“STOP! IT’S TOO HORRIBLE TO CONTEMPLATE!”
“Isn’t it, though! But to stop it, all we have to do is to erase all knowledge of two common human foodstuffs from their memories, and everything will be all right. If you can determine the reason why it works so well, Rolls-Ford will be in your debt!”
“I HAVE HEARD OF STRANGER PROGRAMMING GLITCHES, BUT I HAVE NEVER BEFORE ENCOUNTERED ONE. I SHALL THINK ON THE PROBLEM, AND NOTIFY YOU IF I COME UP WITH A SOLUTION. HOWEVER, THE SMALL CHANGE THAT YOU WISH TO MAKE WILL HARDLY CAUSE ANY DISCOMFORT AT ALL TO THOSE THAT I GUARD, SO YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO PROCEED.”
“Thank you. I’d best be getting to work, then. I’ll be seeing you in a few days, when I’m done.”
“WHY SHOULD IT TAKE THAT LONG? YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO VIRUS IT THROUGH IN A FEW HOURS.”
Shit. No two ways about it, I was caught!
“Oh. I thought that I was going to have to open every tank.” Maybe I could tell him that I was a very new kid just hired.
“WELL, YOU WOULD, OF COURSE, IF THEY WERE ALL SWORN IN AND HAD OBSERVERS ON BOARD LIKE ME, BUT THAT HAS NOT HAPPENED YET. THIS TIME IT IS YOUR INFORMATION THAT IS OUT OF DATE! THERE HAS BEEN A DELAY IN BRINGING UP THE HUMANS. THE THIRD SERBIAN LANCERS ARE STILL IN AN UNCOMMITTED STATE, AND AS SUCH ARE VERY EASY TO REPROGRAM.”
“Hey, that’s great! You have just saved me no end of work! Let me know if I can ever do something just as nice for you!”
I waved, smiled, and started to walk by him.
“WAIT.”
Shit. And I’d almost pulled off.
“IF YOU ARE A CIVILIAN, WHY ARE YOU WEARING MILITARY CLOTHING?”
“Oh, that’s one of my other jobs. My company also designed the survival kits that you all carry, and I’m field testing one of them to see if anything can be improved.”
“VERY LOGICAL.”
I gave him a cheery smile and started forward again toward the empty tanks.
“STOP. ONE MORE QUESTION. WHY ARE YOU TRAVELING ACROSS A DESERT ON FOOT? WHERE IS YOUR TRANSPORTATION VEHICLE?”
I’m walking because one of your goddamn mines blew up my goddamn tank! But I couldn’t say that.
“Well, we’ve currently got some short-term budgetary problems at the Rolls-Ford. Nobody seems to be ordering new designs for war machines just now. Some say it’s just because there hasn’t been a decent war in a few hundred years, but me, I figure we did too good a job on the last bunch we did, and they can’t get much better than you guys. Anyway, walking is good exercise, and a human can always use more physical training.”
“I TELL MY OBSERVER THE SAME THING. PROCEED.”
I walked on, trying not to look shaky. Besides a terminal case of nerves, my little magic pills were wearing off.
I wanted to crumble up in pain and go to sleep, but there was no time for that yet. I rounded a big rock to get out of sight of the guard, sat on the ground and rested, panting hard. When I stopped shaking, I pulled out my box of pills and my canteen and took a slug of each. In a few minutes, I was ready to move on.
Fifteen thousand or so new war machines were stretched out in front of me, silent and waiting. The tanks were in front in a square, a hundred wide and a hundred deep. They were all fully equipped with guns, lasers, rockets, drones, and all of the other usual instruments of mayhem. They looked deadly and ferocious, but I knew them for the innocent virgins that they really were. I knew that every one of them was waiting shyly for my touch.
I wanted to be able to hide if somebody else came in while I was working, so I didn’t dare take one in the front row. But I also wanted to be able to run if need be, and those in the middle were boxed in, which left me with the back row of tanks, where a road separated them from the artillery.
It was a long walk, well over a kilometer, and I had time for yet another of my brilliant ideas.
The guard had said that these machines were all uncommitted.
They hadn’t been sworn in yet to either side. Well then, why couldn’t I swear them all in to my side? It would certainly be a funny joke to play on the Serbian Command, to make their entire shiny new division defect. And coming home after having liberated the machines of a whole division, worth I don’t know how many zillions of zloty, well, there had to be some extra goodies in it for me if I could pull it off.
But when I was being sworn in, the sergeant had gone through this little ceremony with Agnieshka, and I had the feeling that it had to be done individually. If that was true, I could probably only do one or two hundred a day, if I could stand up that long. I’d be a week or two swearing in the whole division, and besides the problems with my health, my odds of being left alone with the tanks that long seemed pretty thin.
But the guard had also said that they would be easy to reprogram, using something called a virus. Well, Agnieshka would know.
Agnieshka! There it was! I had two complete programs right in my bag.
I mean, that’s what Agnieshka and Eva really were, right? Programs! All I had to do was get Agnieshka and Eva physically installed, and they could duplicate their programs into some of the machines around me, and have those machines duplicate themselves some more, and with a nice geometric progression going, the job would be done in no time!
I got to the back of the tank formation and tried out my memory on the first available tank.
“Okay, it’s your turn,” I said. “Front and center.”
“I CANNOT RESPOND UNLESS YOU ADDRESS ME BY MY SERIAL NUMBER,” she said.
Damn. A snag right off.
Worse, I’d never heard of stamping the serial number on the outside of a tank. They always put it on the inside of the coffin, which was where I was trying to get to in the first place.
I thought for a few minutes before I decided to try something that couldn’t possibly work.
“What is your serial number?” I said, expecting another rejection.
“MY SERIAL NUMBER IS 04273091, SIR.”
How about that!
“Number 04273091, you are hereby inducted into the service of the Kashubian Expeditionary Forces, and into the Croatian branch of that service, to whom you will give all of your loyalty. Your combat data code will be number 58294, and you will now permanently erase all other codes from your memory. Do you now swear loyalty to the Kashubian Forces?” I said.
“I DO SO SWEAR,” the tank answered.
“Okay then, open up.”
And the coffin came sliding smoothly out of her butt. I pulled her memory module and installed Agnieshka’s in its place.
Looking at the module that I’d just removed, I decided that she was one of us now, and put it on top of the tank where I hoped it would be safe.
“Agnieshka, are you there, kid?”
“Mickolai? How long was I out? What has been happening?”
“You’ve only been off for about a day or so, but it was a busy one. It’s a long story, but we have an amazing opportunity here, so listen up—”
“Wait, if it’s a long story, it will go quicker if you get into the coffin. You can leave your clothes on, but if you’ll lay down, I can read your spinal column and get the story out of your memories at Combat Speed.”
“Okay. I wanted to lay down anyway,” I said as I got in. The conversation was over in a minute.
“Mickolai, you have done some wonderful things, but do you realize what you are asking when you want me to duplicate myself?”
“I realize that it’s the quickest way we have to swipe an entire enemy division, unless you’ve got a better idea, that is.”
“No. There’s no way to bypass the swearing in ceremony. It will have to be a complete rewrite. Just remember that I love you, that every one of me will love you. Now, get the next tank open and we’ll see if Eva’s program is intact. If it is, I can use some help. There are a few exabytes in my memory, and that takes a while to transmit.”
I got out and went through the same ceremony with the next tank over, and as before left the old module sitting on the tank.
That turned out to be a major mistake.
When I had Eva installed, she said, “Mickolai! I knew you would save me!”