ROBO SAPIENS: A Science Fiction Classic

by Gary Naiman

  The console’s speaker crackled with a digitized voice. “Drone Twelve has detected an anomaly at the Neptune Mariana Platform. All communications have been severed. The platform’s defensive weapons have been activated. Aerial intervention has been rejected due to the risk of nuclear detonation.”

  Tabulek stared at the console. “Nuclear?”

  “Sensors detect a radioactive device implanted in the platform’s solar energy conversion chamber. Device is encased in titanium-lead shell, but our meson sensor has successfully detected its presence.”

  Tabulek gripped the console.

  “You are?”

  The drone’s words rang in Tabulek’s ears.

  “Your identity please?”

  “Tabulek ... Western Hemisphere Overlord. Codename star-treble-nova-twelve.”

  Tabulek listened to the silence.

  “Acknowledged, Overlord.”

  Tabulek pushed back from the console and collapsed in a plasma chair. His fingers dug into the chair’s electrostatic arms. “Drone Twelve?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you detect the life form known as 0021?”

  “0021 is alive with two others in the platform’s master control room.”

  “And the Meta?”

  “The Meta is in a small compartment off the control room. It appears dormant.”

  Tabulek clenched his fist. “And the Project Director?”

  “The Director is on the platform with two Guardian robots awaiting the arrival of the cargo ship Cathay.”

  Tabulek leaned forward. “What is the cargo ship’s ETA?”

  “Thirty-three minutes.”

  “Record this message and forward it to the cargo ship’s commander.”

  “Yes, Overlord.”

  Tabulek rose from the chair and gripped the console. “This is Olafang Tabulek, Overlord of Synapse’s Western Hemisphere Security. You are to abort your docking maneuver and begin a circling pattern until notified by me. You are to contact the Neptune platform and advise them you have experienced a problem with your ballasters that prevents docking. That you will notify them as soon as the necessary repairs have been made.”

  Tabulek dropped in the chair. “Send it.”

  “Message sent to Captain Zilicheck aboard the Cathay.”

  “A final question, Drone Twelve.”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you detected the saboteur?”

  “No, Overlord. It appears the device was implanted after Drone Eleven completed its surveillance pass of the platform twenty-four hours ago.”

  “But the onboard Guardian robots check the solar lab every two hours?”

  “Understood, Overlord. I have no explanation.”

  Tabulek glanced at the console’s digital clock. The next ten minutes would be the most painful of his life.

  “Your orders?”

  “Maintain a circling pattern above the platform. Continue sensing if there is no threat of detection. I will get back to you shortly.

  “Yes, Overlord. The cargo ship is turning away.”

  Tabulek listened to the silence. He glanced at the digital clock while muttering a string of inaudible curses.

  He pushed off the chair and rested his hands on the console, his eyes staring at an iridescent-gold button.

  “Damn.” He pressed the button.

  A hologram materialized above the console, its flickering static replaced by a familiar face. Tabulek cringed from the most powerful voice on the planet.

  “Overlord?”

  Tabulek eyed the silver-haired woman. “I am sorry for this disturbance, Great One.”

  She frowned. “It must be important to disturb me during meditation. Why are you not contacting Velasquez?”

  Tabulek stared at her flickering emerald eyes.

  “Well?”

  Tabulek lowered his head. “There is no time for intermediaries.”

  Her voice sharpened. “In case you have forgotten, Señor Velasquez is your boss.”

  Tabulek forced out the words. “I fear we are experiencing a second attack on the Neptune Mariana Platform.”

  The Leader’s eyes widened. “The platform?”

  “Yes, Great One.”

  “But how... our robots just diffused an Anarchist attack there?”

  “I don’t know, Great One. I was at my post when the alert sounded twelve minutes ago. I’m still gathering data.”

  Her face reddened. “That’s all you have?”

  Tabulek fought a surge of vomit. He knew his next words would determine his fate. He swallowed the vomit and continued. “I have placed our best infiltrator in their ranks. I believe you recently honored her.”

  “Honored?”

  “Lucinda Montavi... Number 0021.”

  Tabulek looked down. He could hear mumbling. The bitch must be consulting her underlings.

  “Tabulek.”

  Tabulek raised his head. “Yes, Great One?”

  The Leader’s eyes burned into him. “I remember her. She was the flat-chested iridescent-green we honored at Summit’s Chicago facility.”

  “Yes ... her.”

  The face lunged at him. “She’s a fool! A flat-chested urchin who has sidled her way through the ranks. And you stake your career on her?”

  Tabulek clenched his trembling fists. After sixty-three years of groveling, he could stand no more.

  “Well... say something.”

  Tabulek glared at the face peering down at him. “We cannot wait. Our one chance is a Level Three undersea strike using a stealth sub and killer robots. I ask your permission to proceed.”

  He stared at her face, but there was no reaction.

  “Hear me, Great One. We are wasting precious time. If the Anarchists detonate a nuclear device at Neptune, it will take several weeks to cleanse the radiation and rebuild the complex. Many will starve and revolution will sweep the planet.”

  The hologram crackled with colored static. The leader’s voice was barely audible. “Stand by, I will convene the Consortium.”

  Tabulek stared at the fading hologram.

  CHAPTER 14

  2053

  It was a magnificent night on the Philippine Sea. The black sky glittered with stars. Gentle swells rolled against the platform. Hard to believe only twenty-four hours earlier those swells engulfed the platform with killer waves.

  A cool breeze ruffled Lucinda’s hair. She grasped the rail and gazed at the black water. She could see the cargo ship Cathay’s red light rising and falling in the swells. Impossible to discern how distant it was, but it appeared to be in a holding pattern.

  She sighed while recalling her final exchange with Tabulek.

  Good hunting, 0021. You have our support.

  The Consortium?

  No, 0021. The human race.

  “Blast...”

  She looked down at the small lump on her right wrist. Four taps of her left index finger would open a clandestine channel to Tabulek, but the Overlord’s instructions were clear. Under no circumstance was she to initiate contact. Despite the channel’s cryptology, there was still the possibility of detection, and that could prove fatal to her and the mission.

  She rested her arms on the rail. If Anarchists were aboard, they were surely monitoring her every move. They were recording her voice, studying her every motion, even tracking her eye movements. Deity knows, they might even be deciphering her brain waves.

  She pushed back from the rail, her eyes glaring at the distant red light, and she felt the world slipping away. Perhaps too many Paradisio trips, perhaps the grand mal seizures when she was a teen, or maybe it was just fear. Whatever the cause, Lucinda Montavi was about to relive the most traumatic moment of her life...

  “Forward!”

  Her hands clutched the Ruby 92 laser weapon. She could hear her labored breathing inside the exo-skeletal helmet. Her black-armored legs shuffled forward in lockstep with her comrades. The cries of panicked humans mixed with the crunch of her boots in the dirt.

&nb
sp; It was 2053. Eighteen years had passed since the Consortium’s intervention and Sir Thomas Philibin’s stirring speech to the masses.

  They had been eighteen years of hell. Instead of prosperity, millions of starving humans roamed the planet in search of food. Political hatreds no longer mattered. Racial hatreds no longer existed. Sexual hatreds were nondescript. Religious hatreds had been forgotten. There was only one hatred now, a growing worldwide hatred of the Consortium and all it stood for.

  “Form firing line!”

  She gritted her teeth while shuffling against the armored shoulder on her left. Another shoulder pressed against her right shoulder. The firing line was set.

  “Line One prone!”

  She watched the foremost line of troopers drop on their bellies, their ’92s pointed forward.

  “Line Two down!”

  The line in front of her dropped to one knee, their 92’s in firing position.

  Her gray eyes peered through the slit on her visor, and she saw the enemy, a thousand screaming humans stampeding toward the line of blue-green trucks beneath the mountains known as the Sierra Madre. Two miles to the west, the Pacific Ocean rushed against the rocky shore that was once Los Angeles.

  Lucinda stared at the tattered creatures crawling over one another in the spotlights, their hands extended toward the Manna containers stacked on the distribution tables in front of the trucks. Many were dead, trampled by their desperate brothers and sisters. There was no sanity, only crazed animals rushing toward the only food left to them.

  The darkness echoed with a crackling voice from the drone circling overhead.

  “This is your final warning. Pull back from the trucks or we will be forced to open fire. It is essential the rations be distributed in an orderly manner.”

  The drone’s warning only infuriated the mob. Curses rang out amidst the screams, accompanied by shaking fists and rocks flung at the troops in a final act of defiance. The people had learned there was too little of the precious Manna to feed more than a few.

  Lucinda cringed from a rock striking her helmet. The spotlights filled with incoming debris.

  “Ready! Aim!”

  Lucinda stared in shock at the mass of tattered souls charging at them. She wanted to cry out to them, to beg them to turn back, but it was too late.

  “Fire!”

  The spotlights erupted with flashes of lethal ruby light. The killer rays struck the onrushing humans bringing them down in heaps, but they kept coming, their fists raised, their hands flinging anything they could scoop from the ground.

  “Fire at will!”

  Lucinda aimed at the mass of humanity and squeezed the 92’s trigger, emitting deadly photon bursts. She could see them falling — some old, some young, men, women, children, black, white, yellow — all of them falling.

  She released the trigger and staggered backward.

  “0021!”

  She turned to the black-exoskeletoned officer pointing a gloved finger at her. The lightning bolt insignia on his visor glistened from the flashing laser bursts.

  “Sir, I—”

  He was not listening. His visor had locked on the dozen creatures scrambling over the barricade protecting the stacked rations.

  He pointed at the barricade, his eyes glaring at her from beneath his visor. “Bring them down, 0021.”

  She looked at the twelve people running for the rations. Three were children. Four were women.

  “What’s wrong with you? Are you deaf?”

  She lifted her ’92 and aimed it at the man closest to the first ration table.

  The officer stepped forward. “You have your order.”

  She squeezed the trigger and watched the running man drop on his face, his right chest flaring from the laser hit.

  “All of them, 0021.”

  “But sir, they’re only hungry.”

  The officer ripped off his helmet and flung it at the ground. His eyes were on fire. He raised his ’92 and pointed it at her head. “Heed my order or die.”

  “Sir!” She depressed her weapon’s stun button and fired into the eleven desperate souls, dropping them only a few feet from the rations.

  The officer pointed at Lucinda’s ’92. “Full strength, dammit!”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Now!”

  She fought a surge of vomit and released the button.

  “Fire, 0021!”

  Lucinda pointed the fully energized ’92 at a dazed woman writhing toward the silver packets of Manna. The young woman reached for one of the packets, her fingers clutching her monthly allotment card.

  “Deity forgive me.” Lucinda squeezed the trigger and reeled from the vaporized ash that was once a beautiful young woman.”

  “The others, 0021!”

  “Deity damn this!”

  “Do it!”

  Lucinda fired the laser into the mass of dying humans, vaporizing them.

  A gloved hand pulled her finger off the trigger. “Enough, 0021. No sense wasting good energy. Well done. Get back in line.”

  She stared at the officer retrieving his helmet from the ground. Her nostrils stung from the acrid odor of cremated bones, muscle, and flesh. She had passed her most important test...

  “Forgive me!”

  Lucinda collapsed on the deck, her hand gripping her forehead. The only sound was the sea rushing against the platform. She clenched her fist while trying to control the wrenching sobs.

  The nightmare faded. She heaved a pained breath and pushed up from the deck, her eyes staring at the pitching red light. She brushed away a tear and turned for the hatch.

  The amber eye startled her. “What are you doing here?”

  “I am sorry, 0021. I didn’t mean to—”

  She glared at the Meta. “How dare you!”

  “I am sorry...”

  She watched the Meta disappear through the opened hatch.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Decision

  Tabulek glared at the void above the command console. The console’s digital clock read 12:00 hours. A half hour had passed since the Leader terminated their connection. Time was short. Drone Twelve would soon require orders. The Cathay could not fake its ballast problem forever. The platform’s occupants must suspect something by now.

  He grimaced while recalling the young woman he had ordered into harm’s way. What if there were more than one saboteur aboard the platform? What if they were all saboteurs? What if they had discovered 0021’s true identity? If she succumbed to their interrogation, all would be lost.

  He shook his fist at the console. “What are you waiting for? We’re out of time!”

  The void flickered with electromagnetic static. Tabulek backed away, his eyes on the hologram materializing above the console. He could see the Leader’s face in the static, and the others seated around her.

  His anger turned to fear. He stared in awe at the twelve faces peering at him. It was a sobering moment. For the third time in his life, Olafang Tabulek was about to communicate with the most powerful force on earth.

  His first communication occurred six years ago when he was promoted to Western Hemisphere Overlord. His second, only last week when he was forced to convey the unsettling news of the thwarted Anarchist attempt to destroy the Neptune Mariana complex. This would be his third contact, and most likely his last.

  The hologram broadened to display a large shadowed chamber. The Leader was seated at the apex of a black triangular table, her face etched with concern. The Consortium’s famed gold emblem floated above her head, its holographic “C” resembling an angelic halo. She scanned the eleven faces seated to either side of the triangle. Each was identified by a small gold corporate emblem placed in front of them.

  Her emerald eyes locked on Tabulek. “I trust there are no new developments?”

  Tabulek clasped his hands. “None, Great One.”

  “I have briefed my colleagues on the insurgency. There are questions.”

  Tabulek nodded. A familiar voice burned hi
s ears.

  “How could this happen?”

  Tabulek looked at Armando Velasquez, Synapse’s CEO. It was Velasquez who appointed Tabulek Western Hemisphere Overlord shortly after Velasquez’ promotion to CEO. The two had known each other since the Consortium’s birth, twenty-seven years ago.

  Velasquez leaned forward. “Olafang?”

  Tabulek took a deep breath. “It appears we are dealing with one or more Anarchist implants at the Neptune complex.”

  “You don’t know how many?”

  Tabulek shook his head.

  Velasquez looked across the table at the white-haired man fidgeting in his chair. “Pierre, did you replace the platform’s occupants after last week’s incident?”

  Pierre Dubois shook his head.

  “But we recommended they be replaced.”

  DuBois glared at Velasquez. “You assured me there was no trace of impropriety in their histories.” He raised a bony finger. “Neptune is not responsible for planetary security, Señor Velasquez.”

  Velasquez’ face reddened. “It was our prudent recommendation. As Neptune’s Chief Executive Officer you should have replaced them.”

  Dubois shrugged. “Your recommendation was clouded with ambiguity, señor. Had you demanded it, we would have complied.”

  “You know Synapse cannot demand.”

  DuBois shrugged.

  Velasquez eyed the other members. “Surely you understand my words. The 2036 Accord mandates that Synapse can only provide investigatory support to a Consortium member unless authorized to take action by that member or a majority of the Consortium.” Velasquez glared at DuBois. “We recommended you replace the three occupants, but you looked the other way.”

  Neptune’s CEO was about to fire a retort when the Leader cut him off.

  “We have no time for finger-pointing. At this moment, one of our drones is circling the Mariana platform. One of our cargo ships is in a holding pattern in the Philippine Sea. Both await orders from Tabulek. He has advised me time is short.”

  She eyed her colleagues. “If that device goes off, Manna production will cease and the masses will starve. We all know what that means.”

  The Leader looked at Tabulek. “Are you standing by your recommendation?”

  “Yes, Great One.”

  “No options?”