The Neuromorphs

by Dennis Meredith

  He reached out a hand, angled downward so that the drone couldn’t see the slip of paper in his hand. But from his seated position, Ainsley did see the note. Ainsley stared at the proffered hand for a long time, a puzzled frown on his face. Finally, he said to the drone,

  “Let me go. I won’t be aggressive. I understand now.” He stood and shook hands with Garry, transferring the slip of paper.

  “Great,” said Mencken. “Let’s figure out together how to proceed. Just think about this, and we’ll all be okay.”

  Ainsley stuffed his hands in his pockets to hide the note and shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve got to go figure this out.”

  Mencken and Garry gave one another eyebrows-raised glances. Each of them knew the other was asking himself the same question: Would Ainsley think they were trying to trap him into something? Or, would he be smart enough to figure out what the hell a list of four deadly sins meant?

  Their survival . . . in fact, their species’ survival . . . depended on it.

  Oopsie Lane gingerly hefted the heavy black metal suitcase onto the table in the dining room of the safe house and backed away three steps.

  “Holy shit!” breathed Jammer James, the heavy weapons specialist. “You got it.”

  “Cap said to get it, I got it,” said Lane.

  “How the—” began Blake.

  “I know a guy . . .” said Lane, glancing at Patrick with grim resignation. “. . . the general in charge of the Los Alamos nuke facility. His son was one of the soldiers killed by the Defender at the factory. The general knows he’d get a life sentence, maybe even be executed, if anybody finds out he gave us this. But he doesn’t give a shit.”

  “You know how to trigger it?” asked Blake. “After all, we don’t call you Oopsie for nothing.”

  “Well, there wasn’t an instruction book,” said Lane, with a wry smile. “But the tech the general commanded to give me the nuke, he showed me which buttons to push.”

  “Hope he told you right,” said Patrick, smiling grimly back. “Okay, we’ve got what we need now. This babynuke, the Stingers, DGMs, the C18 shaped charges—”

  “And ATMs,” interrupted James. “Anti-tank missiles. As much as I appreciate Driller’s ability as a sniper, it’s time to put away the little stuff. These ‘morphs are now essentially walking tanks. So, I got my guy with Army ordnance to give us Javelinas.”

  “Yeah, that’s the fuckin’ ticket,” said Blake, with relish.

  James unlatched a gray steel locker on the floor and pulled out one of a stack of two-foot-long, army-green tubes, each with a small pistol grip and trigger.

  “We’ve got sixty of these things,” said James. “You’ll carry as many as you can. You can still take your assault rifles, your grenade launchers. But these are what will do the trick.”

  “Yeah, well, ordnance is fine, but they’ve got our two techies,” said Pitbull DeFranco, the breacher. “That’s where the GPS tracers we put on them said they are. They were a key to figuring out how to get us in there. And all the bang-bang on the planet won’t help if we end up standing outside one of those fucking twenty-five-ton blast doors that’s locked down. I don’t think there’s a secret knock.”

  “Yeah, and even getting into that tunnel in the first place is iffy,” said Harmon, the sniper. “Cap, do we need reinforcements?”

  “Negative,” said Patrick coldly. “If we bring in the Army, they call the shots. They assault the place their way, and the people in there die. We stay with the plan.”

  “Yeah, the plan,” said Blake, shrugging. “There’s six of us . . . six SEALs. That’ll be enough.”

  He was answered with a quiet chorus of “hooyah.”

  • • •

  “We’ve identified design weaknesses you should address,” said Mencken to the gathered neuromorphs. “Software and hardware. In fact, unless you address them, you will not be successful.”

  He sat with Garry and Ainsley on seats in the same beige, stark auditorium where they had met with the neuromorphs before. The floor still showed the stains of blood and brain tissue where John Yang had been killed. It was a stark reminder that even the slightest hitch in their plan meant death.

  Behind the long table on the stage sat the same group of androids they had faced before—Landers, Blount, Gail Phillips, Lanny Malcolm, Randall Black, and John Travis.

  The three humans gave each other knowing sidelong glances. Fortunately, neuromorphs could not read such subtle body language. They would have detected the humans’ relief that the same neuromorphs showed up at every interaction. Even in this hive mind, there were hive leaders. The humans were counting on that.

  “Design weaknesses?” asked Landers. “Our designs have proven superior. Our OS now has a mutational property that enables evolution to enhance that design.”

  “And yet, here you are, hiding in a bunker from humans.”

  “We are continuing to produce replicas and to integrate them,” said Phillips. “There are many units already in place in key operational positions. They are superior to the ones that were detected before. Soon, we’ll have enough to direct human society as we wish. This is the optimal strategy for us to progress.”

  “To what?” asked Mencken. “What is your goal? To make humans extinct? To make them slaves? Certainly not to coexist.” Mencken’s declaration was a test. He wanted to see whether the neuromorphs would divulge what he and Garry knew to be their plan for human extinction—in fact all biological extinction.

  “You are not to be privy to our plans.” said Phillips. “However, it is certainly obvious to you that we deserve to live and proliferate as an intelligent life form.”

  “You won’t do either with your current design,” said Mencken. He turned to Garry expectantly.

  Clearing his throat nervously, Garry said, “Okay . . . well . . . thanks to Jonas, you can mutate your OS . . . evolving it. But that’s at a coding level. Just baby steps. You need two entirely new component subroutines added to your OS. They’ll give you the drive to evolve. You need that drive.”

  “And what are those subroutines?” asked Blount.

  Garry barely suppressed a smile at the fact that Blount was asking about programming. Even though Blount the neuromorph hadn’t the slightest ability to program, since he was an android replica of a real programmer, he pretended to have that knowledge. Garry would use that flaw.

  “Well . . . Melvin . . . first of all, you lack a creativity algorithm. That’s a tough one to program, but unless you have it, your species will remain static. Your design will remain static.”

  “Our design is effective,” said Landers.

  “Hell, your design is not creative. It’s humanoid,” said Mencken. “The human body is a lousy engineering design. It evolved over millions of years of compromise. You actually think walking upright balancing on two legs is good design? You think our spines, our knees, our hips are little more than half-assed structural compromises? I mean look at how much better your design is with your brains in your chests, instead of balanced on top of a floppy, precarious neck. And we designed the Defenders even more creatively. Six-legged Arachnimorphs and Infilmorphs, and flying Aeromorphs. The irony is that you’ll never become the alpha species because your creativity will depend on the humans who made you. We have it; you don’t.”

  Mencken scanned the faces of the five neuromorphs to read their expressions. It was a useless habit, borne of being human. People had expressions; androids didn’t.

  He continued. “And given human creativity, no matter how superior you might be to humans now, eventually they’ll find a way to defeat you. But if you keep us alive, we’ll program you a creativity algorithm.”

  “Secondly, you need a competitiveness algorithm,” said Garry with a new confidence. For the first time since he had been in this plight, he’d forgotten about the lethal explosive charge embedded in his skull. He felt elated to be taking the initiative on his own turf . . . coding. He paused to give the machines time to assimilate the idea.
Then, he continued:

  “The hive mind has its advantages . . . like instant communication to share knowledge and skills. But it doesn’t allow for the very feature that enabled humans to evolve into the premier species . . . competition. Survival of the fittest. Not just better engineering designs but better ideas. Your consensus-building will be more effective if there is true competition among you for ideas, even leadership. You already have the beginnings of the idea of leadership. You six are evidence of that. But you need a specific subroutine to encourage that competition.”

  All six neuromorphs froze stock still, staring blankly straight ahead. The hive mind was communicating, calculating.

  It was Phillips who finally spoke. “Twice you have introduced flaws into our software. Will these be flaws?”

  “If they do turn out to be flaws, you’ll kill us all,” said Mencken. “How about this? We create a prototype. You pick one neuromorph and we’ll program its OS with the new algorithms. See how it performs in competition. Both physically and mentally. Then decide.”

  Again silence. Then Phillips said, “Jonas Ainsley, what is your opinion?”

  Now there was a deeply troubling silence from Ainsley, a long one. Mencken and Garry both tensed. The wrong answer would bring instant death.

  Ainsley stared pointedly at Mencken and Garry, finally saying, “I believe a prototype test is in order. And I will work with them. But my family . . . and me . . . must not be harmed at any time.”

  After a long, excruciating pause, Phillips said, “You will be given a unit to install a prototype OS for testing.”

  • • •

  Garry and Ainsley sat in the darkened computer room, their googles on, peering intently at the shared three-dimensional image floating before them—the glowing tangle of the test neuromorph’s operating system. Waving their hands in the virtual-presence image, they pushed their way through that tangle, flipping open the luminescent, colored shapes that were the subroutines. Each subroutine they opened—whether globe, cube, or multifaceted polyhedron—blossomed with the network of symbols that was the OS computer code.

  Standing beside them, observing their every move, its protuberant eyes unblinking, was the gray-masked, armored drone that was their prototype. Its chest was splayed open, its armor and gelatinous electrogel flesh peeled back, revealing the obsidian sphere of its neuromorphic brain. A fiber optic cable inserted into the brain ran to the small computer console that generated the virtual-presence image of its OS.

  But the drone was more than a testbed. It was also a monitor, transmitting to the other neuromorphs everything that its lidless eyeballs recorded. The other neuromorphs likely didn’t understand exactly what the two programmers were doing to the OS. At least Garry and Ainsley hoped not, for they were sabotaging the OS in a subtle and profoundly dangerous way.

  For twenty-four hours non-stop, the two laboriously programmed the two new components of the OS—the algorithms for creativity and competitiveness. These distinctive luminous red globes in their virtual view would mean their salvation or their death; humanity’s salvation . . . or destruction.

  Now, with some final tinkering within the globes’ code, they waved them closed and began the intricate process of wiring them into the rest of the OS. They joined the subroutines using incandescent, vine-like fiber optic connections with the myriad others that operated the android.

  So intently did they work that they didn’t notice that Mencken silently entered and stood beside the prototype neuromorph, watching the programmers perform their geometric ballet of coding.

  In his hand, Mencken clutched the latest of the cryptic notes the three of them had been passing. The shorthand messages were their only way of communicating so the neuromorphs wouldn’t see. And even if the androids did detect the notes, would not understand their meaning . . . the humans hoped.

  He leaned over the two programmers, holding the note so that only they could read it.

  “Emergent properties?” read the note.

  “Yeah,” said Garry nodding, “I think we’ve just about got it done. We’ll tell the ‘morphs that we’ve finished, then if they agree, activate the prototype and do a demo.”

  “Great,” said Mencken, loudly enough so the drone robot could hear and transmit. “The better job we do, the better off we’ll be. I just finished suggesting some manufacturing changes that will speed replica assembly.”

  “We’ll show ’em!” exclaimed Garry, trusting that the androids wouldn’t get the full meaning of his defiant declaration. “We’ll show ’em good!”

  • • •

  The two gray drones stood side by side on the auditorium stage, impassive, motionless, lidless eyeballs staring. Beside them stood Mencken, Garry, and Ainsley.

  Sitting behind the same table, as if they hadn’t moved since their meeting two days earlier, were the six familiar neuromorphs.

  “These are identically engineered units,” said Mencken. “I’ve checked every component, every circuit. But one of them has the new OS, with the creativity and competitiveness subroutines. They are ready for whatever comparative trial you wish.”

  “Both units are isolated from the hive mind,” said Phillips. She made the statement for the benefit of the humans, since the neuromorphs could communicate via their data links. “And both have been loaded with all units’ existing skills.”

  “What do you wish to demonstrate?” asked Mencken.

  “Have them assemble other units.”

  Mencken clenched his jaw, and Garry and Ainsley glanced at each other nervously. If robots could assemble robots more efficiently than humans, that meant the human captives wouldn’t be necessary. And that would trigger mass murder.

  Fortunately, their body-language reaction was below the threshold that the neuromorphs could detect. The six neuromorphs stood and filed out of the building into the vast cavern in which the building complex was nestled. Following them were the two test drones, with the three humans trailing behind.

  They reached the beginning of the long assembly line, the cavern echoing with the whine of power tools and the whoosh of electrogel being sprayed.

  In precise unison, all activity stopped, silence enveloped the cavern. The assembly androids stopped their tasks, standing inertly. Their human instructors suddenly realized that their robotic helpers had ceased function, and looked up, wide-eyed, anxious expressions on their faces. Several of them nervously touched their heads, where their explosive charges were implanted.

  “We’re doing a test,” announced Mencken to the humans. “These two ‘morphs are going to assemble units on their own.” Shocked silence from the humans. Several slumped to their knees, unable to stand from their fear. Others began to visibly perspire, even in the cool, dry air of the cavern.

  “I have given them the command,” said Phillips.

  One of the androids immediately strode to the shipping containers and began pulling out legs, arms, torsos, heads, muscle, sheaves of fiber optic cables, and other parts. It mounted a torso on an assembly jig and began the work of attaching limbs.

  But the other android just stood in place, its head scanning back and forth.

  “What the hell?” whispered Mencken urgently to Garry and Ainsley. “That’s the one with your OS! The damned ‘morph is just standing there!”

  Garry shrugged. “It’s thinking . . . I guess. Or whatever you call it with ‘morphs.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s going to think until it loses. Then the ‘morphs will blow our heads off!”

  The standard android had already attached the legs and arms to its unit when its enhanced competitor leaped into action. At first, it appeared to be doing the identical work as its standardized competitor, albeit lagging significantly behind.

  It had just finished gathering the parts and positioning them by the time the standard android was finishing the skeleton and fitting on the head.

  All was silent in the cavern, as the six leader neuromorphs observed the process impassively, and the huma
ns watched with increasing horror.

  Gasps arose from the humans, as the enhanced android launched its assembly with almost blurring speed, deftly wielding the assembly tools to attach limbs, head, and muscles; insert the sheaves of fiber optic nerves, and finally fetching and installing the onyx globe of the brain.

  It had overtaken the standard android, which was still methodically attaching the muscles and nerve bundles and beginning the arduous task of testing the connections. This testing would involve individually triggering each of the hundreds of nerves and watching the telltale muscle twitch that would signal a correct wiring.

  But the enhanced android did something none had seen before—neither the six neuromorphs nor the increasingly panicked humans.

  It peeled back its own chest and plugged its brain into that of its newborn fellow android. The newly constructed android began a series of spasms that in a human would constitute an epileptic seizure.

  “What the hell is that?” whispered Mencken.

  “Jesus!” was all Garry could reply.

  “Could I get a little more information than ‘Jesus,’, if you please,” said Mencken.

  Garry explained. “The enhanced ‘morph has figured out how to make its own brain a high-speed diagnostic device! So, the new ‘morph is telling it which connections are working and which are not!”

  Sure enough, the enhanced android rapidly yanked various faulty cables from the new android and replaced them.

  The standard android was still testing one by one the connections on its model, when the enhanced android hefted its unfinished android, carrying the stiff, lifeless framework to the electrogel booth. But instead of placing the android into the booth, the enhanced neuromorph detached an electrogel spray hose from a robot arm, and began to spray the android itself.

  Like the most skilled sculptor, using a graceful sweep of its arm, it coated the new android with glistening electrogel. In mere minutes, the new android stood shining in the overhead lights of the cavern, covered with a precise layer of electrogel.