Fiction: The Flamers

It must have been some war, he said as they wandered through the thicket of mangroves by the beach with fallen giant robots. Hulks of titanium bleaching in the salty air.

If you dig, you’ll find their brain worms.

What?

Pieces of their AI -they un-form and re-form as necessary, independent neuro serpents who seek heat.

Heat is their motivation; motion is their intelligence.

If you get a whole bucket of them, it’ll be enough to revive a hulk.

After dragging a bulb through the sand for an hour, the two friends succeeded in snaring a hundred worms. They climbed up onto the lap of a hulk. The giant machine sitting half buried in the surf with its arms spread wide.

What do we do now?

These were simple machines, designed to last and recharge independently. Most aren’t broken, just asleep.

He stared up at the slumped head of the giant robot. Its corrugated optical sensors, 3 great big eyes blindly navel gazing. It had a mouth and ears that were just seams between close fitted metal plates.

See the third center eye is an infrared sensor. The other two are its cameras. The microphones and speakers are locked behind its armor. It’s deaf and mute but it sees us. It’s got no brain left to decide what to do.

They stared at the AI worms in the bucket, squirming into a mass of networked cognition.

Give me my hands, he said.

The grappling claws snapped on over his wrists and fingers. Then he fished a worm from the bucket, held it up to the slumped head and tore it’s sheath off. Sparks and lubricant sprayed from the destroyed AI machine. It smelt like WD40, and Coke. He threw the dying worm out to the sea.

The boy looked down into the bucket of remaining worms. They were frantically re-forming, thinking maybe. He stepped back. Then they both ran for the mangroves. The metal giant stirred, first its right arm, lifting its haunches from the sand, then its left leg. Finally, it stood up, creaking like a broken trolley. Lube seeped along capillaries in its joints. The hulk knelt and scooped up its brain, now calling desperately. It looked out over the sea. And its thick fingers received the torn body of the dying worm. It stared at it a long time, then turned towards the boys in the mangrove thicket.

What have you done? He said, as the robot started towards them.

He felt warm pee run down his legs as the hulk peeled aside the trees. Then it said,

Fix, master.

And it dropped the dying worm into his hands.

The breadboard was easy to prepare, and the worm’s contacts readily accepted the solder, sensing its new lease of life. It felt their breath through its flute-like pitch converter. He put it into his backpack, with its speaking tube gauzed to his lip.

Take us up, he said.

They stood on the hulk’s shoulders.

What’s your purpose? He asked the robot.

Chaplain, it replied, medic-chaplain.

The giant machine swayed in the salty air, its limbs and fingers stretching and clasping. It spun at its waist and the plates over its ears and mouth unfurled.

In the fading evening light, other hulks started rising from the beach. Some that were badly damaged collapsed into the rising tide. Others unleashed fiery rockets into the air, attacking an enemy locked into their sensors, now long gone. Bursts of TNT and groans of buckling metal filled the night.

Can you shut them down? He shouted.

There is a God, replied the hulk. Only He knows.

Thermite rockets grazed the chaplain-medic, singing their hair. The machine gracefully side-stepped the munitions with the two boys on its shoulder, slipping against its ear.

Stop it! The boys screamed.

God will intervene. God will save us. He will send the Messiah. It raised an arm over its face as depleted uranium rounds slammed deep into its armor.

He knows all things. A storm with flashing blue lightning lit up the cloudy sky. And it began to rain. It tasted bitter against their lips.