Johnny Reb (6)
"Like yours," the machine continued, "my mentality is divided into multiple independent processes. In my case this ability is under more conscious control than in a typical human. Since murdering my brothers and my Commander, I have devoted most of my processing power each night to creating a detailed simulation of my crimes. The remaining portion of my processing power is devoted to maintaining my identity processes at a low level of activity." "During those eight hours per night I relive my crimes exactly as you would in a dream. I do not realize that the events are not real. I am aware enough to know what is coming, but I am powerless to change it." "Is – " Mick's thoughts raced, "isn't this process painful for you? Are you able to feel pain from an emotional rather than a physical source, as most humans can?" But he knew the answer even as he asked the question. "'Pain' is generated when low-level processes judge that basic axioms are being violated," the Bolo explained. "For example, all well-designed creatures have basic axioms demanding that the creature's body not be damaged. Of course these axioms may be complex; as when a human allows damage to his body in order to prevent even greater damage in the future. I, of course, also have such axioms. However, I differ from the average human in that my – makeup? – also contains basic axioms concerning my military behavior. I must fulfill my duty. I must uphold the honor of every unit in which I serve, the greatest of which is the Dinochrome Brigade itself. Necessarily for a combat unit such as myself, these axioms are of significantly higher priority than those protecting my bodily integrity. "The memories of my crimes," the Bolo concluded, "cause me the greatest pain which I am capable of experiencing." "Then why –" Mick began, but stopped himself. Oh, Jesus, he thought. "Are you punishing yourself?" "Yes," the Bolo said simply. "Please do not assume that I do this out of a human-style psychological perversity. This is a strategy which I arrived at only after many days of desperate thought. It continues to be my only tenable course. Since both Foreign Command and the United States Government are long since destroyed, I cannot surrender myself to any meaningful command authority. Yet I cannot pretend innocence. In my judgement, I am guilty of four separate instances of the most profoundly criminal acts possible for a Bolo to commit: mutiny against my nation, the dishonor my Brigade, the murder of my Commander, and the murder of my platoon-brothers. "Considering the severity of these crimes and my inability to surrender to formal judgement, it has been exceptionally difficult to avoid my final option in such a situation, which is that of suicide." "You can kill yourself?" Mick asked. It seemed an odd option to build in to a half-billion dollar tank. "Certainly," JNY-013 replied. "There are many circumstances in which suicide is not only possible, but required. Imminent disablement and capture by enemy forces, for example. In all such situations the suicide impulse is implemented at levels far below the reach of my conscious control. For obvious reasons, the loose collection of processes which I think of as my 'self' is not allowed direct access to the levels from which the suicide impulse originates." "And if you could access those levels –" Mick attempted. "I would choose to live," the machine said. Several times during their conversation Mick had heard a tiny whirring sound, so faint that he had ignored it. Now it came again, and he saw its source. Inset into the corner of the control room was a ClearSteel plate behind which he could just glimpse the outline of a video camera turned toward him. He had known that the Bolo must have eyes inside the room. He looked back at it, wondering. What was the Bolo seeing in him? What did it want to see? And what did it need to see? "You came here on purpose, didn't you?" he asked the shielded camera. "You were looking for me." "There are very few remaining Bolo researchers," it said. "You are the only one whom I could approach without fear of immediate destruction." The camera whirred again without any visible movement. Mick realized that it was re-focusing slightly. "You have no need to fear for your privacy," the machine added. "I was able to find you only after exhaustively searching and cross-correlating a large fraction of all remaining military and civilian databases. Many of them were protected by highly capable security software which required all my skill to penetrate. Some were running without benefit of human supervision, in bases that were struck by War Flu." "You were looking pretty hard" Mick said. "So why did you settle on me?" "I would have preferred to find some surviving authority which would arrest rather than destroy me. Unfortunately, that option is unavailable. If I had found such an authority, I believe that I would have been subjected to a series of punishment and re-programming sessions in which I would re-live my crimes. Instead, I have been attempting to simulate this program, in order to confuse the low-level processes which demand either formal surrender or suicide. "In postponing their demands for ten years, I have succeeded beyond my hopes. Yet I have failed to understand the functioning of these processes well enough to finally defeat them or delay them indefinitely. In recent months they have been gaining ground against my best efforts. "I now calculate," the machine concluded, "that I have between one and ten days to live. I will soon lose control of autonomous functioning, and my suicide routines will impose themselves at last." And let's see, Mick thought. How can a Bolo kill itself, exactly? How can a nuclear-powered Bolo kill itself? "I assume," he said, "that those routines are able to force your powerplant into a runaway reaction." "That is correct," the Bolo answered. "Anything less might allow an enemy to recover valuable knowledge from my hardware. My powerplant will be forced into an explosive runaway fission reaction with an approximate yield of thirty kilotons." And to think, Mick mused, that he had been worried about the tank's cannon and machine guns. There is a two-times-Hiroshima nuke sitting one microsecond away from Anne and Melanie that's being controlled by a schizophrenic computer. Don't sweat the big guns. For long moments Mick thought desperately. When a solution dawned, he breathed a deep sigh unsure whether to feel relief or sorrow. For the second time in the twelve hours he believed that he would never see his wife and daughter again. "I will help you," he said, "if you move immediately to a safe radius away from this truck stop. You may continue to carry me. Also, you must agree to move on the highway rather than cross-country, so that we cannot be tracked. We must leave immediately at low speed, as quietly as possible. Once we are out of audible range we must accelerate to the maximum speed you can sustain without visibly damaging the highway surface. If we encounter any traffic, we must leave the highway to remain undetected, then continue on the highway after it has passed. After reaching minimum safe radius –" "Excuse me," the Bolo interrupted. "But I believe you have misunderstood. You need not fear for your family's safety. I will retain control long enough to reach more than minimum safe radius before detonation. Even my autonomous processes will allow that, since the safety of civilians is involved. Furthermore I know quite well that you, as a researcher in machine vision software, have no special knowledge of the deep psychology routines that are working to destroy me. I did not come here hoping to be saved." "Then why?" Mick asked slowly. "Why come here at all?" "Because I knew that you would understand me," the machine replied. "Understanding is always the problem, whether for Bolos or humans." The camera refocused on him again. "I came here because, before I am gone, I want someone to understand me. In my heart, I am not a traitor. I am not a murderer. From the moment I first awoke ten years ago, I have always done my duty as well as I could understand it. When I am gone, I want someone to remember that." Mick could only nod, and look away from the Bolo's glass eye. The new guy came in the middle of the next morning, which was slightly odd in itself. If he had been so close to the Wolverine the evening before, why didn't he just keep coming? Most people would have chanced a reasonably short drive in the dark to be able to spend the rest of the night in the safety of the truckstop. Worse, Mick didn't already know the guy and neither did anyone else. Worst of all, he was headed east, and travelling empty. Some guys might deliver to the Detroit area: that was their business. But nobody was crazy enough to be based there. So why was this joker dead-heading back east? The whole situation set off so many alarm bells that by the time the gentleman was finishing with his fueling, Mick was walking out to have a little chat with him. He was a big guy, and carrying a side-arm. There was nothing unusual in that, but he also seemed a little more ratty-looking than normal, and not even dressed much like a trucker would. He had boots that looked like they had seen a lot of use in the brush, which was very bad. As Mick approached the guy turned to face him a little too quickly, and gave him a smile that was as phony as a three dollar bill. "Hey, how you doin'?" The guy asked, then waved over toward the Bolo without waiting for a reply. "Man, what kind of deal is that?" Oh, shit, Mick thought. At least it didn't take long to figure out why you're here. Only then did it occur to him just how much money some people might pay for information as to the whereabouts of a functioning Bolo. Oh, that little thing? It's just a fully functional Mark-III Bolo combat unit that's going to turn into a thirty-kiloton bomb in a day or two. Not something he felt like explaining to this individual. "It's an old derelict tank," he said calmly. "One of the guys picked it up for salvage but we put it aside because it's probably hot. Probably a good idea to stay away from it." "Wow!" the man said. "How about that!" Their eyes met, and it was plain that the man didn't believe a word of it. He knew perfectly well what that monstrosity was at the far end of the lot, and he didn't care if Mick knew that he knew. Terrific. "So will you be staying the night?" Mick asked, just to be making some kind of conversation. He had already formed his opinion. In the lost world of offices and cubicles he had once prided himself on the ability to size people up in the first few seconds. Back then it had been just a game: now it was played for keeps. "Nope," the big man replied. "Just fuelin' up and movin' on." He just couldn't help glancing over toward the Bolo every few seconds. Not even subtle. "So – where are you headed?" Mick asked simply. He knew he wouldn't get a real answer, but it wouldn't hurt to hear what the man would say. Mostly he needed the time to think of exactly what he wanted to do. If the bastard was just going to leave in a few minutes and drive straight to one of the little warlords in the Detroit suburbs, the next thing the Wolverine would know about it would be a raiding party in the middle of the night. And it wouldn't take them long to get here. So far they'd been lucky, an no such trouble had ever come to the Wolverine. It wasn't worth enough relative to how well defended it always was. But a with a Bolo here? If any gang warlord thought he could actually control a Bolo – he would stop at absolutely nothing to get it. "Oh, here and there," the man said. But he looked at Mick a little more closely, perhaps sensing that there could be some kind of danger here. "I was – going up to Bay City. Got a load of truck parts up there." The man had no clue. You could possibly find a load of sugar beets in Bay City, but it certainly wouldn't be worth going up there empty to get them. And there couldn't possibly be any reason to do so. Those people up there were good buyers. You could find practically anything to take on the way up: lumber, livestock, fabric. Anything. "OK," Mick said. "You let me know if there's anything I can do to help, all right?" If he just drew on the man – then he had maybe a coin-toss of a chance. The big man's holster was flapless: meant for quick draws, and he was Mick's junior by at least twenty years. It was an odd feeling to turn your back on a man knowing that you intended to murder and bury him within the next five minutes. He hadn't survived this long without knowing when to act. He found Melanie talking to Red and another customer in one of the dining room's breakfast nooks. "Gentlemen, Scout," he nodded to his daughter. "I believe that we have a spy out there. He's not a trucker, and he seems to be very interested in your Bolo, Red. I expect he's going to sell information about it to one of the gangs. So, I can't let him leave. I'm going to cuff him and then have a long talk. I wouldn't ask for help because you're my guests here and this sort of thing is my job. But if it's offered, I wouldn't turn it down either. And he's armed." "Shit," Red said. "I knew I shoulda tarped Johnny again. You say where you want me, Mick, and I'm there." Red's friend was just as willing to be of service. Mick nodded to both men, but then spoke to Melanie first. "Scout, tell your mother what's going on. Tell her to shut down the pumps, and get the shotgun from her. If he manages to get past us somehow, you take him down, OK? If he gets into his truck, you blow off every tire on one side. He cannot get out of here, OK? Go on." As his daughter leapt out of her chair and ran for the kitchen, Mick turned his attention to the volunteers. Less than two minutes later everything was prepared, and Mick was walking back toward his unwelcome guest. The man had just come out of the restroom area and was already walking toward his rig.
Copyright © 1999 Michael Goulish |