“I don’t give a shit about a few crushed cars and some motor oil. That riot is spreading. Do whatever it takes to get there and don’t bother me again with inconsequential details.”
He ends the transmission. I hesitate, as he has not given me explicit or even implicit instructions about the people struggling to free themselves from wrecked cars. His final sentence provides the only information I have that resembles a directive in this matter: do whatever it takes to get there. I engage my drive engines, broadcasting a warning through my external speakers. Some rescue attempts are underway, many of them involving what appear — based on clothing styles — to be Grangers attempting to pull urbanites out of their vehicles. I pause time and again while grim-visaged Grangers carry out their impromptu rescue attempts, freeing wild-eyed, trapped civilians who, moments earlier, had been trying to kill them.
I do not understand this war.
As people are freed, I move forward, sometimes nearly a full city block at a time. My treads flatten cars and pulverize pavements. My fenders scrape buildings as I navigate the first turn. A gun barrel on my forward turret catches a large second-story window and shatters it, then gouges out part of the wall as I back slightly to free the snarled muzzle. A woman occupant of the room jumps wildly up and down in place, screaming incoherently.
This is not going well.
I complete the turn, paying closer attention to the placement of my guns relative to nearby walls and windows and abruptly find myself festooned with downed power cables that spark and dance across my warhull. Traffic lights torn down with them swing and bang against my forward turret as a ten-block section of the city loses power. I contact Jefferson’s municipal psychotronic system with instructions to send repair crews and to shut down the city’s power grid. I am here to quash a riot, not electrocute bystanders.
The power grid goes down. Emergency generators kick in at critical facilities such as hospitals, fire stations, and law enforcement offices. Noncritical government offices and all private structures lose power, which will doubtless inconvenience seven million people, but leaves me free to tear down obstructing cables with impunity. I engage drive engines again and move forward. I am navigating the second turn when I receive another transmission from President Zeloc.
“What the hell are you doing? The whole city just lost power!”
“Critical support facilities are fully functional on the emergency system built into Madison’s power grid after this world’s first Deng War.”
“I didn’t ask for a history lesson! I want to know why you shut down the power grid.”
“I am unable to navigate streets and intersections without tearing down power cables. Electrocuting innocents is an unacceptable level of collateral damage under the current threat scenario. I have cleared rioters from this section of the Granger caravan’s route.” I flash schematics to the president’s datascreen. “The main portion of the riot will be within direct line-of-sight visual contact once I negotiate my next turn.”
“Good. When you get there, crush those bastards flat.”
“I am not programmed to crush unarmed civilians who are not actively engaged in acts of war against the Concordiat or its officially designated representatives.”
“Then crush their damned smelly pig trucks! And those rusted, run-down, sorry-assed tractors.”
This is not an economically sound order, since agricultural producers cannot produce food without the equipment necessary to grow, process, and transport it. But this order, at least, does not violate my programmed failsafes, the complex logic trains and software blocks that exist to prevent unacceptable damage to civilian populations. I move steadily forward, leaving mangled ruin in my wake. As I ease around the final turn, which brings me into Darconi Street, the sound of rioting rushes down the funnel of flanking buildings and strikes my sensor arrays with a warning of city streets gone wild. Visual scans confirm this assessment. I scan approximately eight thousand two hundred twenty-seven combatants engaged in pitched battles for control of street corners, blockaded vehicles, Law Square, and Lendan Park.
As my prow swings around the corner, becoming visible to the rioters, a sudden eerie hush falls across the urban landscape. For a moment, the only sound I hear is the wind in my sensors and the ping of traffic signals swinging forlornly against my turrets. Then someone screams. The sound is high and feminine.
“Clear the streets,” I broadcast over external speakers. “You are hereby ordered to clear the streets.” I move forward, keeping my speed to a slow crawl. A stampede begins as my treads tear gouges out of the pavement and reduce livestock transports, combines, groundcars, and produce trucks to wafer-thin sheets of metal fused to the street surface. Pedestrians attempt to scatter. My visual sensors track a crush of people caught against the sides of buildings, unable to get through doorways into the shops and government offices they seek refuge in and unable to retreat into the street which my treads and warhull fill. Radar images show me images of people being trampled and suffocated, with a ninety-eight percent probability of death for many of those caught in the jam.
I halt, waiting for the mass of panic-stricken civilians to surge into side streets, which are helping to bleed off the majority of the crowd attempting to escape. I receive another transmission from Gifre Zeloc.
“Why did you stop, machine?”
“The mission is to clear the riot. Darconi Street and Law Square are emptying at a satisfactory rate.”
“I said to crush those bastards and I meant it.”
“I have crushed thirty-nine point two percent of the smelly pig trucks and rusted, run-down tractors in Darconi Street, as directed. I have also crushed sixteen percent of the groundcars and forty-nine point eight percent of the combines, which I calculate will have a serious detrimental effect on successfully reaping the fields currently ready for harvesting, since the harvest is dependent upon equipment which has now been destroyed.”
“I don’t care how many combines get crushed.”
I attempt to educate the president. “Losing forty-nine point eight percent of the available combines translates into a probable loss of seventy-eight percent of the grain crop, which will result in substantial price increases for staples such as bread and will trigger probable food shortages before another crop can be planted, ripened, and harvested. If I continue to move forward,” I add, as an afterthought, “people will die. This includes counterprotestors with no ties to the Granger dissident movement. I have scanned the crowd and detected no weapons that are prohibited by the exclusion zone regulations. Ordering me to crush to death an unarmed crowd trying to flee violates my primary programming and would only spark further violence, if I attempted it, potentially igniting open rebellion.”