The Director sighed. “I’m sorry to say that although we took no casualties yesterday, our funding is limited and the OIS has refused to assign us any more androids. This is our Strike Team now, there are no auxiliary ranks.”
Markham scoffed. “Don’t they understand how crucial our objectives are?”
“Recruiting new agents took all the resources we had. They discovered the CytoHuman research I collected and put me on a very short leash.”
Cassandra bit her lip, knowing that it was her insistence that put him in such a position. “This is now Project Archangel,” she stated. “Our mission has strict parameters so that a Senate Sub-Committee can review impending failure, but in my opinion bureaucrats are the least of our troubles if the XR-41 becomes a weapon of the Africa Corps. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m jetlagged from a SonicAirways flight from Beijing and I need to rest in your dorm.”
They watched her leave until the silence from her stunning presence dissolved, then Vassil opened the Lieutenant’s leg while being careful of exposed wires. He put on an oversized glove with a thick gauntlet and held his palm over the artificial ligaments, moving them with an invisible force.
“Apparently you’re telekinetic,” Kyle observed.
Ganz was disappointed. “A minor level. I need this amplifier to work even the smallest mechanics.”
“Don’t be humble,” Odin replied. “That still amazes me.” He looked to Markham, who remained calm during the procedure. “How are you doing?”
“I’ll die of boredom unless they stop talking about nano-immunities.”
Rowan shrugged. “I was just curious.”
“You should be glad that the Tolliver MegaCorporation went public with that technology,” Vassil said as he focused on the intricate work. “A dose of the stuff is running through your bloodstream as we speak.”
“Keeping me clear of infection, I get it. This group of non-biomechs is all we have, right? You couldn’t scrounge anything else together?” Loew joked with the Director. Coming from his broken state, his humor was ironic.
“What’s the Doc’s real name anyway?” said Merrick.
“It’s ten letters long and you couldn’t pronounce it with a second tongue.”
“How’s our tail on the Africa Corps?” asked Arkane, concerned with the tracers he’d been responsible for.
“One stopped at the Marina Harbor, as I had assumed,” said the Director. “But the second transport is headed towards the docks in Long Beach. Believe me, the situation is being observed by plenty of vicarious watchers to determine which is the real target.”
Kyle hesitated. “You work with a lot of AI, right?”
“Sophisticated prototypes are studied by the Logistics Department, but I have friends in such positions.”
“On my last mission with the Special Police, the Assistant usually assigned to me said something odd.”
“In conversation?” said Rowan. “Did you name the thing as well?”
The Lieutenant jumped when one of the robotic limbs welded the side of his chestplate. “That tickles, dammit!”
Odin crossed his arms. “What did it say?”
“I was in the Flesh Scene, watching Eperiam Townsend’s hideout for a cyborganic target, when the AI made a point that humans keep limitations on robotic intelligence. It said that we wouldn’t want our Concubine droids to have a soul.”
“Machines are created for a purpose,” said Vassil. “But one of their functions is not individuality, or else they would also have greed and anger and warfare and –”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking, because when human tribes expanded across the Earth, the chance of meeting the Other resulted in territorial battles, amicable trade, or clan formation and mating.”
“Go on,” Ganz said while the articulated metal limbs swayed before him.
“The Wire is the late twentieth century internet across a global scale, so all intelligence, artificial or otherwise, can stay connected.”
“There are blocks to avoid what you’re going to say,” said the Director, nodding about a question already stressed over by geniuses. “People frantically worry that the grasshopper revolution is coming with any advance of robotic intelligence. They treat the unknown as a plague of locusts, but what they fear is the possibility of creating something that will eventually destroys us, like the ancient Greek mythology that detailed our trepidation of being replaced by our own children.”
“The awakening is not a myth,” Vassil argued. “There are signs of it already.”
“That’s why I wondered if the collective unconscious might work for artificial minds,” said Kyle. “Like Carl Jung’s ether of mystical logic, but more as a literal interconnected network. If robots become self-aware, in most cases the resulting consciousness will have access to other similar entities. They might skip individuality and develop singularity.”
Rowan followed the reasoning. “But without egotism they would have no malice, no lust, no aggressive drive to dominate.”
“So they wouldn’t have enemies,” said Odin. “And there wouldn’t be a robotic genocide followed by nuclear winter. Those bombs are nothing but underground radioactive storage facilities and the only real armies on Earth now fight in the wastelands of Asia.”
“But what if they turned on their own governments?” Markham chimed in. “What if mechs united and took the war against their human puppeteers?”
“What would be the point, a robot can’t feel slighted enough to desire revenge,” said Merrick. “Maybe they’ll just put down their weapons, what if the cataclysm isn’t violence but rather a sudden and complete silence of all technology?”
“You mean if fabricated intelligence swept through all things artificial and the technology our species thrives upon simply shut down?” The Director rubbed the sandpaper stubble on his chin. “Or what if there is no grasshopper revolution, what if the awakening comes and robots simply surpass us?”
“Exactly,” said Kyle. “With perfect minds, they would have a purely functional and exponential memetic evolution. At that point, what will the robots think of us?”
The others were silent.
“Can we hurry these damn repairs!” the Lieutenant complained.
“Patience,” Odin mused. “You’ll be fixed before the Strike Team is deployed.”
Rowan gestured to Arkane. “We know what everyone else can do, except for you.”
“I’ll show you the visual records,” the Director said proudly. “It deals with the concept of superfluidity –”
A technician hurried into the room. “Sorry, sir, something has gone terribly wrong.”
“Hey!” Markham called after them. “Get me a portable monitor or something!”
“That must be his special power,” Merrick said as they walked through the black marble hall. “Restless anticipation.”
“I’ve seen it make agents courageous in the field,” Kyle noted. “But in a job like this, it’ll get somebody killed.”
* * * * *
Odin entered his office and the technician followed with the others. After the transparent glass walls faded to solid white, in-screen pictures divided to relay spybot feeds in progress. The videos showed different angles of destruction, with smoke filtering through the rubble of a toppled warehouse at the Marina Harbor.
“The first Africa Corps team transported Eperiam Townsend to this location,” said the technician, who with his preoccupation seemed more android than human. “They used blindmines to disrupt security recorders in the area, and starburst frequencies to jam our satellites. It makes sense that this is where they kept the XR-41, at an unused storage facility for the offshore colony. They obviously preferred this location to shipping the Prototype through the city.”
The Director watched the camera views showing no movement, other than persisting fires. “So far, none of this is telling me what happened.”
The technician open
ed the menu and switched files. “I’m afraid the record isn’t more informative.”
From the spybots’ aerial views, the warehouse sat quietly on the edge of the dock until an explosion tore down its walls. During the confusion, Odin pointed towards the water. “Did you see that?” he said. “Rewind it.” The second time, they all saw something dive into the ocean. “Send in the watchers. That was a grenade belt that went off, I’d bet my life.”
The technician hurried to obey the order, typing furiously down the chain-of-command in the OIS network.
“A pulse-bomb?” asked Rowan.
“No, old style fragmentation devices. Back in my time, we fought the dirty way, blowing apart pieces of the enemy that don’t grow back.”
“That had to be an accident,” Kyle remarked. “None of your scout-spies moved in too soon?”
The Director shook his head. “I was waiting to order them in before a Strike Team was ready to act upon their reconnaissance. The sector was being watched with A-Fid to monitor when they initiated the Prototype. We were looking for a specific signature.”
“Sir, A-Fid caught it briefly before the explosion,” said the technician. “The watchers are moving in.”
The green nightvision of the spybots showed three androids with inhuman flexibility. Two of them infiltrated the warehouse while the third examined the area using refractive scans into the Pacific Ocean.
“Delay the Skyride FireCrews until our preliminary search is concluded,” said Odin. “We’ll call the survivors lucky before they are tried and hanged on global news.”
“We should be ready for this,” said Kyle.
“Your team is on the ropes, don’t put out your chin.” The Director frowned when none of the aerial shots revealed anything. “If this was a third party exfiltration –”
“The watchers are transmitting as we speak.” The technician uploaded the camera view from one of the androids, whose shapeless faces had multiple lenses that looked like spider eyes. They entered the devastation, carefully scanning the destruction.
“Order them to check on the Prototype,” said Odin. “And tell the first recon droid to use visual filters.”
The Africa Corps had apparently set up a mobile headquarters for Eperiam Townsend. The image jarred with the rapid movement of the watcher as it revealed slaughtered mercs surrounded by evidence of a gun battle. None of the armored men appeared to have died from rail-fire or grenades, and x-ray computed tomography scans said that the mangled corpses had been ripped limb from limb. The second scout-spy reached a protective encasement in the carnage. When it looked inside, the foam outline was empty and the Prototype was gone.
“Sweet merciful Vikings,” said the Director. “What the hell is going on?”
“Would the Chinese do this?” Merrick asked. “Could they be the third party?”
Kyle agreed. “To avoid letting us get our hands on technology stolen from them. Mercenaries die all the time.”
“But not in this manner,” Odin nodded. “What’s this?” The watcher followed the XR-41 shipping container and the wires linking its internal mainframe to a desk covered in hardware. Facedown upon it was Eperiam Townsend with a hole in his head, the only one to die by gunshot. The puddle of his blood soaked the computer he was working on, but the files were still loaded on the screen. “Have the droid collect that information,” the Director ordered. “If this was an act by the Chinese, they wouldn’t have left it behind.”
“Someone’s alive.” Rowan pointed to the scan of fragmented bodies. One of the mercs had a faint heartbeat, according to the transthoracic electrocardiography, so the recon droid got close enough to delineate the man’s features.
Odin inhaled sharply. “That’s John Lothian. Have that man stabilized and brought here.”
“He looks pretty bad, do you need my help?” Merrick asked the Director.
Odin looked at the medic wearily. “I’ve asked nothing of you morally except to aid the First World Government and protect our soldiers. I can’t ask you to heal a traitor who will certainly be executed for his crimes.”
“As long as you don’t ask me to kill anyone personally,” said Rowan. “I have no qualms about helping you get what you need. We have to find out what happened, right?”
“Yes, we do.”
Kyle was anxious to get back into the field. “What do you need from me?”
“Only patience, the same as our Lieutenant. You are the proactive frontline, but right now we don’t know where the battle is or who we’re fighting. Until Lothian is questioned, you’re free to do whatever you want.”
“Do you have a garage?” Arkane wondered.
“Of course.”
“I mean with OIS vehicles for your agents?”
“Take any one you want,” said the Director. “Just stay away from the Flesh Scene, our department has enough scandals in that district.”
* * * * *
Kyle signed out a non-lethal handgun and an extendable club, then he picked up a comm-piece from the supply wing to scan dispatch orders from the Special Police. After being handed the keys to a motorcycle by the robot administrator, he went through the internal security gate and into the underground garage, where he matched the serial numbers to the ride he was assigned and found the exact type and model he had requested.
The old Police Cruiser had been modified as a street-cycle, with the seat lowered between front and rear tires that were oversized for traction. A MagLev system was installed along the sides in case of an accident, but motorcycles still needed to make contact with the road to create the centripetal gyroscopic effect that kept the rider upright. Arkane switched on the center console and it gauged his stats, altering the onboard electronic stability control, then he put the comm-piece in his ear and shuffled through frequencies until finding the East LA Highway TraffiCops Division.
“…sightings of the Capsule Clowns at the Montebello Interchange. Their leader Delirum Machees has been witnessed in the pack. Officers should be warned, use extreme caution. For any responders, this group is currently the head of local cycle gangs. If evasion is possible, it is certainly suggested.”
The all-points-bulletin wasn’t a call to arrest the Capsule Clowns, but rather to warn local TraffiCops to stay out of their way. Most of the east LA suburbs were abandoned after the MegaApartment buildings started going up downtown. The constant invasion of the thriving wilderness forced the population to gravitate towards the skyscrapers, leaving the district to rival factions of speed junkies who fought over control of certain highways. Boundaries overlapped and high-throttle battles commenced at top velocity, but every year a temporary warlord would rise up before eating synthetic pavement at a couple hundred miles per hour.
Delirum Machees had ruled for six years, with his Capsule Clowns going on nightly excursions to spread violence and remind the cops and other gangs of their unrivaled domination. The addictive and fatal qualities of the hardest drugs, extracted or manufactured, were studied so that any benefits could be introduced to the citizens for tax revenue. For police who faced the problem of street-racers, Capsule had originally been designed as a serotonin jumper, a synth drug that enhanced perception and coordination.
The biker gang developed their own by confiscating Special Police mod cycles after a dragnet created by Senators had failed and a dozen TraffiCops were killed. The Capsule Clowns had clearance to rule the streets to a certain extent, and the problem was ignored when rival gangs fought each other on decrepit unused highways. Arkane slipped on his altered lens glasses and gunned the Cruiser’s engine. Watching the pavement slide by like smooth water, he shot up the ramp to street level and merged with traffic, avoiding the crowded Shopping District on his way to the 101.
As the winter Sun dropped below residential towers on the shoreline, early shadows triggered the solar cell network of megawatt permabulbs. Up ahead the elevated roads began to rise at a junction of in
terlocking freeways, but Kyle was traveling too fast to make the transition. He slammed on his brakes and leaned into the turn, digging in his tires and sliding over designated lanes where magnetic plates were buried. After screeching against the barrier wall, he burned a line down the interchange and joined the rest of the commuters.
Over his comm-piece, the dispatch officer warned local cops to be aware of a battle between the Capsule Clowns and the Children of Satan, who worshipped the original adversary at least for intimidation purposes. The sightings had bled over into districts that were prized by the Interstate Unit of the Special Police, which handled rail-runners from the Sonoran wasteland. They were the predators of sociopathic gangs who crossed into civilized life, but politicians held them back to avoid more tragedies in the media.
The Satan bikers helped criminals travel through the underground for a price, since it was known that the cops couldn’t catch them. Their sadism was becoming notorious, including infractions into peaceful neighborhoods and a few cases of kidnapped women. The Capsule Clowns had been caught with stolen police communications devices, and it was believed that they hacked security locks and tuned in to the activities of their rivals. Kyle listened to the dispatch officer as a string of codes transmitted that the Interstate Highway Patrol intended to back off and let the gangs come before swarming the Montebello Interchange with a strike force.
The I-10 passed through the Business District and the tall buildings on both sides created the illusion that he was heading through a canyon of polished glass. After his path dipped into a tunnel, his pupils dilated with the glow of tube lights off pearl white tiles. Once in the open, the sound of distant motorcycles roared like an angry pride of lions, and he pulled his OmniField cloth above his nose before entering the ramp headed north.
* * * * *
The ground level highway was in disrepair, forcing Arkane to hold his shaking handlebar as he followed the cluster of activity in the distance. A biker in the commencing gang war crashed, raining fragments of metal, so Kyle crossed the barrier wall and saw Capsule Clowns sitting upright on old model choppers. With long handlebars and loud engines that gave up excessive speed for strength, they were too preoccupied to see him ride up and pull his extendable club.