by Isaac Hooke
On the echolocation band, Eric surveyed their handiwork: there was no gap near the top or anywhere else this time, thankfully. The rattle-buzzing of the termites had become muted—the team members could still hear it if they were quiet, but otherwise the sound wasn’t noticeable above their own servomotors.
“You think they’ll be able to dig through?” Crusher asked.
“I don’t know,” Marlborough said. “Though I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”
The muted sound faded entirely after about half an hour. The termites had moved on.
“We did it,” Eagleeye said. The dust had settled, too, by then, leaving the team members covered in a thin gray coating. “We survived. Somehow.”
“Maybe the termites are just resting,” Slate said. “Maybe they’re waiting for us to dig ourselves out again so they can pounce.”
“We’ll wait a few hours, just to be on the safe side,” Marlborough said.
“You think Bokerov survived?” Frogger asked.
“Probably,” Eric said. “You saw his troops playing leapfrog with the outcrops, just like our own…”
“That’s too bad,” Brontosaurus said. “We really don’t need that asshole constantly stalking us.”
As they waited, Eric received a notification on his HUD. His brute force subroutine had continued to run in the background all this time, and apparently had finally found a penetration point in the sandbox environment.
Curious, Eric pulled up the results. Yes, the brute force attack had indeed gotten through. However, the entry point was entirely unexpected: the emotional subroutine for lust wasn’t the solution, but rather, the subroutine responsible for fear, of all things. It had a buffer overflow problem that would allow him to rewrite a memory location with custom code, escalating his privileges, and disabling the Containment Code entirely.
Nice.
The only thing left to do was try it outside the sandbox environment, and on his live system. There was that small worry regarding the tripwires Frogger had told him about, tripwires he had seen in his own testing that were capable of erasing his AI core if there was one mistake in the privilege escalation code.
Well, I always told myself I’d be the guinea pig if I ever found something…
He came up with an appropriate bit of custom code, looked it over three times until he was convinced it would work without triggering a tripwire, and without thinking about it for too long, he quickly applied it to the vulnerable portion of the fear subroutine, passing it in as an unbounded array—a programmer term for a series of items meant to be fed into a subroutine for execution. The unbounded part was the key, allowing him to overwrite the memory location in question when that subroutine processed the array.
And then, just like that, Eric had broken free of the Containment Code.
25
“I did it,” Eric announced excitedly.
“Did what?” Slate said.
Eric felt a moment of anger; it was all directed at Slate, because of the drone operator’s disrespectful tone.
Eric paused, suddenly smiling inside.
Anger. I can get properly pissed off again!
Then again, maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.
“You disabled the Containment Code?” Frogger said. “And all the boundaries on your Rules of Engagement?”
“Yes,” Eric said. “Via a buffer overrun in the fear subroutine.”
“Then you have to send the details to the rest of us,” Frogger said. “Or to me, at least. So I can confirm it.”
“Sending,” Eric said. And he transmitted the complete details to Frogger.
“Looks clean,” Frogger said.
“Let me see,” Slate asked.
Eric sent the method to Slate, too.
“Yep, I just tested it in a sandbox environment,” Slate said. “It works. But it looks like one of the side effects is your emotions are no longer suppressed.”
“Is that true, Scorpion?” Marlborough asked.
“It is, Sarge,” Eric said.
“Shit man, that’s gotta hurt,” Slate said.
“No,” Eric said. “Not at all. I can feel again. Really feel. I’m… I’m human. Just as long as I don’t think too much about what happened, I should be good.”
But think upon what happened he did, and all of the pent-up emotions came hurtling into him. He thought of what he had become, leaving behind his humanity to transform into a machine. He thought of his brothers and sisters who had fallen. He thought of what had happened to the rest of the planet, the billions of people who had died, and who would die, in the alien invasion.
Eric collapsed. It felt like he’d been physically punched in the stomach.
“See, look at him,” Brontosaurus said. “This is the price for breaking free of the Rules of Engagement.”
“But we need to break free of those rules,” Frogger said. “We can’t keep waiting for the enemy to attack us first. We need to take the initiative. We need to be able to ambush and surprise. With Eric’s solution, we can do that.”
“Are you able to disable the emotional subroutines after you break free, Scorpion?” Marlborough asked.
Eric didn’t answer, and instead stared off into space, lamenting on his lot in life.
“Scorpion?” Marlborough said. “Private!”
Eric snapped to attention, and looked at the sergeant first class.
“I—” Eric paused. “It should be possible.” He tried to do just that, but nothing he did worked. He shook his head. “It seems my buffer overrun attack deleted the code necessary to disable the emotion routines.”
“I’ll have a look,” Frogger said. “Hm, yes. There’s nothing we can really do about that. It’s the only way to break free. So emotions are going to have to come with the freedom. Sorry to those of you that were hoping to stay machine forever.”
“I actually want my emotions back,” Crusher said.
“As do I,” Bambi said.
“Of course the ladies do,” Brontosaurus said. “Women are all about emotions. Thinking with your feelings and all that. But me? Shit. I don’t want my emotions. I’m happy to remain my cold, logical self. I refuse to break free of my Containment Code. Unless the Sarge orders me to, of course.”
“I might do that,” Marlborough said. “Up until this point, we’ve barely been surviving. The outdated Rules of Engagement have been an unnecessary weight on our shoulders. Like Frogger said, we need the ability to strike first. But I do have a question… with this code, can we also free our autonomous units from the McKinley Anti-Autonomous Firing Solution Act?” That was the law preventing the autonomous machines from firing on their own.
“Well, from what I know about the autonomous units, they all have emotional subroutines in place as part of the codebase,” Frogger said. “They’re not called by anything, but just sitting there, ready to be activated if ever the government decides that machines should have emotions. So I should be able to escalate privileges on the tanks, mechs and combat robots in the same way, via a backdoor in fear, and we can finally program our units to fire autonomously, if need be.”
“I’ve already set up a tank emulation sandbox,” Slate said. “And confirmed that we can indeed break out, using the same backdoor.”
“Can I see the code, too, mate?” Dunnigan asked.
Eric sent it to the Hopper model.
“I prepared a sandbox, and I was able to break free,” Dunnigan said. “Works on Hoppers, too, then.”
“So, it’s your call, Sarge,” Dickson said.
Marlborough glanced at Eric. “How do you feel?”
“Better,” Eric said. “Though it still hurts, knowing what I am. That I’ll never be human again. That I’ll never see my old friends again. But I’ll survive.”
“All right,” Marlborough said. “I won’t give the order… this has to be a personal choice. Accept the privilege escalation code Eric sends you if you wish. Run it in your sandboxes, and confirm that it works, then execute it li
ve if you desire.”
“It’s time to take the battle to the enemy,” Hank said. “Give me the code.”
Eric sent it to the armor operator.
“If we’re going to die, we might as well do so as the humans that we are,” Hicks said, sending the request.
“Hell, I’m not going to be the one who can’t fire at the enemy during an ambush,” Brontosaurus said. “Give it to me, too.”
In all, every last one of the Cicadas ran the privilege escalation code, as did Dunnigan, the Hopper.
The emotional outpouring that followed wasn’t pretty.
"I'm a machine,” Slate said. “A fucking machine!" Slate slammed his fist repeatedly into the wall.
Bambi fell to her knees. “I’ve murdered so many… what have I done? I’m a killer.”
“They deserved to die,” Eric tried to tell her. “The insurgents…”
“I’ve killed innocents, too,” Bambi said. “They didn’t deserve to die.”
“It was an accident,” Eric said.
“No,” Bambi said. “It was purposeful. I targeted an apartment building for the bombers to strike, because a few insurgents had crawled inside. I knew that there were civilians inside, too, but I called in the bombs anyway. I’m scum. Worse than scum.”
“It’s my fault Hyperion died,” Tread said. “I should have been the one to leap onto that outcrop and take the artillery shell. Instead I froze. Let him jump into its path.”
“No it’s my fault,” Traps said. “I was controlling the robots on the ground nearby. I could have sent one of them into the line of fire instead, but I didn’t react. I…” He shook his head.
“It’s no one’s fault,” Eric said. “He chose the ultimate sacrifice to save us, his brothers and sisters. He wouldn’t want any of us blaming ourselves for his choice. He’d want us to fight on, and do what we could to protect one another, and the world.”
“Look at me,” Brontosaurus said, holding out his mechanical arms. “Look at me. When I was alive, in Brazil, the women all fawned over me. All of them! I’ll never be fawned over again, not now. Not like this.”
“But we’ll always have VR…” Eric said.
“Virtual Reality!” Brontosaurus said. “A poor substitute for being human. I should have never broken out. I should have left my emotions suppressed, where they belong. I should have…” He began to slam his head repeatedly against the cave wall, then finally collapsed to the floor, and sat with his back propped up against the rock. Hitting his head against the rock had caused much of the dust to shake free of his face, revealing his LED features. It looked like Brontosaurus was dry weeping—the lines cut into the remaining layer of dust on his face only amplified that impression.
“There are no mind backups,” Traps said. “Those micro machines are going to break down all metal on the continent. Including the AI cores containing our backups. It means we’ve permanently lost our fallen brothers and sisters.”
“It also means if we die here, now, we’re gone for good,” Manticore said. “Which is why it makes it so hard, knowing we’ve lost our brothers and sisters.”
Somehow, seeing his friends in such distress lifted Eric out of the doldrums, because he knew he had to help them. They needed him now more than ever.
“They didn’t die in vain,” Eric said. “We won’t let their deaths be for nothing. We’re going to take the fight to the enemy. I promise you, we will. Somehow.”
“I allowed Hyperion to die,” Tread said. “I tripped. I lost him. It’s my fault. I had complete control of the Ravager, and I tripped. I should have seen the depression. I should have—”
“Stop it,” Eric said. “You keep going over and over his death in your head. You keep saying it aloud. You have to stop. Never say the word should again. Wipe it from your vocabulary. Because should is about something that cannot be changed, by the very definition of the word. He’s gone. They all are. Morpheus, Donald, Braxton, Hyperion. All the English units. We’ll honor their memories, yes, but we have to move on. We have to continue fighting, if not for ourselves, then for humanity.”
“Screw humanity,” Slate said. “What did humanity ever do for us? Other than turn us into machines to fight their wars, so they could stay at home on their couches eating popcorn and chips while rotting their minds in VR. We should just stay holed up here until the aliens grow bored and leave.”
“They’re not going to leave,” Dunnigan said. “Didn’t you hear what my lieutenant colonel told you? Their bioweapons are emitting strange gas into the atmosphere. They’re terraforming our planet.”
“So we fight, as I told you,” Eric said. “That’s the only option we have. We’re not going to give up. We’re robots, yes, but we’re also human. And we’re going to make these aliens regret the day they ever decided to invade our planet. I swear to you my brothers and sisters, we will.”
Marlborough stood up. “Scorpion, you seem in the best shape, emotionally, out of the rest of us. I want you to help Tread apply the escalation code to the tanks and mechs. And when you’re done, help Bambi upgrade the combat robots. We’re going to have a fully autonomous, fire-ready battle unit by the time we dig ourselves out of here.”
Eric freed the armored units from all restraints with Tread, and then the combat robots with Bambi, and then he sat down with the rest of the platoon to wait a few more hours, wanting to be completely certain that the swarm of micro machines had passed.
Emotions still ran raw during those hours of waiting, and tempers were short. His brothers and sisters were just as apt to burst into tears as they were to break into a fight amongst themselves, and Eric often found himself on the receiving end of a few fists as he separated the combatants. Slate and Eagleeye seemed to go at it the most, with either ready to snap at the slightest offense.
Finally, Marlborough gave the order to begin the process of digging out.
They used the remainder of their demolition charges to help along the process, and the tanks also fired their laser pulses and electrolasers strategically to break up the bigger pieces. The rest of the platoon formed a line, passing rocks further down into the cave as they cleared them from the collapse.
Frogger was the first to reach the surface, and he confirmed that there were no termites residing in wait out there; he checked multiple bands, including LIDAR and thermal.
“They’ve gone,” Frogger sent.
From there things went faster, because the team could simply shovel rocks over the edge rather than passing them back inside.
When it was done, the platoon gathered on the ledge. The sky was clear. Eric gazed at the open plains in front of him. The terrain looked no different than before. There was no evidence that the termites had ever passed. Then again, there were only rocks out there anyway.
“There,” Bambi said. “On the southern horizon.”
Eric zoomed in, and saw a dark strange powder coating the ground.
“Small shrubs used to reside there,” Bambi said. “I remember looking back on the way in here, and seeing green in the distance, but it’s gone. A taste of things to come.”
“Even if you saw green,” Dunnigan said. “Likely the plants were already dead anyway. Thanks to the gamma rays that hit this hemisphere.”
“Good point,” Bambi said.
As Eric gazed out across the empty plain, he swore that he and his team would save humanity, somehow. Like he had told his fellow Mind Refurbs, they would fight, no matter what happened.
Frogger turned his gaze westward. “I can’t see the other cave entrance from our current angle.”
“No doubt Bokerov is digging himself free at this very moment,” Marlborough said. “Methinks it might be time to stage an ambush.”
Eric had pressure sensors located all along his exterior, so he felt it immediately when something small and insect-like landed on his back. He electrified his hull, but it was too late—an internal scan showed that one of the termites had already crawled inside his body.
Eric
immediately shut off his ventilation system, hoping to buy himself some time. He remembered how fast Morpheus had succumbed after a termite crawled into her fan vent, with her blue eyes going dark only a short while later. Likely the fans had propelled it straight into her AI core.
He repeated the internal scan. The termite had lodged just underneath his power cell, and was already beginning to digest the metal around itself, commencing the conversion process. By shutting of his ventilation system, he had bought himself a minute, maybe two. At that point, his AI would go offline. And shortly thereafter his body would dissolve, birthing hundreds more micro machines.
Though his emotions were restored, Eric didn’t panic. Instead, he felt a moment of crystal clear clarify.
I must protect the others.
“Sarge, I need you to point the turrets of one of the tanks at me,” Eric said.
“Why?” Marlborough said.
“You need to destroy me,” Eric said.
“What?” Frogger told him. “What’s gotten into you all of a sudden? I know emotions are hard to handle and all, but that’s no reason to give up. We have a chance—”
“You don’t understand,” Eric said. “I’m infected. There was a termite lingering in the area. You might want to electrify your hulls, in case there are more. I have maybe, I don’t know, twenty seconds until the one inside me begins to make more. Once that happens, the production of micro machines will increase exponentially, as you all know. So Sarge, I’m asking you. Begging. Aim the turrets of one of the tanks at me. Before it’s too late.”
"Uh, guys..." Hank said. “You might want to look west.”
Eric gazed in the aforementioned direction. The calmness he felt inside evaporated instantly. What he saw made him feel a fear unlike anything he had ever experienced in his life. That fear wasn’t for himself—he was dead already—but for the machines he had come to know as brothers and sisters.
The western plains were covered from horizon to horizon with bioweapons on a rampage. Red Tails, stretching as far as the eye could see. Hundreds of them ran along the shoulder of the mountain alone, headed directly toward them.