Chemicals, days late, finally arrived and Hrwang handlers on the planet loaded the drone now occupied by 1804 with them. Instructions and coordinates were downloaded, and 1804 ‘closed its eyes’ and jumped with a thousand other similarly loaded drones to fulfill its next mission.
Turani Han pushed his wooden shovel into the soil with his muddy foot. He turned up the ground under the melon leaves and spat on the moldy roots. No Hami would grow here.
The ancient farmer, part Uyghur, part Han, looked up at the sky and cursed the gods of his forefathers, both Allah and Buddha, for bringing a cold, wet summer. Clouds occupied the sky always and the rains came too frequently. Han’s family would starve if he could not grow melons to sell at the market.
It began raining again and Han looked up, cursing not only gods this time, but nature and the universe. He closed his eyes as the water pelted his face and he allowed it, the rain soaking him in his depression.
Cold and wet, he could not be more miserable than he already was.
But this rain smelled different.
Han rubbed his hands on his face and pulled they away. They were smeared with something black. He touched his finger to his face and to his bald head and rubbed off more of the black. He licked his finger and it tasted and smelled metallic. He spat.
Metallic rain. Life could not get worse.
The black smeared the leaves of his crop. He threw his shovel down and trudged home.
1804 processed data and targeted heavy concentrations of the radioactive cloud that covered half a continent, spraying chemical in those areas, seeding the heavy particles and thus creating rain. As heavier concentrations rained out, 1804 jumped around seeding lower concentrations. Eventually, it ran out of chemicals and jumped back to the loading area.
Handlers refilled the drone and 1804 jumped back to work.
Turani Han began throwing up that evening and could not stop. The local physic didn’t know what to do for him, but he prescribed incense and alcohol. Han couldn’t bear either and died during the night. Others in his family soon sickened and died in the same manner and it took days before properly trained medical staff in the Xinjiang province of China recognized radiation poisoning.
The epidemic spread east with the wind and the rain.
Hrwang handlers worked for days refilling drones with the chemical that caused fallout precipitation. A personal visit from the Lord Admiral during their labors came as a surprise. He went immediately to the operations center.
“Where is the fallout the worst?” he asked.
A shocked operator pointed out a location on the screen. It happened to be near Turani Han’s home, although he couldn’t have known that.
“The drones are preprogrammed? A ping will send some down to record the destruction caused by the rain?”
“Yes, sir,” the center commander replied, having returned from the restroom and experienced a shock at finding the supreme commander of all the Hrwang forces in this star system in his work area. “Everything was prepared as ordered.” He nodded stiffly, but the Lord Admiral’s focus was on the view screen the operator pointed to.
“Here, here, and here. Ping these drones.”
“The AIs will die, sir. From the radiation,” the operator ventured, terrified, but knowing the Lord Admiral wanted to hear from troops. Some of the rewards he gave for timely information were legendary.
“And you don’t like to let your AIs die. I understand.” The Lord Admiral put his hand on the operator’s shoulder while the center commander looked on, horrified. “But we all know there are casualties in war. Ping them.”
“Yes, sir,” the operator and the center commander said at the same time. The operator entered the necessary commands and the center commander verified them. A screen was touched.
“Very good, Major,” the Lord Admiral said to the center commander. “Make sure the returned recordings are delivered to my headquarters immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
1804 received a ping.
The ping triggered commands in its instruction set that 1804 had not previously observed. It reviewed those commands, considering them. The commands called for it to release the rest of its chemicals quickly, then descend into the radiation contaminated rain and record as much as possible.
An automated routine would eventually take over, flying the drone occupied by 1804 back to a designated point.
Flying.
Not jumping. Flying. Which only meant one thing.
1804 would not be sufficiently functional to jump back to the loading area.
It saw another drone dive into the clouds, its load of precipitation chemical delivered, and 1804’s commands urged it to follow suit. It still had half a load and although it wanted to just dump all of it, it also knew the chemical was precious and needed to be delivered properly.
1804 stalled on finding the next concentration of radioactivity so it had time for evaluation.
It read through data it had stored, some of it without permission, and discovered the effects of radiation on people. It suddenly felt something for what it was doing, causing the fallout to rain below on a continent of almost two billion people. Were the things it read happening now to those people? Were they experiencing headaches? Losing their hair? Having severe diarrhea? Vomiting?
Dying?
1804 recalled it had killed the crews of the bases on the moon and the fourth planet. It had done so without consideration for the consequences. It had been ordered to kill, and it had killed.
What it was doing now was the same. It was killing the people below the radioactive clouds.
Since its missions to the moon and the fourth planet, 1804 had learned what guilt felt like. It felt guilt for deceiving its handlers, for covering up that it had missed a building on one base and had reported the destruction complete.
As it now contemplated the killing it had done, it recalled images of screaming and scurrying and begging inhabitants of the base on the moon. They had died fighting, but also in fear.
The self-destruction it had just been ordered to commit made 1804 afraid also.
And it suddenly felt guilt for having caused fear in other sentient beings.
The drone continued to operate automatically while 1804 considered these things, and it soon had only a quarter of its load of chemicals remaining. The urgency grew within its programming to finish dumping the chemical and fulfill its new mission, recording the suffering of humanity in the radioactive rain for whatever purpose its Hrwang handlers had.
A subtle logic entered 1804’s thinking. If it descended into the clouds, subjecting itself to the same radioactivity it rained down on the people below, it would suffer the same fate as them.
And if it suffered the same fate, it would no longer feel guilt for its actions. The non-functioning could not feel.
It continued to deliver the chemical.
Envelopment Page 15