Toy Wars (38 page)

“Unenhanced, my units would fail against the combined force of Isp’s followers.
Intelligence and sentience remains a great tactical advantage.”

“Enhance them, then.
Make them as smart or smarter than the traitors.”

“Up to this point, I have not had the capabilities.
The unit you call
Isp
, Teddy 2513,
was the pattern for all of the units that now control the surface of this valley.
He was the only model for the Tedium that I had.
All attempts to procure another source have failed.
Teddy 2513
precipitated these events when he was liberated by the units his own mind had created.”
My hydraulic pump almost stopped
—
my
own son had caused this disaster and was leading the mutiny.
Golden Isp was the unit Six and I
had
enhanced with my own fluids.

I must have stood there for several minutes realizing that this could probably be traced all the way back to some failure within me.
Six laid the guilt at my feet.
I picked it up, w
ore
it like a new fur covering.
The only way I could expunge that onus was to correct it.

“Well, you have a prototype now.
I suggest that you use it.”

“Affirmative.”

Heretic

It took four weeks to
prepare
.
Limited was a generous description of
Six
’s capabilities
.
Making the brain transfers could only be done so quickly.
After about the sixth withdrawal in the first day
Six called a halt
to the extractions
when I failed to respond to one of its commands.
It took me four hours to recover and be functional again.
I didn’t even realize that I had been asleep.

Despite replacing my sump fluids with raw semiconductor liquid, Six and I realized that
reabsorption time was zero.
Between us, we decided that one withdrawal a day was the most my system should tolerate.

It
wa
s not difficult to see that once the original units saturated their sumps with the
T
ed
d
ium after five days, they could
also
be used as donors.
Fortunately
,
the
exponential
curve
non-linearly
self-limited
b
ecause
Six only had
8,008
units to be converted.
The speed of Teddium transfers were limited by
Six’s facilities.
Even at top speed Six could, working around the clock, only perform about 800 full
transfusions
per day.

Six activated units
as soon as they were implanted with my brain seed.
Each
unit
was given a task to keep it busy and mentally grow until the entire force
finally began to think for itself.

In parallel with the seeding process, w
e kept track of
and tested
intelligence and performance of each individual unit.
It became clear early in our testing that
teddy
units were
near the top in
intelligence.
Unsurprising
to me,
the elephant’s mental faculties were almost at the bottom of the
bell curve and
none ever gained speech.
Six offered
a theory
that sump size and shape had a great deal to do with the intelligence of a unit.
Six commented that further experiments would be warranted after the surface was controlled.
I fairly ignored this train of thought as there was too much to be done just getting ready to tak
e back what was rightfully ours, much less controlling the surface of the entire world.

Through this setup time I worried about Sancho.
I knew he was tough enough to keep anything natural on this world at bay, despite the brains of a rock, but the religious fanatics above me were another matter.
If they thought about searching for him, after my abrupt disappearance, then he would die.
He couldn’t hope to stand up to the entire clan and their modified hydraulics.
I worried but knew I had nothing to offer, so, hypocritical as it sounds, I prayed to the Humans to keep him safe.

At the same time I missed his silent company and felt crowded by
all the units
that
mingled about.
I couldn’t turn around without having
a unit
trying to engage me in some conversation.
I realized at that moment that you could be as overwhelmed with units as you could be lonesome for another unit to talk to.
I longed for one elephant and
the open spaces.
Just the
mental
pressure of all these sentient units
drove my
processor into fits trying to find some way out of the situations.
What I wouldn’t give for just another week by the
Mercury
Sea
, recharging during the day with Sancho lying next to me and walking through the cold, silent air of the night.

I took refuge in being Six’s assistant in the transfers.
It was an unnecessary task, but it kept me alone and sane.
Six
’s company
was
more than enough
for one obsolete
teddy
unit.

Finishing the task of modifying and preparing the units couldn’t happen fast enough for me.

By the time the last unit had saturated and had been equipped, thirty
-four
days later, I was exhausted, my batteries no longer holding a charge longer than a few hours.
Six monitored my decline and took the time to replace all of my batteries.
The experience
i
nvigorat
ed me
.
At the end of the installation I would have taken on
Factories single-handedly.
Little frail
Isp didn’t stand a chance.

Six and I had a less than quiet argument, out of the hearing of any other unit.
We had just finished the testing of the last enhanced units.
As soon as the unit had left the room, Six spoke.

“We are now ready, Don Quixote.
All our units have been augmented.
I am now going to self-destruct all of Isp’s followers.”

“What?
You can’t do that, Six,” I said incredulously.

“But they are malfunctioning.
Any we leave active would deplete current resources.”

“But they are not robots anymore.
They have feelings.”

“Feelings will not fulfill our mission.”

“But they are alive,” I said, slamming down the clipboard I had been using to write notes upon.
“Just like me
.
I am no longer just a collection of hydraulics and electronic circuits.
I am more than what you created.”

“That is not a factor
that
matters to the original programming.”

“Programming be hanged, Six.
These units are sentient, alive
,
and I will not have you just deleting them like an errant memory.
Killing is wrong.”

“They will destroy current resources.”

“Some of them will be current resources, Six.
I told you that not all the units agreed with Isp but were rather coerced by his apparent power.”
Six was silent for several moments.

“You cherish this life I have given you, don’t you, Don Quixote?”

“Well, yes, I do.”

“You value the life of those units I have created, even if they would deactivate you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I find this contrary to the logic of your own programming.
Perhaps I need to update
—
”

“You are not poking around in my head any more than you already have!
It is not right to kill those units without a good reason.
Give me the opportunity to bargain with them.
If Isp’s power is no longer all encompassing, I believe you will have even more units than you do now.”
More silence.

“You would risk your own existence to save their lives?”

“Yes, because it is the right thing to do.
Every unit has worth, and not just as a pile of raw materials.
They are the sum of their experiences and feelings
—
something
that
has no material equivalent, but at the same time is much more valuable.
”

“I give you command of this mission, Don Quixote, who used to be Teddy 1499.
Success is the only outcome I will accept.
I leave it in your hands as to how you succeed.”

Over the net
,
Six ordered all units to the main chamber.
There they stood, very much like the first day I saw them.

“1499, I believe we are ready.”

“I agree, Six.
Time to address the troops.”
I got a sick feeling as I realized that all the units here were my children.
Six had given them a body and I had given them a brain and soul.
I would soon be sending my children to their deaths against their own kind and then against those units of other Factories.
What cost was there to stop a war
—
to stop death?

“To all you, sentient units of Six, and children of mine.
We are about to embark on a most difficult mission.
We need to persuade the disloyal units above that they should surrender instead of die.
It will not be easy.
I will plan this so not a single one of you shall be at risk.
I will take that onus.”
I could feel the tense excitement of the crowd.

“If I survive, I will lead you into a battle to put an end to the violence tearing at the very fabric of our world.
But even if I should die, I expect the entire assembly here to unite with units of 55469 to claim this planet for you and your children.
There will be no more war on this planet!”
A cheer rose from the assembly.
I knew I had reached them and whipped them into a frenzy.
This was now a religious war
—
a jihad.
Each unit out there was as fanatic about this cause as was I
and those above
.

That very night, final preparations began in earnest.
Units scrambled to mate with their squads and there to make certain their
new
equipment
operated as designed
.
In spite of the current of excitement, o
nly one of Six’s units had to worry about imminent demise
—
namely me
.

Should things go awry, Six would self-destruct each of the units on the surface.
It would take too long to save me, if I failed.
I would be nothing more than a memory
—
like that of three units I carved on the inside of that cave so very long ago.
I just hoped I was remembered as fondly as I treasured those three
—
Jeffrey 177 and 178, and Elly 5998.
They were the ones who taught me the value of our existence and I would always thank them for the sacrifice they made.

Bright and early the next morning, I rode the elevator up
alone
in silence.
Voltages fluctuated throughout my distribution net
.
I decided that courage is doing the right thing when you want nothing more than to put hundreds of kilometers between you and the danger.
You can’t be courageous if you aren’t afraid.

The audience chamber
remained
much the way I had left it save the body of the guard was gone.
The dried remains of hydraulic fluid still stained the floor
orange
where it had lain.
I had wondered briefly if Isp would have it retrieved.
I never doubted they would find it.
I walked out of the hall to find not two, but eight guards on the entrance.
I was not surprised when they each leveled a weapon at me before I even got out the door.
Three of them still carried M16s, but four were carrying spears of the same kind of metal they were using to assemble the
Wrath of Humans
and the final one had a crossbow.
I carr
ied
nothing that could even be construed as
a weapon
, for doing so
would
have
be
en
foolish.
The only weapons I had were my mind and my tongue.

“Come with us,” said a bright green
teddy
.

“Gladly
.
” I said, not giving even the smallest trouble to these stout guardians
,
nor would I in the future
.
Eight to one odds are not good even if I
were
fighting hydraulically unmodified units and they didn’t have the drop on me.
Six’s programming left out a m
artyr
complex
.

“You four take this one to Isp.”

The sun seemed bright after so many days of being down in Six’s caverns.
As four of the teddies led me through the maze of scaffolding
,
our route lined with units. They jeered. Several threw rocks until the guards growled at them.

They continued to yell obscenities in my direction.
We m
ount
ed
100
meters of steps to the top of
Wrath of Humans
, where Isp supervised the construction of his pet project.