Robopocalypse

  Sappy does sport a flak vest under his robes. Or maybe two. I can’t remember. The more clothes he wears the better. We’ll put anything on him: robes, scarves, T-shirts. I mean, he wears Snoopy socks. Honest.

  At a quick glance SAP looks just like one of the locals. Smells like ’em, too. Only thing that looks even close to military on SAP is this wobbly, sky-blue riot helmet that we strapped on his head. It has a scratched-up Plexiglas visor to protect his eyes. Had to do it because the damn kids kept spray painting his cameras. I think it became sort of a game for ’em after a while. So we strapped that big, goofy helmet on—

  This is military hardware that is being vandalized. Why doesn’t the machine protect itself? Fight back?

  Cameras are cheap, ma’am. Plus, Sappy can watch himself from the Raptor drones overhead. Or use real-time satellite imagery. Or both. His most important and expensive sensors—stuff like magnetometers, the inertial measurement unit, his antenna and jammer—are all housed inside his casing. And SAP’s built like a tank.

  During the twelve months before the incident occurred, was the machine ever damaged and replaced?

  SAP One? Never. He does get himself blown up, though. It used to happen all the time, but the guys in the repair bay are fuckin’ animals. Pardon me, ma’am.

  Studies show that the faster we put the exact same SAP back on the streets after an incident, the more it demoralizes the enemy and reduces instances of further disruption.

  For that reason, SAP constantly backs himself up. Even if SAP One got fragged, we’d just take whatever clothes and parts were left and stick ’em on a replacement unit and send it back out. The “new” robot would remember the same faces, greet the same people, walk the same route, quote the same passages from the Koran. Pretty much it would just know the same exact stuff as the “old” robot.

  Demoralizing, the studies say.

  Plus, there’s usually collateral damage when bad guys try to blow him up. Trust me, the locals do not appreciate it when their friends and family get exploded all so some stupid robot can disappear for an afternoon. And the robot? It’s harmless. SAP’s not allowed to hurt anybody. So if there’s an explosion that hurts a civilian, well, you know, the local mullah will sort it out. And then that don’t happen again anytime soon.

  It’s, like, reverse guerrilla warfare.

  I don’t understand. Why don’t the insurgents simply kidnap the unit? Bury it in the desert?

  That happened, once. Second week on the job, some yahoos sprayed SAP One with bullets, then threw him into the back of an SUV. The projectiles mostly tore up his clothes. Put a few dings in his casing, but nothing major. Since he didn’t retaliate, these guys thought he was damaged.

  That was their mistake, ma’am.

  A Raptor drone locked onto the event seconds after SAP went off route. The guys in the SUV sped across the desert for maybe two hours before reaching some kind of safe house.

  Least, they thought it was safe.

  The Raptors waited until the insurgents were away from the vehicle before asking their executioners for permission to launch Brimstone missiles. Once everybody inside the safe house was cooked and the Raptors double-checked for squirters sneaking out the back door, good old SAP One climbed into the front seat of the vehicle and drove it back to the base.

  SAP was missing about eight hours total.

  It can drive?

  This is a military-grade humanoid platform, ma’am. It grew out of the old DARPA exoskeleton programs. These units move like people. They balance, walk, run, fall down, whatever. They can hold tools, speak sign language, perform the Heimlich maneuver, drive vehicles, or just stand there and hold your beer. About the only thing SAP One can’t do is peel off those damn stickers the kids love to tag him with.

  And SAP won’t fight back, no matter what. Those are his orders. His legs have been sheared off by mines. He gets shot at every couple of weeks. The locals have kidnapped him, thrown rocks at him, run him over, shoved him off a building, hit him with cricket bats, glued his fingers together, dragged him behind a car, blinded him with paint, and poured acid on him.

  For about a month, everybody who walked past him spit on him.

  SAP couldn’t care less. Mess with SAP and he just catalogs your retinas and you get put on the list. 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 Sa
ppy 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.

  We’re all speechless for a second, the four of us just staring out the windows of the APC. Then, SAP One grabs the downed guy’s gun.

  The robot turns to the side and I see it clearly in profile: With his right hand, SAP holds the grip and with the left he uses his palm to slap the magazine in securely, then he pulls back the bolt to load a round in the chamber.

  We never, ever taught SAP how to do that! I wouldn’t even know how to start. It had to have learned that procedure on its own, by watching us.

  By now, the street is empty. SAP One sort of cocks its head, still wearing that wobbly riot helmet. It turns its face back and forth, scanning up and down the street. Deserted. Then, SAP walks to the middle of the road and starts scanning the windows.

  By now, the soldiers and me are over the shock.

  Time to party.

  We pour out of the APC with our weapons at the low ready. We take up defensive positions behind the armored vehicle. The guys look to me first, so I shout a command to Sappy: “SAP One, this is Specialist Paul Blanton. Stand down and deactivate yourself immediately. Comply now!”

  SAP One ignores me.

  Then a car rounds the corner. The street is empty, quiet. This dinky white car rolls toward us. SAP wheels around and squeezes the trigger. A single round smashes through the windshield and bam—the driver is slumped over the wheel, bleeding everywhere.

  Guy couldn’t have known what hit him. I mean, this robot is dressed in Afghani clothes, standing in the street with an AK-47 slung at its hip.

  The car rolls down the empty street and crunches into the side of a building.

  That’s when we open fire on SAP One.

  We unload on that machine. His robes and shawl and IOTV—uh, improved outer tactical vest—look like they’re flapping in the wind as bullets pound into him. It’s simple, almost boring. The robot doesn’t react. No screaming, cussing, running away. Just the flat, repetitive smack, smack of our bullets ripping into layers of Kevlar and ceramic plating wrapped around dull metal. Like shooting a scarecrow.

  Then SAP turns around slow and smooth, rifle poised like a snake. It starts spitting bullets, one at a time. The machine is so strong that the rifle doesn’t even recoil. Not an inch. SAP fires again and again, mechanically and with perfect aim.

  Aim, squeeze, bang. Aim, squeeze, bang.

  My helmet is smacked off my head. It feels like I got kicked in the face by a horse. I drop down onto my haunches, safe behind the APC. When I touch my forehead, my hand comes away clean. The bullet bitch slapped my helmet off but missed me.

  I catch my breath, try to focus my eyes. Squatting like this cramps my legs and I fall backward, catching myself with my other hand. That’s when I realize something is awfully wrong. My hand comes off the ground wet and warm. When I look at it, I don’t hardly understand what I’m seeing.

  My palm is covered in blood.

  Not mine, someone else’s. I look around me and see that, uh, the soldiers assigned to man the APC are all dead. SAP only fired a few times, but every round was a kill shot. Three soldiers lay sprawled out on their backs in the dirt, all of them with a little hole somewhere in their faces, missing the backs of their heads.

  I can’t forget their faces. How surprised they looked.

  In a distant sort of way, it connects in my brain that I’m all alone out here and in a bad situation.

  And that AK-47 is firing again, one shot at a time. I peek under the chassis of the APC to visually locate the SAP unit. The bastard is still standing in the middle of the dusty street, Western-style. Chunks of plastic and cloth and Kevlar are scattered around it.

  I realize that it’s firing at civilians watching from th
e windows. My earbud radio sputters: More troops are incoming. Raptors are monitoring the situation. Even so, I flinch at each shot, because I understand now that every bullet fired is ending a human life.

  Otherwise SAP wouldn’t have pulled the trigger.

  Then I notice something important. The AK-47 is the most delicate machine out there. It’s the highest priority target. Fingers shaking, I flip up the scope on my battle rifle and click the selector to three-round burst. Normally it’s a waste of ammo, but I gotta break that gun and I doubt I’ll get a second chance. I poke the barrel around the side of the APC, real careful.

  It doesn’t see me.

  I aim, inhale, hold the breath, and squeeze the trigger.

  Three bullets rip the AK out of SAP’s hands in a spray of metal and wood. The machine looks at its hands where the gun used to be, processes for a second. Disarmed, SAP lumbers off toward an alley.

  But I’ve already got a bead on it. My next few shots are for the knee joints. I know the Kevlar doesn’t hang much past the crotch. Not that the groin guard is useful on a machine, but oh well. I’ve rebuilt SAPs lots of times and I know each and every weak spot.

  Like I said, two-legged units suck for warfare.

  SAP goes down on its face, legs shattered. I emerge from cover and walk toward it. The thing flips itself over, painfully slow. It sits up. Then, it begins to drag itself backward toward the alley, watching me the whole time.

  Now I hear sirens. People are emerging into the street, whispering in Dari. SAP One moves itself backward, one lurch at a time.

  At this juncture, I thought everything was under control.

  That was a false assumption.

  What happened next was technically my fault. But I’m not a ground pounder, okay? I never pretended to be. I’m a cultural liaison. I’m meant to run my jaw, not get in firefights. I barely ever make it outside the wire.

  Understood. What happened next?

  Okay, let’s see. I know the sun was at my back, because I could see my shadow on the street. It stretched out in front of me, long and black, and covered SAP One’s shot-up legs. The machine had dragged itself back up against the wall of a building. There was no place left for it to go.