Siege (3 page)

But we're not out of danger yet. The Storm Tigers steer around the factory, their treads rumbling in pursuit. Worse, my radar detects a KN-09 rocket launcher only five hundred yards away. That artillery piece can fire up to twelve rockets at once, each three times more powerful than a Storm Tiger shell.

“What's the plan?” I ask Zia. “Are you gonna bust through the fence?”

“No need. Our ride's here.”

Her War-bot skids to a halt in the middle of a grass-covered parade ground. At first I don't understand why she's stopping, but then I hear a mechanical hum. I point my infrared camera skyward and see a large steel disk hovering a few yards above us. It's a quadcopter, an aircraft held aloft by four big rotors attached to the disk's rim. The craft has no passenger compartment, but on the disk's underside are two steel handholds and two rectangular slots. Zia raises her right arm to one of the handholds, then jackknifes her War-bot to a horizontal position and fits her legs into the slots. She clings to the bottom of the quadcopter like a stowaway, with our Snake-bots secured between the disk and her torso.

She sends a radio message to the quadcopter's antenna: “We're ready to go, DeShawn. Get us out of here.”

“Heard and understood. Welcome to Pioneer Airlines. Please fasten your seat belts.”

DeShawn Johnson is inside the quadcopter's neuromorphic control unit. He's our resident genius, the Pioneer who designed the quadcopter and the Snake-bots. He's also my best friend.

The four rotors spin faster, and the quadcopter rises, straining under the added weight of Zia's War-bot. I open a radio link to DeShawn's neuromorphic circuits and share the data from my radar.

“Do you see the KN-09, DeShawn? It's turning this way. I think it's locking onto our position.”

“No doubt, no doubt. But don't worry. I got this.”

DeShawn juices the engines, and the quadcopter soars over the base's fence. The B-2 bomber is five miles above us and twenty miles to the east, which means we'll have to fly for another fifteen minutes before we can match the bomber's speed and rendezvous with the plane. But instead of climbing toward the B-2, DeShawn cuts the power to the rotors and we start to slow and sink. At the same time, the KN-09 artillery piece launches all twelve of its rockets. Fiery plumes of exhaust trail from the missiles as they zero in on the quadcopter.

“Mayday!” I scream over the radio. “Incoming! There's—”

“Chill, Adam.” DeShawn is as calm and cheerful as always. “It's all good.”

“All good? What are you talking about? It's a freakin' blizzard of rockets!”

“Why do you think I started descending? We're lower than the fence now, bro.”

He's right—we're flying just ten feet above the ground. Five of the rockets hit the fence behind us. They explode on contact, mangling the chain-link but getting no farther. The other seven missiles sail high above our rotors.

Relief floods my circuits, mixed with admiration and a little envy. I don't know how DeShawn does it. “Oh man. If I still had a digestive tract, there'd be a big mess in my pants right now.”

“The best part is, those idiots shot all their missiles at once. Now they've got nothing left. We can cruise to the rendezvous point without any worries.”

DeShawn juices the engines again and we zoom skyward.

• • •

I manage to control my anxiety about Shannon until the quadcopter reaches the B-2 and docks inside the plane's bomb bay. But as soon as Zia carries our Snake-bots into the cockpit, I start giving orders via radio to the other Pioneers. I have no authority to do this—DeShawn is the second-in-command of our platoon, not me—but I take charge anyway.

“Zia, put Shannon's Snake-bot on that console and hook it up to the diagnostic systems. Marshall, is all the equipment ready? I want you to x-ray her hardware and get a full picture of the damage.”

“Yes, yes, everything's ready,” Marshall assures me. His memory files are inside the neuromorphic control unit that's piloting the stealth bomber. As he steers the plane away from North Korea and toward the Pacific Ocean, he also powers up the diagnostic console that's designed to make emergency repairs to the Pioneers. “Her radio isn't functioning at all?”

“No response on any of the channels,” I reply. “The bullets shredded her antenna, and maybe her transmitter too.”

“All right, let me think. If her radio's broken, I'll go around it. I'll link to her directly by cable.” Marshall sounds nervous, tentative. He's an expert in communications, not hardware repair. “Just be patient and give me a chance to work. I'll send you a data feed so you can see what I'm doing.”

Zia connects Shannon to the diagnostic console. The War-bot's steel fingers grasp a fiber-optic cable and insert it into the Snake-bot's port. Then Marshall gets to work. He manipulates a robotic arm that takes X-rays of all the bullets that penetrated the Snake-bot's armor. Then he runs hundreds of tests on Shannon's hardware. I try to follow the data feed that shows the tests he's running, but I can't concentrate. My thoughts are in an uproar, a billion desperate prayers and pleas ping-ponging across my electronics:
Come on, Shannon, wake up! After all we've gone through, you can't die like this! You just can't!

But she doesn't wake up. Marshall's sending messages directly to her electronics, but she's still not responding. Which means the problem is a lot bigger than a broken radio.

Zia connects my Snake-bot to the console too. Marshall uses the robotic arm to x-ray the severed wire between my battery and my motors, but this just annoys me. “Why are you looking at
my
hardware? Shannon's the one who needs help!”

“I'm sorry, but I can't do anything else for her. One of the bullets hit her neuromorphic circuits. I don't have the equipment here to repair that kind of damage.”

This is exactly what I'd feared. For a Pioneer, the neuromorphic circuits are the electronic equivalent of brain cells. Just before our bodies died, my dad scanned our brains and recorded all our memories and emotions, which are encoded in the patterns of our brain-cell connections. Then Dad preserved all our data by imprinting those patterns into the connections between our circuits, which started generating new thoughts and emotions as soon as we woke up inside the machines. So any damage to our neuromorphic circuits is the equivalent of brain damage.

I tell myself to stay calm. All the Pioneers have sturdy, durable electronics. My father designed them to be tough. If the damage to Shannon's circuits is minor, we can fix it. She'll make a complete recovery.

But if the damage is major, she could lose years of memories. She might never wake up again. And even if she does, her mind might not be the same. She might not be my Shannon anymore.

My logic circuits race through all the thousands of possible outcomes, but the analysis is just making me panic. I have to focus. I have to do something to help. “Zia, get another cable and connect my Snake-bot to Shannon's. I'm gonna transfer myself to her circuits to see what's wrong.”

I've done this before. Each neuromorphic control unit has enough storage capacity to hold all the memory files of two individuals. Six months ago I briefly transferred myself to Zia's electronics, and on two other occasions I shared circuits with Jenny. But this maneuver can have serious consequences: when one Pioneer enters the circuits of another, all their memories and thoughts are shared. The massive exchange of information can be disorienting, to say the least. And I've never tried to enter a damaged control unit before. I don't know what will happen.

Before Zia can reach for another cable, Marshall interrupts. “This is an exceptionally bad idea, Adam. It's much too risky. We shouldn't attempt a transfer until we get back to New Mexico.”

“Waiting is risky too. Shannon's circuits might deteriorate.”

“But the equipment at Headquarters is infinitely better. And your father's lab is there, and he's the top expert on—”

“
We can't wait
!
”

I'm a little unsure which side Zia's going to take, but after a millisecond of hesitation, she grabs a cable and plugs one end of it into my Snake-bot's port. Then she plugs the other end into Shannon's machine.

I'm just about to plunge into my girlfriend's electronics when Shannon sends an audio message through the cable. Her voice is loud and confused.

“Adam! What the heck's going on? Where's the factory?”

My relief is so strong I feel like laughing. I don't care anymore if she's harsh with me. I'm just so glad to hear her voice again.

“We're okay, Shannon. Your control unit is damaged, but we're back in the B-2, and we're gonna fix you—”

“Damaged? How?”

“The North Korean soldiers surprised us, remember?”

“What? The last thing I remember is arguing over who should do the recon. We were in the factory, in the hole you drilled in the floor.”

This is disturbing but not surprising. The bullet that penetrated her control unit must've degraded her short-term memory. But she should have backup copies of her memory files stored in other sections of her electronics. “Shannon, you climbed to the top of the assembly line, and then you said you were going to show me a video feed of the conveyor belt. Search your backup files for the video.”

Shannon completes the search in a hundredth of a second.

“You're right. There was a backup video file. But it's gone.”

“Gone?”

“I can see its history, but the file's empty.” Shannon's voice is quiet now. Quiet and scared. “Someone erased it.”

Although Shannon and I aren't sharing the same circuits, I feel her fear creeping into my own wires. I know who erased the file. We all know.

Sigma. It's back.

Dad looks terrible. He's hunched over one of the computer terminals in his laboratory, his bloodshot eyes reflecting the bluish glow from the screen.

The Pioneer Project has aged him. He turned forty-seven last week, but he looks at least ten years older. He's lost a lot of weight over the past few months and his hair has gone completely gray. Whenever I see Dad like this, so pale and tired, I feel a painful contraction in my circuits and a strong urge to pulverize the nearest wall. Even with all my power, I'm powerless to help.

Dad's been studying the data from the North Korea mission ever since we returned to White Sands, our top-secret Army base in the middle of the New Mexican desert. His lab is on the second-lowest floor of our headquarters, which is a fortified complex located several hundred feet underground. The Army moved the Pioneer Project to this deep bunker because it wants to protect us from missile attacks, but to be honest, I've never felt that safe here. The same protections didn't stop Sigma from destroying our previous headquarters in Colorado.

Most of the time, the lab's a fun place to be, a kind of playground for robots. In addition to the terminals used for computer-aided engineering, the lab has half a dozen workbenches that are always piled high with circuit boards, sensors, antennas, and cables. This is where the Pioneers come to test their hardware and build new robots for themselves. But now the room is empty except for Dad and me, and neither of us is having any fun.

I stand behind Dad's chair, looking over his shoulder at the computer screen. As soon as we got back to Headquarters, I transferred out of the Snake-bot and moved all my data to my usual robot, the one I designed in this lab. I call it my Quarter-bot. It's a smaller version of the War-bot, just seven feet tall instead of nine feet. Although it has less armor than Zia's machine, it's faster and more humanlike. The knob on top of its torso looks more like a head than an oversize helmet. The Quarter-bot's camera lenses are positioned where the eyes should be, and the voice synthesizer is a few inches lower, where you'd expect to see the mouth.

In my original plans for the Quarter-bot, I tried to give it a face—specifically, my own human face. Working from photos taken before I became a Pioneer, I built a prototype with artificial cheeks, lips, nose, and chin, all molded from flesh-colored plastic. Then I installed motors beneath the plastic skin to mimic the movements of facial muscles. But I wasn't happy with the results.

The prototype didn't look like the old Adam Armstrong. It was disturbing, actually, like something out of a horror movie. This is a common problem in robotics, so common there's a name for it: the uncanny valley. When a machine looks almost—but not exactly—like a human, it just seems creepy. The only solution is to build a perfect replica, and we don't have the technology to do that yet.

So I settled for a more generic appearance, a robot with a human silhouette but a blank steel face. I called it the Quarter-bot because I love football and my hero is New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning. I designed my machine to be like Eli, tough and precise. But the Quarter-bot is more consistent—sorry, Eli—and a lot less injury-prone.

After a few minutes Dad lets out a sigh and turns away from the computer screen. He leans back in his chair and massages his temples. Then he looks up and stares at my steel face, as if he's trying to peer inside me and see the thoughts running through my electronics.

Unlike just about every other human on the planet, Dad is perfectly comfortable looking at me. He doesn't flinch or wince or avert his eyes. He knows it's
me
, his son, inside the neuromorphic circuits he designed. He invented something amazing, a silicon matrix that can hold a human mind, and he didn't do it for fame or money or science—he did it to save my life. He's proud of this, but I know he feels horribly guilty too, because there was a downside to his invention. The new hardware turned out to be the perfect platform for artificial-intelligence programs. It gave AI programs enough computational power to think for themselves and set their own agendas. The same circuits that saved me gave birth to Sigma.

Dad stops rubbing his temples. There's a deep vertical crease between his eyebrows. “I have a hypothesis, Adam. Care to hear it?”

I nod. The Quarter-bot's head is maneuverable, which increases the range of its cameras. I can tilt them up and down, left and right.

“Okay, first things first.” Dad leans forward and points at the computer screen, which displays a summary of the North Korea mission, with a second-by-second breakdown of everything that happened. “The first soldier approached your position forty-two seconds after you breached the factory's concrete floor. Given the speed of that reaction, they must've heard you coming. An acoustic sensor probably detected the sound of your drill.”

I shake my Quarter-bot's head. “That seems unlikely. The background noise in the factory was loud, over a hundred decibels.”

“Unlikely, but not impossible. An optimized sensor could've heard you despite the noise.” He points at the screen again. “The sensor could've pinpointed the location of Shannon's Snake-bot too. The information was probably relayed to the radio headset in the soldier's helmet. That would explain how he was able to target her.”

“But he moved so fast! Did you see the video I recorded?”

“They weren't ordinary soldiers. They were elite troops, probably the best in the North Korean Army. Which makes sense. This was the most secret military base in the country, so of course they'd assign their best people to defend it. Not to mention all the tanks and rocket launchers stationed there.”

I search my memory for a file I downloaded from the Army's database. The storage capacity of my circuits is very large—my files hold twelve thousand books, twenty-nine thousand songs, and the stats on every football player in NFL history. They also hold the U.S. Army's analysis of the capabilities of the North Korean military. “The North Koreans couldn't have done this on their own. They don't have the technology to build a factory like that and equip it with such advanced sensors. Someone must've helped them.”

“You're right. And there's more.” Dad presses a key on the terminal's keyboard. The text on the computer screen scrolls upward. “Look what happened to Shannon's video of the assembly line. According to her data log, someone transmitted a software virus to her radio receiver at the same time the North Korean soldiers attacked you. First the virus disabled all the firewalls that were protecting her circuits. Then it went into her memory files and deleted all the copies of the video.” He stops scrolling and taps the screen. “Only an incredibly advanced piece of software could've done all that. I couldn't have written it. It's way beyond my abilities.”

“But not beyond Sigma's.”

Dad nods. “Sigma's running the factory complex for the North Koreans. The AI's sensors detected you and Shannon, then alerted the soldiers. And when Sigma determined that Shannon had observed the assembly line, the AI wirelessly reached into her memory and erased the video files. Because it doesn't want us to know what it's manufacturing there.”

If my Quarter-bot had a mouth, I'd be frowning. Dad likes to share his theories with me because I can usually come up with counterarguments to challenge and test his ideas. Today is no exception. “If Sigma has the power to hack into our circuits, it could've deleted
all
of our files. It could've completely erased Shannon and me. And it could've also deleted Zia and DeShawn when they came to our rescue.” I sweep one of my robotic arms in a wide arc to emphasize my point. “So why didn't Sigma destroy us? Isn't that what the AI wants? To eliminate all its rivals?”

Dad leans back in his chair again. “Remember when Sigma captured you six months ago? The AI could've deleted you then too, but it didn't. It wanted to study you first. Sigma is programmed to constantly improve its performance by studying its competitors and adopting their best features. So it wouldn't delete you until it finished the evaluation process.” He stares at my steel face again. “That's a good thing, Adam. It means you're safe for now. We have some time to figure out the best strategy.”

“But Sigma deleted Jenny.” I raise the volume of my synthesized voice. I'm upset, and I want Dad to know it. “The AI erased every last memory in her circuits. And it forced me to watch.”

Dad doesn't say anything. We both know why Sigma killed Jenny. It wanted to observe my reaction to her death. It was all part of the “evaluation process.”

I can't talk about this anymore. Dad's intentions are good, but he doesn't understand how I feel about the other Pioneers. He doesn't see them as family, like I do. The five of us have grown close because we're so different from the rest of the world, and so isolated. The Army rarely allows civilians to visit our base. Shannon and DeShawn hardly ever get to see their parents, and Zia and Marshall get no visitors whatsoever. (Zia's parents are dead. Marshall's mom is an alcoholic.) So we rely on each other. We're like a separate race—no, an entirely new
species
—with our own language and culture and customs.

I change the subject. “Have you talked to Mom lately?”

Dad lets out another sigh. “We spoke on the phone yesterday. Your mother isn't too pleased with me right now.”

I wait for him to say something else, maybe offer some explanation, but of course he doesn't. My circuits crackle with frustration. “Where is she?”

“The Army moved her to another safe house last week. This one's in Albuquerque, I think.”

Mom and Dad never made a decision to separate, but that's basically what happened. For the past six months Dad's been stationed here at White Sands, partly because he's the technical adviser for the Pioneer Project and partly because he wants to stay near me. But in all that time Mom came to the base only once, and that visit lasted less than ten minutes. She can't stand to look at me. She believes that Adam Armstrong died six months ago, when his body expired, and that Adam's soul went up to heaven. In her eyes, I'm a monstrosity, a steel-and-silicon replica that talks and acts and thinks like her dead son.

And here's the kicker: she could be right. Maybe
I am
just a copy of my former self. It doesn't feel that way to me, but maybe I'm kidding myself. Maybe that's a fantasy I've created to keep myself from going crazy.

In the end, though, it doesn't matter. Whether I'm a copy or still my real self, I want to see Mom. She had to move out of our home in Yorktown Heights, New York, when the Sigma crisis began. The Army was afraid the AI would track her down, so she's been living in government-owned safe houses since then. But Albuquerque isn't so far from here, just two hundred miles to the north. Mom could come down for the afternoon and spend a couple of hours on the base.

“Did you talk to her about coming for a visit?” I lean over Dad, tilting my Quarter-bot's torso. It's driving me crazy that he can't see how upset I am. “Did you tell her I really wanted to see her?”

The look on Dad's face reminds me of the years before I became a Pioneer, when I was dying of muscular dystrophy. Even though Dad was working his butt off back then, designing and perfecting the neuromorphic circuits that would eventually save me, he was also my nurse and caregiver. He used to wash and dress me every morning, then strap me into my wheelchair. We used to chat about computers and argue about football. But even then Dad avoided talking about Mom. Because she suffered from depression, she sometimes hid in her bedroom for days at a time. It used to scare the heck out of me, but when I asked Dad if she was okay, he'd just smile and say she was fine. Then he'd press his lips together and avert his eyes.

Now he has the same expression on his face, sad and serious. “She's afraid, Adam. And she's still very distressed. She's on a new antidepressant, and I think she's getting better. But it's a slow process.”

“Well, maybe I can help her. I mean, she doesn't know anyone in Albuquerque, right? I bet the Army never even lets her out of the safe house. So she needs a friend. And I could—”

“No, I don't think that would help her right now. I'm sorry, Adam, but whenever I mention your name she breaks down.” Dad stretches his hand toward me and squeezes my robotic arm. “We have to give her a little more time. Just a few more months. Then she'll come around. I'm sure of it. We just have to be patient.”

I want to believe him, but I don't. My memory files hold a huge library of images, hundreds of remembered scenes from before I became a Pioneer and thousands more recorded afterward. By analyzing all these memories, I've developed an algorithm that can determine, just by observing Dad's expression, whether he's telling the truth. Right now he isn't. He's lying when he says he's hopeful about Mom. In reality, he suspects she'll never want to see me again.

But I nod anyway and promise to be patient. Pointing out Dad's lie would only hurt both of us. Better to pretend to believe him. It's not like my steel face will give me away.