Friday Mourning
Friday
by bkMarcus
The "central gardens" of NATO's Terraform Sector were the oldest developed area of Mars. Thirty years after human feet first touched the red soil, Wintergreen and Bonaparte walked among the five acres of flora where the original greenhouse dome had stood.
When, on his second day of duty, General Hallek had again requested he walk the dog, Wintergreen was quietly offended. He had not come up here to be a pet-sitter. But spending an hour of on-duty time each day in the only beautiful part of Western Mars was an unexpected pleasure, and Wintergreen had quickly taken to knocking on the General's door twice a day, and asking if Bonaparte needed walking.
"Yes!" the dog would say. "Take me for a walk!" And the general would wave his hand without looking up from his terminal, sending them on their way.
Still captivated by the surreality of a canine conversationalist, Wintergreen spent their first several walks questioning Bonaparte on his history, but the dog spoke mostly in short sentences if he couldn't answer with a Yes or No.
Wintergreen estimated his mental capacity to be that of a bright human child.
"How old are, Bonaparte?"
"Three."
"Three what?"
"Three, Private."
"Three years old?"
"Yes. I'm three years old."
"Do you speak Russian?"
"Da."
"Say something in Russian."
"I just did."
"OK, never mind."
The longest answer Wintergreen had gotten out of the dog was in response to one of the first things he'd said in Bonaparte's presence: "Why doesn't the General walk you his own damn self?!"
"Because I asked him to let you walk me. He's very busy now."
Wintergreen had eyed the dog in horror. "Bonaparte? Do you tell the General what people say around you when he's not here?"
"Sometimes."
"Can we keep our conversations just between you and me?"
"You want me to keep them secret?"
"Yes, please."
"OK."
But they hadn't exactly had "talks" after that. Wintergreen would ask questions, and the dog would ignore him and sniff at the bushes, or try to chase insects through the central gardens.
The Soviets had a similar central dome on the other side of the hemisphere. Wintergreen had recently watched video of the failed peace negotiations that had taken place there a year ago. Without the full emersion of cyberspace to distract him off-duty, Wintergreen found himself studying the history of the planet he now lived on, and the conflict his military was engaged in.
A close-up showed General Hallek receiving a younger Bonaparte, who was wearing a big red ribbon and bow in place of a dog collar. The Soviet General handed Hallek the end of the leash, which Hallek took, smiling awkwardly. Then he bent down and scooped the dog up under his left arm, and held him up for the audience, holding one of the dog's front paws and waving it at the cameras.
Wintergreen had been Bonaparte's daily dog walker for a week before he decided to review the archives. When he saw the footage of the peace offering, he did a double-take. He didn't remember it until now, but he'd seen Bonaparte's picture a year ago: the silly little paw wave was the front-page image on all the major news sites.
Tony Martin had even mentioned it: "It doesn't make any sense to fight them if they have such cute puppies to give away!" Tony had smiled wickedly. It seemed to Wintergreen that Tony Martin was hoping negotiations would fail.
There hadn't been an old-fashioned war between the superpowers since the previous century. In the shadow of nuclear holocaust, the US and the Soviets had found hot spots to fight over indirectly: Asian and African territories whose people could kill and die in proxy for the two giants who didn't dare assault each other directly. But the Cold War had been very cold for the past 40 years. President Kennedy had directed his nation's efforts into space colonization, and the Martian territorial disputes, only 5 years earlier, were the first direct conflict the super powers had allowed themselves since the Soviet Union had expanded into Africa.
Those first disputes were settled by the Green Peace Treaty, a UN-negotiated settlement that set the terms of Martian colonization: since the Soviets had conveniently avoided establishing their first dome anywhere near the NATO dome, the two powers could start at opposite sides of the Northern Hemisphere (the Southern Hemisphere being less hospitable to early terraforming efforts). Each side could only claim territory they had terraformed, starting with what were now the central domes on either end of the planet.
The so-called Green War on Mars didn't play among the zealous patriots. Who could get excited over a plant-growing competition?
So now the fight on Mars was as old-fashioned as history's first off-world armed conflict could be: territorial battles, bullets, bombs, death -- though most of the deadliest fighting took place between our artificials and theirs.
While the West built ever-expanding domes of greenhouse oxygen, the Soviets realized early that expansion would be faster and more efficient if they did it underground. They had animal and robot work crews dig and plant low tunnels of genetically engineered algae and bacteria. Once the animal crews could survive in the tunnels, unaided, the Soviets declared them terraformed. The Soviet sector was ten times the size of the NATO sector -- despite the Soviets' late start -- and was growing at 20 times the rate of Western expansion.
So NATO started bombing. The world governments would not have tolerated nuclear weaponry in space -- and the Green Peace Treaty specifically forbade nuclear arms, reiterating the nuclear-free space treaties established late in the 20th century. But NATO had big old-fashioned kinetic bombs on Mars, and they began to use them against the outer tunnels, the ones that were not yet life-supporting. While Soviet and NATO representatives battled verbally on Earth, the war on Mars grew hotter, each side feeding the planet with more artificial soldiers and weaponry, and less terraforming material.
In early 2019, the Soviets announced a unilateral cease-fire, and invited NATO to peace talks under the Soviets' central dome. More than once, General Hallek had mentioned these talks, and sounded regretful that they had fallen apart.
"We sat around that table for a full month, and all we have to show for it is little Bone, here."
"Little Bone" had chased something under a shrub near the bench where Wintergreen watched him. The first day in the gardens, Wintergreen had asked the dog "Can I trust you off the leash?"
"Sure," said Bonaparte. "I'll be good."
He did try to stay in sight, though Wintergreen had to whistle and call him back when he wandered too far.
Bonaparte trotted back to the bench, licking his lips. "You ringer is off," he said.
Wintergreen looked down at him. "What?"
"Your ringer is off. You must have it muted."
Wintergreen touched the tip of his finger to the control behind his right ear lobe and turned. He heard his phone chirping urgently in his ear.
"Yes, General?"
"Private, where have you been? I've been trying to call you for 5 minutes!"
"I'm sorry sir. We've only been out for 20 minutes. I sometimes mute the phone when I'm in the gardens."
"Well, don't!"
"It won't happen again sir! Did you need me?"
"Yes, bring Bonaparte back in. I need you for something over at the hospital."
"Right away sir!"
The General rung off.
Wintergreen looked back to Bonaparte. "How did you know?"
The dog seemed to be considering something. "I heard it," he said.
"You heard what?" He attached the leash and lead the dog out of the gardens.
"I heard the General calling you."
"But I didn't hear it."
"My hearing is good."
"What did you hear, Bonaparte? The muted ringing? The signal?"
The dog didn't answer.
"The signal is encrypted," said Wintergreen. How did you know it was Hallek?"
"I recognized it."
Reluctantly, Wintergreen dropped the subject. They were back at the office.
The General was waiting for them in the outer area. He looked disapprovingly at Wintergreen, then down at his dog. "I'm sorry, Bone. I'll take you for a long walk tonight. The Private and I are needed at the hospital.
The dog said "OK, General," and trotted into the inner office.
The General looked back at Wintergreen.
"It won't happen again," said Wintergreen.
"I believe you," said the General, holding his gaze. Then: "Private, I want you to load your side arm and wait out here for a minute. I need to clear something with ALPHA before we go over there." He closed the door behind him.
The soldier's interface was still unreliable, even 48 hours after the EMPulse. Hospital robots wheeled in a virtuality rig and a sodium pentathol drip that they attached to his head and arms, a terminal for ALPHA, and two chairs for General Hallek and his assistant.
When the robots left the room, the terminal directed its camera at the soldier's face.
Wintergreen's legs were longer than Hallek's, but the General had spent the better part of two years on Mars, and was more accustomed to negotiating its environment. Wintergreen struggled to keep up with the older man without falling.
"We're going to interview a field agent, Private."
"Sir?"
"A month ago, I had ALPHA assign two agents to capture a Soviet android. The team consisted of one American tube -- uh, synthetic human -- and one European replicant. German, I think. The replicant died in the field. The tube has been in a coma for the past three weeks. He just woke up. ALPHA alerted me half an hour ago."
Wintergreen had never talked to a "tube" before. His father talked about them all the time. Tubes were vat-grown humans, created and engineered in test tubes, artificially matured and developed for enhanced abilities. They were the result of technology that was banned in civilian labs within North America, but used by the military to grow super soldiers. The engineering of synthetic soldiers was one of Sergeant Wintergreen's early topics for back-in-my-day type rants.
The European equivalents were called "replicants". Equally artificial to North American tubes, replicants were an integration of genetic and cybernetic engineering. Created by the European private sector to occupy the industries unwanted by or illegal to humans, replicants had been drafted into NATO when European parliaments began to pass laws against conscripting humans into what was increasingly considered a North American war on Mars.
Wintergreen knew that both kinds of artificial soldier were common in the conflict -- more common than human soldiers, in fact -- but he avoided them. The military rarely enforced its rules against fraternization between humans and artificials -- and many human soldiers took advantage of the retooled replicant prostitutes who had recently entered the conflict -- but Wintergreen kept his distance.
He did not look forward to this interview.
"Do you know anything about androids, Private?"
"I know that the Soviets like to use them as soldiers. They like to use them in space in general. They're built for the specific environments they're assigned to ... They're supposed to be very strong, very smart ... um, they're bald. Their skin is blue ... "
"And we haven't a clue how they build them. ALPHA is the smartest computer the Free World knows how to build, and it isn't nearly smart enough to operate without human help. ALPHA helps me coordinate every NATO weapon, vehicle and soldier on Mars, but try talking to it sometime. There's no there there." They entered the hospital and stopped by an elevator. Hallek whispered, hoarsely: "The Soviet effort up here is run by an AI back on earth, an ancient computer that's supposed to be buried somewhere under Moscow. Our intelligence is that the Soviet AI has been running the show for their space program for a few decades now."
"The Soviets have had Artificial Intelligence for decades?"
"Rumor is they've had AI since the early 1970s. Until the androids showed up, we were only able to confirm AI in the one case of their space program's central computer." The elevator let them out into a small corridor, with one closed door.
The soldier is conscious, General. He is waiting for you inside.
Wintergreen looked around for the source of the voice.
"Thank you, ALPHA. We'll be just a moment. Now listen, Private. Any time we capture one of these bald, blue gizmos, it's fused. CPU meltdown. Nothing our engineers can reverse or study. Our belief is that the android brain holds the clue to true Artificial Intelligence, that if we could take one apart, we'd be able to implement the programs in our own computers -- maybe we'd have to build a whole new kind of computer -- but we'd have the ability to build something a whole lot smarter than ALPHA, something the size and shape of you or me." Hallek's whisper got even quieter. "Listen, no matter how people feel about it now, no matter what the laws say, these artificials we have -- our genetics and the European's integrated cyborgs -- these soldiers of ours are a temporary edge ... and we've only seen the beginning of the kind of trouble they can cause. It's a dirty business. We'd much rather start from scratch and build something like the Soviets have."
"So you've tried to capture an android to disassemble and study it?"
"We've tried it many times. Each time they fuse. We've seen it happen the moment of capture. A kill switch. One moment they're super soldiers, the next moment they're dead puppets. The tube in their, he and his partner took a pulse bomb with them. Our hope was that the Electro Magnetic Pulse would shut the android down before it could know to fuse. But the replicant died, and this one in there, if he weren't as enhanced as he is, he never would have survived the number of bullets that hit him. Is that gun loaded?"
"Yes, sir. What do you want me to do with it?"
"Holster it, but have it ready. I don't trust this guy. If he starts to get out of his bed, shoot him in the head."
General Hallek ignored the chairs, positioning himself and Wintergreen at the foot of the soldier's bed.
"Good morning, soldier."
Good morning.
"Normally, soldier, your debriefing would take place directly, but the doctors don't want us attending to your interface until they've cleared you from the hospital..."
Why are you here?
"I'm in charge of the operation you've returned from."
I've never seen you before.
"Nevertheless."
And him?
"My assistant has taken a special interest in the goals of your mission."
Why are --?
"That's enough, soldier. We'll ask the questions. Is that understood?"
Yes, I understand.
"State your designation."
Friday.
"Your designation, soldier."
EHG/P-20100318.usna.1a
General Hallek cocked his head toward Wintergreen. "Designation '1a' means that this soldier was the first instantiation of his genotype." He raised his voice. "Why 'Friday', soldier?"
It was Gregor's name for me. None of us waste our time with designations. We choose names.
"Gregor was your field partner?" Hallek looked down at his pad. "Designation R/IC-20150605.de.17z?"
He was.
"Why did he call himself Gregor?"
I don't know. I never asked.
"Did you ask why he called you Friday?"
He had a different answer every time it came up. He first named me on a Friday. Later, he'd claim he had just finished reading Robinson Crusoe, or he'd say that it was the title of a Heinlein novel about my kind. One time, he said that Friday was the end of human responsibilities, the beginning of leisure.
"Gregor had a sense of humor."
You could call it that. He was always talking. This drip is making me talk, too. Why are you giving me the drip?
"Your interface was disrupted by the--"
That's right. I remember that now.
"Soldier, how long had you been field partners with Gregor?"
ALPHA assigned me to him a year and a half ago. We've spent most of the time since then patrolling the neutral territory in the northern hemisphere. We returned only for supplies or after a battle. We've only had 4 battles, not including this last one. We rarely see NATO Terraform Sector, not unless ALPHA called us in, which it's only done the once.
"Tell us why ALPHA called you in."
It said we had a specific assignment. Told us that we had to bring back a Soviet android, disengaged, but functional.
"Had you battled androids before?"
We held a full frontal assault on a transport vehicle, a few months ago, in the south. When we got inside the ship, the androids were fused. They have a switch in their heads that they trigger to avoid being captured intact. Gregor said it was their cyanide capsule. Their brains fuse and your engineers can't make any sense of them.
ALPHA ordered us to take a pulse bomb and head south again to the ice fields. Gregor said it wanted us to look like we were stealing the Soviet's ice from them.
A Soviet ship attacked us. We put up a show of resistance, but we surrendered before they could do any real damage to us.
As the two mechs -- what we thought were two mechs -- boarded our ship, we set off the pulse.
The android went down immediately. But the other one turned out to be a cyborg -- much more machine than human, as far as we could see, but enough biology to withstand the electromagnetic pulse that disabled everything else.
Gregor stumbled when the pulse went off. He has enough circuitry inside to make it tough on him. I suppose all replicants do. I was the one unaffected, or minimally affected, which is what Gregor predicted.
I should have taken care of the cyborg. If I had, Gregor would still be alive. But we'd rehearsed it so that I was the only one left standing, and my job was to disable the android before it could come back online and fuse itself. I noticed the Russian cyborg struggling on the floor of our ship, but I went straight to the android, figuring Gregor could take care of the half-breed.
I heard the machine gun behind me. When I turned around, I saw Gregor stumbling back. His weapon fell across the floor. The cyborg had one non-electronic arm, with an old-fashioned machine pistol integrated into it. All mechanical, nothing to fritz out in the pulse. He really did a job on Gregor. Looked like he cut him in half. Gregor's gun fell to my side, and I immediately dropped the android and picked up the gun. I charged the cyborg as he turned his arm on me. I knew Gregor was dead. I was pretty angry about it. I assumed I'd be dead in the next minute, but I wanted to take the cyborg with me. I pushed through the spray of bullets and pressed Gregor's gun to the cyborg's face. He had a patch of flesh and bone showing under the exoskeleton. I pressed the pistol into his scarred flesh and shot away his jaw and cheekbone. He lowered his arm, but he didn't stop breathing. I tried to pry off his helmet, but I think it was secured directly to his skull. I settled for putting the gun in his mouth and aiming upward. One eye focused on me before I pulled the trigger. That helmet kept everything in, but Gregor's gun scrambled his brains.
For some reason, I wanted to put the gun back in Gregor's hand. I think I passed out before I could reach him. Next thing I knew, I was here. One of the attendants told me I've been here a month.
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