Peter was not prepared for what wandered into the illumination of his Multi-tasker. In fact, he wondered if the dark was playing tricks on him.
There, by the dim light of his Mutli-tasker, was a man in a black, form-fitting suit. Was this some new kind of uniform? There was something off about his face. Perhaps it was a trick of the shadows.
“Okay, so you got me. Did I lose?”
The man did not answer, he only stared at him with the most vacant of expressions. Then he began to shuffle forward.
The gait didn’t sit right with Peter. Why would a soldier shuffle, particularly in a combat situation?
“So what’re you supposed to be?”
The man reached out a hand. Peter took it as a greeting and shook the man’s hand, but the man’s grip was unusually tight, and he began to pull Peter closer.
“Hi, I’m Lieutenant…” But Peter saw the glazed eyes, which now widened in some kind of frenzy. The man gripped Peter by the shoulder with his free hand and pulled him close.
He opened his mouth, and Peter smelt the sickly sweet aroma of putrescence on his breath. Something was wrong. Peter knew this feeling, and he became alarmed.
He struggled to pull himself away from the man, but the man possessed an unnatural strength. He remembered his Aikido and spun out of the man’s grip, causing him to trip over his own limbs and fall to the floor.
Peter backed into a corner. “What the hell’s your problem? This exercise is over.”
But the man was hoisting himself up. When he was kneeling on his left knee, he looked up at Peter and let out a ghastly moan that sent chills up Peter’s spine.
Peter knew at that moment that he had to get away from this soldier. He dashed around the man, barely dodging a swipe of the man’s arm, and he ran out of the room.
He began to navigate the dreaded Labyrinth room-by-room with shuffling and moaning only a couple of rooms behind. As he struggled to remember his training and his past experiences with the Labyrinth, his mind ran wild with terror as to what was pursuing him.
The panic was inexplicable, but found its origin in the most primitive recesses of his mind. There was something definitely wrong with that soldier, and the knowledge that he was pursuing him triggered a potent revulsion and the most basic instinct to survive.
However, the terror was unsettling to the point of distraction, causing Peter to flounder about clumsily in the dark maze. As Peter ran and bumped against walls and found himself going in circles, the constant shuffling gait always right behind him never ceased.
Peter must have reached a room with an exterior wall, as there was a boarded up window. He threw himself at the window, hoping to go through, but the boards were fastened tightly and he ricocheted off and fell to the floor.
The man appeared in the doorway and saw Peter on the floor.
“Soldier, state your name and rank.”
As if in response, the soldier reached out his hand and moaned. It sounded like when a strong breeze is caught by the mouth of a large empty jug. It was not a sound a natural man made with his lungs.
Peter stood up. “This exercise is over, soldier.”
The soldier, ignoring Peter’s declaration, reached out and grappled with Peter again, causing him to drop his Multi-tasker. He heard a crunch as he struggled with the man in the dark. The man must have stepped on it.
“What are you?”
The man only moaned as it opened its mouth. Peter wedged his forearm under its chin as it snapped its jaws at him only inches from his face and clawed at his clothes with his nails.
“Stand down, soldier! That’s a direct order.” He managed to wiggle out of his grip and ran towards what he estimated to be the back of the maze in relative darkness.
The shuffling continued, the moans bearing down on him sending his mind reeling to the brink of madness.
“Let me out! Sergeant Lockwood, this exercise is over!”
He ran frantically through rooms, slamming into walls and clipping his shoulders on sides of doorways, but his adrenaline was pumping and he was feeling no pain.
In his alarm, he must have gotten turned around and ran right into the soldier, who in reaction wrapped his arms around Peter, nearly squeezing the breath out of him.
He was face to face with the soldier, whose white eyes widened. He opened his mouth and hissed loudly at Peter.
“Sergeant…” He struggled, as the man’s grip would not allow him to draw breath, like a boa slowly but surely constricting around its prey. “Get…me…out.”
The man opened its jaws and leaned its head into Peter. Peter closed his eyes and no longer fought blacking out.
Suddenly he was dropped to the floor hard. It was dark, and his vision was blurry. He made out the silhouette of the soldier standing over him, but he did not move.
There was buzzing in Peter’s ears, but as he regained his bearings he began to realize that the buzzing was not coming from within his ears. He stood up rather unsteadily and backed away from the buzzing soldier until his back hit the wall behind him.
Bright lights flashed on, and Peter was able to get a better look at his antagonist. The soldier looked like hell. His face was ragged, the skin pulled tight over his skull like tanned animal skin, and the eyes were severely clouded with cataracts. There was no expression on his face.
Peter heard the tone of digi-locks disengaging, and in a moment, Sergeant Lockwood and Major Lewis stepped into the room.
“What…what is this?” Peter asked to either man, still catching his breath.
Sergeant Lockwood was holding some kind of transmitter. “No worries, Lieutenant Birdsall. He’s quite harmless at the moment.”
“Quite harmless,” Peter parroted acerbically.
Major Lewis put his hand up to Sergeant Lockwood in warning, “Sergeant…”
But he was too late. Peter lunged at Lockwood, punching him square in the jaw with such momentum that they both fell to the ground.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Peter yelled hoarsely into Lockwood’s face, sprinkling it rather generously with spittle.
Major Lewis was pulling Peter off Lockwood. The buzzing soldier just stood there stoically, frozen in time and rather unmoved by the drama.
“Lieutenant Birdsall, stand down.”
Peter backed away from Lockwood, who picked up the transmitter that he had dropped and glared at Peter.
“I can explain everything,” said Major Lewis. “Let’s go to the debriefing room. Sergeant, put the ID away.”
Lockwood nodded and saluted. Major Lewis left the room, and Peter followed giving the now still soldier a last glance on the way out.
He followed Major Lewis into the debriefing room and closed the door behind him rather abruptly. Major Lewis leaned up against the table in the front. “Have a seat, Lieutenant.”
Peter sat. “With all due respect…enough riddles, Major. I want answers.”
“I understand your confusion, son, but it was important that you saw it for yourself. The ‘ID Program’ stands for Insidious Drone Program.”
“Drone? That man looked dead.”
“Undead, actually,” Major Lewis corrected.
“Undead? You mean…zombies, sir?”
“Yes, Lieutenant. I suppose you could call them that. In the twentieth century, in the early 1990’s there was a civil war in what was then Rwanda, between the Tutsi and the Hutu.”
“Yes, I remember something about it from Twentieth Century History class.”
“Well, then you may have remembered the genocide perpetuated by the Presidential Guard, the Rwanda armed forces, and extremist militia targeting those who supported the Arusha Accord. Nearly one million Rwandans were killed. That was nearly ten percent of the population.”
“Yes, but the Rwandan Patriotic Front got their revenge, didn’t they?”
“Well, yes, but that’s on oversimplification. In 1992, the production of coffee, their main export, went down, and since most of the land was dedicated to gr
owing coffee, there wasn’t enough food. What resulted was famine and disease.”
Peter was wondering what this had to do with zombies.
Major Lewis continued his explanation. “Even after the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) retook the capital of Kigali, disease was still rampant. In fact, there were reports of civilians becoming sick and turning to cannibalism. Soon RPF soldiers had fallen victim to this mysterious sickness. The Hutu fled to the Congo.
“Later, when the US-backed Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire entered the Congo with the RPF, they encountered what first appeared to be refugees wandering through villages.
“But these refugees were afflicted with the mysterious disease and were devouring everyone in sight. They were unsure if these were agents of the French, who were backing the Hutu. Curious about the phenomenon, the Alliance forces followed them, observing from a distance.
“They observed the afflicted hunting down and cannibalizing Hutu refugees. Thinking that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, they attempted to approach these afflicted individuals with disastrous results.
“So they captured many of the afflicted, killing some in the process out of self-preservation, and they were extracted secretly by US Special Forces. The press blamed the RPF for the slaughter of the Hutu refugees in the Congo, but it was written off as a justified response to the genocide.”
Peter couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Zombies in the Congo? It sounded like the plot of a bad black-and-white movie. “So…that soldier in the Labyrinth, he’s a…”
“Yes.”
That explained the blank expression, putrescent smell, and the man’s constant attempts to try to eat him.
“Lieutenant, I know this must be a great deal for you to digest. But, we’ve found that they make the perfect soldiers, combining unconventional and psychological warfare. They never need to be fed, they don’t dehydrate, they never show fatigue, and in numbers, they can swarm and overwhelm just about any position.”
Peter recalled the footsteps in the maze. “The soldier in the maze was relentless.”
“Yes, and it drove you to panic. That’s the psychological component that we didn’t even anticipate until the field tests.”
“Field tests?”
“Just image your panic if we threw forty, fifty, or even one hundred of these Insidious Drones at you.”
Peter didn’t want to, but he got the point.
“And furthermore, they can be sent into terrain normally inaccessible to live soldiers. Just imagine, finally we can breach the cave systems of Afghanistan. All we’d have to do is pour a few hundred of these bad boys into the caves, and they would just keep wandering through, sniffing out terrorists…”
“And eating them?”
“But no lives of American soldiers would be risked. They are the ultimate drones. And we could apply this not only to caves, but any terrain not easily accessible by traditional means. It even has applications for urban warfare.”
A few hundred? How many of these things did the army have?
“Well, Major, this all sounds good, but where do I come in?”
“Lieutenant Birdsall, we need a platoon of soldiers to funnel them into the buildings, caves, and the like. Like shepherd dogs directing sheep. They won’t think on their own. In fact, they don’t think at all.”
“Like cowboys herding cattle.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“Well, isn’t that…dangerous? I mean, how are these things controlled?”
Major Lewis pushed himself off the table he was leaning on. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”
Peter followed Major Lewis back out of the debriefing room. He submitted to a palm print and retinal scan at a heavy door with two armed guards and took Peter into a room that resembled a large freezer. “It’s going to be cold in here, Lieutenant.”
Peter nodded and followed. There was a clear, thick Plexiglas wall with a door built into it. Behind it, there were rows of shackled soldiers like the one in the maze in the same black suits. Major Lewis entered a code, and the door opened.
“This is our containment facility. The temperature is maintained at near freezing temperatures to arrest decomposition to the point where it’s negligible.”
“But what about when they’re in the field, sir?”
Major Lewis pointed to one of the soldiers. “See the black suit?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The suit is designed to reduce body temperature to retard decomposition, which is easy since these guys are dead and aren’t generating any body heat. The suit is more of a protection from the surrounding environment.”
Major Lewis paused so that Peter could take it all in. Then he beckoned Peter to follow him out of the room. They exited, and the door sealed behind them.
“I noticed that none of them were moving, sir.”
“Yes. That’s because they each have an Amygdala Inhibitor—or AI—installed in their skulls.”
“Pardon my ignorance, sir, but what is that?”
“Follow me. I’ll introduce you to someone who can explain it.”
They crossed the hall and entered a laboratory. There were long, black-surfaced tables, beakers, microscopes, centrifuges, etc. Major Lewis waved at what was apparently a scientist (hence the white lab coat) and the man walked over.
“Lieutenant Birdsall, this is Dr. Gilbart. He’s an organic chemist working on the project.”
Dr. Gilbart shook Peter’s hand.
“Dr. Gilbart, if you could be so kind, could you explain the ID’s condition and why they need Amygdala Inhibitors?”
He bowed his head graciously. “Of course, Major Lewis.” Then to Peter, “Lieutenant Birdsall, we don’t know the origin of what has been dubbed the Tutsi-Hutu Virus, or THV, but we do know that those afflicted die rapidly from organ failure and re-animate with brain damage.”
“Re…animate.”
“Yes. More precisely, they re-animate with suppressed frontal lobe functioning due to oxygen deprivation and a nasty case of Kluver-Bucy Syndrome.”
Peter’s eyes were apparently starting to glaze over, and the good doctor took this as his cue to explain in simple, layman’s terms.
“Lieutenant, Kluver-Bucy Syndrome was originally only seen in primates with lesions in very specific areas of their amygdala—the center of the brain in responsible for aggression—that would cause them to behave in a hyper-aggressive, hyper-sexual, and hyper-oral manner.”
“I get the hyper-aggressive and hyper-oral—they basically want to eat you…”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“But hyper-sexual?”
Major Lewis jumped in. “Yes, in early field tests they would sometimes resort to humping each other.”
Peter stifled a laugh.
“Yes,” said Major Lewis matter-of-factly, “we, too, initially found it amusing, but it became problematic during training exercises.”
“Hence the Amygdala Inhibitors,” added Dr. Gilbart. “They are set at a low enough level of inhibition to suppress the acting out of sexual urges, and we can turn them up to effectively stop any behavior as a safety mechanism.”
“So that’s what happened to the soldier in the Labyrinth?” Peter asked Major Lewis.
“Yes, we never had any intention of letting the exercise get out of hand. We were monitoring your progress and had our finger on the button at all times.”
“We?”
“Sergeant Lockwood, actually. He’s the one who turned the ID off and effectively saved your life.”
“Remind me to thank him properly,” Peter remarked with obvious sarcasm. He turned to Dr. Gilbart. “So where do all of these zombies come from anyway?”
“Ah-hem, Insidious Drones,” corrected Dr. Gilbart, who looked at Major Lewis nervously.
Major Lewis quickly changed the subject.
“Come with me, Lieutenant Birdsall, I have to show you the equipment you’ll be utilizing.”
Peter was still pondering
the brief moment between Dr. Gilbart and Major Lewis when the Major had left the room. Apparently, they did not intend to answer his question.
Dr. Gilbart bowed his head. “Good to meet you, Lieutenant. Welcome to the team.” And he turned around and walked back across the lab to continue whatever he had been working on.
Peter left the lab and caught up with Major Lewis, who had been waiting in the hallway. He continued giving the tour. “Let’s go to Engineering. They’ve developed portable MRI’s to help you when you are alone with the ID in the dark to tell the living from the undead.”
They entered another security-locked room where there was a laboratory of another kind.
“Lieutenant Farrow…”
Farrow was at a stainless steel workstation, calibrating some kind of apparatus. When he heard his name, he put down what he was doing, walked over, and saluted the Major.
“Lieutenant Birdsall, this is Lieutenant Farrow. He’s the engineer that supervised the development of MR.UD. Lieutenant Farrow, Lieutenant Birdsall will be leading the platoon of ID wranglers. Could you explain MR.UD to him?”
Farrow smiled enthusiastically. “Yes, sir. Lieutenant Birdsall, MR.UD is the Magnetic Resonance Undead Detector. Picture every atom in your body spinning like a top, but each in a different direction. The MR.UD uses a powerful magnet to align all of the atoms in your body so that they all spin in the same direction. Got me so far?”
Science was not Peter’s strong suit, but he got the gist and nodded.
“Good,” Farrow continued. “Well, when I turn the magnet off, all of the atoms return back to their original orientations in space. As this happens, they emit information revealing the location of each atom, in essence painting a picture of you.”
“Got it.”
“Well, one of the measures taken is the time it takes the atoms to snap back to their original orientations—we call it T1. In necrotic tissue, T1 times are longer, meaning it takes necrotic atoms significantly longer to snap back to their original orientation.”
“So, does that mean the picture of a…ID…is going to be different?”
“We’ve calibrated the device to feed information into a monitor. If the T1 readings fall above a preset threshold, indicating an undead individual, the image of that person will appear red.”
I Am Automaton Page 6