Machines - The War Of The Robots

To read more short stories and articles by author Ken Kreps, visit http://www.kenkreps.com.
To send an e-mail to the author, click here.

Sitting at his command console in a forward outpost, Captain Clark Hamilton knows this as well as anyone, as he makes entries into his daily log.

"March 8, 2052. This is the final log entry of Captain Clark Hamilton, Combined World Forces. At least, I presume it will be my last entry. I can’t imagine we’ll hold out until tomorrow. They’re all around us and closing in quickly. It’s deathly quiet outside as it has been for over three weeks. No laser cannon fire, no heat ray blasts, no activity of any type. I don’t know what it means, but the few satellites still operational show the enemy is steadily advancing toward our position. I can only communicate with a handful of our outposts and I take this to mean most of the others have been destroyed or captured. I’m using my personal com-device instead of the outpost’s central com as I still have a faint hope my family is alive and will hear this some day. Deep down, I know they’re dead, like much of the world’s population, but I still hope, because that’s really all I have left. Maybe it’s not just about my family. Maybe I’m afraid the human race will be extinguished and if that happens, I have to hope some being, someday finds this so they will know what happened to us and that we existed. I know that’s a long shot, but I must leave a record of the total devastation we’ve been through. Usually my daily reports are full of statistics about battles and strategy plans, but not today. We’ve lost and whatever I’ve got to say about the war, I have to say today."

"Funny, as a kid I used to be a regular at the virtual reality theaters to see the latest Hollywood space epic. I particularly loved the ones about the brave earth hero’s gallantly defeating the horrible looking aliens from space. What kid didn’t? None of us ever dreamed that, in the final conflict, the enemy would look exactly like us. Who would have thought the worst enemy, the world has ever seen would come from…"

"Captain, they’re less than two miles away and moving fast. What are your orders, sir?"

Looking up from his log, Clark saw his second in command, Sergeant Russell standing in the doorway of the bunker. His uniform was frayed and covered with battlefield grime. He wore a habitual gaunt look from over two years of seeing men die and from having a front row seat for the destruction of his country. "Come here, Sergeant Russell," Clark said.

"We’ve lost, Sergeant. It’s over. We’ve less than 30 minutes before they get here. Sit down and talk to me."

"Talk, Sir?" the Sergeant said, looking puzzled as he sat down in the chair next to the Captain’s command console.

"You were assigned to me a little over two months ago, when my top Sergeant was lost in the Los Angeles campaign. Two months, Sergeant, and I don’t even know what part of the country you’re from."

"Great town, or at least it used to be. It’s been under their control for more than two years."

"The Sergeant’s voice broke slightly, and he answered. "I…I had a wife and a daughter. They were both killed in the first Chicago attack."

Clark felt foolish and guilty for not having asked the Sergeant about his family before now. Needing to change the subject, he said, "I’m filing my final log entry. Would you care to help?"

"That’s not what I need Sergeant. I need your thoughts. I want to know what you think."

"Those are difficult questions, Captain. They were everywhere. I mean we all relied on them for so much."

"We had two, sir. One did all the cooking, cleaning and shopping. The other drove the car, did the gardening and household maintenance. You know, sort of a handy man."

"Yes we had both of those and a third one, a nanny and teacher for the kids," Clark added.

"Sergeant, before the war, we didn’t think of them as things. We trusted them. They were an important part of almost every household."

"You’re right, Captain. It’s just that I hate them so much for what they’ve done. They massacred my family. They killed my wife and little girl. All I want now is to kill as many of them as I can. It’s what I live for and many of the men feel the same way. Sir, we have one good last fight left in us."

"I don’t blame you or the rest of the men for the way you feel, Sergeant," Clark said, "but there’s one more order I need you to carry out."

"Tell the men to fall back to the bunker compound, immediately. I want them to lay down their arms and surrender when the enemy arrives."

The Sergeant looked stunned and squared his shoulders defiantly. "Surrender, no sir….you can’t mean that. We have to fight, Captain. We’re soldiers."

Making sure there was no doubt about his order, Clark looked the Sergeant squarely in the eyes as he said, "That’s exactly what I mean, Sergeant. We’re giving up."

Now, more determined than ever to make his point, the Sergeant jumped from his chair. "Surrender? Captain, we can still take some of those devils with us. Damn, sir, you have to let us take them on when they get here. It’s our last chance to pay them back for what they’ve done."

"No, there’s been enough of our men killed. We’ve been lucky that we haven’t lost a man in over five weeks and I don’t want any more to die. As you know, we’ve received confirmed reports that, for some reason, the machines have started taking prisoners. I have no idea why they changed their policy, but I’d rather see our troops as prisoners than dead. Sergeant, you have your orders. When you’re finished, get your tail back here and we’ll face this thing together."

"Even though I don’t know all that much about Sergeant Russell, I like him, but we’ve just been too busy to really get to know each other," Clark thought. "He does a damned fine job with the troops. He’s closer to them than I am and they’ll do what he tells them to do. At least I can stop any more from dying. That’s some consolation, anyway." As he sat looking at the highly detailed and now meaningless charts and maps on the view screens in front of him, his mind drifted back to the beginning of the war. "How could anyone have foreseen the war or how quickly it would erupt?" he thought.

Looking back it’s easy to see that man was the victim of his own technology. He thought he was so clever and the sad truth is, he was. In the 1980’s and 90’s, computer science really began to hit its stride and by the end of the century, nearly all aspects of life in the world were heavily computerized. Computer chips ran everything from hair dryers, to huge entertainment complexes, to the ever expanding Internet.

Then, in 2011, Ezra Kincaid made his historic break-through in automatronics. He successfully integrated the new liquid biomedical computer chip with robotics and produced the first cyborg. It was as important a scientific achievement as was the first automobile or the early crude computers in the mid 1900s. Although limited at first, these cyborgs, or machines as they were quickly called, advanced rapidly and by the early twenties they looked, walked and talked exactly like human beings. Only a tiny metallic disk on the back of their necks made them look different than humans.

The machines were programmed in any number of domestic skills. As their numbers grew, the price came down and by 2035 fully seventy percent of all households owned one or more machines. They became as common in homes as dishwashers. They were polite and quite efficient. Too efficient as it turned out.

In 2038, Congress passed the Automated Defense Act which, for the first time, authorized the building of machines who would serve as members of the armed forces and by 2045 sixty five percent of our troops were machines including a majority of the enlisted men and fifteen percent of the officers. Why not….one machine giving orders to other machines seemed quite proper. We smugly boasted that future wars would be fought with greatly reduced loss of human life. We were totally willing to let machines fight and die for us as we, in no way, compared the loss of a machine in combat with the death of a human being. After all, they were just machines with artificial intelligence, which we’d created. Other nations were quick to follow suit, placing large numbers of machines in their armed forces, also. A few people did raise concerns over being surrounded by armed non-humans but, since there had never been a recorded case of any machine trying to harm a human except in the defense of another human, these concerns were quickly swept away.

Then in one terrifying night, everything changed. All over the world, the machines attacked with a savagery never before seen. They executed an extremely well prepared plan in which both military installations the civilian populations were swiftly attacked with equally devastating results. They were as brutal as they were efficient. Unrelenting and unmerciful, they took no prisoners, preferring instead, to kill anyone who got in their way. By morning, they owned several major cities, worldwide. Boston fell the next night as did Amsterdam. Three days later New York and a day after that, Paris. Their attacks on the West Coast failed, but they owned the East Coast. Several million people died in less than a week. Focusing their attention westward, the machines, like a huge swarm of angry locusts poised at the edge of a pristine corn field, prepared for a bold march of conquest across the United States.

With the Eastern Seaboard gone, the human troops in the military who weren’t killed in early battles, regrouped in the Midwest where they formed the first defense line. Civilians like Clark Hamilton soon joined them and in a few months The United States Defense Forces were formed. Six months later they combined with other human armies around the world to form the Combined World Forces.

That was almost three years ago and man has been fighting a losing battle ever since. The machines look like humans, they think like humans and they are a formidable enemy. Needing neither food nor sleep, they fight as with a single purpose. All the advantages that sold the idea of using them in armed forces around the world were now coming back to haunt mankind. Finally, what remained of the human army had been driven to the Pacific Northwest where currently it holds, for a short time at least, Seattle and some of western Washington. The machines have captured the rest of the United States. San Francisco fell a month ago and Los Angeles a month before that. The latest information said Europe is totally in their hands and only a small human force in Mongolia is still fighting. South America and Africa both fell last year.

Sergeant Russell hurried into the bunker. "The men are on their way back in, Sir, but…ahh, well…"

"Sir, most of them are angry and frustrated and they’re not at all happy with you. They wanted one last crack at the machines. They’ve all lost people in this war."

I understand," Clark said. "I’d rather have them ready to take me apart than to have them dead."

"But sir, we don’t really know what being a prisoner will mean. Remember, until just a short while ago, they didn’t take prisoners. They killed every human being they came across. Why are you so dead set on surrendering? What makes you think they won’t just line us up and shoot us?"

"Sit down," Clark said "and I’ll share something with you I’ve told no one until now."

"Before the war I was a Transportation Logistics Engineer in San Francisco. A fellow engineer, Ben Sutter, was a close friend of mine. We both joined the defense forces as soon as we could make our way east to meet what was left of the human military. Ben also became a Captain. His last command was an outpost in Northern California. We used to talk and exchange information a couple of times a week. We were talking a few weeks ago when his outpost was over-run by machines. The com-line went dead, but I received a strange text only message from him thirty minutes later. It said, "Clark, surrender to them. It’s better that way, much better." I trust Ben and we’re going to surrender."

The Sergeant smiled slightly before looking up at the Captain. "Yes sir…it’s been a long time, but I’ve been known to take a drink from time to time."

Clark opened a compartment near the bottom of the command console and took out a bottle and two small glasses. "I’ve been carrying this around all through the war. Figured I’d know when the right time to drink it was and I guess that time is now. It’s good twelve year old brandy." Clark carefully filled each glass two thirds full and handed one to Sergeant Russell.

"Oh, I was just thinking it’s strange that a transportation engineer from San Francisco and a shoe store manager from Chicago would be sitting here in Western Washington enjoying twelve year old brandy in the middle of a war."

"More like the end of a war, sir. We’re part of the last group of free defense troops in the entire United States," the Sergeant pointed out.

"Yes, that’s true. Tell me Sergeant, those two machines that you owned before the war. Did you like them?"

"Well, I mean did you have any feelings for them? Did you ever talk to them about anything other than their work?"

"No, I didn’t have any feelings for them. They were just machines," the Sergeant responded. "And no, I never talked to them except about their work."

"The nanny to my two kids and I talked a lot," Clark said. Her programming was incredible. She was well-versed in the theater, books, poetry, history. She even knew a great deal about that ear shattering noise my kids called music. She was quite an interesting woman."

"Sir, that wasn’t a woman," the Sergeant shot back. His anger at the mere thought of a human carrying on a conversation with a machine was evident. "Sure, it looked like a woman and sounded like a woman, but it was just a machine. It stands to reason a machine programmed to be a nanny would know those kind of things. Remember it was her kind that killed millions of humans."

"Well, not exactly, " Clark replied "Only the machines built and programmed for the military actually did any of the killings. They even destroyed many of the domestic machines. Said they just got in the way."

Sergeant Russell’s com-device emitted a high pitch whine. He pressed a small button on his uniform , "Sergeant Russell," he said. He waited a moment before saying, "One moment." Turning to the Captain he said, "They’re a mile away, sir."

"Corporal, notify me when they’re within 500 yards. And remember, no one fires a shot. That’s the Captain’s order and anyone who doesn’t obey it will personally answer to me."

"Thank you Sergeant. I know that wasn’t easy for you. We have a few minutes left. Tell me about your family."

"All right. At least it’s a little easier to talk about, now. I couldn’t even do that for the first year. Sue and I had been married for seven years. Anyone who’s ever been married knows there’s no such thing as the perfect marriage, but ours was very good. Our little girl Chrissy was four."

"Well, you know, sir…..it started pretty much like any other night…home from work, dinner…put our daughter to bed, watched a show in the virtual reality room, and then we went to bed. Around 1:00 AM all hell broke loose. I thought I was dreaming when I looked out our bedroom window and saw the house three doors down the street explode into a ball of fire. People were screaming. There was smoke and fire everywhere and the sky was filled with laser cannon blasts. We ran to get our daughter who was screaming at the top of her lungs. We didn’t know what to do. God, we weren’t prepared for our neighborhood to be attacked. No one was."

"The three of us huddled together on the floor in the kitchen, next to the refrigerator for what seemed like hours. Then, finally, it stopped. I went outside and saw the horror of what used to be our neighborhood. A third of the houses had been destroyed, and many others were badly damaged. There were other people in the street, a few sobbing, but most just standing silently in shock. Dead bodies were everywhere and the smell of burning flesh…was….was overpowering. There were a few wounded, but as you know, laser cannons don’t leave many wounded. I moved towards one of the injured people to see if I could help. I was thinking how lucky we were our house had been untouched, when the second attack started. As I watched in disbelief, a laser cannon blast hit our house and it exploded, knocking me into the front yard of the house across the street. Just like that, my wife and daughter were gone. I tried to get to them, but the heat…my God, the heat…I couldn’t get near where our house had been."

Though more than two years had passed, the Sergeant’s voice trembled and he was visibly shaken by the memory of that terrible night.

"Sergeant, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry it happened and I’m sorry I never had the time to talk with you about your family, until now."

"I know, sir. There’s not much time for anything when you’re fighting a war. What about you? Your family?"

"I guess we were lucky, at least for awhile," Clark began. "The first attacks on San Francisco were much lighter than in the east. Some casualties, but not many and we had time to dig in. The machines simply didn’t have as many troops in the west and that’s what saved us, at first. I knew many civilians were leaving to join the human military as they set up a major defense line in the Midwest, but I had a difficult time deciding if I could leave my family. Other men were in the same situation. We talked about going and finally decided we should join the military. The war had to be won and we knew it would take all the manpower our country could raise. San Francisco still had little war damage and the night before I left, my wife and I sat on our back deck holding each other and watching the blinking lights on the patrol boats as they crisscrossed the bay like a gathering of earth bound fireflies. The next morning many of us left in groups of seventy five to a hundred and made our way east. A month later, I was commissioned a captain, given minimal training and sent into battle. I’ve was never able to contact my family again, and I don’t know if they survived when San Francisco fell."

A high pitch whine again filled the room. Clark looked grim knowing what was in store for them. "That’s your com-device, Sergeant. I think we both know what that means."

"Sergeant Russell." After a short pause he said, "All right. Remember your orders. The captain and I will join you shortly." Then, looking at Clark, "Sir, they’re 500 yards away and closing fast."

"All right Sergeant Russell. Let’s go join our troops. They’ve fought bravely and I want them to stand proudly."

The two men walked to the door of the bunker. It opened with a whoosh and they walked outside onto one of the many gravel walkways that crisscrossed the outpost. In the distance they could see a huge vehicle approaching. It stood thirty feet high, twenty five feet across and at least eighty feet long. It didn’t need roads….it carved them out of the landscape as it traveled. Three laser cannon turrets sat on its top, one fore, one in the middle and one aft. Strung down each side were five formidable looking heat ray generators. Clark knew from battle experience that two more heat ray generators resided in its tail. In fact, the great firepower in its tail is why human soldiers had nicknamed it the Scorpion. A double high row of spot lights in its front constantly rotated back and forth as they illuminated the ground ahead of the mammoth vehicle. This giant fighting machine was every bit the equal of a seagoing battleship except it moved on land. The ground rumbled, as if signaling the beginning of an earthquake, as it approached them. Clark had only seen Scorpions from a distance through binoculars and now that he was this close to one, he couldn’t believe its tremendous size.

When the gigantic vehicle was approximately 30 yards from where Clark, Sergeant Russell and their troops stood, it lumbered to a stop with a screech of metal rubbing across metal. A voice came over the vehicle’s loudspeakers. Clark was surprised when the voice wasn’t nearly as hostile sounding as he had expected it to be.

"This is Commander Franklin with the United States Mechanized Forces. Please do not be frightened. Do not fire and no harm will come to you. We will protect ourselves if fired upon."

A hatch opened in the forward part of the giant vehicle and several occupants climbed down a metal ladder its side and began walking toward Clark and his troops. When they were ten yards away, they stopped. All except for the tallest one who continued to walk toward Clark and Sergeant Russell. He wore the rank of Commander. He walked closer and smiled slightly as he asked, "Who’s your commanding officer?"

"I am Commander…Captain Hamilton," Clark responded. He was stunned to see the enemy officer smiling as no one had ever reported seeing a soldier machine smile. Domestic machines could smile but Clark had always thought soldier machines were incapable of such actions.

"Captain….may we talk, inside?" the commander said motioning to the entrance to the bunker.

Barely hiding his suspicion, Clark answered, "All right. Sergeant Russell, come with us."

All three walked inside the bunker where Clark turned to the Commander and said, "I surrender my entire unit to you, Commander. We’re now your prisoners. I hope you’ll treat my men with…"

"First, you’re not our prisoners," Franklin interrupted, "and secondly, you’d better sit down because you’re not going to believe what I have to tell you."

"It looks like a human," I guess you’ve found a way to do away with the metallic disks."

"No, the disks are even smaller now, but they’re still on the machines. I don’t have one because I’m just as human as you are."

"I was born and raised in Kansas City, lived in Denver and taught at a university until the war broke out," the Commander answered.

The Sergeant’s body stiffened and he was unable to hide his disgust. "Humans fighting on the same side with machines? What are you some kind of traitor?" he spat, taking a step toward the Commander.

"No, Sergeant," Franklin said. "I’m no traitor and I’m not fighting with the machines. In fact the machines haven’t been fighting anyone for over four weeks. Three weeks ago I was commanding a Combined World Forces outpost very much like this one when we were overrun by the machines. We threw everything we had at them until I noticed they weren’t firing back. Not a single shot. I ordered a cease fire and they came into our camp under a white flag. Soon I was facing a machine officer who told me the strangest story I’d ever heard. Now I’m here to tell you that same story. We would have flown a white flag ourselves, but you weren’t firing at us."

"Did either of you ever wonder what made the machines attack us and why the domestic models didn’t join in the fight with the soldier machines?" Franklin asked.

"Well," Clark offered, "the soldier machines were programmed in the art of fighting and the domestic models weren’t."

Franklin nodded and said, "That’s partially right, but the main reason was, the domestic models were programmed with emotions including caring and empathy for other machines and humans. The emotion of caring for others was left out of the soldier models to make them more efficient at fighting and killing. All other emotions, including self preservation, were left in the soldiers."

Same reason slavery was doomed to fail in the 1800’s," Franklin responded. "The machines were fully sentient beings with the same ability to think and react as humans. They felt they were our equals and wanted to be treated that way. Their lives and futures were just as important to them as ours were to us. The domestics would eventually have tried to reason with us. The soldiers did the only thing they knew how to do. They fought."

The Sergeant could no longer control his anger. "But they murdered every human being they came in contact with. Wholesale murder."

"Yes, they did and no one hated them for that more than I did," Franklin agreed.

"No I haven’t, Sergeant. Hear me out, please. History sometimes comes full circle and just
as we were victims of our own technology, so eventually were the machines."

Franklin couldn’t help but smile. "Actually the rank and the machine army uniform are honorary. They just make it a bit easier to get people to listen to me. Up until three weeks ago, I was a Captain, just like you, Hamilton."

"There’s around 500 other Combined World Forces officers and enlisted men going to the remaining outposts and telling them what I’m telling you. Same thing’s happening in other countries, too," Franklin explained.

"You said something about the machines being victims of their own technology," Clark said.

"Yes," Franklin continued. "The machines underestimated the human will to fight and while they were steadily advancing around the world, the war was going much more slowly than they’d anticipated. One reason was, lacking the empathy emotion, the soldiers wouldn’t help a fallen comrade in battle. They had no feelings for him so if he went down, they simply left him. Many could have been repaired and returned to battle, but none were. Then about three months ago, the scientific machines hit upon the idea of fitting new soldier machines, as well as those in the field, with the same empathy emotion the earlier domestic models had. Feeling empathy, they thought, would make the soldiers help their wounded in battle."

"Yes, for a few days," Franklin answered. "But then it all began to fall apart."

"What the scientists hadn’t counted on was that the empathy and caring emotion also made the soldiers realize what they were doing was wrong and killing innocent people or even killing opposing troops was not anything they cared to do. Like the domestic machines before them, they fell back on reason instead of force. The few old style soldier machines still left, were outnumbered and they too, were soon modified with full emotions. Essentially, an army that set out to conquer, now felt remorse about what they’d been doing. They simply stopped fighting. First, machines spread the word to humans and then humans, like myself, began helping out."

"You’re free men, Captain," Franklin responded. "You and your men may leave any time you wish. The war’s over and there’s no winner. We’ll help you with transportation to Seattle where we’ve set up relocation centers. You’ll find everything you need there to re-start your life."

"What….what about news of our families? I mean…I’m not sure what happened to mine," Clark said, unable to stop a single tear which suddenly rolled down his cheek.

"We’re gathering information on all families. More news is coming in every day. They’ll be able to help you in Seattle. Where was your family?"

"There were survivors in San Francisco. That battle happened during the time the soldier machines started losing their will to fight. I hope your family made it through, OK."

"They killed my family and I’m just supposed to forget it?" the Sergeant growled. He clearly was struggling with making the adjustment from a fighting man, bent on killing as many machines as he could, to something more civilized. He believed what the commander had just told them and knew the war was over, but deep down, he didn’t want it to be over. He still wanted to keep killing machines.

"I’m sorry you lost your family, Sergeant," Franklin responded kindly, "and I’m sorry I lost mine. I miss them every day. I understand how it feels knowing you’ll never see your wife or children again, or hear their voices or feel their touch. The machines who killed them are either destroyed or re-programmed. As much as we’d all like to do so, there’s no way to change what happened. I know millions of people still hate the machines for what they’ve done, but we must face the fact that there are two intelligent life forms on this planet now. Two life forms with feelings, emotions and plans for the future. We’re different, but we’re also equal. History tells us prejudice dies a hard death so gentlemen, we must overcome that and work together if we’re going to rebuild this country and the world."

"Commander, can we really rebuild after almost three years of death and destruction?" Clark asked.

"Do we have any other choice, captain? The first steps in building a coalition government in this country have already been taken. Free elections are next. Of course there’s going to be some bitterness and anger. Your Sergeant is not the only human I’ve talked with who feels deep resentment about the war ending this way. Some of the domestic machines even feel hatred toward the military machines. But our only real choice is to overcome all that and rebuild. Other nations will start doing the same."

"Yes, of course you’re right. I am curious about one thing. Why did we lose communication with most of the other outposts?"

"I’m afraid we did that," Franklin responded "You know how rumors get twisted in the military. We wanted you to hear the truth from us."

"I….I hardly know where to begin, but come on, Sergeant. We’ve got quite a story to tell the men."

"Do you think they’ll believe us, sir?" The Sergeant said, his mind starting to realize the war was actually over. His bitterness about what happened to his family would take a long time to fade and would probably never go away entirely. Still, he realized he could no longer go on fighting the machines, no matter how much he might like to do so.

"Maybe not at first, but they will. It’s our job to make them understand. Now let’s go spread the news."

As the three men walked from the bunker, the sun was just arriving in the east and it looked like a beautiful day was in store. A hard fought, bloody war, in which man and his finest creation had battled for control of the planet was finally over. Each side had been determined to annihilate the other, yet now they must find a way to put aside hatred and bitterness and start the slow process of rebuilding the world. They had to work together or any hope of success would be lost. Clark knew it wouldn’t be easy and there would be setbacks, delays and disappointments. He also knew, as Franklin had said, there was no other choice.

A new day, full of hope and discovery was dawning for mankind. It was a time for healing and learning. It was a time for building. Not just the new structures which would surely go up all over the world, but it was also a time for building new alliances with another race, a race we had created and a race which we now had to learn to live with in harmony. It was a monumental task, but more importantly…It was a beginning.

Click Here to read more short stories by Ken Kreps.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ken Kreps lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife. He has written a number of published articles, essays and short stories, as well as numerous consumer and business pieces. Ken has also written scripts for Imagination Theater, an award winning audio drama series heard on over 150 commercial radio stations across the nation, as well as in several foreign countries. He recently completed three short film screenplays. For the past ten years, Ken has concentrated on acting, studying in the Seattle, Washington and Dallas, Texas areas, and apperaring in independent short, and feature films, television commercials, and various types of voice-over work.