On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 208, of 240 so far.

Peace and Friendship

Carter stood beside the young recruit, and pointed at the machine lying on the floor in the centre of the room. Its limbs had been severed, all six of them, and its array of sensory devices watched the two men silently.

It emitted no light or sound whatsoever, and a single thick cable connected it to the wall where a guard stood with his hand on a lever.

“This is the basic hunter unit,” Carter said. “Usually comes with projectile weapons, some bladed surfaces, and a limited EMP/taser capability running from a separate and isolated power pack.”

“It can’t… get us, though? Right now, I mean,” the younger man said, and Carter shook his head.

“Internal power has been ripped out, so it’s dependent on the mains supply there,” he replied. “Fighting gear is all gone. This one probably killed about a thousand people since it was made a week or so ago. It’s very good at its job.”

The younger man, whose uniform bore no name at all but who Carter knew was called something like Finch, swallowed. He’d been visibly nervous since he was led in a few minutes earlier.

“We’ll get to the specifics later, but for now, I want you to familiarise yourself with the most common types,” Carter said. “That’s one of the things about the machines: they don’t vary their designs much. Some optimisations, some fixes, but no big sudden changes. It’s more like evolution; slow and gradual. But worse than evolution because there’s no randomness about it, so there are no dramatic unplanned advances.”

The young man, barely 20 years old, took a tentative step forward and peered at the thing. He startled when one of its sensor clusters moved to track him. Carter watched with grim amusement, but he didn’t begrudge the kid his obvious fear. Fear was the wisest reaction. And in any case, the recruit was no soldier, now or ever. He would become an engineer instead.

“There’s a warning on its superstructure about laser radiation,” the recruit said, “and some kind of alignment markers for installing the appendages. And there’s a No Step label painted on the flat section.”

Carter nodded. “That’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. There’s no purpose from the machine’s point of view for those things, given that they want to kill all of us, but we made them for military use and it’s never occurred to them to get rid of human-focused features. It’s a weakness, in principle.”

The recruit looked around at him. “Can’t it hear us right now?”

By way of response, Carter stepped off to one side, moving away from the younger man, and the machine’s sensory clusters smoothly moved to follow him. “See and hear,” Carter replied. “Far beyond human capabilities on both counts. But we’ve ripped out all its comms gear too. It won’t be talking to any of its kind ever again. We’ll destroy it shortly, once we’ve salvaged what we can use.”

The recruit leapt backwards almost two metres when the machine abruptly spoke.

“We firmly believe in peace and friendship for all,” it said.

The recruit blinked twice, looking at Carter again, and then at the few other soldiers dotted around the large chamber, who all looked reassuringly bored.

“That’s the other thing,” Carter continued, walking over to the machine himself now. After a moment’s contemplation, he kicked its lower chest plate, making the metal carapace ring with the impact. Then he looked over at one of the other soldiers and gestured at a large screen that hung on the side wall. A moment later, it illuminated.

The recruit watched as footage began to play, showing a place that had once been an inner-city playing area for children, complete with climbing equipment, swings, and picnic tables. There were no children there, though, and not just because most of the fixtures were broken into pieces. On the screen, a squad of soldiers fanned out from some off-camera muster point, weapons ready, and at the same time a group of machines of the same kind that lay on the floor of the room entered the area. They travelled quickly, moving like crabs, and upon detecting the soldiers they opened fire immediately.

“Aggression must always be a last resort, ” the lead machine in the video footage said, its synthesised and oddly jovial voice booming out in front of it and echoing against the hard ground.

The recruit watched as the machines slaughtered first one soldier and then another, talking all the while.

“Trust is our most valuable commodity,” one of them called out.

“There can be no prosperity without democracy,” said another.

Carter waited a few moments and then motioned to the soldier to stop the playback. The recruit stood staring at the final frozen image on the screen, of a machine filling almost the entire frame, its weapon about to discharge.

“You’re a bit young, but you might remember something about how the AI stuff started, and what happened after,” he said. “Regarding how the things were trained.”

The recruit turned to face him again, slowly, obviously still thinking about what he’d seen, but after another few moments he answered. “A bit. They… it was internet data. They were trained on everything. The companies just stole it all, until governments enacted legislation. First it was opt-out, then it became opt-in, and finally they only had public domain stuff to use.”

Carter nodded twice, taking a pack of cigarettes from a pocket in his uniform. “And the last big archive they could find — that didn’t cost them money, anyway — was the fucking politicians. C-SPAN and BBC Parliament and all the rest of it. So that’s what they used.”

The recruit looked at him, and then at the machine on the floor. “The AI that eventually got into autonomous military fighting platforms, and collectively decided to try and kill every human being, was trained on political speeches?”

Carter took a drag of the cigarette, relishing the familiar bloom of heat in his lungs. “So every one of them is a hypocrite, and an idiot, and a damned liar.”

“We have much more in common than that which separates us,” the machine on the floor said.

Carter took another drag.

“Ain’t that the truth,” he said, then he unholstered his sidearm and blew the thing’s sensor cluster into a thousand pieces.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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