the now-disorganized formation. Another wave of Model Sixes maneuvered into position. The whine of their engines announced their acceleration toward the enemy. This time the outer ranks of the phalanx broke.
'Yeah!' Hoblenz yelled. 'Scatter, you steel monkeys! You're dead meat now!'
But the Model Eights didn't scatter and flee. They lunged outward and grabbed Model Sevens, pulling the quadrupeds back against their ranks as living shields. With a rending crash the thrashing Sevens were crushed to death, the same fate as befell the valiant Sixes.
The disruption was over, and the phalanx moved on. They left behind the smoking wreckage of their weaker foes.
There was no more cheering from the troops. The Model Eights were the superior species. They were vastly outnumbered, but they lived up to their higher model number. They were more advanced. They were better at protecting their niche, at killing their more primitive cousins.
They were more ruthless than the all-too-human computer, which controlled the downtrodden army of older equipment now in full retreat.
A heavy truck towing a flatbed trailer pulled up to the computer center. Atop the trailer were several large tarpaulins.
'Dr. Aldridge!' Filatov called from the steps. 'Mr. Gray wants you! Hurry!' She followed Filatov through the duster into the computer center entrance. 'He's in the version 4C,' Filatov explained along the way. 'He wants you to suit up. Dorothy and Margaret are already in the changing rooms.'
Filatov led her on a run through the empty control room toward the corridor leading back to the virtual workstations.
'What does he want us to do?' Laura asked when they stopped at the door to the hallway.
'You're going to fight the robots,' Filatov said out of breath. He grabbed her arm and pulled her past the hissing door. 'The Model Eights.'
'We're going to do what?' Laura said, tearing her arm free.
'Come on!' Filatov shouted. 'There isn't much time!' Reluctantly she followed him to the ready room adjoining Gray's most advanced workstation. 'You change. I'm going to load the program for Dorothy and Margaret.'
Laura stripped in the little room and donned the exoskeleton.
'Are you almost ready?' Filatov asked through the door upon his return.
'Ready for what?' Laura asked as she emerged wearing the tight suit. 'I don't understand what I'm supposed to do!'
'When you go in there and I load the program, you step into their world! You can fight them!'
'How? What are you talking about? Do you mean the computer is going to make those Model Eights think some hundred-and-ten-pound human is scurrying around their feet in [garbled]? Do you really think that's going to stop them? They'll squash me like a bug! Is that roof going to come crashing down on me? I would enjoy that experience, too.'
'You're taking too much time!' Filatov replied angrily. 'It will be too late.'
'Answer me! Am I going to get bashed to a bloody pulp inside that thing?'
'There will be some… some jostling, I'm sure. But you're missing the most important point! The Eights aren't tapped into the computer's world model. They access the Other's. It won't be a virtual representation of you that they see. 'You' will be a Model Eight! You'll be ten feet tall and have arms of boron epoxy! Now go! Go!'
Laura put on her hood, arguing the whole way. 'But I don't understand! I don't know what you want me to do!'
She was in the chamber, and Filatov stuck his head in for one last answer. 'This machine you're in has two settings — virtual reality and telepresence. Virtual reality is pure imagination. You're just dreamed up inside the computer's head. But telepresence is real. In telepresence you're operating a real robot in real space somewhere far away from your workstation. We trucked in four brand-new Model Eights from the assembly building. They're just off the line and have no real-world training, but they can be slaved off your arms and legs. You can control them from this workstation. You should lie down on your back to assume their start position. That'll cut down on any initial disorientation.'
'Wait a minute! Do you mean that I'll be controlling real robots? That when I move my arm, the robot will move its arm?'
'Yes! Teleoperation, like I said. You are the robot!'
He disappeared, and the door closed with a squeak from its tight seal.
Laura was petrified when the lights in the workstation went out completely. She was lying on her back in the middle of the chamber.
'Are you ready, Laura?' she heard. It was Gina's voice.
'I guess.'
Suddenly, the floor rose to an inclined position like a hospital bed. Then the starry night sky appeared out of nowhere — emblazoned on the ceiling of the otherwise dark workstation. Then the brightly lit horizons crackled into view on the walls and floor.
Laura was lying outside the computer center on some sort of trailer. Beside her was the sandbagged fortress of Hoblenz's troops.
Laura was on the truck, she realized, that had driven up just before Filatov summoned her. The tarps that had covered its cargo now lay on the ground. Three empty positions dotted the long flatbed beside her.
Something was strange about the world around her. Everything seemed smaller. The sandbags, the jeeps. Hoblenz ran about shouting orders to his men, who seemed to be packing up to leave.
He was noticeably smaller than he should have been at such close range.
'Mr. Hoblenz!' Laura called out.
'He can't hear you, Laura,' Gina said. 'Model Eights can't produce audible sound waves.'
Gina had not spoken with the 'all-around' voice of a moment before. Laura turned to look at the sound's source. The muscles of her neck had to work hard against the suddenly stiff and confining hood.
'Don't try to move more quickly than a robot can,' Gina said. 'The skeleton restrains you to the robots' range and speed of motion.'
Gina stood tight beside Laura — her image faint and fuzzy.
Gina was apparently imaginary in the teleoperation mode. Laura looked back at the scrambling soldiers. Their images were sharply depicted.
'The solid-looking objects you can manipulate,' Gina said, anticipating Laura's question. There were faint burping and tipping sounds in the distance. 'Hear that? That's Mr. Gray attacking a very surprised Model Eight who blasted him with a microwave version of 'What the hell do you think you're doing?'' There were other sounds, each of different duration and tone.
They were robot screams, terse data transmissions that screeched over the chamber's sound system. They were inaudible in the real world but perfectly clear in cyberspace.
'You'd better get up now. Your comrades-in-arms are wondering why you're lying down on the job.' Laura struggled to sit up, but the suit made the task very difficult. The motion, however, had been noticed by the soldiers, whose weapons were raised and pointed her way.
'Be careful with them, Laura. You can hurt them, and they can hurt you.'
Laura looked down at the open brackets around her hand. When she lifted her arm, the Model Eight arm rose. She moved her fingers. Her thumb and the two fingers closest operated the three fingers of the robot's gripper. She could feel the rubberized supports beneath her back with her new robotic skin. Laura and the robot were one.
Gina talked her down to a standing position on the lawn just beside the trailer.
'There! You're getting the hang of it! Now, come along, come along.' Gina headed off toward the sounds of battle, turning back and waving for Laura to follow.
Laura began the slow and difficult process of walking. The suit held her like a full-body straitjacket.
'Come on, come on, come on,' a grinning Gina said, skipping in front of Laura and turning backward and forward in a girlish dance.
Laura peered through the fires and smoke ahead. 'What's going on up there?'
'The Model Eights have taken heavy losses. They started out with thirty, but they're down to thirteen, plus another five or so walking wounded.'
'How about our side?'
