Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 27 - Primal Loss
The virus hit them around a kilometre from the ground, that was Krusher9’s surprise; a virus that totally subverted the human-exoskeleton dynamic. K-Rox felt like his head was being turned inside out, he sensed the looped feedback of a thousand inputs . . .
. . and screamed.
He fell the last two hundred metres, engines dead, not responding . . .
It felt its backup system cycling through its subroutines, power came in short bursts. It instinctively did a systems wide check.
No permanent damage.
Signal to probes.
No response.
It was blind beyond the 585 metres sensor range in the dense forest.
It checked its mission brief.
Subverted, one file left.
It had to meet with it’s partner, a mobile battle tank named PX-187, heavy artillery . . . the big guns.
It checked its own id status – Rapid Response Spy Unit JG-012.
It attempted to view a corrupted file on one of its main drives.
Jargon, two names, Asimo and -Rox ~data missing~ the names meant nothing to the unit, it set a recovery routine in action.
It ran a systems check.
SysChk results:
30897257 ext data files – corrupted
182832 memory files – corrupted
247 mission data files – corrupted
3 mission critical files – corrupted
External Hardware Report#29837.8790
Damage report:
LongRange Sense Unit (ext) – destroyed
OnboardPrimary Sense Unit (longrange) 88% damage –
repairTime 87.5 hours solstan subjective.
end.
AllSysChk Complete
Actions – Nanobots activated:
Repair seq28 – initialised.
end.
It flipped its orientation so that its head was the right way round, not that it mattered, it could move just as comfortably in any given position.
It sent out a covert thinCast to the nearby tank.
It armed its weapons and sprung forth with impressive agility and stealth, its huge salamander tail whipping behind it as it bounded through the thick vegetation, its burning coal-eyes resembling the winking orange flames far above its head, of still more mechanoids dropping from orbit.
As the forest grew thicker around it the Rapid Response Spy Unit began to change shape, various internal structures shifted and flexed, externally the previous salamander, took on the shape of a kind of pseudo-primate, with four long arms protruding from a triangular like body.
The unit’s memo-metal skin flashed with greens and blacks, as it perfectly matched the surrounding environment as it whizzed through the undergrowth at fifty three metres per second.
~incoming transmission: signal identified: PX-187 – type battletank – class Commander.
~response transmission: JG-012 rendezvous point three point six, three, four kilometres – mark.
The two machines met in a clearing, the transmissions between them were fast and furious, they exchanged mission info, and were able to update the mission brief using each other’s information. PX-187 had received transmissions confirming the location of the other four members of their squad.
Communication between the two exoskeletons was brief, an outsider watching would have seen two extremely large machines come crashing out of the undergrowth, face each other for around half a second, and then witness both of them shooting off in the same direction.
They met up with the other members of the squad, using information from the non-corrupted parts of their memories, they were able to piece together the mission and contact command.
Only two orders came back, they were to move to a specific location, around a hundred and fifty kilometres to the west, and to destroy anything and everything in their path that did not have the relevant callsigns and security codes.
The spy unit JG-012 felt as if there were another set of orders it was forgetting, which in itself was an odd sensation, machines don’t forget, it thought to itself; we destroy!
With that thought, the unit bounded forwards, the precise positions of its five squad members placed firmly in the 4D space, of a tiny compartment in what could pass as its mind.
Is it joy?
It wondered.
Yes, if it is not, then I will call it joy, this is what I feel as I envisage slaughtering the enemy.
Previous Chapters
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 26 - Shadows Past
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 25 - Mind Loss
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 24 - The Immorality Of Krusher9
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 23 - Descent On Krusher9
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 22 - The Mars Problem
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 21 - Thought Patterns
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 20 - Reality Dysfunction
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 19 - The Lost Scream
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 18 - The empLink Story
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 17 - A Problem With Time
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 16 - Neither Here Nor There
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 15 - At The Edge Of Madness
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 14 - A Sense Of The Real
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 13 - The Search For Truth
Asimov's Ghost - Chapter 12 - Empires
Original artwork by @nekromarinist
Original words by Cryptogee
Brutal, brutal.
Sometimes i wonder if fantasy could become true. I know a lot of scifi has become true.
It IS true! These memories are storesd in our Soul Light, then channeled by Artists as a result of our past and future history within the Time-Space continuum. In many cases, the final version is narrowed-down to a version our Human mind is capable of comprehending ;)
@cryptogee, it seems K-Rox has lost the information on his original mission, to find Asimov. He will definitely need Jemima now but will he trust her and take her help?
"using information from the non-corrupted parts of their memories"
Well, this casts everything again in a whole other light. So what it insinuates is that the squad members had their memory implanted with thoughts which originally are not their own. Yet the squad members of course don't recognize that (yet?). In hindsight, the same might be true for Jemima, which then again means that ALL are merely puppets on strings manipulated by a mastermind's whim. ;)
Interesting, interesting how you place these hints so casually that they almost escape the reader's eye :)