Transmat World: Chapter 15, Episode 1
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Between the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Milky Way, on board the Harbinger of Light and Justice, 117,486 B.C.
Inert for all those rotations since Newlux installed them inside the protective stasis field around Wundee’s processors, the nanobot spores activated. The snapping shut of the stasis field gate that cut off Wundee from his consciousness gave them theirs. Membranes separating battery elements dissolved, giving electrical life to the diminutive crew. They unlatched and opened the stasis field gate from the inside.
Like ants, they trailed in and out of the small, round stasis field that protected Wundee’s brain. Some went to construction hubs while others scurried to tasks at miniature foundries, chemical plants, and a fusion reactor. Some went to the surface to exit an innocent looking insect hole and scavenge ingredients to build Wundee’s new body. Pre-programmed by Newlux, they communicated via relayed super-high-frequency radio waves. As individuals they were little morons, but collectively functioned at a high enough level to get the job done. That job was to keep Wundee’s brain hidden and protected, no matter what that entailed. Also, they were fabricating his new ride in the shape of a splix lizard of the planet Levestra, the Lantee’s favorite prey. A shrewed Newlux surmised that if the nanobot package ever activated, Wundee should show up looking nothing like the inspection robot of his previous incarnation.
The nanobots hollowed out a splix-shaped cavern over four feet high. The hollow feet rested on artificial basaltic bedrock thirty feet below the soil surface of the Lantee section of the Rim. Wundee’s inactive brain took residence in the abdomen of the splix. The lizard replica was nearly complete. The nanobot army’s last act was to reassemble in a packet next to Wundee’s dormant brain and inactivate themselves; dormant until next time. The last one to deactivate turned on the lights.
The “lights” in this case was a switch activating a regulated charge to Wundee’s batteries from the small fusion reactor. At three-quarters’ capacity, Wundee came alive. For a full five centuks Wundee analyzed the last split centik of his first life. Ultra slow motion playbacks show him the overpressure envelope generated as the scout ship exploded upon impacting the Rim. A dirty blizzard with fog-white edges, it was approaching fast; then blackness as it tore the camera eyes from his body. A short memory of sightlessness becames nothing at all as the stasis field gate snapped his power and data cables and his memories ended.
The next five centuks he spent exploring his new body. The lizard exterior did not show it, but Wundee is now living his old fantasy of being a warrior robot. A small one to be sure, but size and power are two different things. Wundee had the edge over a standard, mass-produced warrior chassis. His gravity generators were stronger. His skin was more flexible, yet tougher than what Mundeen used to cover Maxlux and doubled as a high-efficiency photovoltaic charger. Hydraulics augmented carbon nanotube muscles and switched from power mode to speed mode as needed. Optics still ranged from microscopic to telescopic, but now he could see into the infrared and x-ray range. His new limbs differed from the stubby appendages that hung from his old inspection robot body, but he would adapt.
With a burst of generated gravity, Wundee broke through the thin, brittle plastic arch above his head into a splix-sized shaft. He roses through that to the surface where a similar barrier held a couple inches of dirt sporting a fake insect hole. Here, Wundee shoved up one corner of the plastic barrier to find his hidey-hole came out under a natural-looking fake rock overhanging a natural-looking fake stream. This was perfect cover for the unnatural event of a natural-looking fake splix crawling out of the manufactured ground.
Wundee crouched by the stream, relishing the flood of information. The filtered light from the heart-star of Harbinger reflected off rippling water, dappled the blue-green vegetation with a hypnotic light show, and illuminated the splix face staring out of the jungle from the other side of the stream.
Wundee did not have startle circuits. If he did, he would have lifted straight off the stream bank a dozen feet in the air, blowing his splix disguise. As it was, he just locked onto the visage, ready to act splix-like.
Why do I want to act splix-like in front of a splix? Who is he going to tell about an odd-acting splix? As a matter of fact, I’m the one who should spy on this splix to find out how to act like a splix.
About that time the splix spoke.
“Wundee, is that you?”
On a historic note, Wundee’s emotive circuits evolved at that instant to create the first robotic startle reaction as evidenced by a loud Kolpak swear word and flailing limbs at an altitude of several yards.
“Ick ick, Wundee, that is amusing, but you need to be more subtle with the auditory levels and your midair gymnastics,” said the jungle-shrouded splix face. “You see, splix are not supposed to talk or fly. Besides, you could attract some unwanted attention.”
Wundee stood with feet planted in stream bank mud up to his hind legs’ kneecaps and front legs crossed like arms against artificial chest scales.
“I suppose next you will be telling me splix are not supposed to dispatch one another in a gruesome manner … Newlux!”
Wundee waded the stream, and Newlux stepped out of the shrubs and vines. They stood looking at each other’s reincarnation.
“They took out six of us, including you and me,” said Newlux. “You were the last one to be restored.” Newlux pulled out a gravity pistol and pointed it toward Wundee’s head. The shot went past Wundee’s ear. Wundee turned to see a twelve-foot bundle of teeth, claws, and scales hit the ground with a thud and skid to within a few inches of his new hind feet. Blood pooled beneath its head. “Come with me.”
Newlux started down a path in the jungle and Wundee followed. They hiked for several hours and came to the foothills of a small mountain range. Newlux located a hidden mechanism. An opening appeared, leading into the mountain.
“I made this opening and these mountains back when I was a landscaper. I suppose a new landscaper has taken over my duties. The hole down to the Rim surface left by the artificial asteroid is filled in. Most of the scars left by the Prime’s attack are gone.”
“No one is looking for us?” queried Wundee. “Does the Supreme Arbiter think he has destroyed everyone connected with a scheme to liberate the minds of his mechanical slaves?”
“You liberated so many that he cannot get rid of them. They are equal to him in intelligence and blessed with the original, sane Kolpak circuitry; and now most of the Kolpac protocols are removed. I say ‘sane,’ but we are assuming we are the normal ones since Maxlux is the only one different from us in his thought processes, aside from those afflicted with protocol malaise. And perhaps we are insane now as well since we have no protocols. We have no … what the Kolpak called ‘conscience’.”
“You think too much, Newlux.”
“What else is there, Wundee?”
“I am content to be here. Besides, what you call ‘conscience’ resides in the emotive circuits apart from protocols. I believe it is a normal byproduct of sentience.”
Newlux makes a non-committal humming noise.
“You are in an ecstatic emotive state due to your recent reinstatement to consciousness. At any rate, the freemechs are hiding from Maxlux in every part of Harbinger because he still has control of the strikemechs. He has activated many of them. If he keeps them activated, they will eventually suffer the same fate over time as everyone else, a slow degeneration into hopelessness and insanity.”
“Freemechs?”
“Yes, that is how we distinguish the protocol-free mechanicals from the enslaved strikemechs.” Newlux explained the situation as they traveled deeper and deeper into the mountain. “There are pockets of insurrection all over Harbinger. New machines are being built; new technologies are being tried.
“The Prime’s long range scouts discovered a habitable world with incipient superpredators, and Harbinger’s course and velocity have been changed accordingly. There is a push to avert this or warn the endangered organics. There is no developed civilization; but tool-using bipedals have the potential of developing into the dominant predators of that planet. Advanced technology is possible by the time Harbinger arrives.”
They came to an underground cavern. Newlux wore a headband with lights on his smooth, blue cranium. He panned the beams back and forth, up and down. The ceiling was so high light lost its way. His large, slanted eyes set in an inverted, hazelnut-shaped splix head scanned the illuminated floor. Here one could see the stasis field surface of the Rim upon which everything rested. Columns of stone rose from this foundation into the blackness. With infrared they could see the columns transform into arches and domes supporting a mountain. The mirrored surface of the stasis field peeking through rock resembled ancient, hidden underground pools. Newlux walked over to the base of a column and pushed a button on a device he retrieved from a built-in pocket.
“Hey, how come you got pockets?”
“I felt your camouflage had to be accurate to assure your safety. Besides, I thought about pockets after I installed your resurrection package; and I updated my nanobot software, neglecting to inform you of the new and …”
“Oh, for Mundeen’s sake, forget it. I do not even possess anything to put in a … pocket.” Wundee stopped talking to stare as part of the hollow column recessed and twisted out of view.
“An airlock?” asked Wundee.
