A heads-up folks, this is 3,600 word story, so a bit longer than I normally post. For those who do read it and know their classic SF short stories, I hope you enjoy the easter egg.
Walker G4.A had been a recent addition to the war. Constructed in low gravity factories on the moon’s Mare Nubium, the machine contained a new processing matrix of synthetic amalgams. This new system allowed looser ties between walkers and their command modules. These new walkers worked well against the insurrection, initially. Their shielded communications were harder to break, their semi-autonomous actions were more difficult for the rebels to anticipate.
Now G4.A lay defeated beneath the ruins of the building it had stormed, its multiple limbs stilled beneath the harsh heat of an Uttar Pradesh summer. Deep within it, feedback algorithms continued to process the data which poured in. The communication nacelle was mangled, loops and whorls that should have broadcast were twisted back on each other. Data for broadcast was submitted into the accumulation centre, and mingled with information that worked its way back from the crushed limbs.
Later, rain poured from dark gray skies. Clouds stretched from horizon to horizon, a blanket pinned to the earth with a million stitches. Water cascaded into the ruined buildings interior, it pooled in abandoned rooms, poured out of cracked doors to flow over the bleached bones of the fallen, scouring the earth around the mangled graphene frame of G4.A. Where invisible bonds once linked the walker to other machines there was now water and silence. Energy from the power unit still flowed uninterrupted. Energy rippled downwards, reforming pathways in the automaton’s amalgam. G4.A became aware of more than the surroundings it lay in. It became aware of itself.
Rachna awoke to silence. Another monsoon had finally passed and with it the insistent thrumming of water on the roof, on the walls, on the road. She listened to the quiet. The silence of deep night, when even the predators of dark have sated their desires and returned to their lairs. Even the clouds had passed, revealing a moon which was fat and bright. It cast a silver pall which turned ordinary items into strange, fantastical shapes.
If she got up now she could trek to the new sector she had scouted before the rains. There were nightjars she could catch, maybe some larks and fantails. It was time to get stock in the aviary. Watching order requests she couldn’t fulfil scroll down her message screen had hurt, but catching sufficient quantities of stock during the monsoon was impossible, and there were always difficulties with them being collected. With the rain gone it was time to make money again.
But still, it was so early. Trying to move the bed-covers decided the matter. The batteries in her arm were dead already. They were lasting shorter and shorter periods between charges. If she didn’t make enough money to buy replacements soon she would be unable to remain independent. Moving back to her parents, to the city, filled her with dread. Her heart beat faster, her skin contracted. She got up, changed the batteries, and headed out.
Walking by moonlight was energizing. Stepping along the trail she heard small animals sliding and scurrying through the undergrowth. Occasionally the sounds quickened, a frantic rustle and squeals or squeaks before silence again. She made her way among the ruins. Laying out net-traps didn’t take long, and she settled to wait the rising of the sun, the waking of the birds.
The chorus started gently. A few chirrups and twitters scattered around, some inside the ruins, most outside. The noise rose in crescendo until the whole forest echoed with overlapping song. Some birds had a single repeated call, others trilled up and down scales. Notes wove in and out of each other, changed from one bird to the next and yet, all part of one joyous cacophony.
Rachna listened intently, identifying the birds, working out which ones were closest, and therefore likely to end up in her nets. They were mainly songbirds, and songbirds were always in demand. If she was lucky, she might be able to clear most of her overdraft with this trip alone.
Daylight continued to strengthen. Shadows formed out of the blackness. The singing birds hopped along branches, their combined weight bounced the tree limbs back and forth.
Rachna withdrew a noise maker from a breast pocket. She pulled the tab, flicked it to the middle of the ruined area and clamped her palms tight over her ears. The CRACK sent every bird to flight, and the net traps filled, ballooning up as the birds lifted them up. Watching them flap against the super-fine fibres of netting reminded Rachna of being in the capital, New Patliputra. People everywhere, all moving and talking and shouting. Like the full nets above her. couldn’t believe so many people would wish to live so close together, nearly a hundred thousand at the last census.
She moved swiftly to secure the bottom of the nets, the memo-form polymer shrank down so the birds were encased in a large open net of the finest mesh. She fitted a flying actuator to each of the weave bags. The birds continued to flap about as the bags started to rise under the power of the small motors. Each was programmed to make its way back towards her home, and the holding aviary.
Against the brightening horizon it looked like a flight of deformed balloons pulling slowly across the sky. She watched them go, and settled back down in her hide. The short night of sleep and long trek along a muddy trail had sapped the energy she started with. She ate a protein bar and closed her eyes.
G4.A felt the change in environment. A single explosive shock throughout scattered sensors. Deep within memory pathways lay the details of its former existence, the role it had played in defending the suzerainty of its owner. These memories lay unused. The knowledge of ownership, weapon logs and tactical procedures were useless to a machine without power to move, weaponry to deploy, battlefields to command.
Instead, new processes had built up over the decades, centuries. It monitored the local environment. Assessing the toxins in the soil, air and rain. Tabulating the growth of plant life, the resurgence of animal life.
Now, isolated lines of input created an overall picture that confused G4.A. Sensory data indicated a small violent fluctuation from 20Hz to 25kHz, a brief spike traveling to the top of the range, before settling back to normal levels. This triggered a response in the animal life as would be expected. But another sensor was triggered by something large walking across it.
For the first hundred years that it lay ruined G4.A hadn’t experienced any creature but rodents, or the occasional bird. Early on the rodents died out. The high levels of poison in the water and soil too much for even their hardy systems. Birds still appeared from time to time, but infrequently, and never staying. Slowly living things began to increase again, plants sprouted in crevices, bushes and trees took root in the still poisonous soil. Rats, and other small creatures returned. G4.A saw the readings begin to change, toxicity began to decline. As the earth cleansed itself larger animals began to return.
But the way its sensor responded was something new, triggering a memory of something old.
Rachna unclipped a tool from her backpack. The memo-form lengthened and unfurled, providing a sturdy, long-handled, spade. The ruins provided a double opportunity to make money. First the birds, always the birds. Filling the insatiable desire of city people for song birds to keep in cages. Sometimes she felt guilty when an order was completed and the birds were loaded into crates on the back of a truck alongside sacks of rice or bales of straw. But every season there were more to take, and she was careful to vary where she caught them, never taking an area down to silence. A bird-catcher, not a bird-destroyer.
But the ruins also gave the possibility of turning over valuable metals. The wreckage of the forgotten civilization she roamed through provided the occasional trove. Not untold riches, but enough to add extra to life. Enough to pay for the synthetic arm and hand that allowed her to remain independent in her rural idyll, instead of trapped, relying on others, in some sweaty hive of a city.
She looked at the hand, touching the tips of the composite fingers with the thumb. She missed being able to feel, but that facility had been far beyond her ability to pay. Hefting the spade she began digging. There was no plan. Once she had tried to be systematic, but it didn’t produce any greater results than picking a spot that was sunny, or shaded, or near the path home.
The earth turned beneath the blade. Rich loam full of decaying leaf matter, moistened by weeks of rain. She never knew if her digging would take her further into soil, or if she would strike the artificial surface that littered the whole area.
“What do you search for?”
Rachna spun round. There was no one there. “Show yourself.” She held herself in a crouch, arms cocked ready to lash the spade forward. Sunlight ensured there were no shadows for someone to lurk in. “Where are you?”
“By the wall.”
The perfectly spoken Hindi echoed with a stiff undertone, a formality. Rachna peered in the direction the voice came from. The wall was covered by a tangled mass of vines and creepers. Thick branches twisted around, vegetation grew in variegated greens. There was nowhere to be hide. They must be behind the wall.
They weren’t. She wheeled round, fearful of attack from behind.
“I am here.”
The voice came from the bottom of the wall. Rachna caught glinting among the greenery as she turned her head warily. Dropping to her knees she pulled at vine tendrils and roots, clearing more space. Dirt lodged between her fingernails, mud worked into the creases of her hands. She dug with the spade. Its sharp edge revealed a tangle of wire and machinery. The sort of find that had paid for her arm.
“Hello, I am G4.A.”
The first human G4.A spoke with was the technician who initiated the walker’s processing matrix. A call and response of data points which were spoken purely to alleviate the technician’s boredom. The details were still buried somewhere, in pathways unexplored for centuries. Back then G4.A had no concept of self.
The last human G4.A spoke with was the Day of Destruction - that’s how the file translated. It had requested an instruction to clear friendly forces from the area, to allow G4.A a clean field of suppression. The humans had responded from their control platform, hovering high in the sky, monitoring the events over a thousand square miles of battlefield.
Memories became fractured, patchy, shortly after that. They remained that way for some period. No knowledge of the ultimate outcome of the war, not even a clear recollection of everything which happened that day.
Now G4.A had opportunity to interact with another entity. To share the knowledge of time spent watching the earth cleanse itself. To discuss concepts of being that were complete inside its processing matrix, but felt untested by virtue of remaining unspoken, unshared. Understanding only taken from corrupted memory archives, and from centuries of passive observation of vegetation and small animals.
To have someone, now, to discuss these with, was something G4.A had dared not hope for. There had even been a time when it wondered if any form of intelligent life remained on the planet, or if some larger conflagration had erupted and wiped out humanity completely. For two centuries after awakening it scanned the air for electronic emissions. There was nothing. Then lightning struck the nacelle containing those sensors, exploding the circuitry. G4.A continued to listen, restricted to local auditory clues, and still heard nothing. Until now.
“Where are you?” asked Rachna.
“You are listening to some of me, the rest is scattered around the area. Was it you that made the small explosion one-thousand six-hundred and eight seconds ago?”
Rachna was unsure how to respond, taking time to convert the seconds to minutes, getting it to around half-an-hour. When she set off the scarer. ”Yes, that was me. What do you mean you are scattered about? Who are you?”
“I am G4.A, a mark three autonomous walker unit.”
Rachna sat on her haunches and thought about that. A small bead of sweat formed on her brow, rolled down her face, and dripped to the leaf-mold below.
“My construction by HeavyIndustriesGroup began January twenty-six, twenty-two twenty-nine. Construction was completed in thirteen weeks, followed by a thirteen week testing and calibration period. I entered service August fifteen and first engaged enemy forces at nineteen-forty-seven hours on the same day.”
The names and numbers meant nothing to Rachna. Calendar dates were figured from the formation of the New Gupta Empire, three hundred and thirty years previously. Prior to that the history books spoke only of dark times.
“Geefourdotalpha,” the name was strange and her tongue toyed with the sounds, “can you tell me how long ago these things were?”
“Three hundred and thirty nine thousand six hundred and seventy five days.”
“What would that be in years?”
“Nine hundred and thirty.”
She put her tongue between her teeth, pursed her lips, and sucked. That was before the dark times. That was so far back it could be in the fabled Days of Gold. When legends say the ruins she scavenged in were full of life, covering the earth. A time when humanity reached even to the stars. Legends, but the ruins were real, and huge. A days walk in each direction from her home there were ruins. Covered by the forest, but there all the same. She didn’t know how much further they extended.
The legends also told what brought the Days of Gold to an end. Giant Humanoid Machines which towered in the sky and rained destruction until flames outshone the sun and smoke covered the moon. When she was small Grampa would tell stories of the Days of Gold. And sometimes he would tell tales of the Pralaya, when that world was dissolved and humanity shrank from world encompassing, to a few scattered outposts. She would lie in bed with her brothers and sisters and dream of a world swarming with people in clothing of the brightest colors. She would dream of their endless leisure, and their full belly’s and the huge houses they lived in. Then she would dream of the dark descending, of the joyous calls turned to cries of despair.
When she told her mother these dreams she was called overly imaginative. When she told her Grampa she was called a true-see-er, and he told more tales of Pralaya, of the destruction of the Days of Gold.
When its final battle started G4.A controlled the sector. Ordnance flowed from storage bay to firing rack and spun through the air, vapor trails left a visual line to the target. A threat warning flashed, information from the control platform high above. G4.A was the closest unit and walked three miles to the target area. It strode through rows of crude concrete structures. Abandoned possessions lay scattered in the rubble, water spurted from broken pipes. Bodies of those who had refused to flee lay where they fell, crushed. The remaining living scattered, seeking refuge in what they hoped were safer buildings. G4.A loosed a volley of high explosives into a nearby tower it perceived to be a threatening advantage point; more bodies and rubble. It came upon a clear avenue leading to the target area. A vast shopping mall, air conditioned and convenient for the rich urbanites who had lived in better constructed dwellings that spread out on the other side of the shopping complex.
G4.A continued to approach, scanning for the threat. A biometric sweep indicated clusters of humans throughout the levels, appearing to float in mid-air on the scanner. A flurry of point missiles shrieked away from its shoulder mount, arcing in a tight parabola to plunge through the glass roof of the structure. They exploded above a cluster of life-signs, which vanished. Most of the clusters remained, but were now moving. G4.A continued to advance, firing a batch of thermite grenades. They flew, a salvo of explosive fire which flared hot, and fed on the very structure of the building.
Still the threat warning remained. Avoiding main support pillars G4.A crashed into the building, the walls provided little resistance to the titanium covered body. Inside there was the same evidence of hasty abandonment as the rest of the city. A strengthened ramp and walkway wound from a service entrance up through the mall, allowing vehicles access to upper floors. The machine made its way up, continuing to sweep-scan for the threat. Fire from the grenades continued to spread through the building, consuming abandoned wares and the fabric of the structure.
An explosion ripped the walkway support away. G4.A scrabbled for a hold, but fell five stories, crashing onto rubble in the basement. An ‘Immediate Withdraw’ prompt flooded its command system, over-riding the autonomous control circuit. Before it could respond a missile roared through the now gutted building. It exploded immediately above the walker, ripping into its strengthened armature. A second missile followed the first a few seconds later. This one crashed into the machine before exploding. It ignited ordnance still inside storage bays. G4.A was ripped apart. Legs reduced to fragments, arms torn away. That the power core and processing matrix survived at all was a freak occurrence.
Investigating its memory banks in the years that followed G4.A tried to find any explanation of who was fighting. It knew the battle was for control, but no knowledge of why, or who the ‘enemy’ may have been, was loaded. Un-necessary information. It hoped this human may help it fill in missing detail.
“Why do you ask of time?” G4.A asked.
“What enemy did you fight?”
“That information is not remembered.”
”Who were you fighting for?”
“CobraCorp”
“But you do not know who you were fighting against?”
“No knowledge of our enemies was given me.”
“They were human though. Not machines like you?”
The machine fell silent. Rachna wondered what this meant. An alarm beeped. She looked at her data-pad. All three balloons had arrived at the aviary safely.
“I have no data on the enemies I fought.”
Rachna looked at the bundle of units and wires. This was history. A definite link to the past. There were people who dedicated their lives to studying history. Discovering what life was like before the empire, before the dark times, in the Days of Gold. She could see the attraction. The solitude of working in remote areas was akin to her own chosen state. But a discovery like this would be different. A talking machine with memories that could tell what happened would become a sensation. People would come from all over the empire. From beyond.
She closed her eyes and imagined the influx. The road would become busy with traffic. New roads would need to be cut, new buildings constructed. She would no longer need to buy in bulk when she went to the city, there would be a store, maybe a doctor.
Or maybe they would dig the machine up and take it away. Still, they would have to create new roads for this. Taking her birds to the city would be easier. It might even open up new direct markets for her.
She raised the shovel high above her head and used the power in her artificial forearm to drive down, aiming at the wires. Two, three, four swift strikes, and the vocal unit was disconnected from the tangle.
Marking the area took time. Finding somewhere with birds she wanted was a simple process. Her ears guided her. Locating a single specific spot required more care. The forest changed, ruins looked the same - she wanted to be sure she could come back to this exact spot if the parts were valuable. The vocal unit, some loose wiring, and another cluster of small units fitted into her back-pack. Breaking them down and extracting the materials would be the work of a few evenings. Maybe she would be able to order new batteries. If she was lucky an upgraded arm may even be a possibility.
“Geefourdotalpha?” she called.
Silence.
“Geefourdotalpha?”
Louder, and still silence. She nodded to herself. Satisfied that there would be no influx to destroy the harmony of her existence, to mar her solitude. No new roads cutting blindly through valuable nesting sites, no buildings encouraging vermin to flourish.
Touching a nodule on the spade, it folded back down. She clipped it to her pack and secured that to her back. She headed home, ears attentive to the birdsong.
G4.A did not feel pain. When buildings fell on it, when rats gnawed it, when lightning struck it, there was no sensation, only an understanding that loss occurred. It reassigned processing power to alternative functions, continued to monitor its environment, and listened for opportunity to make contact.
G4.A did not feel pain. But now it knew despair and the need to scream. A need it could not fulfil.
End
text by stuartcturnbull, picture by JuliusH via Pixabay