I Wrote A Story With Robots · 4:01am Feb 19th, 2018
Intended as Chapter 1 of a longer story called The Jackrabbit War. We'll see what people think, but I'm reasonably happy with it.
If you've ever wanted to read some of my non-pony fiction, enjoy!
Robot Applejack has nothing to do with the story, but come on, robots are cool.
The sound of a gun discharging is often compared to the sound of fireworks. Fireworks are a deeper sound and lack the one-two nature of a modern gas-operated weapon, but to someone who has not been shot at before, they may sound very much the same.
At a distance, other less-obvious comparisons may apply. For example, heard from over 1500ft away and through a plasterboard wall, a suppressed H&K MP7 A1 personal defense weapon firing subsonic ammunition sounds almost exactly like a balloon popping.
Sahak al-Ghamdi did not know this. All he knew was that he was dreaming about balloons, and then suddenly he was wide awake in his bed.
His eyes flew open. Adrenaline flooded into his veins. But he didn’t hear anything. His eyes searched the dark hotel room around him, craning for any hint of what it was that pulled him from sleep. His breath froze in his throat, and listened closely. The old air conditioner hummed, and the muffled voice of someone in the hallway crept under his door. When things got quiet enough, he could hear his own heart beat.
In the distance, a balloon popped. Then he heard the sound again, then a quick stattico burst.
“Rook, I hear gunfire.”
From the nightstand beside his bed, an artificial voice spoke. “Rook-1 confirms sound of gunfire,” Rook said. Its speech synthesizer was not the best, and the emphasis landed on the wrong part of the word: con-firm, gun-fire. “Auditory analysis suggests suppressed subsonic automatic weapon at a distance of between 1000 and 2500ft bearing 122 southwest. Unable to confirm weapon model or shooter location. Local law enforcement has been notified.”
“Okay.” Sahak lay in bed for a few moments. As he struggled to order his thoughts, his eyes continued to search the dark room on instinct. Soon they settled on the window. “What are you doing about it?”
“No imminent threat to convoy response not required at this time.” It spoke with no pauses, and for a moment, Sahak tried to piece together what a threat to “convoy response” meant.
Then he took a breath, and reached out for the nightstand. He fumbled in the dark, and let out a quiet “fuck” as he knocked over his glass of water. Finally, his fingers settled around the pointer, and he aimed at at the hotel window. He clicked the switch several times. “Rook, do you see the pointer?”
“Rook-1 sees friendly laser designator. Indicated area contains window and air conditioner integrated into local structure designated ‘Holiday Inn.’”
“Stand outside the window.”
“Please confirm, is Rook-1 being placed on guard duty?”
“No.” Sahak mumbled. “Just, stand outside the window until I tell you to do otherwise.”
Sahak lay in bed, listening to the sounds of his hotel room. Eventually, he heard heavy footfalls. Something trampled on the bushes outside the window, cracking twigs and snapping branches. A shadow fell over the drawn curtains, dimming what little street light seeped in.
In the distance, more gunfire echoed. Not the soft balloon-pop of the suppressed gun from before, but something higher caliber. It fired in bursts. Sahak did his best to ignore it, and to ignore how the adrenaline made his hands shake under the covers. He shut his eyes and waited for it to pass.
It was still dark outside when Sahak’s phone-alarm let out its shrill wail.
He didn’t feel like any time had gone by. It seemed to him that he’d only shut his eyes a moment ago. He ignored it for as long as he could, but eventually gave in. He sat up, rolled out of bed, put his feet on the cheap carpet, and swiped the alarm to silence
His morning routine was always the same: shower, brush teeth, shave every part of the body except the face, neatly trim beard, shave space between eyebrows to give them better definition, mouthwash. Then came the uniform.
Sahak didn’t take pride in his uniform exactly, but an observer could be mistaken for thinking he did. He always made it looks just like it did in the promotional pictures: black shirt and pants pressed and free of any lint, white belt for contrast, and a white name patch over the breast that read “al-Ghamdi” in blocky text. The american-flag patches on each shoulder were bright and easy to see, as was the Lee-Han corporate logo beneath them.
The last aspect of his morning routine was the shoulder. The left shoulder of his uniform had a loop of fabric on top of it with a tight strap, but it wasn’t for decoration. Sahak retrieved the body camera from the nightstand, checked it’s battery, and then looped it through the fabric on his shoulder and pulled the strap tight. Made from a bright-white plastic that stood out against the rest of the uniform, it resembled an epaulet, rounded at the end so that its cameras could see in every direction except to the wearer’s immediate right.
“Hey Rook, can you see me?” He checked.
“Rook-1 receives body camera signal. Signal is strong. Camera view is unobstructed.”
“Good,” he said. Then he packed his bag and left.
The sun was just coming up. There wasn’t anyone else in the lobby, except an off-duty cop sitting at one of the tables by the door. There were bars over the windows and on the main door, and the lobby was barren, stripped of the furniture it had once held in better days.
As he passed, the cop threw Sahak a mock-salute, and Sahak threw one back. They both wore the same body camera.
It was a short jog from the front of the hotel to the lead convoy vehicle. The hotel parking lot was nearly empty, but company rules didn’t allow parking an APC in a regular lot. That meant the TAE had to stay in the empty lot beside the hotel, and that meant the trucks had to stay there as well. Sahak trotted out over the concrete and then into the tall grass. The lot was bounded by the hotel on one side and the highway on the other, and cars sped past on a regular basis.
The TAE-110 MRAP was not a pretty vehicle. Perhaps one and a half times the size of a particularly large SUV, it resembled nothing so much as a giant, irregularly shaped steel box on six wheels. It had no windows or driver’s cab, and when its doors were shut, they flushed with the hull until they were nearly invisible.
Sahak pulled open the rear cargo door and headed inside, pulling the door shut behind him as he entered. Intended to carry troops, most of the vehicle interior was instead used to store cargo, and many boxes were held in place by netting. He slid past them, tossed his bag into a corner, and sat next to a small touch screen that rested against the forward-facing inner wall. A red icon on it was blinking. He sighed, and pressed it.
After a few moments, the video call went through: “Good morning, sunshine! Enjoy your beauty sleep?”
“Good morning, Jacob,” Sahak replied, his tone dull. “You know travel rules say I can sleep in a hotel once every two days if I want.”
“Did I say otherwise?” the man on the screen asked, speaking with a quick, bouncing cadence. He was short-haired, young, and dressed in the same uniform as Sahak, save for the different name-tag. “Perish the thought! I just asked if you were well rested.”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“Super!” Jacob turned to look at something off-screen, his eyes scanning left and right. “Okay, looks like we’re all good to go for today. Projected arrival time is 2:21 PM. That still gives you a few hours of light. Did you call ahead?”
“Yeah, I told Chief Deputy Sharp I’d be in this afternoon, so that adds up.” Sahak gestured at the monitor. “He’ll be there to meet me, and he says they’ve got the lot cleared so we can start right away. Townhall is scheduled for the day after tomorrow. I’m going to give him another call on the road to confirm but everything should be set.”
“That matches what I’m seeing here, so we’re good to go. I’ll make sure your operator crew is ready when you arrive. Try to get started right away if you can. We want the construction gear back in California ASAP.”
“Got it. Anything else?”
“Yeah. You check your hotel bill yet?”
“I just woke up. I was going to do all my paperwork during the drive.” He frowned. “Is there a problem?”
“Your jackrabbit crushed $400 of shrubs last night. The hotel billed us.”
“Oh.” Sahak let out a hiss of breath. “I’m sorry, there was gunfire out in the city. Not that far away. I asked him to stand outside the window.” After a brief pause, he added: “Is it coming out of my pay?”
“I’ll call it a drone malfunction this once, but it better not happen again. We good?”
“We good.” Sahak nodded. “Thanks, boss.”
“Yeah, sure thing. Stay safe out there.” They said their goodbyes, and the screen went dark.
Reaching into his bag, Sahak fumbled around until he found the box with his glasses and earbuds. The buds went in his ears, and he held down the power button on his glasses until they booted up. Then slipped them over his eyes. Green text flashed in front of his vision, blurry and out of focus. Finally, the words: “PLEASE WAIT,” appeared hovering in the air in front of him.
“TURN HEAD LEFT,” the text ordered, a voice in his earbuds mirroring the command. He did so, and the text slid to the right until it left his field of vision, like it was a real object with a fixed position instead of an illusion in glass. “TURN HEAD RIGHT,” the voice in the earbuds commanded, and he reversed himself. “YOUR GLASSES ARE CORRECTLY CALIBRATED. PLEASE WAIT.”
Hovering icons began to appear in his vision, marking friendly vehicles, nearby buildings, or the highway. A flashing alert told him he had twelve messages waiting, none urgent. Finally, the MRAP itself faded away. The illusion of the outside world appeared projected on the interior, so that Sahak could see through the vehicle’s armored skin. He saw the hotel, the highway, the trucks, the lot, the jeep, and in the distance, the handful of burned-out highrise buildings that were the nearby city center.
Someone had spraypainted a giant swastika in bright red paint on one of them during the night. He’d missed it during his walk out. The symbol covered five stories, too large to be painted by any human without the benefit of a climbing harness.
“Rook, come back to the TAE, we’re leaving.”
“Rook-1 returning to transport TAE-1,” his body-camera chirped. The sound was mirrored by the vehicle’s interior comm and by his earbuds, and echoed around the cramped interior space.
Sahak shut his eyes and rubbed his temples. He retrieved an breakfast bar and an energy drink from his bag, tearing into the bar as he waited. Soon he could hear heavy footfalls, and through the illusion generated by his glasses, he could see his jackrabbit approach.
It wasn’t a small drone. Not by any stretch. Rook stood just over seven feet tall when upright. It was wrapped in a pretty plastic shell, but people could feel its weight when it walked. It shook the ground, a mountain of steel balanced on two legs. Some people said it looked like an ogre, others that it resembled a knight in plate or football linebacker in full armor. But whatever the details, its designer had intended for observers to feel the strength in its motions. Its hydraulics hissed when it moved, not because silent hydraulics could not be found, but by design.
It did have a head, but no face. It was just a cluster of camera lenses and precision instruments on a swivel mount. And on its left shoulder, where Sahak wore his body-camera, there was a small LIDAR dome and other 360 degree sensor mounts. The right shoulder was reserved for the grenade launcher.
As it made its way down into the grassy field, Sahak bit his lip, momentarily concerned the robot would sink into the soft earth. But it did not. Its legs ended in in wide metal feet with three “toes,” and despite its bulk it balanced elegantly. Its hands were much the same, broad implements with three strong “fingers” made of wrapped mesh. They couldn’t pull a trigger, but they did have the dexterity to pull open the TAE’s rear door.
“Good morning, Sahak,” Rook said. The machine had to stoop low to fit in the back, but it fit, and it found its place in the back. There was a mount where it could slot in for the drive, and once hooked in place, it pulled the door shut behind it.
“Good morning, Rook. How are you doing?”
“Rook-1 is undamaged. Battery is at 67%. All weapons are at recommended ammunition levels. 88 events have been reported since you last logged onto my tactical net. 3 of the events require human review. 0 of these events are urgent.”
Somehow, it got through the field without getting dirt all over it’s pretty new casing. The plastic was a bright eggshell white, painted with bright blue text. “ROOK,” read the writing on the left side. “ABERTON COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT” read the writing along the back. Badges, logos, and other similar images covered the front.
“Good.” Sahak didn’t bother elaborating further. He reached over and tapped the control panel to get the TAE in motion.
“Vehicle underway. All passengers should fasten their seatbelts,” an automated female voice purred out of the interior speaker. The quality of the synthesizer significantly exceeded that of Rook’s. She sounded almost lifelike. “Destination is the Office of the Sheriff for Thermon Grove, West Virginia. Total estimated transit time is 9 hours and 20 minutes. Estimated time of arrival 2:21 PM local time.”
Sahak did buckle up. Through his glasses, he could see the TAE pull up and out of the field. Behind it came a half-dozen automated flatbed trucks, each one loaded down with drones or crates of equipment. Last came the automated jeep to bring up the rear of the convoy, a little spitfire of a vehicle that shed all passenger and cargo space in favor of a pair of robotic roof-turrets.
The convoy rose out of the field, neatly sliding onto the onramp and there to the highway. Other automated cars moved just enough out of the way to let them pass, while human-driven vehicles gave them a wide berth. Once, Jacob had put a sticker on the transports that read: “IT’S NOT TRAFFIC IF I CAN DRIVE OVER IT.” Everyone had thought it was funny, but corporate didn’t see the humor. Everyone had to do sensitivity training.
After he finished his bar and energy drink, checked his emails, read the news, and finished filing his travel and expense paperwork, Sahak gestured into the air. The image of his contacts list appeared hovering in the vehicle in front of him. He was pretty sure cops got up early, but he’d waited just in case. His fingers flipped through menus, and he tapped the call button.
The phone on the other end rang twice: “Hey, Sahak,” the voice appeared in his earbuds.
“Good morning, Chief Deputy,” Sahak said, his tone curt and professional. “I just wanted to let you know we’re on time for a 2:30 PM arrival, and to check if there’s anything else you needed from me before we arrive.”
“Nope, we’re good. Got the field all cleared, maps all laid out like the instructions said. Everybody here is eager to meet you face to face.”
“Good. I’m looking forward to it as well.”
“Yeah, you’ll love living here. It’s a great little town. I’ll show you around after you get unpacked.” Deputy Sharp clicked his tongue. “Hey, one question. I’ve been trying to think of ways to, you know, socialize the big scary robot with the folks out there? You think we could do some range time with that thing’s grenade launcher? I know a lot of people here who’d get a real kick out of getting to see that.”
“If you’re referring to the jackrabbit unit and its shoulder launcher, it’s a riot launcher. It doesn’t have any explosive rounds.”
“Yeah, but, come on.” Deputy Sharp chided and laughed. “That’d still be a thing to see. People would like it.”
“I’m sorry,” Sahak continued, his tone keeping its professional neutrality. “The grenade launcher can only be used in a Class-A imminent human threat situation, or during training exercises with the written authorization of county-level officials.”
“What, you can’t tell that thing to bend the rules?”
“The purpose of law-enforcement robots is to prevent rules from being bent,” Sahak said, softening his tone a degree. “But I do think it’s a good idea. And there’s no rule against people watching a ‘training exercise.’ Do you think we could have a word with the county sheriff about getting him to approve it?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll see what he thinks. I’ll let you know if I hear back from him before you arrive.”
“Great. See you soon.” The call disconnected. Sahak let out a long breath, and turned to glance at the robot in the back.
“So, Rook. What do you think of all this?”
For a time, the machine thought that over: “Question not understood please rephrase.”
“What do you think of getting to fire your grenade launcher to win some hearts and minds?”
“Rules of engagement do not allow Rook-1 to fire its grenade launcher except in Class-A imminent human threat situations.”
Sahak snorted. “What if I took a hostage?”
The machine turned to look at him. Sahak let out a sigh. “Nevermind. Bad joke.” He put his head up against the inner wall of the vehicle and shut his eyes. “Go to sleep.”
They arrived in Thermon Grove that afternoon.
Plus 1 happy pone for robots
"His breath froze in his throat, and listened closely."
"His breath froze in his throat, and he listened closely."?
"checked it’s battery"
"checked its battery"?
"on the road to confirm but everything should"
"on the road to confirm, but everything should"?
"He retrieved an breakfast bar and"
"He retrieved a breakfast bar and"?
"legs ended in in wide metal feet"
"legs ended in wide metal feet"?
"Somehow, it got through the field"
"Somehow, it'd gotten through the field"?
"all over it’s pretty new casing"
"all over its pretty new casing"?
"onto the onramp and there to the highway"
"onto the onramp and from there to the highway"?
Seems an interesting beginning, at least. :)
By all means, continue.
What's the source on Applebot?
4800367
https://underpable.deviantart.com/art/Heavy-Machinery-730493188
My only complaint *might* be a lack of strategic direction, but I presume the book-blurb would cover that.
A flavor much like the Dean Ing stories, in particular Wild Country, one of my favorites. As an example of the tech he was writing about in the 80s, one of the widgets in a story was the Magnum Six(?), a lumber harvesting machine with both pneumatic legs and wheels, which used an extensible boom and two manipulators to be able to drive/walk into a timber stand, isolate out one tree, *strip* it of branches from root to crest, load the log onto the top of the machine and *walk* it out of the area if the trees were too thick to drive. The driver interfaced with it using a cybernetic helmet, which permitted him to treat the Magnum like an extension of his own body, which was very neat. It was also *dangerous* as one of the test machines turned the driver into a murderous psychotic with mental feedback, leaving the inventor to drive a second machine up into the Oregon forests to stop him. Yes, a mechanical chainsaw duel ensued.
4800384
One more book for the reading list!
Interesting. Feels like a more realistic look at the rollout of ED-209.
Please let us know when you write more.
Color me interested! And thank you for sharing it. Is Jackrabbit meant for later novel publication?
4801782
It is! We'll see how it goes.
Nice! You managed to be interesting while conveying routine and boredom. Did you research police or military work for this, or just make it all up? I especially like the rules about where transports can park.
Also I want a story where Applejack is replaced by a robot.
4802280
Thanks! The more I think about it though, the more I'm not quite sure that's the right way to introduce this story. It seems like the hook is weak.
Yup. And for real-world MRAP's, that's basically true. They're heavy enough they can damage regular parking lot asphalt if they're parked on it all night.
Beep boop.
This sounds like an amazing story, I would love to read it as a full book.
4802329
Society is an implied character, and implications about the current state of society are part of the hook, imho.
"SCIENCE FICTION!"