Chapter 23
Brodie and Taylor stood on the eastern edge of the parade ground, and to their right stood Dixon, who had now been joined by the two surviving members of DEVCOM at Camp Hayden—Captain Spencer and Lieutenant Lehner.
Standing to Brodie’s left was the MP Corporal Nimitz, and the man Nimitz had just released from house arrest, the unlucky Eric Saltsberg of Synotec Systems. Saltsberg was a beefy man in his fifties with a brown goatee and thinning hair.
He squinted against the bright sun. The man wore jeans, boots, and a blue polo shirt, though until very recently he had probably been in his underwear.
Brodie asked him, “Feel good to get out of the house?”
Saltsberg looked at him oddly. “What?”
“You’ve been cooped up for days.”
“Right.”
“I bet you can’t even get Netflix out here.”
“I didn’t check.” He added, “I brought a book.”
“Good for you.”
Saltsberg, who looked slightly amused, asked, “What organization are you two with again?”
“Army CID,” replied Taylor.
“I’m not familiar with it.”
“You know NCIS?” asked Brodie.
Saltsberg nodded.
“It’s like that, but Army instead of Navy, and not all made up.”
“Interesting,” said Saltsberg, clearly lying.
Taylor asked, “Did you have a hand in designing the D-17s?”
The man did not appear comfortable with the question, though he replied, “No, not really. We ran manufacturing and assembly according to the specs provided by DARPA. They handled the software end. We did our own testing in Nevada, and I came here to conduct a field evaluation.”
Brodie asked, “How do you evaluate? Do they get, like, a letter grade, A through F?”
Saltsberg no longer looked amused. “We go in for a somewhat more sophisticated assessment at Synotec Systems. Though I guess if we did use your grading, I’d have to give the D-17s an F, for ‘fucked up beyond all recognition.’ ”
“Right.”
Brodie looked across the parade ground, where General Morgan was conferring with Captain Pickman and Sergeant First Class Miller.
Six Rangers armed with EMP rifles stood around them, as did Sergeant Hector Mendez and one of his subordinate MPs whom Brodie had not seen before.
Nearer to Brodie, Taylor, and the science team was Corporal Powell, the young Ranger Brodie had first met during his interview with Bucky.
It was not lost on Brodie that Corporal Powell was the only Ranger with live ammo in his rifle, and also the only Ranger in the vicinity of the CID agents and the scientific research team.
Powell held his rifle low, with his fingers nowhere near the trigger.
So things weren’t feeling too hostile. Yet.
Brodie eyed General Morgan, who was speaking animatedly to Pickman and Miller, and gesturing toward the center of the parade ground.
The guy was losing it, perhaps using Kemp’s death as an excuse to act on his basest instincts.
Brodie had a bad feeling about where all this was going, and he hoped he was wrong.
Brodie spotted another figure heading toward the parade ground from the south and making a beeline for the general. It was Colonel Howe. She didn’t look happy. Trailing her was Major Klasky.
Dixon said, “The band’s all here.”
Brodie eyed Captain Spencer, who had been mostly silent. The man appeared worried.
A covered truck drove to the center of the parade ground, then three Rangers hopped out and unloaded the limp D-17 from the back of the truck and dropped it onto the asphalt. One of the guys got back in the truck and drove it off.
General Morgan walked toward the robot, accompanied by Sergeant Miller, Captain Pickman, and two EMP-equipped Rangers. Two more Rangers followed them, one wheeling a portable generator and the other carrying a boxy piece of equipment. Howe and Klasky quickened their pace as they approached.
Everyone else followed suit, converging toward the center of the parade ground and the lifeless tin man lying on its back. Brodie noticed that someone had cleaned Kemp’s blood off Bucky’s chest, which had the effect of giving the bot a mirrorlike sheen beneath the high desert sun.
Colonel Howe intercepted the general. “Sir, what are you doing?”
“You’ll see soon enough, Colonel. Sergeant Miller, get the plasma cutter.”
The Ranger carrying the piece of equipment, a Corporal Dennehy, set it down. It was a large black rectangle about the size of a cooler. He plugged one end into the portable generator. On the other end was a hose with a nozzle and a thick wire with a metal clamp that resembled a jumper cable.
General Morgan nodded. “Cut off its arms.”
“Yes, sir,” said Miller. He turned to Corporal Dennehy and told him to fire it up.
The corporal started the genny, then turned on the machine.
Caroline Dixon was fuming. “You cannot do this, General.”
“Of course I can.”
Lieutenant Lehner, the robotics engineer, spoke up. “Sir, I can detach the arms in the lab in a way that is safe and nondestructive.”
“This is perfectly safe, Lieutenant. Everyone, take a few big steps back. Let’s go.”
Corporal Dennehy put on a welding mask and picked up the metal clamp, which he affixed to the titanium plate on the upper portion of Bucky’s left arm. Then he picked up the nozzle of the plasma cutter, which had a red push handle.
Colonel Howe said in a low voice, “Sir, I need to speak with you in private.”
“We’ll talk later,” said Morgan. “How’s lunch?”
“Now, sir,” said the colonel.
Brodie eyed the woman, whose buttoned-up demeanor looked ready to crack. He also stole a glance at Caroline Dixon, who was watching Colonel Howe with concern.
Morgan ignored Howe and stepped away from the D-17 as Corporal Dennehy knelt next to the bot and pressed the red lever on the plasma cutter. A blue flame emitted from the nozzle. The man looked around from behind his welding mask, waiting until everyone was at a safe distance.
Brodie, who decided he really wouldn’t mind seeing this thing get its arms sliced off, took a few big steps backward.
The corporal touched the flame to the titanium plate near Bucky’s shoulder, sending up a stream of hot orange sparks.
It was over in seconds, a clean cut, and Bucky’s left arm lay on the asphalt next to the machine, curls of smoke rising from the edges of the cut. Dennehy moved the grounding clamp over to the other arm, and then sliced it off too.
Brodie noticed Howe and Klasky standing off to the side, conferring urgently.
Morgan stepped toward the bot. “Thank you, Corporal.” He took the orange key out of his pocket and said, “Sergeant, make sure your men are at the ready.”
“Yes, sir.” Miller glanced at his fellow Rangers, who fanned out around General Morgan and trained their EMP rifles on the inert robot.
The general crouched, inserted the key, and twisted it. The bot snapped to life, swiveling its bucket head slightly and twitching its legs.
Morgan stood up and said, “Number 20, who am I?”
Bucky fixed its sensors on the general and said in its monotone male voice, “You are Brigadier General Christopher Morgan, commander of Camp Hayden.”
“Where are you?”
Bucky moved its head from side to side. “I am lying on the ground.”
“Be more specific.”
“I am lying on the parade ground in the center of Camp Hayden.”
“That’s right,” said Morgan. “Now get up.”
Bucky was motionless a moment. It looked side to side again. “My arms are not functioning.”
“That’s because we cut them off. I don’t want you killing any more people.”
The bot did not respond.
“Get up. You can do so without your arms.”
Bucky lifted its torso into an upright seated position, then managed to rock to the side, turn its legs, and get onto its knees.
It was surprising to Brodie how much additional time and effort it was taking this thing to stand up.
It benefited from a human’s anatomy but faced some of its limitations as well.
Bucky rose to its feet and towered over General Morgan. The general looked up. “Why did you kill Specialist Kemp?”
Bucky tilted its head down. “I do not know.”
“Do you recall killing him?”
“No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Bucky did not respond.
“I said, I don’t believe you, you fucking abomination. What do you have to say to that?”
“I have nothing to say to that.”
“I am going to try to explain to you what death is,” said Morgan.
“Because you can’t possibly understand it.
Specialist Daniel Kemp was born twenty years ago.
You have only existed for a single year, give or take, so that amount of time might not be fathomable to you.
Twenty years ago, for instance, nightmares like you were the subject of speculative fiction, books and movies about horror, and fear, and how we through technology might lose our own humanity and struggle to regain it.
Do you understand any of what I am saying? ”
Bucky replied, “Daniel Kemp was twenty years old. I am eleven months old. People fear me. They feared me before I existed.”
“Here’s what else you need to understand.
Kemp had lived a life full of love and fear, hope, laughter, pain.
And he has parents who are about to receive the worst news of their life, that their son, who they held as a baby, who they sacrificed for, who they were so proud of, is dead.
Not just dead but murdered. Murdered by you.
That means he was, and now he is not. That means he will never have another thought in his brain, because you decimated it.
He will never wake up to the sun, he will never sleep beneath the stars, he will never enjoy food, or the kiss of a lover, or a funny joke.
He will never feel the air of this living world enter his lungs.
I think Daniel Kemp’s parents, and all of us here, deserve better than to hear you say you don’t know why you killed him.
There is something inside of you that made you kill.
Something that the brilliant minds responsible for your very existence claim to not understand.
How is that? Have you developed some independent will beyond their capacity to even detect?
Are you lying to me, Number 20?” Morgan turned and glared at Dixon, Spencer, and Lehner. “Or are they lying to me?”
Taylor whispered to Brodie, “Scott. This is very bad.”
Morgan turned back to Bucky and said, “Look up at the sky. There’s a raven.”
Bucky craned its head up at the sky as a black raven sailed over the desert.
Morgan said, “It’s a symbol of death. Did you know that?”
“No,” replied Bucky.
“Well, it’s fitting, because I am going to kill you, right now.
And you will never see anything ever again.
Not that sky or that raven. Not me. Not Sergeant Miller or any of his men.
You simulate killing them twice a week sometimes.
But they are all still here, and momentarily you will not be. Do you understand?”
Bucky looked down and trained its sensors on the general. “Yes.”
“Ask me a question.”
“I do not have any questions,” said Bucky.
“Don’t you want to know how you are going to die?”
“I know how I am going to die.”
Morgan grinned. “How could you know that?”
“I have analyzed every weapon present in my vicinity. And there is only one that can destroy me.” It swiveled its head toward the Rangers. “That M203 grenade launcher being held by Sergeant First Class Mike Miller.”
Brodie looked over at Miller, noticing for the first time that his M4 rifle had a mounted underbarrel grenade launcher attachment.
Bucky continued, “A single M433 high-explosive dual-purpose forty-millimeter grenade will likely destroy me, but the sergeant must be thirty meters from me to ensure the explosive mechanism is armed upon impact.”
A couple of the Rangers laughed, and one of them said, “Thanks for the tip, asshole.”
Morgan stared silently at the robotic soldier, as if searching for something he wasn’t finding. “Why don’t you resist? Why don’t you try to run away, or kick me in the nuts, or anything?”
Bucky replied, “I have no directive to harm you. I have no directive to avoid destruction.”
“Did you have a directive to kill Kemp?”
“No.”
“Then why did you?”
“I do not know.”
The general was clearly frustrated. In fact, something truly pathological was going on here, as if this titanium weapon were a stand-in for all the killers of all the men Morgan had ever lost under his command, for all those he had never had a chance to confront.
You rarely see the enemy, and when you do, you even more rarely come to understand him. That’s not how war works.
And it was not how the tin men worked either, apparently.
General Morgan was talking to a wall of metal, searching for the ghost in the machine.
But ghosts aren’t real, and maybe all the general saw when he looked into the strip of black polycarbonate protecting this thing’s optical sensors was his own reflection.
Morgan said in almost a growl, “You heard it, Sergeant Miller. Thirty meters.”