Robopocalypse

Insurgents have tried everything, but all they ever manage to do is ruin SAP’s clothes. And then they end up listed for it.

SAP’s a machine built to be strong as hell and meek as a rabbit. He can’t hurt anybody. It’s why he works.

It’s why he worked, anyway.

I’m sorry, but this doesn’t sound like the army I know. Are you telling me that we have humanoid robot soldiers who don’t fight?

There’s no difference between the general populace and our enemy. They’re the same folks. The guy selling kebabs one day is the guy burying an IED the next day. The only thing our enemies want is to kill a few American soldiers. Then they hope the voters make us leave.

Our soldiers only storm through town every now and then, like a tornado. Always on a mission and with a target. It’s tough to kill an American soldier when you never see one, ma’am.

Instead, the only viable targets are SAP robots. They’re the only two-legged robots in the United States armory and they don’t fight. I mean, killing is a specialized profession. Killing is for scuttle mines, mobile gun platforms, drones, whatever. Humanoids just aren’t that good at it. SAPs are designed to communicate. See, that’s what humans do best. We socialize.

That’s why SAP One never hurts anybody. It’s his mission. He tries to build trust. He speaks the language, wears the clothes, recites the prayers—all the crap that army grunts won’t or can’t learn. After a while, people stop spitting on him. They stop caring when he comes around. People might even like him because he’s the police, only he never has his hand out for a bribe. On some days, SAP’s feet barely touch the ground because he’s getting free cab rides all over town. People want him nearby, like good luck.

But none of this social engineering works without the trust built up from having a peaceful sentinel walking the streets, always watching and remembering. It takes time, but you gotta build that trust.

And that’s why the insurgents attack the trust.

Which leads us to the incident …

Okay, sure. Like I said, SAP doesn’t fight. He doesn’t carry a gun or even a knife, but if SAP One decides to detain your butt, his metal fingers are stronger than any handcuffs. And the insurgents know it. That’s why they’re always trying to get him to hurt somebody. Probably about every two weeks, they pull off some stunt to get him to malfunction. But they always fail. Always.

Not this time, apparently.

Well, let me get to that.

Normally, I don’t go into the city. SAP walks home to the green zone every few days and we fix him up. I’ll go into the city with the armored squads and sweep for listers, but never without serious backup. Human backup, you know.

The SAPs are pussycats, but our troops have become more, uh, fearsome, I guess. People figure out pretty quick that only humans pull triggers, and, honestly, we’re unpredictable compared to the robots. Locals far prefer a robot with rigid behavioral guidelines to a nineteen-year-old kid raised on 3-D video games and carrying a semiautomatic rifle.

Makes sense to me.

Anyway, this day was unusual. SAP One dropped from radio contact. When the Raptors zeroed in on his last known, he was just standing at an intersection in a residential part of town, not moving or communicating.

This is the most dangerous part of my job: recovery and repair.

What caused this?

That’s what I’m wondering, too. My first step is to review the last transmissions from SAP One. I pinpoint what looks like standard monitoring behavior. Through Sappy’s eyes, I see that he is standing at this intersection, watching a steady flow of cars snake by and scanning the retinas of pedestrians and drivers.

This data is a little funny, because Sappy sees the physics of the whole situation. There are annotations about how fast the cars are moving and with how much force—stuff like that. Diagnostically, though, he seems to be working fine.

Then a bad guy shows up.

Bad guy?

Retinal match to a known insurgent. A high-value target, too. SOP calls for Sappy to apprehend and detain, rather than just catalogs last-known location. But this guy knows damn well that this will happen. He’s baiting Sappy, trying to get him to cross the street and get hit by a car. SAP is strong. If a car hits him, it’d be like someone rolled a fire hydrant into the street.

But SAP doesn’t take the bait. He knows he can’t move or he’ll put the cars in danger. He can’t act, and so he doesn’t. Gives no indication that he even saw the insurgent. Clearly, the insurgent feels that SAP requires more motivation.

Next thing I know, the screen fritzes and starts to reboot. A big gray lump streaks through his vision. It takes me a second to figure it out, but somebody dropped a cinder block on my Sappy. It’s not that uncommon, really. Minimal damage. But at some point during the reboot, SAP stops communicating. He just stands there like he’s confused.

That’s when I know—we’re gonna have to go get him.

I scramble a four-man team immediately. This whole situation is bad. An ambush. The insurgents know we’ll come to recover our hardware and they’re probably already setting up. But the local police won’t deal with broken robots. That falls in my lane.

Worse, the Raptors fail to identify any nearby targets on rooftops or in alleys. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of insurgents with AK-47s; it just means we don’t know where they are.

Are you saying that the incident was just the result of a hard knock on the head? The machine is traumatized on a regular basis and yet it has never responded this way before. Why this time?

You’re right. A knock on the head didn’t cause this. In my opinion, it was the reboot. It was like the robot woke up from a nap and decided not to take orders anymore. We’ve never seen this behavior. It’s pretty much impossible for someone to rewrite his instructions, to make him disobey.

Really? Couldn’t an insurgent have hacked into the machine? Is that what could have caused this?

No, I don’t think so. I reviewed SAP’s last month of activities and found that he never connected to anything but the base diagnostic computer. Nobody ever had a chance to fool with him physically. And if you could figure out how to hack him, you’d definitely have to do it face-to-face. SAP’s radio can’t be used to overwrite his programs, to avoid situations just like this.

And based on what happened next, I really don’t think he was hacked, at least not by these guys.

See, the insurgents weren’t done with Sappy. They dropped that block on his head just to get his attention. Only, he kept on standing there. So, a few minutes later, they got bold.

I watch this next attack go down via drone footage on the portable vid while we trucked over in the armored personnel carrier. It’s me and three other soldiers. Things are moving fast. That’s a good thing, because I can’t believe what I’m watching.

A man with a black rag over his face and mirrored sunglasses emerges from a house around the corner. He has an AK-47 in one hand, covered in reflective tape, strap hanging loose. All the pedestrians vacate the area when they spot this guy. From above, I see a bubble of civilians streaming away in different directions. The gunman definitely has murder on his mind; he stops about halfway up the block and fires a quick burst at SAP One.

That finally gets SAP’s attention.

With no hesitation, SAP tears a flat metal street sign off a utility pole. He holds it up in front of his face and marches toward the man. This is novel behavior. Unheard of.

The gunman is totally taken off guard. He fires another burst that rattles off the sign. Then he tries to run, but he stumbles. SAP drops the sign and takes hold of the guy’s shirt. With his other hand, SAP makes a fist.

There’s only one punch.

Guy goes down with his face caved in—like he’s wearing a mashed-up Halloween mask. Pretty gruesome.

Uh, that’s when I see the overhead view of our APC showing up. I look out the bulletproof sliver of window and see my Sappy just up the block, standing over the body of the gunman.