Johnny Winger and the Amazon Vector

by Philip Bosshardt

  Using pieces Winger had snatched from Via Verde, Frost was able to alter the structure of ANAD’s carbene grabbers to make them more effective against the bots. “I’ll just stick an extra radical here—and here—“ Frost was saying, as he expertly guided the hydrogen groups into place with the quantum ‘tweezers’.

  “And the configuration routine will be done in a moment,” added Mary Duncan, from a nearby keyboard. “I want to make sure ANAD can get to that new config quickly, with a minimum of fuss. Okay, Irwin—I’m ready to send the command string.”

  Frost tinkered some more with ANAD. As Johnny Winger watched, he wondered what the assembler was thinking. Was he even aware of what was going on? Frost had disabled the coupler link for the work. Somehow, it was like losing an arm. ANAD had almost become like a third arm, natural as you please, only someone else was now in control of it.

  “Okay, Mary…send the command.” Frost changed the imager view to show a wider scale. ANAD hung on his scaffolding like a pulsating bouquet. Nearby, also mounted on a scaffolding, was a torn segment of an Amazon bot’s effectors…pieces of the tentacle ANAD had torn off when he’d grappled. “Let’s see what ANAD can do.”

  Mary Duncan sent the commands.

  For a few moments, nothing happened. The piece of tentacle waved and undulated like a snake in the fluid solution of the containment tank. Then, almost without warning, ANAD’s forward effectors suddenly unfolded with startling speed, stabbing and ensnaring the tentacle with four-sided peptide pincers.

  Frost was exultant. “Excellent! Excellent…much faster. I’ve given him an array of stickier radicals to grab with…and the new routine means he can replicate the grabbers faster too. Good work, Mary…you’ve got that routine humming now.”

  Mary Duncan smiled faintly. “Just a matter of pruning the code…knowing how ANAD works.”

  “Jesus,” Gibbs said, as he marveled at the new effectors ANAD had sprouted, “it unfolded so fast, I couldn’t follow it.”

  “Yeah,” said D’Nunzio, “like a knife fight in an alley…ANAD’ll cut ‘em down quick.”

  Frost nodded, pleased. “It was a fairly simple fix. Part of the idea is concealment—it looks like the grabbers just explode out, but ANAD’s actually replicating them inside his shell, in a small nook we found…out of sight. When they’re formed, he extends them in a flash.”

  “King Arthur and his sword,” Gibbs said.

  Frost turned back to Johnny Winger. “Your report said you encountered a herd of para-human creatures inside that grotto…the same things Dr. Del Compo ran into. What were they called--?”

  “Demonio,” said Winger. “That’s what the Valencians call them. The name’s kind of stuck. Del Compo determined they aren’t living beings at all…just colonies of nanomechs bunched together in human-like form.”

  “Hmmm,” Frost said. “Yes, I’ve seen his reports. And Mary and I went through your recorded imagery last night, before you arrived. A most unusual swarm behavior, clustering like that. I’m not sure I understand why that should be…”

  Mary Duncan cocked her head. “Herding behavior like that has to be commanded at some level. Unless, it’s emergent in the processor architecture. The question is: to what purpose.”

  “To look like humans, maybe,” Gibbs suggested. “To fool us somehow—“

  “Maybe replace humans,” Winger said. “Remember what they’re made of. Every one of those demonio creatures is nothing but a swarm of Amazon bots…the same bots that are chewing up the atmosphere.”

  “Maybe they’re being fashioned somehow to survive in a new atmosphere, one that’s radically different from ours,” Deeno offered.

  The thought hung in the air for a moment.

  “But by who?” Gibbs asked. “If it’s Red Hammer, what’s their goal? They have to live in the same atmosphere as us.”

  Winger stared at them all, without really seeing them. His thoughts were focused elsewhere... on the grotto, on the imagery ANAD had returned from probing the demonio, on the lattice inside its ‘head.’ The final image before the HERF gun had scattered the bots to hell and back

  …an entire planet of mechs.

  “Doc…maybe Red Hammer didn’t create these bots after all. Maybe they had some help.”

  “What kind of help…perhaps another agency or organization? Who besides Red Hammer would have the expertise?”

  Winger’s face was grim and deadly serious. “Maybe another race. Beyond Earth—“

  Gibbs and D’Nunzio stared in disbelief at their Captain.

  “Captain…you can’t—“

  But Irwin Frost held up a hand. “Why do you say that, Johnny?”

  Beside Winger, Gibbs shifted uneasily. The two men hadn’t talked much about what they had seen since they’d left Via Verde. It was too crazy, too far beyond the bounds of credibility.

  “When I was driving ANAD,” Winger said, “and we were inside that the lattice of that demonio, inside its brain, Gibby and I kept sounding readings that were crazy, that didn’t make any sense—“

  “How so, Johnny?”

  Winger looked at Gibbs for—what? Assurance? That they weren’t both out of their minds?

  Gibbs spoke up. “Acoustic sounding showed that, once we were inside that creature, distances didn’t mean anything. We both saw it. We were getting readings of millions, billions of microns—like we’d entered another dimension or something.”

  “Maybe the pulses were getting distorted somehow,” Winger decided. “The whole place looked like a big farm…grain fields, clouds, rolling hills…only it was all made up of mechs. Doc, I’m wondering if we weren’t caught up in the middle of some weird memory trace.”

  Frost had seen the findings from Dr. del Compo. “Possibly. I’ve looked at the test results from Valencia. I concur with del Compo. The creatures are nothing but colonies of nanobotic mechanisms. The Valencians haven’t shared that much on the nature of the mechs—what you’ve brought is the first I’ve had to examine myself. The platform engineering is first-rate…the shell design, effector control, power sources, all of it is evidence of top-notch thinking. Without probing the core processor more, I can’t say much about their programming. Offhand, though, I’m inclined to doubt there’s any reason to think the technology is anything more than an ANAD clone, tweaked and modified extensively, to be sure, but well within the bounds of possibility. Why do you think it’s something more?”

  Winger scratched his head. “It’s what I saw, Doc. Gibby saw it too. Right before the HERF gun went off, it seemed like---it felt like—ANAD had been struggling to get free of these lattice mechs. Finally, I maneuvered him loose and ANAD’s momentum carried him up and over the lattice or field or whatever it was. The field dropped away and it kept dropping further below me. Finally—“ Winger shook his head, trying to put the imagery into words “—ANAD had floated so far over the field that it looked like we were in space, above a planet…an entire world of mechs. Everything was mechs, Doc…from the lattice ANAD had been caught in to the entire planet.” He shrugged. “I just had the idea then that the creatures were somehow not from our world.”

  “It was wild,” Gibbs admitted. “—like the creatures were reflections of something, or projections from this other place.”

  Irwin Frost pulled up a stool and sat down at the containment control station. “Interesting. I suppose it might be possible for a nanobotic swarm to be designed like that…designed to alter sounding signals. Photon lensing is a technique already well understood…ANAD’s been capable of capturing photons and changing their frequencies in a rudimentary way for several years. This seems more advanced than ANAD.”

  “Then you don’t think these demonio buggers are aliens from outer space?” asked Deeno. She winked at Gibbs.

  Frost was cautious in his reply. “Based on what I’ve heard and seen, no…it’s more likely we’re dealing with some kind of advanced signa
l modification. To what purpose…that’s the question. And why these Amazon bots would detach part of their swarms to grow and maintain such human-like creatures…that’s another question. There has to be a reason.”

  “Doc, if Red Hammer has the capability to do this sort of thing, our intelligence is way behind. That makes them more dangerous than ever.”

  “Agreed.”

  Gibbs still wasn’t convinced. “But why design a bot that can alter molecules of air? We still haven’t received any demands or any ultimatums.”

  “Maybe it’s a test,” Deeno said. “You know…like an experiment or something. Maybe it got out of control.”

  “We have a Red Hammer agent in custody,” Winger reminded everybody. “Nigel Skinner. When he was questioned, he said Red Hammer was trying to discredit BioShield.”

  “It could be a diversion,” Gibbs said. “Force us to focus on one problem, while Red Hammer tries something else.”

  “But what?” Deeno asked.

  “Unknown. BioShield is pre-occupied with the atmosphere perturbations at the moment. Quantum Corps intelligence hasn’t received any other alerts, from UNIFORCE, or anybody.”

  “Doesn’t the cartel have a base in the Himalayas?” Mary Duncan asked. “I thought UNIFORCE had put that place out of commission.”

  Johnny Winger recalled the mission from several years before, during the Serengeti pandemic. “They tried, but the Chinese wouldn’t allow operations on their territory. We probably should do a covert recon mission, but the place is well guarded…swarms above and below ground, massive camouflage and concealment effort there. That must be your photon lensing in action, Doc. UNIFORCE says the whole place is shielded by swarms, constantly changing config. Every week, the place looks different to the spysats. So far, nobody’s been able to get a bug or a bot in there to take a look.”

  “I’d give a month’s pay to know what’s going on behind those shields,” Gibbs said.

  Winger’s wristpad beeped. The atomgrabber took the call outside the Containment tank. It was Kraft. His face was lined with fatigue.

  “Captain Winger…you’d better get your detail back to Table Top…on the double.”

  “What is it, Major?”

  The image of Kraft’s face dissolved into another image, this one an overhead view of massive ice cliffs calving off into the sea. Icebergs could be seen in the distance.

  “Weathersats took these images yesterday. There’s a bubble of altered atmosphere expanding around the South Pole. It’s accelerating rapidly and, as a result, the ice cap’s melting faster than ever. With the sea level rising by six inches every week, UNIFORCE estimates half the world’s coastal cities will be flooded in a month. UNSAC has changed our mission. General Linx has ordered us to conduct a new operation against Amazon Vector in the Antarctic. Have you got ANAD ready to engage the enemy?”

  Winger explained some of the changes Doc Frost had made to ANAD’s architecture and programming. “It works well in the sims, Major. We’re ready to take ‘em on.”

  “Then get your ass back to Table Top pronto, Captain. I’ll work up a basic mission plan and squirt it to you in flight. Antarctica’s the worst now, but there are bubbles growing all over the world: the Congo River basin, Tibet, the south Pacific, Valencia and the Caucasus Mountains. Earth’s atmosphere is under assault and nothing UNIFORCE tries seems to be working. The politicos are frantic. ANAD’s our best hope.”

  “ANAD’s ready to get back in the fight, Major.”

  “Good.” Kraft’s face seemed relieved to finally hear some good news. “You’ll be engaging the enemy swarms at Lake Vostok. General Linx says the operation has to work…we have to find a way to slow the bubbles, slow the ice cap melting. If we can’t…millions of people are going to die and there isn’t a damned thing we can do about it.”

 

  CHAPTER 7

  McMurdo City, Ross Island

  Antarctica

  November 7, 2068

  1200 hours

  Alpha Detachment, newly equipped and re-armed, departed the north liftpad at Table Top Mountain shortly before sunup. The ten-thousand mile flight south, aboard hyperjet Charioteer, would take about two and a half hours. Their destination was McMurdo City, the research base at Ross Island. There, the Detachment would hook up with a platoon from UNIFORCE Security Corps, deployed to the Antarctic to engage the spreading swarms of Amazon Vector.

  Johnny Winger spent much of the flight across the top of the Earth’s atmosphere in the comm shack, following operations of other detachments as Quantum Corps engaged Amazon swarms around the world. He kept a close eye on search and rescue ops in the south Pacific, as UNIFORCE sought traces of the lost Bravo Detachment. Spotty signals from two hypersuit emitters were still being detected and the search forces were closing in on one possible target east of Kurabantu Island.

  Maybe they’ll find something, Winger muttered to himself. Not knowing what had happened to Dana Tallant and the rest of Bravo was the hardest part.

  When he wasn’t in the comm shack, Winger circulated through the cargo bay, checking on his troops, an encouraging word here, a pat on the head there. Got all your gear up to speed? Check those suit seals, trooper. Check your connections, suit boost, crewnet, check everything. We’ll load out for combat just before touchdown.

  Everyone one of them came back: Yes, sir…all copasetic, sir…how’s ANAD doing, sir?

  The truth was Johnny Winger didn’t know how the assembler was doing.

  He spent the last hour before descent toward the Ross Ice Shelf in the C/O’s quarters up forward, going over his own gear. He felt lonely, uneasy, occasionally glancing out a small porthole. Ice-flecked ocean glittered in morning sunlight miles below them…the south Pacific and the Andean coast of South America might as well have been another planet. Despite warnings from Doc Frost, he cycled his containment capsule open and released ANAD into the air.

  It was against all regulations but Johnny Winger didn’t care. He needed someone to talk to.

  ***Boss…..it’s good to be out…okay to rep a few million times?...nice to have some company, you know…it feels…kind of weird…maybe it’s my config…got all these new doodads and effectors…***

  Winger was sitting on his bunk, feeling connections and ports in his suit helmet, mindlessly checking everything, the usual pre-ops drill.

  “ANAD, you worry me, sometimes, you know that?”

  ***No reason to be worried about me…I’m having fun just figuring out what to do with all these new gadgets***

  “I shouldn’t even be letting you out of containment here. It’s against all regs.”

  ***Why did you, then? Not that I don’t appreciate it. But still--***

  It was a question that had many answers. Pick one: I’m lonesome and I need some company…I’m curious about what you’ll do and say next…Living and working with you is like having a little brother…I never know what’s going to happen next….

  Winger completed his hypersuit checks and buttoned up the helmet. He checked his watch. Charioteer would begin her descent toward the runway at McMurdo in less than half an hour. Alpha Detachment would have to be ready for action the moment they touched down.

  “I don’t know, ANAD…I guess I want to do the right thing…only, I don’t know what that is. Even Doc Frost said I shouldn’t let you out of containment unsupervised.”

  ***Am I that dangerous, Boss? You must have let me out because I asked you to. You know…it’s more natural for me to be outside…I learn more…I exercise my effectors and my processor…just interacting with the environment strengthens my core synaptic connections…I’m a nanoscale element of a larger colony, Boss…the best thing for me is to be part of a swarm…with my comrades and fellow nogs…that’s how you would put it…is that so hard to understand?***

  “No, of course not.” Winger stared out the porthole. Reflected in the perspex, he could see a faint shimmerin
g blob in the air behind his head. He knew it was ANAD, replicating a swarm. It was like growing a family to order. Forming up a squad to keep him company.

  Wouldn’t that be a neat trick for humans, he thought? Build your own family to spec, as easily as building a shed in the backyard.

  ***Boss…you and me…we’re a lot alike, aren’t we?***

  Winger turned back to face the shimmering swarm. It was faceless, little more than a flickering light show. “You mean aside from the fact that I’m a billion times bigger and you don’t even have a face I can look at…sure, we’re almost twins, ANAD.”

  For a few moments, there was no further communication. The swarm was changing though, the pinpricks of light swirling, coalescing, right before his eyes. As he watched, Johnny became dimly aware of a pattern in the shimmer, something there but not quite there, a shadow, maybe? No, it was more than that—

  It was a face. The barest outline of a face, like a child’s stencil copy of a face, but recognizable nonetheless.

  It was the face of his father. Jamison Winger.

  Johnny Winger blinked hard. Jamison Winger had died in ’66, one of thousands of victims of the Serengeti plague. He quickly wiped off a tear. ANAD had been sniffing again. Sniffing memories…he’d have to quit letting the assembler have a free-for-all inside his brain. Doc Frost would be horrified.

  “ANAD…that’s not funny. I see what you’re forming…I think it’s in bad taste. Very bad taste.”

  ***You said I didn’t have a face to look at, Boss…isn’t that what you wanted me to have? Something to look at…something familiar--?***

  Winger got up and began putting on the hypersuit. “ANAD…reconfig for capture. We’ll be on the ground soon. We’ve got a mission—“

  ***Maybe we’re not so much alike after all…but, you’ve always said you think of me as a brother…as a fellow trooper***

  “I do, ANAD…how can I say this…maybe you’re too much like me. Not the way you look….just the way you are. Like the Major’s always saying…loads of talent but it needs polish. Nobody understands us, ANAD…that’s what I mean. Now—get rid of that swarm and get inside—“ he tapped his left shoulder and the capsule port clicked open.