S: How did you convince him to go with you?
R: I slipped something into his drink. He got tipsy and needed my help to leave the bar. But he was sober again by the time we reached the woods.
S: Was he cooperative?
R: He needed some persuading. After a while he admitted he knew Adam Armstrong. And then he lost it. He started sobbing and babbling and telling this crazy story about children turning into robots. It was pretty strange, Unc.
S: Did he tell you where the boy was?
R: He gave me the coordinates for a place he called Pioneer Base. But I gotta warn you, it’s probably bogus. The woods were dark and the guy was scared out of his mind. I tried to reason with him, but he kept talking nonsense. It wasn’t going anywhere, so after a couple of hours I ended it.
S: Tell me the coordinates anyway.
R: Yeah, I memorized them. Latitude 37-36-18, longitude 107-35-15. It’s in southwestern Colorado.
(Analysis of satellite images shows several newly built structures at the location. The electronic records of the U.S. Department of Defense identify the site as a prison camp and interrogation center for captured terrorists. But the records could be false documents, deliberately fabricated to hide the presence of the Pioneer Project.)
S: You’ve done well. Where’s Peterson now?
R: I hid his body in the woods.
S: Do you think the Army has noticed he’s missing yet?
R: No, his fellow officers think he’s still sleeping in his hotel room. But they’ll probably start looking for him in an hour or so.
(Conclusion: The attack on Pioneer Base must begin in the next hour.)
S: I must attend to other matters now. I believe our business is finished. You’ll receive your final payment soon.
PART THREE: Sigma
SHANNON’S LOG
APRIL 7, 05:25 Mountain Daylight Time
I don’t know if I can do this.
Okay. General Hawke ordered me to keep a log. Whenever I get a free moment, I’m supposed to record my observations and store them in my memory files. I guess the idea is that we’ll review my notes at the end of the mission, so we can figure out what we could’ve done better. Assuming, of course, we actually return from the mission.
I’m supposed to record all the facts, so here they are. Four Pioneers, including myself, stand in the cargo hold of a C-17 transport jet. Three hours ago we took off from Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado, and now we’re 40,000 feet above Canada, flying on a course that’ll take us over Greenland and Norway before we arrive at Russia’s Saratov District. The official records of the flight have been falsified to deceive Sigma; in the communications between the Air Force pilots and the ground controllers, our cargo is identified as nine hundred cartons of meal rations, all destined for the small army of American advisers who are assisting the Russian troops outside Tatishchevo Missile Base. There are a dozen other C-17s flying back and forth between the United States and Russia right now. Our hope is that Sigma will see nothing unusual about our flight and therefore won’t try to shoot us down.
General Hawke is on the plane too, along with thirty of his soldiers. They’re bustling around the cargo hold, making final adjustments to the equipment we brought along for the mission. The Raven drones are packed in crates at the back of the C-17, and we also have tons of spare parts and extra neuromorphic control units. Hawke’s team includes plenty of technical experts, but Tom Armstrong isn’t here. He decided to stay with Adam and Zia at Pioneer Base.
I’m sorry. I know I’m supposed to stick to the facts, but I have to add a personal note. I hated leaving Adam behind. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I still don’t know why he shoved Hawke against the wall—the general wouldn’t tell us the details—but I can’t believe it was all Adam’s fault. For one thing, it happened right after Zia almost killed him. Under those circumstances, can you really blame him for getting upset? And then there’s the upcoming battle to think of. Defeating Sigma is so important that it seems crazy to deprive ourselves of one of our Pioneers just because he gave the general a shove. But Hawke doesn’t see it that way.
On the other hand, I’m glad Zia isn’t with us. I’ll never forget how she went after Adam with her blowtorch. I was on the other side of the gym, in the middle of transferring from Pioneer 4 to 4A, when Zia attacked him. By the time I was fully transferred to 4A, she’d already cut through the armor around his circuits. It was horrifying. And the worst part was that I couldn’t do anything about it. I ran as fast as I could, but I was more than a hundred feet away, and I knew I’d never get there in time.
I thought Adam was as good as dead, and because my circuits are so fast, I started imagining my life without him, even while I was still racing across the gym. It was like how I felt right after I became a Pioneer, like my heart had just been ripped out of me. The emotion flooded my circuits as I grabbed Zia and wrenched the blowtorch off her arm. And it kept torturing me even after Pioneer 1A miraculously rose to its footpads. I thought, That can’t be Adam. He’s already gone.
Okay, this is getting a little too personal. Stick to the facts, Shannon.
An hour after the fight in the gym, Hawke announced that Zia and Adam wouldn’t be allowed to come with us to Russia. Hawke’s soldiers had confined both Pioneers to their quarters, and each faced serious charges under the Code of Military Justice—attempted murder for Zia, and assault of a superior officer for Adam. Neither could participate in the mission, Hawke said, because they couldn’t be trusted to follow orders and their lack of discipline would endanger everyone. Then he told the remaining Pioneers that their new commander would be Shannon Gibbs.
Let me be clear: I didn’t want to be commander. I told Hawke to pick DeShawn instead. But he argued that I was the best choice to lead the Pioneers because I seemed to have a firm grip on my emotions. He said emotions work differently in an electronic mind. Because our circuits generate thoughts so swiftly, it’s easy for anger or fear or sadness to build up to intolerable levels. That’s why Zia and Adam couldn’t restrain their violent impulses. So it was necessary to select a commander who could control her feelings.
I still didn’t think I was the best choice, but Hawke wouldn’t take no for an answer. In the end I gave in, but I made him agree to one condition. I insisted on visiting Adam before we left Pioneer Base.
When I went to his room I saw two soldiers standing outside his door. There were two more soldiers inside the room, each carrying an M16 rifle equipped with a grenade launcher. But there wasn’t a need for even one guard, because Pioneer 1A had been stripped. Adam’s arms and legs had been detached from his torso, which rested on its base in the center of the room. He still had his camera and his other sensors, but the antenna had been removed from his turret to prevent him from transferring to another machine. The soldiers carrying M16s stood on either side of his torso, and they raised their rifles as I approached. They said I couldn’t come any closer. I had to stand at least ten feet away from “the prisoner.”
So I stood there, exactly ten feet away, and said, “Adam, what happened?” But he didn’t answer. I said, “Come on, talk to me. I want to help,” but he still didn’t respond. I waited several seconds, getting more and more anxious, and then I said, “Adam, I can’t stay long. In ten minutes we’re leaving for Russia.”
After a moment I heard a strange noise come out of his speakers. It sounded like he was choking, which of course made no sense. Then I realized Adam was doing something no Pioneer had done before.