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Chapter 1
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He didn’t wake up. To wake would suggest that he’d been sleeping,
when he’d actually just sort of become aware. It was as if someone had flipped
a switch and he started processing information. First came a vague awareness
that startled his mind into a heightened state of activity. Then, a feeling of
increased urgency expanded from the diminutive depths, as if he’d suddenly
forgotten something important. He tried to open his eyes. Nothing happened.
System diagnostic running.
These words appeared amid the black void of his thoughts. A few
moments later, various diagnostic windows flashed, and a status report
appeared.
Warning.
Low-power mode.
Less than 30 percent of power remaining.
Recommendation: Deteriorating power cell should
be replaced for optimal performance.
Configuration update required.
Please wait . . .
He frowned, or at least tried to, but nothing happened, which
instantly made him want to even more. He couldn’t feel anything. He couldn’t
even open his eyes, but he’d seen the status windows, so he wasn’t blind. His
racing thoughts went into overdrive. He tried to move—first his arms and then
his hands. Nothing. He felt the urge to inhale, but it was only an urge—just a
longing to take a deep lungful of sweet, precious breath—and it wasn’t
happening.
He couldn’t breathe and wondered why he wasn’t gasping. He should
be struggling to breathe, but he wasn’t, and his thoughts flatlined. He
wouldn’t panic. He was awake but couldn’t move or feel . . .
anything. There was no kinesthetic awareness to indicate whether he was lying
down, strapped to a chair, or dangling in the air.
Not a good sign.
Maybe someone had drugged him, and he hadn’t fully awakened yet.
There were drugs that could induce paralysis, and maybe they were wearing off.
He tried to remember the last thing he’d been doing. Had he been hurt?
Medication to block pain receptors could explain a lot, including the
paralysis. Where was he? He felt another urge to frown, remembering what it
felt like as his eyebrows knitted together, his gaze narrowed, and his jaw
tightened with the gritting of his teeth, but as he commanded his muscles to do
those things, they just sort of . . . stalled, as if there was
something blocking his muscles from actually moving.
Veris initiation complete.
System startup complete.
Autonomous mode has been activated.
Limited storage available.
A small image appeared in the void that surrounded him. He focused
on it, and the image rushed toward him until the void disappeared. He was in a
dreary room with smudgy, broken windows and long, thick cobwebs, and he had the
impression that he was sitting. He looked down to a crusty, dirt-laden floor.
Howling winds gusted from outside, sending layers of dust swirling into a lazy
cyclone. Scummy residue trailed a path from the broken windows to the ground.
Across from him were charging stations that housed different-sized humanoid
robots. They were covered with a swarthy, crumbling shell that must have taken
years of exposure to accumulate. These remnants of abandoned robots were all
offline, without any indication of power.
He glanced down at his legs, and his thoughts screeched to a halt.
His legs were gone! In their place were thick, metallic legs with an intricate
set of connectors and actuators running to his feet. But they weren’t his
feet; they were something else. Each foot had three large, elongated toes and a
broad, thick heel. They shifted, seemingly of their own accord, as if their
range of motion was being tested.
He jerked backward at the movement and heard the mechanical whine
of actuators fighting against their restraints in a cradle unit. Looking down,
he saw that his chest was broad and comprised of overlapping plates that flexed
when he moved. A whitish-blue power source glowed from between the plates.
There was a series of symbols on his left side, and after a few seconds, a
translation appeared on his internal heads-up display.
Agricultural Unit – 92.
Repairs have been completed, and the unit
is cleared for duty.
Something disconnected from his back with a snap-hiss, and he
slumped forward. The table he’d been sitting on dropped down and became part of
the wall. As he landed on his feet, he saw the metallic toes spread and adjust
to keep him standing. He flailed his arms for a few moments, trying to keep his
balance. Everything felt uncoordinated and slow. He tried to move his head, and
the movements were jerky, as there were actuators in his neck that hadn’t been
moved in a long time.
The one thing he knew for sure was that he hadn’t been drugged. He
felt as if he was remotely operating a mechanized unit for the first time,
except that there was no system lag. Was this someone’s idea of a joke?
Self-diagnostic?
The words appeared on his heads-up display—HUD—and he initiated
the command.
Cannot run self-diagnostic now. Still
restoring backup from remote storage. Please wait . . .
Thanks for nothing. That wasn’t very helpful. He was apparently
stuck in an agricultural unit, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do.
This wasn’t funny anymore. Why had he thought this could’ve been a practical
joke? His mind was functioning much like his current body, like neither had
been used in a really long time, but his mind suddenly began to race with an
all-compelling need to remember.
He needed . . .
He needed.
He . . .
Partial data restored.
Veris restore procedure for
the consciousness transference protocol has enacted emergency protocol number
736 in accordance with the Veris mandate of
preserving core Personality Matrix Construct into the system.
He read the message again. “Consciousness transference protocol”
stood out amid the amber lettering on the translucent window. Consciousness
transference . . . His consciousness had been transferred, and
something was trying to restore it from backup. Someone was restoring him
into this machine.
He tried to bring up a command menu on the HUD.
Identify.
The system response puzzled him. It had just restored him, so
shouldn’t it already know who he was? He froze there, his thoughts racing as he
tried to make sense of all the information coming at him.
I’m a robot? No, not a damn robot! I know
who I am.
He repeated that thought over and over again.
I know who I am.
I know who I am.
I. Know. Who. I. Am.
He glared at the system prompt that showed its last query in
dispassionate amber lettering.
Identify?
A surge of hope coursed through him as his name pierced the veil
of confusion surrounding his thoughts.
“Quinton Aldren,” he said, his voice sounding slightly modulated.
He tried to clear his throat—which he didn’t have—and repeated his name.
“Quinton Aldren,” he said, much more clearly this time.
Identification confirmed. Partial
restoration of Personality Matrix Construct has confirmed the viability of the
individual in this unit.
Quinton reread the message with an increasing awareness that he
knew about Personality Matrix Constructs. PMCs were
human-consciousness-to-machine interfaces. He tried to remember more, but the
information just wasn’t available. He was sure he knew more about it,
but something . . . He looked down at his body and understood.
A quiet hum came from a maintenance drone as it sank slowly to the
floor. Its spherical chassis had multiple appendages, some of which looked to
have been torn off, but one of them reached in his direction. Its power
indicators went dark, and the drone was dead.
Quinton felt a second presence snap to existence in his mind. It
was as if someone had just appeared next to him, but nobody was there.
VI interface initiated. Designation—Radek.
A virtual intelligence should be able to help him out.
“Radek, are you online?” Quinton asked.
“Diagnostics are still running,” Radek said a few moments later.
“Diagnostics complete. Virtual Intelligence Designate Radek responding.”
“Excellent. Now, maybe you can answer a few questions for me. Why
have I been restored into this agricultural unit?” Quinton asked.
“Emergency reactivation protocols were initiated,” Radek replied.
Quinton felt as if his thoughts were wading through a muddy
barrier.
“Radek, putting my consciousness into this agricultural unit
violates PMC protocols. It shouldn’t have worked, even under emergency
conditions.”
“Personality Matrix Construct’s standard operating procedures were
overridden.”
“By whom?” Quinton asked.
“Information is unavailable.”
“Unavailable . . . how’s that?” Quinton paused for
a moment, trying to strangle his growing irritation with the useless VI. He
glanced down at the maintenance drone. “Were you in control of this drone?”
“Affirmative. It was required to transfer the Energy Storage
System to Agricultural Unit 92.”
“You’re telling me that I’ve been stored in an ESS, which you then
stuck in the chest of this agricultural unit—a damn garden robot,”
Quinton said.
More of his knowledge became available. It shouldn’t have worked.
PMCs required a high level of haptic capabilities in order to avoid
malfunction. The PMC was a way of preserving his consciousness, requiring that
he feel human, or else—
“Your summation of the events is an oversimplification,” Radek
replied, and Quinton could’ve sworn the VI sounded a little agitated.
“Not from where I’m standing.”
“Per emergency procedures, I found the best solution given the
constraints I was called to deal with,” Radek said.
Quinton looked out at dark gray skies through the shattered
remnants of what had been windows. He was in a garden storage shed for service
bots. He didn’t have any idea where he was, and he certainly didn’t know why he
was there. He needed Radek’s help if he was going to figure out what had
happened. He needed the VI’s cooperation, but VIs could be finicky. They
weren’t sentient, but they could be singularly uncooperative if given the right
motivation.
“It sounds like you did the best you could,” Quinton said. “How
long did you have to search before you found this body?”
“One hundred eighty-seven days, fifteen hours, and thirty-three
minutes.”
Oh crap, Quinton thought. Radek seemed to sense
this, but Quinton reminded himself that VIs couldn’t read minds.
“The ESS was in a critical state and in danger of imminent
failure. Use of this agricultural unit was the only option.”
Quinton didn’t doubt what Radek said. If Radek had searched for a
hundred eighty-seven days to find a suitable host for his PMC, then he was in
danger.
“Where are we?”
“Unknown.”
That’s great, Quinton thought. Radek
was just as much in the dark as he was.
“Is there a governing body we can contact?”
“Negative. There are no settlements with active inhabitants that
I’ve observed.”
Six months searching and no one to contact. Quinton glanced out
the window at the ash-covered landscape and then looked around the room. This
planet had suffered some kind of disaster. A readout on his HUD showed that the
atmosphere was still breathable, meeting minimum requirements to survive—not
that breathing air was an obstacle for him in his current form.
Quinton tried to recall why he’d been uploaded into a PMC and
stored in the first place but found that he couldn’t remember.
“Radek,” Quinton said, “my memory access is restricted. Is the ESS
intact? Was it damaged?”
“The ESS is undamaged and fully intact. However, because of the
limitations of the agricultural unit, you have limited access to the ESS. This
is required so you can fully utilize the unit the PMC is currently housed in.”
Quinton took a few steps across the shed, then turned and paced
back to the other side. Each step he took demonstrated more confidence as he
learned the capabilities of the agricultural unit. There was significant risk
involved with a PMC being loaded into a less capable machine. PMC degradation
would occur if the consciousness inside lost its connection to being human.
Quinton tried to feel whether he was losing himself and then shook his head.
How was that supposed to feel?
There were several loud pops as something slammed into a nearby
building. Quinton spun around at the noise and glanced toward the maintenance
drone on the ground. There were gashes cut into its sides, and several of its
limbs were missing.
“I must advise you that there are hunter mechs currently searching
for you,” Radek said.
A new pathway engaged in Quinton’s mind, and he had access to new
data stored in the ESS. “Hunter mechs! What do they want with me?”
“The hunter mechs are specifically tasked with destroying PMCs.”
That couldn’t be right. Nothing about this situation was right.
Quinton heard something crash from within a nearby building. “They
must have control units. Can’t we override them?” Quinton asked, stepping
toward the door as he tried to engage the communications systems of the
agricultural unit.
“I advise against that,” Radek said quickly. “They can detect open
comms signals. These units have been pursuing me for many days. I already tried
an override command, which didn’t work. Those systems are locked out from any
comms unless they’re coming from whatever command central gave them their
instructions in the first place.”
That made the hunter mechs no better than mindless drones. Why
would they hunt PMCs?
“Radek, I need access to your analysis of those units if I’m going
to decide how to deal with them. If they’re just basic mechs, I should be able
to disable them.”
“Data is available, as you requested.”
A report appeared on his HUD, and Quinton accessed the log data.
There wasn’t anything like a detailed analysis, and Radek had been severely
limited in his capabilities while operating the maintenance drone. His top
priority had been to preserve the Energy Storage System that Quinton’s
Personality Matrix Construct was stored in, which was all fine and good, but it
meant he didn’t know what he was facing, and they were getting closer to his
position.
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Copyright © 2020 by Ken Lozito