Robopocalypse

PART FIVE Retaliation

I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our labors and joined back to nature, returned to our mammal brothers and sisters, and all watched over by machines of loving grace.

RICHARD BRAUTIGAN, 1967

1. THE FATE OF TIBERIUS

Leaving Tiberius to suffer will cost something. Our humanity.

JACK WALLACE

NEW WAR + 2 YEARS, 7 MONTHS

Almost three years after Zero Hour, Gray Horse Army reached within striking distance of our enemy—the Ragnorak Intelligence Fields. The challenges we found there were far different from any we had ever encountered. It is safe to say that we were in no way prepared for what was to come.

The following scenes were recorded in great detail by a multitude of robotic weapons and spies deployed to protect the central AI known as Archos. Additionally, these data are bolstered with my own recollections.

—CORMAC WALLACE, MIL#GHA217

Tiberius is heaving, muscles spasming, kicking up clumps of bloodstained snow. Mist pours off his sweating 250-pound frame as the East African thrashes violently, flat on his back. He’s the biggest, most fearless grunt in the squad, but none of that matters when a glinting nightmare flashes out of the swirling snow and begins eating him alive.

“My god!” he bellows. “Oh my god!”

Ten seconds ago, there was a sharp crack and Ty went down. The rest of the squad took immediate cover. Now there’s a sniper hidden somewhere in the snowstorm, leaving Tiberius in no- man’s-land. From our position behind a snowy hill, we can hear the panic in his cries.

Jack straps on his helmet.

“Sarge?” asks Carl, the engineer.

Jack doesn’t respond, just rubs his hands together, then starts climbing the hill. Before he can get out of reach, I grab my big brother by the arm.

“What are you doing, Jack?”

“Saving Tiberius,” he says.

I shake my head. “It’s a trap, man. You know it is. It’s how they work. They fuck with our emotions. There’s only one logical choice here.”

Jack says nothing. Tiberius is just over the hill, screaming like he’s going through a meat grinder feetfirst, and that’s probably not too far from the truth. Even so, we don’t have time to fuck around here, so I’m going to have to just say it.

“We have to leave him,” I whisper. “We have to move on.”

Jack shoves my hand away. He can’t believe that I just said it out loud. In a way, neither can I. War does that.

But it’s the truth and it had to be said and I’m the only one in the squad who could say it to Jack.

Tiberius abruptly stops screaming.

Jack looks up the hill, then back at me. “Fuck you, little brother,” he says. “When did you start thinking like them? I’m going to help Tiberius. It’s the human thing to do.”

I reply without much conviction, “I understand them. It doesn’t mean I’m like them.”

But deep down, I know the truth. I have become like the robots. My reality has been reduced to a series of life-or-death decisions. Optimal decisions lead to more decisions; suboptimal decisions lead to the bad dream that’s happening just over the hill. Emotions are just cobwebs in my gears. Under my skin, I have become a war machine. My flesh may be weak, but my mind is sharp and hard and clear as ice.

Jack still behaves as if we live in a human’s world, as if his heart is more than just a blood pump. That kind of thinking leads to death. There’s no room for it. Not if we’re going to live long enough to kill Archos.

“I’m hit bad,” moans Tiberius. “Help. Oh my god. Help me.”

Each member of the squad is watching us argue, poised to run on command, ready to continue our mission.

Jack makes one last effort to explain. “It’s a risk, but leaving Tiberius to suffer will cost something. Our humanity.”

And here is the difference between Jack and me.

“Fuck our humanity,” I say. “I want to live. Don’t you get it? If you go out there, they’re gonna kill you, Jackie!”

Tiberius’s moan floats in on the breeze like a ghost. The sound of his voice is strange, low and raspy.

“Jackie,” he wheezes. “Help me. Jackie! Come out here and dance.”

“The hell?” I say. “Nobody calls you Jackie but me.”

I briefly wonder whether the robots can hear us. Jack shrugs it off. “If we leave him,” he says, “they win.”

“No. Every second we spend here bullshitting they win. Because they’re on the fucking move, man. Rob’ll be here any second.”

“Roger that,” says Cherrah. She’s walked over from where the rest of the squad stands, staring at us impatiently. “Ty has been down a minute forty-five. Estimated time of arrival four minutes. We gotta GTFO.”

Jack wheels on Cherrah and the whole squad, and flings his helmet to the ground. “Is that what you all want? To leave Ty behind? To run away like fucking cowards?”

We’re all silent for a solid ten seconds. I can almost feel the tons of metal speeding through the blizzard toward our position. Huge legs swinging, clawing up the permafrost in exploding gouges, the mantis leaning their frostbitten visor plates into the wind to reach us that much faster.

“Survive to fight,” I whisper to Jack.

The others nod.

“Well fuck that,” mutters Jack. “You all may be a bunch of robots, but I’m not. My man is calling me. He’s calling for me. Move on if you have to, but I’m getting Tiberius.”

* * *

Jack climbs the hill without hesitation. The squad looks to me, so I act.

“Cherrah, Leo, unpack a lower-limb exo for Ty. He isn’t gonna be able to walk. Carl, get to the top of the hill and put your senses out there. Call out anything you see and keep your head down. We move out soon as they’re back over the top.”

I snatch Jack’s helmet off the ground. “Jack!” I shout. From halfway up the hill, he turns. I toss his helmet up to him and he catches it neatly.

“Don’t get killed!” I call.

He grins at me, wide, just like when we were kids. I’ve seen that dumb grin so many times: when he was jumping off our garage into a kiddy pool, drag racing down dark country roads, using a fake ID to buy shitty beer.