Robogenesis: A Novel

We must face the fact that every degree

of independence we give the machine

is a degree of possible defiance of our

wishes. The genie in the bottle will

not willingly go back in the bottle, nor

have we any reason to expect them

to be well disposed to us. In short . . .

we can be humble and live a good

life with the aid of the machines,

or we can be arrogant and die.

—NORBERT WIENER, 1949





BRIEFING


And now the story begins for the last time.

We return to the scarred plains of Ragnorak where the New War ended. In the stupendous silence of war’s aftermath, Gray Horse Army regrouped. The traumatized survivors began to march back to Oklahoma, unaware that deserted weapons were still hunting the snowy wastes, their minds severed from the control of Archos R-14.

And of course, the beast itself still lived.

In the last moments of war, a pulse shuddered away from the grave of Archos R-14. An earthquake—its heat and pressure rippling like a muscle twitch across the great white flank of the Alaskan peninsula. Its patterns were laced with hidden data, coded instructions that infected remaining hardware with unknown purpose.

I witnessed a blind, eyeless head push out of the snow. An abandoned stumper, raising a long, wavering antenna, tasting the air. I had never seen one alone before. It was soon joined by others, explosive hexapods emerging onto glittering ice. Arranging themselves in dots and dashes, a kind of living Morse code, they foraged in fractal patterns until they found a dark mound, half buried in the snow. Massive, sloped, and still, it was the burned wreck of a spider tank.

The stumpers danced. With feelers and feet, they tapped messages to the sleeping spider tank. Archos R-14 was sending a message from beyond the grave: instructions. Soon, the tank’s dark round intention light faded up to a dull red. With a groan, the weapon rose up and set out in the footsteps of a soldier called “Bright Boy.”

—ARAYT SHAH





1. HUNTED


Post New War: 2 Months, 7 Days

As the main force of Gray Horse Army departed Alaska, self-styled “hero” Cormac Wallace stayed behind to write a war diary. Joined by his fellow soldier and companion Cherrah Ridge, these last two soldiers made plans to reunite later with the main column. This proved more difficult than anticipated. Although Archos R-14 had been defeated, its killing machines still roamed.

—ARAYT SHAH


NEURONAL ID: CORMAC WALLACE

The walker that’s hunting us must have been on fire at some point. I can smell the singed flesh of the monster on the wind. Melted wires and baked steel plating. A kind of toxic smoke that clings to the back of my throat no matter how many times I spit.

Funny what becomes familiar after two years.

“This is it,” I say to Cherrah. “It’s almost on us.”

Cherrah shoves a strand of hair out of her face. Those lips that I have kissed so many times are cracked now, bloodied by the cold. “We can make our stand at the tree line,” she says. “Dig a foxhole, set up the shelter, and camouflage it. From a blind we might have a couple of extra seconds to disable whatever-it-is.”

The war has beaten Cherrah nearly to death, but it’s also chiseled away the soft parts. We killed Archos R-14 two months ago, and those of us who lived are strong. Even so, none of us is stronger than metal.

“And if things go wrong, we’ll be stuck,” I say.

“We can’t outrun it,” she says, nodding at her leg. The bullet was a through-and-through but it tore the muscle. She’s still healing and will be for months. Until she does, we’re moving deadly slow on foot.


I nod in agreement. There’s not energy for much else.

Leaning into it, I drag the heavy mesh net that contains our supplies. We cut this netting off a dead spider tank buried in a snowdrift and kitted up on leftover supplies. That and the occasional deer might be the only things that save us. After I transmitted The Hero Archive onto the wire, we had to abandon what we couldn’t carry in our rush to catch up to Gray Horse Army, including our black box.

We nearly made the rendezvous, but the woods had other plans.

Now we’re looking to find a good spot to set up an ambush. Hoping our tracks don’t make our little plan obvious to whatever is coming.

I don’t know why we’re still being hunted. I don’t know whether Archos R-14 is still alive somehow or if it’s talking to this thing or if it’s on its own. It’s hard to guess how smart the machines are, but a good rule of thumb is that they’re always smarter than you think.

“Cormac,” says Cherrah. She is standing alone in the clearing now, leaning on a slender walking stick to keep the weight off her shot-up leg.

I turn to face her, sweat rolling down my forehead.

“I’m sorry,” she says, gesturing to her leg.

Not what I want to hear. I turn my back to her and keep straining to drag this burden. I don’t want to see her like this. We keep each other warm at night, but she’s also my brother-in-arms. I can’t abide weakness in her.

Her weakness is mine. And we have to live.

“I slowed us down,” she says. Her voice sounds thin and far away in my ears, competing with the pounding of blood in my temples and my own heavy breathing. “We would have caught up with the column if it weren’t for me.”

After a couple of steps, I pause.

“No,” I say. The word feels heavy and true, like the swing of a well-balanced ax. Turning, I see the despair in her weather-beaten face and I put on a grim smile to counterbalance it. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have any reason to catch up with the column. Now come on, soldier. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

I haven’t seen it yet, but the burned-up Rob that’s been stalking us for the last few days is advanced. Definitely a late-war variety of killer. Probably a mantis. As far as I can tell, Archos half-designed the mantis walkers to map remote terrain and half-designed them to kill any humans who made it this far north.

I know these things because of the smell of burning.

The newest machines didn’t use actuators anymore. No motors at all. Instead, they had real muscles. Carl, our brainboy, said their muscle fibers were made out of electroactive polymers. Give ’em juice and the tough plastic will flex just like real muscles. When the machines walked, those polymer slabs quivered on impact, hanging from titanium bones.

The worst part about it was that you couldn’t shake the feeling that you were watching a living thing. When that first stuttered column of mantis tanks came sprinting out of the tree line, blazing across the Ragnorak Intelligence Fields, meaty legs swinging, clawed feet gouging the ice, and each one throwing up a spray of dirt and exhaust—well, it was like prehistoric monsters had been let loose on the battlefield.

Lot of guys lost it, seeing the new machines move so graceful. They were too much like animals for comfort. It’s hard to describe. Their movements trigger a part of your brain that recognizes innate beauty—the grace of a leaping deer. But you’re looking at a machine. Not alive, right?

It’s their living grace that shakes your faith in what’s natural.

And if you do manage to slice through those black ropes of muscle, nothing but salty water sprays out. No crimson gouts of blood. Just an easily replaced conductive black fluid. We could slow Rob down, but we could never stop him. Not without fire. Burn the muscle, stop the machine.

Using a folding trowel, I begin to dig a foxhole.

Digging in this part of Alaska is tough, but not impossible in early autumn. I scrape snow and tree bark off the layer of half-frozen soil beneath. Wedge all that muddy ice into a rim that faces the clearing. Getting through the next layer is when the sweat really starts to flow.

I stop when the foxhole is just big enough. There isn’t a lot of time left. Besides, any deeper and I’d start to feel like I was digging my own grave.

It takes Cherrah and me a few minutes to get the tent up. It’s a low hexagonal dome, patched too many times to count. Dirty white, it matches the snow as well as we could hope. The entrance faces the clearing, Cherrah’s arc of fire centered on where I figure the wind is blowing the smell from.

Somewhere not far from here, a quadruped walker is mechanically trudging over broken terrain. It has a hunting instinct as constant as gravity. Whether it is tracking us by our heat or our sound or by satellite signature—it doesn’t matter. We can’t outrun it, but maybe we can surprise it.

Maybe, if we’re damned lucky, we can finish it off.

Cherrah lowers herself into the camouflaged shelter. Shuffles around until she lies prone with her rifle pushing out of the tent mouth. From a distance, the setup looks like a tree hollow covered in dirty snow. Even from a few meters away, I can barely see her in there. The smoke-tainted wind blows in and the tent sways gently.

“You good?” I ask.

“Perfect,” says Cherrah, voice muffled.

“We’ve got twenty minutes max. Probably ten. Be ready,” I say.

“Affirmative.”

I stand in the snow outside the tent for another second. Now is when I’m supposed to head off to my own covered position. But as it turns out, I’m finding it tough. That tent is so little and the fabric is paper-thin and what’s coming is so goddamned big.

“Be . . . safe,” I say to the mound of snow.

It is quiet for a long moment.

Then the tent flap flutters open. I catch a glimpse of Cherrah’s face inside, behind the machine-gun sight. She loudly kisses her gloved hand and then wiggles her fingers at me. Her cheeks puff as she blows the kiss my way. Down low, I see that her ungloved right hand is steady, still wrapped around the grip of the heavy-caliber machine gun mounted on its bipod.

Yeah. That’s my girl.

“Get into position, Bright Boy,” she says. “Shoo.”

I hear the high-pitched crack of broken timber first. Then the groan of a falling tree. Pine needles rip like Velcro through snow-laden canopies. Tons of snow and hardwood are collapsing out there in the white waste. Not too far away, because a billowing cloud of frozen water vapor is avalanching into our clearing, low and swirling and growing like mist.

No targets yet.

I’m halfway up a tree, across the clearing. My ass is wedged in the crook of the trunk and the barrel of my rifle is resting on a frozen branch, aimed at a spot of woods that is dancing with shivering, swaying treetops.

As the New War went on, every new Rob variety seemed bigger. By the end, a typical mantis walker was the size of a small house. Often, they were loaded up with more machines, quadrupeds folded into space-saving forms so they could be unloaded for scouting or mapping or whatever else Big Rob was doing out here in these woods. If the war hadn’t ended, I don’t know how big they might’ve gotten.

I’m sure this bastard won’t disappoint the imagination.

Nothing to see yet, but the rolling mist is full of sound. Tree limbs snapping like starter pistols. Thudding footsteps and the raw-edged squeals of tree trunks peeling away from a chest hull. And the rasp of my own breath in my ears, loud like I just ran a sprint.


I pick up a lighter sound behind all of it, faint. A high-pitched clacking. Faster than the walker’s gait could allow for. Quick like a sewing-machine needle. Legs that belong to something smaller and faster than this monster.

Each flare of my nostrils lets in the strong scent of burned muscle fiber. Cherrah’s machine-gun nest is quiet and still. She is burrowed, coiled inside the tent at the tree line like a rattlesnake. Waiting. This part feels like it’s taking forever, but when the shit comes it’s going to come fast.

I flinch as a bullet barks out of her nest. A puff of snow from the rifle kick and a side-vented wink from the jerry-rigged flash suppressor.

Something big and fast is coming in from the mist.

Now I hear an engine groaning deep and mechanical, while some other actuator on it screams like a hurt animal. Four legs slashing through swirls of snow vapor. And a baleful red light glowing at the heart of its dark bulk. The light streaks up and down in wavering tracers of crimson as the thing gallops forward.

I set my jaw and do what I do best.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

My shots and Cherrah’s. Measured trigger pulls. Semiautomatic but sending each bullet out with its own intention—its own violent destiny. Entering the clearing, the walker lightly jars a two-hundred-foot pine tree and sends it wobbling crazily back and forth like a stick of bamboo.

The red glow is an intention light. This must be one of our own spider tanks gone rogue. Brainwashed by Archos R-14 in those last minutes before Big Rob ate fire. No wonder it’s damaged. All of our tank column took heavy fire in those last moments. Only the hopeless cases were abandoned before the march home began. But this one has been resurrected somehow. It’s covered in singe marks and shining gashes, as if the whole thing got burned up and then run over by a lawn mower.

Now it’s in the clearing. Our bullets snapping off its armor. A couple of rounds bounced harmlessly off the hull plating, but now we’re zeroing in. Hitting the joints up high to try to disable a limb. Sending our kinetic energy toward the familiar stubby instrument mast on top, loaded with radar and lidar and, oh no, the signature Z-shape of an acoustic tracker.

Oh f*ck, oh no, oh no, oh no.

It’s one of ours and I know this equipment. The tracker registers bullet signatures and triangulates the sound to pinpoint sniper locations. It’s a nifty device, best used against other humans, but now it’s been turned against us. The thing will have pinpointed Cherrah’s camouflaged position and mine by now, but Rob is methodical and I know it’ll go for the larger-caliber threat first.

Snapping on my rifle safety, I let go of the tree.

I hit the dirty snow on my feet, pain lancing up my shins. I get up and get moving while I’m still seeing stars. Clawing, thighs pumping, pushing myself up and across the clearing toward our nest. The rogue spider tank is on a beeline for Cherrah.

“Hey, you, f*cker!” I’m shouting. “Hey, over here!”

The turret rotates my way but the legs keep pushing tons of cold metal toward the spot where Cherrah is lying helpless in the snow.

“Get out!” I scream and hear the ragged desperation in my own throat. The sad knowledge that it carries with it. Our nest is already in the shadow of the spider tank. There is no way for her to escape.

I keep running anyway, thoughts fast-forwarding through my brain. First rule of engaging Rob is to stay on your toes—got to stay moving—but Cherrah has a hurt leg and we had no way around it. We did what our old comrade Nine Oh Two would call “maxprob for survivability,” but it was no good. I knew it wouldn’t work and now she’s going to die fast, trampled to death, and I’m about to take a shrapnel spray to the face.

The knowledge doesn’t stop me from screaming. This acne-scarred kid, a hell of a war-fighter named Lark Iron Cloud, used to say that if you don’t die screaming in this war, then you’re f*ckin’ doing it wrong.

At least I’m f*cking doing it right.

The tank is directly over top of Cherrah now. The intention light casts a bloodred shadow over the camouflaged tent. That short turret is homed in on me but not firing yet—and now I hear it. The high-pitched clacking from before. It’s coming from the woods. Smaller quadrupeds. And it sounds like a swarm of them.

I slow down and look over my shoulder.

The clacking is the sound of retractable claws catching on the dirt and snow and propelling a wolflike quadruped robot forward. Every leap has the tink of vicious claws dropping back into place. Slipping engages the talons mechanically and it must be a good design, because they’re coming so fast over rough terrain.

The turret stops tracking me and the whole spider tank gets still like a dog about to take a piss. I know what this means and I dive forward as the tank coughs an explosive shell out of its turret. The round whizzes over my head and to the tree line, where it detonates. Dirt plumes into the air and a puffy cloud expands. I hear the whiz as shards of metal and tree and rock spray into the woods.

Click clack—the next shell autoloads.

The impact of the falling debris vibrates through my hands and knees, buried now in the cold snow. I’m under the tank, crawling fast as I can. A gloved hand is reaching out of the hole as Cherrah struggles in the machine-gun nest. Above us, the groaning undercarriage of the spider tank sways, missing its mesh belly net. Only a dirty, featureless plate of armor presses down.

The smell of burning plastic is intense.

“Cherrah,” I croak, pawing through the dirt. I grab hold of the tent entrance and yank it wider. She is half buried and tangled up inside.

“Rip it, Cormac!” she shouts, muffled. “I can’t get out.”

She’s inside, still okay. There’s a chance. I rip the entrance of the tent open wider. But the clacking sound from the woods is getting louder. Coming from all around us now.

The slab of metal overhead abruptly lowers. The spider tank is squatting. That armored belly is all set to grind us into the dirt. Another shell explodes. The turret grates as it spins around. Searching for targets.

“Hold on to me,” I say to Cherrah.

But I can’t get her arm. It’s wrapped up in the collapsed tent. All I can feel is her hair slithering between my fingers. The steel belly of the machine presses into the back of my head and knocks me onto all fours.

“Pull, goddammit!” shouts Cherrah.

Clack clack clack.

My fingers close in on a solid handful of hair, and I pull. It hurts me to do it but there’s no choice. Cherrah is screaming in pain and I can feel roots snapping, but it’s working. She’s kicking and scratching her way out of the mouth of the tent. Finally, she slithers out of the nest on her stomach toward me.

“Sorry,” I say, backing up on all fours.

“Roll,” she gasps, looking over my shoulder. The walker is still dropping, squatting over us, lowering the solid bulk of its stomach down like a press. Both of us are on our hands and knees now and there’s not enough space to even crawl. Cherrah collapses onto her stomach and rolls.

Metal screams around us. The spider tank is bunkering. On its knees now, the machine drops four armor-plated shields over its legs. The plates fold out and hit the snow and form a wall that surrounds us.

“No!” shouts Cherrah.

Darkness closes in. My breathing is loud in my ears now as the sheer deadweight of the armor-plated monster keeps coming down. The tank hull connects like God’s finger between my shoulder blades and I’m pushed flat onto my stomach. My chin digs into the snow, nostrils blowing dirt and water into my eyes. I hear Cherrah squirming, whimpering in the blackness. Strands of her hair are still webbed in my fingers.


“Cherrah,” I gasp. “You okay?”

Now my cheek is pressed into the ground. I can’t even turn my head. I feel the bulk of the beast hard on my back, my ribs digging into the freezing dirt, compressing the air out of my lungs like a bellows. My breath is hot in this sliver of space. In and out, a shallow wheeze. In and out.

I hear Cherrah’s voice in the claustrophobic darkness. “Cormac. Okay.”

My eyes adjust to the dim light filtering in at the seams of the bunker armor. Rotating painfully on my stomach, I see a dark shape a few feet from me. Cherrah’s face is pressed against the frozen slush, one eye open and aimed at me. She is grimacing and breathing in gasps. I feel something on my hand, warm and questing. Fingers. I squeeze her hand with everything I’ve got just to know we’re together at the end.

Clack clack clack. Boom.

Something big hits the bunker wall near my feet. I wince as the air is torn by the scrabbling, chalkboard screech of metal on metal. More light streaks in and I hear the tortured sound of heavy-gauge metal armor bending. I inch closer to Cherrah.

“What the hell is that?” I ask over the racket.

I can’t turn my head to see what it is but her eye is wide, looking past me. Blue-white daylight is filtering in from outside. It puts a television glow on her scarred face, and I see now that her fear has turned to resignation.

“Quads,” she says. “Trying to get in.”

The turret outside rotates quickly, the grinding movement sending shivers through the titanic bones of this machine. It vibrates my whole body into the mud and suffocates my grunted curses.

I see a flash of claws, digging at the bunkered leg beyond Cherrah. Metal talons stabbing at the seam between armor plates, prying and levering the metal. The ripped armor plate gives way and I see pure daylight.

“Watch it,” I say as a crooked black forelimb reaches inside behind her. It spasms back and forth, grasping for flesh. The retractable claw is twisting and slicing in a frenzy, inches from Cherrah’s defenseless back.

A staccato drumroll of bullets rings from outside. The burned-up spider tank is autofiring in short salvos. It must have rigged up some way to actuate the M60 heavy-weapons platform mounted above the turret. It can’t have much ammo left, which is the reason for the quick bursts. I hear bullets spatter off metal.

The scrabbling attack stops and the black limb slips back outside through the hole.

“Why are they fighting?” I ask, my jaw aching against the ice-cold dirt. Freezing steel presses against the other side of my face. Both sides are going numb.

“Quads were flanking us. Knew our positions,” whispers Cherrah. “This frigging spider tank probably just saved us from an ambush.”

“That’s impossible,” I say.

Spider tanks are hybrid human-Rob machinery. They fire standard munitions scavenged from anywhere—National Guard armories or army bases or human outposts. The high-tech, muscled legs are stolen from mantis walkers, but the tank itself is dumb. Only rudimentary thinking abilities. The best of them are smart enough to get out of the way, provide fire support, maybe bunker up when under attack. Most of the rest are about as smart as construction equipment.

Autonomously engaging a pack of quadrupeds while protecting two humans? Impossible. I can’t believe it.

Another inch lower and we’d be crushed to death. The machine must simply be too stupid to finish us off. Maybe it thinks we’re already dead. Or it’s torturing us. Or who knows, maybe it doesn’t think at all.

“Let’s go,” I say. “Out that hole while we still have the chance.”

“And the quads?”

“We’ll deal with them if we live.”

With that turret-mounted M60 firing up top, loud as hell, I doubt the machine can sense us. I wriggle forward, inching toward the light. I’m praying no more quads reach in or else I’ll have my face torn off. My outstretched fingers walk through churned mud. Rocks and roots tear at my bruised rib cage as I squirm forward.

I push my rifle out through the ragged tear in the spider tank’s bunker armor. Then I poke my face out. The grind of the rotating turret is loud over my head, but the instrument mast is hopefully mounted too high to see us down here. I wriggle out into the bright snow and get onto all fours, squinting at the bullet-torn clearing.

A fleeting black shape darts through the woods. A final quad is milling around the tree line, waiting for a chance to get closer and make another attack.

Cherrah’s dirty face appears in the fold of armor. I put a finger to my lips. Reach down and haul her out. Black hair streaked across her face, she squints and blinks into the daylight. Still bunkered, the spider tank holds its position next to us. The turret is pointed the other way, tracking a blur of motion just beyond the tree line.

We both flinch as a final rattle of bullets rips into the trees. The quadruped, hit by the flurry, bounces off a tree root and makes a run at the tank. It’s on three legs but still fast as frostbite, coming at us with sharp forelimbs up and pawing.

I fumble with my rifle, try to get it up. Get a bead and pull the trigger. But the safety is still on. Nothing happens. The quad hunkers down for a killing leap. And then Cherrah fires her sidearm, hitting the wounded machine in a seam exposed by its leap and sending its body down in a loose jumble.

Grinding and hissing, the spider tank starts to unbunker itself. Those actuated armor leaves fold themselves up into position for walking. I grab Cherrah’s arm and she holds on to my shoulder. Together, we stumble toward the tree line.

Behind me, I hear the armor finish retracting. A power surge hums as the machine stands up to its full height. The turret rotates its grinding eye toward us.

Silence.

Only the slush of our footsteps through pockmarked snow. Cherrah and I slow down and look at each other. Her face is a map of despair.

“Don’t stop,” I say, pulling her forward.

I turn and face the tank. It sits still, watching us both. Cherrah keeps moving and I let her get out ahead of me.

“What?” I shout at the tank. I put my arms out. Feel the sting of blood returning to my face. “Go ahead, finish us!”

But the tank does nothing. With a sluggish click, the intention light goes from red to yellow. Click. Then from yellow to green.

The tank squats back into a relaxed stance.

I keep backing away in small steps, arms still out. Feeling out the ground behind me with the heel of my boot. At twenty meters, the tank takes one step forward. I keep moving away, and it steps forward again. Maintaining a set following distance.

It’s like a dog, obedient.

Another step back and I bump into Cherrah. She wraps an arm around my neck to steady herself. Points at the tank.

“Cormac,” says Cherrah. “Right rear quarter panel. Under the dirt and carbon. Do you see?”

I squint. Writing. Some kind of word on the side of the damaged tank. And it’s in a familiar scrawl. Abruptly, I remember painting it myself on the warm tallgrass prairie outside Gray Horse. It was a beautiful day, a million years ago. I was shirtless, hanging off the side of our brand-new friend with a paintbrush in my hand. A grin on my face at the magnificent piece of equipment we were going to pilot into the New War. I was so proud of our spider tank that I even gave him a name.

“Houdini?” I ask, and my voice cracks.