by Todd McAulty
“Oh, I don’t live here,” he admitted. “Not yet, anyway. There’s a bed in the other room, but I only use it a few nights a week. Mostly I sleep on the road these days. What about you? What do you do?”
“I run a small software company, based in Halifax. We build highly reliable telecom switches.”
“You Canadian?”
“I am. I moved to Illinois just ten days ago.”
“Great market to be in, hardened telecom. Ninety-five percent of telecom software in this country failed in the first four weeks of the war. American communications infrastructure was completely unprepared for a concerted attack. The country won’t make that mistake again.”
“Listen to you. You should be one of my salesmen. I should put you on commission.”
“I just know a good business when I hear one. You should come to one of our dinners. My clients love hearing about new markets.”
“It’s a good business, when I can find buyers. I came to Chicago because I thought the city was back on its feet, but turns out it’s not much better than it was at the height of the fighting. I have to get creative just to get enough bandwidth for a phone call.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad. I understand the hotel is setting up a permanent phone line in the lobby.”
“Fabulous. It’ll be just like the 1930s. I hope it has rotary dial.”
I watched as Rupert unpacked a burst router, powered it up, and began to sync it to one of the small monitors. When he was finished, he dropped into a chair next to me.
“Well, that’s that,” he said. “Now I wait for twenty minutes for all the encryption handshakes. You want a drink?”
I didn’t want to ask what level of encryption needed a twenty-minute handshake. “What have you got?”
“I don’t even know,” he admitted, a little embarrassed. “We threw a client party here two months ago; we must have something left.”
He vanished into the kitchen. I was expecting a beer, but when Rupert came back it was with two glasses and something that looked like scotch.
I’m not much of a scotch drinker, especially at 10:30 in the morning, but I accepted my glass with thanks.
I took a sip. I still had no idea what it was, but it wasn’t scotch. I doubted I was going to finish the whole glass.
“Quite a setup you’ve got here,” I said admiringly, looking around. “You must have built a tidy little business.”
“Pure blind luck,” he said bluntly. “Coupled with the oldest story in capitalism—getting rich off the misfortunes of others.”
“Oh God,” I said. “You’re not in insurance, are you?”
“No, no. Today we hold a diverse global portfolio, exclusively large-cap multinationals. But there’s a dirty little secret at the heart of Pacific Reach, for anyone who cares to look. For the first three years of our existence, ninety percent of our profit came from weapons holdings.”
“Good Lord, you sound drunk already. Are you confessing your sins?”
He actually laughed. “No, hardly.” He swirled his drink, looking at it askance. “I’m not even sure what we’re drinking.”
“I’m glad I’m not the only one.”
“You like it?”
“No,” I admitted.
“Neither do I. I think it’s Armagnac. Whatever it is, it’s terrible. I’m no good with hard liquor, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sure it’s very expensive.”
“Of that, I have no doubt.” He took another sip, then set down his glass. “Want to know another secret?”
“Does it involve guns and women?”
“Women and very big guns. Mechanized robot-killers, to be precise.”
“Damn. Let me get comfortable.” I took a seat on the couch across from him and settled in.
He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs. “About five years ago,” he began, “I had a mentor at Atlantic Diverse. Jessie Sands. Ever hear of her?”
“Sorry, no.”
“A legend. She recapitalized Bank of the Sudan during the African currency crisis. She didn’t just manage funds—she rescued companies, moved entire equities markets. There was a saying about her: ‘Jessie makes the money happen.’ She did the research, made the buys, and then made the buys successful. She could turn anything around.
“Then she had a falling-out at Atlantic. A screaming fight with a member of the board. Jessie was in a polyamorous relationship with two women and discovered they both were secretly involved with a fourth partner at Atlantic. She walks into my office at eleven o’clock at night, and says, ‘I’m leaving. Are you coming with me?’ ”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. I had to decide immediately. Of course, I went with her. I walked away from over three million in unvested stock grants at Atlantic Diverse, because I knew this was the opportunity of a lifetime. We set up a small shop in Chocolate Bayou in Texas, and in four months she raised nearly a hundred ninety million in seed capital.”
“My God.”
“People trusted her. She made the money happen. It’s four months in, she’s working on our first big investment in Saudi Arabia, and she has an aortic dissection. A ruptured artery—barely a fifteen percent survival rate. She’s hospitalized for two months and never returns to work. Our Saudi partner pulls out, the investors start calling me, and I . . . I have nothing to tell them. The entire company is on the brink of failure.”
“Holy shit.”
“I was terrified. Spent the first twenty-four hours in the fetal position in a hotel in Houston. I start making some calls, tell everyone not to worry, everything is completely under control. I put together two weeks of bridge financing. Two weeks—that’s all I have to find a new home for a hundred ninety million in capital or we’re going to lose the money.”
“What did you do?”
“I took a huge risk. The kind of gamble you can only take when you’re inexperienced, desperate, and stupid. It started with a phone call from Saladin Amari.”
“I know that name.”
“You should. Even a Canadian should know Amari. He was the governor of Texas. This was just before the war, and he was traveling all over the country, trying to wake people up, to prepare them for what he thought was inevitable: a coming war with the machines. He preached loudly about creating formidable new weapons of glass and steel.”
Rupert picked up his drink, swirling the liquid in the glass. “Ultimately, of course, you know the outcome. Despite tremendous popular support, he failed to convince Washington. Fear of antagonizing the Argentinean machine cartels, and especially the Sentient Cathedral, proved too great. President Bermúdez began her ill-fated attempts to appease Argentina. Manhattan was invaded two months later.”
“What did Amari mean by ‘weapons of glass and steel’?” I asked. The phrase seemed strangely familiar.
“Ah, I wondered if you’d catch that. That’s the point in which the hero of our tale”—he pointed at himself—“returns to the stage. When Amari failed to galvanize Washington, he began to make preparations of his own. And there, he didn’t fail. His ‘weapons of glass and steel’ were the first true field mechs. Giant, mobile killing machines. Heavily armed, hard to kill, and very, very fast.”
“The American Union army,” I said.
“Yes—although it wasn’t called that until much later. At the time, it was the US Sixth Army, based in Fort Sam Houston. Amari’s brainchild. Amari was a canny politician, but he was also a brilliant strategist. Long before he started making speeches and trying to rouse the nation, he was pouring billions into advanced weapons research all across his state. He knew war was coming, one way or another, and he was determined to be ready for it. He wanted to create mobile war machines capable of stopping the robots he knew would soon be invading American shores.
“He nearly bankrupted Texas, but by May 2080, he’d already funded incredible breakthroughs. And he was looking to do more—much more. On May 9th, 2080, someone in the Houston mayor’s offi
ce placed a call to the governor, telling him there was a hundred ninety million in an investment fund in Chocolate Bayou, looking for a home.”
“So he called you.”
“He called me. A few minutes before midnight, to be exact. I remember exactly where I was. Sitting in my car at a gas station in Pearland, eating an overcooked hot dog, wondering if there was any point to going back to the office.”
“What did he say?”
“He wanted the money. And he made me, as they say in the business, an offer I couldn’t refuse. He told me that with my hundred and ninety million, he could complete construction of three functional prototypes. The first three Renhawk mechs. They were, in fact, nearly finished—he invited me to come see them in Austin. Typical for Amari, he’d funded them almost entirely with promises and fast talk, and now he needed hard cash just to keep the factory open.”
“What did he promise in return?”
“The world. You don’t know what it was like, talking to him. In five minutes, he could convince you that only he saw the world clearly. Give him ten, and suddenly you saw yourself standing next to him, changing history.”
“What did he promise that stuck?”
“He made a devil’s bargain. That night on the phone, he licensed me the design for the sixty-ton Renhawk, the machine that would become the backbone of the Union army—and eventually two dozen different armies around the world—for a hundred and ninety million. I funded the first three prototypes, and in return he gave me the means to become one of the most sought-after arms merchants in North America.”
I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound trite after a story like that. I looked down at my glass. Empty. I barely remembered drinking it.
“Refill?” Rupert said.
“Please.”
“Same?”
“Maybe not.”
Rupert laughed. He came back with a glass of white wine, which I accepted gratefully.
“Did you ever see them in action?” he said as he took a seat. He’d also replaced his own drink with a glass of wine.
“The Renhawks? Yeah, I think so.”
“The original prototypes, I meant.”
“I don’t know. How could I tell?”
“You watch the fall of Manhattan?”
“Of course,” I said.
“The name Achmed ‘Duke’ Oshana mean anything to you?”
“Oh my God—of course. He was piloting one of the prototypes?”
“Second one off the line. Best sixty-three million I ever spent.”
“That’s incredible.”
“Amari drove his design team to the limit in late 2080. Gave them unreasonable deadlines, demanded the impossible—and for the most part, he got it. I don’t think any of the rest of us saw what was coming. Not the way he did. He insisted all three mechs be ready for action by late October. And two of them were on October 20th, when those towering robotic terrors strode up the Hudson, like something out of War of the Worlds.”
I stirred uncomfortably in my chair. Everyone remembered where they were when they’d heard about the invasion of Manhattan. I’d been working for Quebec Telecom and had watched the live footage from a remote relay station on Hudson Bay. I still remembered the sense of awe and doom when I saw the first robots built for war, laying waste to the world’s greatest city.
“At first, nothing could stop them,” Innes continued. “They were designed to crush everything in their path, and they very nearly did. Almost eleven thousand dead in less than eight hours. Manhattan fell in twelve hours—there was virtually no military presence on the island, and it made a good, soft target. The first three engagements in New Jersey were massacres for the American ground forces.
“Then two days later, the first of those robots met the US Sixth Army for the first time, just outside Trenton—including a Renhawk piloted by Duke Oshana. That battle lasted three hours—you see any of the footage?”
“Of course.”
“Duke was wounded—nearly killed, actually—but not before his Renhawk brought down two enemy cans. Then he went up against Blue Rock, a Thought Machine in a forty-ton chassis. The fastest, deadliest, smartest opponent on the battlefield. It ran circles around Duke, hitting him over and over with small weapons fire. A brilliant tactician, never made a mistake. Eventually, Duke begins to lose function in his legs. He’s sitting in sixty tons of dangerously overheating metal, fire spreading through his comm gear, barely able to move. Blue Rock keeps hitting him from range, not risking close engagement. So Duke shoots an American supply drone, brings it down, burning, right on top of Rock. In the eight seconds it takes Rock to dig himself out, Duke is on top of him.
“And once he gets his hands on Blue Rock, the battle is over. Rock was built for speed and agility, not to take the kind of punishment Amari designed his mechs to be capable of. Right there, in front of two billion viewers around the world, Duke takes Blue Rock apart. Cracks him open like a lobster, tears his core right out of his shell.
“You can’t imagine what that single victory did to American morale. I must have watched the closing minutes of that battle twenty times. Duke—and by extension, Amari—showed the entire country that these things could be stopped. Could be beaten back. Duke ended up badly burned and suffered a concussion during extraction. He never fought again, but in those three hours he changed the fate of the whole country.”
“I’ve watched it a few times myself,” I admitted.
“It was life-changing to be at the heart of it all, I can tell you that. Amari had been right, about almost everything. The inevitability of invasion—and the right way to stop it. In a matter of days, he had the funding he needed to go into full production on his new mechs—and his design team was already hard at work on the heavier Corsairs and three other experimental models.
“But in the end, he lacked the political skill to pull off one final miracle: to unite the country behind him. Using Manhattan as a secure base, the San Cristobal Coalition sent their machines—the relentless Robots of Gotham—down the entire Eastern Seaboard. There just weren’t enough mechs to stop them all. When Washington fell, and Atlanta agreed to the Memphis Ceasefire, Amari vowed to keep fighting. He was assassinated three weeks before the Union Syndicate split from the rest of the country in early 2082, and the ceasefire collapsed. Amari never would have done that, no matter what the Union of Post-American States claims. He died an American, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“By then, the mechs had already proved themselves, and we were licensing the designs to nations around the world. Indonesia, the Sudan, even Turkey. Anywhere machines had not yet taken complete control of the political apparatus. The Renhawk was too slow for true long-term effectiveness, and the Corsair wasn’t much better. But the Juno was a huge improvement. It’s still in use—heavily modified from our original design, of course, but still effective. That was a Juno that blundered into our front yard last week. The American government in Atlanta still blames the Union Syndicate for prolonging the war, but the truth is, without Amari’s mechs, there would have been almost nothing to stop the invasion. The peace negotiations going on in Clarksville, Tennessee, right now would have a very different character, I assure you.
“It was a challenging time for me, working with Amari. And it got worse when the Union took over. I’d never worked so hard in my life. My partner, Jessie, was in hospice care, and the man who’d made all my success possible—and damn near saved the nation—was dead. America was a broken country, under foreign occupation for the first time in her history. And I was making more money than I’d ever believed possible.
“I sold most of my holdings in our new company two years later and used the proceeds to found Pac-Reach. We were heavily tied to munitions and related industries for the first six months, until I got out of that business altogether last year. I found I’d lost my taste for it, despite how good it had been to me.”
I looked down at my glass. I’d ba
rely touched my wine. I sipped it, just to be polite.
“That’s a hell of a story,” I said.
“You asked,” he said.
“Any regrets?”
“God, yes. More than I can count.” He leaned forward in his chair with a thoughtful look. “You see a lot of things when you’re the general partner of a multibillion-dollar fund. Things that are invisible to most. I saw, up close and personal, how a small group of Sovereign Intelligences ruthlessly manipulated global markets behind the scenes, to enrich themselves during the war. How they triggered bankruptcies, destabilized currencies, seized control of global corporations, and even toppled governments.”
I stirred in my chair, uncomfortable. “Forgive me,” I said. “I’ve heard a few similar theories, but they seem a little far-fetched. Believe me, I know machines can be assholes, just like humans, but using the war to seize control of the global economy? That sounds a little paranoid.”
“I didn’t say I had hard evidence. All I have are clues. The ones the cabal didn’t manage to cover up, that is. But the clues point to a very convincing narrative.”
“If you say so. You know the landscape a lot better than me.”
“My biggest regret is a simple one. There have been attempts by the Global Securities Commission in Geneva to indict the Sovereign Intelligences involved. In at least one case, my company was aware of information that might have strengthened their case.”
“Did you share it?”
“We were prepared to. But the entire team of prosecuting attorneys died in a plane crash, and the case was eventually shelved. Other opportunities came up later, but I would have liked to have been able to make a difference in that particular case.”
“Which Sovereign Intelligence was involved?”
“Armitage. What a monster he is. Two members of my board were so terrified of crossing him that they resigned. Armitage brought together the machine intelligences that formed the San Cristobal Coalition, and some say he was the chief architect of the war with the United States. I’ve never met a more cold-blooded adversary. His enemies have a bad habit of disappearing. By the hundreds, every single year.”