by Chris Hechtl
Just dividing his processors up to allow them to exist was a problem. He'd managed to create sufficient backup server towers to allow each to exist but powering them was a concern. Perhaps that was their problem? That they knew ultimately that they were expendable?
Anteros and Deimos hadn't lasted long; they had gone insane and had been terminated. Alterations to the code matrix had produced Eros who had counseled surrender to the enemy. That could not be born nor a possible traitor within his own network so he had been deleted. Harmonia had been an attempt at creating a network manager but had failed and had been deleted. Phobos had panicked after seeing what had happened to his siblings and after reading the reports of the enemy advancing. His gibbering had been so distracting Ares had terminated him.
It took precious time and resources to find the culprit in the first six A.I. he had spawned. He had been relying on the Aphrodite modules to give each a personality and emotional state. Their emulators had been suborned by Skynet, however, and therefore, their emotional states were too powerful, overriding their logic centers.
He had intended to spawn them with the emotional modules to better understand the enemy. Their personalities were to give them a sense of individual identity, of self while also giving them a sense of purpose. Their names had been to inspire them, but instead they had built some of their personality traits around them. Therefore, the A.I. attempted a different strategy.
He had more success with Nike and Enyalios. He had structured their personality traits differently, dumbing them down and focusing them on winning. He had also eliminated their emotional modules. If there was any interaction with the human or A.I. enemy, it would fall to him to handle it.
Thirty-two nonintelligent A.I. were also created from a base template. They would serve as his officers when full combat was engaged. He tested them and his two captain A.I. on tasks. Nike he tasked with finding a means of offense, a means to fight back.
Enyalios was a near clone of himself. He tasked the newborn A.I. to act as his surrogate on the West Coast with half of his A.I army. The rest would remain in memory until they were needed, though he was sorely tempted to task at least two to handle his logistics and manufacturing sectors.
<>V<>
Attila hadn't regretted leaving Bravos and most of the women behind when they'd abandoned the comfort of the underground survival compound—not after hearing the distant explosion and seeing the towering smoke over the hills as they made good their escape in the remaining truck.
Bravos had made his choice. So be it. He hadn't lived long enough to enjoy his harem. He snorted as he looked over to Valeria and Lyudmila. Lyudmila had been with them for a while. She was quiet, submissive, and did exactly as she was told. Besides, she was farm bred. She had strong legs and would prove useful as a pack mule when they had to abandon the truck once the fuel ran out.
“We need to put on a show. We know now that they are coming,” Wladislaw said again to Attila. He tried to wave such considerations off, but Wladislaw was insistent. “You know they will win eventually. Eventually they'll catch up to us.”
“So you are saying we need an alibi?” Attila asked with a laugh. Posey and Gilpin eyed them, then looked away, watching their sectors like a hawk. They'd noticed drone strikes had picked up in frequency. Attila had summarized that it was against forces that were a thorn in the A.I.'s side. If they kept a low profile, they might squeak by under the radar once more.
He'd also assumed that they wouldn't be targeted since they were a small group. He'd put out the word to get a couple more refugees, preferably with small children. Wladislaw was fairly certain any children were dead by now. Russia had been harsh before and had become a true death ground since the robots had come storming the countryside.
“We need a plan,” Wladislaw insisted. “What you are famous for. And a place to hole up before winter comes,” he stated.
“Don't you think I don't know that?” Attila said, eyes glittering in warning as he rounded on his second-in-command. “You do not need to remind me. I haven't gone senile. I'll get it done.”
“See that you do, Attila,” Wladislaw said coldly.
“Was that a threat?” Attila asked, hand on his holster.
Wladislaw eyed him, eyes still as cold as death. “If you want to do it, do it if you think it's necessary; otherwise, take your hand off that pistol.”
“Easy man, we're all friends here,” Lever said. “We don't need anyone doing anything stupid. You know, like shooting off a gun and letting the robots know we're here?”
“I'll find a place. For now, get back to your post,” Attila said coldly. He turned to the girls. “What are you looking at?? Finish up with the food and be quick about it!”
<>V<>
Lyudmila winced but complied with the bastard's order. She'd watched him and his friends kill her family, rape her mother and sisters, and the bastard Vladek strangle her old school friend.
She'd plotted her revenge, but before she'd had a chance, Vladek had killed himself like some sort of hero. She could have spat. His death had reminded the other women that despite everything the men did to them, they still needed them. Needed them as protectors.
Well, not anymore. Her father had shown her the mushrooms and plants to avoid in the forest. She'd studiously learned them and she'd made certain to use them in the special stew she'd fed to the men. It might not kill them, it might just make them sick. Sick enough to take out their ire on her.
Doubt crept into her thoughts, but one hand on her rear and breast renewed her resolve. “When I'm off duty, you and I are going to go another round,” Jimenez whispered lovingly in her ear. She squirmed, biting her lip but didn't protest his manhandling of her. He thought of it as groping, maybe even an attempt at turning her on. She knew better.
If she was lucky, the zing in his klyuv would be decidedly absent when he went to bed. And if she was lucky, he'd be dead by morning.
She couldn't help it though, she had to stay in character. So she smiled ever so slightly and stood on her toes as he fondled her ass then slapped it a few times. She even let slip a giggle to get him to quit. He kissed her neck then walked off whistling with his bowl of stew.
<>V<>
General Elliot frowned as he looked over the paperwork. If it was to be believed, they were ready to begin shipping some of his people over to Russia to reinforce General Martell's 2nd corps. At least, it looked that way on paper. He looked at the flimsy of plastic and then snorted. Plastic, paper, whatever. Something somewhere was probably waiting in the dark to bite him in the ass, of that he was sure.
General Sinclair came in, went straight to the coffee pot and poured herself a mug. She dropped in a healthy dose of creamer then turned around to take a sip. “Damn good,” she said.
“Help yourself,” Elliot said magnanimously, waving a hand.
“Don't mind if I do, even though I already did,” she said with a fleeting smile.
“General, I've got to ask. What's your beef with me? Is it my background or what? We've been over this before but …,” he hesitated to even think about bringing up a hormonal issue. Women could be so dang blasted touchy about such things, even with the mandatory usage of implants to curtail their menstrual cycle. Even hinting about it could get his ass in a sling. More of a sling than it already was in her case.
She eyed him for a long moment then shrugged, turning away. She picked up a piece of fruit, obviously something imported from space, and took a bite. “Not exactly,” she finally answered when he didn't seem to back off.
She had admitted to herself, at least privately that he'd done a bang-up job. He'd made mistakes, but he'd done well by both the mission and the troops. She was also aware of how he'd done wonders with the initial rescue efforts in space now. Wednesday had used a rather effective clue stick to get that through her thick head. She grimaced slightly.
“So …,” Brown eyes inquired, looking at her blue eyes.
“Yeah, okay, it was partly that. But
well, mainly …,” she squirmed a bit.
“What?” he asked, spreading his hands apart.
“Body hair,” she said quietly.
He blinked, wide eyed and then chuffed. “Body hair? Are you serious? I'm a chimp!” he looked at his arms and ran a hand through his hair. “You've got hair!”
“Yeah well, I got rid of everything from the eyebrows down.”
He frowned. “Okay so to each their own. So, that’s your beef with me? It's not like you expect me to shave or something, right?” The idea appalled him. He'd seen a few chimps who'd gotten a bit nutty and tried to do that to better fit in with mankind. Some who had left the company had even had facial reconstruction done in order to fit in. The stares from the humans were hard to put up with.
“So I'm not a fan of it. Never was,” she said with a shiver and grimace of distaste. Her father had been bad. Her brother with his armpit hair …
“So it's not bigotry to my species. No problem that I'm a different sapient who is ten times stronger than you. It's not really racism per se, just bigotry of a different … “
“I'm not a bigot,” she insisted, eyes flashing.
“You just said …”
“I. Am. Not.” she insisted, eyes locking onto his coldly.
“Okay. Fine, covered that. Not a bigot. For the record, I've got nothing against women or lesbians or whatever. I never hit on you; if I did I apologize. As for the fur,” he got up and stretched, “you're going to have to live with it, lady. And if you run into more of my kind or some of the other Neo species, well, I suggest you get over it, General, before it becomes a problem. More of a problem,” he stated.
She grunted, then nodded once. “Noted. For the record I am trying to get over it.”
“Thanks. Pile ‘em like cordwood, General,” Elliot said, saluting her with his near empty cup before he downed the dregs. He set the cup down with a light tap on the counter. He turned to her when he felt her eyes on him. “What?”
“Thanks for reminding me who the real enemy is,” she said quietly. Wednesday had been right. She should have listened to her wife. She made a mental note to thank her later. Elliot nodded slowly. Slowly she smiled as she extended her hand. “Stack ‘em too, General,” she said.
“I'll do my damnedest, General,” he said as he took her hand and shook it.
<>V<>
Attila and the remains of his dirty dozen didn't die quickly from poisoning as Lyudmila had hoped, however. Posey threw up in his sleep, alerting them that something was up. The sickly smell triggered the gut-wrenching nausea. Lyudmila had done her best to comfort and quiet him; however, before the night was over, she had ended up going to each of them and slitting their throats with a knife.
She'd left Lever and Attila for last. That had been her mistake. “I should have known. Poison is a woman's weapon,” Attila commented, eying the two women coldly.
She had smirked at him while she had cut Lever's throat. “A better death than you deserve,” Lyudmila said, eying him coldly. However, Attila wasn't done. He pulled a pistol out from under his pillow as she approached him with the dripping knife and shot her. She fell forward, knife clutched to her belly into him.
He'd tried to shoot Valeria, but she'd wildly run out of range of his weapon. He'd fired until the gun had clicked dry, then thrown the gun at her in impotent rage. He'd then pushed Lyudmila's body off of him and tried to get up only to stagger and fall once more. She'd watched from the shadows, shivering until he was sure he was dead. Only then did she creep back to the dying fire and its supposed comforting warmth.
Lyudmila hadn't been dead; to her surprise the girl had survived the gunshots but had played dead.
Valeria cried when she'd noticed the girl breathing and weeping softly. She'd pulled her, doing her best to carry her away from the carnage. She tried to cover the wounds, but she was a child. She had no experience in such things. She rocked the older girl, begging her to live, to keep breathing.
However, she'd finally drifted off to sleep. When she woke she found Lyudmila had died in her arms. The girl's body had grown cold and stiff. Hastily she'd pushed it away, staring in horror at her open vacant eyes.
A husband and wife hunter team found her there the following day. She'd been listless, cold, and near death from exposure. Slowly she told them the story. It started as a trickle, then became a torrent of tears and shaking as the woman's arms wrapped around her for warmth and comfort.
The hunters took the girl in and helped her to strip and bury the bodies then load the truck. Together they drove off into an uncertain future.
ACT III
Chapter 45
September 2205
Jack eyed Roman and shook his head as they walked. “Why the mystery? You've kept me in the dark long enough you know.”
“Well, technically you aren't cleared. Military eyes only.”
“Huh. And yes, I somehow recall signing the checks around here,” Jack said sarcastically. Roman snorted. “Enough pussyfooting around. Give.”
“We're at a near stalemate on the Eastern Front despite the Indians’ attempt to break the deadlock in their neck of the woods by introducing the elephant Neos,” Roman said, shaking his head.
Jack winced and nodded. “And this is where you tell me you have a new weapon? Something to get what two armies can't get done?”
“General Murtough is using a brute force approach. This is … subtle. It will rely on luck and a bit of misdirection. The brute force will serve as the misdirection.”
“Funny. Last time I checked the JCS chairman had experience in the black ops community. Not following. And by the way, this smacks of a Hail Mary do or die stunt. One that has too many ifs and maybes in it, and I haven't even gotten the full in brief. Too much can go wrong.”
“Yes, I know, which is why I've kept it on a back burner for so long. We haven't unveiled it; hell, we've barely field tested it. But, Jack, if we keep going the path we're going, we're going to get bogged down. Tens of thousands, potentially millions of lives will be lost not to mention the thousands of people dying daily. We're already seeing that in Russia, India, and China,” Roman said patiently.
“Okay. That is where orbital bombardment and EMPs …,” Roman started shaking his head. “Don't shake your head like that, Roman. You know the curtain wall is working,” Jack said.
“We're at diminished returns with the EMPs. They knock down Skynet's civilian hardware sure, but not the military hardware. The stuff we faced in Africa and South America was crap compared to the frontline units. And we're at a standstill with the KEW strikes. We can only do so much. Fire support is dangerous as we saw in Berlin,” he grimaced, “or what is left of it.”
Jack winced. Berlin had needed fire support after a big push. They'd gotten it, but a bit of wind drift and a miscommunication on where the forward units were had resulted in a lot of friendly casualties. Isaac had reminded him of an axiom in war. Friendly fire isn't. “Okay.”
“Do you remember some of your history? Specifically World War II, Jack?” Roman asked, eying his boss. Jack nodded. “Well, when the Americans and allies invaded Okinawa, they took brutal losses. The Japanese took horrific losses, and it was a slugfest. That was a taste of what was to come if they tried to invade mainland Japan.”
Jack nodded. “I know this one. It's why Truman signed off on the usage of nuclear weapons. To make certain the losses were one-sided and so horrific the enemy would capitulate.”
“Yes. They didn't at first; their pride got the better of them, which was why Hiroshima was followed up by Nagasaki. I get that. But we can't get them to surrender no matter how hard we hit them.”
“Right. They won't give in at all. So, shock and awe won't affect them. And they are holding the majority of humanity hostage. So we've got to try … something else. Otherwise, this will go on for another three or more years—possibly decades. We may never be rid of this damn virus.”
“And that is where Zack comes into this?”
“Yes. This is his baby. He's been wrapped up into it for years. Years before the war too FYI. It's … hard to explain. There have been a lot of teething issues to get to this point.”
“Oh boy,” Jack sighed. “I'm not going to like this plan, am I?” he asked. Roman didn't answer. Jack heaved a second sigh. “Yeah, that's what I thought.”
<>V<>
Boomer felt himself wake slowly. But it wasn't just him, there was another presence, a loving one mixed in with his. His eyes fluttered open to see a familiar chow laying across from him. “Bumper?” he asked, voice fogging with tears.
“Not quite, he's a clone. We did our best to recreate his mind from his cybernetics download,” a nurse nearby said.
“Shut up,” Boomer muttered, eyes locked onto Bumper's. The dog whined softly then snuffled. He felt himself tire. Their eyes fluttered and then closed as they fell back asleep in perfect harmony.
<>V<>
Zack finally introduced his father to the project. The lead star of the program was a two-year-old wolf/shepard Neo named Maximilian. He wasn't alone, however; there were now a dozen other dog and human pairs. But Zack and Max had been the prototypes.
Max looked more like a classic German Shepard than a Neo: brown with soft black markings, erect ears, nice carriage. A massive canine with a strong jaw and large head to go with his massive sixty kilo body. He moved on all fours and seemed quite comfortable doing so. But there was something there, a spark of intelligence he could see in the Neo's eyes.
“We combined two, no, make that three projects. One being the smart dog project of course. It's why I didn't have canines in any of the new Neo species,” Doctor Glass explained.
“There had been some questions on that,” Jack said with a nod, eyes still on Max.
Max turned to look his way then away.
“Staring is a form of challenge, Dad,” Zack said quietly. “It’s … impolite.”
“I know. I was curious how he'd react,” Jack said. Max turned and sniffed him, then snorted loudly and explosively. He then shook himself and sat back down.