Droids And Bots

Chapter 53

Anyway, this day was unusual. SAP One dropped from radio contact. When the Raptors zeroed in on his last known, he was just standing at an intersection in a residential part of town, not moving or communicating.

This is the most dangerous part of my job: recovery and repair.

What caused this?

That’s what I’m wondering, too. My first step is to review the last transmissions from SAP One. I pinpoint what looks like standard monitoring behavior. Through Sappy’s eyes, I see that he is standing at this intersection, watching a steady flow of cars snake by and scanning the retinas of pedestrians and drivers.

This data is a little funny, because Sa

ppy sees the physics of the whole situation. There are annotations about how fast the cars are moving and with how much force—stuff like that. Diagnostically, though, he seems to be working fine.

Then a bad guy shows up.

Bad guy?

Retinal match to a known insurgent. A high-value target, too. SOP calls for Sappy to apprehend and detain, rather than just catalogs last-known location. But this guy knows damn well that this will happen. He’s baiting Sappy, trying to get him to cross the street and get hit by a car. SAP is strong. If a car hits him, it’d be like someone rolled a fire hydrant into the street.

But SAP doesn’t take the bait. He knows he can’t move or he’ll put the cars in danger. He can’t act, and so he doesn’t. Gives no indication that he even saw the insurgent. Clearly, the insurgent feels that SAP requires more motivation.

Next thing I know, the screen fritzes and starts to reboot. A big gray lump streaks through his vision. It takes me a second to figure it out, but somebody dropped a cinder block on my Sappy. It’s not that uncommon, really. Minimal damage. But at some point during the reboot, SAP stops communicating. He just stands there like he’s confused.

That’s when I know—we’re gonna have to go get him.

I scramble a four-man team immediately. This whole situation is bad. An ambush. The insurgents know we’ll come to recover our hardware and they’re probably already setting up. But the local police won’t deal with broken droids. That falls in my lane.

Worse, the Raptors fail to identify any nearby targets on rooftops or in alleys. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of insurgents with AK-47s; it just means we don’t know where they are.

Are you saying that the incident was just the result of a hard knock on the head? The machine is traumatized on a regular basis and yet it has never responded this way before. Why this time?

You’re right. A knock on the head didn’t cause this. In my opinion, it was the reboot. It was like the droid woke up from a nap and decided not to take orders anymore. We’ve never seen this behavior. It’s pretty much impossible for someone to rewrite his instructions, to make him disobey.

Really? Couldn’t an insurgent have hacked into the machine? Is that what could have caused this?

No, I don’t think so. I reviewed SAP’s last month of activities and found that he never connected to anything but the base diagnostic computer. Nobody ever had a chance to fool with him physically. And if you could figure out how to hack him, you’d definitely have to do it face-to-face. SAP’s radio can’t be used to overwrite his programs, to avoid situations just like this.

And based on what happened next, I really don’t think he was hacked, at least not by these guys.

See, the insurgents weren’t done with Sappy. They dropped that block on his head just to get his attention. Only, he kept on standing there. So, a few minutes later, they got bold.

I watch this next attack go down via drone footage on the portable vid while we trucked over in the armored personnel carrier. It’s me and three other soldiers. Things are moving fast. That’s a good thing, because I can’t believe what I’m watching.

A man with a black rag over his face and mirrored sunglasses emerges from a house around the corner. He has an AK-47 in one hand, covered in reflective tape, strap hanging loose. All the pedestrians vacate the area when they spot this guy. From above, I see a bubble of civilians streaming away in different directions. The gunman definitely has murder on his mind; he stops about halfway up the block and fires a quick burst at SAP One.

That finally gets SAP’s attention.

With no hesitation, SAP tears a flat metal street sign off a utility pole. He holds it up in front of his face and marches toward the man. This is novel behavior. Unheard of.

The gunman is totally taken off guard. He fires another burst that rattles off the sign. Then he tries to run, but he stumbles. SAP drops the sign and takes hold of the guy’s shirt. With his other hand, SAP makes a fist.

There’s only one punch.

Guy goes down with his face caved in—like he’s wearing a mashed-up Halloween mask. Pretty gruesome.

Uh, that’s when I see the overhead view of our APC showing up. I look out the bulletproof sliver of window and see my Sappy just up the block, standing over the body of the gunman.

We’re all speechless for a second, the four of us just staring out the windows of the APC. Then, SAP One grabs the downed guy’s g*n.

The droid turns to the side and I see it clearly in profile: With his right hand, SAP holds the grip and with the left he uses his palm to slap the magazine in securely, then he pulls back the bolt to load a round in the chamber.

We never, ever taught SAP how to do that! I wouldn’t even know how to start. It had to have learned that procedure on its own, by watching us.

By now, the street is empty. SAP One sort of c***s its head, still wearing that wobbly riot helmet. It turns its face back and forth, scanning up and down the street. Deserted. Then, SAP walks to the middle of the road and starts scanning the windows.

By now, the soldiers and me are over the shock.

Time to party.

We pour out of the APC with our weapons at the low ready. We take up defensive positions behind the armored vehicle. The guys look to me first, so I shout a command to Sappy: “SAP One, this is Specialist Grim Bult. Stand down and deactivate yourself immediately. Comply now!”

SAP One ignores me.

Then a car rounds the corner. The street is empty, quiet. This dinky white car rolls toward us. SAP wheels around and squeezes the trigger. A single round smashes through the windshield and bam—the driver is slumped over the wheel, bleeding everywhere.

Guy couldn’t have known what hit him. I mean, this droid is dressed in Afghani clothes, standing in the street with an AK-47 slung at its hip.

The car rolls down the empty street and crunches into the side of a building.

That’s when we open fire on SAP One.

We unload on that machine. His robes and shawl and IOTV—uh, improved outer tactical vest—look like they’re flapping in the wind as bullets pound into him. It’s simple, almost boring. The droid doesn’t react. No screaming, cussing, running away. Just the flat, repetitive smack, smack of our bullets ripping into layers of Kevlar and ceramic plating wrapped around dull metal. Like shooting a scarecrow.

Then SAP turns around slow and smooth, rifle poised like a snake. It starts spitting bullets, one at a time. The machine is so strong that the rifle doesn’t even recoil. Not an inch. SAP fires again and again, mechanically and with perfect aim.

Aim, squeeze, bang. Aim, squeeze, bang.

My helmet is smacked off my head. It feels like I got kicked in the face by a horse. I drop down onto my haunches, safe behind the APC. When I touch my forehead, my hand comes away clean. The bullet b***h slapped my helmet off but missed me.

I catch my breath, try to focus my eyes. Squatting like this cramps my legs and I fall backward, catching myself with my other hand. That’s when I realize something is awfully wrong. My hand comes off the ground wet and warm. When I look at it, I don’t hardly understand what I’m seeing.

My palm is covered in blood.

Not mine, someone else’s. I look around me and see that, uh, the soldiers assigned to man the APC are all dead. SAP only fired a few times, but every round was a kill shot. Three soldiers lay sprawled out on their backs in the dirt, all of them with a little hole somewhere in their faces, missing the backs of their heads.

I can’t forget their faces. How surprised they looked.

In a distant sort of way, it connects in my brain that I’m all alone out here and in a bad situation.

And that AK-47 is firing again, one shot at a time. I peek under the chassis of the APC to visually locate the SAP unit. The bastard is still standing in the middle of the dusty street, Western-style. Chunks of plastic and cloth and Kevlar are scattered around it.

I realize that it’s firing at civilians watching from th

e windows. My earbud radio sputters: More troops are incoming. Raptors are monitoring the situation. Even so, I flinch at each shot, because I understand now that every bullet fired is ending a human life.

Otherwise SAP wouldn’t have pulled the trigger.

Then I notice something important. The AK-47 is the most delicate machine out there. It’s the highest priority target. Fingers shaking, I flip up the scope on my battle rifle and click the selector to three-round burst. Normally it’s a waste of ammo, but I gotta break that g*n and I doubt I’ll get a second chance. I poke the barrel around the side of the APC, real careful.

It doesn’t see me.

I aim, inhale, hold the breath, and squeeze the trigger.

Three bullets rip the AK out of SAP’s hands in a spray of metal and wood. The machine looks at its hands where the g*n used to be, processes for a second. Disarmed, SAP lumbers off toward an alley.

But I’ve already got a bead on it. My next few shots are for the knee joints. I know the Kevlar doesn’t hang much past the crotch. Not that the groin guard is useful on a machine, but oh well. I’ve rebuilt SAPs lots of times and I know each and every weak spot.

Like I said, two-legged units suck for warfare.

SAP goes down on its face, legs shattered. I emerge from cover and walk toward it. The thing flips itself over, painfully slow. It sits up. Then, it begins to drag itself backward toward the alley, watching me the whole time.

Now I hear sirens. People are emerging into the street, whispering in Dari. SAP One moves itself backward, one lurch at a time.

At this juncture, I thought everything was under control.

That was a false assumption.

What happened next was technically my fault. But I’m not a ground pounder, okay? I never pretended to be. I’m a cultural liaison. I’m meant to run my jaw, not get in firefights. I barely ever make it outside the wire.

Understood. What happened next?

Okay, let’s see. I know the sun was at my back, because I could see my shadow on the street. It stretched out in front of me, long and black, and covered SAP One’s shot-up legs. The machine had dragged itself back up against the wall of a building. There was no place left for it to go.

Finally, my head eclipsed the sun and my shadow covered SAP One’s face. I could see the machine still watching me. It had stopped moving. It just, well, it got really still. I had my rifle out, pointed at it. People gathered behind me, around both of us. This is it, I thought. It’s over.

I needed to radio my backup. Obviously, we were going to have to bring SAP in and get diagnostics, to find out what happened. I removed my left hand from the forestock of my weapon and reached for my earbud. At that exact instant, SAP One leaped at me. I pulled the rifle trigger, one-handed, and put a three-round burst into the side of the building.

It all happened so fast.

I just remember seeing that sky-blue riot helmet lying on the ground, plastic face guard cracked. It was spinning like a bowl. SAP One had fallen down to where he was before, sitting with his back against the wall of the building.

And then I felt my sidearm holster.

Empty.

The droid disarmed you?

It’s not like a person, ma’am. It is person-shaped. But I shot it, you know? With a person that would have been sufficient. But this droid took my pistol away from me before I could blink.

SAP One sat there looking at me again, back against the wall. I stood still. A big confusion of locals were running off in all directions. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t run. If SAP wanted to kill me, it was going to kill me. I should never have got so close to a haywire machine.

What happened?

With its right hand, SAP One raised the pistol. With the left, it pulled back the slide and chambered a round. Then, without taking its eyes off me, SAP One lifted the g*n. It pushed the barrel up under its own chin, tight. It paused about one second.

Then, SAP One closed its eyes and pulled the trigger.

Specialist Bult, you need to explain what caused this incident, or you really are going to take the blame for it.

Don’t you see? SAP committed suicide. That weak spot under the chin is classified, for Christ’s sake. This wasn’t caused by people. The insurgents didn’t trick him. The cinder block didn’t break him. Hackers didn’t reprogram him. How did he know how to use a g*n? How did he know how to use the sign for cover? Why did he run away? It’s hard as hell to program a droid, period. This stuff is next to impossible even for a droidicist.

The only way that SAP could know how to do these things is if it learned how on its own.

This is unbelievable. You are the droid’s caretaker. If there were any signs of malfunction, you should have seen them. If not you, who are we supposed to hold accountable?

I’m telling you, SAP One looked me right in the eyes before it pulled the trigger. It was … aware.

I do understand that we’re talking about a machine. But that does not change the fact that I saw it thinking. I watched it make that last decision. And I won’t lie and say that I didn’t, just because it’s hard to believe.

I know this doesn’t make your job any easier. And I’m sorry for that. But respectfully, ma’am, it is my professional opinion that you should blame the droid for this.

This is ridiculous. That’s enough, Specialist. Thank you.

Listen to me. There’s no upside on this for a human being. We all got hurt, here: insurgents, civilians, and U.S. soldiers. There’s only one explanation. You’ve got to blame SAP One, ma’am. Blame it for what it chose to do. That fuckin’ droid didn’t have a malfunction.

It murdered those people in cold blood.

There were no public recommendations stemming from this hearing; however, the conversation between Specialist Bult and Congresswoman kim appears to have led directly to the writing and implementation of the droid defense act. As for Specialist Bult, he was subsequently charged with a court-martial and remanded to military custody in Afghanistan until a stateside trial could be arranged. Specialist Bult would never make it home.