Rebuild of Full Armor 7: You Can (Not) Write

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The night sky glowed a pale orange  above the city lights, the moon tinted

the color of fresh blood from the smoke wafting from the city below.

Skirmishes between police, terrorists and Mafia squads lit up the streets;

they had been going on all afternoon, without a sign of letting up.

Amid Kubakar leaned back in his chair, listening to his Golden Swords'

radio traffic. They had seized the bridge leading north out of town and

teams were making progress in the university district, but nobody had

found their objective yet. They were searching for a combat robot, a

prototype he was hunting. It had taken eight years to find, but thanks to

his mole in the military's local R&D department, he knew it was somewhere

in Red Web. All he had to do was wait a few more hours, and it would be in

his hands.

"Mr. Kubakar, sir! Ninth Lightning Squadron reporting in!" a voice

crackled on his private channel. "NEON armor sighted, heading westbound

across Amethyst Boulevard, preparing to engage. Your orders?"

"Destroy it and anyone traveling with it. It's not the one we want."

"Acknowledged." The squadron of black manta-like planes flashed above the

streets, leaving golden vapor trails above the streets.

The armor in question was running along the sidewalk - its surveillance

mission had gone south, its cover was blown, and it was caught out in the

open, on an now-abandoned four lane byway. It sent a signal back to its

handler, safe in a NEON bunker miles away, requesting help from its human.

Captain Daniel Romanov spun in his chair to face the screen, showing all

the armor's diagnostics, flashing red notifictions demanding that he make

a choice immediately. With a push of a button, he ordered the AI to hold

course, warm up its weapons, and proceed with the mission as planned. He

thanked his lucky stars his droid hadn't run into any of the barricade

firefights people were reporting in, what with Mafia goons wielding EMP

rifles and worse.

Immediately the screen flashed red again, alerting him that he had spoken

too soon. Missile locks from above. Aircraft coming in hot from behind,

the sound of their engines screaming against the concrete canyon. Daniel

swore, grabbing the controls and slamming them to the right. A missile

smacked into the ground just a few feet away, the shockwave nearly kicking

his armor off its feet. He let go as the AI skidded the armor around a

corner into a side-road, just in time to dodge a barrage that tore the

facade of a corner store.

The flyers slowed down at the intersection and one opened doors along its

wings; five drones launched out and rocketed after the NEON armor. Daniel

was sweating, mashing a button on his controls that would signal for

backup. As if anyone would show up in time. "Armor Vessel-O, got five

Lightnings chasing me down, anything'd help out right now..." Another

notification - the AI had picked up a civilian ahead, some idiot punk kid

with a mohawk and green armored gloves. Daniel set the AI into defense,

preparing to cover him, but he took up a fighting stance behind the

armor's back. Kid watched too many kung fu movies, apparently, thought

Daniel.

"The name's Jumper Yo," said the kid, taking the initative.

"I am VSL-0, or Vessel O. I would advise you to leave while you still

can," said the AI, taking over to answer the softball questions.

"No way," said Jumper. "We're doing this together." The drones dropped to

the ground in a circle around them, unfurling into black-armored humanoid

shapes, slim robots built for speed rather than for a drag-out fight. They

popped to their feet, activating vibrating blades along their wrists.

Daniel held his head and braced himself to watch Jumper get cut up.

"Captain? We need to ta- The hell is going on in here?" said a voice from

behind Daniel. It was Lieutenant Malia Jefferson, the logistics officer.

Her eyes were fixed on the screen, watching as Vessel's AI shredded one of

the drones with one of its plasma chakram at a distance, then gripped the

other like brass knuckles and sliced another open across its midsection.

"Who is the civilian?"

"I don't know, he wouldn't leave," Daniel said, his hands poised at his

controls, ready to take control.

"If he gets hurt then we're in a lot of-"

"I know, I know, we're all screwed." He switched over to Vessel's rear

sensor to watch Jumper. One of the Lightnings lunged at him with one arm,

blade whirling; Daniel and Malia sucked in their breath.

But Jumper grabbed it by the shoulder, then shoved away its other arm as

it tried to struggle free, slapping away its strikes with his free hand.

He grabbed its shoulder, swept his leg around the robot's legs, and threw

it to the ground. Before it could recover, Jumper punched it in the face

with his hardened glove. He rammed his boot below its chin over and over

again, until the head snapped free. The robot twitched violently, then

fell limp.

"Holy-"

"Did you see that?" Daniel pointed at the screen, staring slack-jawed at

Malia.

"This kid is a psychopath."

"Somehow I doubt that. If he were really were a psycho, he'd have joined

the Goldens by now. Here, I'm going to try to upload this recording we

made, now that we've got a chance. Open up the secure ports to receive,"

said Daniel. Malia slid her fingers across her tablet, typing in the

passwords.

Meanwhile, Vessel had one of the remaining Lightnings by its legs; it

pulled the drone off its feet, then whipped it like a club against its

partner, turning both into scrap metal.

Jumper was breathing heavily behind Vessel; he started laughing as his

panic turned to relief. "We- we did it, didn't we?"

The AI cooked up some boilerplate response about what Lightnings were,

what they were up against, and all that. Jumper started rambling on about

combat styles, but Daniel was too busy trying to send the file to notice.

"It's not returning a ping to servers, that's strange."

"...They're jamming our wireless connection," Malia concluded.

"What?! How could they do that? That's a 1024-bit system switching between

thirty-two channels, it shouldn't be possible!"

"I don't know, but it's happening. Try to find a wired connection, we'll

be able to bypass the jamming."

"Hah, you think we're going to find a wired data plug in this day and age?

...Hold on, I've got an idea." Daniel reached for the keyboard, overriding

the AI dialogue program.

"Oh no, you're not going to ask the boy for one, are you?"

"You got any better ideas?"

"Quartering soldiers in peoples' houses is against the Third Amendment."

"First of all, this is a crisis. We're at war. We'll let the courts go

over it in a couple years, when we're not being shot up by terrorists."

"And that's exactly what the amendment prohibits, quartering during

peacetime and wartime."

"Let me finish," Daniel said, furiously typing responses to Jumper's

questions. "Second of all, this is a robot. It's not like you have to make

him casseroles or let him sleep in your bed. Just stick him in a dryer

plug for a couple hours and he's good for a week. And third, he just

consented, so it's a moot point." On the screen, Jumper had headed off

along the sidewalk, Vessel following close behind.

"That fast?"

"What can I say? I'm a social engineer. I can poke people into doing what

I want."

"Back in psych 101, we called people like you sociopaths."

"Maybe that's what I am, I mean, look at what I do. I sit in a room and

tell robots to kill people across town, and then I watch the whole thing

on the big screen. What else can you call that except being a sociopath?"

He battered away on his keyboard, writing a script for Vessel's behavior

for over the next few hours.

"When you put it like that, then yes, you'd be a sociopath."

There was an uncomfortable silence as Daniel coded. Finally, he hit Enter,

stood up from his chair and stretched, taking one last look at the screen.

"All right, that should be enough for now. Hey, can you do me a favor

before we go?"

"That depends. What is it?"

"Block off this 'pit, I don't want anyone else to use it, it might screw

up the upload."

"Nobody? Not even Niedermeyer?"

"Especially not Niedermeyer. Oh, and send another armor after Vessel, you

know, to watch over it in case there's retaliation."

"Ezaja's ready to go, is that going to be all right?"

"Hmm, that's the gynoid, right? Ought to be interesting, what with the

teenaged boy on the other side. Make it so! Come on, the shift's almost

over, let's go get coffee."

"Dan, we're at war, remember? The place is probably closed, if the owner

has any sense."

"Huh. Yeah, you're probably right. I guess we'll sit around here, then?"

"Funny how we're on the frontlines for a battle for the city, and we still

get to work eight hour shifts."

"I'm not questioning it."

"Neither am I. Oh! I almost forgot what I came here for." Malia

straightened up, then flipped through her tablet. "We had another security

breach on our network this morning." Third one this week.

"You can't be serious. We've done everything in our power to stop these

things, and they just keep happening anyway. What did they go after this

time?"

"Looks like Yekun files again."

"Gee, I wonder why. Did they get anything important?"

"It's not clear at the moment, but all indications are that this one was a

very sophisticated operation."

"Just like the last."

"More sophisticated than that one. Our hackers are all doing their best

trying to work this out upstairs." Malia's tablet buzzed with an alert.

"Looks like I've got some more work to do. Take care of yourself, all

right?"

"Will do." He wandered down a hallway towards the dorms, and as he did, he

pondered the state of the project. It had cost them eight years and half a

billion dollars of taxpayer money to get this far. That Yekun was going to

cost 40 million a pop to build, even when it did get mass-produced. All

for a robot that needed someone to hold its hand as it crossed the street;

eight times out of ten, the AI couldn't pass a Turing test. For that kind

of money you could kit out a hundred GIs and have them ready in a quarter

of the time. Jesus, Dan thought. No wonder we're eighty trillion in the

hole.