Johnny Winger and the Amazon Vector

by Philip Bosshardt

  “ANAD, close on my position. Configure swarm state one and prepare to engage.”

  ***ANAD closing…still experiencing processor faults…I am attempting to quarantine affected registers…now configuring swarm state one***

  Nearly unseen in all the chaos, the ANAD swarm flowed over the edge of the platform and made its way like a growing ground fog toward the hypersuited troopers, crouching beside the generator.

  “ANAD…prime all effectors and bond disrupters…configure all grabbers and abstractors for max rate disassembly…we’re going after this…thing, whatever it is, with everything we got.”

  Singh wasn’t so sure. “Skipper…I’m not sure ANAD can—“

  “ANAD, propulsors on full…move to contact! Engage on this vector—I’m linking in.” He fed heading information from his suit sensors through the coupler circuit to the assembler swarm.

  ***ANAD engaging...my grabbers are at position alpha, full array…ANAD engaging***

  Just as Johnny Winger linked in, his coupler circuit blew up.

  For a few minutes, he was falling, weightless, just falling through nothing, plummeting down through a void. He shook his head, tried to re-boot the link but nothing came through the buffer, nothing that made sense anyway. He caught snatches of images and could never be sure if they were bursts of signal from ANAD or ‘leakage’ like Doc Frost had once described, stray signals from ANAD that his buffer didn’t know what to do with, unloading the raw feed right into his sensory cortex.

  The same languid tidal pool as before came into view, steamy and fetid, with the crackle of lightning overhead and purplish, sulfurous clouds scudding low across the horizon, promising violent storms to come. Floating in the pool, he soon realized he wasn’t alone; something bumped into him. Whatever it was, it was big and it bumped him again, and again.

  He ducked his head under the surface and then he saw the huge dark mass that had bumped him, now maneuvering away, elliptical, maybe ovoid, with scores of flagella twirling, a massive bacterial ship with flanks studded with chains of molecules and flagella, thrusting it left and right.

  Was it Amazon? It seemed much older…maybe an ancestor of Amazon. But this was different…this was no enemy bot colony, but something else entirely. Beyond describing in words, he felt drawn to the beast, as a cub to a mother. These weren’t assembler bots at all, but pure viral clusters, pure packets of ribosomes, ancient and primordial, aggregated into a living entity….

  An entity at once ancient beyond measure, yet somehow encoded with infinite arrays of wisdom, an endless lattice of binary structures, folded back on itself in loops upon loops without end.

  This…was a brother.

  “ANAD…what is this…place? Where are we?”

  ***ANAD does not know…but processor arrays are being overwritten…memory registers re-loaded…all effector functions suspended…Vector (state: self)= Vector (state: self)…grabbers off line…bond disrupters discharged…pyridines and abstractors and radical tools offline…core functions are being re-initialized…Base…what is happening…what is…I…my….***

  “ANAD, verify config…let’s get going…we’ve got bots to attack! We’re going after this generator!” He decided to de-link...whatever this place was, it wasn’t the Red Hammer base. He switched back to full view on his eyepiece and saw the formation of demonio gathering on the opposite end of the generator.

  ***ANAD cannot verify config…core functions…***

  The enemy swarms were swelling and moving across and seemingly through the generator, which faded in and out of view like a distorted picture. Winger knew they didn’t have much time…without HERF—

  “ANAD, configure swarm state alpha…Assault One…prime all disrupters!”

  He tried linking in but there was only static…no signal. Not even the normal dizziness that came with the linkup. What had happened…was happening…to ANAD?

  What the hell…is my coupler on the fritz? He shook his head, but he didn’t have time to troubleshoot the problem. The enemy was practically on them.

  Taj Singh and Moby M’Bela sprayed the platform with coilgun fire, emptying their magazines but it did little good. It was like pumping rounds into fog.

  “Skipper--?”

  Winger had to make a quick decision. ANAD seemed dead. At least, the coupler link was gone. Maybe I can pilot the swarm directly, the old-fashioned way.

  “I’m going to Fly-by-Stick…keep the bugs off me, will you?”

  “Captain, there isn’t time—“

  Singh and M’Bela threw themselves in the path of the oncoming swarm. Parts of the swarm had already assembled itself into half-formed demonio, headless bodies and armless torsos writhed and billowed toward them, coming right through the generator. The two troopers waded into the midst of the swarm, emptying their coilguns, letting the bots flock to their suits. They were soon knocked to their knees, then face down, while the mechs chewed away at their laminate armor.

  “Arrrrggghhh--!”

  Winger stood his ground and cycled through every band, trying to pick up an acoustic feed from ANAD. There! The grainy image careened and jittered but it was unmistakably ANAD sounding…at least that function wasn’t shot.

  He hunkered down beside the generator, intending to drive the assembler master right into the midst of the generator and set off a Big Bang, a massive uncontrolled replication storm that would destroy the machine and everything else in the cavern.

  It was a drastic, desperation tactic, but they didn’t have time for anything else.

  To his dismay, Winger found ANAD sluggish and unresponsive, his propulsors cutting in and out, his effectors uncontrollable, even the bond disrupters wouldn’t charge up right.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he muttered to himself. ANAD…I’m not sure what’s wrong but we’ve got work to do…

  He checked his config, tapping out keys furiously on his wristpad, while coilgun rounds detonated all around.

  Looks good there…config’s right…why don’t I have any control…something’s bollixed up the processor.

  “ANAD…do you copy me? I’m having trouble accessing basic commands—ANAD—“ he decided to go back to basics…”ANAD, let’s try some simple stuff. Extend carbene grabbers to operating position. Respond—“

  The quantum coupler circuit was shot but there was a staticky fzzzz on the main comm channel…the acoustic channel. Winger tuned it and got a deep, intermittent synthetic ‘voice,’ an ANAD response he had never heard before…a reply that sent chills down his spine.

  *** Vector (state:self) = Vector (state:self)…ANAD internal inhibit…cannot comply with current directive***

  “Cannot com—“ Winger stared at his wristpad like it was something alien. The glowing fog that was the assembler swarm didn’t appear any different. “What the hell—ANAD! Prepare to engage on my command…load Assault One and reply!”

  ***Program aborted…ANAD internal inhibit is active…conflict alarm…ANAD cannot execute program against Vector (state:self)***

  Singh had heard the assembler’s response too. “There’s some kind of internal processor fault, Skipper. Some kind of conflict. Maybe the generator has corrupted main memory.”

  Winger decided to investigate further…they had to get ANAD going if the mission was to succeed.

  “ANAD…list all conflict parameters. Identify inhibits.”

  ***ANAD cannot execute Assault One…against self state…internal inhibit…main fault sequence***

  “He’s saying he can’t attack himself,” Singh theorized.

  Winger was growing frustrated. They didn’t have much time. The Red Hammer swarms were reconstituting, forming up as demonio, half humans and other amorphous shapes, surrounding the platform, closing in.

  “It doesn’t make any sense, Taj. I ordered Assault One to engage the enemy swarms…he’s not engaging himself…he’s attacking Amazon—Red Hammer bots.”

  “ANAD sees them a
s part of himself. That’s one of the first inhibits we put into assembler processors…remember what Doc Frost said? So they wouldn’t cannibalize themselves. Something’s triggered this routine inside his processor.”

  “The generator—“Winger decided. “But how do I get around it?”

  “Like we did in the old days,” Skipper. Singh had an idea. “Bypass his processor. Drive the swarm at the level of core functions. Remember your Basic Assembler Language?”

  “Barely—but I guess we have no choice. We’ve got to do something to put this generator out of action.”

  Then Winger had an idea. “Taj, what if I just peel off an element of the main swarm and drive it myself? Don’t even go thru ANAD…through the master. Just me and a few jillion daughter replicants.”

  Singh eyed the approaching demonio. He lit off a few more pulses from his mag weapon, briefly scattering the enemy bot colonies.

  “Just like nog school…it’s worth a try, Skipper. If that doesn’t work—“ He didn’t have to complete the thought.

  Winger went to work, dredging up old commands in BAL from memory. Most atomgrabbers had never had to learn the archaic command language. He put together a string of commands, in effect taking control of a sizeable portion of the ANAD swarm, hoping that the ANAD master wouldn’t inhibit that, too.

  He sent the command string and saw from his instruments that at least some of the swarm was responding. The glowing fog seemed to divide itself into several patches of assemblers. As Winger sent more commands, steadily taking control of a part of the formation, he wondered what had happened to ANAD.

  Eyeing the oncoming enemy swarms, Winger knew there was only one way to be sure the generator was destroyed.

  He tapped furiously at his wristpad, sending commands to the small swarm he now controlled to execute a Big Bang. Put enough mass into these cavern walls, he reasoned, and the whole place will come down.

  The question was whether any of them could survive it.

  But he didn’t have much time left. M’Bela was already down, Taj Singh was only a few meters away, blocking the advance of the enemy bots while still getting off rounds at the Red Hammer troops below and beyond the platform. Singh was doing everything he could to buy time for Winger. He couldn’t hold out much longer.

  Winger saw Tallant boosting off the far end of he platform. “Dana, take cover…I’m going Big Bang…it’s the only way!”

  “Wings…get away from there…if that generator goes, you may wind up God knows where!”

  Steadily, Winger drove the small swarm toward the cavern walls, piloting the trillions of mechs on instinct, taking the raw acoustic feed and just reacting, letting his training take over.

  There…the lead bots had penetrated solid-phase…the swarm was beginning to penetrate the cavern walls.

  He sent commands to execute the replication storm, then took one last look at the blurry generator, still fading in and out of view.

  I don’t know what kind of device you are, pal, but I’m about to drop about a million tons of rock right on that platform.

  That’s when the first tremor hit.

  The shock waves came as a series of rolling undulations at first, followed by sharp lateral jerks, back and forth. Straight away, the platform supporting the quantum generator collapsed to the floor and was soon buried in tons of loose rubble.

  The cavern walls seemed to buckle. Technicians and troops scattered in every direction. Winger instructed his suit to execute a defilade maneuver and while his boot thrusters were carving out a small foxhole beside the collapsed platform, he saw the far wall give way, exploding outward in a great roaring avalanche of rock and boulders.

  Johnny Winger lay prone in the foxhole and closed his eyes, listening to the cavern walls give way, feeling the end of the world collapsing all around him.

  When the dust settled, Winger opened his eyes. He had survived the tremors and the cavern collapse. The general outlines of the subterranean chamber were still there, save for the far wall, which was now gone, obscured by a deep talus of boulders and smoldering rubble. The platform had been smashed and buried under the landslide. There was no quantum generator in sight.

  Had they done it? Cautiously, with help from his suit gyros, Winger extricated himself from the mound of rubble under which he had been buried.

  Straight away, the crewnet crackled with voices.

  “Skipper, is that you…you okay over there?” Reaves’ voice was husky, strained, as if the DPS tech was hurt.

  “I’ll live…what about you, Sheila?” he could see the gray hump of a hypersuit shell rising like a fat ghost in the dust…maybe thirty meters away. Then another rose, surfacing unsteadily as its gyros sought vertical.

  “My suit’s breached but I’m on auxiliary…I’m not sure about Ozzie here…his comm’s out.” Reaves butted helmets with Tsukota, still unsteady on his feet. “He’s bleeding…we’d better get him out now—“ She fingered the quick disconnects around the helmet neck ring. With a hiss, Tsukota’s helmet was loosened. Reaves eased it off. Inside, the quantum engineer was cut and bruised but otherwise okay.

  “Detachment, this is CC1…sound off and report in immediately.” Over the next few seconds, Winger took stock of the situation.

  Singh and M’Bela were gone, buried somewhere in the thousands of tons of rubble that the tremor had released. “Start sounding,” Winger ordered. “We may get something…maybe an emergency beacon or something.” He didn’t really believe it but he put Klimuk and Tallant to work on the idea anyway.

  Winger wondered what had happened to ANAD. He tried the quantum coupler link but got nothing…only a staticky tickle in the back of his mind.

  Another milder tremor shook the cavern. Rock and rubble streamed down through yawning fissures in the walls. One fissure seemed alive…it glowed with a faint iridescence, a throbbing ball of light expanding out of the wall like a rising sun.

  It was ANAD.

  ***ANAD completing primary mission, Base…now transiting solid-phase…now on one-half propulsor…ANAD requesting new orders…returning to Base***

  “ANAD, you old goat….” Winger cycled open the containment port in his suit. “…ANAD, return to port and prepare for capture.”

  ***Base, ANAD prefers to remain in swarm state alpha…outside of containment…detecting remnant enemy formations scattered but still functioning in the target area…I just like it out here!***

  Johnny Winger didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The master assembler sounded normal…maybe the quantum generator had been responsible for his core failures. But somehow the assembler had repaired himself...reconstituted himself, outside of containment. It shouldn’t even be possible—

  “Skipper, what’s that white sphere to your left…watch it! It’s moving—“

  At first, he hadn’t noticed the sphere. Some six feet around, slightly flattened on top, it wasn’t a true sphere at all. More of an ovoid shape. It did seem to be quivering slightly, and pulsating with a pure white flicker, to some unknown rhythm. The frequency seemed to be quickening.

  Winger kicked through some rubble piles and approached cautiously. As he did so, his quantum coupler went off. It wasn’t ANAD though. It was a Corps signal…Singapore base. The duty officer there had just forwarded an advisory from UNIFORCE.

  Winger stopped momentarily to take in the rest of the message. His mouth went dry when he realized what Singapore had just sent. After a moment’s hesitation to collect his wits, he posted the message on the crewnet.

  Time was running out for Operation Tectonic Strike. Time and events were starting to move against 1st Nano. UNIFORCE surveillance had just reported that elements of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army were forming up outside the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, ostensibly for search and rescue operations in the aftermath of the quakes that had hit Paryang valley. A sizeable force of lifters, interceptors and ground units had started moving out in the di
rection of the monastery.

  “Dana,” he radioed to Tallant, “we don’t have much time left. I’m going to see what this sphere is—I just hope we disabled that generator…at least enough to have some effect. Taj thought it might not even be the central source of control…maybe only a node in a greater network.”

  “Watch yourself, Wings. I don’t like it…that thing could be a trap.”

  “Muster the rest of the unit together. I’ll have ANAD detach a small force to start boring a way out of here…before the whole place collapses. I need the master to investigate this sphere. This gizmo may be part of Red Hammer’s control system.”

  He was still troubled by the glitches ANAD had suffered while engaging the generator…was the assembler fully functional even now?

  “ANAD, configure swarm state Charlie…let’s sound and probe this thing first and see what it’s made of.”

  ***ANAD reconfiguring now…selecting swarm state Charlie…acoustic lens forming…ANAD will return data momentarily***

  “ANAD, what happened to you back there at that platform? I tried linking in but all I got was gibberish…images that didn’t make any sense. You kept reporting memory overflow, state re-initialization…it was like you were still a basic assembler back at Table Top, being grown from first atoms.”

  ***ANAD is still running analysis of the anomaly. I have no conclusions to make…just that, for awhile, I could not engage the enemy assemblers…inhibits prevented ANAD from engaging. Target assemblers were identified as self state…identical core assemblers…compatible structures and algorithms***

  “You mean like a brother?”

  ***ANAD detects from language analysis and parsing that concept (brother) is an equivalent explanation for the anomaly…ANAD probed the structure of the target assemblers and the return was ‘brother’***

  Winger decided to put off any more questions. Something had happened to ANAD. Something had triggered faults and inhibits in his core processor. It was like a whole new set of programs had been activated. If the probe returned as ‘brother,’ normal inhibits could have prevented ANAD from engaging. “ANAD, what do you make of this sphere?”

  At Winger’s feet, the glowing pool of assemblers drifted like a fog toward the white ovoid object, itself embedded in a pile of rubble. The assembler swarm probed the surface of the sphere with acoustic and EM fingers, forming an initial impression from the return pulses.