Briefing
Matt was dressing the shoulder wound, standing above Ted, as the small conductor sat in the far right chair, sipping black coffee with molasses and calibrating his optic, which he disturbingly talked to, naming her “hers” and/or “Peep Girl.”
‘He seems to be unraveling a bit from being shot. How is he still sane, after doing this work, for what, exactly 40 years?’
“There you go, Peep Girl, Hers is on the target—good Girl…” drawled the wizened man in his care.
‘Well, I guess, all he really has is his gear, so its personalized, deeply.’
Matt’s inner counselor had put this anxiety to rest for a moment.
“Matt, we have the overhang you mentioned, zeroed. It is in the black stone cliff face, sixty meters up, partially obscured by old gillie netting. There is a dull metallic trace, no heat signature, significant inorganic structure, could be a weapon cache.”
The optic was taken out, cased next to the strange smart gun. Then Ted sat like a cipher, ready to listen. As strange as it was to sync after one conduction with one of Ted’s breed, who Matt had worked with for his own long decades, the last Auditor on Earth, forged ahead:
“Ted, the overhang is not suspected of being occupied by transhuman subjects ready for Uplift or of marooners in need of HDR. This is being recorded for Uplift Station, of course—as no off the record operations are authorized without concord, in light of the Stewardship blackout we are acting under.”
Ted gave a thumbs up which meant an “a-okay” on the eves dropping bullshit meter. So Matt continued. I am actually concerned that bad actors have cached gear there. Please, I am Auditioning this as a rest mission, a way to avoid potentially hostile interactions while you are wounded, just this first day. In case this is a benign stash of survival supplies with no transhuman tech, a full HDR ruck has been loaded for deposit.”
“Yezzir, Matt. Baby Girl will get me there right quick and I’ll mount Peep Girl, as hurtful a lass az she be, en record the site and the deposit—be back by noon, ahead a da blow I can feel in my teeth.”
“Really, you can feel barometric changes coming on?”
“Bro, ever since I been fitted with da optic, en especially after getting’ clubbed by some roughneck marooner for my gear, the bottom branch of the nerve, to da teeth, lights up like all get-out four to six hours ahead of a storm. We gettin’ socked good, gooder den we should already be, considering it’s February in da Rocky’s en we can still see bare ground out dare.”
‘His diction is deteriorating.’
‘Hopefully it is a sign of trust, of informality.’
Humanitarian Daily Ration Operation T.1[1]
The wind was coming from the north as he rode into it on her sleek back, ice crunching under her tires, a slight warmth from her batteries radiating up into his booted feet. The bill of his tactical cap was crusted. As Baby Girl rolled up out of Coal Canyon under the eves of the awesome jagged teeth of that black ridge, out of a big old ditch that had once been a man-made lake for watering vast herds of folks down on the flat, Ted spied the overhang.
It was a slot in the cliffs 180 feet up, obscured, intentionally, by gillie netting supported by sticks, like a person made a hawk aerie and covered it with net. He new Matt was watching from his telescope, a cool thing he had come up with himself, as being more human than using the automounts fixed above the roof of Wonderview Cabin. Ted relaxed his shoulders extra, knowing his friend, his boss, his teammate, was in overwatch. Matt had determined that Ted did not suffer fear of harm, but of detachment. The last Conductor had a strange phobia that Matt, as a lifetime curator of human technology, could understand: fear of separation from his gear.
Baby Girl was left below.
Ted shouldered the stack of tiny rucks on his back, prepared by Matt. The Auditor had somehow salvaged a set of 110 year old East German Army ruck sacks, tiny things in urban camo, that stacked by way of aluminum hooks and loops upon each other, so that one might carry one to four of these. Matt had also provided lineman cramps fitted on Ted’s tactical boots, explaining that men had once kept power flowing to cities from turbine dams by climbing poles with these claws fitted over boot toes. Matt had also provided a handy military tomahawk from some scrap called The Vietnam Conflict, that served for climbing almost as good as a mountaineering pick.
Ted looked down at his dumdum gun and smiled, “You on leave Bad Girl. Got da day off!”
Ted then scaled the chewed up rock face, the south face free of ice and mostly of snow. It was a climb he might have made without the equipment in dry summer sun.
At 10:14 AM, by the timer on Matt’s telescope, synced with Ted’s wrist watch for audiovisual transfer, Ted crested the bottom ledge of the overhang, which was free of netting for an arm’s length, the netting being supported from the roof ledge of what was a shallow cave. The net was held together by a weir-like structure behind it. From the gloom imposed by this device, which was festooned with cones, needles and leaves, Ted was regarded by various white lit eyes, with pupils varying from green to yellow to red, and also blue.
Ted balked, opened his wrist watch, speaking to her, “Gotta see dis, Mamma!”
A dull burning in the back of his head told Ted that Matt was watching him, that some other folks were watching him, and the rising sharpness of the pain announced that a day star was watching him. He shivered and gawked, then planted his tomahawk in the stone, rucked off his HDR supplies, and said, “Sorry y’all, fer not callin’ ahead. But I don’t got yer number—name’s Ted Pyreon, deliverin’ dese ‘ere HDRs from Matt Styer, Auditor, Final Uplift.”
A skittering and a flapping was heard as the eyes all turned to blue, except for some small white eyes in the back of the cave, surrounding a larger, softer blue light that pulsed like a heartbeat.
A half dozen spider drones pulled aside the netting to permit the exit of as many whackado, areal drones of various types: 3 spies, 2 messenger and one HEAT drone, eyes shining blue. These surrounded Ted in a semi circle, posting up between him and the three little ruck cases.
The three spider drones skittered out, one each opening and inspecting a ruck. This done, these drones each dragged a case back inside the netting.
The HEAT drone then took flight, its six slant rotors and V-wing deploying in an awesome screech, as big as an eagle, whirring off above.
As the three unburdened spider drones held open the netting, the two messenger drones, their control panel lights dead indicating no interface with Uplift or the military drone network remaining at the nuclear structures [2], the two messenger drones, their three rotors folded, along with their two small black wings, bowed on their tripod stands. They then turned and reentered the cave, the netting closing behind them.
Ted began his descent, circled by the eagle-like HEAT drone far ahead, watched by a day star he did not think a lucky one, by Matt who was “shitting myself,” in disbelief and terror, and some unknown party below in the timber. As a man used to interfacing with drones and other AI gear, one thing struck Ted as most strange about this encounter, had as the dark clouds closed in over driving snow. This was, he swore, the palm of his right hand on the back of Mamma, the wrist watch, that as he climbed down, from up above he heard what he could only describe as “mechanical kid voices, chittering in some kind of glee.”
Debriefing
Ted sat, having his vitals checked by Matt before the picture window, viewing the snow storm that had fairly blown him home. He was possessed of “a weird, void-like calm,” when asked of his experiential view of the encounter.
To this note, and the video record, Matt appended:
“To Uplift Stewardship, in concord of discovery, Auditor Matt Styer and Conductor Ted Pyreon render this audio-visual evidence that malfunctioning drones, called whackados, are organizing, surviving and even procreating as a mechanical species.”
Notes
-1. T = Terminal, the final series of food drops.
-2. Ted only knows of old nuclear power plants as Nuclear in the most abstract sense, assuming them to be centers of Omniscient aspect, like temples, not, oddly enough in Matt’s view, understanding these to be decommissioned power plants.
