Toy Wars (23 page)

I ran for nearly eight hours before I stopped, at the summit of one of the tiny hills that made up the valley.
My gyros and hydraulics
both fought desperately
to dissipate the heat they had accumulated.
I must have been alive again.
I could feel fear
as my voltage spiked
.

Neither t
he grenade
n
or the few slugs from my M16
could have severely damaged the Factory
.
It was probably buried behind sturd
y
stuff
. Even failing that it surely had backups
.
I must have stunned it into rebooting.

Back down in
the valley
dozens of
teddy
units mounted balloon-tired, whip-antennaed racecars barely larger than their riders.
Even with their burdens, the cars rooster-tailed dirt out behind them as they leapt forward.
They
reached speeds of 40 kilometers per hour and unerringly came directly at me, even though not one of them had seen me take cover. They pursued me
like a…well, like an animal.

How could I get away?
There seemed no way I could.
Those racecars were doing, even loaded, about
50
percent faster speed than I could manage even if I pushed every system in my body to emergency limits.

My mind raced faster than even the cars.
I looked around for an answer.
It might be a cave or anything
that
could hide my signal.
That was it
—
my signal.
With 55474’s CCT I broadcast
ed
a “friendly” signal over the net.
They
tracked
the signal I generat
ed
on their own net.

I could switch to my normal CCT and broadcast an “enemy” signal, but that was no good either.
What if I didn’t broadcast any signal?
I would become, as far as any
unit cared
, a biologic.
I didn’t think 55474 would be fooled by such a trick.
It would assume that I had done that, as much as I had shown it I could change CCTs and just start a search with my last coordinates as the center, but it would buy some time.
I turned off al
l the CCTs and moved as
rapidly away from my last coordinates
as possible
.
Even as I did so, I doubted that with all the resources 55474 could bring to bear that I would be able to escape in this way.

My sump still pumped frantically for
a plan.
The Humans must have looked out for me as
the solution jumped into my head.
It didn’t grow.
It didn’t form.
In one clock cycle I had no idea, and in the next it was as clear as new hydraulic fluid.

Below me was a river.
Not the river
that
had been my nemesis before, but a significant tributary.
If I could get into the river I would be swept away faster than I could run, or better yet 55474’s CCT could be swept away, just in case
Four
had units it could coordinate farther along the line of the river.

A
t a dead run
, I unslung my combat pack and dug through the little
bit of fur
where I
had wrapped
the
Nurse Nan
tool ring.
I look
ed
frantically for the proper wrench.
It didn’t help
that it was the blasted tool at the very end of my search program
.
I immediately went to work opening the s
ide panel on my neck.
My arms jostled up and down in time with my feet hitting the
ground
. It took writing an algorithm to move my arms counter to that of the motion.
It didn’t matter much
because
when I got the panel open, I couldn’t see to
remove the correct
CCT.
I don’t know what I had been processing.

At the same moment, I turned radically, running down the hill at a dangerous speed toward the river.

I knew it would be a close thing.
If I could make the river before the cars crested the hill, I might
survive
.
As I ran, I once again dipped into my backpack and pulled out
one of the spare
batter
ies
.
I had to be ready or this wouldn’t work.

T
he cars careen
ed
down the hill, barely in control, but even faster than I remembered.
If I only had five more minutes it would be a sure thing.
As it was, my processor couldn’t decide if I was going to win this race or not.

M
y heat sensors edged dangerously past redline for the last hundred meters
to the river
.
The acrid odor of scorched hydraulic fluid permeated the air, but this was the least of my worries.
The racecars
and their riders
were hot on my trail.
I had won the foot race, but would I have enough time?
I fell down onto the ground near the river and tore
back
open my neck panel.
I worked frantically from my reflection in the silver of the river.
I could see the tertiary CCT and I ripped it out with no thought of the consequences.
Wires snapped and I felt tiny discontinuities and shorts, but
I could ill afford
fastidiousness.
I made the fastest wiring job in history, connecting the battery in my hand to the CCT.
As soon as I felt the signal,
I stuffed the board and as much of the wiring as I could into a tiny plastic bag and
heaved it into the swiftly flowing current.
I watched it tumble over in the river and flow rapidly out of sight.

The cars, less than
500
meters from my position, swerved to follow a much different course.
More cars mounted the summit, pouring over the top of the tiny hill like reverse flowing mercury
—
and a
ll of them angled away from me
by at least half a radian
.
They were now chasing a ghost and ignoring a simple simulated biologic sitting next to the river.

I must have
heavily
damaged my circuits
. Overloads and
commands
chased themselves around until
my processor rebooted
.

Wanderer

Consciousness seeped in slowly like a
gradual realization that I was getting input and processing it.
The
nearby river roared most prominently. The fresh smell of moistened earth and the slippery feel of being coated in mercury spray nudged into my processing queue
next. Body sensors started firing off data one by one…

I started, sitting straight up. Looking around wildly I saw no units of any kind in range in spite of expecting the muzzle of automatic weapons ringing me.
The hunters took the bait, all of it.
I sighed with relief.

My internal
clocks told me that some fourteen hours
had passed
and m
y body
expressed
insistent concerns over its wellbeing.
I did some quick checks and discovered that I would survive, even if my battery power
edged well below nominal. Several
minor and intermittent shorts
filed into the repair list as did m
y
scorched
hydraulic fluid.

Taking them as read, I could no longer replace
my power
from
55474’s net
,
and
I had no fluids, hydraulic or otherwise. That only left the shorts as something I could work on immediately.
My internal sensor pointed
to
all the damage in my neck area
as a direct result of t
earing out the CCT
.
Using the mercury as a mirror again, a gaping void lay where the tertiary CCT would sit.
Several multicolored wire strands waved feebly about
in the stiff breeze
,
causing tiny electrical arcs.

My
medical
tools came in handy again.
I cheered my own ingenuity in taking them.
I took my time to coat each of the errant bare wires, six in all, with
nonc
onductive sealant.
Overlaid with the concentration of the first aid
,
a weighted sense of failure came over me.

W
ith my primary mission shot, I guess
ed
it was time to return to Six.
Six
couldn’t hope to stand up to the might
of 55474.
It was a lost
cause
.
W
ould returning to Six be considered suicide or duty?
I couldn’t really think of either.

Did Six stand any chance if I returned now?
Could I return to 55474 and try again?
Failing that, could I destroy 55474?
No.
No.
No.
I was beginning to hate that word.
It pointed even more harshly to my inadequacy.
For three hours I sat there worrying on the problem that always ended in my own deactivation.

I had an epiphany.
There was a long chance.
There was at least one more Factory out there because of the battle where I had 55474’s units repair me.
If I could try again to talk sense into that other Factory, Six would still have a chance in two against one.
55474 would be outnumbered if this other Factory had any semblance of the military machine I had seen fighting 55474.
It was
my only chance to stop the carnage, much less survive.
My i
nternal locator
pointed off in the direction of this possibly mythical third Factory.
The possibilities of redemption were meager but almost none is much better than zero.

For six days I trekked,
constantly looking over my shoulder for pursuit.
Nothing showed.
55474
and his minions had been completely duped.
It
might be a
short-lived victory as power
levels had fallen below
safety.

This was a problem I had anticipated but wasn’t expecting quite so soon.
Ongoing computations still didn’t have a means for
charging my systems yet.
My memory held 674
different methods of generating electricity but they all required huge apparatuses surrounding a pile of transuranic materials or large quantities of wire sp
inning
at a large number of radians per minute in a strong magnetic field.
I rummaged through my backpack to see if perhaps there was something, anything that would be useful.
Nan
tools, knife, extra ammunition, grenades, CCT of the Factory I was looking for, and a lot of batteries.
Batteries?
Hmmm.
That gave me a possible solution for the interim.
Swapping out my batteries would give me some time.
The same ones I
had
ghoulishly stole
n
from the dead
teddy
probably contained nearly a full charge.
That was only a temporary solution
as I
was bound to be away from an accessible wide area net for quite some time.

I mentally reviewed my power diagrams.
Each of my thick thighs contained dozens of batteries with which to run my internal systems.
The batteries were good for nearly fifty hours
of
peak use or, as I had recently found out, seven days optimax use.
Filtered energy conversion panels on my broad back and each of my rather large ears recharged the batteries.
The flexible panels were hidden underneath the fur.
The filters were tied directly into the CCTs to fine-tune the power and command reception.
I reached up with one of the
Nan
tools and
carefully
removed my left ear.
There was enough supplemental wiring to allow me to bring it out in front of me.

The metallic silver
of the
collectors set ensconced within the deep translucent
black quartz of the tuning filters surrounding them.
I wondered if I could retune the filters by hand.
The power converters slipped easily out of their quartz sheaths.
As a shock, my system began to register power
generation
.
I hadn’t done anything but I began to receive power anyway.
The amount was tiny
—
it trickled in, but it was power nonetheless.
I slipped the filter back on the energy panels and the
amperage
dropped to zero.
I pulled it back off and the trickle of power registered again.
I turned the panel around until the power
maxed. It pointed directly east.
I could only assume
an
untuned
net concentrator lay
in that direction.
It would do for the time being.

I reconnected my ear and began to work on the other one.
The other ear was off
and filter removed
in
minutes
.
The sun was setting but I didn’t care.
I worked as well by starlight as by daylight, but I began to notice a decrease in the power being fed to recharge my batteries.
By the time the sun completely set the incoming power
ceased
.
I could think of only one theory
that
fit this group of facts and it didn’t involve an untuned NC, but rather the conversion of the rays of the sun to usable energy.
Morning would tell for certain, but I needed to be busy.

By
midnight
I had filters off all the power panels on my body, even though working with the parts on my back
challenged me in a way
I don’t recom
mend even for the most intrepid contortionists.

I still had plenty of power for the rest of the night so I decided to push on.
As the sun began to peak over the nearby hills
to the west
, I found power trickling down into my batteries from my ears and back.
It barely suppor
ted
current operations.
If I continued, I would have no power available for night operations.
After mulling it over, I could only see one good solution and it was in two parts.
One, I needed to recharge my entire battery system.
As low as it was, one good rain shower and it might have been the end.
Second, I would have to travel at night.
I couldn’t keep my panels optimally
positioned
to the sun while trying to set a course
. I
would sit unmoving during the day and power up.

I programmed my systems to move so as to focus the maximum light upon the panels during the day
even if I shut down cognitive functions
.
To conserve energy even further, my program shut down all other systems, including my consciousness.
Thus, I became nocturnal.

It took me six days to recharge all my batteries.
I can’t explain
how boring it was to do nothing, so I watched the
stars revolve around me and wonder
ed
what it
would be like
away from the bounds of this planet.
They taunted me with their freedom. I wanted to be with them, roving around the cosmos.
It seemed to be a pipedream.
How could I aspire to such heights when I couldn’t yet even save my Factory?
Even if I did,
Six would
n’t
spend any res
ources on such a fanciful notion
.
I tried to program the stars
and their movements
into my inertial locator
;
it didn’t respond
.
This puzzled me.

I took a quick review of the path I’d taken but found my last six days
absent from my
locator’s memories
.
It responded with data to any query, but that data always
showed the same position
, that of
F
actory
55474
.
Somehow
,
the solid state locator’s function and memory were nonfunctional.
In essence, I was lost.

The last two nights of charging
I spent in despair.
I’d come so far.
I’d overcome such obstacles.
Why did the Humans have to put another hurdle in my path?
I would have to find a way to navigate.
If I were completely honest with myself, t
he answer already struck me in the processor, but I first had to purge the self-pity.

The stars
and moons
would guide me as they had Human seagoing vessels for centuries.
E
ach night as the sun would set in the east I would mark its spot against some high mountains.
As the sunset cleared off, the stars peeked out to greet me.
The first night I found
a point of light
that moved not at all through the darkness.

P
resumptuously of me, I named the star Polaris
, th
e polestar
. The d
irection of the rotation of the stars was east and toward Polaris was north.
This gave me my compass to keep track of my journey.
Tracking the placement of the three moons with respect to the horizon also gave me a tight positional fix
down to within about a hundred meters
.
Together they weren’t
as exact as my locator but it would have to do
—
besides
who needed to know where they were to the nearest millimeter.
On the seventh night, my batteries full, I resumed my trek
using my new navigation scheme
.

Within two days t
he terrain
got
increasingly rugged
. With the mountain ridges blocking off the last hour or more of daylight,
I no longer
received
a full charge during my day. The first few days the amount registered only intellectually. Over a week later, deeper in the mountains, more and more light evaded my power cells each day. Each day my reserve dipped lower.

During the travel I
contemplat
ed
happiness
.
I
always looked forward to one of two things
—
either
I had just won a victory, or I had a Factory to converse with.
Right then I felt
an absence of happiness.
Not a negative amount, which would translate into sadness, but just a lack of something
that
had been a part of me for so long: being nurtured by Six.