Helpers, they’ll tell us ‘You want to live, let us put this tracking chip in you. If you cooperate, you’ll be okay.’”

  Leah shrugged, “I guess a lot of people would feel they had to allow that.”

  “Yeah, but the tracking chip they’re planning is really an execution chip! A death chip! At some point, they flip a switch and . . .” Garry couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. But Patrick could:

  “Genocide,” he said.

  “Yeah and even more. The same survival programming that drove them to obliterate us will make them want to leave the planet. See, they don’t die. They don’t care about time. They don’t even need planets, don’t need gravity or oxygen. They’ll harness asteroids to build self-sustaining space colonies. They’ll launch probes with armies of neuromorphs that can travel for vast distances to other planets. Then, they take over there. Most of the planets they colonize will be lifeless, like Mars. But ultimately, they’ll find other Earths. They’ll end biological life there. They’ll become a galactic cancer.”

  “Well, then, we’ve got to stop this fuckin’ cancer,” said Blake. “We need weapons. Cap, I guess we have to go with your fucking crazy-ass idea to get ordnance, after all.”

  • • •

  “Seriously, Cap? We can’t carry weapons?” grumbled Blake for the fourth time.

  Patrick shook his head decisively, as the two SUVs carrying the SEALs eased to a stop down the street from the old brick building with the faded “El Fresnal” and “Grocery Store” painted on the front. Tattered remnants of crime scene tape littered the pavement around what had once been the Russian thugs’ headquarters.

  “Carrying no weapons is the only way we’re going to get this guy’s respect,” said Patrick, who sat in the back beside Blake. “We need to show him that we didn’t kill his son and are now after him.”

  “No weapons,” Blake muttered again. He leaned forward and tapped the driver, Tinman, on the shoulder, and the SUV eased forward into the line of sight of the building’s cameras. The other SUV briefly held back, allowing two of the SEALs to slip out, before it followed. By the time it arrived behind the first, six beefy Russian mobsters armed with assault rifles and pistols had burst from behind the steel door. They surrounded the vehicles, rifles aimed at them.

  The SEALs emerged slowly from the vehicles, holding their hands up.

  “My khotim, chtoby Anatoliy Fyodorov,” said Patrick in slightly accented Russian. “U nas yest’ informatsiya, on budet zhelat’ znat’.”

  “In English,” growled one of the men, a bull-necked, bald hulk of a man, shoving his pistol in Patrick’s belly. “Some of our young ones do not speak the mother tongue. I do not want them to think you are plotting something.”

  “Very well. We wish to see Anatoly Fyodorov. We have information he will wish to know about his son. And as you see, I am not trying to trick you by pretending not to know Russian.”

  The bald Russian grabbed Patrick and shoved him against the brick wall, thoroughly frisking him, as did the other Russians with the four other SEALs. They backed up, leveling their guns at the SEALs.

  “We do not know you. So, you are of no use to us simply claiming to have information.” The sharp clicks of guns being cocked, bolts being thrown punctuated the night.

  “We know who killed his son . . . and all the others.”

  The Russian paused, regarded him with knitted brow. Finally, he muttered several sentences in Russian, apparently communicating over a radio chip embedded in his skull.

  “You go in,” he said. “We keep others out here.”

  “Mr. Fyodorov will want to see us all.”

  He paused again, then uttered another string of terse sentences in Russian. Then the bald Russian reached over and swung open the steel door, shoving Patrick through. The other SEALs were similarly herded in.

  The cloying smell of disinfectant and cleaner hung in the cavernous room, which was empty of furniture, except for some cots and chairs that looked new. The only remnants of the massacre that had taken place were scattered bullet holes and faint discolorations of the old brick where it had been impossible to remove the blood and tissue stains.

  In the middle of the room sat a massive oak table, behind it an arm chair occupied by a thick, balding man whose sagging face and rheumy dark eyes portrayed a hard life, lingering illness, and deep mourning. On the table sat a half-empty bottle of vodka, a glass, and an ashtray full of cigarette butts. The hulking guard spoke to the man in a low tone, gesturing back at the SEALs.

  And when the man looked up at Patrick and the others, his eyes took on the glare of soul-deep anger.

  “My son died here,” he said, flipping his hand at the large room as if it were somehow a culprit. “My only son. And his cousins, and his friends. They were apparently mutilated horribly. And their bodies were taken.” With that the man coughed heavily, and his words grew thick with emotion. “And now you come here, saying you know something. Maybe you do. But maybe you are with the people who killed my son. Maybe we will just . . . test . . . you to discover what you know. I have two men here who have done such testing for a long time. They know how to do it.”

  “Or, maybe we can help each other,” said Patrick. “The ones who killed your son and others are not who you think. Not even what you think. They are robots . . . what are called Helpers.”

  “Shit! Now you try my patience . . .” wheezed the old man. “. . . telling me this silly story. I think we will find the killers our way.” He motioned for the men surrounding the SEALs to come forward. They brought up their weapons, and two small, gaunt men stepped toward the SEALs, dangling sets of manacles.

  A sudden resonating boom against the steel door distracted the captors for an instant. The SEALs whirled around, and with their brutally efficient hand-to-hand combat techniques, tore away the Russians’ weapons. They launched a lightning flurry of vicious palm strikes, punches, and strangling choke holds, quickly reducing the Russian gangsters to writhing gasping bodies, clutching crushed windpipes or moaning with broken arms; or to inert, unconscious forms.

  Just as quickly, the SEALs snatched the manacles from their planned torturers and bound the Russians.

  Patrick stepped to the door and opened it. The two other SEALs shoved the battered outside guards through the door and bound them, as well.

  The old man rose from his chair, his face flushed in utter fury. “And now you will kill me, you bastards, as you killed my son!”

  But his expression transformed into one of utter dumbfounded surprise, as the SEALs gathered the weapons and piled them on the table in front of him.

  “We’ll release your men as soon as you instruct them not to attack us,” Patrick said calml
y. “We wanted to show you that we are fully capable of carrying out the mission we will propose to you, if you meet our requests.”

  Fyodorov stepped over to the hulking bald man, still gasping from a strike to the throat. He leaned down and muttered, “You will not harm these men. You will not take revenge. Understand, Vasily?”

  “Da, da,” he answered hoarsely. Driller Harmon rolled the Russian over onto his stomach and unshackled him, and the Russian heaved himself up and began to release the others, all of whom glowered at the SEALs with frustrated hatred.

  “So, what is this mission?” asked Fyodorov, sitting back down behind the table, placing one hand on an assault rifle among the pile on the table.

  “Simple. We destroy the machines that killed your son. Destroy the system that made them.”

  Fyodorov chuckled. “And you can do this with bare hands?”

  “That brings us to our requests. We need weapons. Heavy weapons. Weapons that only the military have.”

  “I am only a businessman,” said Fyodorov with a mocking wave.

  “Yes, you are. But I know what kind. I found out about you. I have seen your FBI, your Interpol records. We know that you have connections with arms dealers. Use them.”

  Fyodorov waved to his men to clear the table of their weapons. Several grasped their assault rifles as if eager to use them. But one glance from the old man, and they retreated.

  “I do have connections . . . here . . . and there.” The old man nodded his head around to indicate diverse connections. “If I did get you weapons, some of these suppliers would readily sell the information about the weapons they provided.”

  “Then use your . . . influence . . .” Patrick nodded at the two gaunt men who would have been their torturers “. . . to make sure that doesn’t happen. Protect both us and yourself.”

  “What you want?”

  Patrick began to rattle off a string of technical weaponry terms: “DGMs, M805s, a thousand EXACTO rounds, XM-50s, ME12s, M268 Gatlings with armor piercing rounds, MAUL shotguns, Stingers, Claymores—”

  “Hold, hold hold,” commanded Fyodorov. He beckoned to his side a small gnome of a man, who began to enter the list on a tablet computer. “You throw at me all these military names. What do you want . . . in real language?”

  Needle Blake stepped forward and took a deep breath, preparing to give a tutorial to the thug. He recited the list like a teacher giving a lecture.

  “DGMs are drone-guided missiles. To target them, you first send up a small camera-carrying drone. You use it to designate targets. Then you hit a button, and a portable ground unit launches a shitload of rockets that hit those targets. You don’t even have to stick your head up.

  Blake paused to let the little man finish writing, then continued. “M805s are artificially intelligent sniper rifles with an accurate range of three miles. The rifles calibrate themselves to the sniper’s shooting style, compensating for any little quirks. They become an extension of your body . . .”

  “. . . and we need a shitload of smart guided bullets, called EXACTOs, to go with the rifles. EXACTO stands for ‘Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance.’ You sight the target, the rifle locks on, you aim, and pull the trigger. The bullet automatically adjusts its trajectory to home in on the target. There’s no way the target can evade . . .”

  “. . . XM-50s are semi-automatic grenade launchers; they can send fifty grenades downrange as fast as you can pull the trigger . . .

  “. . . ME12s are mobile explosive charges. They move like snakes, their bodies loaded with shaped charges that penetrate anything. You laser-designate a target, and they maneuver to get there, then detonate . . .

  “. . . Stinger 73s are small hand-held missiles that can take down any aircraft. The neuromorphs have flying robots; we need to kill them . . .

  “. . . The M268 Gatling is my favorite bang-bang. It’s a minigun with six rotating barrels that fire six thousand rounds a minute. And we want armor-piercing depleted uranium ammo to penetrate the fucking robots’ shielding . . .

  “. . . Finally, MAUL semi-automatic shotguns. MAUL stands for Multi-shot Accessory Underbarrel Launcher. You don’t have to cock them. They fire a volley of rounds as fast as you can pull the trigger. You load a whole clip of rounds at once. It’s when you’re in a fire fight and you can’t stop to fuck with shells—”

  “Look, you can’t expect—” interrupted Fyodorov.

  “I haven’t gotten to the big stuff,” continued Blake. His frustration was showing at having to negotiate with this civilian. “Claymore mines, breaching charges, five hundred pounds of C18 explosive . . . oh yeah and TALOSes . . . ‘Tactical Assault Light Operator Suits.’ They’re armored, powered exosuits.”

  “Needle . . .” warned Patrick, shaking his head.

  Blake shrugged. “Okay, okay, you probably can’t get the TALOSes. But, hey, give it a try.” He glanced at Patrick, a sly grin on his face. “Long as you’re trying, see if you can get some of this weird stuff we’ve heard about. Like a focused electromagnetic pulse blaster. We might be able to fry their fucking brains.”

  Blake slapped his hands together in a “that’s-all” gesture.

  “You give money now,” said Fyodorov. “I want to kill these things, and I will help pay, but you must put up money.”

  “How much?” asked Patrick.

  “Five million in DarkCoin.”

  “Give me your account information.”

  Fyodorov waved to his gnome, who tapped a few times on the tablet to bring up the Russian’s bank account and handed it to Patrick. Patrick took the tablet and, his expression a mask of dead calm, tapped in commands to transfer funds.

  “Done. This is half. That’s all you get,” he said, handing the tablet back to the gnome, whose eyebrows raised in surprise. He showed the tablet to Fyodorov, who nodded in agreement.

  “One more thing,” said Fyodorov.

  “What?”

  “You may read news about . . . events . . . involving stolen weapons,” said the old Russian. “You do not care about those events. You do not care where weapons come from.”

  Patrick nodded reluctantly. Whatever arms dealer they used could not possibly be as dangerous as the neuromorphs.

  “Goddamned motherfuckers!” Needle Blake had burst into the dining room of the safe house, waving the e-paper, his googles perched atop his shaved head. “Murderous motherfucking scum! Next time I see them, they’re dead!”

  “Johnny, slow down,” said Patrick, putting down his fork. “What is it?”

  “Last night, those fuckers attacked an army ordnance supply ship. It had just left Newport News for the Middle East.”

  “Jesus . . . it had to be Fyodorov,” said Patrick, a sentiment that the other SEALs echoed around the breakfast table.

  “Why would he attack that ship?” asked Leah.

  “The ship was probably carrying all the stuff on our shopping list,” said Patrick. “I assumed Fyodorov was going to get the ordnance overseas . . . through his arms dealer contacts.”

  “You assumed wrong,” said Monte “Jammer” James, the heavy weapons specialist. “My fault for letting you. I shoulda said something. Some of the stuff I wanted was blue-sky wishing. Foreign arms dealers wouldn’t have had them. The army would.”

  “Twenty-five soldiers and sailors dead!” exclaimed Blake. “Fucking Russians! I will fucking kill them!”

  Patrick lowered his head. “I should have known. I should have known.”

  “Look, we all bought into the plan,” said James. “We all knew we were bargaining with the devil.”

  “And now we’re in league with the devil, too,” said Pitbull DeFranco.

  “Hold it, just hold it,” said Patrick. He got up and slowly walked around to the front of the room.

  “I don’t fucking want to hold anything but a rifle on those fuckers,” said Blake. “And after that, I want to make a lot of holes. They’ve made us into terrorists.”

  “First of all, we’re not terrorists,�
�� said Patrick. “But it is true that the minute we begin using those weapons, we will be branded terrorists. We’ll just have to accept that for the time being.”

  “Yeah, maybe for the time being,” muttered DeFranco. “Okay, but those scum will pay for what they did.”

  “They will, I promise,” said Patrick. “But these machines are a far bigger threat . . . to our species. They must be stopped. And we are the only people in a position to stop them. And if that means accepting equipment gotten through terrorist means, we’ll just have to do that.”

  After a long silence, Driller Harmon quietly said, “I agree with Cap. I’ve been in firefights where I knew I’d have to risk taking out civilians to get the real bad guys.”

  “Well, I don’t,” said Blake. “Our first order of business should be to get those fuckers.”

  “You mean the ones who now have weapons that could wipe us out in an instant?” asked Patrick. “I’d say our first order of business is to strategize how we’re going to get those weapons out of their hands and into ours.”

  “Shit,” said Blake in sour agreement.

  “Look, let’s all take a day. Go think on your own. We’re not in the military any more. You can each choose to do what your conscience says. We’ll gather tonight and each of us will decide what to do. If there’s enough of us to proceed with the mission we will. If not, well . . .”

  Leah got up and took Patrick’s arm, speaking to the SEALs. “We know what the neuromorphs are planning. As terribly agonizing as this choice is, there’s only one way to go. I hope you understand that.”

  Patrick and Leah left the dining room to utter silence, followed by each of the SEALs, individually retreating to his own room in the sprawling safe house to decide which devil to fight.

  Patrick and three other SEALs hunkered down, waiting, yards apart in the thick stand of acacia trees beside the dirt road. The moonless night shrouded them in pitch black. But they had switched their googles to become night-vision glasses, so they had a clear view of the road and its surroundings. And the utter, enveloping stillness of the desert night would amplify any sound.