Daniel Wilson - Robopocalypse

Then SAP turns around slow and smooth, rifle poised like a snake. It starts spitting bullets, one at a time. The machine is so strong that the rifle doesn’t even recoil. Not an inch. SAP fires again and again, mechanically and with perfect aim.

Aim, squeeze, bang. Aim, squeeze, bang.

My helmet is smacked off my head. It feels like I got kicked in the face by a horse. I drop down onto my haunches, safe behind the APC. When I touch my forehead, my hand comes away clean. The bullet bitch slapped my helmet off but missed me.

I catch my breath, try to focus my eyes. Squatting like this cramps my legs and I fall backward, catching myself with my other hand. That’s when I realize something is awfully wrong. My hand comes off the ground wet and warm. When I look at it, I don’t hardly understand what I’m seeing.

My palm is covered in blood.

Not mine, someone else’s. I look around me and see that, uh, the soldiers assigned to man the APC are all dead. SAP only fired a few times, but every round was a kill shot. Three soldiers lay sprawled out on their backs in the dirt, all of them with a little hole somewhere in their faces, missing the backs of their heads.

I can’t forget their faces. How surprised they looked.

In a distant sort of way, it connects in my brain that I’m all alone out here and in a bad situation.

And that AK-47 is firing again, one shot at a time. I peek under the chassis of the APC to visually locate the SAP unit. The bastard is still standing in the middle of the dusty street, Western-style. Chunks of plastic and cloth and Kevlar are scattered around it.

I realize that it’s firing at civilians watching from the windows. My earbud radio sputters: More troops are incoming. Raptors are monitoring the situation. Even so, I flinch at each shot, because I understand now that every bullet fired is ending a human life.

Otherwise SAP wouldn’t have pulled the trigger.

Then I notice something important. The AK-47 is the most delicate machine out there. It’s the highest priority target. Fingers shaking, I flip up the scope on my battle rifle and click the selector to three-round burst. Normally it’s a waste of ammo, but I gotta break that gun and I doubt I’ll get a second chance. I poke the barrel around the side of the APC, real careful.

It doesn’t see me.

I aim, inhale, hold the breath, and squeeze the trigger.

Three bullets rip the AK out of SAP’s hands in a spray of metal and wood. The machine looks at its hands where the gun used to be, processes for a second. Disarmed, SAP lumbers off toward an alley.

But I’ve already got a bead on it. My next few shots are for the knee joints. I know the Kevlar doesn’t hang much past the crotch. Not that the groin guard is useful on a machine, but oh well. I’ve rebuilt SAPs lots of times and I know each and every weak spot.

Like I said, two-legged units suck for warfare.

SAP goes down on its face, legs shattered. I emerge from cover and walk toward it. The thing flips itself over, painfully slow. It sits up. Then, it begins to drag itself backward toward the alley, watching me the whole time.

Now I hear sirens. People are emerging into the street, whispering in Dari. SAP One moves itself backward, one lurch at a time.

At this juncture, I thought everything was under control.

That was a false assumption.

What happened next was technically my fault. But I’m not a ground pounder, okay? I never pretended to be. I’m a cultural liaison. I’m meant to run my jaw, not get in firefights. I barely ever make it outside the wire.

Understood. What happened next?

Okay, let’s see. I know the sun was at my back, because I could see my shadow on the street. It stretched out in front of me, long and black, and covered SAP One’s shot-up legs. The machine had dragged itself back up against the wall of a building. There was no place left for it to go.

Finally, my head eclipsed the sun and my shadow covered SAP One’s face. I could see the machine still watching me. It had stopped moving. It just, well, it got really still. I had my rifle out, pointed at it. People gathered behind me, around both of us. This is it, I thought. It’s over.

I needed to radio my backup. Obviously, we were going to have to bring SAP in and get diagnostics, to find out what happened. I removed my left hand from the forestock of my weapon and reached for my earbud. At that exact instant, SAP One leaped at me. I pulled the rifle trigger, one-handed, and put a three-round burst into the side of the building.

It all happened so fast.

I just remember seeing that sky-blue riot helmet lying on the ground, plastic face guard cracked. It was spinning like a bowl. SAP One had fallen down to where he was before, sitting with his back against the wall of the building.

And then I felt my sidearm holster.

Empty.

The robot disarmed you?

It’s not like a person, ma’am. It is person-shaped. But I shot it, you know? With a person that would have been sufficient. But this robot took my pistol away from me before I could blink.

SAP One sat there looking at me again, back against the wall. I stood still. A big confusion of locals were running off in all directions. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t run. If SAP wanted to kill me, it was going to kill me. I should never have got so close to a haywire machine.

What happened?

With its right hand, SAP One raised the pistol. With the left, it pulled back the slide and chambered a round. Then, without taking its eyes off me, SAP One lifted the gun. It pushed the barrel up under its own chin, tight. It paused about one second.

Then, SAP One closed its eyes and pulled the trigger .

Specialist Blanton, you need to explain what caused this incident, or you really are going to take the blame for it.

Don’t you see? SAP committed suicide. That weak spot under the chin is classified, for Christ’s sake. This wasn’t caused by people. The insurgents didn’t trick him. The cinder block didn’t break him. Hackers didn’t reprogram him. How did he know how to use a gun? How did he know how to use the sign for cover? Why did he run away? It’s hard as hell to program a robot, period. This stuff is next to impossible even for a roboticist.

The only way that SAP could know how to do these things is if it learned how on its own.

This is unbelievable. You are the robot’s caretaker. If there were any signs of malfunction, you should have seen them. If not you, who are we supposed to hold accountable?

I’m telling you, SAP One looked me right in the eyes before it pulled the trigger. It was… aware.

I do understand that we’re talking about a machine. But that does not change the fact that I saw it thinking . I watched it make that last decision. And I won’t lie and say that I didn’t, just because it’s hard to believe.

I know this doesn’t make your job any easier. And I’m sorry for that. But respectfully, ma’am, it is my professional opinion that you should blame the robot for this.

This is ridiculous. That’s enough, Specialist. Thank you.

Listen to me. There’s no upside on this for a human being. We all got hurt, here: insurgents, civilians, and U.S. soldiers. There’s only one explanation. You’ve got to blame SAP One, ma’am. Blame it for what it chose to do. That fuckin’ robot didn’t have a malfunction.

It murdered those people in cold blood.

There were no public recommendations stemming from this hearing; however, the conversation between Specialist Blanton and Congresswoman Perez appears to have led directly to the writing and implementation of the robot defense act. As for Specialist Blanton, he was subsequently charged with a court-martial and remanded to military custody in Afghanistan until a stateside trial could be arranged. Specialist Blanton would never make it home.