“Well, there’s two more. One major and the other minor.”
“Tell me the major first,” said Rohrbach, humorlessly.
“Okay. The way these things work is that they ‘read’ our nervous signals. It generally takes about thirty hours for them to get fully worked in. And the program that drives the pseudonerves is an autonomous AID that picks up not only our neural signals but also our ‘personality.’ And it’s built off of a completely different algorithm than the AID’s,” the Marine continued, pointing at the President’s AID on the desktop. “So the ‘gestalt’ is capable of taking over control of the suit if the human inside is injured and doing all sorts of things that an AID would be constrained against. Like, surgery, combat, all sorts of things.”
“Hold it,” said the Detail chief. “You mean there’s a self-directing computer in there with some sort of ‘personality’? How is it going to react to the President being in there?”
“We don’t know how it’s going to react,” admitted the Unit commander.
“No,” snapped the Detail chief. “No way!”
“What,” asked Hadcraft in a tired, cynical voice, “you want to truck him through a landing in one of your fuckin’ Suburbans?”
“Wait,” said the President. “Just stop. Captain, can we… talk to this personality? Tell it what’s happening? Reason with it?”
“Yes, probably and I don’t know. You see, we don’t even notice the gestalt. The thing is us. Do you carry on a conversation with your spleen?” he asked rhetorically.
“So you’re going to try to talk to it before I try it on?”
“Yes, sir. And if we think it’s too dangerous, we won’t proceed,” he continued, more to the Detail chief than to the President.
The President held up his hand to forestall the protest of the Detail chief and nodded his head. “Okay, we’ll try it. I agree that wandering around in a Suburban given the situation is not a good idea. You mentioned there was one more minor problem?”
“Uh, yeah,” said the Marine, with a chagrined tone.
Roselita Martinez was apparently a very angry woman. If there was such a thing as ESP, President Edwards was experiencing it. The rage of the suit transmitted up a link that was supposed to be unnoticeable two-way communication. The reason for the gestalt’s rage was ambiguous. It missed its proper user. It hated Posleen. It hated “brass” and had one in its belly. But it loved the protectee. It adored the protectee. It had to protect the protectee. It was very confused. It was very angry. It was very, very angry.
“Mr. President,” said the captain. The voice sounded odd, incredibly crisp and relieved of all background noise by the transmission technology.
The President tried to turn his head against the enveloping jelly in the helmet. He could barely move against it, but the viewpoint of the helmet shifted wildly as he struggled against the Jell-O. The way it flew around was dizzying.
“Mr. President,” said the captain again, grabbing the suit and turning it. The President finally got the viewpoint settled down and focused on the officer. The view was cluttered by dozens of indecipherable readouts. “Just keep looking forward and walk carefully. If the viewpoint starts shifting all over just look forward and close your eyes.”
“There’s all sorts of readouts,” the President said, closing his eyes as the viewpoint started to swivel again.
“AID, tell the suit to clear the view and reduce sensitivity to view shift by fifty percent,” said the captain. “Sir, we don’t have time to get you trained to the suit. We have to leave.”
“Okay,” said the President, fighting against the waves of anger flooding through him. He took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s go.” He started to shake his head and was stopped by the gel of the underlayer. The viewpoint nonetheless shifted side to side. How anyone got used to this insane device was a mystery to him.
CHAPTER 59
Near Harper’s Ferry, VA,
United States of America, Sol III
0546 EDT October 11th, 2004 ad
“How the hell do you guys get used to this?” asked Captain O’Neal, fighting down the nausea as the OH-58 Kiowa banked past Harper’s Ferry and dropped down to follow Interstate 70 towards Baltimore. The road was packed with military vehicles, most of them at a standstill.
“Get used to what?” asked the pilot, keeping a close eye out for wires. The requirement to stay below one hundred feet was nerve wracking. You never knew where some stupid electric company was going to stick their lines. And half the time it seemed like they weren’t on the damn chart.
“Never mind,” muttered Mike, wishing he was back in a suit. Even the interface using a set of Milspecs was limited. He craved the total immersion of the suit like the drug it was. But he had other things to worry about right now.
He leaned back in the seat of the small helicopter and let the information flowing from the Virtual Reality glasses sink in. The interstates were completely overloaded, as were the side streets. But the mission was to get the battalion to D.C. before the Posleen. There seemed to be no way, but that was an illusion.
Back under the hammer of necessity, doubts and fears started to fall away. “Impossible” was a word that left his vocabulary as the information started flooding through his synapses. The Posleen had torn his world apart and ended the Golden Age he had grown up in. Such a species would not be permitted to continue to live, breathe and breed. Earth was their last stop. He nodded his head as the final piece of the plan fell into place and keyed the AID.
“Shelly, get me Major Givens.” It was time to start the dance.
Bob Givens was an experienced officer. Therefore, he knew that what he was in the grip of was a classic military disaster, not a nightmare. There was a simple difference. You woke up from nightmares.
“I know, Sergeant Clarke. I agree,” he said to the battalion operations NCO. The sergeant first class was one of the few battalion staff NCOs that was not scattered to the four winds. And the NCO had a legitimate complaint. The tasking from Continental Army Command was clearly impossible. The roads were packed with military units scrambling in every direction and refugees heading for the hills. Getting to Washington in anything under twenty hours would be a miracle. “But those are the orders.”
“How in hell does General Horner expect us to perform them, sir? Did he give a hint?”
“No, but we’ll have to figure something out.”
“I’ll start getting transportation laid on,” said the NCO. “But I’m damned if I know how it’s going to cut through the traffic jams.”
“Major Givens,” chirped his AID. “Incoming call from Captain O’Neal.”
Givens’s shoulders slumped. He shouldn’t be ashamed of his delight that the captain had finally initiated communication. The colonel had told him that if O’Neal made it back he would be taking over operations while Givens took command. And God knew he needed all the help he could get. There was only one company commander present and half the first sergeants were still out. There were no other battalion staff officers. He was just about to shanghai senior lieutenants from the companies to take up some of the administrative slack. Having a captain back would be a bonus even if it weren’t O’Neal. But it was. And although Givens was an experienced and capable field-grade officer, he still had a germ of hope that the doughty captain would have thought of a miracle.
He picked up the AID and decided that humor would be the best approach. “Dammit O’Neal, where the hell have you been,” he said with a smile in his voice.