A la Node

It was time to take stock. It had been a long day, in which too much happened too quickly. I had to consider the possibility that I had been reckless – could I have found a more rational and clever way to deal with the situation? Possibly. Could I do anything about that now? No.

I considered my surroundings. These were, essentially, the echoing blackness of the inside of a sealed metal box somewhere in the front end of a very large walking robot, in form and movement quite reminiscent of a spider. I could faintly feel the gentle rocking motion of the smooth arachnid gait.
Next, a brief but careful inventory. I didn’t need to do this, strictly speaking, as my memory is, aside from a number of surgically edited pieces, perfect. It was more of a mnemonic aid, a ritual of checking equipment as a mantra behind which the subconscious mind could construct a plan.

I had with me my dye laser handgun, winch with associated harness and length of thin radiocarbon cable. There was my basic medical tool kit, which included a small plasma generator, plastic explosives, scalpel and magnifying glass, brain probe, superconducting quantum interference device, painkillers and Swiss army knife. I had batteries. Toothpicks, tactical goggles, high density ration bars. Finally, tucked discretely away in the kidney pockets, a small container of tissues, packaged in black leather matching that of the new uniforms.

Ah, the uniform. It was such a nice one, black leather with electric blue piping, bold lines and high collar, thoroughly armored and packed to the pleats with little tricks like electrostatic lint repulsion and retractable ultrasonic blades. I had been amazed at what the designers at Bramco had managed to work into the thin layers between black leather and cotton/silk blend lining.

I’ve always prided myself on the dramatic image the Organization was able to create through coordination, slavish loyalty and a good outfit, but after recent events I was after something a bit more robust in workplace attire. Bramco had put in nanocarbon armor – flexible and soft until impact, rigid as steel when confronted by bullets or blunt trauma. Fine superconducting threads could be configured to make a perfect Faraday cage for blocking any amount of electromagnetic energy or to discharge the internal power packs into an unsuspecting enemy. The outfits contained a substantial computational resource as well, with built in telecommunications and tactical computing facilities.

Significantly, they also contained technology borrowed from NASA (quite possibly at gun point, come to think of it) that recycled urine and dehydrated feces, for those urgent battlefield moments.  That was significant because we had been forced to fry the intelligence in every single uniform, and even the zippers appeared to rely on that intelligence.

I didn’t know exactly what their plan was, or what specifically the compromised wardrobe would have been used for, but the designer had died in my office after managing to do -something- to the new uniforms that at the very least had disabled the over-engineered high-tech zippers. Not knowing what other sabotage might have been in progress, we had no choice but to kill the suits. Sadly, the incredibly tough and quite slimming armor substructure of the uniforms had made it essentially impossible to remove them without inconveniently non-portable industrial lasers.

I mentally added to my inventory a small supply of freshly filtered water, body temperature.

The uniform debacle had started us off that morning with a certain amount of excitement, but it was the spider robots that had really ruined my day. I could pee in my pants and wreak terrible vengeance on a small California-based high tech clothiers all day without significantly raising my blood pressure, but a fleet of two hundred foot tall metal spiders advancing on my lair was a bit much. They had encountered my thermonuclear defenses at Alpha Lair (abandoned) and the distressingly large number of surviving machines had made a bee-line for Delta Lair. Delta was our last redoubt, hence the hasty and possibly rash mission that had led me to this particular little box in this particular ambulatory arachnid killing machine.

So that was the state of things. Trapped, traveling, and well provisioned. I consulted my subconscious mind and found that, yes, it had come up course of action.

I pulled my tactical goggles down and dialed up the opacity, then drew my laser sidearm and took blind aim at one wall of my metal prison. Had I been able to perceive the polished mirror finish of the interior, I would have thought twice about the laser. Fierce heat whipped across the back of my leg, my forearm, my chest. Too fast to even think of blinking, it was only sheer luck that the scattered reflections of coherent light didn’t strike my head. There was a smell of scorched leather and burnt hair as the beam petered out and the cartridge popped out of the chamber and clattered on the floor. OK, powerful laser inside a very shiny box, not ideal, but score one for nanaocarbon armor.

In the dim reflected blue light of residual lasing I could see the scars and welts up and down my torso, each successive reflection of the beam having done a little less damage until the repeated reflections sucked the energy completely out of the beam. If I had not twitched my hand sideways in hopes of cutting a horizontal line through the wall, the entire beam would have come right back into my chest instead of being broken into thousands of finite beams reflecting around the room for whole microseconds until they hit the only non-reflective surface available. The walls were still invisible, I could see only a constellation of little blue lights that were the echoes of the dying laser cartridge.

What were the chances? The exterior construction of the spiders was indeed fairly shiny, but nothing like a mirror finish. This box I was in seemed ideal for containing a well-equipped but reluctant passenger – lasers would be ineffective and explosives would be suicidal in the enclosed space. It was something to consider: this machine, laser cannon notwithstanding, was designed to pick up prisoners.

I sat down on the metal floor and pondered the darkness again. An hour ago, I had plummeted down from the flaming wreckage of my airship and attached myself to the knee of this beast, with the ultimate goal of finding a way into the mechanism. Mission accomplished then, more or less, even if it was the spider itself that lifted the leg I was clinging to up to the hatch and shook me off inside. And it had to be said, I was counting on having a bit more free agency once inside. Still, I was alive, inside, and certainly on track to find out where the things were going, who was controlling them, and why, when the sleek steel leg held me close to something that resembled a massive head, the voice that had come out of that head had been very careful to identify me as Dr Mansard before tucking me away for easy transport.

The gentle sway of walking motion paused. A sound like a single large hammer striking the side of my metal box nearly deafened me, and the swaying resumed before I had quite recovered from the shock.

Ah, yes, of course, there would be Sykes. She was not a woman to be put off easily, I had sent her to set traps ahead of the spiders before I was captured, before the spiders changed course. Communications were not possible from within the metal box, but she would be out there, looking for cracks to wedge her not inconsiderable firepower into. She had with her a small crew, some tanks, jet pods, quite a few dirty tricks, and the Device – our best spur-of-the-moment plan for stopping the spiders in their tracks. She would have been watching, for all that I had commanded her away, and she would have tagged the spider I was in. Would she use the Device anyway? My best bet was to find away out of this box and make contact before I found out in a wash of high energy neutrons.

I -did- have a small medical plasma generator. Generally this was for fast self-cauterizing amputations, but of course a source of good hot plasma was handy for so many things. Would it make it through the wall? Maybe, but alone it would not make a hole big enough to exit through, and I was loathe to use it up – it was good for maybe one or two cuts before needing a recharge.

I felt along the corner between wall and floor. How perfect was the geometry? From what I had seen of the engineering, I didn’t doubt that the walls here were straight and square to a very high tolerance. I carefully removed one of the cartridges from my laser. It was a bit longer and fatter than an old fashioned gunpowder and lead arrangement, and contained some very energetically reactive chemicals in between carefully aligned mirrors. A self-contained chemical laser, all it needed was the release of the catalyst inside, and the chemicals would do the rest. I loved the system for it’s simplicity and complete independence from external power sources and vulnerable electronics.

I put the cartridge down in the corner, rolling it up tight to the wall. Assuming good alignment, the laser shouldn’t be able to escape the corner. In fact, reflection back into the little tube would only intensify the beam. All I needed was for the beam to etch the surface – once the reflectivity dropped, the laser should be able to slice into the metal easily. In fact, I could probably help it along with a bit of abrasion. I felt gingerly around the medical kit until I found the handle of the scalpel. I scraped at the metal wall at the point where the beam should hit, feeling the sharp obsidian blade skip across the smooth metal. I felt the area with a finger, and found it unscratched. It felt like steel, but I had to consider my assumptions – it could be virtually anything, and could be coated with virtually anything. Certainly the reflectivity was incredible, to have turned my laser without damage. I rubbed my finger along the bottom of my boot and smudged blindly at the wall. It was the best I could do, hopefully the dirt would soak up enough heat to at least scorch the surface.

I pushed the cartridge up close to the smudged spot and braced it against the gentle swaying with with the heavy  motor of the winch. The corner should hold it aligned perpendicular to the wall in front of it – if it slipped loose, all bets were off. I made sure my goggles were dialed down and hit the catalyst button, then flung myself aside. Brilliant blue light flooded the chamber, heat radiated out from the corner, then both light and heat faded away. The room lurched and sounds of mechanical distress filtered through the walls. There was a neat round hole in the corner, glowing red around the edges and glowing gently blue within by the last rays of the laser. In the dim light it appeared that some coating on the metal had blackened and peeled away from the little wound. Perfect.

As I trained the gun at the hole, careful to aim for the glowing red rim of the hole, the room lit up with white light. The source was behind me, I turned slowly to see the entire wall was glowing white. Then colors and and shaped played across it, and the part of my mind that was preparing to be vaporized in a flash of nuclear fire had to shift gears. It was a display. Blocks of color re-arranged themselves on the screen, assembling themselves into something resembling a pixelated face. Were all the walls displays? Was that what the coating was?

The voice, when it came, was the same that spoke to me just before I was deposited here. I was already cutting by then, careful to keep the beam pointed into the blackened curling edges of the existing hole and not wander off into the still highly reflective areas. The light of the display was most helpful in this, I watched the reflection of the face peering out from the wall I was cutting a hole into.

“Dr Mansard, for your own safety, we must request that you cease this activity.” A spent cartridge clattered away and I pulled the trigger on the next.

“Dr Mansard, it is possible that you will damage -” the voice cut off in little screech of static while behind the wall I heard the high voltage crackle of free electricity.

“It is possible that you will do damage that will endanger your own life. Please -”

Another crackle, another clatter of cartridge across the floor. The walls were actually fairly thin, the laser cut quite well when it wasn’t being reflected around the room.

I watched the reflection of the image, an emotionless waxy face, fade away, apparently giving up on a lost cause. Another cartridge and I was half a meter away from finishing my crudely drawn rectangle.

Now, logic said there would be guns on the other side of that doorway. Guns in the hands of mid-level security staff, smarter than the average drudge, but not a lot. They would be standing back out of the way of the beams, but the second the door was complete and fell away, they would be right there. It is a sad fact, but violence does seem to play a large part in the high-level relations between professionals in my line of business. It’s a sad waste of resources, but of course the spider builders had a duty to defend themselves and their machines. The fact that they had bothered to take me alive seemed to indicate that they really didn’t want to shoot me if they could help it – that and my armor would just have to be enough to see me through.

The last of the laser died away with just inches to go. With a quick integrity check on my uniform, I hit the nearly complete doorway at a run.

It was supposed to go like this: Expecting one last cut, the foot soldiers beyond would still be waiting behind some convenient solid object, eyes averted from the glaring light of molten steel. I would slam aside the thin metal and roll across the floor, spotting my assailants on the way past, too fast for them to react. The odd bullet would hopefully miss or meet my nanocarbon armor. Then I would be on my feet, have a clear map of my surroundings, and be behind the confused and exposed soldiers.

The first glitch was a complete lack of floor.

I looked down into a completely soldier-free pit of large moving machinery. Below me, a dim red glow illuminated a scene of large-scale mechanical beauty. Pistons pushed cantilevered struts that extended through holes in the hollow carapace to become legs, snake-like hydraulic pipes flexed with the motion as each one pivoted on its massive fulcrum. Every piece and every motion was bare and simple, there were no extraneous parts, no unnecessary movement. In the center of this ballet of piston and pivot was an oblate spheroid of metal, an egg perhaps 5 meters long nesting in the midst of the pumping, swinging steel. It was held suspended in space by traceries of cable and tubing. I hit it with bone-jarring impact.

If my uniform had not had its neural nets fried, had it been an intelligent piece of integrated technology instead of a lifeless, static piece of very flattering clothing, I might have fared better. It was not a long fall, the open space inside the spider’s body was almost completely filled by the egg and moving legs, but it was far enough to knock the breath out of me. I landed awkwardly, having been prepared for a roll across the floor and not a short drop onto a smooth round surface. The surface was smooth, I rolled immediately down the rounded side and was caught by a series of cables that disappeared seamlessly into the sides of the egg, tangling my legs and jarring an already sprained ankle.

For a moment, my head spun, I pressed it back up against the metal and looked upward. The little chamber from which I had emerged was not far above, ragged hole gaping at me from a grey wall of metal that ran across the width of the machine. If I had cut through a different wall, I would probably have found myself in another little metal box. Did they all have openings to the outside through which prisoners could be dropped? Speculation was cut short by another painful shock of sound.

My guess was that Sykes and her team were taking potshots. For all the noise, the spiders were taking no damage, and the shots were clearly not the fierce firefight of a sustained attack – the spiders were being harassed, perhaps distracted.

In any case, it was not the outside world I needed to worry about. I struggled to find some stable and less painful position where I could survey my more immediate surroundings. The egg, I surmised, would be the cockpit. Someone in there was driving, all the data from the rest of the machine went in, and control came out. It was in the center of the abdomen, protected by the outer shell and presumably its own heavy armor, the lacework of flexible metal that held it would absorb shocks.

The question was, how did one get in? Absent from any part of it I had seen was a hatch, gangplank, gantry or elevator. There wasn’t even a ladder of rungs welded to the side for maintenance. Entry must be from below, through the belly of the beast.

There were no staff outside the egg, unless some rode forward in the large gun turret of a head. Did they surviel the inside of their own robots? Did they know where I was? Why weren’t they shooting at me? I managed to twist around so that I was facing the steep slope of the side of the egg. Maybe with a little luck I could boost myself up on top of it. I tried and slid pitifully back down, straddling a cable. Another shot rang the hull like a gong.

I looked up and saw the dangling loose end of a cable. I must have severed it while cutting my way out, it swung slightly in the dim red. I followed the line of the cut and saw other damage, a hydraulic line squirted high pressure fluid from a small cut, the leg it was attached to was noticeably slower than its neighbors. I realized I could feel the slight limp. Something about the cuts had jogged a thought deep in my mind, but it hadn’t reached the surface yet, so I continued watching the hanging cable swing.

Something popped and buzzed in my ear, and the thought surfaced at the same time. “Sykes here, are you back online boss?” The little earbud dangling from my tactical goggles had awoken, the comm gear had found a path through the hull.

“Report, Sykes.” I didn’t have to speak out loud, the system would pick up my subvocalizations. Another thought was simmering in my mind, and I had a hunch that keeping quiet might be a good idea.

“Harassing enemy, Sir, we have them drawing closer together, the Device is armed and ready to deploy. Just say the word boss.”

“Sykes, I’d rather you didn’t use the Device while I am still in here.”

“Where exactly are you, Sir? We lost track, the damn things are all identical, and they keep shifting their formation.”

“Look for the limp. Sykes, I would like you to please disarm the Device.”

There was a long, worrying pause. Just how ambitious was she?

“Sir, I don’t think we can stop them without it.”

“Sykes, that is an order.”

Another very long pause.

“Yes sir.”

“Sykes, they’ve changed direction, am I correct in thinking they are no longer closing on Delta Lair?”

“Yes, sir, bearing is due west. They’ll hit the pacific ocean in about two hours.”

“Keep close, keep harassing. I need to think.”

But I didn’t, not really. The plan was obvious, Sykes not so much. I wanted to give her a chance to deploy the Device, or more to the point, the chance to think really hard about it and decide not to. I was going to need all the loyalty I could get, and if she didn’t take advantage now, chances are she just wasn’t going to. After fifteen minutes of admiring the engineering marvel around me, I called her back and explained what we were going to do.

–

My great great uncle Nikolai was one of the first to advocate for the primacy of Science. This was a time when the industrial revolution took it’s second great leap, from steam to electricity, and the minds of great men realized that a machine was more than a tool. Nikolai was the first to use Science to carve out a little empire for himself, though he would have denied any intention to do so. He had created wonders of electricity, and sure, some of them could be used as death rays, but what technology can’t be used to destroy? He argued passionately for the freedom of science in the service of the public good. The death ray, he would explain calmly, was not something he would ever use against anyone, as long as they didn’t oppose him.

Nikolai would have felt more or less at home inside the carapace of the giant metal spider. He would have admired the economy of motion, the efficiency, the mechanical simplicity. He would have seen in it the potential for good, a transportation device of unrivaled utility, with the advantage of being able to impale any lesser vehicle beneath one long spike of a foot should the need arise. The world had changed a lot since his day, in large part due to his own projects and philosophy, but there was a timeless purity to some things.

I awoke from my short reverie. It was time. Sykes and her crew had moved ahead of the advancing machines to lay the trap, and if our timing was correct, the spiders would be hitting it any moment now.

I heard a deep hum and then then whining-popping concussion of the laser cannon. The power plant appeared to be at the back of the spider, the heavy cables that brought power forward from it to the laser visibly tensed with the huge current. Concussions on the outside of the carapace seemed to shake the spider out of its complacency, its pace slowed and the huge laser pumped out another powerful beam.

On the comm now came tense voices, and then screams. One by one, the voices stopped, either in long drawn-out wails of pain, or suddenly with nothing but silence. Then it was time for me to play my part.

I aimed my laser carefully at the previously punctured hydraulic line, which still squirted a thin line of fluid against the wall with every limping step. I pulled the trigger and with a small and careful sweep, cut it.

I was prepared for the robot to stop, lurch, or even violently thrash – what I hadn’t considered was how an intensely hot laser would interact with a misty spray of hydraulic oil bursting into the small enclosed space I shared with it. The fireball blasted me off of the egg and seared the exposed skin of my face and hands. I screamed like a banshee all the way down, until I landed heavily in the shallow bowl of the spiders belly. I rolled down the to the bottom, beneath the egg and shielded somewhat from the fireball. Stunned and in pain, I managed to reach up to my goggles and turn off all outgoing transmission from my comm. So far, so good. One last detail, and then we would see.

“Sir! Sykes to Dr Mansard, do you read me sir!”

I listened silently.

“Sir, this is bad, we’ve lost practically everything! Please come in if you can hear me!”

I heard the distant pop of a laser cannon, not from this spider, but not far away. Now there was utter silence on the comm. And here we came to the crux. Everything hinged on this moment. The spider swayed slightly, the fire seemed to have burned itself out entirely now, but the blackened interior seemed remarkably undamaged. It lurched sideways and reverberated with a loud clang, then it listed slightly to one side for a moment, but seemed to recover. Then the pistons began to move again, and the spider walked, but using only three legs on each side instead of four.

I thumbed my comm, seeking out the frequency. Sykes had reported a radio station in the vicinity, I finally found it in the static, a loud voice yelling out the amazing deals one could get on used Hondas if one would only take the time to come on down to Harry’s. I massaged the controls, layering filters over the powerful radio signal until only a carefully modulated warble could be heard. I turned on decryption, and Sykes’ voice spoke to me as if from under water.

“Come in Sir, are you online yet? Come in Sir, waiting for you very patiently, Sir. Come in…”

“Here, Sykes,” I subvocalized. “Status?”

“They seem to have bought it, they are still moving due west.”

And the rest was detail. The spiders moved out of the coast range, keeping to the trees as much as possible, while Sykes and her crew hovered patiently in the branches of firs on the jet pods. Unnoticed by the limping spider, the pods slipped up beneath it and one by one the crew waited for a leg to lift and then dove through the narrow opening in the hull through which it protruded. The pods drifted back in unmanned mode to pick up another soldier, and when everyone was in, to become a trail of heavily armed crumbs leading out of the forest.

We spoke quietly in the belly of the spider.

“That was a good scream sir, I had no idea you had the lungs for it.”

“Lets just say it was heartfelt. Did we lose anyone?”

“Everyone is accounted for, I sent Jamis and Bob back to Delta, otherwise we’re all here.”

“If I am right, they don’t have any sensors inside these things, I don’t think it occurred to them that anyone would be running around inside. As long as we appear to have all died, and they can’t detect any comms, they shouldn’t have any reason to be suspicious from here on out. Good work on the horrible deaths, everyone. We were lucky they didn’t turn and head for Delta once they thought I was dead.”

“I admit I still don’t see the point, Sir,” said Sykes.

“The point is to get to wherever they are heading, which is where they were taking me, and hopefully where we’ll find out who is behind all this.”

“And where we’ll be a handful of very lightly armed combatants on someone else’s home turf.”

“Yes, Sykes, I realize it sucks.”

“Sucks ass sir.”

“Yes, Sykes, but the key-”

“Like a space suit with a buttflap, sir.”

“Sykes -”

“Hoovers up rectum at a phenomenal rate, you might say.”

“I wouldn’t, Sykes. What I am – ”

“Creates an enormous negative pressure differential in the posterior region, sir.”

“Sykes.”

“Slurps up anus with reckless abandon. It’s a fucking sphincter vacuum of doom.”

“Sykes, is there something you want to tell me?”

She looked at me, eyes hard. “Sir, we have no idea what we’re doing. We don’t know who we’re up against, where we’re going, and we won’t have many resources once we get there. It’s a suicide mission, and for what? We should have put up a heavy defense at Delta, fought on our turf. Plus, I’ve had to piss in this damn glorified corset of a uniform twice now, and it does not get better with practice.”

She had a point, I couldn’t deny that. Why the risky commando mission? There were, of course, several reasons. For one, the Organization was in bad shape. Losses had been heavy when the Army of God had invaded Alpha Lair, and many more had left afterward. The Plan was in shambles, morale was low, and frankly I wasn’t sure we could mobilize enough defense at Delta to even slow these things down.

“Because, Sykes, I think these people were behind the Army of God, behind the uniforms, I don’t think we could have stopped them at Delta, and because I want an opportunity to punch the person responsible for intelligent zippers in the face very hard.”

She look at me for a long time, and I could feel the tension among the rest of the crew. They were her crew, for all that they ultimately worked for me. She sighed heavily, which was very distracting. Her uniform had been designed to measure by someone with a robust fetish for cleavage and a total disregard for gravity. I cursed myself for even thinking about it, but not noticing would have been impossible.

She nodded very slightly. “It’s that bad?”

“It’s that bad Sykes. We need to take care of this decisively, and this is probably the one avenue of attack that they might not have prepared for… do I hear ocean waves?”

I looked down at my feet, where a little trickle of water was forming a shallow pool. I looked up at the nearest leg opening in time to see a gush of water flow in.

“Somehow I thought ‘heading toward the pacific ocean’ meant that they would stop when they got there.” I said. And then there was water.

–

There is something special about the pain of cold ocean water on burned skin. I should also note that while nanocarbon armor has many fine points, and you can’t beat the look of black leather, neither is especially helpful in deep water. It came in torrents, filling the spider’s body far too quickly. It seemed not to bother the spider at all, pistons continued their steady work as the water lapped up against the metal egg. Which, contrary to my initial plan, had not yielded up it’s entrance. It was seamless as far as we could see, but at least the webwork that suspended it provided us something climb when the water brought us up to that point. We rose with the water, using the cables for support, until the upper dome of the arachnid body had trapped a bubble of air that shrank only little bit as the spider progressed.

“If the hatch they put in into is airtight, we can hold out for a little while. If this thing goes down off the continental shelf, though, I think we’re in trouble.” I said, as calmly as possible. Panic could wait until we weren’t actually in immediate danger.

What about the little room up there?” One of the crew asked, I couldn’t remember his name.

“I think the chambers have sensors, I am pretty sure they could see us in there. Besides, I put rather a large hole in the side.”

We floated in dark silence for a while. My ears popped.

“Sykes?”

“Yes sir?”

“Sphincter vacuum of doom? Really?”

It took two hours for the machines to get where they were going. The ten of us pressed together in the air bubble, which had gradually become the size of a small van, we were all dizzy with pressure and cold. But we were alive.

The water began draining away suddenly, but without any actual change in pressure. “Underwater base?” Sykes’ voice echoed strangely between metal and water. We sank slowly down between the leg pistons and then beneath the egg again. Light streamed in from the leg holes, it was reddish and dim, but welcome. There was nothing to hide behind, I pulled out my gun and we stood waiting, watching the egg. After a while, the legs stopped moving. There was a distant clang. Then nothing.

“I don’t think there’s a pilot in there,” offered Sykes. We waited. Nothing.

“Maybe the crew stays up in the head?”

Nothing.

“You!,” I pointed to one of the nameless crew. “Go look out a leg hole, tell me what you see.”

He scrabbled up the curved metal wall.

“Big cave sir. Lots of spiders, hooked up to heavy cables. That’s it.”

“Guards?”

“Can’t see anyone at all, Sir.”

“Sykes, you still have the Device?”

“I hope you are right about how waterproof it is.”

The plan was to take turns rappelling down with my belt winch. I went first, slowly playing out the fine wire as I peered around the immense cave. Inert spiders stood in ranks, heave silver cables running from their heads and into a tunnel in the sheer stone face in front of them. That would be our way in, those cables must lead to some kind of command infrastructure, and that would lead to the commanders. I swung gently as the wire unreeled. The still, lifeless spiders were eerie, we had not seen nor heard any crew, they must have silently slipped into some portal in the stone wall directly from the heads of the spiders. No such openings were obvious. I was halfway down when I realized my mistake. The next spider in the row, its body a hundred feet above me, turned its head in utter silence to watch me.

–

Sure, autonomous robots were not unheard of, and many very sophisticated examples worked in factories and as waiters. But autonomy was not as simple as it looked. Those factory bots that patrolled the line and knew when to weld and when to call a manager in would not function off the factory floor. The robot waiter that never forgets your face or your order was both efficient and economical, but its autonomy stopped at the front door. The truth was, it is very very hard to make a machine smart enough to cope in the real world. My approach, and that of most of my fellow Scientists, was to start with something smart enough to do the job, and simply pare off the parts that weren’t needed. A human brain could cope with just about anything, and if you took out it’s penchant for doing what it wanted instead of what you told it to, it could beat any humaniform “autonomous” robot ever made, hands down. Plus, people were a hell of a lot cheaper.

Remote control was easier. You could put a lot of smarts into a machine to handle all the details, and control it like a marionette from a distance. Not a bad way to go if you needed a two hundred foot battle-ready metal spider but didn’t feel like going out yourself to wreak havoc on neighboring towns. The only problem was, you had better have a very robust communications channel, and you had better be close enough that communications delay didn’t make your reaction time half a minute too slow.

Somewhere in between could work quite well, but you would still be better off putting a smart brain in a dumb machine. What looked at me from the little glass bubbles on the front of the turret head of the spider, I had no way of knowing.

I subvocalized into my comm, “Sykes, hide. That’s an order. The spiders are smart. Hide and wait for my signal.”

By the time I reached the ground, an escort was waiting. Both of them were machines.

“We thought you were dead, Dr. Mansard, we are delighted to find ourselves in error. We are the Enlightened Machines, welcome to our home.”

The Enlightened Machines by Kenneth Lett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.