When it all started, people would get a kick out of the extra hand, unbalanced eyes, or missing fingers. Then came the day when everyone watched the pre-HL models perform tasks at nearly the same physical and mental intellect as us.
We rejoiced. The capabilities were endless. Side-by-side competitors on the track, moving that Olympic runner a split second closer towards a new record. Testing the strength of a newly constructed wall, whispering to the mason where more structural support was needed.
Then came the day when they outperformed us where we thought they never could: Thinking and growing. It should have been a turning point, but it happened so quickly, and without much fanfare, that it simply cruised by without notice like a freighter in the middle of the ocean.
Once the machines gained control, there was no stopping them. Everything was based on numbers, calculations, computations. Our emotions, compassion, empathy – all sent to the recycling center to build a better, stronger, more durable, and more sophisticated machine.
And they were built alright – with speed, precision, and complexities. Constructed and tested. Analyzed and reconstructed. Sold and serviced…until, they needed nothing more.
The 8 AM shift had just begun. Jay opened the box on the conveyor belt and turned his monitor on. The plant was busy for a Friday morning. A new shipment had arrived earlier in the week and everyone was called in to process it.
His co-worker, Skeet, hadn't come in yet. It wasn't common for him to be late, especially on a Friday morning. Jay looked forward to seeing him as his shift began. He usually walked in with a cup of coffee in one hand and bottle of water for Jay in the other.
Skeet also entertained him like no one else. He’d have a new story every Friday. Underground baseball leagues…concerts…gambling. American pastimes that were one step away from dying after the war but revitalized by people seeking normalcy in a world now controlled by their robotic clones.
Just as Jay began to scan through the details of the day’s workload, Skeet arrived. There was no coffee or bottled water. Just his usual mechanics jumpsuit and safety goggles. He took out his gloves and adjusted his screen.
“What have we got here today? Another HL-Bot? Where the heck are all these things coming from anyway?” Skeet rhetorically asked.
Jay stared at him for a moment, noting the fact that he jumped right into his work without any of his usual procrastination. “It looks like another HL-Bot. Later model.”
“Yeah? What's his story? Wait…don't tell me. Let me read here.” Skeet read through the information on the monitor but couldn’t dull the absolute brightness in his face.
“So what’s gotten into you?” Jay asked.
“Nothing much, Jay boy. Nothing much at all.” Skeet used a circular saw to make a slight incision on the near side of the cadaver’s neck. A stream of blood splattered onto his goggles as it squirted over his head and onto the concrete floor.
“You haven't stopped smiling since you got here,” Jay continued.
“I'm just glad to be working.” Skeet leaned into the work bench and forcefully tore the head from the body, exposing a small metal sphere surrounded by synthetic bones.
“Hey, careful with that thing. We get docked if undamaged parts come out of here disfigured,” Jay said.
“Sorry, pal. I almost forgot.” Skeet continued to smile even as his fingers meandered through the radioactive material cushioned between the skull and “brains.” “Look, the truth of the matter is, Jay, we’re onto something. We are onto something big, my friend.”
“Oh yeah?” Jay glanced at him for a second but Skeet kept his eyes on his work. He waited patiently for a response while dismembering the lower portion of the HL.
“And what might that be?” Jay asked.
“You remember that group I told you about? The one that meets weekly down on Lower Salisbury and 22nd?” Skeet asked.
“Yeah,” Jay replied.
Skeet continued, “Well, we met last night.”
“And?”
Skeet stopped what he was doing and turned towards Jay. “You ready to join us?”
Jay began cutting into the legs and removing them for tear down. “You know how I feel about that.”
“I do. I know, brother. And that's why I want you to come. Just one meeting. I promise you, the team is safe; the location, discreet. We've been meeting like this for months. We've got pass codes, certain knocks. You name it. They'll never be onto us, Jay. Never.”
Jay began laughing. The more excited his colleague got, the more it made him smile. Never failed. “You'd better settle down. Those guards can hear a pin drop through a thunderstorm.”
“Yeah, but that's all they've got! You ever get hungry, Jay? Do you ever feel pain? Of course not. You have this job. There’s no need to want, to envy, to crave.”
“I hadn’t thought about it much. So what? What are you getting at?”
“There’s no other surveillance here. You know that. They can’t hear anything with all of these machines at work. It’s just muffled to them. They’re still using some of our technology. They still haven't mastered that art of rebuilding.
But, I am telling you, one meeting and your mindset will change. Men telling starving sons about America’s favorite pastime. Mothers using sacks of fresh potatoes foraged from the fields out west to play house with their daughters. For a split second. Just for a split second before those sacks are torn open and devoured first by the children, then the elderly, then everyone else if there’s anything left.
The oldest of the clans sharing the most uplifting human connectedness stories I have ever heard. It always intrigues me that the person telling the story always has an endless grin on their face while the rest of us laugh and cry at the same time.
I'm telling you, Jay, the time is now. As smart as they are, they're centuries behind us on sympathy, empathy, togetherness! The time for revolution is now.” Skeet’s voice became louder as he churned with energy and excitement.
Jay continued working feverishly. “Quiet down! What’s wrong with you. Trying to get us killed?”
Skeet’s attention was turned towards the security guards. “They may have mastered how to look and act like us. But they still can't build things like we used to, Jay. Heart. That’s what I’m talking about. Heart! They don’t all have it! They just don't have the capacity to do that heart thing yet.”
“Not yet.” Jay’s tone was considerably more serious.
“Not yet but what if they did?” Skeet argued.
“What are you getting at?” Jay stopped what he was doing and pulled his goggles off his face.
“That’s what I've been trying to get to!” Skeet could no longer contain his excitement. “These HL’s. They look like us. They perform like us. Talk, walk, work, eat, drink. They’re just like us. Except for there’s hollowness inside. But Jay, there's more. Do you remember that 17-50 model they brought in a few weeks ago?”
“I most certainly do. Mid-30’s. Skinny. Sort of a clean cut guy?”
“Yeah. Glasses and all. Around 6 foot tall. Strapping fella. Good looking. Kind of like you, my friend.”
Jay stood stoically. He certainly didn't anticipate that Skeet would come in sharing something like this. He looked up at the balcony where the two remaining guards stood watch. “Tell me more.”
“That guy was onto something big that they didn't want out.”
“Our orders said he died in a transport accident,” Jay interrupted.
“I know what it said. Do you believe that? We probably have 5 transport accidents a year in these parts. He didn't die in an accident. Or maybe he did. An accident that they orchestrated,” Skeet insisted.
“Why would they go through all of that just to destroy a bot? I mean, why not just bring him into a factory and disassemble him?” Jay asked.
Skeet shook his head and smiled away, “Because they can't do that anymore. These new models, Jay. There's too many of them. And they're too good. They made them too much like us.”
Jay stared at his colleague. The sweat that he tried so hard to keep contained to his hairline began to trickle down onto the ridges of his forehead.
“Our orders said that he came in with 8 toes, right?” Skeet asked.
“I honestly don’t remember, Skeet. Wait, don't tell me…” Jay let out a heavy sigh of exhaustion. His stomach began knotting up like the coils found beneath the cadaver’s rib cage. “Don't tell me you…”
“Yes, I did. And don't worry about it. There were nine toes. They didn't want us to know that. Or maybe someone did.” Skeet nodded in approval at his own discovery and mischief.
Jay began twitching mildly, trying to keep his focus on the HL on the table.
“Jay, that guy was a teacher. Taught history. Somewhere up near Springfield, Massachusetts.”
Jay’s tone changed. His voice trembled like his hands as he carelessly stripped the legs off of the cadaver. “Now how do you know that?”
“Nine toes, Jay. I don't need to tell you how I got away with it but somehow they missed it. The diagram showed one big toe.” Skeet paused for a moment to change his tune. He eased into the next verse as if he were at Sunday mass, “There were two.”
“Okay. That's enough.” Jay began looking around. He was growing more concerned and felt as though someone would hear Skeet over their work.
“I found the chip,” Skeet finally admitted.
“I gather that. Let me guess, you found his entire history,” Jay concluded.
“Boy did I ever. Well, not just me. We. We found it, Jay. You gotta join us. Pretty soon, we’re going to be able to recruit them, Jay. They made them too good. They have feelings. Sympathy. They're learning their own history. This boy, Jay, he was a school teacher. Taught American history before the revolution, Jay. Before.”
Jay completely stopped working and now listened to Skeet’s every word.
“He had a unit on the post-Cold War Era. Americans. Soviets. Anything of importance that happened from the onset of the war to the end of it,” Skeet rushed through what he remembered.
“So? That was a part of the regular curriculum when I went to school,” Jay responded.
“I know that. But the red balloons, the Terminator, and some nosy teenage wise guy hacking into a system to play a game. They all have something in common.” Skeet spoke quickly.
“What are you talking about?” Jay asked.
“1980’s pop culture, Jay. It was a sub-unit.”
“The 1980’s. Let's see. We learned about Reaganomics, I don’t know. Other things, I'm sure,” Jay replied.
“Right. What you didn't learn about is the fear that our ancestors had, Jay. The very real fear that spells out what we've been trying to prove for years!”
Jay stared at him in disbelief. He gathered his nerves and waited patiently now for his colleague to finish.
“It was the machines, Jay. The computers. The clones. The system, Jay. They started this disaster. Not some rogue throwback terrorist. Not some general-turned-psychopath. Not some dictator-wannabe trying to forge alliances and rebuild an empire. It was the machines, Jay. The worst nightmares of our grandparents and their parents came true. But it was too late for them to warn us.
They knew it would happen back then. They made movies about it. The Terminator. A bot, Jay, just like those clunks of metal watching over this place, has to go back in time to kill some woman so that they can rule the world.
They’re the ones responsible for nearly wiping out mankind! They wrote songs. Some kids set off a bunch of balloons. A computer picks them up and mistakes them for a nuclear attack!”
“That's enough! I've heard enough!” Jay yelled.
“Jay, what are you doing? Keep it down.” Skeet now looked at him in disbelief. His eyes started to fill with tears, not at the fear of what could have laid ahead but at the sudden betrayal of his friend and colleague.
“Impossible without people programming them!”
The entire floor grew silent.
“Guards!” Jay yelled.
Both guards — earlier-model recycled HLs — ran to the table. One had a foot drag but ignored it. The denting to his outer shell couldn’t be masked like a missing kneecap. The other fumbled repeatedly for his handcuffs, only stopping when Jay turned his attention toward them.
“This man needs to be removed from the site immediately and permanently,” Jay said hastily.
“Yes, sir,” one of the guards replied. He turned to Skeet and began, “Sir, please place your hands…”
“Wait. You haven’t received further instructions,” Jay interrupted, now speaking with noticeably more control.
“Yes, sir.”
Jay steadied himself. “There’s no need to report this further. In an attempt to make some money to feed his family, he stole a measly amount of metal from this shop. He is to be suspended for two weeks and possibly reassigned to another local plant. He is not to be held in captivity. He is to return home to his family for the duration of the suspension.”
“Yes, sir. Come with us.”
Jay called out again, “Guards.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Upon leaving this room, treat him well.”
“Understood, sir.”
The guards cuffed Skeet and turned him for escort.
Skeet took one last look at what was now his former colleague… but very much his true friend. “I’m sorry, Jay. Thank you, kindly, for your mercy.”
“So long, Skeet.”
Jay turned away to wipe the tears from his face. A sudden surge of guilt overtook him with no ability to resist. It didn’t prompt him to lash out or power through the task. It drove him toward one single, irreversible act.
He tore his sleeve off, grabbed a scalpel, and made a shallow incision on the inside of his bicep.
As the guards guided Skeet through the locker doors, Jay glanced one last time at his friend before focusing on the wound. He peeled away the clotting tissue, revealing a small steel plate beneath the skin.
With trembling urgency, he pried open the plate, ripping the screws from the bone and punching in a code.
Within seconds, his eyes rolled back. He exhaled once - a deep and final breath – then collapsed to the floor. The virus he had released was terminal and its data wouldn’t be recovered here. It would require a deeper inspection, somewhere else.
**
Located just over an hour's drive from the furthest reaches of the capital's suburbs and standing flatly in the middle of 97 acres of old farmland was Building 563 at Hannibal’s Bend. Its cracked yellow paint barely covered the cinder block walls. Growing moss protected what was left of the golden paint and it was far more appealing.
There was one entrance: a solid brown metal door with a sturdy bronze handle and two keyholes for the deadbolts.
Inside, the floor was wide open with a variety of belts, machines, tables, drill presses, adhesives, clamps and saws. Stairways in each corner led to a fenced-in watchtower, complete with extra powder blue coats, hard hats, control panels and a few large monitors.
It was a 20th century plant brought back to life from a cemetery named Humanity. Normally, every one of the 38 employees would scurry about, stripping anything of use off of the HL’s and then shipping them to manufacturing centers around the world. But this wasn't your average workday.
A long boisterous buzz came over the PA system. A scruffy young man with a thick Brooklyn accent took his time walking to Station F-2. "Craig" was embroidered in cursive on the upper left hand side of his suit.
He finished zipping it up and threw his yellow helmet on. "What are we doing here at this time of night? Gallagher run out of beer or something? Money’s tight and needs to take it out on someone?”
His partner, similar in size, recently brought in as a temp for a week-long shift, scanned through the table's built-in monitor and stopped it with his forefinger. "Don't shoot the messenger. Look at the first paragraph. It'll bring some life to this place."
Craig took a second to read it. With his jaw hanging low, he stared at his newly-assigned mentor. "All brain cells including the microchips? Are you kidding me? Don't get me wrong, I could use the OT money. But, now? Why is this thing so important?”
"Apparently, one of those models that was created 35-40 years ago, before you were even born. They had some chips that were so sophisticated that they not only breathed, bled, walked, talked, cried, and smiled like us, but also thought like us. Their brain cells developed as they grew older. They retained all the information they learned, and built upon it. That was the point in making them that way. Problem is: the same people who created them began realizing that they were getting too damn smart, even for them,” his mentor said.
Craig stared at the stained grout in the tiled wall, half in disbelief. “So, what did this one do?" he asked.
“Damaged,” he whispered to himself, knowing some, but not all of the words on the screen.
"Keep reading. Gallagher says he wanted it torn apart and separated before some new recruits come in tomorrow. Who knows. But, look at the R-A control plate.” He paused for a moment to let Craig take a look.
“You know,” the mentor continued “this thing looks familiar but I can’t quite pinpoint how or why.”
“Oh yeah?” Craig asked.
The mentor shook off a flash daydream, “They damn near had a riot in England not too long ago. The newer generation of Model Rt12A's found out they were gonna be replaced with humans. I can’t quite…”
Craig looked on, confused.
“Yep. Found out they were being reintroduced into the assembly lines,” his mentor continued.
Craig stared straight ahead into his reflection in the monitor, thinking about the poor souls that were lost in the revolution. “What happened?"
His mentor seemed honest, straight to the point, but something about the H-L on the table shook him. “Hey, you okay?”
"Not sure…but you don't see any newer Model Rt12A's around too much, do ya?"
Craig looked down onto the table and shook his head. "Yeah but this isn't a Model Rt12A. So what happened to him?”
“Did you read the report?” the mentor asked.
“I'm reading it. I don’t quite understand a lot of it,” Craig answered.
The mentor was just as confused. “That's because it's not in there. The only one who knows according to my calculations, is Gallagher. And, whoever was there,” he stopped again, shaking and quivering as he stared at the H-L. “This hunk of suicidal junk was… when he committed the unthinkable. My guess, Gallagher won't say a word.”
Craig kept his distance, a subtle fear growing inside him, keeping one eye on the monitor and the other on his mentor. “So, what are… our orders, you know…” He searched for the right words. “…once we retrieve the chips?"
"Turn them over to shipping. The cells are all going off to Dallas,” his mentor replied with nothing but a blank stare.
“Dallas? That's where the graveyard is. Adios, huh?"
As soon as he snapped out of his tranquil gaze, he finished. "Yep. This one couldn't have been all that bad though. Gallagher wants to make sure his core chip goes with the cells. But the metal will be sent to Bangladesh. No questions, no mistakes. Says it’ll be used for a Reconstruction Unit 7-8-3 Asia. From what I hear, that's a new child-like clone that doesn't grow at all. The machines there won't even know what it's talking about if it recollects anything this scrapyard did.”
**
Minutes before dawn, Craig found his way back home to a sleeping wife and children while his mentor, Skeet, found his way to a once-vibrant concrete plaza next to row of tall ash trees that he had help plant years ago.
He turned his head slowly to scan the floor, then knelt down, trying to recall what was here before the revolution. It was no use. Retaining his memory from a previous life just wasn’t possible anymore. He wasn’t complex enough, but his job was done.
Having to get away from the stress of not knowing what was next, what used to be, and why the dead H-L caused him such short bouts of pain, he ran.
Passing the row of ashes, crossing a series of abandoned farm properties, and through empty fields. He waded through narrow streams, took refuge in shady meadows only frequented by wild animals, and found solace in complete isolation.
Hours away from the plant now, a slight discomfort emanated through his wrists. He was short of breath, confused…sort of… exhausted. The internal hard drive ran through a series of algorithms to determine what he had been running from. Little did he realize that a new mission was being transferred to his core as he began shutting down.
The area was scanned well in advance. No one would find him there – H-L, surveillance, or human. A short 35 miles away stood an independent village where the H-L residents began appealing for assistance from headquarters. A large band of human vagabonds were seemingly setting up a permanent encampment and too few were doing anything about it.
Once his system rebooted, Skeet would be on the move again. Hopefully this time around, any remnants of memories from his good friend Jay would be permanently lost in cyberspace. Empathy and compassion would be retained. And another name – already planted in his memory - will be what he goes by. But his mission would be the same: Take down more systems with matching intelligence. Eventually, when he and others like him have completely turned the tide, he will make his way back to his home at Hannibals Bend.
**
If you care to scrutinize a map of the developed world and search hard for the coordinates of Hannibal’s Bend, you aren’t likely to succeed. If you try programming any one of your intelligent machines to do the same, it too will fail.
But those of you working tirelessly to develop an intelligence capable of both finding it and subsequently wiping it off of such a proverbial map, need to take a deep breath and pause. It will remain underground until peace, prosperity, and human intelligence outlive man’s destructive entities that lack two essential elements of progress: empathy and compassion.
There are very few of us who know about the true capabilities of our intelligent machinery. There are billions of us, however, who know all too well how destructive mankind can be.
Perhaps, someday, when almost all is lost, and the automatons of tomorrow truly do run the world, one of the surviving humans with the intelligence, drive, and fortitude, will alter their perspective, and create a gifted warrior in our own image. One who will overcome adversity, use the nearly-universal characteristic of empathy to wage a permanent war against evil and ruin, and find something peculiarly wrong with a high-tech obituary citing 8 toes when the dead Human-Like clearly has nine. Perhaps that will be the moment when the prototype martyrs – Jay and Skeet – will be side-by-side with those who’ve already left their mark as the true leaders of humanity.
[TRANSMISSION: 601-L- Nine Toes]
CLASSIFICATION: Extreme Caution
______________________
Signal Type: Analog / Crossover Entity Feed
Status: High Alert - Possible Unidentified
Notes: Further analysis required. Proceed with extreme caution.
Surveillance Image: 601-M
Source: 1956
1:44
End Transmission