The Neuromorphs

by Dennis Meredith

  “God, Leah, we were—” Patrick began to say.

  “Police!” She exclaimed, waving her hands, a frightened look on her face. “SWAT teams with weapons, rockets! There are armored carriers coming in with more!”

  “The ‘morphs must have called them,” said Mencken. “But how could they have known you guys were here?”

  “Doesn’t make sense to me, either,” said Patrick. “They can’t lie, and if they’d detected us, they would have reacted.”

  “Since we just used a DGM, the cops know we have heavy weapons. They must think we’re the terrorists that stole them,” said Blake. “This is going to get nasty.”

  “Nastier than you think,” said Mencken. “I’d bet there are replicas out there among the human cops. At the lab, we produced replicas of Phoenix police, including commanders. They’re going to tell those cops to shoot first, and not even bother to ask questions later.”

  • • •

  The security cameras showed at least a dozen armored combat vehicles rumbling into place around the warehouse, their machine guns trained on the building. With them came vans that discharged SWAT teams wielding automatic weapons and grenade launchers.

  “This building’s hardened, but it’s not bombproof,” said Mencken, scrutinizing the camera feeds. They heard another whoosh of a rocket launch and a distant boom.

  “Just took out another police drone,” reported James over the comm. “They won’t be sending any more of those.”

  An electronic tone signaled a phone call. Mencken touched a button on the console to put it on speaker.

  “This is Nathan Rodriguez of the Phoenix police,” said the voice on the other end. “We also have the Phoenix National Guard deployed. We know who you are, Patrick Jensen. We know your men. We know you have weapons. So, unless you surrender in the next ten minutes, we will destroy your building.”

  “He’s one of the replicas we made,” said Mencken. “It will order an attack no matter what we do. We go out there and it has us gunned down . . . claiming we were rigged with suicide vests.”

  “Garry, you’re our only chance,” said Patrick. “Does that motor control code work? What will it do?”

  “It’ll make them reveal themselves as ‘morphs,” said Garry, leaning over the keyboard.

  “How?” asked Patrick.

  “Just watch. I’m sure they all have the skills algorithm by now. I’m transmitting a signal to the algorithm . . .” he paused and took a deep, shaky breath. “. . . now!” He pressed a key and the group stared at the screen. Scattered among the hundreds of cops and soldiers, some slowly raised their right hands above their heads.

  “The ‘morphs are raising their hands!” shouted James from his vantage point on the roof. “Oh, man, you are a fucking genius! We can take them—”

  “Ohhhh shit!” They heard Cranston behind them exclaim in a low, stunned voice. They turned to see him staring dumbly at Leah, who stood back about ten feet from the group.

  Her right hand was raised above her head.

  The neuromorph replica Leah regarded the raised arm with the blank stare of an android. It started toward the group, its useful arm reaching out with the mechanical determination of a well-programmed machine.

  “Oh, dear God,” breathed a stunned Patrick. “Leah . . . did you call the police?”

  “Yes,” it said simply.

  “STAY BACK!” shouted Mencken. “IT CAN TEAR YOU APART!”

  Cranston ignored the warning and lunged at the android Leah, slamming into its midsection and driving it backward. But the neuromorph grabbed him and with its operable hand lifted him bodily over its head.

  “SHOOT IT!” Shouted Mencken. “THE HEAD! THE HEAD!”

  The android pulled back its arm prepared to slam Cranston’s struggling body against the brick wall.

  The explosive crack of a rifle resounded in the vast space, and the Leah android’s mouth became a gaping hole, secondskin lips torn away to reveal a graphene jaw. The group turned to see the sniper Harmon, his rifle propped on a workbench, taking precise aim for another shot.

  The bullet tore into the left eye, shredding the fiber optic cable beneath. Yet another shot took out the right eye. Harmon paused, as DeFranco leaped at the android, grasping a grenade. He shoved it into the cavity Harmon had created, and with the same momentum used his bulk to tear Cranston from the android’s grasp. The two slammed onto the floor, leaped up and sprinted for the protection of a nearby steel shelf. The others sprang behind workbenches, consoles, or any cover they could find.

  The android Leah flailed about with its left arm, the right one still held uselessly aloft. With its sight and hearing gone, it staggered back and forth for a long moment, blindly grasping for any human it could find.

  Then its head exploded with a reverberating bang, blasting away fragments of graphene, plastic, and electronic circuitry. The grenade also shredded the neck, leaving the headless neuromorph wandering aimlessly back and forth.

  Patrick recovered first. “Al, get to the roof. Take the other rifle, and you and Blake target the ‘morphs. But we need the DGMs to really finish the job. Tell James to put up the DGM’s drone. I’ll be up when we’re done here.” He glared at the flailing machine he once thought was his wife.

  “Oopsie, get a shaped charge,” he said. Lane, the explosives specialist, sprinted behind the rows of steel shelves to their weapons cache.

  Patrick signaled to DeFranco to circle to the other side of the damaged, but still lethal, android. Patrick found a length of steel pipe, and waved at DeFranco to find a weapon. DeFranco rummaged in the tall shelves and came up with a metal robotic leg.

  They warily approached the blinded android, and drew back their weapons, swinging them with as much might as they could muster, catching the android square in the chest.

  The impact achieved what they had hoped, knocking the android onto its back. With only one useful arm, it struggled to get to its feet. Patrick and DeFranco each grabbed a leg, and—barely able to hold them against the superhuman kicks, dragged the android away from the computer consoles and down the length of the sprawling warehouse, toward the scattered array of damaged androids.

  “OOPSIE!” shouted Patrick.

  “Got it!” he heard Oopsie Lane say, as he ran past holding the chunk of explosive.

  “Plant it!” commanded Patrick, and Lane plunged forward, avoiding the android’s grasping hand, and slammed the small hemisphere of C18 explosive onto its chest, where the explosive charge’s adhesive stuck it fast.

  Patrick and Lane quickly grabbed the android’s still-frozen arm and flipped it onto its stomach, and the three of them leaped away to take cover behind the shelves.

  The ear-splitting explosion vaulted the android ten feet into the air. It slammed with the dull thunk of an inert mass onto the concrete floor.

  The three approached the mangled android, and Patrick moved the body. Shiny, black shards of a shattered neuromorphic brain littered the floor beneath the wreckage.

  “Where is Leah?” Patrick whispered, his expression stricken. “My God, where is she?” He took a deep breath and recovered himself, his expression hardening, turning to the others. “One down . . . and a shitload to go.”

  Standing on the warehouse roof, peering out at the forces arrayed against them, James declared “You realize, Cap, that the instant we start shooting at the ‘morphs, everybody’ll return fire.”

  “Well, Jammer, that just means we’ve got to make our point fast . . . show them that there are robots among them,” said Patrick. “We’ve got an advantage in that they’re seeing what they thought were humans with arms raised.”

  “Three minutes to deadline,” said Blake. “Then we’re all blown to hell.”

  “Okay, commencing targeting,” said James. He opened a large metal case, flipping a switch inside. A high-pitched whine emanated from within, and rising from the case came a plate-sized quadcopter drone, its four propellers whirring furiously.

  “Synching,�
� said James. The video screen built into the case’s lid showed the view from the drone’s camera as it vaulted into the sky. The camera aimed toward the fleet of assault vehicles and SWAT vans, and the dozens of men crouched behind and between them.

  Meanwhile, Blake moved to check a desk-sized case, from which jutted a hundred firing tubes, each holding a micro-rocket. Two were empty, the missiles having destroyed police surveillance drones. But the red lights beside the others indicated they were armed and ready to fire.

  “Acquiring targets,” announced James. The view screen showed the drone swooping toward the line of police, where many were holding up their right arms, their comrades looking at them curiously. James began to count off “One . . . two . . . three . . . ,” as the view screen showed red X’s appearing on the heads of one after the other of the neuromorph mimics.

  “The mouths, Jammer,” reminded Patrick. “You need a precise hit on the mouths.”

  “Cap, when we’re done, they won’t have mouths,” answered James, still peering intently through his googles. He continued to count off, reaching twenty.

  “One minute, Jammer,” said. “There’s a high-altitude killer drone somewhere up there with a missile with our name on it.”

  “Okay, Jammer, launch now!” Commanded Patrick.

  “But Cap, I haven’t gotten all of them yet. There’s still—”

  “We’ve got to show them now, or we won’t be able to because we’ll be nothing but charred corpses.”

  Jammer responded instantly with “Command launch!” The system recognized his voice, and Blake leaped back from the rocket tubes to avoid the explosive launch of twenty-five finger-sized micro-rockets. They burst skyward in a single formation, their fins popping from their bodies, streaming thin trails of smoke from their tails. In an instant, they broke formation, blasting away from one another and arcing separately downward toward their targets.

  Oblivious to the fact that they might get their heads shot off, Patrick, Blake, James, and Harmon all stood up to see the result. That result made all three smile.

  Impacting their targets in rapid-fire succession, the twenty-five rockets penetrated into the mouths of twenty-five replica neuromorphs, and with explosions resembling shotgun blasts, blew their heads into pieces.

  Machine gun fire erupted from the police, impacting the roof parapet and driving the four SEALs to the ground. But suddenly the firing stopped, and they raised their heads to see a vicious battle begin on the police lines, between stunned cops and headless androids, flailing around blindly.

  Police and soldiers were tossed like rag dolls, some with their limbs torn away, as the androids managed to clutch some who foolishly came within range. But other humans were smart enough to back away, firing into the thrashing androids.

  “GRENADES!” Shouted Blake to the men below over the cacophony of gunfire. “GRENADES AND SHAPED CHARGES, YOU DUMB FUCKS!”

  “They can’t hear you,” said Patrick. “They’re busy. They’ll figure it out. Jammer, finish the job.”

  James turned back to the business of targeting more neuromorphs, and he shortly had another twenty-five. He gave the launch order, and another fusillade of rockets erupted from the tubes, swirled into the sky and sped to their targets, unleashing another series of blasts.

  By now, the police lines were a wild pandemonium of cops and soldiers firing at convulsing, headless neuromorphs.

  “Mencken, do you see what’s going on?” asked Patrick over their communicator.

  “Yeah, looks like they could use some advice.”

  “See if you can contact somebody in charge. Tell them our munitions guy is coming out with a load of shaped charges. You hear me, Oopsie?”

  “Already on it, Cap,” came the answer from Lane.

  “Al, let’s give them a little help,” said Patrick, taking up a sniper rifle.

  James had already nestled his sniper rifle onto a roof parapet and sighted in. The artificially intelligent rifle synched to him, and he quickly began to designate targets and unleash a steady, precise volley of smart guided bullets. Homing in on strategic points on the thrashing androids, the bullets crippled their ability to do any more injury to the attacking troops. Several of the men waved quickly back in thanks, as James precisely targeted an android leg or an arm, rendering it crippled. Patrick joined in with his rifle, also doing serious damage to the androids.

  “The brains!” he exclaimed abruptly. Some of the androids’ neuromorphic brains had automatically triggered their escape mechanisms.

  If the shock of seeing robotic heads being blown off weren’t enough for the troops, now they were even more stunned to see onyx spheres erupt from chests of the downed androids and sprout metal legs. But James and Patrick were ready.

  Taking precise aim at one sphere after another, they fired, blasting each one into a pile of inert, black shards. The guided rifle rounds even tracked the brains that had already begun to scurry away, following them and ultimately reducing them to rubble.

  Below them, the explosives tech Oopsie Lane and breacher Pitbull DeFranco ran from the building carrying two large cases. A bullet fired from the police line barely missed them, and the SEALs realized it had come from a neuromorph that had not been targeted, his right arm in the air, his left wielding a rifle.

  But a soldier standing beside the android jammed the barrel of his assault rifle into the android’s mouth and loosed a rapid-fire volley of shots. They reduced that android to uncoordinated staggering similar to those that had been struck by rockets.

  Lane and DeFranco reached the soldiers, and Lane whipped open a case and yanked out a hemispherical shaped charge. He punched its trigger button and ducked down, scrambling toward one of the thrashing androids, barely managing to avoid its powerful hands. He slapped the charge onto the android’s chest and rolled away, leaping up and running as the explosive detonated with a jarring thud, blowing the android into shredded, component parts.

  Meanwhile, DeFranco had moved down the line of police and soldiers, doing the same to another blinded, meandering android, blowing it apart.

  The soldiers immediately understood the process and began grabbing the shaped charges approaching the androids. Some of the humans were injured in the process, some arms broken, some thrown against the armored vehicles. But the steady succession of loud explosive thuds told the story of android after android being reduced to little more than inert, smoking piles of graphene, secondskin, and electrogel.

  Now Cranston appeared from the building, sprinting down the line to take out several escaping brains, blowing them to pieces with his assault rifle.

  “This is Captain Casem,” said a voice in Patrick’s ear. “I’m the Guard commander. Your man gave me his comm. You’re Patrick Jensen?”

  “Yes, but what happened to Rodriguez?”

  “He’s in pieces, and we’d like to thank you for that. I’m now in field command.”

  “And what are your orders?”

  “Well, I’m supposed to blow you up. That’s the order from command.”

  “But you know what that means, right?”

  “Well, I’m told back-channel by a buddy of mine at HQ that the general who gave that order has his right hand in the air. And there are a couple more like that.”

  “So, you’ll need our help in taking them out.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Listen, I need a favor, too. The robots have my wife. They made a replica of her, and that’s what called you about us. I have to find her.”

  “Whatever we can do,” said Casem. “I hope she’s safe. But you certainly appreciate how little value these things place on human life.”

  • • •

  Patrick and three other SEALs stood amid the rubble of the large National Guard Phoenix command center, surrounded by bullet-riddled computer screens, a door blasted off its hinges, and the lingering blue haze and chlorine odor of detonated C18 explosive.

  With the toe of his boot, Patrick nudged the shatter
ed remains of what had once been the neuromorphic replica of the adjutant general of the Arizona National Guard.

  A dull thud vibrated the building, indicating that Oopsie and Flash had dispatched the last of the four replicas that had been infiltrated into the command.

  “What next?” asked Guard commander Captain Casem, a compact, dark-haired man in fatigues.

  Just then, Mencken and Garry entered.

  “Ask them what’s next,” said Patrick.

  “We have to take the factory,” said Mencken. “The assembly line, of course, but also the lab where replicas are made. At least the lab that we know of. We need to find out how many are out there. And we need to destroy the central server. That’s what downloads the mutant OS.”

  Garry shook his head emphatically. “No, we can’t just take out that server. That holds all the data on the number and location of neuromorphs. If we want to get them all, I need to get into that server.”

  Blake retorted, “Well, shit, you mean all we got to do is blast our way into the factory, blow the crap out of everything, but not touch the server?” He sat on a desk while a medic bandaged an arm that had taken a bullet from a replica. “Pitbull, you got some of that magic explosive that just blows up what you want it to?”

  The breacher Pitbull DeFranco folded his thick arms and shook his head. “Nah, got no magic stuff. But Cap, you get me up close to whatever needs to be opened up, I’m pretty sure I can do it and spare what’s inside.”

  Casem stepped away from the group, lowering his head and peering through his combat communicator googles. He returned to the group.

  “We’ve got to move fast. Things are getting worse,” he said. “I sent my action report up the chain of command . . . particularly about the raised-arm signal by the robots; and the intel I just got back wasn’t good.”

  “They found a lot of replicas?” asked Patrick.

  “Too damned many,” said Casem. “A four-star general in the Pentagon; some colonels in the army and air force scattered throughout the country, four governors . . . these things are all over.”

  “Were they neutralized?”