Siege (6 page)

My circuits freeze for a millisecond, as if they just suffered a momentary loss of power. There were six of us when the Pioneer Project started. Then we lost Jenny. Hawke is talking about replacing her.

I raise my steel hand again. “Have you…have you found someone…someone who's…” I let the sentence trail off. I can't finish it. But Hawke nods. He knows what I'm asking.

“Her name is Amber Wilson. She's a seventeen-year-old from Tulsa, Oklahoma, dying of bone cancer. She's extremely intelligent and ferociously strong-willed. In other words, she's a perfect candidate for us.”

The general reaches into the pocket of his fatigues and pulls out a photograph. I aim my sensors at the picture, and so does every other Pioneer in the room. It's a glossy black-and-white photo, the kind of portrait that a Hollywood actress would give away as a souvenir, and although the girl in this picture is as pretty as an actress, she looks painfully thin and absolutely miserable.

She's dressed like a goth girl in a low-cut black corset and a studded choke collar and a big, black fright wig with all the hair standing on end, as if she just stuck her finger in an electrical outlet. Her emaciated cheeks are powdered white, and her frowning lips are painted black. But one item of her outfit looks out of place: a silver chain with a pair of oblong tags, each imprinted with a name, a number, and a blood type. They're U.S. Army dog tags. I zoom in on them. The name on them is Captain Neil Wilson.

Zia notices the tags at the same time I do. She pivots her War-bot's head toward Hawke. “Sir! Is Amber related to a soldier?”

Hawke nods again. “Her father served under my command. He was a captain in the First Armored Division. Killed in action in Iraq in 2006.” His voice is even but his eyes blink a little faster. It's a sign of emotion, very subtle, but my high-speed cameras catch it. “Amber was diagnosed with cancer two years ago. It went into remission after her first course of chemotherapy, but a few months ago it came back, much worse. And in the middle of her second round of treatment, her mother committed suicide.”

He pauses while we take this in. The silence is thick and heavy. “I keep in touch with some of the families of fallen soldiers, so I heard what happened. I made contact with Amber and told her about the Pioneer Project.”

Zia raises her right arm and snaps off another salute. Out of respect, I guess. “Sir, I volunteer to assist in training Ms. Wilson after she becomes a Pioneer. I would consider it an honor.”

“That's a fine sentiment, Allawi, but you're a little premature. Right now we're focused on getting Amber ready for the procedure. We haven't created any new Pioneers in the past six months, so we have to make sure the brain scanner still works. As you may remember, it's an extremely complex and challenging procedure.”

“Well, can I talk to her before the procedure, sir? She might be feeling nervous about it, and I can help reassure her.”

Hawke pretends to think about it for a few seconds, but I know what he's going to say. The sight of Zia's War-bot is anything but reassuring.

“I appreciate your intentions,” the general replies. “But it's not a good idea. Amber's in the final stage of her illness and her state of mind is fragile. She says she definitely wants to go through with the procedure, but she's made it clear that she doesn't want to talk about it.”

Zia takes a step backward. I know she's disappointed. Her father also served in the Army under Hawke's command, and so she probably empathizes with the Wilson girl. But Zia has a hidden motive too, a secret that even Marshall doesn't know. I discovered it six months ago when Zia went on a rampage and I had to transfer myself to her circuits to stop her from obliterating my robot. As our thoughts came together, I viewed all of her memories, every incident and emotion she'd felt since she was a toddler, and in the process I learned that Zia was obsessed about Hawke's connection with her parents.

Both her father and mother died in Iraq, under mysterious circumstances, when Zia was just five. She suffered a lot in the following years, first in foster homes and then in juvenile detention centers, and even though that part of her life is long over, she still wants to know why both her parents were in Iraq and exactly what killed them. And because Amber has her own connection to Hawke, I bet Zia wants to ask her a few questions about the general.

Hawke turns away from Zia and eyes the rest of us. He's still holding the photograph of Amber for us to see. “I'm sure all of you understand what Ms. Wilson is going through, because you all experienced it yourselves. So let's give her a little space, okay? With any luck, she'll get through the procedure all right and quickly adjust. I'll let you know when I think she's ready to join the team.”

No one responds to this. Hawke is right—we all know how hard this must be for Amber—and yet his decision to isolate the girl seems wrong. He's not doing her any favors by preventing us from visiting her. He should encourage Amber to see what her future looks like, to witness what she's going to become.

The general slips the photo back into his fatigues, but I've already memorized it. In my circuits I examine the image of the goth girl from Tulsa, so frail and unhappy. I can picture her in one of the hospital beds on the top floor of our headquarters, where the brain-scanning equipment is kept. I imagine her taking off her fright wig and running her skeletal hands over her bare scalp.

Then a new thought arcs across my electronics, and the image in my memory files undergoes a transformation. The goth girl disappears and is replaced by another dying seventeen-year-old, a girl who was just as painfully thin as Amber but wore cashmere sweaters instead of black corsets and choke collars. It's an image of Jenny Harris, a memory of the first time we met, before we were both turned into Pioneers. Amber reminds me of her, because Jenny was fragile too. The thought of living inside a machine terrified her. She was sick and scared and horribly confused.

I shake my Quarter-bot's head to make the image go away. This isn't the first time that memories of Jenny have overwhelmed my circuits. It happens to me at least once a week, ever since she died. That's one of the big disadvantages of having an electronic mind—your memories never fade. It never gets any easier.

Hawke notices my movement and stares at me, furrowing his brow. Shannon also stares, pointing her camera lenses at me for the first time since she came into the Danger Room. But neither Hawke nor Shannon makes any comment. The general clears his throat again.

“I have just one more thing to say, Pioneers. There won't be any easy victories in the war that's about to start. Sigma is building up its army and preparing for a long siege against us. And when the attack comes, it'll be fierce and unrelenting. But if you stay strong and united, I know you'll prevail. I have faith in you.”

Hawke is an old-fashioned military man who believes in the power of inspirational speeches, even when they're addressed to eight-hundred-pound robots. He looks at each of us in turn, apparently trying to gauge the impact of his words. Then he bellows, “Carry on, Pioneers,” and marches out of the room.

Shannon follows him, striding close behind. Zia salutes for a third time as they leave, and Marshall lets out a synthesized groan.

I wait exactly nine seconds. Then I also leave the Danger Room. Hawke and Shannon are out of sight by the time I reach the corridor, but my acoustic sensor picks up the sound of the Diamond Girl's footsteps.

I stride down the corridor, following the sound.

I know Shannon's schedule. Every morning at ten o'clock she goes to her room on the third floor of the White Sands headquarters to recharge her batteries. It's a quick, simple operation. You just stand beside the charging station in your room and plug the power cord into the port on your robot's torso.

Recharging is how we get our energy, but it isn't as enjoyable as eating. We feel neither pleasure nor pain when topping off our batteries. Yet all five of us have come to think of it as a very private act. No Pioneer would ever recharge in the presence of another. It would be just as rude and gross as one person watching another sit on a toilet.

The recharging process takes six minutes, and so at 10:06 a.m. I march down the corridor to Shannon's room, which is only twenty feet from mine. All the Pioneers have private rooms on the third floor. Besides recharging, we use the rooms for going into “sleep mode,” which is when we shut down our sensors and most of our logic circuits. Sleep mode isn't essential for a Pioneer—you can go months without it—but I always feel better after napping for a couple of hours.

Our rooms are also where we store our personal belongings, but we don't have many of those. When Sigma destroyed our previous headquarters six months ago, we lost most of the mementos from our human lives. I used to have several Super Bowl posters and a Star Wars chess set and a whole shelf of comic books, but they're all gone now. And though I could ask Dad for new comic books and posters, I haven't gotten around to it yet. I guess I'm worried that the request might seem a little pathetic. Robots don't really need mementos. Our electronic brains have total recall.

I stop in front of the door to Shannon's room. Luckily, no other Pioneers are in the corridor. I wait until 10:07 a.m. to be sure that Shannon has finished recharging, and then I raise my Quarter-bot's right hand and clench the steel fingers into a fist to knock. But I hesitate, just standing there, afraid. I need to talk to Shannon, to find out why she's been acting so cold, but I'm also scared of what she's going to say. Shannon means a lot to me, and not just because she's my first and only girlfriend. Our relationship reminds me what it's like to be human. Sometimes I think it's the only thing keeping me from going completely crazy.

I'm still standing there when the door opens. Shannon's Diamond Girl stops in mid-stride, her sparkling hand clutching the doorknob. The video screen on her head is blank, but she's clearly surprised. Her camera lenses swivel, and for a millisecond it looks as if she might launch one of her explosive charges at me. But she recognizes my Quarter-bot, and her defensive systems stand down. “Adam? What are you doing here?”

I lower my hand. This isn't a good start. “Uh, hey. Can I come in for a minute?”

“I'm on my way to see DeShawn. To talk about his Swarm-bot.”

Her voice is brisk, professional. There's no emotion in it. She's just making it clear she's in a hurry. Shannon knows very well that I'd love to participate in any discussion about new Pioneer technology, but she doesn't offer an invitation to join them. Instead, she takes a half step forward, suggesting in her gesture that I get out of her way.

But I
have
to talk to her. “It's important, Shannon. Please?”

She makes me wait another three seconds, which is an eternity for an electronic mind. Then, synthesizing a sigh, she steps backward and lets me into the room. “Make it quick, Adam.”

I've visited Shannon's room dozens of times, so it's comfortably familiar. It's practically empty, just like my room—Pioneers don't need beds, chairs, or bureaus—but the walls are covered with photographs, mostly family snapshots. During previous visits Shannon told me the stories behind the photos and identified all the people in them: her father, mother, grandparents, cousins. They're posing at birthday parties, ball games, and barbecues. I recognize some of the locations because Shannon grew up in my hometown and we both went to Yorktown High School.

Her father is a short, round man with a gray mustache, always grinning for the camera; her mother is also short and plump, but she has long, black hair. There are photos of Shannon too, nearly all of them taken before she got sick. She's at a science fair, a track meet, a ballet class. She's a petite, dimpled, feisty girl, with her mother's black hair and her father's big smile.

My favorite picture, though, is the one that shows us together just before we became Pioneers. My father recruited Shannon to the Pioneer Project after he learned from her parents that she was dying, and we got to know each other pretty well in the days before we underwent the procedure. We had long, intense talks about illness and death and whether we'd still be the same people after we lost our human bodies. Shannon made me laugh and gave me the strength to go through with it.

In the photo of us—Dad took it with his iPhone—I'm slumped in my wheelchair, leaning against the straps. Shannon stands behind the chair, pale and almost bald, her lips bunched to one side of her face because her tumor is pressing against the nerves. But despite all the pain, she's still smiling. Her grin is lopsided but beautiful.

It occurs to me that Shannon doesn't need to hang any photos on her walls. I'm sure that all these images are stored in her circuits, where she can view them anytime, anywhere, just by retrieving the memories from her files. And yet she put the pictures on her walls anyway. I bet she stares at them every once in a while. It's a human impulse, and in many ways we're still human. That thought gives me courage.

I step closer to her. “I think you can guess why I'm here. We haven't been getting along so well lately.”

Her Diamond Girl nods but doesn't say anything. I wish Shannon would turn on the robot's video screen. She usually programs it to show the human, healthy Shannon Gibbs, the way she looked before the cancer. Over the past few months we've had several long conversations here in her room, and during those talks I sometimes stared so intently at her video simulation that I almost forgot we were machines. But that was just an illusion. Now I see the reality: the blank screen, the faceless hardware. This is what we are.

I wait a few more seconds but she remains silent. I have to do all the talking. “I don't know what's wrong. Did I say something that upset you? I've gone over all the conversations we've had over the past two weeks, but I still can't figure it out.”

“Really?” Her voice is quiet but full of disbelief. “Think about it a little more, Adam. You have lots of processing power in your circuits, so this shouldn't be beyond your abilities.”

She's right. I have hundreds of trillions of logic gates, enough to perform billions of calculations in a millionth of a second. The only problem is that 99.9 percent of my circuits are useless now because they're flooded with the random noise of fear. The emotion chokes my electronics, blocking my thoughts. I feel tight and hot and constricted, which is the same way I used to feel in my pre-Pioneer life whenever I was afraid. I get this constricted sensation when I'm in combat too, but in those situations I don't need to think a lot, because it's usually pretty obvious what my next move should be. Now, though, nothing is obvious.

Still, I make an attempt. “Well, we don't agree about everything. You like Hawke more than I do, or at least you have a higher opinion of his methods. But we're allowed to disagree, right? That doesn't doom a relationship, does it?”

“Okay, that's the key word.
Relationship
.” Shannon points a sparkling finger at my Quarter-bot and then at herself. “We've had conversations about that too, remember? About what we mean to each other and where we want to go?”

Now I'm starting to follow her thinking. Shannon and I have talked about sharing circuits. It's a logical step for two Pioneers who are drawing closer to each other. If I transfer myself to Shannon's neuromorphic control unit, I'll have access to all of her data and she'll have access to all of mine. I'll be able to see all of her memories and emotions, going back as far as she can remember. Everything will become visible, both the good and the bad, all the proud moments of love and kindness, and all the dark, secret humiliations. Shannon won't be able to hide anything from me, and I won't be able to hide anything from her. It would be a big step forward for us, exhilarating and intimate, but also terrifying.

I've shared circuits before, with Jenny and Zia, but not by choice. Those were crisis situations. I jumped into Jenny's circuits when she ran into trouble during her transition from human to Pioneer, and I leaped into Zia's because she was attacking me. A few weeks ago, Shannon asked me what it felt like to view someone else's memories, and I told her that it isn't a step to be taken lightly. The effects are irreversible. You can't
unknow
someone's secrets. Shannon was quiet for a few seconds after I said this, and then she said we should probably wait a while before we tried it. That seemed like a sensible decision at the time. Now I realize there was more to it.

“Uh, Shannon? Do you want to have that conversation again? About you and me sharing circuits?”

“No, I want to talk about something you forgot to mention before. About the second time you shared circuits with Jenny.”

“What? I—”

“The first time was an emergency. I realize that. Jenny would've died if you hadn't gone into her control unit and helped her set up her memory files. But what about the second time?”

Fear chokes me again. My first impulse is to ask, “How did you find out there was a second time?” but I don't say it out loud.

The Diamond Girl steps closer to me, so we're almost touching. “Don't deny it, Adam. Jenny went to your room at the old headquarters and said she needed more help with her memory files. So you jumped into her control unit. Why didn't you tell me about that part?”

Her synthesized voice is quiet but furious. And I don't blame her. She has every right to be angry. I feel a sting of regret that cuts right through my wires.
I should've told her. Why didn't I tell her?
But I already know the answer: because I knew Shannon would be upset that I'd messed around with Jenny.

“I-I'm sorry.”

“Jenny didn't really need help, did she? She just wanted to be close to you. And once you were sharing circuits, you saw what she really wanted. You could've transferred out of her control unit then, but instead you stayed. Isn't that how it happened?”

I wait a few milliseconds, still afraid to admit the truth. Then I nod my Quarter-bot's head. Jenny created a virtual-reality landscape within her circuits, a gorgeous digital simulation of the Virginia countryside where she grew up. When I jumped into her control unit, I entered the simulation. It felt entirely real: I could see rolling green hills on the horizon and hear the virtual birds chirping in the simulated trees. The VR landscape also included two human figures, a tall, blond girl and a short, dark-haired boy. They were simulations of Jenny and me, our lost human bodies.

I have no idea how Shannon could've learned about this. It happened just two days before our battle with Sigma. The AI deleted Jenny and all her memories before she would've had the chance to tell anyone about it. But Shannon somehow figured it out, and now I have to assume she knows everything: how the simulated Jenny lay on the virtual grass and asked if I wanted to kiss her. How her question literally electrified me, because I'd never kissed a girl before I became a Pioneer and never thought it would be possible afterward. And how the simulation allowed me to feel Jenny's lips against mine, and how wonderful the sensation was, even though it was only virtual.

“I'm sorry, Shannon,” I whisper. “I'm so sorry.” I don't know what else to say. “I shouldn't have done it.”

She steps backward very abruptly, as if she's repelled by my words. “You're missing the point. You weren't my boyfriend back then. You had no obligation to me. Yes, I would've been jealous if you'd told me what happened between you and Jenny, but I would've gotten over it.” She shakes her Diamond Girl's head. “But instead you hid it. You hid the truth for months and months. When we had that talk about sharing circuits, I asked you to tell me everything. But you lied, Adam. You lied by not mentioning it.”

I have no defense. All I can do is continue to apologize. “You're right. It was a really stupid thing to do.”

“It was worse than stupid. It makes me wonder about
everything
you've told me. What else have you lied about?”

“That's the only thing, I swear!” The volume of my voice synthesizer rises. “I haven't lied about anything else!”

My words echo against the walls of Shannon's room, but her Diamond Girl just stands there, unmoved. Her armor glitters in the silence.

Desperate, I stride toward her, extending my Quarter-bot's arms. “I can prove it to you! Jump into my circuits and you'll see! Everything else I've said is true!”

She takes another step backward, dodging me. “No, that's not going to happen. I don't want to share circuits with you now. And I don't want to be your girlfriend anymore.”

I feel like I've just stepped on a land mine. Although the room is perfectly still and nothing is exploding under my footpads, I've just lost everything. A blast of grief hits me, jolting my circuits like a pressure wave.

“Shannon…no…please.”

In response, she turns on the video screen in her robot's head. But it doesn't display the usual video of Shannon smiling and laughing. Instead, it shows her face as it looked after the cancer ravaged her. Her parents must've recorded video footage of her in the last few weeks of her human life, and now she's using those images to create this simulation on the screen. Half her face is paralyzed and her left eye is swollen shut. Her simulated lips droop diagonally as they mouth the words coming out of her robot's speakers.