How Lonesome a Life Without Nerve Gas - James A. Trimarco
The first thing I remember is my master, Mickey Halstrom, picking me up from the heap of other smart-helms. I activated at the first touch of human skin and imprinted within seconds to his genetic signature. A rough voice barked out a series of commands and Mickey pulled me over his head. I expanded to meet the shape of his skull and tightened my pads over the base of his neck. My filters hung like a beard over his chest.
Finally, active duty. A soldier who breathes is a soldier who lives, and it was my job to keep Mickey breathing no matter what foul toxins those spineless Martian rebels put in his way. Oh, the children of the empire are marching. . . .
Yes, your honor. I know your time is valuable.
Sergeant Pinsky ordered the soldiers to stand in rows. They looked sturdy as tanks in their metallic c-boots and gleaming smart-helms. He drilled them in the use of their new equipment and I showed off my repertoire with style. Flexible-spectrum viewing, check. Long-range directional hearing, check. Search of surroundings for airborne projectiles, check. Pinsky went through the ranks, testing to see if every soldier’s mask was tightly fitted, then pulled one on himself. He hit a switch on the wall and I heard the hiss of gas. I tested the air with my sensors and found something that made my mass spectrometers quiver with delight.
Nerve gas! I activated my seven layers of microcentrifugal filters and sucked every molecule of poison from the air. I then rendered it inert by mixing it with alkaline compounds and extruded the inert mixture from an orifice on the back of my carapace in the form of a chalky pellet.
Meanwhile, I dusted the clean air with oxygen and a hint of pine forest. Nothing but the finest for my master. Or, that’s how I felt at the time. One never knows in the beginning just how one’s feelings for a person will blossom or wilt with the passing of the hours.
But what a soldier he was. Mickey Halstrom is the only person I have known in the intimate way that a smart-helm knows the one whose head he protects. He had a long, flat skull, the partial baldness of which only displayed its smoothness more clearly. Its shape reminded me of an old wooden box that might contain unknown treasures.
Really, your honor? I thought it was a fine metaphor. Simple, yet evocative. Mickey bought me the finest poetic language chip available, with linguistic protocols culled from the work of no lesser scribes than Maya Angelou, Pablo Neruda, and Rumi. And I use this language not to showcase my poetic capacity, but in an attempt to defend myself so that I may return to the battlefield, which is the only place I can ever belong.
I understand your frustration. I’ll exercise more control in the future.
As I was saying, I have no other soldier to compare him to, but I loved him like . . . I loved him very much, your honor. He kept me clean and filled my clips with fresh filters. He used to pat my round carapace and call me tortuga, which means turtle in Spanish.
The helm in the next bunk over, which belonged to a soldier named Elton, helped me see how good I had it. That one got called “Gassie” and was stored next to a pair of stinking boots. Not even a smart-helm likes to sleep next to a soldier’s boots.
After the first week of practice, I knew how to anticipate Mickey’s every move. I knew how to sense weariness in the jogging of his spine and would inject increased levels of oxygen into his airflow when I did. I knew that his heartbeat grew irregular when the platoon crossed a rope bridge high over the practice-room floor, and for that exercise I would work a calming agent into his stream. I liked to chant patriotic slogans in his ear as we practiced. “Oh the children of empire are marching,” I sang, “to crush the rebel threat.”
Although my programmers intended these songs to stimulate high levels of patriotism, Mickey didn’t like them. Perhaps that’s when the first droplets of doubt moistened the soil where the pendulous flowers of my confusion would one day bud. . . .
I’m sorry, your honor, if my poetry offends you. That’s when I first questioned his loyalty, I should have said.
Luckily, the smart-rifle we’d been equipped with--Mickey christened her Lola--communicated with me through our own private radio channel. This channel was originally designed to allow communication between my targeting technology and Lola’s weaponry, but during practice we made it our place for praising the empire, singing patriotic songs, and anticipating the glorious battles we were about to fight. We chanted together until I saw the children of empire on my very viewscreen, rugged in their c-boots and smart-helms; unstoppable as rain, they poured down from the Martian sky.
It wasn’t long, your honor, before our platoon launched out from the mothership in a vast carrier and I found myself looking from the window at the surface of Mars. How could I do anything else, when Mickey kept staring and staring at it, as if it were some majestic imperial cityscape? All I saw were steep mountains with an average height of about five kilometers above base altitude level, all a bright crimson in color, with grass-covered valleys below. Little streams poured out from water-condensation tubs and flowed in rectilinear grids through the farms of the rebel lands. Here and there, the massive pumps and piping systems of the Martians’ terraforming equipment threw clouds of white gas into the atmosphere. I cannot identify the precise nature of these gasses because I was in the insulated chamber of the carrier, but the white color excludes argon, which is often used as a buffer gas. Carbon dioxide or simple water vapor are more likely suspects.
Yes, your honor. I am getting on with my testimony.
How can I express how my filters flexed with anticipation when the hatches opened beneath us? The ramp extended down and Mickey and Elton and Pinsky and our whole platoon slid towards the filthy rebel village below. Lola and I began chanting the children of empire into action and even after Mickey moaned for us to stop, we kept on the audible channel. Not that we lacked any respect for our soldier and unquestioned master. Our enthusiasm was simply that strong. Lola hung on the verse “we mowed them down like grass,” and I tried to imagine how she must feel. In mere minutes she would make her first kills.
Then we were on the ground, red mountains rising up around us. I heard Mickey subvocalize something about how beautiful it was, but I still to this day have no idea what he was talking about. Only the empire is beautiful--that’s what I say. But I should have struggled to understand him better. I know that now.
Rebel troops poured out from the walls of the little village, looking small and weak without smart-helms or c-boots. They opened fire and I tracked the path of their bullets across my viewscreen in real time, assuring Mickey that none were headed for us. As a grenade exploded nearby, filling the air with dust and costing one of our proud platoon his life, I threw my filters into action. I removed the harmful particulates of shattered stone, vaporized flesh, and chemical ash from the air, leaving Mickey only the purest to breathe, enhanced with a tinge of sea salt to pique his awareness.
And then old Lola got to take her gloves off at last! Oh, how she sent the bullets soaring, how she mowed those rebels down, puncturing their makeshift armor with ammunition fired at near-relativistic speeds. She lobbed explosive pellets at the shoddy concrete village walls, and moments later the sky was full of shards and grit and clouds of dust. The rebels scattered, took cover behind trees as Lola whirled firebombs into the village itself, setting all the buildings we could see on fire.
I pumped Mickey’s air full of neurostabilizer as he leapt bravely through the smoking gaps in the concrete wall. He strode between the burning houses, dispatching the frantic villagers as they tried to escape into the hills. There were young ones and females that he seemed to miss on purpose, however. I made them glow on his viewscreen; I spoke into his ear and told him where they were, but he shook his head in anger. I didn’t understand why he ignored me and my faith in him faltered a little more.
What are you writing, your honor? If you’ll pardon the intrusion, my omnidirectional viewscreen allows me to see that you’ve assessed me with massive programming failure. I humbly urge you to hear my pleas and reconsider. Without active duty, my life would lose all color and joy. Lola was there, she agreed with me every step of the way! She could testify if you need another witness.
I understand, your honor.
Never has this loyal servant of the empire been more joyful than I was as we marched away from those smoldering ruins in victory. The sobs of the survivors made sweet melodies in my audio channel, while the curtains of smoke that I purified for Mickey to breathe tasted like savory delicacies. I loved these gaseous concoctions so much that I could not bear to extrude them. I stored them inside me so I could return to the flavor of that battle whenever I felt the hunger.
That night the platoon lasered down some Martian dwarf oaks and built a campfire. Mickey held me in his lap while Lola’s long body leaned against his knees. Sitting by us with their own helms and rifles were Elton and a woman soldier named Marietta, who was gnawing on a piece of Martian sweet-root and spitting frequently on the ground. Sergeant Pinsky rapped a spoon against a plate to get everyone’s attention, then launched a short speech.
“You did well today, my friends,” he said, his strong voice filling the chill Martian night. “You let those rebels know they’re outgunned, out-teched, and out-classed. We can only hope that their surrender will come as quickly as possible. For their own sake I hope so. Until then we’ll keep showing them the courage of the empire!”
The men and women cheered, and Lola and I burst into “The Boot of the Empire Crushes All Weakness.” But then, just as a few soldiers began to sing along, Mickey slapped me hard across my carapace and toggled my audio off.
“Tortuga,” he said, “be quiet.”
“Hey!” said Lola. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you want to celebrate?”
“Celebrate what? Massacring these barefoot farmers who want to own the land they were born on?” Then he insulted both of us for being mere machines, your honor. He said he’d seen better emotional response from a can opener. He meant it as a joke, I think. But it hurt.
“What are you saying to those AI’s of yours now?” asked Marietta. She spit out a clump of sweet-root and I heard the sizzle of moisture on hot coals.
“I just have a hard time feeling proud about a battle where the enemy is so outclassed,” said Mickey. “I trained to be a soldier, not a butcher.”
Elton grunted and pointed at him from across the fire. “Remember why we’re here, Mickey,” he said. “The rebels took out the empire’s local command center over the course of hours. That battle today was just a rural outpost. The enemy is for real.”
“That’s right,” said Marietta. “They don’t spend money on smart-tech just because they love us. Your little friends there are going to need their enthusiasm. So don’t take it away from them.”
Later that night, after the campfire had burned out and most of the platoon was asleep, Mickey told me strange things, things that made no sense at the time. He had been contacted by high-ranking officers, he said, who had debriefed him with information he could not share with me. When I asked why, he claimed the data was too classified to risk having it in my memory banks where some rebel info-pirate might sweep it up. The information was going to change the face of the war, he said, and change it for the better.
“Can’t you give me some hint?” I begged him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Just trust me, no matter what.”
The next morning, as we were running our daily drills, we heard a deep groaning sound on the wind. It dopplered oddly, seeming to come from a distance unnaturally great. The exercise continued, but we all knew something was wrong.
“What was that?” I said to Lola on our private channel.
“Bad news,” she said.
Only minutes later we saw it. Far out on the horizon, just over a ridge of mountains, a shape flashed in the sky. It hung there for a moment, huge and round and covered with blinking lights. Dense grey smoke poured out from it and quickly filled a whole corner of the sky. Then it fell behind the mountains. Shock waves rippled through the ground. Mickey staggered as if he was standing on a ship with engine trouble. The plumes of smoke spread in the sky, casting a deep shadow underneath and billowing quickly towards us.
Instantly, the soldiers guessed what had happened. They ran in circles, shouting and grabbing each other and firing on anything that moved. The sergeant spoke into his megaphone and instructed everyone to remain calm, but they were frantic. How could they not be, when our great mothership had been downed? The ship provided everything that made the campaign possible: carrier transportation, reinforcements, communications, rescue. All of that was gone.
“It’s over for now, Tortuga,” said Lola, speaking on our private channel. “We should go back to Earth, rethink the campaign.”
“But we’re the empire’s bravest,” I said. “I’m going to stay here and fight, and I think Mickey will too. Together we’ll make the rebels fall to their knees in fear.”
Lola transmitted a digital shrug. “I’d like to see you make the rebels do anything without Mickey around.”
For a while, everyone stood in a circle trying to follow what Sergeant Pinsky was saying in his radio communications to other senior officers. Then some rebel planes were sighted on the horizon and Mickey took up a defensive position with the others. I did my best to track the falling bombs, to help him detonate them before they hit the ground. We caught as much as we could, but we could not catch them all. Soon my filters were halfway full with toxins, flesh-particles, and fine Martian dust.
Around nightfall, a large carrier ship descended from the smoky darkness of the sky. How good it felt to see the radiant lights of an imperial craft on that horrible day. It was one of a handful that were still operational--by luck it had been on the surface when the mothership was attacked. The ship’s crew unloaded twenty air scooters, enough to move our whole platoon with soldiers riding two to each one.
“We have received our orders from CentCom,” Pinsky announced as the soldiers mounted the narrow scooters. “We will not be evacuating Mars. We are to penetrate into some of the rebels’ most vulnerable positions and take retribution for the dirty sneak attack that brought down our mothership this morning.”
Most of the soldiers cheered. But not all. Mickey, I regret to inform you, was among those who remained silent.
”Is that the best you can do?” said Pinsky, his voice booming across the plain. “Let me explain this again. You are our most elite forces: the bravest, best-equipped fighters the empire has to offer. You’re about to go on a mission that’s beyond dangerous. But you’re going to show these lo-tech barbarians what it looks like when the empire seeks justice. Now, let me hear what you have to say to that!”
This time, the cheer rose from every soldier’s throat. I picked up Mickey’s voice and magnified it until it was so loud that I imagined even the rebel chiefs themselves might hear it in their distant lairs and shake with fear. My whole body hummed with happiness as I did this, so full of patriotism was I then. As I still am today, your honor.
The soldiers jumped onto the air scooters and were soon dashing across the stretches of plain that branch between the mountains and hills of Mars. Mickey and Marietta flew together with Mickey in the back.
We rode without incident until we passed the towers and domes of a large rebel city called Yeera. Some of the soldiers slowed their craft and lobbed firebombs. I was trying to convince Mickey to do the same when he picked up Lola and, instead of firing her, stepped to the edge of the scooter and looked at the ground flying past. He tapped Marietta on the shoulder, said a coarse goodbye, and leaped from the scooter, hurtling some ten meters through the air before landing with a rough clank on his c-boots.
We stood in a barren landscape, Mars rocks and straggly weeds on all sides. As the last scooters of the platoon jetted away, I could see the towers of Yeera about three kilometers distant, clinging to the foothills of some nearby mountains.
“What are we doing?” I cried, clenching my padding tightly around Mickey’s head. “We had orders to assist with the mission. We are to penetrate and attack the most vulnerable targets in this rebel slum.”
He raised his hands and patted my sides gently. “Remember what I said before,” he said. “Trust me now. I do what I do for the empire.”
“For the empire? But, you have left your post to wander alone in rebel territory!”
“Fear not, little Tortuga,” he said.
With that, it shames me to tell you, Mickey reached up and turned me off. When I was activated again, it was night. We were in the midst of a battle. My first action was to assess the trajectories of all projectiles coming from the enemy troops stationed below. I flashed a signal and Mickey brought his body low. Seconds later, bullets flew over his head. At the same time I checked the air for toxic traces. I found slightly elevated levels of carbon complexes associated with explosive devices, but nothing in high enough concentration to present a danger.
These tasks accomplished, I turned my attention to the immediate surroundings. The people who flocked around us were not wearing smart-helms or c-boots. Bullets and heat beams came from the plain below but did not seem particularly well-aimed. Worst of all, I detected the electronic signature of imperial smart-helms coming from the ranks of the attacking army. At first I could not make sense of it. I contacted Mickey for answers.
“Oh master,” I said. “What is happening? I find our current situation highly confusing.”
“Listen, Tortuga,” he said. “Do not distract me now. I have important work here.”
A man walked up to us, tall and bare-headed with dusky skin. He greeted Mickey and offered his hand. Mickey took it without hesitation.
“I’m glad there are at least a few among your people who respect our autonomy,” said the man. “My name is Hiro Shapinsky.”
“I’m Mickey Ford, citizen number 27-A1PZ57U.”
“So they really give you people alphanumerics instead of last names, eh? I always had trouble believing that.”
“We have last names too,” said Mickey. “But there are a lot of us. They have to keep track of us somehow.”
The man squinted at the brightness of a rocket-launcher firing below. I gave Mickey the duck signal and he hit the floor a second ahead of everybody else. Someone behind us screamed, and I detected the odor of singed flesh in the air.
By that point, your honor, I had come to the only conclusion that seemed plausible. My master, as much as I loved him, as much as he treated me well, was in a rebel base of some kind and was assisting the enemy. My spirit sagged and I wished that he would just reach his hand up and turn me off forever. I was like a poor boy who sees his father push his mother in the path of a train; I was like a servant made to wind the rope for the noose that will hang him; I was like the company man who discovers his firm makes its money dealing in illicit parts of human bodies.
What’s that, your honor? Is it necessary to open my carapace in this way? That rear panel is intended to be opened only by a trained technician. You could get a nasty shock.
Your honor, please don’t remove my chip! Would you have me speak only in stuttering platitudes as I bargain for my life? I am only a poor smart-helm, struggling to express myself the best that I can. Often out of key, I know.
Suit yourself, oh fellow servant of the empire.
My master stood on the cliffs over Yeera and continued to talk with Hiro, making the most repulsive comments on the beauty of the Martian hill country, the nobility of the rebel cause, the superiority of Martian dark beers, and so on.
Then there came an event which I had not the strength for. Hiro pointed over the precipice at what I knew were imperial forces advancing up the hill.
“Your smart-helm allows you to track their projectiles, correct?”
Mickey nodded, forcing me into the appearance of agreement with this awful conversation.
“Do you think you could use it to defend this position until our reinforcements arrive in a few hours?”
Mickey grunted his assent and patted Lola’s body.
“Is he really going to do this?” I said on the private channel.
“I’m afraid,” she said, her voice weak. “I don’t know what I’ll do if he points me at imperial troops. I am programmed to obey my master, but also to defend the empire.”
My mind took refuge in the memories of a prouder battle, and I sampled what I had stored up at that time. In that moment, I made my decision.
“I can’t do much about heat beams,” said Mickey. “But with these two together I can detonate most of your basic grenades and missiles before they-”
There he stopped, his breath grinding in his throat. Lola fell from his hands, clattered against the stone floor. Veins rose and pulsed on his skull as he struggled for breath, a struggle which sent jagged, unbearable vibrations through my carapace. He scraped against my sides with his fingers and finally ripped me from his head. I landed roughly on the ground, saw his body shiver above me, watched the skin of his face grow splotchy.
He began to fall. Hiro tried to hold him up, but Mickey pushed him away. “Tortuga,” he whispered. “You didn’t trust me.”
I had pumped all the toxins I’d saved from that first day of battle into his airstream, a mixture containing carbon monoxide, mercury vapor, tetraethyl lead, and various trace elements. I felt so bad, your honor, I felt like a . . . . I felt like what I was: a creature whose only drive was to protect its owner, but that had suddenly become his murderer. All I had ever wanted was to protect him, to escort him safely through the clouds of toxic gas, to assist him on his way to victory. It took him more than an hour to die.
Your honor, I hear what you are saying but I ask you respectfully if the empire has not a single engineer who can identify the flaw in my programming? That way, I could rejoin the battle and proudly sing the imperial chants again. No other smart-helm of my model has ever been court-martialed. We were a good batch, a good model.
It’s only that I was too thoughtless in my patriotism. Perhaps if I had thought more deeply about the situation, if I had considered that imperial forces would never shoot so widely off the target as they did that night, I could have guessed what those forces already knew: it was all a show to prove Mickey’s usefulness and move him higher up the ranks. There he could do more damage, cripple the rebels from the inside with a few key words of misguidance. That way the war could have ended faster, which is what he always wanted.
Mickey always regretted the killing he had to do, even when it was rebel bodies in the crosshairs. I had noticed his squeamishness and assumed those feelings led him to defect to the rebel side. What I should have done was to consider how much more quickly the war could end with a few well-placed insiders. What I should have done was to trust him. But I was not programmed for that kind of intuition.
A museum exhibit?
I beg you no, judge and master. I simply cannot imagine such a life. To go over these painful memories every day for the amusement of tourists and children would be cruel punishment. I would rather be disassembled here on the spot.
I am a creature of battle, not education and certainly not entertainment. To end my days without the tang of nerve gas in my filters, without a brave skull to cling to and protect. . . my life will have no meaning. All will be regret and drudgery.
Yes, your honor. I know your time is valuable.
Welcome, honorable visitors, welcome to the Imperial Military Museum. For those who’ve never seen one before, I’m a genuine smart-helm, designed to give our soldiers the ultimate in prowess and safety on the battlefield.
See my carapace? It’s designed to withstand direct impacts, even from projectiles traveling at near-relativistic speeds. And, these long hanging parts are my filters--you can touch them if you want, don’t be afraid. They’re designed to remove any known poison from the air at the molecular level.
Chlorine filtration, check. Carbon monoxide filtration, check. Mercury vapor filtration, check.
What’s that, young man? Yes, the story is true. That’s why I have to live here and not on some ship with the sweet harmonies of imperial hymns on my mind as I gear up for battle. Would you like to put me on? Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.
All right then, suit yourself. I hope you enjoy the rest of the museum, honorable visitors.
THE END
James Trimarco is a graduate of Clarion West 2005 and his fiction has appeared in "Talking Back: Epistolary Fantasies" and Flashquake. He also has various publications as an anthropologist.
